Star Rigger's Way (26 page)

Skan, are you trying to kill us?
he cried out without thinking.

Gev, damn you, what is that supposed to mean?

What do you see, Gev, where shall we steer?
called Janofer.

Her urgency was well founded. The ship was leapfrogging ahead. Beneath them glowered flaming land and fearsome labyrinth; overhead floated golden clouds and flashing storm clouds. How could this have happened? Janofer aiming for impossible dreams, and Skan for a more devious suicide than Cephean had tried, so long ago, on crippled
Sedora.

Carlyle did not speak; he acted. He projected, instinctively, an image of his own—and his thoughts were so powered by alarm and desperation that they overwhelmed the others completely. He drove forward an image that he knew: luminous amber space, the golden clouds Janofer had wanted broken to a peculiar twisted infinity. It was the luminous amber which he saw when he held a glass of ale to a light and stared through with unfocused eyes. Glazed luminous space with out-of-focus bubbles. At the bottom of the ale were darker regions, where the glowing amber was fuzzy and smoky and obscured by objects: shattered refuse, quarry debris, broken planets, the cluttered reefs of a massively depressed mind. Carlyle steered upward toward the light, toward the infinity; and he found himself being helped by at least one other rigger.

Gev,
whispered Janofer,
where are we steering? Do you know the way?

He did not, but he could not say so. His two friends were steering to disaster, and any other course was better. It hurt him to hear such fear in Janofer's voice, such uncertainty.
Can you help Skan?
he asked desperately.
Do you know why he wants to do this?
Even as he spoke, he flew determinedly upward away from the darkness. The ship moved as though in molasses, or true amber.

After a time he could find no reference points except the vague direction of the light source above, and disaster below.

No, Gev. I should have known, I should have known. Especially without Legroeder. Please—do you know where we are going?

Janofer's fear made him tremble. These were people he had loved, people he had adored. How could this flight have gone so wrong? Was the ship even moving now?

Gev?

No. No, I don't.
He was paralyzed by his own fear now; and the ship hung in amber space, suspended.

Caharleel! Sssssssssss! Caharleel!

Cephean! Yes!
he cried.

There was a peculiar moment of transition, as Cephean slipped forward in the net, curling his claws out into space on both sides, grasping
something,
and as several other things happened. The amber viscosity dissolved around them, and the ship began sinking and rising in response to the net. A curious terrain appeared, slippery gleaming panes and corners sliding through the medium, like fantastically sized cubes of water ice slipping through a vaporous golden liquor. Light flashed and sparkled through the medium, reflected and refracted from a source which might now be anywhere.

Skan's influence in the net subsided almost to nothing, as though suppressed, and Janofer's shrank as though withdrawn. Cephean gathered himself and, with a whisper to Carlyle, leaped.

For a strange minute, the cynthian carried the ship almost singlehandedly. Then Carlyle resumed his efforts, but he allowed the cynthian to thrust the ship and to guide him.
Guinevere
slipped down between two narrowly separated planes and back up through a treacherous channel which angled and twisted past the corners of numerous drifting cubes. By the time they cleared that maze, they were flying again toward the light.

Cephean, do you know where we're going? To Hainur Eight?

Hyiss-yiss, hoff khorss!

How can you know that?
Carlyle was astonished, but he felt totally secure with the cynthian's guidance.
How did you learn the way?

Hyor fren-ss, Caharleel! Hi ssaw iss hin ss-their mindss h-when h-we lefft-ss!

(What? The cat?)
Skan's voice was far away; he was watching from the innermost edge of the net. He sounded calmer now, and distantly interested.

(Seem to be doing very well together.)
Janofer was withdrawn, with Skan, but was very interested in watching.

Cephean, I'm amazed
, said Carlyle. Bending at the waist like a diving swimmer, Carlyle steered the speeding ship under several looming, unfocused bubbles. He wondered if they were going to surface in the head of a glass of ale. It felt right to him. It felt perfect, flying with Cephean.
Can we carry it all the way?

Hoff khorss, Caharleel!

Carlyle nodded and banked, and the ship sliced upward through clear space and leveled out in a lighter realm. A frothy lane stretched out straight to the horizon, and at the end of it glowed their light source, a setting sun: Hainur.

An hour later, in the subjective time of the Flux, Carlyle and Cephean brought the ship upward through layers of foam and cream, and
Guinevere
popped to the surface, into a universe of stars and eternal night.

Gev. Cephean.

Yiss?

Carlyle was so surprised to hear Cephean respond so easily to Janofer that he forgot to answer himself. Janofer peered at them, causing them both to hesitate before leaving the rigger-net. Her eyes caught both of them at once, and by a silent appeal she coaxed Cephean to show his full countenance in the net. Cephean blinked, his eyes coppery and black. He regarded Janofer with an uncharacteristic degree of courtesy.

To Janofer, Carlyle said,
You and Skan must have been tired from your journeys.

That's not the reason for what happened, and you know it,
said Janofer.
We would never have made it in if Cephean and you had not done such a beautiful job of flying.

Yiss
, said Cephean.
Caharleel h-ands hi heff ffly h-many t-thimes.

So we have,
Carlyle said. He felt warm and nervous. For a long time he had been resisting the suggestion that Janofer was making to him right now. But perhaps it was time to stop resisting. Janofer was right. The real team here wasn't Gev and Janofer and Skan, and it never had been. His real teammate had been there all along.
I
guess we're not finished, are we, Cephean?

H-no. Ffly h-more,
hissed the cynthian. His ghostly image vanished from the net. Carlyle met Janofer's gaze and allowed her an embarrassed smile. Then, together, they left the net to join Cephean and Skan on the ship's bridge.

Carlyle rested a hand on the back of the cynthian's furry neck. Cephean craned his eyes back as though to look at Carlyle's hand; but he said nothing and remained crouched, looking with Carlyle across the field of the Jarvis spaceport.
Spillix
stood ready for flight, with an empty pad on one side of her and a fat freighter on the other. She seemed a mere slip of a vessel compared to most of the commercial ships on the field.

"A good ship, Cephean. I think we ought to stick with her as long as they let us command her. That could be quite a long while." Carlyle picked his teeth and thought about it, then nodded to affirm his own words.

"Hyiss," said Cephean. He dipped his head and gently nibbled at one of the riffmar. They were arrayed in a cluster before him, with several of the smallest leaning into his forepaws. "Yiss."

They were alone now. The return to Chaening's World had gone smoothly. Janofer had ridden with them, to watch and keep company; but Skan had said good-bye on Hainur Eight and was now on a ship bound for the southern reaches of human space, with a Thangol and another human as crewmates. Janofer would be leaving soon on a ship out of Chaening's World. She said that she would try to keep in touch; and Carlyle believed her, within reason. Keeping in touch was no easy thing to do.

For just the two of them, then,
Spillix
was the ideal ship after all.

"Good," Carlyle muttered, thinking of all things taken together. He patted Cephean's shoulder and put his hand in his pocket. Before they left, he should call Alyaca again, to say good-bye. "Do you think you'll want to look for your home world one of these days, Cephean?" he asked.

The cynthian did not reply immediately, but his breath escaped with a tiny whistling sound. "Fferhaffs," he said finally. "Fferhaffs, Caharleel." (
Longing
and
confusion
and
wistfulness
welled up out of the quiet of his mind.)

"Maybe we will, then," said Carlyle. He raised his eyes from the silver ships on the field to the evening stars, sprinkled against the darkening sky. There was the source of dreams, and he could look at them forever. But he lowered his eyes again and watched the ships. They were the source of dreams, too—and reality.

"Maybe we will at that, Cephean. Maybe we will."

Jeffrey A. Carver
was a Nebula Award finalist for his novel
Eternity's End
; he also authored
Battlestar Galactica,
a novelization of the critically acclaimed television miniseries. His novels combine thought-provoking characters with engaging storytelling and range from the adventures of the Star Rigger universe (
Star Rigger's Way, Dragons in the Stars
, and others) to the character-driven hard SF of
The Chaos Chronicles.
Sunborn,
published in 2008, is the fourth novel in the Chaos series, which began with
Neptune Crossing
and continued with
Strange Attractors
and
The Infinite Sea.

A native of Huron, Ohio, Carver lives with his family in the Boston area. He has taught writing in a variety of settings, from educational television to conferences for young writers. He has created a free web site for aspiring authors of all ages at http://www.writesf.com
.
Learn more about the author and his work at http://www.starrigger.net
.