A Passage of Stars (3 page)

At the lock, she had to encode high risk clearances in order to cut through the security shutdown on the lift. Her glove, ripped clean from her wrist to the base of her fingers, dangled open, revealing a ragged cut on her hand. Slow drops of red formed and fell, shattering into invisible fragments as the wind caught them. The hum of the lift rising to the surface lay like an ominous undertone to the clatter of the furiously spinning wind generators. The light on the panel blinked and a wailing beep sounded. She hastily tucked the bleeding hand under the opposite arm. The door yawned open.

“Lily!”

She ducked inside to face her eldest brother.

“You fool!” He hit the “close” button with one fist. “Do you want to shut the whole system down?” The door scraped shut behind her, a swirl of sand settling at her feet. “Why you think it’s such a lark to go out in high weather I’ll never understand. We already have a breakdown in the second vein—can you imagine if we’d gotten a code two in the warehouse just because you had to run outside?”

“This is serious,” said Lily. “I have to take the tunnel into Apron Port, right now.”

“Of course we’ll divert the car from second vein. We don’t really need to send anyone out there to prevent the collapse of the entire workings.”

Lily reached past him to the com-panel and punched up the “status” codes. The second vein blinked in third, under a broken wind generator and a mine engine in fifth vein. “That’s not bad enough that two hours will make any difference.”

“Lily, we can’t let everyone who gets it into their head go diverting maintenance and schedules for whatever trifles—”

“Heredes was kidnapped! Don’t you care?”

The door slid away to reveal the warehouse. The whine of a drill pierced above the rumble of grinder and one engine that sputtered into life, held on tentatively for a drawn-out space, and failed abruptly.

“Lily.” Her brother stepped into the warehouse and walked toward three figures who had gathered around the spent engine. “I have work to do.”

Cast carelessly back over his shoulder, the words barely reached her. She ran to her room, stripped off her outside gear, and bandaged the cut on her hand. A duffel bag of traveling gear packed, a change of clothes, and she went in search of her father.

The metal walls slid off in bareness around her, linking lab and workshop, kitchen and private rooms. Some led into the blankness, ended without reason, work abandoned or not yet begun. They were so alike, each to each, as to be indistinguishable, but the entire House was laid out so succinctly on a grid that it was impossible to get lost. And what joy, thought Lily, in a world where there is no uncertainty at all?

In the center of the grid lay the offices, grouped around a circular chamber. From the communications center the back talk from the intercom link to the field supervisors whispered in the still air: “Ten-eighty-eight. Let me have a spiker on five-eight. Ten-four. I’ll send it with Seke.” One of her sisters sat at the com-desk, playing “Vector Storm” on the computer and periodically responding with a terse “Eight-twelve, you’re coded in” to a request. Squawks and static punctuated the low exchanges; now and then a high beep sounded from the game.

“Lilyaka!” Her mother’s voice penetrated forcefully into the quiet of the foyer. “Come in here.”

Lily walked to the entrance of her mother’s office.

“Come in, girl. You needn’t pretend to avoid me.” The Saress rose from her chair, pausing to erase a screen from her computer. Lily stayed in the doorway. “You continually disobey me,” the Saress continued, beginning now to pace the large room. Metal-sheathed walls mirrored her stride, her height, the long, tapering fingers that she clasped and unclasped before her. Only her expression was lost, for lack of detail. “I have offered you any number of options for your future, but you refuse to listen to me. The time has come that you simply no longer have a choice—”

“This is an emergency,” Lily said, stepping back.

“You will wait, young woman, until given my leave.” The Saress swept one hand over her scarf, brushing a stray strand of black hair, tensing as she forced it back into its place under the coiled cloth. “Emergency! I tell you, my girl, when the next offer—”

“You never listen to me!” cried Lily.

Her sister stepped out from the communications room, shrugged, and went back in. Lily whirled and ran to her father’s door.

“Lily!” came her mother’s voice from behind her. “As of this moment—”

The Sar’s door slid open. Lily dodged inside as the door sighed into place behind her. Here, the still, dry air smelled as if it had been touched by some unidentifiable spice.

“Excuse me, Sar-father,” Lily said into the silence.

His dark head remained bent over a graph. “If you must argue with your mother, at least do so in private, not where the entire field division can overhear you.” He turned in his chair to face her, straightening a sleeve that had slipped askew. “I am aware,” he continued, “that we have not been able to provide you with a job that suits your talents. I don’t want to force you into a bond that you would despise, but eventually you may leave me no choice. You must have some occupation, Lily.” A frown creased his face, a soft break in the copper of his complexion. “I feel constrained to add that you haven’t even done us the courtesy of providing children for our House.”

The familiar litany faded past her. “You don’t understand.” Eight strides took her to his chair. “I just came from the Academy. Someone—they weren’t even human—someone abducted Master Heredes.”

“An alien abduction? Lily, that’s ridiculous. In this weather? And what you were doing out I can’t—”

“They had an
aircar
. I saw it.”

Black eyes met black eyes, “By the Void, did they now.” He stood up. “An aircar.” He paused suddenly, considering her. She, in her turn, was struck by that unequal balance of years between him and Heredes. The Sar was as young a sixty as anyone Lily knew, since he could afford the occasional dose of rejuv. Yet Heredes, looking thirty years younger, felt as old to her. And picturing him, she experienced so strong a rush of fear that it took all of her years of training not to run out of the room.

“Lilyaka,” said the Sar finally, almost a sigh. “Only Central has clearance to grant bounties and to allow intersystem arrests. And only Central would have access to aircars, if there were any. I’m afraid that Hiro’s tale must have been correct. If you like, we’ll send out a query, follow the usual channels. I’m sure we can get word of him. What happened to your hand?”

She thrust the bandaged hand behind her. “It’s nothing to do with Central. I know it.”

“Even if it were nothing to do with Central, which I doubt, what possible responsibility do you have toward Heredes?”

“Because—” She faltered, thought of Heredes unconscious in an alien grasp, and went on. “Because he’s the only person who understands what I want out of life. The things that matter to me. Not mining.”

For an instant she saw a flash of emotion in his face, as if some old pain had returned to haunt him. “Of all my children,” he said slowly, “you have been the most disobedient, Lily. And in that way, you have always reminded me of myself at your age—but I did not have the luxury to seek some more—shall we say—spiritual calling. I had to rebuild the Ransome mining operation, and whatever inclination I might have had to an artistic vocation—or to an elite military group like the Immortals—” With a slight grimace he shrugged, as if relieving himself of old dreams long since withered. “My responsibility was—had to be—first of all to Ransome House.”

Another time she might have been surprised at this revelation, or perhaps flattered that her stern and single-minded father had shown this side of himself to her. But now she only shook her head. “Then you see why I have to go after Master Heredes.”

“No, I don’t see. Your obligations are here, Lilyaka.”

She bowed her head, but she did not reply.

“Daughter.” He looked down at her with forty years of authority over Ransome House in his gaze. “I forbid you to go. Do you understand?”

“I understand,” she replied, quite levelly.

She walked, without undue haste, to her room; the un-decorated walls, white bedcover, and uncluttered plastic desk revealed nothing of her character. She had left no mark here. Without regret, she grabbed her gear and left.

It was alarmingly easy to get Bach through the warehouse and into the hangar. Bach had played this game before, on furtive trips to her room where lay the wonderful and much-loved computer, his idiot relative. He shielded his outside lights; his two sensors he dulled to a deep orange, like sparks guttering on the ground. Dust puffed out along his track, and Lily walked beside, her parka and duffel hanging from one hand to screen him. Once, when the drill and grinder and the reluctant engine all wailed at once in an excess of high harmonics, Lily heard the little robot sing softly, as on an indrawn breath, his anguish at such dissonance. Workers hurried to help consolidate these hopeful repairs, and Lily and Bach escaped into the hangar lock.

The hangar was empty and cold. A single light hanging over the counter that housed the computer lit the room. Shadows held court here, filling the far limits of the stone hall, covering the little fleet of trucks and remodeled vehicles. Huge dents in their exteriors seemed more a trick of the light than the mark of their world. In the dimmest reaches lay the salvage and the one incredibly flattened vehicle, no longer recognizable as a truck, that her sisters had teased her with when she was young, telling her that it still contained the body of a man, the metal crushed so tightly around him by some fearful combination of rock and wind on Unruli’s surface that he could not be recovered. Lily savored the stir in the dry air, the hiss of her breathing plug, and walked over to the computer. Bach rose, singing, behind her.

She coded the computer to turn on at its lowest level and left Bach to monitor it. Checked and fueled a truck, stowing her gear in the well-armored driving compartment. It took three tries before the engine steadied and stayed alive. Its roar echoed in the hanger, drowning out Bach’s melodic lines. She eased it forward, coming to rest with only a slight sputtering one foot from the lift doors, and swung down from the seat.

At the computer, the lance of light from her hard hat illuminated the keyboard. Bach was playing chess on half the screen, while the other half still monitored the lift and hangar doors. As Lily passed behind him, he checkmated the computer. Lily covered her eyes. With a few sheepish chords he exited the program and sat ready for her command.

We go,
she whistled. Bach typed in an elaborate sequence. Lily jogged back to the truck and climbed in. Three bell-like tones chimed above the swell of the engine, and the lift doors began to slide aside.

The intercom snapped on, “Contact. Contact. Please identify. No clearance has been given.”

Lily put the truck into gear. It lurched forward into the lift, sand gritting under the tires.

“Please identify. We have storm warning. Close the lift doors.”

Lily whistled a quick half-phrase. Bach detached himself from the computer and floated toward her. They got inside the lock at the same time. The com-panel in the wall of the lift came to furious life before Bach reached it, flashing warnings and prohibitions. Behind, the doors were shutting, but beyond them Lily saw the hangar door panel blinking and the first stirring as the lock into the warehouse began to open.

“Come on,” she said under her breath. The lift doors came together with a metallic thud. One of the warning lights on the panel immediately snapped off, but another took its place. Someone behind was keying in the “open door” sequence for the lift. The roar of the engine echoed around her, deafening.

Bach keyed in the lift sequence. Several things happened at once. Someone pounded on the lift doors, A flurry of messages lit up the panel’s screen in a palette of colors. The intercom crackled and a high voice shouted, “What, by All, do you think you’re doing?”

And the lift began to move, slow, shuddering at first, then smoothing into the long rise toward the surface.

“Who is this?” shouted the voice over the intercom. An alarm, high-pitched and strident, began to wail, piercing in the closed lift. It shut off abruptly.

“Lilyaka,” said her father’s voice suddenly over the intercom. “Stop this at once.”

Lily shoved her duffel bag a little deeper under the instrument board and adjusted the safety belt for the extra seat so that it would fit over Bach.

“Answer me.” For the first time in her life, she knew he was angry. “Very well. We will go into the central computer.” The intercom clicked off. The lift shuddered once and stopped.

“Bach,” Lily shouted. The lift began to descend. “Override it! Override!” Her hands clenched the steering wheel, white-tipped at the knuckles. Bach had been typing; now he pushed forward a second appendage and plugged directly into the panel. There was a furious riot of color on the screen. The intercom sputtered with voices and failed. The lift shuddered. Bach was not singing at all.

A violent jolt threw Lily into the wheel, winding her. The lift halted. The alarm began to shriek. Yelling came over the intercom, suddenly cut off. The lift began to rise. The screen went black except for a single column of white rising like the level of water in a slim tube. The alarm ceased, as if it too had been cut off. The white column rose, rose, rose, and they were there.

Air rushed past her face as she leaned out. Bach detached himself from the com-panel and sped to her. She felt the air pressure thicken around her, as if the doors and walls were bracing. Bach slid onto the seat beside her and she belted him in and shut the metal cage around them. A loud crash cut above the noise of the engine. The doors creaked and moved and, with the sudden movement of something released from restraint, popped open.

The wind screamed in at them. Lily was blinded by its force. With both hands she pulled the safety goggles down from her hard hat She could see scarcely ten meters in front of her. But she merely tightened her grip on the wheel and eased the truck forward. As they came out completely from the lock, into the full fury of the storm, a hard gust picked the left side of the vehicle fully a meter off the ground, then let it free to come crashing down. Lily’s head struck the metal mesh above her as she was flung up, but the hard hat absorbed most of the shock.