Celestial Matters (38 page)

I dressed myself in my purple robes and stood in the mingled light of above and below. In my hands I held a plain bronze bowl filled with unmixed wine.

“The time of preparing is done,” I said. “When Ares rises in four hours we will cast ourselves before the knees of the gods and try to escape this trap of the heavens.”

I paused and raised the bowl up in front of me.

“Zeus, lord of the sky, bless our undertaking.” I poured purple wine upon the silver ship. Thunder rumbled in my heart.

“’Era, queen of heaven, bless our undertaking.” More wine poured on the ground, and that goddess descended onto Yellow Hare’s shoulders.

“Athena, guide our thoughts. ’Ermes, guide our hands. ’Elios and Selene, forgive our thefts. Ares, let us flee from your snare.” With each god’s name I spilled more wine and felt the touch of the divine presence invoked. The assembled divinities waited in my heart, filling me with strength. The stars grew bright, and overhead the gleaming purple orb of Zeus passed in his majestic orbit around the earth.

“The omens are good,” I said, and laid down the empty bowl.

“Phan Xu-Tzu,” I said, turning to the old man, “is there any ceremony you wish to perform?”

“No, Aias,” he said. “There is no proper li, no ritual for this place and time.”

Athena touched me gently, whispering in my ear. “Very well,” I said to Phan. “Then I give to you the honor of naming our new ship.”

Phan turned in a slow circle, studying the bird with wings of night and head of fire, body of the moon and will of the sun, that we would soon be riding to life or death.

The old man raised his arms and his silken work robes glistened in the moonlight. “I name this vessel
Rebuke of the Phoenix,
” he said; then he turned and walked to his control cabin in silence.

“A strange name,” Yellow Hare said. “I wonder why he chose it.”

“I do not think he did,” I said. “I think he answered the prompting of a spirit.”

We separated then, each to his own meditations. Yellow Hare and I went to the top of the hill and spoke together for a time. What passed between us then was as between man and woman, and thus I will leave it as private.

When Ares rose across the bow of our new ship trailing the sun fragment behind it, I left Yellow Hare to go to my control cabin while she joined the rest of the crew in the brig cells, the safest place for them to be during the flight. Yellow Hare protested at being separated, but I pointed out that there was nothing she could do to help me if some piloting disaster occurred, but she might be of help to those down below in case any of them were injured during the flight.

In my cabin, I leaned back against the hard wooden wall and strapped myself to the carpeted floor with long cords of twisted hide wrapped in spun cotton. The leather handgrips of the five pull ropes dangled down in front of my face. The port and up reins were to my left, starboard, and down to my right, and Ramonojon’s gift, the emergency rein, hung directly before my eyes.

I waited for Ares to turn and pull
Rebuke of the Phoenix
toward the inner side of the war god’s crystal sphere, so that we would not have to negotiate our way through the whole gear work of epicycles.

The red glare of Ares faded as he set under us, spinning eccentrically downward; then he rose again to port, pulling us after him. I tightened my grip on the guide wires and held my breath. The light of the sun glittered up through half a dozen of Ares’ interlaced epicycles. I waited as the obstacle spheres spun away one at a time until, according to my calculations, only two invisible orbs, one of which tethered the sun net, lay between the
Rebuke
and the open skies.

I pulled the handle of the up wire. The rope strung across the ceiling became taut, pulling on the silver cord. Through the window I saw a gleam of gold rise up along one edge of the net, and I saw the sky become clear and sharp along that gleam. The air rarefied in an arc, pulling the net away from the sphere that trapped it, sliding off like a ring from a finger; then, like a knot untying itself, the sun fragment pulled the net behind it, freeing the ship from its moorings.

The sun fragment, like a racehorse let loose from its hobbles, spun up from the capturing epicycle. It tried to swerve and dance through the sky, but the reins held it; the rarefied air pulled the sun net out of its arc into a straight line, and that line of twisted celestial matter pulled the ball of flame after it.

The ship bucked and turned, following the net in a rapid spin. The breath was pushed from my lungs as the ship swayed angrily from side to side. My eyes swam with sudden dizziness.

The fragment swooped down, pulling us toward Ares. I yanked on the handle to the port rein and heard a snap reverberate down the line. The rope that tethered the port guide wire came away in my hand. I grabbed the wire itself and felt the sharp silver bite into my hand; a trickle of blood fell onto my sleeve, staining the blue scholar’s fringe student red.

But I had the wire in my hand, I pulled, and a new line of gold sprung up along the net, pulling us to port until we faced the sharp edge of the main crystal sphere. I counted five heartbeats and then felt a humming in my back; Phan had activated his Xi strengtheners right on time. The sun fragment drifted farther to port in a gentle curve, and we turned slowly and gracefully away from the cutting edge of the unbreakable crystal, away from Ares and down toward the sun.

I released the guide wires. The gold shimmers vanished from the net, but the sun fragment continued in its flight downward, down and down, until, like a horse tired of running and wanting to graze, it turned away from its marked-out racecourse and took up an orbit around the earth a few hundred miles below the war god’s sphere.

It took me half an hour to untie myself with my one uncut hand and walk across the rocking body of the
Rebuke
to the other control cabin. Phan was already outside, wearing a smile of satisfaction on his face that must have matched mine.

He bowed deeply to me, and I returned the courtesy.

*   *   *

We orbited for two days while Ramonojon, Phan, and I checked the ship to see how well it had survived its first use. Apart from some patching needed on the starboard wing and a stronger pull cord for the port guide wire,
Rebuke of the Phoenix
had come through its maiden flight intact.

Repairs done, we waited until the ship’s natural motion pulled it back toward the invisible currents that connected Ares and the Sun. To my mind the next segment of our flight was the real test to see whether or not we would return to Earth. Neither Phan nor I was sure how fast we would be flying. He knew how great a speed a battle kite could attain in this Xi flow, and I knew how fast sun and moon tethered together would fly if no force was applied, but we could not yet add those knowledges together to calculate the speed of
Rebuke of the Phoenix.
We had to rely on experiment.

As we orbited under Ares, we resumed our flight stations, Phan and I in our cabins, the rest of the crew strapped to the walls of the cells. The war god circled overhead and the sun fell below us. I pulled on the down guide wire and the netted fireball dove like a dolphin into the Xi current. The Xi strengtheners started to hum, sending a tickling shiver up and down my back, and we began to fall toward the sun, drawn down through the currents in the ocean of air toward the fire below.

The speed pushed me back against the hard wooden wall. The straps bit into my arms and legs, but I did not care. Like a Bakkhanate at a revel, I sucked in the same joy of flight that Kleon reveled in. I felt the navigator’s ghost rise up laughing in my heart, drinking in the exhilaration like blood at a sacrifice, drawing Kleon back to the world of the living.

The navigator’s spirit filled my ears with the sound of blissful harmony that the musical universe sings to the souls of Pythagoreans. And in that ode of the planets I heard, not saw, the Xi flow that gave this rapturous speed to our ship. The song was a duet sung in strophe and antistrophe by Ares and ’Elios in turn. And through my soul and throat Kleon sang with them, raising my untrained voice to match the music played on the lyre of existence.

And then without a warning, without epode, the song stopped and Kleon left me. The fireball had orbited out of the pathway between the planets and the echoes of the song of heaven faded away into the distance.

Dazed by the sounds I had heard, I stumbled from my cabin and surveyed the sky above and below us. Ares was a small red ball hanging high above us and far to port; ’Elios a large golden coin below and to our starboard. Once again they seemed to be mute balls of matter, but I had heard their voices.

Phan joined me to look at the spheres. He looked at each orb in turn as if he had never seen them before.

“Phan Xu-Tzu,” I said. “Is Xi a musical harmony?”

“Yes,” he said. “Is each planet a single note?”

“Yes,” I said.

In my heart Athena raised the Aigis in salute while something that was not a spirit or a god passed through Phan’s eyes and gave him a look of pure, quiet comprehension.

*   *   *

During the following week, we took four more rides down the song of the Xi flow and reached an orbit only ten thousand miles from the sun. One more downward plunge and we would return to ’Elios himself, and if we survived passage through the riptides of the sun we would reach the inhabited spheres. I decided we should spend several days just orbiting since I felt we all needed time to clear our thoughts before we attempted passage through the sphere that had wrecked
Chandra’s Tear.

On the second day of rest, the soldier Xenophanes came to my home cave, where Yellow Hare and I were relaxing after a long day’s work, she smoking her pipe, I reclining against the cave wall.

Xenophanes saluted. “Commander Aeson requests your presence and that of Captain Yellow Hare, Commander Aias,” he said.

“Where does Aeson wish to meet?” I said.

“In the dynamics lab, sir. He is there now with Chief Dynamicist Ramonojon.”

“Inform Commander Aeson that we will be along in a moment,” I said.

Xenophanes saluted again and walked out.

“Do you have any idea what this is about?” I said to Yellow Hare.

“I have a thought,” she said.

“And?”

“And I would prefer that Aeson tell you,” she said as she stood up and strapped on her armor and handed me my formal robes of command.

A few minutes later we walked down the steps to Ramonojon’s old laboratory. Aeson and Ramonojon were seated on the floor in the center of the room under the ink stain. Aeson was wearing his full formal bronze armor; he had even put on the horsehair-crested helmet, and all had been shined to a sparkle. He sat cross-legged with his sheathed sword lying across his bronze-greaved knees and waited for us to approach and sit down to join them.

From a small pitcher Aeson poured out a bowl of dark red wine and mixed in a little water. He handed me the bowl; I drank a little and waited for him to speak.

“Commander,” Aeson said. “Now that our survival seems likely, have you turned your thoughts to what we will do when we return to Earth?”

“Could you be more specific?” I said.

“Do we hand the sun fragment over at Selene,” he said, “or try to carry out our mission by personally using it on ’AngXou? The latter seems to me quite difficult since we are neither on schedule nor carrying the armament we would need to reach the heart of the Middle Kingdom.”

Ramonojon’s face had grown white with horror as he listened to Aeson. “Is that why you called us together?” he said. “How can you even—?”

He took a deep breath to compose himself, then turned to look at me. “Aias, I would not have helped you repair this ship if I had known you were still planning to use the sun fragment as a weapon. And I am certain Phan would not have helped either.”

“I have not said that I would still use it,” I told him.

Aeson turned to stare at me in surprise. Yellow Hare, however, seemed completely undisturbed by my statement.

“You have put victory back within our grasp, Aias,” Aeson said. “Now we must decide how best to achieve it.”

“That is not what I have done,” I said.

“But—”

“To steal fire from heaven for man’s survival may be justified to the gods,” I said. “But the words of ’Elios to me before the launching of the sun net were quite clear. That fire is not to be used for mortal wars.”

“’Elios spoke to you?”

I nodded.

“Then what are we to do, Commander?” Aeson said; his Spartan soul would never contradict a pronouncement of the gods.

“I do not know,” I said. “I have too many conflicting duties. To the gods, to the League, to Ramonojon and Phan.”

“To Phan?” Aeson said. “What duty do you owe him?”

“His life,” I said. “Without his aid we would all be dead.”

“Without him
Chandra’s Tear,
our ship, would not have been destroyed,” Aeson said. “We owe no duty to a saboteur.”

“I disagree,” I said. “The onus for the destruction of our ship lies on Mihradarius for his treason and Anaxamander for his folly. Phan was only doing his duty.”

“Aias,” Yellow Hare said gently. “You cannot save Phan’s life. If we give him to the League they will execute him for sabotage. If we return him to the Kingdom they will execute him for failing in his mission.”

“Then why did he help us?” Aeson said. “Why did he not take death when it was offered him?”

“Because a change might come,” Phan said. He was standing on the bottom step of the cave entrance, looking around at the wreckage of Ramonojon’s workplace. “In the turning of heaven and earth, there is always the hope of something unforeseen arising.”

All of us looked up, startled at his entrance, except for Yellow Hare.

“You heard him coming?” I said to Yellow Hare. She nodded curtly.

Phan walked over and sat down next to Ramonojon. The old man sat with his knees bunched up against his chin, hiding his beard behind his now threadbare silks.

“You put your trust in Fortune?” Aeson asked. “She is a most unreliable goddess.”