A Passage of Stars (31 page)

Lily knelt, let her cheek lie against Bach’s cool curve, feeling the smoothing vibration of his soft singing hum. “Are you lucky, Pinto?” she asked.

“I’m tired. And I hurt.”

They left within the hour, leaving Bach to monitor.

Pinto knew shortcuts. Lily wondered where he had learned them, because several of them involved sections of rail reserved for government use. They arrived at Tachtau Overrun at twenty oh five hours.

It was simply an interchange of rail lines. Despite the state of emergency it was crowded, travelers changing trains to a myriad of destinations: Muir, Esau, Abba Gate; Security manned the entrances to the trains to Tchelik-in-Central, Khafaje Center, Subadar.

“Hoy.” Lily paused along a wall to survey that shifting mass of color and movement.

“Who are you meeting?” asked Pinto. “What does she look like?”

“Paternity,” said Lily. “Is there a destination called Paternity?”

Pinto blinked. “Is that what it said? Nothing I’ve ever—wait.” He grinned slightly, almost engaging. “What about Abba Gate? It used to be a big joke with us—” He broke off suddenly, looking upset about some memory. “‘Abba’ means father in some ancient language.”

“Might as well try it,” said Lily. “Otherwise we’ll never find him. He’s very dark,” she continued as they walked. “Good-natured face.” Shook her head. “You just watch out for Security. I’ll look for him.”

“Goodness,” said Pinto mockingly. “In deep company, I be. There it is.”

The crowds sifted past them, a constant flow that ebbed and lulled in spurts. Busy, intent on their own purposes, these were people linked to Central, she thought, and happy enough with the current government—she glanced at Pinto beside her, at two women in construction worker’s coveralls, and at a single tattooed man sweeping the floor—not all.

The stream of people swept past her. In the gaps between them she saw a trickle of arrivals coming through the turnstile one by one, as if presenting themselves to her, and then blending into the crowd.

All but one.

She stopped so suddenly that Pinto ran into her and they both staggered forward two steps before she pulled up.

“Hoy,” she breathed. “
Abba
Gate.”

The man had halted just beyond the turnstile, put a hand in his jacket pockets as any traveler might fumbling for some remembered item. But his eyes swept the crowd twice unobtrusively. She noticed it because on the first circuit they met hers. He smiled.

She walked forward as if she were blind, wove her way through the press of traffic by instinct and was standing in front of him before she realized that she might be attracting attention.

But he still smiled. “Well, Lily,” Heredes said. “I was hoping you would be the one to meet me here.”

“Y
ES, MY WORK IS
finished,” said Heredes. “There is just one last appointment I must keep, the one I’m going to now.” The
clack-clack
of the wheels serenaded his words. “I know what I need to know, and I have something to give to you, Lily—a final gem of information for our friend.” He glanced at Pinto, sitting stiff and reserved beside Lily.

Lily also looked at Pinto.

“I can get off at the next stop,” said Pinto.

Heredes smiled and said something in a language Lily did not recognize. Pinto looked surprised, then suspicious. But his reply, in the same language, was brief.

“Ah,” said Heredes. “If she has your kinnas then I see we can trust you.” Pinto spoke again, a rush of words this time, but Heredes waved him to stop with a laugh. “I don’t know the language that well, and in a much different dialect.”

“But you do know it,” said Pinto. “You must possess the kinnas of one of my people.”

“A long time ago, and she is, I’m afraid, dead now.”

Pinto merely nodded his head, a gesture so respectful and meek that Lily could only stare first at him, then at Heredes. “Is it all settled?” she asked, leaning closer to Heredes. The noise of the train as it rattled along the track masked her words. “How do you know we can trust him?”

“Kinnas is a strong force, Lily. Do not underestimate it. And in any case, never let pass an ally, if you have a moment to gather one. You never know when you may need one.”

She sighed. “Why didn’t you tell me that you traded me for the information? To Robbie?”

Much to her surprise, he laughed. “I never realized what I made you into,” he said, quite at variance, “not until you came running to my rescue. ‘He wore a lily on his brow—’ Well.” His nondescript gray tunic and trousers blended into the grey metal of the train bench they sat on. “And now I’m certain.”

“Certain of what? You talk in circles a lot, Master Heredes. You’re very good at concealing information.”

“Master Heredes? This will not do, my child. You had better call me Taliesin.”

“That’s what La Belle called you,” said Lily. “Don’t tell me that’s your real name?”

“The one I was born with.” The admission slipped so easily from him that at first she thought she had heard incorrectly. The train pulled into a stop. The doors slipped open and a blast of fresh air entered along with the new passengers. “Taliesin ap Branwen a Jawaharlal,” he continued. His voice took on a rolling, lilting quality that mirrored the roll of the train as it started forward again. “Or so I was baptized in the church of the Blessed Mother, in Gwynedd District, planet Terra, in the year of the New Age 209. Taliesin, son of Branwen and Jawaharlal. They were devout believers, or at least my mother was, and she rather held sway, in terms of cultural transmission at any rate, as you can see from my name.” A pause, during which Lily simply regarded him with astonishment and the train descended into a tunnel. “On the other hand,” he continued in his normal voice and without much regard to her surprise, “I suppose you can’t, having no knowledge of Cymru.” A wordless shake of her head confirmed that statement. “Perhaps I did neglect your education,” he murmured, more to himself than to her. “Well, Lily, regrets never lead you forward. Remember that.”

“Of course,” she said in a breath, as if she feared too loud an expression would cause him to disperse into the air from which he almost seemed to have come back to her. If Heredes was born
N.A.
209, if the Reft’s calendar was still in line with that of their ancestors’, then Heredes was more than 120 years old. “Hoy,” she said. His eyes, green as the burgeoning spring, watched her intently. “Are you really that old?” she whispered.

He smiled.

She realized abruptly that this was not a subject she wanted to discuss in such surroundings. “What was it like, where you were born?” she asked instead.

“Green and low and rich.” That lilting, musical strain informed his voice again. “Not rich in credits or great vast fields of grain or outward things, rather poor in outward things, in truth, but rich in the heart, in the mountains worn down by the ages of life lived about them, and the small jewels of lakes, and the small fields of corn, and the sea, brushing the shore. And song, of course. I think I sang before I talked. Air to breathe, rain, the soft winds; the kind of beauty that never leaves you, even when you’ve left it far behind you. We moved to the city when I was fourteen.”

“Didn’t you ever go back? Even to visit?”

“I meant to, once. There’s a lesson there—one of the secrets of a saboteur’s life, Lily, of that life you have to lead if this life, the one you’re living now, is what you’re living for.” His smile bore equal parts bittersweet memory and that distant gleam of anticipation. “Never hesitate, once you’ve decided on a course of action. I hesitated, and I may have lost the chance to return to the place where I was born. But—” With an encompassing gesture of one hand, he dismissed the past.

“But regrets never lead you forward,” said Lily.

“You’re very wise, Lilyaka. You must have been well taught.”

“Certainly not,” she replied indignantly. “I was lucky to survive my training.”

He laughed. “You see how like me you are. By the time I was twenty years old I was in jail—I robbed and rioted and fought and hated until the law grew sick of me. But sensei came. She worked with delinquents, succeeded rather better with me than anyone expected. I got out early on good behavior and studied at her Academy for ten years, like you, although you of course avoided prison.”

“I did run away once,” she pointed out.

“Isn’t that why the Sar sent you to me in the first place? You were a sullen child, Lily.”

“Was I?”

“Yes, but full of energy.” His hands lay unmoving on his lap, like the symbol of his inner composure. “After ten years, my sensei told me she had taught me everything she could. She told me I was good, but that I would never be a true master of the art.”

“But—”

Heredes raised a hand, interrupting her, and smiled. “She said I was too precipitous. That’s a quality you can’t unlearn. I competed for a few years after that, in martial arts tournaments; it’s a very popular sport in the League, like three-di or
bissterlas
is here. Then I became an actor.” He chuckled at her expression. “No, not one of your network actors. I studied acting for six years, then joined a repertory company on Sirra—that’s one of the League planets—and after that was offered a gem of a position in the Bharentous Repertory Company. It was while I was with them that I met the old man, the Duke, and he recruited me for the rebellion, for the band of all work. That’s what I did for the next forty years, until, of course, we won.”

“You were rebelling against the Kapellans, weren’t you?”

“Has Hawk been talking to you? What history do you know?

Lily considered. Beside her, Pinto dozed. Across the aisle, a man read, a woman slept, a child holding her hand. “Humans came from a few neighboring systems, explored, and found the pygmies. But the population grew too fast so they shipped out whole populations on the lowroad ships—that’s how we got here. But the coordinates back to the home worlds were lost—something. Even when the highroad fleet showed up no one could get back. A couple ships, those that Central didn’t impound, tried to. Maybe they did. But usually it’s said that they got lost on the way and just drifted forever.”

“The highroad fleet.” The train rattled on through the tunnel, black walls like starless space. “
Custer’s Luck
was the flagship of that fleet.”

“You know about it?”

“Of course. It was legendary. The hard-luck fleet, they called it. Twenty-eight of the finest ships ever built, sent out to explore and to search for the earlier colonizations—like Reft space—three of those ships returned. The vector drive was new. I suppose they just hadn’t got the hang of it yet. Obviously some of those ships got out here, but none ever returned with news of the Reft that I know of. And the League had more pressing problems. But it’s the names I remember—they struck me so:
Custer’s Luck
,
Swan of Tuonela
,
Pope Joan
,
Pyrrhus
,
Enfants Perdue
,
Chernobyl
,
Forlorn Hope
—”

“The
Forlorn Hope
!” Lily exclaimed. “That’s the name of the ship that old spacers say haunts the route back. Out beyond Nevermore and Jeremiad.”

“What, like the
Flying Dutchman
? No, I don’t suppose you’ve heard that story. Well, it makes one wonder.”

“What problems did the League have?”

“The Kapellans.”

“That’s right,” said Lily suddenly. “You and Kyosti and Sensei Jones were terrorists.”

For a moment, when he frowned, she understood why Kyosti and Adam might refer to him as a tyrant. “Hawk
has
been talking. But not, I dare say, about the right things.”

“He isn’t
that
forthcoming,” she retorted. The look she directed at Heredes, one eyebrow quirked slightly up, her mouth’s line bent with a softly sardonic pull, caused him to chuckle.

“Like me? I’m afraid that is an accusation that is quite true. But it’s just as bad to tell too much. That’s a lesson one learns as a saboteur: Always stay one step ahead of the pursuit. Especially if that pursuit is Kapellan in origin. We ran into the Kapellans in the course of our explorations, or they into us—who knows. For a decade or two they treated us like younger siblings. Offered us their vector drive. Of course, they were merely sizing us up, and just about the same year the hard-luck fleet went out—our twenty-eight best ships—they decided it was time for the League to join their Empire. We had no choice. We were their subjects for over two hundred years. But in the last forty of those years we built the revolt. We broke down their systems from within, and when the call came for the League to take up conventional arms, the Kapellans were partly crippled. And we succeeded.

“What did you do—besides blow up space stations and run an entire Kapellan fleet into their vectors wrong?”

“Hawk didn’t know about—has
Adam
been talking to you?”

Perceiving that
Adam
would hear about it someday, in no uncertain terms, Lily merely shrugged. “I don’t remember. There are so many stories, after all.”

“Touché,” he acknowledged. “Which means, ‘your point.’ We did everything. Blew things up, yes. Killed people when we had to. Rerouted information so it never got where it was meant to go. Sent false information in its place. Sabotaged entire computer systems, mechanical systems, so they shut down when we wanted them to. It was very effective. Now the League and the Empire live with a very jittery truce, abetted on our side by a huge privateer fleet that works the neutral territories that divide us from them, and by the Kapellans’ natural aversion to violence.”

“But if you helped bring about the League’s freedom, why is the League hunting you?”

“Because we know too much. Because they don’t trust us—‘our kind,’ as Hawk would say. Why should they? We dealt double-sided decks for so long that we could as easily pass our loyalty to yet another side. The Duke protected as many of us as he could while he still lived, but most of us chose to go underground. That’s how I ended up on Unruli. I never expected to find the Reft—I had no real idea that it even existed, just old records of a colonization seeded this way.”