Alternate Realities (28 page)

He had had his partnerings with the women of
Rightwise
and bade all that good-bye—”Go sleepover,” Paul had advised him on Endeavor dock. “Do you good.”

“Money,” he had said, meaning they could not spare the cost of a room, or the time. “Had my time on
Rightwise
. That’s enough. I’m tired.”

Paul had just looked at him, with pity in his eyes.

“What do you want?” he had answered then. “Had it last night. Three
Rightwisers
. Wore me out.” And Jillan walked up just then, so there was no more argument.

“We’ll have a ship,” Rafe had sworn to Jillan once, when they were nine and eight., and their mother and their uncle died, last of old freighter
Lindy
’s crew, both at once, in Fargone’s belt. Getting to deep space again had been
their
dream; it was all the legacy they left, except a pair of silver crew-pins and a Name without a ship.

So Rafe held Jillan by him—
Don’t leave me, don’t go stationer on me. You take your men; give me kids—give me that, and I’ll give you—all I’ve got, all I’ll ever have.

Don’t you leave me
, Jillan had said back, equally dogged.
You be the Old Man, that’s what you’ll be. Don’t you leave me and go forget your name. Don’t you do that, ever.
And she worked with him and sweated and lived poor to bank every credit that came their way.

Most, she got him Paul Gaines, lured a miner-orphan to work with them, to risk his neck, to throw his money into it, Paul’s station-share, every credit they three could gain by work from scrubbing deck to serving hire-on crew to miners when they could get a berth.

Having children waited. Waited for the ship.

And Endeavor and a dilapidated pusher-ship were the purchase of all they had.

Rafe took first watch. He caught a reflection on the leftmost screen of Jillan and Paul in their sleeping web behind his chair, fallen asleep despite their attempt to keep him company, singing and joking. They had been quite a handful of minutes and there they drifted, collapsed together, like times the three of them had hidden to sleep, three kids on Fargone, making a ship out of a shipping canister, all tucked up in the dark and secret inside, dreaming they were exploring and that stars and infinity surrounded their little shell.

Mass.

<> came fully alert, feeling that certain tug at <>’s substance which meant something large disturbing the continuum.

Trishanamarandu-kepta
could have overjumped the hazard, of course, adjusting course in mid-jump with the facility of vast power and a sentience which treated the mindcrippling between of jumps like some strange ocean which <> swam with native skill. But curiosity was the rule of < >’s existence. < > skipped
down,
if such a term had relevance, an insouciant hairbreadth from disaster.

It was a bit of debris, a lump of congealed material which to the questing eye of
Trishanamarandu-kepta
appeared as a blackness, a disruption, a point of great mass.

It was a failed star, an overambitious planet, a wanderer in the wide dark which had given up almost all its heat to the void and meant nothing any longer but a pockmark in spacetime.

It was a bit of the history of this region, telling <> something of the formational past. It was nothing remarkable in itself. The remarkable time for it had long since passed, the violent death of some far greater star hereabouts.
That
would have been a sight.

<> journeyed, pursuing that thread of thought with some pleasure, charted the point of mass in <>’s indelible memory in the process.

The inevitable babble of curiosity had begun among the passengers. < >’s wakings were of interest to them. < > answered them curtly and leaped out into the deep again, heading simply to the next star, as < > did, having both eternity
and
jump capacity at < >’s disposal.

There was no hurry. There was nowhere in particular to go; and everywhere, of course. <> was now awake, lazily considering galactic motion and the likely center of that ancient supernova.

Such star-deaths begat descendants.

T
he Downer wine was opened, nullstopped and passed hand to hand in celebration. Music poured from
Lindy
’s comsystem. There was food in the freezer, water in the tanks, and a start to the fortunes of the Murray-Gaineses, a respectable number of credits logged on the orehauler
Ajax
, from what they had delivered and a share of what others had brought in with their beeper tags. They were bathed, shaved and fresh-scented from a docking and sleepover on
Ajax
. Even
Lindy
herself had a mint-new antiseptic tang to her air from the purging she had gotten during the hours of her stay.

“None of them,” Jillan said, drifting free, “none of them believed we could have come in filled that fast. No savvy at all, these so-named miners.”

“Baths,” Paul Gaines murmured, and took the wine in both hands for his turn, smug bliss on his square face when he had drunk. “We’re civilized again.”

“Drink to that,” Rafe agreed. “Here’s to the next load. How long’s it going to take us?”

“Under two months,” Jillan proposed. “Thirty tags and a full sling.”

“We can do it.” Rafe was extravagant. He felt a surge of warmth, thinking on an
Ajax
woman who had opened her cabin to him in his onship time. He was feeling at ease with everything and everyone. He gave a quirk of a smile at Jillan and Paul, whose privacy was one of the storage pods when they were down on supplies, but they were full stocked now, with solid credit to their account, stock bought in Endeavor itself. “Someday,” he said, “when we’re very old we can tell this to our kids and they won’t believe it.”

“Drink to someday,” Paul said, hugging Jillan with one arm, the bottle in the other. The motion started a drift and spin. Rafe snagged the bottle from Paul’s hand as they passed, laughing at them as the hug became a tumble, the two of them lost in each other and not needing that bottle in the least.

I love them,
Rafe thought with an unaccustomed pang, with tears in his eyes he had no shame for. His sister and his best friend. His whole life was neatly knitted up together; and maybe next year they could build old
Lindy
a little larger. Jillan could look to family-getting then, lie up on
Ajax
for the first baby; be with them thereafter—close quarters, but merchanter youngsters learned touch and not-touch, scramble and take-hold before they were steady on their feet.

And even for himself—for his own comfort—Endeavor was a haven for the orphaned, the displaced of the War, people like themselves, taking a last-ditch chance. There might be some woman someday, somehow, willing to take the kind of risk they posed.

Someone rare, like Paul.

“Drink up,” Jillan insisted, drifting down with Paul. The embrace opened ... a little frown had crossed Jillan’s face at the sight of his; and Paul’s expression mirrored the same concern. For that, for a thousand, thousand things, he loved them.

He grinned, and drank, and sent their bottle their way.

Trishanamarandu-kepta
was in pursuit of delicate reckonings, had chased plottings round and round and busily gathered data in observation of the region. <> might have missed the ship entirely otherwise.

<> detected it in the Between, a meeting of which the ship might or might not be aware. It was small and slow, a bare ripple of presence.

It too was a consequence of that ancient stardeath ... or came here because of it. Weak as it seemed, it might well use mass like that which <> had recently visited as an anchor, a navigation fix when the distance between stars was too great for it. <> diverted <>’s self from <>’s previous heading and followed the ship, eager and intent, coming
down
at another such pockmark in the continuum, where <>’s small quarry had surfaced and paused.

(!)
, <> sent at once, in pulses along the whole range of <>’s transmitters.
(!!!) (!!!!!)
It was an ancient pattern, useful where there was no possibility of linguistic similarity and no reasonable guarantee of a similar range of perceptions. <> waited for response on any wavelength.

Waited.

Waited.

Even delays in response were informational. This might be recovery time, for senses severely disorganized by jumpspace. Some species were particularly affected by the experience. It might be slow consideration of the pulse message. The length of time to decide on reply, the manner of answer, whether echo or addition, whether linear or pyramidal ... species varied in their apprehension of the question.

The small ship remained some time at residual velocity, though headed toward the hazard of the dark mass by which it steered. Presumably it was aware of the danger of its course.

<> remained wary, having seen many variations on such meetings, some proceeding to sudden attack; some to approach; some to headlong flight; some even to suicide, which might be what was in progress as a result of that unchecked velocity.

Or possibly, remotely, the ship had suffered some malfunction. <> retained corresponding velocity and kept the same interval, confident in <>’s own agility and wondering whether the ship under observation could still escape.

<> observed, which was <>’s only present interest.

The little ship suddenly flicked out again into jump. <> followed, ignoring the babble from the passengers, which had been building and now broke into chaos.

Quiet,
<> wished them all, afire with the passion of a new interest in existence.

The pursuit came
down
again as <> had hoped, at a star teeming with activity on a broad range of wavelengths.

Life.

A whole spacefaring civilization.

It was like rain after ages-long drought; repletion after famine. <> stretched, enlivened capacities dormant for centuries, power like a great silent shout going through <>’s body.

Withdraw,
some of the passengers wished <>.
You’ll get us all killed.

There was humor in that. <> laughed. <> could, after <>’s fashion.

Attack,
others raved, that being their natures.

Hush,
<> said.
Just watch.

We trusted you,
<^> mourned.

<> ignored all the voices and stayed on course.

The intruder and its quarry went unnoticed for a time in Endeavor Station Central. Boards still showed clear. The trouble at the instant of its arrival was still a long, lightbound way out.

Ships closer to that arrival point picked up the situation and started relaying the signal as they moved in panic.

Three hours after arrival, Central longscan picked up a blip just above the ecliptic and beeped, routinely calling a human operator’s attention to that seldom active screen, which might register an arrival once or twice a month.

But not headed into central system plane, where no incoming ship belonged, vectored at jumpship velocities toward the precise area of the belt that was worked by Endeavor miners. Comp plotted a colored fan of possible courses, and someone swore, with feeling.

A second beep an instant later froze the several techs in their seats; and
“Lord!”
a scan tech breathed, because that second blip was
close
to the first one.

“Check your pickup,” the supervisor said, walking near that station in the general murmur of dismay.

That had nearly been collision out there three lightbound hours ago. The odds against two unscheduled merchanters coinciding in Endeavor’s vast untrafficked space, illegally in system plane, were out of all reason.

“Tandem jump?” the tech wondered, pushing buttons to reset. Tandem jumping was a military maneuver. It required hairbreadth accuracy. No merchanter risked it as routine.

“Pirate,” a second tech surmised, which they were all thinking by now. There were still war troubles left, from the bad days. “Mazianni, maybe.”

The supervisor hesitated from one foot to the other, wiped his face. The stationmaster was offshift, asleep. It was hours into maindark. The supervisor was alterday chief, second highest on the station. The red-alert button was in front of him on the board, unused for all of Endeavor’s existence.

“... it’s
behind
us,” he heard next, the merchanter frequency, from out in the range. “Endeavor Station, do you read, do you read? This is merchanter
John Liles
out of Viking. We’ve met a bogey out there ... it’s dragged us off mark ... Met ...”

Another signal was incoming.
(!) (!!!) (!!!!!)

“... out there at Charlie Point,” the transmission from
John Liles
went on. An echo had started,
John Liles
’ message relayed ship to ship from every prospector and orehauler in the system. Everyone’s ears were pricked.
Bogey
was a nightmare word, a bad joke, a thing which happened to jumpspace pilots who were due for a long, long rest. But there
were
two images on scan, and a signal was incoming which made no sense. At that moment Endeavor Station seemed twice as far from the rest of mankind and twice as lonely as before.

“... It signaled us out there and we jumped on with no proper trank. Got sick kids aboard, people shaken up. We’re afraid to dump velocity; we may need what we’ve got. Station, get us help out here. It keeps signaling us. It’s solid. We got a vid image and it’s not one of ours, do you copy?
Not one of ours or anybody’s.
What are we supposed to
do
, Endeavor Station?”

Everywhere that message had reached, all along the time sequence of that incoming message, ships reacted, shorthaulers and orehaulers and prospectors changing course, exchanging a babble of intership communication as they aimed for eventual refuge out of the line of events. What interval incoming jumpships could cross in mere seconds, the insystem haulers plotted in days and weeks and months: they had no hope in speed, but in their turn-tail signal of noncombatancy.