Star Rigger's Way (3 page)

The fusors were dreadfully inefficient in the Flux; but they generated an image of directed movement, and that gave Carlyle the confidence he needed to reassert his control over the ship. Like a crazily inverted river, the Reld came back down toward him as the ship rose; then the river fogged, and sputtered in the jet flare. When he finally shut down the fusors,
Sedora
's keel was again drifting in the hazy stream of the Reld. She was held cockeyed but steady by the tangled remnant of the net.

Carlyle set the stabilizers and withdrew, shaking and twitching, from the net. He sensed the cynthian nearby, jittery and numb and bewildered, but he was far too exhausted to look. His veins flowed with lead, and before his eyelids could open he foundered into unconsciousness.

* * *

Images of the quarm fluttered naggingly, incessantly. A strange communion: cynthian heads bowed in a circle, clusters of riffmar shivering, forgotten. Ears, whiskers twitching. Thoughts fleeing from one's body to join, to intermix like buffeting winds—to share dreams and strange worlds, to animate imaginary bodies. Time slipped quickly, spanning eons, or stretched and staggered, and flowed like clotted milk. There was distaste here, disdain. Sour anger toward . . . toward others in the quarm, personalities that slipped into and out of the self without invitation. Resentment?—that intimacy should come so easily, so unavoidably.

(But wasn't the quarm a relief, a boon to the lonely mind? Wasn't it a natural end to solitude, an inborn gift of being cynthian?

(Why did Cephean so want to be alone?)

* * *

Carlyle felt dizzy and confused, uncertain of his own identity. The cabin walls blurred, resisting focus, as he struggled to recapture consciousness. Recollections filtered into place. He had awakened on the bridge, exhausted—years ago, it seemed—had stumbled to his cabin and bunk. He had slept—how long?—a full shipday. Jesus. There had been memories, dreams—the
quarm
, whatever that was. He had picked up more from Cephean than he had realized.

And flying, earlier—lord, flying as four people, he must have been trying to kill himself. Small wonder he had slept solidly for a day.

Rousing himself, he went to the commons. Hunger soon made him feel awake, and he ate ravenously, a meal of sea-tarns and warmloaf. Scarcely another thought went through his mind until he had finished. Afterwards, he fixed a mug of hermit brew and sat and collected himself, knowing that he ought to be looking for Cephean.

But he was rather comfortable, basking in the ochre morning glow of the commons, and instead of getting up right away, he put his feet up and thought. As he sipped the brew, memory-faces rejoined him. Skan led the conference, shaking his head:
"No flow, Gev. You've got to bring that cat right into the rigging—wring him out, make him work."

"Thanks, Skan. Care to help?"

Skan, smiling broadly: "I have, Gev."

Janofer, flowing and concerned: "Perhaps you should think of using the dreampool, Gev. Or, if you must, go the whole way alone."

The dreampool—assisted intimacy. Not for nothing had he kept it out of his mind. It terrified him, even with another human. "Just like the old days? That's not much help, Jan. That's how you've always spoken to me."

"I've tried, Gev—you know that. But there was always something that wouldn't connect between us."

"How many times did you try? Twice? Three times?"

"Which nearly broke me. It wouldn't work, Gev—it just wouldn't."

"Hm."

"You're coming up on the Flume, Gev. Don't be thinking about us. We'll help when we can, but if you depend on us you'll burn yourself out."

Skan: "The cat—you have to get the cat working with you or you'll never make it."

"He seemed to be trying, last time. But God knows what he was doing. He acts suicidal."

Legroeder, from somewhere, looked up and nodded, but distractedly, as if his real thoughts were elsewhere. Janofer, whispering, drew close and brushed him with a kiss, and then withdrew, her voice a fading note on the air. He was alone again.

He drained his mug and left the commons, thinking to find Cephean and—what? Okay, it was time to act like a commander and start kicking ass.

Right.

But Cephean was not in his quarters. Carlyle stood in the corridor under one of the humming, brushed-bronze stabilizer arches. Fretful, and feeling a little silly, he considered where to look next. Well, what might Cephean have been doing while he slept away the last day? Unsupervised, almost anything.

The bridge was deserted. Likewise the communications coop. He went back down the ramp, worried now, and began a systematic search: dreampool theater and exercise room, then the lower deck and utility storage, lifecontrol, airlock, and conversion room. In the central part of the deck was the prep room leading to the fluxfield chamber. Lots of bad memories there. He checked without entering the chamber; the suits were all in place, and the monitors were steady, indicating that the pile shields had not been breached.

No Cephean.

That left only the cargo holds, accessible from the next lower deck; the primary holds were grouped in a broad oval around the bulk of the flux-chamber. Carlyle actually was not even certain what
Sedora
carried, but it was likely to be costly merchandise. Not that it mattered much, at this point; nevertheless, he hurried below.

The corridor was eerily silent, and he found himself moving stealthily, peering through each sealed cargo port like a thief. He came to number three port and cursed. "Damn you, Cephean!" The port was retracted, and a tattered bit of something lay on the deck: a broken riffmar leaf. Carlyle stepped quietly inside. The hold was gloomy, and crisscrossed with anchoring webs from which were suspended individual pieces of cargo. He recognized the articles almost immediately—Lifecybe organic computer cores, each in a fried-egg-shaped cradle connected by umbilical to a central life-maintenance unit. He was surprised; he had not guessed that the cargo was
that
valuable.

Cephean was on the far side of the hold, hunched over one of the cradles. Carlyle started that way, ducking and threading his way among the anchoring strands. Suddenly he was stopped in midstride by a snap of light, a flash from nowhere which danced in a quick series of circles about the room, then vanished—and for a moment he totally forgot his purpose, his destination. When he shook his head and completed the stride with his left leg, the spell evaporated and he was aware again. But what? Oh—the light was external stimulation for the computer cores. Mesmerizing but, one hoped, not dangerous.

He crossed over to the cynthian. Cephean looked up at him, eyes dark, glinting.

A welter of emotion crawled through his mind: loathing, curiosity, scorn, anger. A mixture of his own feelings and Cephean's. He struggled to sound diplomatic, thinking of the precarious position they were in. "Cephean, what in hell are you doing?" He heard a whisper, and looked down at the two riffmar, who rustled quickly around behind Cephean. (He sensed
disconcertment, frustration.
)

The cynthian's whiskers curled, and he hissed, dipping his head, the words coming out in a sigh. "Caharleel—hyor com-ffusor noss hwork."

Carlyle scowled. "Of course not . . .
now.
They'll work when they're installed in computer tanks. Right now they're just being kept alive for shipment."

"D-heds now," Cephean insisted.

Carlyle froze, eyeing the cynthian. What was that supposed to mean—
dead?
He shoved past Cephean and looked into the nearest cradle. The neural tissue of the core, visible beneath a clear dome, quivered faintly; it was dark and smoky. A glance at the cradle monitor confirmed that the core was indeed dead. He turned slowly, raising his eyes to the cynthian.

Cephean's ears were flattened to the sides, the fur along their edges trembling. His whiskers twitched. "Hi h-make miss-thake," he hissed. His eyes darted about the room, his foreclaws extended and retracted quickly, clicking softly on the deck.

Carlyle's breath escaped in gasps: "You . . . made . . . a mistake?" He caught the cynthian's eye and held it.
"You what?"
He glared, infuriated by Cephean's sullen gaze. "What did you try to
do?
"

Cephean sputtered and pawed his nose. He half snarled an answer, incomprehensible. The riffmar lurched forward, rustling, then retreated. Carlyle was startled, but he demanded an answer. Cephean broke from his gaze and cried, "Hiss whoodens hans-ser h-me!" He hunched mournfully and shook his head. The golden flecks in his eyes gleamed like flames.
Guilt
, Carlyle thought scornfully.

He circled around to check the other Lifecybe units. He found one more ruined and he returned, confounded, to Cephean. "Why are you wrecking my cargo?" he shouted. Even if the cargo didn't matter in the end, what did this creature think he was doing?

Cephean sputtered. "Hi hask ssem."

"The computer cores? Asked them what?"

"H-insfor-m-hationss. H-abouss sshiff," he hissed. "H-how iss ffly."

This was incredible. "What did you want to know? Why didn't you ask me? This is just a mass of nerve tissue—only works when it's part of a system. It's delicate! You can't just—it doesn't even
have
information! And what did you want to know, anyway?"

The cynthian made no reply. Carlyle shook his head in disgust. The two cores were an expensive loss, but more appalling was Cephean's lack of understanding or of good sense—which probably went a long way toward explaining his incompetence in the net. Cephean peered at him. (
Resentment
, he felt.)

"Damn it!" Carlyle said, making his decision. "Time we got some things straight!" Cephean looked startled, the color dimming from his eyes. (
Apprehension
crossed Carlyle's mind. Had the cynthian already guessed?)

"Cephean, I'm not going to like this either—but when it's over, I think we're going to understand each other a little better." He took a deep breath. The riffmar squealed; he glared at them. "Follow me."

Cephean obeyed and followed him out of the hold, ducking his head and hissing.

The dreampool theater was lighted only by a deep-sea gloom. The pool was encircled by a smooth, padded ledge; the water itself radiated the ocean-blue light. The water was still, and its depth visually indeterminable. The water appeared simply to merge with the inner wall, and only the glow could be seen in its depths. Good place to dive and never come up, Carlyle thought, though of course the depth was illusory.

The intensity of the light fluctuated as they moved about, varying inversely with their proximity to the water. "Whass?" Cephean queried, loping around the pool and coming back to eye Carlyle suspiciously. The riffmar fluttered to a halt.

"Dreampool," Carlyle said. "Rigger crews use it to help develop rapport. Intimacy. I didn't want to use it because it was designed, really, for human minds—and frankly it can be pretty damn personal." He swallowed. "Well, we're going to test it between a human and cynthian."

Cephean's flickering eyes seemed to turn inward. The riffmar shuddered sympathetically. "H-no-o, no-o!" he hissed. He glared at Carlyle and drew back defensively, his whiskers pointing forward.

Carlyle exhaled through his teeth. He wasn't asking; he was telling. This was something that had to be done. "Cephean," he said sternly, "if you don't, we will be adrift in this spaceship for the rest of eternity. Now, maybe you wouldn't mind that for yourself, but how do you like the thought of looking at
me
until you die, eh?"

Cephean shivered. Hissed.

"That's what's going to happen, because we're not going to fly this ship again until we've had a session in the dreampool." He held his breath, keeping his anger and his uncertainty in check. How far did he dare assert himself?

The cynthian muttered and, to his surprise, acquiesced. "Hyiss."

Carlyle sighed gratefully, and explained the procedure. Then they sat at the pool's edge, ninety degrees apart from one another—Cephean having to splay his hind legs and sit stiffly upright to fit on the ledge. "Now," Carlyle said, "look straight into the water, and let your mind follow your eyes. Listen to my thoughts and do exactly as I do."

The cynthian hissed an acknowledgment, and Carlyle let his gaze drift down to the center of the pool. He studied the luminous surface. He remained aware of Cephean's attention, and of his own worries; but as he stared into the water his tensions began to subside. His thoughts focused themselves, without guidance, onto the pool with its internal glow. Something began perturbing the water beneath its surface, causing a subtle wavering in the light. Soon it was the variations rather than the light itself which he watched—shimmerings in the cool sapphire-emerald bath. The flickering of an open flame, but without warmth—it was alive, and it reached out and entered his gaze with the energy of an alert, probing mind . . .

* * *

The first thoughts were his own memories, focused both through his own eyes and the eyes of another. Murky. Then deadly clear:

Sedora
's fluxfield chamber's secondary shield curved around him like a queer eggshell, sealing him into the serviceway between the outer shield and the main core baffling. The mutter of voices from the wall intercom barely reached him, and he worked at his chores with some relief at being alone and having his thoughts to himself. Not that he minded his four new crewmates, but he had only been with them for a few weeks, and that was hardly enough time for real relationships to develop. It was good to be off, to be out of the rig, to worry about simple machinery for a while.

That anomalous reading, now, was probably a misalignment in one of the feedback elements, a bit too steep to be compensated for from the bridge. It was easily corrected, except for the awkwardness of just moving around in this damn chamber suit. He stooped and took a flow reading, turned a handscrew, and then backed it off a hair. There was a flow surge for some reason, but it only lasted a moment before the readings leveled off again. He played the screw back and forth very slightly; it wasn't a critical adjustment, but it was always good to have the flux-pile working as smoothly as possible. Finally (did he hear a ringing, an echo of some kind?—hard to tell, probably his own heartbeat pulsing in his ear), he moved over to check the other elements, one by one.