A Talent for War (39 page)

XXIII.

Solitude holds the mirror to folly. One cannot, in its cold reflection, easily escape truth.

—Rev. Agathe Lawless, Sunset Musings

WE RETURNED TO the Centaur for a meal, and some sleep. But the sleep came late: we talked for several hours, speculating on what had finally happened to the captain and crew of the Corsarius. Had the Tenandrome found remains on board? And possibly conducted a funeral service? A ritual volley, report home, and forget it? Pretend none of it ever happened?

"I don't think so," said Chase.

"Why not?"

"Tradition. The captain of the Tenandrome would have been bound, if she took such action, to have closed out the Corsarius's log with a final entry." She looked out at the old warship. Its
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running lights glowed white and red against the hard sky. "No: I'd bet they found her the same way we did. She's a dutchman." She folded her arms tightly across her breast as though it were cool in the cabin. "Maybe the mutes captured the ship, spirited away the crew, and left it here for us to find and think about. An object lesson."

"Out here? How would they expect us to find it?"

Chase shook her head, and closed her eyes. "Are we going back over?"

"We don't have any answers yet."

She moved in the dark, and soft music crept into the compartment. "There may not be any over there."

"What do you think Scott's been looking for all these years?"

"I don't know."

"He found something. He went through that ship, the same as we did, and he found something."

While we talked, Chase took us out another few kilometers, smiling ruefully, but admitting that the derelict made her nervous.

I could not get out of my mind the image of a Christopher Sim in despair. It had never occurred to me that he, of all people, could have doubted the eventual outcome of the war. It was a foolish notion, of course, to assume that he'd had the advantage of my hindsight. He turns out to be quite human. And in that despair, in his concern for the lives of his comrades, and the people whom he tried to defend, I sensed an answer to the deserted vessel.

There will be a Confederacy one day; but they will not construct it on the bodies of my men.

Long after Chase had gone to sleep. I tried to tabulate everything I could recall or guess about the Ashiyyur, the Seven, Sim's probable state of mind, and the Rigellian Action.

It was difficult to forget the guns of the Corsarius turning in my direction during the simul.

But that, of course, was not how it had happened: Sim's ploy had worked. Corsarius and Kudasai had succeeded in surprising the attacking ships. They'd done some serious damage before

Corsarius had been incinerated in its duel with the cruiser. That at least was the official account.

It obviously hadn't happened that way either. And I wondered, too, why Sim had changed his strategy at Rigel. During his long string of successes, he'd always led the Dellacondans personally. But on this one occasion, he'd preferred to escort Kudasai during the main assault, while his frigates drove a knife into the flank of the enemy fleet.

And Kudasai had carried the surviving brother to his death only a few weeks later at Nimrod.

But Tarien lived long enough to know that his diplomatic efforts had succeeded: Earth and Rimway had joined hands at last, had promised help, and Toxicon had already joined the war.

The Seven: somehow it connected with the tale of the Seven. How did it happen that their identities were lost to history? Was it coincidence that the single most likely source of their names, the log of the

Corsarius, was also mute on the subject, and in fact mute on the battle itself? What had Chase said? It could not have happened!

No: it could not.

And somewhere, along the slippery edge of reality and intuition that precedes sleep, I understood. With a clear and cold certainty, I understood. And, had I been able, I would have put it out of my mind, and gone home.

Chase slept fitfully for a couple of hours: When she woke, it was dark again, and she asked what I intended to do.

I was beginning to grasp the quandary of the Tenandrome. Christopher Sim, however he might have died, was far more than simply a piece of history. We were embroiled with the central symbols of our political existence. "I don't know," I said. "This place, this world, is a graveyard.

It's a graveyard with a guilty secret."

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Chase looked down at the frosty, cloud-swept rim of the world. "Maybe you're right," she said.

"All the bodies are missing. The bodies are missing, the names are missing, the log entries are missing. And the Corsarius, which should be missing, is circling like clockwork, every six hours and eleven minutes."

"They intended to come back," I said. "They put the ship into storage. That implies someone expected to come back."

"But they didn't," she said. "Why not?"

During the entire history of Hellenic civilization, I know of no darker, nor more wanton crime, than the needless sacrifice of Leonidas and his band of heroes at Thermopylae. Better that Sparta should fall than that such men be squandered. "Yes," I said, "where are the bodies?"

Through a shaft in the clouds, far below, the sea glittered.

The Centaur's capsule was designed to permit movement from ship to ship, or from orbit to a planetary surface. It was not intended for the sort of use I proposed to put it to: a long atmospheric flight. It would be unstable in high winds, it would be cramped, and it would be relatively slow. Still, it could set down on land or water. And it was all we had.

I loaded it with supplies, enough to last several days.

"Why?" asked Chase. "What's down there?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "I'll keep the videos on."

"I have a better idea: let's both go."

I was tempted. But my instinct was that someone should stay with the ship.

"They're all a long time dead, Alex. What's the point?"

"Talino," I said. "And the others. We owe something to them. The truth should have some value."

She looked dismayed. "What am I supposed to do," she objected, "if you get in trouble? I won't be able to come down after you to bail you out."

"I'll be all right. If not, if something happens, go for help."

She sneered, thinking how long it would take to make the round trip. "Be careful."

We ran through the various systems checks. "Don't go to manual until you're down," she said.

"And probably not then. The computers will do all the tricky stuff. You're just along for the ride." She'd been staring at me.

I reached for her, but she stiffened and drew away, shaking her head. "When you come back,"

she said, so softly I could barely hear.

I climbed into the vehicle, pulled the canopy down, and secured it. She rapped on it twice, gave me a thumbs-up, turned quickly, and left the bay. I watched the lights change over the exit door, signaling that the chamber was sealed.

Her image popped onto my display. "All set?"

I smiled gamely and nodded.

Red lamps in the bay went purple, then green. The deckplates opened beneath the capsule, and I was looking down at wisps of cloud and a gem-blue ocean. "Thirty seconds to launch, Alex."

"Okay." I locked my eyes on the instrument panel.

"It'll be late afternoon when you get down there," she said. "You'll have about three hours until dark."

"Okay."

"Stay in the capsule tonight. You have no idea at all what sort of place this is. In fact, you should probably stay aloft. Keep off the ground altogether in the dark."

"Yes, Mom."

"And Alex—?"

"Yes?"

"Do what you said. Keep the cameras on. I'll be with you."

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"Okay."

The capsule trembled as the magnets took hold. Then I fell away, down through the clouds.

It was raining over the ocean. The capsule descended into gray overcast and leveled off at about a thousand meters. It turned southwest on a preset course, which would parallel the overhead track of the Corsarius.

There were thousands of islands scattered through the global ocean: no way I could hope to search them all. But Corsarius had been left in orbit.

I was certain now that there had been a conspiracy. Its shape and form was unclear, but I had no doubts who the principal victim had been. But why abandon the ship? To torture him, perhaps?

Or as a sign they would come back for him? Whichever it was, the conspirators, with an entire planet to choose from, would have placed him somewhere along its track, close beneath its orbit.

Within the womb of the bubble cockpit, I felt warm and safe. Rain splattered in large sluggish drops on the plexiglass.

"Chase?"

"Here."

"Islands ahead."

"I see them. How're you doing?"

"Ride's a bit rough. I don't know what this thing'll be like if it gets windy."

"The capsule's supposed to be reasonably stable. But it's small. They really don't expect you to go joyriding in it, Alex." She still sounded worried. "You might want to cut the search area down."

I was planning to look at everything in an eight-hundred-kilometer-wide band centered on a line drawn directly beneath Corsarius 9s orbit. "It's probably too narrow already."

"You're going to be busy."

"I know."

"You'll run out of sandwiches long before you run out of islands. You're lucky you don't have to track across the continent."

"That wouldn't matter," I said. "It's too cold there." It must have seemed a cryptic remark to her, but she didn't press me.

The first group of islands lay dead ahead. They looked sterile, sand and rock, mostly, with scattered brush and a few withered trees.

I flew on.

Toward sunset, the storm had fallen behind. The skies purpled, and the sea became smooth and transparent and still. A school of large, black-bodied creatures glided below the surface; and towers of sun-streaked cumulus drifted on the western horizon.

The ocean was studded with white, sandy reefs; lush, fern-covered atolls; and ridges, bars, and islets. There were thousand-kilometer-long island groups, and solitary fragments of rock lost in the global sea.

Chase's voice, exasperated: "If I knew what you were looking for, maybe I could help."

"Sim and the Seven," I said. "We're looking for Christopher Sim and the Seven."

I saw no birds anywhere, but the skies were filled with schools of floaters. They were bigger by far than their cousins on Rimway and Fishbowl, and indeed larger than any I had seen anywhere.

These living gasbags, variations of which could be found on so many worlds, gamboled through the air currents. They rose and dived in synchronized movements, and swirled in wild chaos like balloons in a sudden gust.

All the floaters I'd ever heard about, though, were animals. These seemed different, and I learned later that my first guesses about them were correct. Their gas sacs were green; and they possessed a vegetable appearance. The larger ones tended to be less mobile. Long tendrils
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trailed from a stem and, on the more sedentary creatures, floated on the surface. I saw no indication of eyes or any of the extrusions associated with animals. I suspected this was one of those ecologies which produces animates, species not possessing the clear distinction between plant and animal which adheres on most living worlds.

A few approached the capsule, but they could not keep up, and though I was curious, I resolved not to slow down. Keep moving. Tomorrow maybe.

I passed over a group of desert islands while the last of the sunlight was fading. They were strung out at remarkably constant intervals, alternately to my left and right. Footprints of the Creator, Wally Candles had said of a similar chain on Khaja Luan. (By then, I had become something of an expert on Candles.)

Candles and Sim: how much had the poet known?

Our children will face again their silent fury, Who walks behind the stars On far Belmincour.

Yes, I thought: Belmincour.

Yes..

I crossed into the southern hemisphere in the late afternoon of the following day, and approached a wedge-shaped island dominated by a single large volcano. It was a place of luxuriant growth: of purple-green ferns and broad white flowers and vast green webs that clung to every piece of rock. Placid pools mirrored the sky, and there was a fine natural harbor, complete with waterfall. It was an ideal site, I told myself, setting down on a narrow strip of beach between the jungle and the sea.

I climbed out, cooked my dinner over an open fire, and watched Corsarius pass overhead, a dull white star in a darkening sky. I had a steak that night, and beer. And I tried to imagine how it would feel if the capsule (whose cabin lights glowed cheerfully a few meters away) were gone.

And if Chase were gone.

I kicked off my boots and walked beneath the stars toward the sea and into the surf. The tide sucked the sand from around my soles. The ocean was very still, and the immense isolation of that world was a physical thing I could touch. I activated the commlink.

"Chase?"

"Here."

"I can see the Corsarius."

"Alex, have you thought about what you're going to do with it?"

"You mean the ship? I'm not sure. I suppose we should take it home."

"How? It has no Armstrongs."

"There must be some way to manage it. It got here. Listen, you should see this beach."

"You're out of the capsule," she said, accusingly.

"I'm sorry you're not here."

"Alex, I have to watch you every minute! Do you have anything down there to defend yourself with? I didn't think to pack a weapon."

"It's okay. There are no large land animals. Nothing that could be a threat. By the way, if you look at the sky a little to the north, you'll see something interesting."

I heard the sound of movement over the commlink, and then she caught her breath. Wally Candles's wheel. The cluster of stars seemed almost to spin in the heavens: a blazing halo dominating the night, a thing of supernal beauty.

I went back to the capsule and extracted two blankets from the utility box. "What are you doing, Alex?"