Celestial Matters (26 page)

“Come with me,” I said to Mihradarius when he had finished his explanation.

“Can it wait, Commander? I have to make sure this is working.”

“Now!”

He turned to face me, his thick eyebrows raised in surprise. “Yes, Commander.”

We stepped aside, letting the wind cover the sound of our voices so the straining ears of his workers would not be able to overhear us.

“Mihradarius,” I said, “you’re my second in line. Why didn’t you intervene when Anaxamander started ordering Kleon around?”

“I’m sorry, Aias, I thought the Security Chief had your consent.”

“Did you actually think I would do something as foolish as order repairs while we were flying?”

He looked down, not wanting to meet my gaze. “To be honest, Aias, I didn’t think about it.”

“Mihradarius, Anaxamander is a power-hungry idiot. He has just proven that as long as he is military commander of this ship, he will continually try to steal my authority. I am counting on your assistance in stopping him.”

“Yes, Commander,” he said. “Is there anything else you want from me?”

“Yes. No battle kite has ever reached this sphere before; they were always stopped by our patrols around Selene. Turn that brilliant mind of yours toward finding out how they did it.”

Mihradarius sputtered in disbelief. “How am I supposed to know how the Middlers do anything?”

“Calm yourself,” I said. “I don’t expect a definite answer, just some guesses based on what we know of their technical capacities.”

“That I can do,” he said. “Thank you for your confidence, Aias.”

“You are most welcome, Mihradarius. Now, if you will excuse me, I have to return to work.”

“Yes, Commander.”

*   *   *

I spent the next few days making clear to Anaxamander where his authority ended and mine began. In response to this clear delineation, he began to show off his own power. He tightened security to a ridiculous extent, knowing that I could do nothing to stop him. Guards patrolled continuously, and a constant escort of moon sleds flew patrols around the ship to make sure no more battle kites caught us unawares. Fatigue took hold of the overworked soldiers and their morale deteriorated.

Helpless to affect this terrible style of military command, Yellow Hare and I found ourselves mingling talk of Aeson in with the rest of our conversation, hoping by our memories of him to sway the Fates that they might restore him to health.

Over dinner one evening after a long day spent countermanding Anaxamander’s encroachment on the repair work, we sat leaning against the aft wall of my cabin drinking bowls of honeyed rose water. I told her about my early days on the ship and how my friendship with Aeson grew from his gently helping me learn how to command, and my long lectures to him about the planets and the harmony of their movements. Yellow Hare seemed quite pleased with these stories, and related to me her meeting with Aeson at the Olympics and the mutual respect they gained for one another both in practice bouts and strategic discussions.

“It’s strange,” I said. “For all the good Aeson has done for me during my early days on the ship, the most important thing Aeson did for me was very recent.”

“What did he do?” Yellow Hare asked as she lit her pipe and sucked in the aromatic smoke.

“He gave me a new perspective on Sparta.”

“What perspective is that?”

“That you are the true Spartan, not my father.”

“I thank you and Aeson for the honor, but I do not understand what you mean.”

I told her the story of my failure at the Spartan military college and how my father turned away from me because of it.

“Your father did what?” Yellow Hare clenched her fist; the divine fires returned to her eyes and the mantle of the gods fell across her shoulders. “How dare he offend against the honor of the city like that!”

I was stunned by her vehemence, but family duty required me to respond. “Offend against Sparta? My father?”

“Aeson was too gentle in his condemnation,” she said. “Your father’s actions are nothing short of sacrilege.”

“But—”

“Spartan training is for those destined to lead in war. There is no disgrace in failing our tests. It only means that the Fates have not given you the soul of a born warrior. We do not expect everyone to succeed, and we are not so foolish as to demand that the Fates bestow similar souls on our sons and daughters.”

“But—”

“No, Aias,” Yellow Hare said, and I could hear ’Era, goddess of Sparta, speaking through her. “Aeson spoke the truth. It is your father, not you, who fails to live up to the standards of my city.”

Her words and the divine blessing that lay within them filled me with a sudden awareness of the greatness of Sparta’s spirit, the holiness of the Spartans’ single purpose, and the glory they gave to heaven’s queen on the field of battle.

I bowed my head to both woman and goddess, and handed them a bowl full of libation.

*   *   *

The repair work took a total of eight days, during which the debris was cleared up, cannon batteries were redistributed, and remaining primary impellers were evenly divided between the port and starboard arrays. Only when I had formally sealed the last repair report did I gave Kleon permission to begin flying us toward the sun. With only half the proper number of primaries, we flew considerably slower than before, but still far faster than we would have without the Ares impellers. Kleon proposed a schedule of four hours of speed out of every twelve, which I reluctantly agreed to. It was much more stressful than our earlier schedule, but we would reach ’Elios only five days behind schedule.

Two days after we set off, my work was disturbed by an unexpected visit from Clovix, the chief slave.

“Commander, I have some information you might be interested in,” he said.

“Might be?”

“Unofficially interested.” His eyes fixed on the floor of my cave with seeming fascination. “You see, sir, if it became official it would be a security matter, but Commander Anaxamander’s official interest might not be as great as your unofficial interest.”

Yellow Hare cocked an eyebrow at this convoluted speech, but I understood what the Gaul meant. I dug a purse out of one of my trunks and counted twenty silver drachmas onto my writing table. Clovix stroked his long red mustache for a second as if deliberating the value of his information. Then he picked the coins up and stuck them into a leather pouch concealed within the sleeve of his tunic.

“During the repairs,” he said, “one of the slave maintenance crews found a crack inside the well shaft. It’s about forty feet down from the storage cavern, ten feet above the waterline of the reservoir. One of the repair slaves thought he saw a small dark cave through the crack. He could not swear to that, of course.”

Yellow Hare and I exchanged glances. “Thank you, Clovix,” I said. “You may go. Don’t mention this to anyone.”

“Of course, Commander,” he said as he climbed the stairs out of my cave.

I turned a bitter smile to Yellow Hare. “As I said, there are advantages to having the most corrupt slave in the League.”

“The proper thing to do,” she said, her voice as emotionless as the day I met her, “is to pass this information on to Security.”

“Security is Anaxamander,” I said, discomforted by her sudden withdrawal. “He’ll find some way to twist this into proof of Ramonojon’s guilt. I have two duties, Yellow Hare. I must fulfill them both.”

“Then what do you wish to do, Commander?”

I gripped my hands together and cracked my knuckles, preparing them for unaccustomed physical effort. “Search that cave. It must be where the transmitter is hidden.”

She said nothing.

“Yellow Hare,” I said, “I must do this. It is my duty.”

She nodded slowly, and I felt some return of the spirit that had grown between us.

“But,” I said, “you will not let me search that cave alone, will you?”

“No,” she said.

“Then the matter is yours to decide. If your duty requires that I pass this on to Anaxamander, I will.”

“No, Aias,” she said after considering the matter for some moments. “I have sworn to obey you in your search for the spy. If you can reconcile this act with your duties as commander, then I will follow you.”

“You honor me,” I said.

Without another word, we went to the storage cave. A few more coins slipped to Clovix bought us some privacy as he sent the slaves scurrying about a variety of not-really-necessary tasks, away from where we were working. From an equipment crate Yellow Hare took several ropes and some grapples while I searched a box of spare dynamicists’ gear until I found a long evacuated hose with a sharpened iron tip.

“What is that?” Yellow Hare asked.

“A handheld water drill.”

Yellow Hare and I lowered ourselves down the side of the wet, silvery well, having secured the ropes to the grapples and the grapples to two of the bronze rings embedded in the granite lip for the convenience of repair workers. The descent was easy for Yellow Hare, and I had done enough mountain climbing as a youth in India to follow her without too much trouble.

Forty feet down we found the crack, an inch-wide scar in the gleaming moon rock. And, as reported, there was a dark cave beyond it. I could see the slight wavering of night blankets and a hint of silver sheen behind them, but I could not make out any details.

“Hold me steady,” I told Yellow Hare. She braced her legs against the far side of the well and gripped me tightly around the waist. I dropped the intake end of the hose into the well. There was a splash, and a moment later, water sucked out of the reservoir through the rarefied air in the tube started gushing out the iron tip in a sharp thin stream. Armed with water and metal, I began to methodically enlarge the crack into a hole.

I was not used to that kind of work, but still, after half an hour, I had managed to excavate a hole large enough for us to clamber through.

Yellow Hare crawled in first, unhooking herself from the rope, then slipping through the gap like an eel through coral. I climbed after her, but I did not untie myself until I was standing on solid ground. As I stepped through the opening, Yellow Hare tore down one of the night blankets, flooding the cramped den with silver light. It was a rough-hewn cave eight feet long, seven feet wide, and five feet high. The floor was uneven, and bits of rough rock jutted out from the walls and ceiling. It was all too crude to have been carved by a professional dynamicist.

The only furnishings were rolled-up bolsters of cloth, no doubt stolen from our stores, strewn about the floor to give the occupants some protection from the ship’s speed.

Yellow Hare told me to stand in a corner while she searched the cave.

“Two people have been living in this cave for at least a month,” she announced after a few minutes of poring over the carpets, the bolsters, and the blankets. “But there is no sign of them having eaten anything.”

Two stowaways on my ship? Under the nose of our so-called Security Chief. “They must have been Middlers,” I said, restraining my anger, “living off alchemical food pills.”

Yellow Hare nodded absently and started walking around the perimeter of the cave, tapping the walls gently with the pommel of her sword. There was a hollow clang halfway along the port wall. She stopped and with the blade of her knife pried out a thin piece of moon rock six inches high and two feet long. Behind this false panel was a niche lined with wadded-up cloth, and nestled in it was a block of glass that exactly matched Doctor Z’s description of a transmitter.

“Got them,” I said.

Yellow Hare shook her head. “They left this room about four hours ago.”

“How did they leave? I don’t see any doors.”

She continued wall tapping and behind another false panel found a concealed tunnel. This passage was also rudely carved and a mere two feet across, uncomfortable to crawl through to say the least.

“Follow me,” Yellow Hare said. “And be careful.”

We crawled through the narrow, straight tunnel, scraping hands and knees on the ragged moonstone. After several minutes we reached a dead end. Yellow Hare pushed on the cul-de-sac until the stone blocking the exit gave way.

We emerged into a square pit that contained a wide steel pole, perched on top of which was a large golden sphere. The air around the ball was clear and bright; it had to be made of fire-gold. It took me only a second to realize I was looking at one of the ship’s lift balls, and we were in the bottom of its holding pit.

“Climb out of there,” a voice called from above. I nodded to Yellow Hare, and she preceded me up the maintenance stairs that had been cut in an ascending spiral in the walls of the pit.

We stepped out onto the surface of
Chandra’s Tear.
I stretched my back muscles and heard a harsh creak in my spine. I turned to the voice that had called us up and was surprised to see, not an individual soldier or even a squad of four, but a dozen of Anaxamander’s personal security guards, their throwers drawn and pointed at me and Yellow Hare. Behind this armed phalanx stood Anaxamander and, to my astonishment, Mihradarius.

Anaxamander pointed at us and orated to the invisible audience he always seemed to be speaking to. “Aias of Tyre. Yellow Hare of the Xeroki. I arrest you on charges of treason.”

“That is a ridiculous accusation,” I said.

“I suspected you from the first moment you defended Ramonojon,” he said. “And now we have found the place where you hid your equipment. That is all the evidence we need.”

“Aias, you are hereby relieved of command.” The Security Chief turned to his left. “Mihradarius, you will take scientific command of this project.”

To my amazement, instead of protesting this absurdity, the Persian merely nodded, his face as placid as a statue of a god receiving a sacrifice. In that instant I realized who the spy was, and what a monumental act of folly I had committed in trusting him.

Yellow Hare, meanwhile, had been studying the postures of the guards, and was bracing herself to leap forward. In a flash I realized she was about to lay down her life to give me a chance to escape. I grabbed her arm. “No Spartan self-sacrifice,” I whispered. “I need you alive!”