The Starkahn of Rhada (12 page)

To know that you had arrived at the end of a long journey--a journey from which there could be no return--was one thing. But to know that this same journey had thrust you a hundred thousand lifetimes forward in time, isolated you utterly--that was a blow beyond human bearing.

But, I realized suddenly, she wasn’t human--not completely. Somewhere in the intergalactic abyss, the germ plasm of her ancestors had been changed into--what?
Homo Magellansis
.

“The communes,” she said in a hushed voice. “What of the communes of Magellan?”

“We know nothing of any such communes, Marissa,” I said gently. “Most of our people have never heard even of Transportation. The practice ended five hundred years after it began.”

I could see her struggling with the confusing time values involved now. She said, “My great grandparents were First Arrivers. They took the Long Death in 6350.”

For a moment I didn’t understand what she meant, and then I translated her archaic dating system into my own and the shock deepened. “Six thousand Anno Domini--we don’t use that form any longer, Marissa--but six thousand A.D. was the first year of the Galactic Era. This is 8760 G.E.”

The girl closed her eyes and touched her throat in a softly human gesture. Her early anger was lost now, drowned in a sea of terrible enlightenment. “
So long?
” she murmured.

“Longer, even, than that,” Erit said. “For between the First Empire and our own came the Interregnum, the Dark Time, and no one, not even my people, know how long that black age lasted.”

Her sorrow and loneliness struck me. It was like a wave of cobalt sadness. I don’t know how else to express it. It had
color
and a grieving
feel
to it. I realize I express it badly, but it is because for a human being there are no words to describe sadness. Every man and woman alive in the galaxy can suffer grief, but who can transmit it to another? Words simply won’t do. Yet the girl projected her emotion to me, and I felt it almost as she did. Much more than eyes the color of silver separated us in kind. Yet her mutation made it possible--no,
imperative
--that I share what she was feeling.

And though I cannot take credit for realizing it then, the experience later gave me some insight into how it was possible for a whole people, all the children of those who had “died the Long Death,” to live in communes with
one
heart and mind, with
one
aspiration. Here and now it was sadness, grief, a young girl’s loneliness. But
there
and
then
it was revenge and hatred for the uncaring society that had rejected them. That was the function of the Magellanic Mutation: to share and project one’s emotions. In such a society there could be no conflict of purpose. And such a society could, and
did
, build not one but
three
of the great black starships. Marissa described her worlds.

“They are--were? How can I know?--bleak lands, but rich in metals and minerals. My home was on the Fifth Commune, the fourth planet of a double star. We lived together, always together, all of us. We were one. We were a
family
, a family of millions. We hated the people of the main galaxy, but we loved one another--” And as she said it and felt it,
I
felt it, too: that sense of belonging, of community. It was a strange and terrible experience, though there was more to come later. But even then I felt the strangeness of a deep love for my fellow beings and a rabid hatred of those “outside,” the callous and materialistic billions of the main galaxy who had cast “us” out.

As we rested in the control pod of Ariane, orbiting my home world, I had that strange feeling that I was living two lives--my own and Marissa’s. I had shared my mind before, with the Vulk. But this was a different experience. It was emotion I shared and, in a way, therefore, greater understanding than I had ever shared before with another being.

Yet I retained my own identity and my own critical faculty. And it was this that bared the obvious, tragic flaw in the world of communes she described to us in such glowing, grieving words.

They had been cast out of the main galaxy for dissent. The powers called it criminality, but, truthfully, it was a matter of definition. And perhaps the galactic universal Spirit, whatever one recognizes as God, or Prime Mover, or what-have-you, intervened. As their fathers and mothers took the Long Death, their genes were changed and the Magellanic Mutation was born. I’m a soldier and an historian, not a mystic. But who can say what is chance and what is teleology? Dissent caused their expulsion. The mutation made dissent unbearable. Whatever they
felt
, they projected to one another, and so a mass consciousness was born. In our race’s dimmest history, there have been political systems that attempted to
force
communism or community on men. They all failed because man in the main galaxy was never anything but man: vital, quarrelsome, avaricious, predatory (ask the Vulk about that!), and
individualistic
. The people of the Cloud,
Homo Magellansis
, could not live that way. The mutation made it impossible.

“Life in the communes was always hard,” Marissa said, and I felt her terrible longing to see the double sun and share herself with her fellows, “but we were together. We worked together, ate and made love together, learned together--”

“And hated together,” I said. Her silver eyes flashed for a moment, and I felt her anger, too. Even Erit shivered. “Yes, that, too. We needed that to build the
Deaths
.”

“Your starship,” I said cautiously.

She nodded. “It was the greatest honor to be chosen a Watcher. To go with one of the
Deaths
. “

My mouth felt dry as I asked her, “How many were built, Marissa?”

“Mine was the third. You know nothing of the first two?”

“Nothing. We found you in Delphinus. The ship--the
Death
--had been damaged slightly. Perhaps that was why the machines never woke you.”

She sagged. “Then the others crashed. Or never reached the main galaxy.”

“No such great starships were ever discovered in the galaxy before,” I said. “Not until we found yours.”

“So it was all for nothing,” she said bitterly. “Each generation slaved to build a
Death
that the next generation might launch. But even in my time, the desire for revenge was weakening. The work on
Death Four
was far, far behind schedule when I entered the capsule.”

It was strange and terrible to hear her speak of things that happened so far, far off in space and time as though they had taken place yesterday and nearby.

And I gave thought to the cosmic irony, the tragedy really, of an entire civilization dedicated to building nothing for themselves but the mightiest engines of destruction the mind could conceive--for revenge on a world that barely outlasted their First Arrivers, had they but known it. It was a fit subject for cosmic, universal, and bitter, bitter laughter.

The silver eyes searched for mine and held them, and I felt a gentle pity for what I saw there. “The Genies,” she said, “the Raschilids. All of that. Dust for a hundred centuries?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“While I slept in the capsule--”

“Yes,” I said again, not knowing how to comfort such sadness.

“And my people never returned.”

“Never.”

“Perhaps,” Erit said quietly, “they lost the need for vengeance. Perhaps they turned inward, into the Cloud. There is a whole galaxy out there to know, to live in. A billion stars. Perhaps they did that.”

The girl began to weep silently. Her tears were tinged with the same silvery color as her eyes. They were like drops of molten starlight on her cheeks. I thought she was the most beautiful thing, and the saddest, that I have ever known. I touched her cheek more gently, more tenderly, than I have ever touched a human being of my own kind.

“This is enlightening, I’m sure.” Ariane’s voice came into the control pod tinged with some impatience. “But the business at hand is that ship.”

The Magellanic girl jerked with sudden fright. Her eyes went wide. “Who spoke?”

“Ariane,” I said. “The ship.”

“The
ship?
” Marissa looked about the bridge in utter confusion.

“Ariane Cyb-ADSPS 339,” I said, not realizing how my matter-of-fact statement might startle one knowing nothing of starship cyborgs.

“Your vessel is
alive?
” Marissa’s expression showed clearly she thought such a thing impossible, almost unthinkable.

“Surely you know of cyborgs,” I said. “There were humanoid cyborgs--?” I almost said “in your time” but curbed myself.

She looked about her at the curving bulkheads of the pod. Erit permitted herself a weary smile.

“A living starship,” the girl said almost to herself, filled with a sense of wonder.

“For our work it is the only possible arrangement,” I said. “We spend months--sometimes years--alone in deep space. One needs--a companion.
You
should understand that.”

“A robot?” Her fright had passed swiftly, and her scientific curiosity was aroused. I thought that marvelous.

“
Not
a robot,” Ariane said crisply. “A cyborg. Quite a different thing. A cyborg
and
a citizen.”

“It is a time of wonders,” the Magellanic girl said in her archaically accented lingua spacia.

“It is a time of great danger,” Erit said. “And the danger is from your vessel.”

“
Where
is my ship?” the girl asked suddenly. “What has been done with the
Death
?”

“Nothing has been done with it,” I said, with sinking heart. “And we hoped that you would know where it is and how it can be stopped. That is why we took you from the warlocks on Gonlanburg. That, too, is why the Navigators want you. Is it possible you don’t know what the
Death’s
mission was?”

The girl’s face darkened. “The mission was to kill.”

“That, I know. I saw what your weapons did to the Delphinus sun.”

“The
Death
is functioning?”

“Too well. It attacked Sigma Libra. There was a Fleet outpost on an outermost Sigma planet. It is vapor now.” Now it was her turn to feel my emotions, and they were laced with anger, bitterness, and frustration. I had been so certain that the girl would be the key to unlock the mystery of the murderous starship, and now I was unsure.

It evidently puzzled her and took a moment for her to understand we meant nothing occult when we used the word “warlock.” I explained. “Scientists. Since the Interregnum we have been speaking of them so. They were sometimes burned for researching. Gonlanburg is a province of my nation, Rhada. It was from the university there we took you. They were going to turn you over to the clergy.”

“Are you still savages, then?”

“Somewhat,” I said drily. “Most particularly when there is a doomsday machine loose in the galaxy.”

Marissa turned to Erit. “You are--a Vulk?”

“I am,” Erit said.

“You are different. Yet you’ve been allowed to live? Among men?”

“We have had troubles. But that was long ago. We live without fear now.”

Damn
, I thought. Was the girl actually testing human tolerance? Here and now? But what better time, I considered. A human being, a Vulk, and a cyborg--working and living as one. And now, hopefully--desperately--a Magellanic?

“The teachings of a lifetime are not easily put aside,” the girl said. “And I am a Watcher. My indoctrination was very firm.”

“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “But your enemies are dead. And your ship is killing
my
people. It must be stopped.”

The girl regarded me curiously. “Are you perhaps a cyborg, too?”

She was looking at the blunt ends of the stoppered gill implanted in my chest.

“No,” I said impatiently. “It is an implant. I was on a water world, and the implant allows me to breathe water--that is all. It will come out when I have time to have it removed.”

Marissa shook her head wonderingly and said, “ ‘O brave new world that has such people in’t!’ ”

Lord Star, Ruler of the Universe!
I thought
. We stand on the brink of annihilation and the girl quotes Dawn Age poets to me
. But it was a remarkable and wonderful thing to do, really. I was certain I had never met anyone with such equanimity and courage. Yes, she was brave. Maybe one became that way by sharing himself or herself with his or her fellow beings. It was something to think about--even here and now.

“Lady Tran Wyeth--” I began formally, but she interrupted me with the first real smile I had seen from her: a lovely sight, too. “There were no Imperial titles and townsman’s speech where I came from. There is no need for them here. My name is Marissa.”

“Marissa, then.” I began again and told her all that I thought she might not know of what had happened since Ariane and I discovered her and her grimly named vessel in Delphinus. When I had done, I said, “There is nothing in the Grand Fleet that can stand against your ship if it is programmed to fight--”

“It is,” she interrupted quietly. “The function of a Watcher was only to start the battle computers after the intergalactic flight. And to see that all else is in order.”

“And then?”

Her eyes lightened momentarily with that communal fervor. “Why then, the Watcher dies. We have a Cause.”

“You
had
a Cause,” I said heavily. “What you have now is a duty.”

“A duty? To what? I did not ask to be brought here.”

“You have a duty to the people who will die if you do not stop your vessel--people who have done you and yours no harm. These are a generation thousands of years unborn when you left the Cloud.”

She lowered her head and rested in silence, once more alone, a creature far out of her time and place.

Presently she said, “Have you star charts?”

“Ariane,” I said. Instantly, the pod darkened, and Ariane projected a holograph of Delphinian space before us. Once again, the Magellanic girl stared in surprise.

“It is the Dolphin,” she said in a hushed tone, looking at the constellation in miniature.

“A projection from the region of the constellation of Sagittarius--where Earth is located,” I said. “Do you want to see it from another angle?”