The January Dancer (13 page)

“Although it may matter what Jumdar thinks.”

The Fudir spread his hands. “Legally, you are Planetary Manager. Jumdar was confused by the chaos she stumbled on, but she’s had a chance to sort things out by now. If you press a demand for January’s ‘Dancer,’ she may hand it over, even if it’s just to buy you off. The law is on your side, remember. We’ll have to wait and see.”

“That’s your plan? Wait and see? Somehow, I imagined something more…devious.”

“We can try devious; but I’d rather not make plans before I know the situation. ‘A plan is blackmail levied on fools by the unforeseen.’ It’s a barn door for absent horses. It’s always based on what you know, and what you know is always out-of-date. The situation on New Eireann when we get there may be very different from when you left. If Jumdar’s discovered the Stone’s power, that’s one thing. But if not…” He reached out and turned the viewer around. “What’ve you been reading?
Bannister’s Treasury of Prehuman Legends.
Forget it. Bannister’s not reliable. He doesn’t take the stories seriously.”

“I found it in the ship’s library. If we’re going wild goose chasing, I want to know what the goose looks like.” He pointed to a fanciful drawing of a dun-colored crystalline creature brandishing a macelike scepter in its claw.

“The scepter actually looks like a brick,” the Fudir said, “so I don’t suppose the prehumans looked like faceted gems.”

O’Carroll turned the viewer back. “Ah. You mean, legend not true?”

The Fudir nodded to the screen. “Bannister doesn’t have the story of the Twister.”

“I know. So far, have only your word legend even exist, let alone that it true.”

The Fudir spread his hands. “Thus raising the subtle matter of trust.”

O’Carroll logged off the viewer and put it away. “Not really. It doesn’t matter if I trust you or not. Either way, I’ll be back on New Eireann. Look, Fudir, I’m grateful you helped out in the alley back then, but you are living a childhood fantasy. Those legends tell us nothing of prehumans, only what we made up
after
we started finding artifacts. The stories don’t even fit together. No wonder Bannister doesn’t take them literally.”

“That wasn’t my complaint. I said he didn’t take them
seriously
. Think about this: Twenty years
after
Bannister collected those stories, rangers on Bangtop-Burgenland discovered the Grim Chrysalis in a chamber in the Southern Troll Mountains. And a generation later, recreational divers found the Finespun in Lake Mylapore on New Chennai. Half a dozen artifacts described in Bannister’s collection were discovered
after
publication. Explain that.”

O’Carroll smiled coldly. “Old sage say: ‘What man expect, man see.’ ‘Kalim,’ those artifacts were found by people who’d read Bannister, so they saw what Bannister prepared them to see. You’re on a fool’s errand. And so am I. The difference is: I know it.”

Kalim was on deck when they finally lost the push from the magbeams, and Malone, back in the power room, engaged the alfvens.

“Very well,” said Captain January, when Kalim had taken dopplers of the beacons in the cooper belt and the intelligence had verified
New Angeles
’s vector and position. “We shall go on watch-and-watch. Remember, it’s a ballet out there and the dance is chaos. Bill, go fetch us some sandwiches and drinks. Kalim, go grab some shut-eye. You’ll take the second watch with Maggie.”

Kalim left the deck with Tirasi. “Remember, it’s a ballet out there,” the acting astrogator muttered as they climbed down the spiral staircase to the wardroom. “Every bleeding time he says the same bleeding thing!” Of course, it
was
a ballet, and all of the bodies, including the cooper beacons, were in constant motion and ultimately influenced by every other body in the universe—and the equations really were unsolvable. But Kalim did not point that out. It was the iteration that irritated Tirasi, not the fact. “Sleep tight, ye bleeding heathen,” he told Kalim in the wardroom. “You’re up in four—and don’t you bollix my instruments.” With that, he grabbed a basket of sandwiches that Ringbao had prepared, two cups of coffee, and climbed back up to the control deck.

Four hours later, Kalim relieved Tirasi and, shortly after, Maggie B. relieved January. The captain glanced pointedly at the chronometer, but said nothing. Maggie handed Kalim a cup of coffee and settled herself into the command chair, sipping a second. “Get me a position,” she said when the first watch had gone. “Let’s see how far off true Old Two-face let us drift.”

Kalim did not react to the gibe. From what he had seen so far, January was a rather competent shiphandler. He checked the log to find what benchmarks Tirasi had shot—Larsen’s Star and the Giblets—and set up the parallax cameras to take fresh images for comparison. He ran the diagnostics, judged the results acceptable, and downloaded them to the stereograph so the intelligence could calculate the parallax, and from that their direction relative to the fixed sky.

Maggie queried the intelligence, which recommended a slight course correction. “Not too badly off,” she admitted, entering the correction in the astrogator’s log. “Maybe because Annie isn’t here to distract him.”

Kalim sensed alien ground involving the captain and the two women in the crew. He and Ringbao were aboard for the free—and anonymous—passage to New Eireann, not to take sides in the crew’s internal squabbles.

“Adds up, y’know,” Maggie told him, perhaps responding to his silence. “The divergence. The least bit off’n true at this point and we’d miss the entrance. Or worse, we’d go in at too dang sharp an angle. It’s gotta be normal to the cross section. Better to miss and come back ’round than to skid going in, an’…” She came to a halting stop, then fiddled unnecessarily with the log. A furrow formed on her brow, a deep fold between her eyes, as if someone had struck her with a chisel.

“I understand completely, ma’am,” Kalim said.

“Do you,” Maggie B. said curtly. She shook off the study into which she had fallen. “Get me a Doppler shift on the Eye of Allah—and let’s check our speed.”

During the last day before entering Electric Avenue, the watch was continuous and the crew took catnaps when they dozed at all. January was always on the deck, although he deferred to Maggie B. for the astrogation. She, for her part, switched from screen to screen on the computer as fast as Kalim and Tirasi could feed her the data. The stellar spectra had blue-shifted as the speed of the ship approached the speed of the medium whereby they measured it. The stars in the forward viewscreen crowded together and actually seemed to recede the faster the ship moved. Visible light slid off the scale, and the sensors shifted to infrared. Ringbao, with no specific duties, ran food and drink to the deck and to the power room, where Hogan and Malone tended the alfvens.

An hour before entry, Slugger O’Toole appeared, fully rested and sober, and took his place in the pilot’s saddle. “How’s the fookin’ groove?” he asked of no one in particular. “Ringbao, d’ye have any more o’ that tay?”

Maggie B. told him that the trajectory was within five degrees of normal to the entrance. O’Toole nodded and placed an induction cap on his head. Ringbao handed him the cup and he took a long swig of the hot liquid. “I’ll see yez when I see yez,” he announced, then inserted his earphones and pulled down a pair of black goggles. Ringbao, who had always traveled as a passenger before and had never seen an entrance actually being made, stood in the rear and watched everything with fascination.

Tirasi took a final set of parallax views of the weirdly distorted sky. The intelligence computed the ship’s bearings and Maggie ordered a final course correction. Her hand hovered over the red slap-button, ready to snatch the last string in the fabric of space and yank the ship over the threshold should the intelligence fail to act.

The chronometer clicked, Ringbao glanced up at the sound, and—he missed the transition. When he looked again at the forward screen he saw nothing but a blur of xanthic light. January called out, “Status?”

“In the groove,” said Maggie.

“Alfvens spinning sweet,” reported Hogan from the power room.

O’Toole, cocooned in his headgear and in rapport with the ship, said, “Minor skidding. Nothing I can’t handle.”

And as slick as that, they were sliding down the Grand Trunk Road.

Now, Shree Einstein once said that nothing in the universe could move faster than light; but like many gods, he spoke in oracles. On one hand, nothing could be
seen
to travel faster than light; for such an object was moving faster than the medium by which it was seen, and an ancient superstition holds that “out of sight is out of mind.”

On the other hand, if the universe is composed of all those parts that can be perceived, a superluminal ship is no longer
in
the universe. Instead, it voyages in those blank regions of the map in which men once wrote “Here there be dragons.”

So just as a world includes parts unseen as well as seen, the universe is more manifold than subluminal instruments reveal. Yet, the limits still apply. In the superluminal creases, the ship did
not
move faster than light,
relative to local space.
It was space itself that was moving. After all, space is not itself a material body, and so not subject to the limits placed on matter. Not even Shree Einstein could tell Shree Ricci to hold still.

January hosted a dinner in the wardroom to celebrate their entry onto the Grand Trunk Road. “Here’s to a successful slide!” he announced, holding aloft a glass of Gladiola Black Saffron, otherwise known as Old Thunderhead, because it delivered maximum impact at minimum cost.

“An’ the end o’ th’ fookin’ crawl,” O’Toole seconded him.

Tirasi twirled the stem of his wineglass between thumb and forefinger. “How smart is it to leave the bleeding control deck unwatched?” he asked. By the roll of the eyes around the table, Ringbao judged this was not the first time he had raised such an objection. He wondered if anyone on this crew ever said anything that the others had not heard unnumbered times before.

O’Toole favored the Queensworlder with one eye. “We’re in the fookin’ groove, boyo. Dead nuts center in the tube. Won’t need a tweak for another tin watches, by th’ drift.”

Tirasi sighed elaborately. “We have to trust your judgment then…”

O’Toole reddened. “My judgment
and
the intelligence’s!” Too late, he saw the trap. The words were flown!

All innocence, Tirasi turned to January and said, “As long as an
intelligence
concurs.”

January snapped, “Enough of that!” And Tirasi sat back, puzzled and hurt; for in spite of many years in which he might have learned better, he had thought the captain smiling at the joke.

Neither Ringbao nor Kalim had joined in the laughter at Tirasi’s trick. Little Hugh thought there was too much malice in it, and he preferred to save malice for when it was genuinely needed. The Fudir, for his part, preferred no distractions from his quest, and becoming embroiled in these petty squabbles was no part of his plan. But Tirasi had heard the two newcomers’ silence, and since he could not chide his own captain, turned to the deckhand. Kalim was sitting between Tirasi and Ringbao, so Tirasi had to lean past him to address Ringbao.

“You disapprove, Ring-o?”

“So sorry,” the deckhand answered. “Queensworld humor so subtle.”

Tirasi made a fist. “Do you know why they call me ‘Fighting Bill’?”

Little Hugh studied the fist, looked in the acting astrogator’s eye. “Because you cannot control temper?”

O’Toole burst into laughter. Hogan and Malone traded smirks. Captain January smacked the table. “I said, Enough!”

“Do you want a piece of me, mate?”

Little Hugh shook his head. “Too many pieces remain when done. Not able to choose.”

Both O’Toole and Malone went blank, but Maggie B. understood right off. So did Tirasi himself, who clenched his teeth and glared at Ringbao. But he hesitated. Perhaps he saw something in the deckhand’s face. Perhaps he saw the Ghost of Ardow, for there is a gulf between those who brawl and those who kill, and the Ghost waited on the far side of it. Tirasi backed off, glancing at Kalim, who had been calmly eating his stew the while. “Aren’t you going to help your mate?” he asked with belligerency false in his voice.

The Fudir blinked and looked up as if in surprise. “Why? Does he need help?” There were little knots of anger at the corners of his jaw, and a certain unexpected hardness had crept into his voice. The others at the table fell quiet.

And January, in particular, regarded his two new hands more thoughtfully.

Later, the Fudir visited Little Hugh in his cabin, and shutting the door on them both, he grabbed the younger man by the front of his coverall. “Don’t ever do that again!” he said in a whisper more terrible than a shout. “Don’t ever let them see anything more than a simple deckhand!”

O’Carroll pried the Terran’s fingers loose. “I didn’t like the way Tirasi was picking a fight with Slugger.”

“You didn’t like it?” The Fudir shook his head. “
You
didn’t like it? Did anyone ask that you should? The only one who had to like it was O’Toole, and in case you didn’t notice,
he did
! He and Tirasi have gone round on round since the cows came home. It’s a ritual with them. Malone takes bets, and everyone clucks in disapproval. So you keep your nose out of their business.”

Little Hugh shook his head. “No, there was a meanness to it. You’re making it out less than what it was.”

The Fudir shoved him on the chest. “This from a man ready to throw an entire world back into civil war because he lost his job in a hostile takeover.”

Little Hugh seized the Fudir’s wrist. “Careful, old man, or I’ll break you in two.”

But the Fudir only relaxed and said mildly, “We shouldn’t quarrel with each other.” The words were meek enough, but they sounded oddly like
Do you really think you could?

Now
there
was a new and sudden thought! Little Hugh released the Terran. “You’re not as old as you look,” he said in wonder.