Celestial Matters (29 page)

Six days under speed. It made a certain twisted sense. No one on the ship would be able to move under those conditions; not us, not the Middler spies, no one. Anaxamander would be able to use the sun net without anyone having an opportunity to sabotage it.

The one problem with Anaxamander’s surprisingly intelligent stratagem was that the net was the only thing on the ship the Middlers would not want to sabotage.

“We have to stop the launch,” I said, then gulped down more water.

Yellow Hare nodded grimly. “Wait here. I’ll find some cloaks and goggles.”

Ramonojon and I nodded gratefully and sank back to the floor. “We don’t have much time,” I said. My throat felt cracked and dry, and no amount of drink could take away its aridity.

Ramonojon nodded and took a small bite of bread. He chewed painfully through bleeding gums.

Yellow Hare returned in a few minutes. She had three sets of goggles and three hooded cloaks lined with a cooling mesh of air-silver.

“Make for the aft exit,” I said after we had donned the protective gear. “Don’t bother to hide. We can’t worry about whether or not the slaves see us.”

Fortunately, the slaves were too busy unstrapping themselves from the walls to care about three people running through the storage cavern. We passed Clovix on our way out the tunnel, but he seemed too bewildered to say anything.

We stepped out onto the surface of
Chandra’s Tear
to face a sky filled from horizon to horizon with red-gold fire. So fierce and terrible was its color that it overwhelmed the green filter that covered my face. The light of the sun pierced my eyes and entered my heart, carrying the sun god’s voice to my mind. ’Elios spoke to me, as he had been trying to speak since first we set off from Earth, but I had refused to listen until that moment, when I stood a mere two miles from his surface and could no longer ignore him.

He spoke of hubris and até, of the follies of those who had tried to be heroes in defiance of the gods. Bellerophon had only wanted to fly to Olympos, Phaethon had only attempted to guide the path of the sun for one day, Orpheus had only tried to charm the lord of all the dead. But I, who had thought myself reverent, I who had known that the Akademe had turned a blind eye to many affronts to the gods, I had planned to snatch the eternal fire and bring it to Earth to be used as a weapon.

“But my duty to the League,” I whispered to him. He brushed that aside with a wave of his fiery hands. Then he spoke again, and his words were sharp and clear; he burned a thought into my heart, carved it with a blade of burning steel, and sealed it with the red-hot point of his spear: Your first duty is to the Good!

“Drop your weapons!” somebody barked. Yellow Hare spun me away from the vision of the sun, but the blessed thought remained, scorching the embers of my heart.

“Aias,” Yellow Hare said. “Aias, come back.” She pulled my mind once again into the world and I saw in front of me ten guards with evac throwers leveled at us.

“You were right,” one of the soldiers said to a man behind them. “They were after the sun net.”

Mihradarius strode forward. “The soldier said to drop your weapons.”

I looked at Yellow Hare. She slowly put her thrower and her sword on the ground. I dropped my sword as well. Mihradarius told the guards to take us up the hill. We went quietly, but I could see Yellow Hare’s brow furrowed in concentration. She looked the guards over one at a time. I could see her deciding not to fight, at least not yet.

At the top of the hill we found Anaxamander talking to a yawning, angry Kleon.

“Caught again, Captain Yellow Hare?” the security chief said. “What would the Spartan war college have to say?”

Yellow Hare looked over at me, forcing Anaxamander to follow her gaze.

“We came to prevent you from launching the net,” I said.

“Admission of treason, excellent,” Anaxamander said. He gazed up at the sun and spread his arms wide as if to grasp that wall of flame and draw it into himself. But I saw as he obviously did not that ’Elios was poised to spear him.

“You fool,” I said. “Mihradarius is the traitor.”

“Mihradarius? Sunthief is his crowning glory.”

“Sunthief is my crowning folly!” I said. “I bear the responsibility for it. I will answer to the Archons and the gods for its results. But it is not too late for you, Anaxamander. If you launch the net
Chandra’s Tear
will shatter, and you will go down in history as Anaxamander the Simpleton. Comedies will be written about your foolishness, and no father will ever name a son Anaxamander again. But if you release us and turn this ship around for Earth, you will be its savior and paeans of praise will be sung to you for preventing Aias’s folly.”

“Do not seek to save yourself with these useless lies,” Anaxamander said. “You will stay here and witness the failure of your treason.”

“Aias?” Kleon said. “Is it true?”

“Yes,” I said. “The ship will be destroyed.”

“Silence!” Anaxamander shouted. He drew his sword and held it to Kleon’s back. “You will pilot this ship,” he said, and with his free hand he shoved the frightened navigator toward the tower.

Mihradarius watched them go. Then he turned to stare at the statue of Alexander, and mouthed the name of the Zoroastrian Adversary, “Ahriman.”

That single word revealed to me in a flash of clarity why he was doing this, showed me the fanatic who had been hiding for years under the mask of Athenian propriety and using his native genius to rise to a high enough place from which to strike. I leaped for him, but four guards grabbed me. “Stop him!” I shouted. “I order you to stop him!” But they were unmoved.

Mihradarius waved to me and walked down the hill toward the sun net. I struggled against the guards but they held me fast.

Six moon sleds specially equipped with thirty-foot-long poles of fire-gold took off from the stern of
Chandra’s Tear,
flying sunward. The sleds lined themselves up in two columns like an honor guard, poles pointed inward, creating a corridor of rarefied air that joined my ship to the sun. The golden light glared even brighter, and ’Elios raised his spear to cast it through that lane.

There was a muffled whoosh and two long strands of celestial rope shot out from the net cannon, laced together by thick terrestrial cable. The ropes followed the corridor of air straight and sure toward the sun. The lines reached out like two spreading claws, then pulled inward, striking through the fire into the sun. Their terrestrial components flared away into nothingness, but the indestructible celestial matter plunged through the heart of ’Elios. But the sun god did not scream; instead, he drew back his arm to throw the spear of retribution.

Their mission accomplished, the sleds darted back toward the supposed safety of my doomed ship.

A minute passed as the four-mile-long claws spun themselves into a net, twirled through the guts of ’Elios, and arced out, dragging a half-mile-wide sphere of Olympian fire. For a moment there was a hole in the sun; then the remaining flame flowed back to heal the gash.

The net and its cargo twirled in space, the multitude of motions adding together into an angry dance. First it pulled away, then it doubled back and flew over
Chandra’s Tear,
scorching our marble rooftops from a mile up. As the fireball was about to turn again, the trolley was released along its track, pulling the sun fragment into a sedate orbit around our moon fragment.

For one brief moment everything was going as I had originally conceived of it, and I dared to hope that despite all that had happened Sunthief might yet succeed. For that hope I ask the forgiveness of ’Elios.

Then the god let his javelin fly. The ball of fire ceased its natural orbit; it turned in midair and flew straight away from the stern of the ship, nearly pulling the trolley out of its tracks.

Chandra’s Tear
bucked; her aft end was pulled upward toward the sun by the confused motions of the net and the fragment. The force threw us over on our backs as the fragment made anther pass overhead, pulling the ship around and about. The ball of celestial flame was a wild horse, dragging my ship like a hapless chariot that had been foolishly yoked to a steed untamable.

λ

The sun fragment twirled across the fire-painted sky like a bull dancer in a ring.
Chandra’s Tear
flew after it, pulled helplessly toward blazing oblivion as the ball of celestial flame tried to reunite with ’Elios. The guards, unprepared for the sudden shock of unexpected movement, tumbled into a heap at the base of Alexander’s statue. No longer constrained to stand under the weapons of the soldiers, I ducked down and rolled across the shaking hill until I reached the circle of couches. Ramonojon and Yellow Hare followed my example. My bodyguard and I slid under one couch and huddled together clutching the hot marble legs. Ramonojon dove under the next couch and copied our actions.

In the crimson sky ahead of us, the fireball made a sudden turn downward, twirling
Chandra’s Tear
about its central axis until our bow pointed upward. The pointed tip of my teardrop ship became a spearpoint aimed at the heart of the sun, while her broad, arced stern looked down through the spheres, down toward the tiny dot of Earth that lay at the center of the universe, tugging inexorably at our terrestrial bodies, calling us home. A score of crewmen who had assembled at the trolley to watch the triumph of Sunthief heeded that call and fell screaming off the ship. The lucky ones flew into the sun fragment and burned up instantly; the rest tumbled helplessly through space down the eighty-thousand-mile stretch of emptiness that lay between the spheres of ’Elios and Aphrodite.

The fragment made a right angle turn to port, violating all the laws of celestial motion. The impossible motion pulled
Chandra’s Tear
toward the blade-thin edge of the crystal sphere that held ’Elios in his orbit. I offered what I was sure would be a final prayer for forgiveness to the sun god as my ship hurtled toward the celestial knife of sacrifice.

Then the sky grew sharp and bright as two lines of gold spears appeared across our bow, thrusting out into space: the secondary and tertiary impellers. Kleon’s voice echoed through the ship. “Brace for speed.”

“Daidalos bless you, Kleon,” I whispered.

A moment later, Kleon deployed the port ballast and starboard lift balls; the ship rolled onto its side, so that instead of our stern, our broad-bottomed keel faced the sphere’s edge. There was a jarring scrape, and a noise like chalk on slate reverberated through the underside of the ship. Shards of moon rock were carved away from our bottom as we turned away from the edge of indestructible crystal and began to fly sideways toward the sun, fleeing Skylla to be caught by Kharybdis.

But Kleon had not saved us from one death to commit us to another. He retracted the starboard phalanx of impellers, trying to pull us away from ’Elios and face us toward the inner spheres. But the sun fragment turned again; now leaping upward toward the stars, it pulled us stern first past the sun and through the gap in the crystal sphere.

More gold appeared on the bow as Kleon deployed the primary impellers, trying to oppose the force of the fragment and pull the ship back down toward Earth. Drawn upward by the fragment and down by Kleon, my ship screamed like a man being torn apart by wild horses.
Chandra’s Tear
sang out her agony, chorusing the Pythagorean chord of the moon, the high unwavering howl of a terrified child torn from its mother.

The scream shook the ground like the wrath of Poseidon, bringing forth a wave that ripped like an earthquake from fore to aft across
Chandra’s Tear.
The quake shook the navigation tower, splintered what was left of the amphitheater, then shattered barracks and dormitories and cannonades as it passed sternward.

“Hold on!” I shouted as the wave came up the fore end of the hill, but whether I was warning Yellow Hare, Ramonojon, or myself, I could not say.

The shaking moon rock exploded the colonnade as if the marble columns were hot glass suddenly immersed in freezing water. A cloud of marble dust rose up, crowning the brow of the hill in a fog of stone chips. Then the harmonic reached the circle of couches. The solid marble legs took in the shock and transmitted it to my body. My hands lost their purchase, and I tumbled away toward the front of the hill, clutching to no avail at the angry smoothness of the ground.

But a strong hand grabbed my left wrist and yanked me backward. I could feel a tracery of scars in the palm that held me in an iron grip. It pulled me up and helped me grasp again the legs of the couch.

“I have you,” Yellow Hare said into my ear. I wiped the dust from my goggles, then blinked to clear away the stinging pain of the light. I saw a wavering movement out of the corner of my eye, and shouted, “Run!” to Ramonojon.

He scrambled out from under his sanctuary just as the statue of Aristotle toppled from its pedestal, smashing down on the marble couch. The scholar’s statue broke into a dozen pieces; his head splintered into dust. The little globe model of the universe he had so proudly carried flew off into space, freed from its terrestrial constraints. But his left shoulder and right leg hit Ramonojon from behind. My poor friend collapsed under the weight, screaming, his arm pinned under Aristotle’s shoulder.

“Stay here!” Yellow Hare said as she ducked from our place of safety.

“No!” I followed her onto the rocking ground. Yellow Hare ran forward, keeping her footing despite the random tilting of the ship. Knowing I could never match her agile gait, I crawled after her across the few feet that separated me from where Ramonojon lay pinned, howling in inarticulate pain.

Yellow Hare knelt down beside Ramonojon, bracing herself between Aristotle’s errant leg and torso.

“Take hold of him,” she said as I arrived. “I’ll move the statue.”

Ramonojon was breathing raggedly. His trapped arm was bent in ways it had never been meant to turn. I reached around his waist and leaned back, ready to pull. Then Yellow Hare heaved the stone, rolling the old scholar’s remnants off the hill.