Battle of the Ring (36 page)

Repairs began on the Methryn at a pace that kept even Valthyrra happy. In
spite of her professed dread of refitting, Velmeran soon began to suspect that
she actually liked the attention. She was certainly enchanted with the thought
of acquiring a functional jump generator, allowing her to throw herself vast
distances interdimensionally. Earlier tests of jump ships had not been
successful, the carrier
Valcyr
having leaped out of time and space in
the early days of the Starwolves, never to return. The problem with the system
had finally been solved, and Velmeran confirmed the data before installation
began. He was, after all, the resident expert on interdimensional jumps, having
the ability to do it himself without the aid of machines.

After the first week Velmeran began to think that all the surprises were
over. He was sitting alone in his cabin one evening, ship’s time,
reviewing data on a new weapon he was trying to design to crack quartzite
shielding. The door announced a visitor, for what seemed like the fiftieth time
that day.

“Come in!” he called without looking up, and the door slid open.

“I am sorry to disturb you, but I have come very far,” a voice
that was a rich, warm purr stated in Tresdyland, accented in a way that he had
never heard. Velmeran glanced up.

The Aldessan were the true parent race of the Kelvessan, but there had been
little contact between the two since. In Union space they were dismissed as
creatures of legend, and Velmeran was naturally surprised to have a legend pay
him a call in his own cabin. She was large, dwarfing him in comparison. A long,
snakelike body was supported by a spider’s cluster of appendages, four
triple-jointed legs in back with four arms in front, each one longer than he
was tall. She was furred in a plush brown velvet, a shaggy mane running from
the top of her head to the tip of a thick tail two meters in length. A
meter-long neck supported a fox’s head with a long, tapered snout, vast
cat-slit eyes, and tracking ears. Three pairs of breasts lining her belly
identified her sex, although there was a curious delicacy to this oddly
graceful lady.

She was also a Venn warrior-scholar, as he could tell by the body harness
that was her only clothing. The harness supported two long swords and a clutch
of throwing knives. As large and powerful as she was, she could not match a
Kelvessa for strength and speed. Even so, she would be more than a match for
twice as many Kalfethki.

“No, please come in,” Velmeran insisted, hurrying to greet his
guest. She towered over him on her long spider’s legs, so tall that she
risked bumping her head on the ceiling.

“I am Venn Keflyn,” she said simply. “I am very pleased to
meet you, but in truth I must admit that I was sent.”

“To me?”

“To instruct you,” she explained. “Word has reached us of
mutant Kelvessan, and of the things that Velmeran can do. But after reading the
report of your last battle, I think that you should instruct me.”

“No, I need all the help I can get,” Velmeran insisted.
“We have been bumbling along as best we can. If it is all the same to
you, I would just as well start over again with someone who knows what is going
on.”

Keflyn nodded. “In truth, with all matters concerning the psychic
arts, we must all be our own teachers. We learn by example, and an example is
only a model, a pattern that is not complete until you learn how to adapt it to
your own use. I profess to be a teacher of such things, which is to say that I
am experienced at setting good examples. But even I do not have your powers,
some we had not even believed could be possible. You have caused quite a stir
in the hallowed halls of the Venn Academy.”

“I am sorry... “

“No need to be concerned,” she assured him. “It is, I
assure you, a most delighted agitation. Such things I may not know, but I still
hope to be of some service to you. As we say, those who cannot lead may at
least stand behind and push in the right direction.”

Velmeran was soon given to wonder if Aldessan were naturally given to
understatement, or if Keflyn was simply too cautious to promise results. She
knew exactly what was needed. He soon discovered that philosophy, not science
or metaphysics, was the foundation for the study of the psychic arts. She never
tried to explain how such powers worked. She was more interested in exploring
the question of why.

“Many have talent but lack the self-awareness to make use of
it,” she explained once as they sat on a ledge overlooking the removal of
damaged plates from the Methryn’s battered nose. “Some stumble
through life only half awake, not aware enough of either themselves or life
around them to make use of what they possess. We are all limited by our
beliefs, and that applies to more things than just the exercise of any gifts we
might possess. Indeed, it might be that belief is the only limitation that is
placed upon us.”

And so they spoke together, sometimes exchanging only a few words, sometimes
conversing for hours on end. Sometimes they volleyed questions back and forth
in gentle exchange. Sometimes they speculated together on the same question.
She never gave him some repetitive psychic exercise to do or drilled him in use
of his talents. But from time to time curiosity would lead him to try something
new, or he would try something he had already done with greater ease and
accuracy than ever before.

“I assume, then, that our talents do not strengthen and grow with
use,” Velmeran said. He was becoming used to Keflyn’s company. With
her meter-long neck, it was not unlike talking tol Valthyrra.

Keflyn curled the end of her tail forward and sat back, balancing a portion
of her weight on its thicker, stronger upper half. “It seems that the
only thing that strengthens and grows is our skill with the tool that is the
individual talent, while the tool itself remains always the same. A psychic talent
is not like a muscle that develops with use. Say, rather, that your talents are
the eyes and ears – and in some cases the hands – of your
soul.”

“And is there such a thing?”

“Oh, of course,” Keflyn insisted. “Anyone trained in his
talents can feel the souls of those about him. Indeed, a person of your talent
can manipulate a lesser spirit, although for obvious reasons we consider that
the worst offense that anyone can commit by the use of talent. We may even
transfer the essence of a person out of a broken body into a cloned replica.
Even the body I wear is not the one I was born in.”

Velmeran looked at her in open amazement. “You?”

She smiled gently. “I am Venn. Like you, I fight whenever there is
need. It happened that when I was still very young, some four centuries ago, I
was not as cautious as I should have been, and not as lucky as I would have
liked.”

Another time, weeks later, they were standing in the vast cavern created by
the removal of one of the Methryn’s four main drives. The repairs were
proceeding in three steps. First the damaged portions and the old engines were
removed, then the new field generators and jump generator were installed during
the general refitting and overhaul, and finally the new engines would be
installed and new hull plates set into place.

“Did the Aldessan make us?” Velmeran asked quickly, the question
that Kelvessan had pondered for hundreds of years. It took a certain amount of
courage for him to ask that, and even so it was not the question that he wanted
most to ask. The only question that he might not have the courage to ask,
because he was so afraid of what the answer might be.

Keflyn regarded him closely but without expression. “What do you
think?”

“I believe that you must have,” he replied. “But...”

“But why?” she asked when he faltered, asking the question for
him. “Again I ask, what do you think?”

“I know only the obvious answer to that. Because the Terran Republic
asked and the Aldessan agreed. Perhaps we were only an experiment, from your
point of view.”

“But you also know better than that,” she said, sitting back on
her tail. “We did not make you for their use. This has only been your
childhood, your time of maturing. Soon you will leave them to seek your own
worlds and lives. We made you because we wanted you, as one might seek a friend
in one’s loneliness. We made you because you are the thing in most ways
like ourselves. Perhaps you are even what we wish ourselves to be.”

“And that is the reason?” Velmeran asked.

She smiled. “Were you expecting some great oratory to express some
inescapable argument of logic and practicality? I have none. Your lives are
your own, to live as you will.”

“And the humans?”

“They have problems that you cannot solve for them,” the Aldessa
insisted. “They have found the best solution for their genetic
deterioration, but even that cannot save them forever. We have seen too many
races come and go for us to have much hope. There is a chance, but if they do
survive they will be the first of half a hundred such cases we have observed.
But that is not your problem. You cannot keep them alive, and you should not
try to take their place when they are gone. Rid them of the Union before it
begins the process of turning them into genetic machines, and that is all you
can hope to do for them.”

“These are the general specifications for the jump drive,” the
young Kelvessa explained as he began handing over microdisks, sheets, and
booklets. “This is the helm manual, what your helm and navigator need to
know to set up jumps manually. And these are the specifications, detailed
enough for you to repair the generator or even – fortune forbid –
build a new one.”

“Can you read that?” Consherra asked Lenna as they looked over
the helm manual. Lenna was now very conversant in the Kelvessan language,
although she still had some trouble reading technical material.

“Big words,” Lenna answered, a vague reply at best.

Commander Laroose entered the bridge at that moment, and Velmeran left
Consherra and her assistant to work out matters themselves. Laroose was
watching Lenna closely, still unsure of what to make of her after all this
time.

“I see that you are using your new hand,” Laroose remarked.

“I am trying to remember to,” Velmeran amended, demonstrating
the hand that he had grown. “It works now, even if it is a bit small yet.
At this point it will only continue to get larger for another week or
so.”

“That is amazing. And speaking of getting bigger...”

Consherra afforded him a tolerant stare. She remained on the ship now, where
no one noticed – or pretended not to notice – that she could no
longer button the lower half of her tunic over a round belly. With only days to
go, she would not get any larger. Nor was she nearly as large as humans got,
since Kelvessan young were born half the size of their two-armed counterparts,
nor even as large as a Feldenneh, whose cubs always traveled in pairs.

“At least I can now be sure of having this over with before we leave
airdock in four weeks,” she said. “Obviously, nature does not take
into account that we have ships to run.”

“I can appreciate that,” Laroose agreed. “The joke around
the station is that all pregnant Kelvessan must be from the Methryn. It’s
a purely inside joke to ask who the father is.”

Velmeran looked uncomfortable, although it was hardly his fault that over a
third of the Methryn’s female population was pregnant. Baressa had
brought forth a son only days before, and those few who knew conveniently
forgot that Baress was not the real father. But Valthyrra made no attempt to
hide her amusement.

“What became of your long-legged friend?” Laroose asked.
“It occurs to me that I haven’t seen the Valtrytian in quite some
time.”

“Keflyn left about seven weeks ago to collect some things she needed,
although she should be back any day now,” Velmeran explained. “She
has decided to stay with us. She says that she has more to teach than she could
even begin in only six months. And we can use another teacher.”

“Can she handle life with the Starwolves?”

“She says that she can handle the accelerations as well as Lenna can,
and the cold bothers her even less. She certainly has more fur.”

“On the other hand, she wears no clothes.” He shrugged.
“It’s your business. It just seems to me that she’s changing
you into something I can no longer understand. The truth be known, I probably
understand you better than I used to think I did. And you Starwolves are
something of a different breed from the Kelvessan we have around here.”

“Perhaps it is because we do not live in close contact with other
races, and are freer to be ourselves,” Velmeran suggested. “One
race cannot live completely immersed within the society of another without
becoming like it in some ways.”

“And you’ll be taking our Kelvessan away to their new home
before very much longer,” Laroose added wistfully. “And mine will
be a sadder world when you do.”

Venn Keflyn returned in five days. She came bearing gifts, although she
quietly hauled her crated toys to a small storage hold assigned to her without
the slightest hint of their contents. She also brought the promise that others
would come soon to teach the psychic arts on other ships and the Kelvessan on
Alkayja.

Velmeran was very happy to have her back, although his present happiness was
in fact the result of several factors. The ship was nearly back in one piece;
all the new drives were in place, and his own device for cracking quartzite
shielding had been successfully tested. Lenna was very happy and very much her
old self. And Consherra could have her child at any moment now. Velmeran could
find no practical explanation for why that fairly common event should be of any
special concern to him, especially when Consherra herself did not appear at all
concerned. The fact remained, however, that he could barely contain his
excitement.