Ceremony (6 page)

Mistress...

There is time. Do not distract me again. Six brethren ships had been negated. They would remember this raid as a disaster. Just guard me.

Let the Serke come. She was strong and treacherous. If nothing else, she could outrun them.

She was closing on another rogue when the Mistress touched her again. She suppressed her anger at being interrupted.

She did not need the warning.

Astounded, she forgot the rogue as she stared at a glowing darkship that had materialized only a few hundred yards away. She recovered barely in time to help the Mistress turn the attack.

This Serke Mistress was weaker than she. Grimly, Marika ducked through her loophole and seized a ghost, hurled it back.

The darkship vanished.

Another appeared an instant later, in another quarter, and vanished again before she could do it harm.

She finally understood. They were trying to attack her through the Up-and-Over.

How could she get out of this?

She could see no escape.

Decision came instantly. She swung the tip of the wooden dagger toward Starstalker and accelerated.

The Serke recognized her intent. They flung themselves into her path. She and the Mistress brushed their attacks aside and continued the drive toward the great voidship. Soon the sisters there would have to move or be rammed.

The Serke tried placing a preponderance of strength in Marika’s path. But once they did that she knew where to expect their appearances. She recovered her advantage of her superior grasp of the dark side.

Short, sharp touch-shrieks filled the void as a Serke Mistress’s heart exploded and her bath realized they had no hope.

Marika continued gaining velocity.

Starstalker vanished.

Marika searched the void, wondering where it would return from the Up-and-Over. If she chased it hard enough it might not be able to recover the rogues before darkships rose up from the planet’s surface or came from other work sites. The rogues might have to be abandoned.

A lance of fire cut past her. She had not kept close enough track of the rogues. She had allowed one to sight her visually. Hurriedly, she threw a ghost its way, destroyed it, and returned to flesh to find her Mistress almost overwhelmed by the Serke. A pair of darkships drifted nearby, radiating elation, thinking they had her.

Marika hammered at one. Again the dark filled the despair.

The second darkship vanished.

Marika spotted Starstalker again, far away, and darted toward it.

It was going better than she had expected. She was as strong as ever she had been, as quick, as deadly, as finely tuned in her instincts. She had won the victory already, even if she were destroyed. The raiders could no longer damage the project.

The surviving Serke were gathering at extreme range. She suspected they would jump at her together. She could not see herself and one sadly weakened Mistress fending off all three.

She had to shatter the fear barriers and hazard the Up-and-Over herself. There was no other exit. They would make no more mistakes.

How long before help arrived? Surely there had been time for darkships to complete the long, slow climb from the planet’s surface. Surely someone could have arrived from the moons or have wended her way out of the jungle of metal at the trojan point.

But a quick fling of the fartouch brought no response.

It was the Up-and-Over or death.

She knew what she was supposed to do. Technically. She had reached out and collected the appropriate ghosts occasionally, but had come up short on nerve. And never had she allowed herself to be taken through by someone else, though that was the customary way of learning.

There was no option. The Serke were poised.

She gathered ghosts.

The Serke darkships vanished.

Marika sealed her eyes and opened to the All, twisted her ghosts, and bid fear be gone. She reached for the Up-and-Over, twisted again.

The stars vanished. Everything vanished. For several seconds nothing surrounded her but a chaotic sense of ghosts and screaming. She had penetrated a vacancy that made the void seem warm and homey.

Stars reappeared, spinning. The darkship was tumbling. Marika looked for landmarks, and nearly panicked when she could spy nothing familiar. The world! Where was it? Where were the Serke darkships, the brethren ships, the mirror, Starstalker, the moons? She saw nothing at all. Only stars, distant stars. Had she hurled herself into the gulf between?

Something huge and dark stirred nearby, aware of her presence, so powerful she could feel it without reaching into the plane of ghosts. It was the great grim dark thing she had so often sensed waiting at the lip of the system. Her skip through the Up-and-Over had thrown her almost into its grasp!

Still battling panic, she steadied the darkship, polled her companions, found them frightened but safe. Her Mistress had no experience of the Up-and-Over either. What do we do now? she sent.

Find the direction home.

Marika scanned the void opposite the crawling darkness, and found a star that seemed brighter than any other. That one?

The Mistress knew where they were too. Must be. Only the sun would be so bright from here. Hurry. It knows we are here and it is coming to see...

The darkness had begun to move.

Marika turned the darkship toward the sun and began moving inward, accelerating. Can we make it? She did not have the courage to hazard the Up-and-Over again.

We must try. We cannot go through again. Another time, not knowing what we are doing, and we could be too far away to find our way. In the face of a problem less savage than the Serke the Mistress was perfectly calm. More rational than she, Marika thought.

The homeward passage took three days, despite the incredible velocities Marika attained. She reached lunar orbit at the edge of exhaustion, with her bath and Mistress all but burned out, and had to be rescued by brethren ships working the mirror, for she and her meth did not have enough left to take the darkship down.

III

Bagnel came to Marika where she lay in a bed aboard the workstation the brethren called the Hammer because of its shape, two pods upon the end of a long arm rotating to create an illusion of gravity. He said, “I heard you cut it pretty close this time.”

She had not been awake long and he was her first visitor. “Very close. I wasn’t sure I would make it this time.”

He eyed her intently while shaking his head.

“I tried something I didn’t know how to do and almost did myself in. Is that what you want me to say? I’ve said it. But I’ll also say I didn’t have any choice. It was the Up-and-Over or die. The Serke were closing in.”

“I understand.”

“How bad is it? How much damage did they do?”

“The raiders? None at all. Unless you count a little caused by one of the wrecks. It ploughed through an area where we had some materials tethered. We’ll have to replace a few hundred sections of beam that got warped.”

“That’s all?”

“Evidently you took them completely by surprise. I hear there’s a great deal of despair among the recidivists down on the planet. This was supposed to be a killer blow.”

“Then the other darkships did get there in time to keep them from wrecking everything.”

“Not exactly.”

“What?”

“They ran away. The Serke. Before the darkships ever arrived. We heard the warning, but for a long time we did not know what had happened. Actually found out from a captured rogue.”

“But... “

“Marika, nobody knew you were out there. I mean, some of the workers remembered a darkship nosing around, but they didn’t know whose it was. You didn’t tell anybody where you were going or what you were up to. Meth only started wondering about where you were after we captured the rogue and could not find any silth missing who were supposed to be out there at the time. Meth were talking about a ghost darkship for a while. Then when nobody could find you anywhere down below... Marika, you have to stop doing that kind of thing. You could have died trying to get back. If you had told somebody what you were up to, anybody, silth could have gone looking for you. It’s hard to save somebody when you don’t know they’re in trouble.”

“All right, Bagnel. Don’t get excited. I get the message. It doesn’t matter now, anyway. Everything turned out for the best. I’m safe.”

He scowled. There was much more he wanted to say, but he held his tongue.

Marika said, “The problem has become how to protect the mirrors. They would have destroyed the project but for the accident of my having been out there. Two of those ships were carrying bombs like the ones they used on TelleRai.”

“Accident? What accident?” There was an odd glint in Bagnel’s eyes.

“What is it? I don’t like the way you’re looking at me.”

“You always discount the notion that you are fated. I don’t like superstition any more than you do, Marika, but this time I really have to wonder.”

“Don’t you start. I get enough of that nonsense from silth. Anyway, if you assume I am a fated thing then the mirror would have been destroyed. Isn’t the pattern one of destruction? That’s what they keep telling me.”

“Maybe that was to prepare you for the turnaround.”

“Enough of this, Bagnel. I won’t have it from you. It’s pure silliness.”

“As you wish. I came to see how you are. I have my answer. You’re as nasty as ever. And those who had hopes of your early demise will be disappointed again.”

“Right. I intend to keep disappointing them, too, because I intend to outlive them all. I have too much to get done to waste time dying.”

He looked at her hard, surprised by her intensity. “Things such as?”

“The project has reached takeoff. It is running itself. Not so?”

“Pretty much.”

“This misadventure got me to thinking. There is very little I can contribute now, unless it’s protection. Or if I just help lift materials from the surface. The rest of the engine is running on its own impetus.”

“So?” He sounded suspicious.

“So I think it’s time I went looking for trouble instead of waiting for it to come to me. No smart remarks! Remember when I was young? Remember how the novice Marika always jumped to the attack? She hasn’t been doing that since she got older. That antique factor in your quarters that time was right.”

“You’re so old now? About to turn into one of your Ponath Wise meth? Eh? Eh? I know. You attacked even when you didn’t know what you were attacking. Yes, I remember that Marika very well. She was a fool, sometimes. I think I like today’s Marika a little better.”

“Fool. That Marika made things happen. This Marika just sits around reacting. Mainly because she has been too cowardly to take what she knows to be necessary next steps. Before Kiljar finally gives up dying and actually yields up her spirit to the All--which may not happen for another century, the rate she’s going, always going to die tomorrow and going on for another year--and maybe leaves the Redoriad Community in the paws of somebody less sympathetic, I’m going to learn the ways of the gulf and the Up-and-Over. I am determined. I will defeat fear, learn, then go hunt those who would destroy us.”

“Marika, please understand when I say I don’t approve. I don’t think... “

“I know, Bagnel. And I appreciate your concern.” Marika close her eyes. For several minutes she did nothing but relax, comforted by his presence. Much of their friendship remained tacit, undefined by confining words.

“Bagnel?”

“Yes?”

“You have been a good friend. The thing we mean and wish when we use the word friend. The best... Oh, damn!”

Bagnel was startled. Marika so seldom used words like damn. “What is the matter?”

“There are things I want to say. That should be said, for the record. But I can’t pry out the right words. Maybe they don’t even exist in the common speech.”

“Then don’t try to say them. Don’t look for them. I know. Just relax. You need rest more than talk.”

“No. This is important. Even when we know things, sometimes it takes words to make them concrete. Like in some of our silth magics, where the name must be named before the witchery can be.” She paused a time again. “If we had been anyone but the meth we are, Bagnel. Anyone but silth and brethren, southerner and packsteader... “

He touched her paw lightly, diffidently, actually squeezed it gently for a second, then hastened out of the cubicle.

Marika stared at the cold white door. Softly, she said, “They might have made legends.” She could recall him having touched her only once before, for all they had been in close contact for so many years. “We will have to make them for them, for they will never be.”

He had dared, at last. And fled.

One did not touch silth.

She had touched him once, before she had known him, atop a snowy ridge as they stared down upon the nomad-gutted remains of the place he had called home. It had been his responsibility to defend that place, and he had failed.

Silth did not show fear. Ponath huntresses did not show fear. Neither did either weep.

Marika wept.

Chapter Thirty-Two

I

For the first time in nearly six years Marika put the mirror project out of mind--though she debated with herself many days before admitting that it could get on without her there trying to run everything herself.

Kiljar allowed her to draft whomever she wanted from among the Redoriad dark-faring Mistresses of the Ship. She took the best as her instructresses.

She went up into the dark, out into the deep, and drove herself to exhaustion again and again, learning the Up-and-Over. She pushed herself as relentlessly as she had when she was younger, and she regained some of the enthusiasm that she had had then. She forced herself to learn the guile and craft that were needed to placate or elude the great darkness lurking at the edge of the system, waiting for no one knew what, filled with a hunger so alien it was impossible to comprehend.

“While we perceive them in countless ways they are all much the same, what you call ghosts,” Kiljar said. Not once in all her years had Marika encountered another silth who called them that. Most called them those-who-dwell. A very few did not believe in them at all. “The farther from the world’s surface you get, the larger they are, and fewer, till out in the gulf you find the rare black giants.