Ceremony

by Glen Cook

  On its last visit High Night Rider had brought word that the rogues were sabotaging the brethren as well as silth, that assassination had become their primary weapon. They were using their talent-suppressing device again, and the sisterhoods could not cope.

  Marika suspected they could not cope because they did not feel motivated enough. Even now, after all the disaster they had wrought, it was difficult to get silth to take males seriously as a threat.

  Marika did not want to take up that task again, but it seemed she might have to, if the vague reports she received indicated the way things were actually moving. If the Communities themselves would not spend the effort and energy to defend themselves adequately.

  A wave of undirected touch passed over her. She looked at the sky as one of her bath called out, “Mistress, High Night Rider has come.”

  A blob of light moved across the sky, visible even in daylight. It slowed, maneuvered, fell into orbit. Marika rose and stalked through the camp, which today housed nearly a score of meth. Two other darkships were operating from her base, not participating in the hunt, but examining more closely the most interesting of the worlds that Marika had discovered. Their Mistresses were young ones, filled with a desire to expand the frontiers, and they had found themselves teams of bath willing to join their ventures.

  Marika’s reports home had had one effect: They had somewhat revivified the old spirit of exploration. Once she had blazed a trail others were eager to devote closer attention to what she had found.

  She suspected Bagnel was irked. That meant darkships scattered about the void contributing nothing to the mirror project. She suspected the tedium of construction work was what had encouraged these younger Mistresses and bath to come out to the edge of beyond.

  The explorers could do little to truly expand meth knowledge. There were more curiosities among the starworlds than could have been cataloged by ten thousand darkship crews in ten thousand lifetimes.

  Of late even Marika had been spending more time looking at those curiosities than she had been being driven by her need to overhaul the Serke.

  “Darkships coming down, mistress,” someone called. “At least three of them. Maybe four.”

  That was to be expected. There were supplies to be delivered, and always there was another group of explorers who had saved themselves effort by scavenging a ride aboard the giant voidship.

  Though the darkships would not ground for a long time yet, Marika went to the landing area with the others. They all stood around waiting, joining in speculation about what news would come from home.

  The first darkship down carried a passenger.

  “By the All! Bagnel!” Marika swore as the tradermale stepped down. He was shaking, numb with awe. “What are you doing here?” He did not hear her. Whether he was amazed to have arrived healthy, or overawed by having traveled so far, he was completely turned inside himself. She rushed over and repeated her question as meth yelled about clearing the area so the next darkship could ground.

  Silth stared. A male! Out here!

  Bagnel shuddered as though shaking water off, and said, “Marika.” He looked her over. “You have changed.”

  “So have you. Is that gray I see there? Time gnaws, does it not? It must be fate. I was just thinking about you--and here you are. What are you doing here? Come with me. Before that Mistress gets impatient and plops down on our heads.”

  “Are you all right? You look tired.”

  “I am tired, Bagnel. I have looked at more stars than you can imagine even exist. Though you must have seen how many there are when you spanned the reach outside the cloud. Come. Let’s get something to eat. You must be starved.”

  “My stomach is too unsettled. That passage... It was too much for me, I fear. The Up-and-Over... I find myself dreading the return trip already.”

  “You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here. Has something happened?”

  “No. Except that I have been stripped of my job and prerogatives. Whoa! It’s only temporary. A cabal of senior factors and high silth ganged up on me and ordered me to take a vacation. They said I was pushing myself too hard, that I was on the edge of a breakdown because I was trying too hard to keep the project ahead of schedule. They stripped me of my powers so I would have no choice. Since they wouldn’t let me do anything at all, and the Redoriad were willing when I approached them, I decided to come walk the stars while I had a chance. You invited me, you’ll recall. I think I am sorry I did it.”

  “I recall. I believe I invited you to come after I caught the Serke.”

  “But you haven’t. You’ve been out here forever. It begins to seem unlikely, doesn’t it?”

  “I am narrowing it down, Bagnel. Narrowing it down. I have a very good idea where they’re not.”

  “You are still able to be amused at yourself.”

  “Not often. But I don’t think it will be too much longer.”

  “You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.”

  Marika noted Grauel and Barlog hovering. They were polite enough to remain out of earshot, but they were there, eager to discover the meaning of Bagnel’s appearance. Marika asked, “You’re sure this isn’t business? That someone didn’t send you out to get me to come home?”

  He looked surprised. “No. Why do you ask that?”

  “We get very little reliable news out here. What we have gotten are rumors about increasingly bad rogue trouble. Trouble nobody seems able--or maybe just willing--to solve. I thought maybe someone sent you to get me to come back and deal with it.”

  “Marika... I might as well put it bluntly. The vast majority of silth are very happy that you are out here instead of at home. That’s why you get the support you do. The farther away you are, the happier they are.”

  “Oh.”

  “The rogues have become a problem again, though, that’s for sure. They’re much better organized this time. They learned a lot.”

  “I believe I predicted that. I believe no one would listen to me.”

  “Right. It’s no longer possible to use the tactics you developed. One cannot be taken and forced to betray scores more by subjecting him to a truthsaying. They have structured their organization so that few members know any of the others. And they are careful to keep the risks low whenever they choose to strike.”

  “That was predictable too.”

  “And even where the hunters know who they are looking for it has been hard to track a culprit down. Your Kublin, for example.”

  “Kublin?” Marika had done her best not to think of her littermate over the years. It had been her thought to destroy his hope by shattering the support lent by the Serke and their rogue companions. But the Serke remained unshattered.

  “He is rumored to be the mastermind, the one they call the warlock. Not one hunter has been able to find a trace of him since his escape from you. Whenever someone does get a line on him he is found to be gone by the time the hunt closes in. There is still strong support for him and those who fled with the Serke among the bond meth and even our worker brethren.”

  “I can find Kublin.”

  “No doubt. You have always done whatever you set your mind to. I will mention that to anyone who is interested. My own opinion is, you should continue the search for the Serke. Step it up, even. It could be important.”

  “Ah? Is that it?”

  “What?”

  “The true reason you put yourself through what it takes for a meth unfamiliar with the Up-and-Over to come out here?”

  “I came for a vacation, Marika. I came where I could see a friend who has been missing from my life for far too long. I’m just trying to tell you what is happening at home. If you care to interpret that as an attempt at manipulation... “

  “I’m sorry. Go ahead. Tell me the news.”

  “Last month we finally caught a courier from the rogues trying to sneak in. Two of them, actually. Both brethren who had gone into exile aboard Starstalker. I was brought in for their questioning becau
se they had things to say about the project.”

  “And? Did you get any hints as to where they are hiding?”

  “Just one. Inside the dust cloud. Which you suspect already. Naturally, they would not have been risked had they known more. I wish we could have taken the Mistress of the Ship who brought them in.”

  “Of course. What did they have to say otherwise?”

  “We learned a lot about what they’ve been doing, which is mostly marking time and hoping the aliens find them before you do. They are no longer so confident of Bestrei.”

  “What?”

  “It turns out that our estimates of the Serke situation were not quite right. They have no direct contact with the alien. What they have is a very large alien ship orbiting a planet. They have been studying it and appropriating from it, while they wait for its builders to come looking for it.”

  “But... “

  “Give me a chance, Marika. There is a story. I’d better tell it so you know what I’m talking about.”

  “I think you’d better. Starting from the beginning.”

  “All right. Here it is. Way back, a venturesome Serke Mistress of the Ship... “

  “Kher-Thar Prevallin?”

  “Exactly. That most famous of the farwanderers. A legend of our own times. But if you keep interrupting you will never hear the story.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Way back, Kher-Thar decided she wanted to see what lay on the far side of the dust cloud. While she was passing through she decided to rest her bath at a particular world. An almost optimally friendly one, by all accounts. After several days down she had just reached orbital distance departing when the alien ship appeared, I take it out of the Up-and-Over. The way I was told, it was not there one moment, and there the next. It detected the darkship and gave chase. Out of curiosity, apparently.”

  Marika grumbled beneath her breath. He was stretching it.

  “No. There was no evidence the creatures aboard were hostile. But Kher-Thar, you will recall, was not known for her cool head. She panicked. Thinking she was being attacked, she attacked first. The aliens were unable to deal with her, though she was not known for the strength of her talent for the dark side. The aliens abandoned the chase. Kher-Thar scrambled into the Up-and-Over and scurried home, nearly killing her bath.”

  “I always thought she was overrated. She was a total misfit, which is why the Serke put up with her wandering in the first place. They wanted her out of their fur.”

  “You would understand that better than I.”

  “Vicious, Bagnel. Tell your story.”

  “Let me.”

  “Well?”

  “The aliens who survived Kher-Thar’s attack managed to get their ship into a stable orbit around the planet, but could not save themselves. When Kher-Thar returned, accompanied by a horde of Serke investigators, they were all dead. The investigators knew the importance of their find, but could make no sense of it. After long and often savage debate their ruling council voted to ask the dark-faring brethren bonds for help. Ever since, for more than twenty years, they have been studying the alien ship, appropriating equipment and technology, and waiting for another ship to come looking for the first.”

  “Why do they think one will come? We seldom send anyone to look for a lost darkship.”

  “I am not certain. But they are convinced one will. Perhaps because of the investment such a vessel would represent. The prisoners said it is huge. That for us to build it would take an effort on the scale of the mirror project.”

  “Then everything they did to us in the Ponath was purely on speculation? They might have gotten nothing at all for their trouble?”

  “Apparently. Even under truthsaying the prisoners insist that no meth has ever met one of the aliens alive.”

  “Idiots.”

  “Maybe. You don’t know how you would have reacted in identical circumstances. One like your Gradwohl, obsessed with making the Reugge Community into a power, might have done the same. Or worse. You dare not fault the Serke without faulting all silth. They were being silth.”

  “I will not argue that. I will only say they behaved in the most stupid fashion possible in being silth. And they continue in their stupidity. All those years and no ship has come? And they have not given up?”

  “How long have you been looking for them?”

  “More years than some care to count. Grauel and Barlog are not happy with me.”

  “It is the only hope they have left, Marika. If the aliens do not come, sooner or later you will. And, as I said, they are afraid Bestrei is no longer what she was.

  “Suppose that ship was an explorer, the same as Kher-Thar’s? With no more fixed a routine than hers? Suppose she had been lost instead? How long have you looked, knowing the place existed?”

  “Even so... I suppose I understand.”

  “So I think you should go on looking, though I am sure the search is wearing. You have to be getting closer, if only by the process of elimination. But so must the aliens. I wouldn’t like to guess what might happen if the Serke were to make common cause with them.”

  “The weapons that destroyed TelleRai.”

  “Not to mention those mounted on the ships the rogues used. We have studied those endlessly, from fragments we captured, and we can make no sense of them. I fear we are just too far away in knowledge and technology. They might as well be your witchcraft. Nevertheless, brethren in the sciences believe larger weapons of the same sort could be used against planetary targets.”

  “I will admit I have been tempted to give up the hunt.”

  “I thought so when I saw you, Marika. You look tired. As if you’re ready to accept defeat. But enough of that. I really did not come here on business. I’m dedicated to carrying out my orders, which are to spend a few months without worrying.”

  “How is the project coming?”

  “Seventy percent completion on the leading mirror. Forty on the trailing. The orbitals for making fine and local adjustments are in place. We’re getting almost forty percent of peak output. I understand that they have begun to have an effect. There was no measurable advance of the permafrost line this past winter.”

  “How far did it get?”

  “Almost to the tropics. Well past Ruhaack. But it should begin to fall back soon. If the dust gets no thicker. And the probes we have run in the direction the sun is moving show no increase in density along the path to be followed for the next five hundred years. I think we will win the battle against the long winter. And, though you have spent very little time on it since you got it going, you will be remembered as the dam of the project.”

  “I am not much concerned about how the future recalls me, so long as there is a future. And I am still battling for it out here. In a hunt that, I am sure, will not be in vain, and that will not last much longer.”

  Bagnel bowed his head as if to mask his expression.

  “Well, tradermale. Adventurer. Want to make it a working holiday? I can squeeze another body onto my darkship. You could be the first male ever to see new worlds.”

  III

  Bagnel stepped down off the darkship and surveyed the encampment with the look of one returning home. “I’ll confess this, Marika. I never once worried about the project.”

  Marika lifted a lip in amusement. “It could not have been that bad. It wasn’t the same as traveling in High Night Rider?”

  “No. It was not the same. As you know perfectly well. It was more like falling forever. It was more unnerving than riding a darkship at home. There is something under your feet there, even if it is several thousand feet down. Still... “

  “What is that look in your eye?” Marika kept one eye on her bath and Grauel and Barlog, making sure they made sure the darkship was being readied for its next journey. She ruled the base strictly. She insisted all darkships be ready to lift at a moment’s notice. The Serke could strike at any time. Would strike, she suspected, if they knew where to find her. She was stuck to their trail like t
he stubbornest hunting arft.

  “Wonder, I suppose. I have to admit that, harrowing as it was, the experience touched something in me. I could develop a taste for exploration.”

  “Give up the mirrors, then. I am here. The darkship is here.”

  He looked at her narrowly, startled and tempted. “I think not, Marika. Your sisters would not understand.”

  “I suppose not. It was just a thought. Maybe someday. When the project is complete. When the Serke have been disposed of. When the aliens have been found and some sort of accommodation with them has been reached. Wouldn’t it be in the grand tradition for us to fly away and never be seen again?”

  He picked it up as a game. “Yes. We could just go on exploring, skipping from star to star, forever. We might be touched occasionally, in the far distance, and rumors would rise about a ghost darkship flitting out on the edge of the void. Young, fresh Mistresses would bring their darkships out to hunt the legend.”

  “But it couldn’t be. We couldn’t carry enough stores. And where would I find willing bath?”

  “Oh, well.”

  “Tomorrow we will go out again. There is no end of stars in this sector--though those really worth investigating are running short.”

  But Marika returned to space much sooner.

  The night was just hours old when a sudden, sharp, panicky touch smote Marika. Darkship! Starting down. Not from home.

  Marika rushed from her hut. The base began coming to life around her. Darkship crews rushed to their ships. The touch came again. Serke! Oh. They have detected us. They are starting back up. They are fleeing. They are very frightened. The otherworld reeks of their fear. Hurry!

  “Grauel! Barlog! Will you come on? We’re going up!”