The Navigator of Rhada (16 page)

There is no such thing as absolute defeat or victory. There are only degrees of success or failure.

Glamiss of Vyka,
early Second Stellar Empire period

Against the powers of a sometime hostile Empire and always dangerous universe, the Order of Navigators historically applied the techniques of manipulation in depth. No plan instigated by the thinkers of Algol lacked alternate avenues to success.

Nav (Bishop) Julianus Mullerium,
Anticlericalism in the Age of the Star Kings,
middle Second Stellar Empire period

The Technician appeared in the chapel of the starship as the remainder of the Five were completing their devotions. He was impatient and scarcely had the grace to wait until the position was sung. But when, at last, the cowled Navigators stood and made the sign of the Star in benediction, he stepped forward and said angrily, “I cannot make him respond. The Vulk’s meddling has broken his conditioning”

The Preacher shrugged and bowed his head. “Then it is the will of God.”

“Nothing of the sort,” the Tactician said harshly. “What went wrong?”

“Even with the resonance of the locator in the girl, I still couldn’t make him respond. But it isn’t the
equipment’s
fault. No one warned me a Vulk would be altering the parameters.”

“This doesn’t hold out much hope for
afterward,”
the Logician murmured.

“What happens afterward is only of importance if we can make the change, brother,” the Psychologist said. “We
must
bring them together.”

“My thanks for stating the obvious,” the Tactician said sarcastically.

“Peace,” the Preacher said. “Peace, brothers. This will accomplish nothing.”

The Psychologist drew back his cowl, baring a gray, tonsured head and cold, brightly intelligent eyes. “I simply meant that if the boy refuses to go to Nyor, then Nyor must come to him.”

“Can it be done?” the Logician asked.

The Psychologist looked at the Tactician. “It is relatively a military matter.
Can
it be done?”

“Yes, I think so. We can draw priests from sanctuaries in Jersey and Connecticut. There is a starship available.”

“But the Imperial troops?”

The Tactician gave a harsh laugh. “It is always some saint’s day. Anthony, Roosevelt, Crispian--someone. And what Vyks will interfere with a religious procession?”

“Very risky,” the Technician said.

“Since your machines have failed us, I don’t see, brother, that we have a choice,” the Tactician said.

“And what about Aurora?” the Preacher asked. “I mean what about it
now,
or
tomorrow?
The Gonlani-Rhad are space-borne. Are we to let them attack Star Field and the Auroran sanctuary while we wait for Torquas?”

The Tactician addressed the Technician. “Can you get a message through to the sanctuary--and to Nyor?”

“The omens are good,” the Technician replied unctuously.

“Spare me the religious mumbo jumbo, brother. Does your infernal machinery work that well? Can we count on it?”

The Preacher murmured a silent prayer for God to forgive the Tactician’s worldliness.

“It
has
been working--as you put it--
that
well,” the Technician said, offended.

The Psychologist, listening to the acrimony in his colleagues’ voices, thought:
This is what comes of elitism. This is what one becomes when one has hyperspatial radio and nuclear power while the masses live in “safe” ignorance. The mighty become petty and spend their time in quarrels that accomplish nothing. We, the Princes of the Order,--what are we now? A quintet of dyspeptic old men, snapping at one another. Do we deserve for the plan to succeed? Should the Order have the power its success will give us?

“We have been receiving reports from Nyor for the last three hours. Veg Tran embarked the Vegan division last night. He is coming on with the Vyks now. The first elements of the Vegans will reach Aurora in ten hours or less,” the Technician said.

“Star Field or the sanctuary?” the Tactician asked.

“Our informant couldn’t discover the first objective,” the Technician said.

“It will be the sanctuary,” the Logician said. “There’s no other course for Tran to follow. He knows about the nuclear project there.”

“Then the sanctuary must use the meson-screen,” the Tactician said positively.

“It has never been tested,” the Logician cautioned.

“It worked for the ancients. It will work for the Order.”

The Logician raised his eyes to the vaulted overhead of the chapel. “Such faith is rewarding.”

“Is there another option?” the soldierly Tactician demanded.

The others remained silent.

“It might mean the destruction of a starship,” the Preacher said in a low voice.

“It almost certainly will,” the Technician said.

“Sacrilege,” said the Preacher. “May the Star forgive us!”

“The Order comes first,” the Tactician said loudly. “Before all things.”

“Before God?”

“Tran’s soldiers can’t be allowed to take the Auroran sanctuary.”

“No.” The Preacher surrendered sadly.

“Well, then?”

“But the loss of life? The troops on board? Our own Navigators?”

“Damn it!”
the Tactician burst out. “What would you have us do, then?”

None of the Five had an answer.

Presently the Psychologist said. “If Kynan reaches the sanctuary first--? The screen takes hours to generate. What if it is
his
starship it destroys?”

The Tactician’s face was rock-hard, like the face of an idol. “There is risk in every plan.”

The Preacher made the sign of the Star on his breast. There were tears forming in his old eyes. “We are condemning our souls to everlasting fire,” he murmured. “But if that is what our Order demands, then so be it.”

The Tactician looked around him. “Are we agreed?”

The Technician and the Psychologist looked at one another. “Let it be so,” the Psychologist said.

The Five turned, all taken by the same ingrained instinct, to look at the Star altar at the end of the chapel transept. The stellar image looked dull and metallic, inert, simply a piece of metal formed by men. There was no holy spirit here, the Preacher thought sadly.

The Tactician, the soldier, was very much in command now. “Are we all in agreement, then?” he asked again.

The Princes of the Order nodded slowly and murmured, “Amen.”

“Very well,” the Tactician said, turning to the Technician. “Send the messages. At once.”

--hyperspatial radio transmissions from starships in intersystem transit may be dispatched only when the speed of the transmitting vessel is in the 10
¹²
kps to 10
³²
kps range. Interrupter coils of the Mark XVII series now in use on board most Imperial naval vessels will draw only minimal power impulses from the propulsion cores, and thus the velocity of the transmission will be unaffected by the course or speed of the sending ship. Impulse velocity may be approximated by the formula P
²²
(Sv), where P--parsecs and SV=velocity of the sending vessel in kilometers per second. To all intents and purposes, then, hyperspatial radio transmissions may be considered instantaneous within a range of 10
³⁰
parsecs.

Golden Age fragment found at Station One, Astraris.
Believed to be part of a First Empire Imperial naval field manual

The words of the gods streak the sky, burn the night.
They shriek below the stars, and above the wind
The god Galacton falls.
We hear his death wail
Not with our ears but with the fear in our hearts.
Dark gods of night, save us from sin.

Chant from the
Book of Warls,
Interregnal period

High in the stratosphere of a dozen worlds on the helical path between the starship of the Five and the third planet of the star Sol, hyperspatial transmission ionized the widely separated molecules of air.

In the time of the First Empire, these sparkling, instantaneous displays were commonplace. But in this age, they were all but unknown.

On a planet of vast grain fields circling the star Bellatrix, a farmer raised his eyes to the fading light of day in the sky and saw, for an instant only, a streak of diamond light from horizon to horizon. He paused in his work of gathering sheaves and made the sign of the Star on his breast.

On the satellite of a methane giant orbiting Procyon, a fur trapper watching the sky from beside a low-burning fire saw the glittering beam, like a rent in the fabric of heaven. He remembered his father’s father reading to the family from the
Book of Warls
and shivered as though the ghost of a warlock had set foot on his grave-to-be.

A warman on sentry duty on the battlements of a fortress in Tau Bootis saw the gem streak, and a fisherman alone on the Southern Sea of Achemar Three; a war party on the second planet of Deneb Kaitos, and a pair of lovers on the fourth planet of Alpha Draconis.

All across the galaxy, at one particular instant in time, the ionized upper air of a dozen worlds recorded the Five’s message to Earth.

Alone but for his personal guard, Torquas XIII lay in drugged sleep in the Empire Tower in the city of Nyor.

His dreams were murky, confused. He slept uneasily, discontented with himself and his life.

Microseconds after the impulses left the hull of the inconceivably distant starship, they touched the rotating dish of an antenna in the Jersey sanctuary of the Order of Navigators. The hour on Earth, at that longitude, was minutes after the second hour of the morning.

As the watch cried the “All’s well” for the third hour, a black barge bearing the spaceship and star blazon of the Theocracy touched the riverfront piers of Tel-Manhat. Fifteen cowled priests of the Order disembarked and moved, in slow, chanting procession, through the sleeping city. The few Nyori awakened by the processional peered fearfully through drawn shutters at the funereal parade.

At half past the hour, the Navigators had reached the citadel and were filing, three abreast, into the outer corridors and lower levels of the Empire Tower. The warmen on duty, Vyks and a few Rhad, being the most devout soldiers in the Empire--men who had been disturbed by the AbasNav ascendancy and the banishing of priests from the court--welcomed the solemn intruders and knelt, extending their weapons for the Navigators’ blessings.

The Navigator superior of the Jersey sanctuary carried his staff of office: an ebony rod topped by the metallic representation of the holy Star. The symbol went before the cowled and robed procession like a battle standard.

In the Galacton’s antechamber, the Navigators were confronted by the captain of the Palace Guard, the Galacton’s Chamberlain, and a squad of Vykan infantry.

“We will see the Galacton,” the Navigator superior said.

The Chamberlain, an AbasNav party member, objected.

“At this time of the morning it is quite impossible, priest.”

The courtier’s manner was rude. He found himself astonished at the insolence of these prayer mumblers. His astonishment made him careless with his tongue. The Vyk soldiers shifted uneasily. On Vyka, the power of the Order was an article of faith. They resented the Chamberlain’s manner.

“It must be so. We will see him now,” the superior said, with that assurance peculiar to clerics.

“I’ve never heard of such damned cheek,” the courtier sputtered. “Clear off, all of you, at once, or I shall have you thrown into the street.”

“Priests have always had the right of access to the King- Emperor at any time, Chamberlain,” the Vykan captain said uncomfortably. “Since Glamiss’s time it has been so. It is their right.”

“Captain,” the Chamberlain said loftily. “I don’t intend to continue this unseemly squabble in the Galacton’s private rooms. You are relieved. Report to the guardroom at once and have Captain Veg Rollan come to me here.”

The Vykan troopers made undisciplined noises, and the Chamberlain’s temper rose. His face reddened, and he gave the order again.

The Navigator superior interceded. Reversing his staff, he began the chant of excommunication.

The Chamberlain, though an AbasNav, was a recently convinced unbeliever. His red face grew suddenly very pale.

The Vykan captain spoke. “Holy Father, it’s my duty to guard the Galacton.”

The superior stopped the chant and said, “We are priests, my son. We are here for the King-Emperor’s good.”

“I accept your word, holy Father.” The captain caught the shaken Chamberlain by the arm and moved him aside. Chanting the hymn to the Star, the fifteen Navigators filed slowly into the dark sleeping chamber of the Galacton.

At the fourth hour, the Navigators reappeared. With them, now shorn and wearing a rough cassock, his feet bare, walked Torquas.

The priests were silent. The Galacton alone chanted the verses of the Act of Contrition.

His eyes were dark and inward-looking, his movements slow and deliberate. Before leaving the Tower he spoke only to the Chamberlain. His words, as reported by that badly frightened official, were: “I go to meet my father’s Sun.” From this, it was concluded that the King-Emperor, escorted by the Navigators of the Jersey sanctuary, was about to undertake a retreat on one of the Vykan planets, since Vyka was the only object in the galaxy that could be properly described as “his father’s Sun.” The Chamberlain, fearful to the bottom of his AbasNav heart and certain that had General Veg Tran not been off-world at this particular time the Galacton would never have gone with the priests, dispatched a message to Tran disclaiming any responsibility for the strange event. The message went by Imperial courier starship, giving the Chamberlain ample time to convert most of his holdings into cash and portables and depart for his estates in Fomalhaut. He hoped with all his being that General Veg Tran would be too busy for the next few months to come searching for him.