The Dark Reaches (6 page)

 

 

I ain settled his ship into its landing cradle at his assigned site beside Linnea’s. It was night at the skyport, but the high yellowish field lights burned bright. He saw Linnea’s ship steaming faintly as drizzle struck its hot skin. Then he cut off his connection to his ship, removed the sensory leads with careful urgency, disconnected himself from the support systems in the shell. For these few moments he could not see outside, could not see her ship. As he pulled a black coverall over his sweaty, aching body, he realized that his hands were shaking, his breath coming hard.

Fear flamed into anger. She’d had no right to do this, no right to risk herself. Her life did not belong only to her. It hadn’t for years.

Dressed, booted, Iain dilated the hatch and climbed out onto the hard field. The warm mist fogged the lights, gave an eerie yellowish cast to the dark, shining pavement, the two or three off-duty patrol ships locked down and empty. He started toward Linnea’s ship. His legs felt rubbery after the long jump, the many hours waiting in orbit, but he forced himself to walk steadily. Two ground crewmen were already helping Linnea’s ship link to fueling lines, ground power, but no one had tried to open the hatch; it was not done, a pilot’s ship was his domain. Her domain.

Never mind that. Without speaking to the crew, Iain slapped his hand onto the control plate next to the hatch, tapped out a pilot instructor’s emergency override code. The hatch dilated, and Iain blinked as light spilled out. Without another thought or word of formal request he boarded and passed through into the piloting compartment.

She was there. She stood staring at him, clutching the coverall she had been about to put on. Her dark hair twined around her shoulders, matted and oily, as was to be expected after a jump. Her eyes were wide, dark. “Iain,” she said.

In two strides he reached her, but stopped short of embracing her. He set his hands on her shoulders, looked hard into her face. “Are you all right?” Again he heard the raggedness in his voice, heard his own fear for her.

She looked away. He slid his arms around her, drew her closer. “Tell me.”

She dropped the coverall, set her clenched fists on his chest. He felt the tension in her bare, slender shoulders ease slightly, but still she kept her eyes down, on her hands. “There was—I felt—” She broke off, and swayed against him. He caught her, steadying her.

Then she pushed away from him, picked up her dark blue coverall, and stepped into it. He saw her hands fumble with the front seal but did not reach out to help her. Covered, she ran her fingers through her hair and stared up at him. “How quickly can we refuel?”

Iain blinked at her. “We’ll settle that after we’ve both rested, had some real food and a good night’s sleep—”

“I don’t need any of that,” she said. She turned and leaned over her ship’s status board, studying the readouts. “Just full fuel tanks, full supplies—”

“We’re heading home,” Iain said. “You don’t need full supplies now.”

She turned her head, and he saw the opaque reserve in her eyes. “Just in case.”

Iain set one hand on the bulkhead, let it shore up his exhaustion. “Linnea—it was worse this time, wasn’t it?”

“Better,” she said distantly. “Clearer. I even—Iain. I saw a jump point. He, they, showed me a jump point.”

Iain could not speak at first. Then he took a breath and said, “Let’s go find our quarters.” He took another breath, to keep his voice from showing his fear for her, or the grief for what he knew he must do. “We both need rest.”

“I only want—”

“If you love me,” he said, and he knew she could hear the edge of fear in his voice, “please—come and rest.”

She looked at him for a long time, considering, and the band of ice tightened around his heart. But then she shut down the board with a sharp wave of her hand, straightened, came to him.

She came to him.

As he took her into his arms, his throat aching, he wondered if it would be the last time.

Esayeh moaned. Always so hard to wake, to return, always so hard. He turned over and over, blind, knowing he was twisting the piloting leads plugged into his skull behind his left ear.

No matter. This time he’d done it: clear, definite contact.

Through the sparks of his joy his mind sent him a wandering melody, and he sang it, the words clear in his mind:
Out of the deep have I called unto thee—

Familiar hands caught him,
her
hands, as they were always ready to do; her dry voice, Pilang’s voice, the beloved friend of years and wandering: “Blasphemy, Esayeh?” Her hands pulled his rotation to a stop, uncovered his eyes, and he blinked hard in the dimness, all music fled.

“I did it,” he said. “Connection. Connection, Pilang!”

“Oh, no doubt.” She was unlinking him,
snap
,
snap
,
snap
, from the piloting plugs.

“No,” he said, against the rising weariness; after all her patience, patience of years, he wanted her to see, to share this moment. “I made contact. I reached another pilot’s mind. A pilot from the Hidden Worlds, Pilang.”

Now she floated with her back to him, pretending to fumble with folding the leads into storage. She would not let him see her face, but he knew. She did not believe him. “I did it,” he said stubbornly. “The first rope across the chasm. The way is opening.”

She was silent for a while. “And you believe that now they will come? Just because of this—connection?”

“Now, at least, there’s hope of it,” he said. He caught her ankle, made her spin to face him. “Someone has to try,” he said to the brightness of the tears in her eyes. “Or—”

She closed her eyes. Nodded. A bright tear floated free.

“Hope,” he whispered, to her, to himself.

To all of their people.

For the next two days, in the pilots’ quarters at the sleepy little skyport, Linnea carefully did as Iain suggested in everything: resting, eating the good fresh food, sleeping long hours. She knew he asked it only for her sake, to help her, to keep her safe.

That only made it worse.

He’d locked down her ship the first night, she discovered. The following morning, Iain had left for a meeting with the patrol’s commander and had insisted she stay in their quarters and rest. As soon as he was well away, she’d slipped out of the quarters building and onto the field, made her way through the sharp shadows of the bright Paradais sun to her ship’s berth.

And she’d found what she feared: a lock-patch, keyed to Iain’s hand of course, slapped down over the access pad. It blocked her own palm, even refused the instructor’s tap-code she knew as well as Iain did.

She clenched her fists, set them against the hatch, and swore. This was her ship.
Her
ship!

And, being Iain, he’d let her discover for herself what he had done. He was afraid to hurt her—at least when he could see it happen.

Linnea sighed. She was just as afraid to hurt him. Since their talk after she’d arrived, she had said nothing more about otherspace. His fear for her was plain, and painful. But still, thoughts of otherspace rarely left her mind, and she knew that he must guess that.

She leaned her forehead against the hatch and closed her eyes. As he knew her mind, she knew his. If she forced Iain to name his fear openly, he’d be locked into the one course of action that would seem right to him: to take her back to Terranova as a failed pilot, to live out her life groundside or, at best, as his passenger. She would never have another moment of freedom in otherspace.

She lifted her head.
That must not happen.
She had heard the call. No one else had heard it, or even believed it was real. No one else could answer it.

The sense she got from that other mind, the other pilot—the sense of rightness, of completing something important—whatever was behind that could save them all. Even, she was sure, the one who had called to her.

And there was no one else to answer.

The second afternoon, after telling Iain she would rest, she stood motionless at the small window in their quarters, looking unseeing out at the clump of tall, silvery-leafed eucalyptus trees that sheltered the patrol leader’s office shed. Thinking hard. If she left Iain behind, if she jumped as far as Earth . . . then, when she returned,
if
she returned, years would have passed for him, many more than for her. There was no reason he would wait for her, or even remember her kindly—a woman who had betrayed his trust, abandoned him, and abandoned what he saw as her duty.

But only Linnea could carry out this task. If Iain did not believe her, did not understand, then no one would. And he had made it clear that he did not.

Heartsore, she made her decision. One from which there would be no turning back.

On the second night she lay awake long after Iain had drifted to sleep. Finally, restless, she slid out carefully from his embrace. He did not seem to wake. She sat in the dark, watching him sleep. Now that she knew she was going to try to leave, sadness weighed her down, an ache too deep for tears. In the weak yellow light from the nearby field, Iain slept on, his long black hair loose silk on his pillow, spilling over one brown shoulder, the strong lines of his face softened into peace.

She would not let herself count over the few years they had had. She pushed away the thought that this was cowardice, that she owed Iain a farewell. Because the moment he understood her intent, he would call port security and have her confined for her own sake. To protect her, he would disable her ship—spin down the jump engine. Maybe he would even let it unbalance, shattering the fine calibrations that kept its energies controlled when it was operating. The containment interlocks would crush it into nothing, irretrievable, never to be repaired.

Maybe he had already done it. She looked down at him, considering.

No. Iain had honor. He would not kill her ship without telling her.

She climbed back in beside him, curled against him, and held herself still until sleep took her.

In the morning, Iain was gone—an early meeting in the town, she remembered him mentioning it in passing. She rose, washed quickly, and dressed in her dark gray pilot’s tunic and trousers—finely woven fabric, the most formal she owned. Fitting for a last voyage. Then pulled from under their bed the travel bag she had packed in secret last night.

She let herself out silently, willing herself not to look back at the empty room. She would see him again—someday.

She would hold to that hope.

Out on the field, in the blue-gray stillness before dawn, she made herself walk at a normal pace along the little row of ships. The one technician she passed looked at her without apparent surprise or interest, then bent back to her work on one of the patrol ships’ fueling lines.

Linnea’s heart gave a thump as she reached Iain’s ship, stopped in front of its hatch. She had access, of course; and she was sure she could reach orbit even in a ship not specifically fitted to her. Orbit, and radius, and one short jump. Direction would not matter, after all; the jump would just be to put her beyond Iain’s reach. Then, when she had laboriously made the ship her own, she would jump again. Jump, and listen. Wait for word.

She touched the cool, smooth metal of the ship’s skin. This was Iain’s ship, his own since his first year as a trainee in boyhood; and now she was stealing it from him.

But she was betraying so much else that mattered even more. Years of his trust, his love. His belief in her good faith. Against that, this theft would hardly weigh in the balance. She forced down a wave of guilt and raised her hand to the access pad next to the hatch.

And Iain’s voice behind her said, “Linnea.”

She froze. Then turned slowly to face him.

He was dressed as she was, in dark gray tunic and trousers: not quite the attire of a Pilot Master, but a sign of pride and serious intent. He stood formally upright, his hands clasped behind his back.

When she saw the leashed pain in his dark eyes, she could barely speak. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“Sorry, for planning to steal my ship?” He did not move toward her, and his expression, firmly controlled, did not change. “But, Linnea, you can’t steal it.”

“You locked it down?”

He shook his head, patience clear in his eyes. “No. You can’t steal it because—because, Linnea, all that I have is yours.” His mouth quirked. “Not that it’s much.”

Now the tears came, burning in her eyes, in the back of her throat. Beyond the shadows where they stood, the first light of the sun touched the top of the clump of eucalyptus at the edge of the field. “I had to try, Iain,” she said. “I couldn’t give up.”

“No,” he said gently. “You never could.” He touched his ship, and the hatch dilated. “Let’s go in. There’s something I want you to see.”