The Navigator of Rhada (12 page)

The warlock’s eyes gleamed hungrily. “What men they were--those ancient ones. By the holy Star, when will the Navigators let us learn from them?”

Kynan said disapprovingly, “The search for old knowledge is the province of the Order, warlock.
Only
the Order.” Baltus shook his head sadly. “No warlock would agree with you there, Nav Kynan.”

“Warlocks can still be burned,” Kynan cautioned. “Remember that, Baltus.”

The older man sighed and shrugged. “But there is so much to know, so much we need to discover.”

“The cloister on Algol is the place for that. The cloister and the sanctuaries.” Kynan was, after all, a consecrated man and a priest. There were times when he felt as Baltus did--as all warlocks did--that the free investigation of scientific truths was the true heritage of all men, not just priests of the Order. But these doubts were momentary. Man’s bloody history bore witness to the dangers of unrestricted science.

Baltus smiled. “We made some progress, Nav Kynan,” he said. “In Kier of Rhada’s time, you might have handed me over to the Inquisition merely for the suggestion that the Order might be wrong.”

Kynan’s manner softened, for the warlock and he were old acquaintances. “No, not even in The Rebel’s day. The Inquisition was part of the Dark Time. All that is behind us, please God.”

Baltus’s smile faded. “There will be a dark enough time for Aurora soon, Kynan. What are we to do?”

The Navigator frowned and shook his head. “I wish I knew. My brain is bursting. I don’t know which thoughts are mine and which are the Rhadan Vulk’s. I keep thinking we must divert and go to Nyor--and yet that can’t be right. The danger isn’t on Earth. It’s here on the Rim. Aurora is the place. The sanctuary, at least.” He pressed his fingertips against his skull. “I have been in Triad often enough to know that there should be no conflicts in a man’s thoughts afterward. Yet I keep having this urge to turn for Earth. I
know
Gret didn’t plant that in my mind. His loyalty is to Rhada. But why--” He broke off, shaking his head in perplexity. “I’m only a starship priest, Baltus. Politics has always baffled me. But why do I keep thinking of Torquas, whom I’ve never seen? And General Tran-- who is like a figure out of a legend to me?”

“When the Vulk implant a man’s subconscious, only the Star knows what he may see,” the warlock said. “It is told that the Vulk joined with Kier the Rebel to defeat a cyborg in the Three Encounters during Mariana’s rebellion, and the star kings swore that he turned to steel during the fight. Who can say what is possible for the Vulk?” He smiled slightly. “Obviously he didn’t
remain
steel, since he married Queen Ariane and gave her five children but--” He shrugged. “It is well to turn to steel when one needs to. I think you need to now, Nav Kynan. LaRoss, Tirzah, and General Crespus will be looking for us when the Gonlani army makes a planetfall on Aurora. They’ll call us traitors.”

“They are my bond-father’s men,” Kynan said.

“And your bond-father is dead, Kynan. So, for all we know, is Karston the heir. Gonlan is without a legitimate king. LaRoss can rule as he pleases. His loyalty has always been to Karston, but who can tell now--?”

Kynan turned away from the silent, empty bay. “Was I wrong, then? To take Janessa out of Melissande? By all the cybs and little demons, Baltus, could I leave her there as a hostage while our armies level Aurora?”

“Was it your idea?” the warlock asked shrewdly. “Have you asked yourself that? To take her out of Melissande wasn’t the act of a fire-breathing citizen of Gonlan--or of Rhada, for that matter.”

“The Vulk suggested it,” Kynan said, uncertainly. “But--”

The warlock waited, looking closely at the young priest’s face.

“No, it was more than the Vulk’s suggestion,” Kynan said with decision. “It wasn’t the act of a loyal Rhad, perhaps. But it
was
what any Navigator would have done. The Order commands a higher loyalty than nationality, Baltus. It must be so, or the Empire would fall to pieces. My bond-father Kreon would have understood. It was Kreon, after all, who gave me to the Order as a child. He was an honorable and religious man. He would say that I have done the right thing.”

“Right, perhaps. But dangerous, Nav. Very dangerous. Gonlan without a star king is a peril to all of the Rim. Perhaps more than that. I can’t believe all this happened by accident.” The warlock spoke earnestly. “There is a pattern, a design--”

“But whose?”

The warlock veiled his eyes, for he knew that what he was about to say would offend the young Navigator. “Only the Empire or the Order make such designs, Kynan.”

Janessa awoke from a weary, dozing slumber and lay on her bed listening to the humming of the starship. Like all of the people of the age, she was familiar with the great, ancient vessels that flew between the stars. But the wonder of how this miracle was actually accomplished never failed to fascinate her. From childhood she had kept in her mind the youthful excitement of star travel. That these machines, so incredibly old, could transform the shining lights in the sky into stars and planets where one might walk and live never failed to arouse her sense of the magnificence of her race. Men had built the starships, not gods. That was the glory of it. And perhaps, one day, men might build starships again.

The quarters assigned to her must have belonged, in other times, to the most distinguished personages who star- traveled. The chamber in which she found herself was not immense, but the curving design of the walls and ceilings gave an impression of unlimited space. Mirrored panels reflected her image, and mysterious cabinets with stylized controls filled one entire bulkhead. She had no idea of what those cabinets might once have contained, though she suspected that once there had been hidden machines to store and care for personal belongings of the star traveler using this stateroom.

The bathing accommodations had been partially restored by the Lyri who owned the starship. Water could be made to flow into a sunken, globular depression in the humming deck plates of the small anteroom. But it was obvious that at some time in the distant past, bathing aboard this vessel had been something far more entertaining than a mere immersion of the body in water. Fully a dozen spigots and spray nozzles ringed the bathing globe. Janessa could only guess at their use.

For an Auroran of the middle Second Empire, however, even a hot bath was a luxury, and Janessa wasted no time in taking advantage of it. The uniform of a Rhadan-Gonlani cadet she had worn aboard had been dried and pressed into a semblance of neatness by the junior Navigator on board, and it lay awaiting her when she emerged, refreshed from the bath.

For a moment the Auroran girl stood before one of the shining wall mirrors in her quarters and thought about the magnificent First Empire ladies who must once have seen themselves reflected there. By comparison, she thought ruefully, Janessa of Aurora was a poor thing. Her figure was too boyish by half, she concluded, the result, no doubt, of many hours spent in the warlike training and activities the Rim worlds demanded of their royal women. The unaccustomed brilliance of the electric lights glinted from her smooth, shining hair that curled damply to her shoulders. She stretched and made a face at herself, frowning at the darkening bruises she had acquired on that nightmare flight from Melissande. No First Empire noblewomen had ever been knocked black and blue on horseback in a race across the cliffs of the Stoneland Peninsula, she guessed. She touched the thin scar on her abdomen left by a Navigator surgeon’s primitive removal of an inflamed appendix a year earlier. Surely no great lady of the First Empire had ever been scarred that way, either. Her father’s warlock had once told her that Vulks had been the surgeons of the Golden Age and that under proper conditions they operated on humans without leaving a mark on them. Janessa shivered. Perhaps a scar was a small price to pay for not submitting so to the Vulk.

That was senseless prejudice--Kynan would tell her so, she was certain. She turned away from her reflection and began to dress almost angrily. She was most strongly attracted to Nav Kynan, and this, she felt instinctively, was a danger to them both. She was Janessa, heiress to Aurora and betrothed to Karston of Gonlan. A dynastic marriage had been planned while they were still children, and she had never, until now, had cause to question it. And who, after all, she thought with Rim-worlder’s arrogance,
was
Nav Kynan? A foundling, an adoptive son of a minor star king. Why, he could have come from anywhere! The good Lord and the Star only knew where the Navigators had found him or why they had placed him in the care of old Kreon, a petty under-king of the Rhad.

Still, she thought with a slow-breaking smile that was suddenly warm with youthful enthusiasm, he was very brave, quite handsome. And she
did
so like the way he looked at her with devotion in his eyes. Janessa of Aurora had seen enough of devotion in the eyes of the young warmen of the rim to know when one of them was falling in love with her.

It was going to cause trouble. There was no doubt of it. But let it! There was already trouble enough brewing. A tiny bit more wouldn’t be impossible to bear.

With that, Janessa made her decision. Whatever would be in this coming war between her country and Kynan’s, she
would
have her Navigator if she chose. And choose she did.

Satisfied, she finished dressing and went to seek the young man she had decided to love.

She found him in a bay near the entry valve where they had stabled the horses. He was rubbing the fetlocks of the mare Skua and talking to her in a low voice.

Janessa heard her reply to something Kynan had said with a flick of her gray-maned head. “It was good to fight again,” the animal said in that guttural voice of the Rhad warhorse.

Kynan stood and ran a hand over the old mare’s neck. “You saved me, you old woman.” He laughed softly and added, “And I have stolen you. If we ever return to Gonlan, I must find the money to buy you.”

Skua’s mind was incapable of developing any interest in the fine points of her ownership. She said, “We fight again soon?”

“I hope not,” Kynan said. “Not where we are going.”

“It is good to fight,” the mare muttered, butting him with her head.

“It is better to live in peace,” the Navigator said, more to himself than to the mare, who could never grasp such a concept in any circumstances, bred as she was for battle.

“No,” Skua said. “Fight.”

Kynan laughed and slapped her flank gently. “Monster,” he said.

The mare raised her head at Janessa’s approach and bared her tigerish teeth. Janessa said sharply, “Skua!”

The mare shook her head angrily.

“She’s jealous of me,” Janessa said.

Kynan looked at the girl and replied, “She has reason, lady.”

Skua made a threatening noise in her throat, and Kynan rapped her sharply across the muzzle. The mare walked stiffly away, silent on her padded feet. When she reached the place where Baltus’s animal lay dozing on the deck, she extended her neck and nipped the sleeping mare’s rump. The other scrambled to her feet, outraged.

“They remind me of us,” Kynan said. “Quarreling and nipping, always trying to draw blood and never quite knowing why.”

Janessa looked at the Navigator’s thoughtful face and said, “Of you and me, Kynan? Or Aurora and Gonlan?”

“All of us,” the Navigator said. “The Rim worlds and the Inner Planets. The army and the Empire and the Order--
all.
Will there never be peace among us?”

“There has been peace for a century or more,” Janessa protested.

“Of a sort,” Kynan said.

“There hasn’t been a major war between nations of the Empire since Mariana’s rebellion in the time of the first Torquas.”

Kynan regarded the girl bleakly. “I wouldn’t call what happened on Aurora
peace.
It’s hard to think of what is going to happen because of it as anything but war.”

Janessa looked at Kynan confidently. “But you are going to
prevent
that, Nav Kynan.”

Kynan burst into laughter at the girl’s bland assurance that he, one man, a minor priest of the Order, could personally hold back the forces that were threatening the peace of the Rim. He put his hands gently on her shoulders and held her. “I shall try, my princess. I shall try very hard,” he said.

He would have taken her in his arms and kissed her then, but something began to happen inside his head. He closed his eyes in pain as conflicting images and impulses seemed to lock in combat for control of his will. A shudder swept through him.

“Kynan, what’s wrong?”

Even the animals sensed his sudden ordeal. They whickered nervously and stamped their pads on the deck.

Behind Kynan’s closed eyes, a vast and confused panorama was forming. The Vulk impressions battled with something else, a great, gathering darkness shot through with sudden, unexpected illuminations. Stars and planets whirled in swift, silent motion through an immense void. He seemed to be moving away from the light at terrifying speed. It seemed that time and distance were shrinking, shrinking, until his mind spun in space, deep in the intergalactic night. Around him he could see the luminous spirals of galaxies, like whirlpools of light. And they were
moving,
spinning perceptively, so that the spiral arms pulsed with the life and death of billions upon billions of stars. It was as though the whole of time were being compressed into an instant, so that the
scale
of the universe was being reduced to a fraction of a man’s lifetime.

Then he was plunging back toward the light spiral that he knew, somehow, contained that place he called “home.” He was falling into a cauldron of light, and the luminosity filled all space, all time. The spinning slowed, and gradually his mind conceived of time again as men had always known it, a flow toward entropy so vast, so deliberate, that a human lifetime was only the quintillionth part of a microsecond in that eternity.

He was humbled, moved beyond his power to comprehend, and he thought of the words “Stellar Empire” in their true context, describing a tiny fragment of the subjective human existence against a backdrop of the vast objective reality of the galaxy.