Celestial Matters (30 page)

I pulled Ramonojon out, and he cried out again, his voice mingling with the ship’s harmonic keening. As if in answer to the screams of its creator,
Chandra’s Tear
howled a deep note of suffering, then spun around again, pulling our fore end downward to the sun. The three of us tumbled backward. Yellow Hare grabbed hold of a couch leg and pulled Ramonojon and me to safety.

The line of gold on our fore end dimmed and I realized that Kleon had angled the impellers down toward the underside of the ship, turning the ship upside down. An inverted eagle, we swooped upward, climbing once again away from the sun. It seemed that Ikaros’s fate was not to be ours.

But that last abrupt maneuver was too much for my poor ship. The scream of
Chandra’s Tear
rose to an agonized pitch. The surface of the ship split at the fore end of the hill. And through the spreading crack, I saw the storage cavern below. I saw Clovix run beneath the fracture, pushing his underlings out of the way. For one brief second he met my eyes and I felt his spirit reaching out, imploring me to do something. Then the crack widened and Clovix ran aft to escape the swiftly spinning shards of moon rock.

The ship climbed away from the sun, the impellers straining against the natural pull of the sun fragment. And as we rose the crack grew wider and wider, deeper and deeper. Then Kleon turned to port, trying to right us, and
Chandra’s Tear,
my ship, my home, broke in twain, singing out its death song, one pure clear note more beautiful than any mortal poet could pluck from a lyre, a paean so sad that only blessed Orpheus or Apollo of the musicians could have sung it.

The aft end to which we three clung tightly was jerked upward by the sun fragment, while the fore end with the navigation tower leaped away from us, orbiting in a wild spiral. Half of the impellers snapped off, leaving that broken triangle of moonstone helpless to control its flight. It tumbled wildly through a mass of partially rarefied air until the sharp half of the silver tear fell blackened into the sun.

“Kleon,” I screamed, but for once that poor brilliant navigator could not save his ship. The fore end of
Chandra’s Tear
flew downward through the great light of heaven; the impellers vanished as the celestial fire consumed them; then the navigation tower exploded from the heat, taking the life of the greatest pilot ever to fly through the heavens. May his soul be well received by the judges of the dead, and his Pythagorean purity grant him a good life beyond life.

A minute later the forward half of
Chandra’s Tear
emerged from the body of ’Elios, a perfect triangle of moonstone, seemingly untouched by the flames. All things terrestrial had been burned away and there was no sign that humans had ever lived on it.

O, ye gods, ye all-knowing Fates, tell me, did so many men have to die for your purposes to be accomplished? No, forgive my plaint. The lives of my crew were spun out and cut short; that I must accept. Permit me to continue speaking that the gallant dead who died in those fires will be properly remembered in song and thought.

When the last man had fallen I heard a gurgling sound from within the remaining half of the ship. At the ragged fore edge of the hill, a waterfall had formed. The reservoir water poured out into the sun, trying futilely to extinguish that divine fire. Crates of stores tumbled out, followed by farmers from the spon-gen labs, filling the air with the screams of beast and man.

Pulled by the drunken flight of the sun fragment, the aft end of the ship spun in wild circles. The waterfall became a twisting helix, spilling the lifeblood of my dying ship into empty space. Yellow Hare, Ramonojon, and I clung to one another and the still-rooted couch. My muscles strained against the unfamiliar pain, but Yellow Hare held me tight.

Then, as the fragment was turning to pull us upward again, the trolley jammed in its tracks, and the fireball, unable to orbit us and following whatever impossible dictates of motion were constraining it, took up a straight-line flight, dragging us up away from ’Elios faster than
Chandra’s Tear
had ever flown.

As the ship skipped across open space like a moon sled through the air, Yellow Hare pulled Ramonojon and me out of our place of safety.

“What are you doing?” I yelled, clutching the leg of the couch.

“We have to reach the brig,” she shouted over the rushing air. “It’s the only safe place.”

Yellow Hare and I crawled aft across the hilltop, pulling Ramonojon after us. We managed, the gods alone know how, to roll down over the side into the brig tunnel with only a few bruises and abrasions. Ramonojon’s arm was black and blue and bleeding. His eyes watered and there was blood on his lips, as if he’d bitten his tongue.

Yellow Hare in the lead, we crawled down the steps of that narrow passageway until we reached the cell without a door. The ship spun again and I was slammed up against the ceiling and then back to the floor, but I managed to stay conscious and tie myself to the starboard wall with the long leather securing straps. Ramonojon fainted as Yellow Hare lashed him in to the aft wall before securing herself to the port side. She kept up her calm Spartan exterior, but I could see her grit her teeth against the cuts and bruises on her body, and lean on her left leg because she had somehow injured her right.

Tied to the walls, we were carried along through that whirlwind ride. Direction lost any meaning as the ship twirled through space. My ears rang, and I screamed in pain as we spun and spun and spun. I do not know when I blacked out, but I thank the gods most humbly for granting me that respite of oblivion.

*   *   *

I lurched forward onto twisted leather straps and choked myself awake. The ship had stopped moving. At first I wondered if this strange stillness was a momentary respite amid the wild careering of sun fragment and moon fragment, so I hung there on the wall for a time, waiting for the next turn or pull; but no new motion occurred.

“I think it’s safe to remove the straps,” I said to Yellow Hare, who had just shaken herself back to consciousness.

She nodded and untied herself. My restraints had become knotted during the flight and she had to cut me down. I came down off the wall and tested the feel of the ground with my feet. There was a slight aftward tilt in the angle of the ship, as if whatever was holding us steady had altered the normal direction of down a few degrees.

Ramonojon, unconscious and delirious from the pain in his broken arm, also needed assistance to be freed. Yellow Hare picked up Ramonojon’s unresisting body and carried him up the stairs; she looked very haggard, and leaned heavily on her left leg as she negotiated the steps with her moaning burden. I followed her, but slowly. My head spun with dizziness, my stomach had the hollow feeling that comes after a long fast, and each muscle in my body ached with a signature pain that made me feel every movement I took.

The steel door at the top of the brig tunnel had been crumpled downward during the flight, embedding itself halfway into the ground, and Yellow Hare had to force her way through the opening on top and then drag Ramonojon and me after her.

We emerged onto a bleak silver landscape. All the buildings, columns, and statues that had lined the hill had been stripped away during our wild flight. The port and starboard cannon batteries were crushed into lumps of iron. But, through the hillocks of the laboratory warren, I could see that the rear cannon battery looked remarkably intact.

I took a deep breath of fresh air and the dizziness and nausea vanished. I still felt the aches and pains of bruised muscles, but they no longer concerned me. My mind began to fill with one pure question: Where were we?

I breathed in more and that query became the only idea in my head. I had to know the answer; nothing else mattered. I looked around, seeking understanding. To port I saw a dull yellow glow, like a distant lantern seen on a faraway hilltop at night. I knew immediately that it was ’Elios and that we had flown a long long way from him.

Yellow Hare said something to me, but I paid her no attention. I needed to know exactly where we were. Ignoring the pains in my legs, I ran up the hill until I could see all the way aft and over all the sides of the ship.

Sternward I saw the trolley still jammed in its tracks, having somehow survived the pulling battle between sun and moon. The sun net itself was stretched over the port side and seemed to be curving downward.

I looked to port and saw a mere hundred miles below us a bloodred orb the size of the earth. Above it the sun fragment was dangling helplessly in midair, flopping around like a netted fish; the net trailed behind it and seemed to have looped itself around some invisible ball, tethering the ship and the stolen celestial fire to empty space.

For a minute the strange tableau overwhelmed my thoughts. But then long-known theoretical understanding connected with the facts before my eyes. I realized where we were and the need that had come over me was satisfied. My joy at having realized the answer to that one simple question was greater than any happiness I had ever felt save when the gods themselves had elevated me with their presence.

“Ares!” I cried aloud, and the word was an ecstatic release.

I ran back to Yellow Hare. “Ares,” I said.

Yellow Hare looked up from examining Ramonojon’s injuries. “What?” she said.

“That planet is Ares,” I said. “And the net is wound around one of the war god’s epicycles.”

She stood up and stared at me with her piercing eyes, but the ecstasy I was feeling allowed me to ignore even her eagle’s gaze. I went on babbling to her about the celestial mechanics of the globe off our port bow.

“Of all the planets in the universe,” I said, “Ares has the most complex orbit, for within the gap in the huge crystal sphere he half a dozen small spheres, each connected to the planet and to the outer sphere. They turn like a mass of gears, each adding its own circular motion to the war god’s world.”

The complex equations that governed Ares’ eccentric orbit filled my mind, vying for space with the realization that we were the first people ever to reach this sphere.

I kept on and on, until Yellow Hare slapped my face. “Aias!” she said.

In that momentary flash of pain, I realized with perfect clarity what had happened to me.

“Don’t breathe deeply,” I said. “The air’s too pure for human minds.”

“I understand,” she said, and the gods of Sparta wrapped themselves around her, protecting her purity from that of the celestial winds. “We need to take Ramonojon to the hospital cave. I only hope enough medical supplies survived to save his arm.”

The upper building of the hospital had shattered and been blown away during the flight, and the tunnel that led to the wards and dispensary was exposed to the cold air of the outer spheres. The smell of rotting meat assailed us as we made our way down the cracked passageway, and I held my nose rather than risk too deep a breath.

Most of the couches in the public ward had been uprooted and smashed against the walls, and a jumble of shattered and twisted corpses lay on the floor, too broken and bloody for me to recognize the men and women whose souls had flown and now waited on the shores of the river Styx. From the corpses flies had already spontaneously generated and were buzzing lazily around the room.

“Euripos!” I yelled, but no answer came; I hoped that he was not among the indiscernible bodies.

Yellow Hare salvaged some cushions from the broken couches, piled them against a wall, and laid Ramonojon down on them. I went down the tunnel into the dispensary to find supplies. Smashed urns and boxes were strewn across the floor. The walls had been stained with a variety of medicines, painting a bizarre multicolored pattern across the silver cave. I managed to find bandages, two dozen injection quills, a large bronze amphora full of water, a few splints, and a padded case filled with jars of the various humours.

Yellow Hare made a sling for Ramonojon’s arm and injected him with Sanguine Humour to speed the healing process and Jovial to cut the pain. He thrashed about for a few minutes as the liquids settled into his blood; then he seemed to relax and fall into natural sleep.

While we watched him, Yellow Hare treated me for cuts and bruises and I wrapped her injured ankle in gauze. I was tempted to stay and wait for Ramonojon to wake up, but it was my duty as commander of that sad, wrecked vessel to see if any of my crew had survived and to do death rites for those that had not.

“Where do we go first?” Yellow Hare asked.

“Through there,” I said, pointing toward the private ward. “Paeans should be sung to Aeson, coins put over his eyes, and the Khthonian gods propitiated.”

We walked through the ragged curtain, heads bowed like mourners. But Aeson was not dead. He lay securely strapped down on his slab, just as he had been the last time I had seen him. The flight had taken its toll on his body in the form of welts and cuts from where the tightening leather had dug into his flesh, but his Spartan soul still dwelled in its mortal vessel. I reached out and tentatively squeezed Aeson’s arm. There was no response; he was still in a coma, oblivious of the fate of his ship and his command.

I turned to say something to Yellow Hare and caught a glimpse of a torn, black-fringed robe buried under a fallen medicine cabinet in the corner. I ran over to it and heaved away the tumbled oaken chest to reveal Euripos’s body. He had obviously died quickly when the heavy cupboard fell on him.

I knelt down and prayed. But my prayers then were formed from my childhood remembrances of that old man. Therefore let me now give my proper respects to Euripos of the Claudian gens, a Roman patrician who did honor to his city by service in battle, a doctor who never shrank from his duty to save the lives of his comrades, and a man who served under my father and myself with the greatest personal loyalty that any commander could ask for.

Yellow Hare gripped my shoulder, gently pulling me from my mourning. “What do you want done now, Commander?” she said.

“We should survey the rest of the damage,” I said, accepting her gentle reminder of my duty to the living. “And search for more survivors.”