The Rosetta Codex (24 page)

The
Night Traveler
hung against the star-filled sky, alive and alight and a real ship at last: a long and silver cylinder that sent out a dozen shining threads and pods as the various crews finished up the last of the work, preparing the ship for its new “maiden” voyage.

Cale watched the ship grow larger as Sidonie piloted the shuttle toward its forward docking station. They were to meet Captain Bol-Terra and Myrok, the navigator. They had not yet told Bol-Terra and Myrok about the codex, the star chart it contained, or their ultimate destination. Only now, with their scheduled departure just eight days away, did Cale and Sidonie feel they could risk the secret accidentally or
purposefully being revealed to someone else; now, they had no choice.

“No one following us?” Cale asked.

“Not that I can tell,” Sidonie replied, studying the readouts and data feeds. “Normal station traffic, no one in the vicinity other than the authorized work crews, no one headed in this direction. All clear for now.”

“For now,” Cale repeated.

“For now will do,” Sidonie told him with a smile.

 

They met on the bridge, the main view screens displaying a dense splash of stars across the blue-black sky. Bol-Terra and Myrok expected a routine meeting: a review of the manifests and travel itineraries and supply logistics, discussion of details and any last-minute changes. Cale looked at the two men. They wouldn't have imagined the kind of last-minute changes they were about to receive.

Captain Bol-Terra, stocky and bearded, wore faded blue coveralls that vaguely resembled an outdated uniform: frayed gold stripes cut at an angle across his upper arms, a tarnished metal star dangled from one cuff, and the Alexandros Family crest had been sewn to his breast pocket. Myrok was probably the same height as Bol-Terra, but so thin and gaunt he looked taller, and wore similar coveralls but without the stripes or star.

They all pulled themselves into chairs around a circular table and strapped in, each with their own data terminals embedded in the beveled surface before them. Bol-Terra's eyelids lowered to give an appearance of boredom, while Myrok looked at Cale and Sidonie with no expression at all.

“This trip is going to be more than just a mundane trade run,” Cale told them. When neither Bol-Terra nor Myrok showed any reaction, he went on. “In fact, after the first leg to Winter's Eye, we're going to have a change of destination.” There was still no reaction, and Cale said, “You don't seem surprised.”

Bol-Terra shrugged, picking at his ear, but remained silent. Myrok nodded and said, “We never did think it was what you told us. Well, at first, maybe, but not for long.”

“Why not?” Sidonie asked.

“Nothing obvious,” Myrok replied. He grimaced slightly. “I don't know . . . a little too well-planned, maybe. Never second guessing the cargo, never any substitutes, never any changes. Just too damn quiet and tidy.”

Bol-Terra nodded, still picking at his ear. He rubbed his fingers on his trousers. “That's about right.”

“Why didn't you say anything?” Cale asked. “Ask us about it?”

Now it was Myrok's turn to shrug. “We figured you'd tell us when you wanted, when we needed to know. Which I guess is now.”

“Did you ever consider pulling out because we hadn't told you everything?”

“Not really. Our job is to get this ship where you want it to go, and to get it there in one piece. I don't think either of us cares
where
that is. And I don't know about Oswell, but I figured it would be a lot more interesting than a conventional trade run.”

Bol-Terra leaned back in his seat. “True for me, too.”

Cale breathed in and looked at both of them. “I don't think you'll be disappointed.”

He took the codex out of his bag, set the volume on the table, and held it in place with one hand. Sidonie fingered her terminal and dimmed the bridge lights. Cale opened the codex to the back, letting Bol-Terra and Myrok watch the metal pages as they fell from one side to the other. Once past the last of the pages, he unlatched and unfolded the shimmering metal panels, then activated them.

The glowing matrices manifested in the air before them and the stars came to life in gold and silver above the table in their dense and complex pattern. As before, on Conrad's World, in the village where Lammia and her family and friends had been slaughtered, one star near the center pulsed green and bright. Cale pointed.

“
That's
where we're going,” he said.

 

Myrok had taken the codex into the next cabin to attempt synchronizing the chart with the ship's navigational systems in the hope of identifying the star. He'd been in there for more than four hours, and still there was no luck. Captain Bol-Terra had gone to meet another loading crew checking in, leaving Cale and Sidonie alone in the bridge to wait.

Now Bol-Terra returned and sat at the table, strapping into the seat and glancing toward the cabin door. “Nothing from Myrok?”

“Not yet.”

Bol-Terra nodded. “I have a few more questions.”

“Go ahead,” Cale replied.

“What about all the cargo?” He picked at his ear again, over and over, a habit that had become irritating to Cale.
“It's real freight, and there's a lot of it. I oversaw some of the loading myself.”

“We'll be making the first leg,” Cale told him. “We don't want people here to think it's anything but a normal freight run.”

The captain reflected on that, then asked, “Are you coming with us?”

“Yes,” Sidonie answered. “We both are.”

“Will you tell me why we're going to this as yet unidentified star?”

Cale shook his head. “Not yet. Not until we get there.”

Bol-Terra's mouth moved briefly down and up in a kind of facial shrug, then moved into the suggestion of a smile. “Will there be extra pay?”

“Yes. For everyone. Will the crew be okay with the changes?”

The captain nodded. “We're a small crew, and a
good
crew. We've worked together for years. Treat them right, pay them fairly, and they'll do everything you ask.” He tipped his head forward, half closing his eyes. “And they'll keep it to themselves.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Sidonie said.

“What happens if Myrok can't ID the star?” Bol-Terra asked.

“Don't know,” Cale replied. “I'll take it somewhere that has greater resources.”

“Like Lagrima's Academy of Astronomy?”

“Yes, someplace like that.”

“Which would be the end of any secrecy. Word would get out, not just about that ‘star chart,' but about the book as well.”

“You know what it is?” Cale asked.

“I can guess,” Bol-Terra replied. “I've heard the stories. Never believed them before.” He tugged at his ear. “I guess I do now.”

Myrok came in then, face flushed with relief and excitement.

“Got it,” he said.

 

Before they returned to Lagrima, Cale and Sidonie took the codex with them to one of the loaded cargo holds. Just inside one of the inspection hatches, a series of cubicles had been built into the bulkhead for the storage of smaller delicate or valuable items. All of the cubicles in this hold were empty. Cale placed the codex into one of them, programmed and locked it with a code he and Sidonie had agreed on earlier, and activated the gel-foam that would surround and protect it.

He turned to Sidonie. “Something happens to either one of us, the other will go on, bring the codex through the gate. No turning back. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” she replied.

Cale felt suddenly exhausted. His eyes wanted to close, his whole body wanted to shut down.

“Sometimes it's hard to believe it's finally happening,” he said. “All these years . . .”

Sidonie nodded. “Somehow it feels more unreal to me now than it did two or three years ago, or even ten years ago. Yet we're only a few days away from heading out.”

“You've stuck with me all this time. Even when you didn't like or agree with what I was doing.”

“That's how it is with us, Cale. That's how it always will be.”

They regarded one another silently, then started back to the shuttle.

 

Cale found his mother at the Family cemetery, which until today he had not even known existed. Wearing a loose and flowing robe of pale green decorated with sprays of golden leaves, she knelt before a polished black stone marker. Stripes of shade and evening sun lay across her, bronzing her skin.

The cemetery was situated in a small grove of low, scraggy trees, a carpet of thick mosses dotted with black or white or gray stone markers of various shapes and sizes, some newer, but many worn and aged. The only sounds within the grove were the dry rustle of leaves and the gurgle of water tumbling over rocks from somewhere nearby.

Cale approached his mother, then stopped and stood a few feet behind her and to one side. He could read his father's name on the marker before her—Faulkner Alexandros—but he couldn't make out the smaller inscription and dates.

“It's just a cenotaph,” she said. “His body was never recovered.” She took a single, long-stemmed violet flower from within the folds of her robe and laid it before the marker. She bowed her head and closed her eyes, perhaps in silent prayer.

The stripes of sun narrowed while those of shadow widened, the sun now touching only the top of her hair. Cale watched his mother and wondered if he would see her again, and wondered whether it mattered to either of them.
But as soon as he asked that of himself, he realized that it
did
matter to him, even if it held no meaning for her.

She raised her head, glanced briefly at him, then gestured toward another black stone marker to her left. “That one is yours,” she said. “It, too, is a cenotaph . . . for the same reason.”

“You know me, then.”

His mother slowly shook her head from side to side. “I only know the dead.” Then, not looking at him, she added, “You're leaving.”

“Yes,” he replied. “I don't know when I'll be back.”

“No one ever knows . . . and too many never come back at all.”

“I'll be back if I can,” he told her.

She smiled faintly. “At least you said ‘if.' None of the others ever did.”

She rose to her feet, took a few steps toward the left and forward, then knelt before Cale's cenotaph. She laid another violet flower gently before the polished black stone with Cale's name carved across its face.

“Goodbye, Mother,” he said.

When he was certain she would not respond, he turned away and left her there with her memories and her grief.

 

Cale and Sidonie rose into the shadow of Lagrima's night, slowly spiraling upward in the space elevator toward the docking station. They carried even less than they had brought with them when they had first arrived nearly five years ago. Cale shouldered the rucksack he'd kept since his days on the other side of the Divide, and Sidonie held only a
small satchel. A few personal items. Everything else had been loaded aboard the
Night Traveler
days or weeks ago. The crew, too, had been aboard for days, along with Cicero, Aliazar, and Harlock.

Below them, the lights of Lagrima glistened within an uncomfortable silence, the gold and crimson falcon near the outer edge slowly diminishing. The hovering and flying multicolored lights above the city looked like bits of shining color unattached to anything substantial, blown about by chaotic breezes.

Home?

It was still a question for Cale. He had never felt at home anywhere, and didn't really know what that felt like. He turned and looked down once more at the receding lights, at the city and world that fell slowly and steadily away from them. They continued their ascent in silence, each alone with their thoughts as they headed toward a place and a time unknown, toward a future that still hid from them all its infinite and unknowable self.

The
Night Traveler
[jumped] . . .

. . . and remerged into the universe.

 

Adrift, the stars innumerable, the night sky thick with them, like blackcloth sprinkled with the dust of gemstones.

Cale lay back in an observation lounge seat, the steelglass dome's metal canopy fully retracted to reveal the deep skies of space. He sensed movement, like gentle rocking on the water, though he knew he was stable and motionless. He recalled that night nearly twenty years past (or was it even longer?) when he'd been pulled out of the freezing lake and lay shivering on the floor of the boat, looking up at a clear
night sky. So many stars, he'd thought at the time, but it was nothing like this.

He could lose himself in this vast and empty expanse, and he thought it might not be so bad to remain lost.

A slight vibration alerted him, and the floor hatch opened. Myrok pulled himself up and into the lounge, sealed the hatch, then settled into the control seat as Cale sat up. Myrok nodded in greeting.

“We've got what we hoped for,” he said. “Hold on.” He manipulated the seat controls and the lounge began to slowly rotate around the circumference of the ship.

Cale fought the vertigo that washed over him as the stars trailed silver arcs overhead; he clutched the seat arms and closed his eyes until the lounge smoothly came to rest.

“Sorry,” Myrok said. “I forget not everybody's used to this.”

Cale opened his eyes when he felt relatively steady. “I'm all right.”

Two sets of glowing crosshairs appeared on the clear glass dome, one green and one red. They moved in tandem, just centimeters apart.

“Yours is the green,” Myrok said. The crosshairs came to a stop low on the dome's horizon. Centered in the green crosshairs was a large bright star that stood out against the others. “We've confirmed it,” Myrok added. “That's the star in the codex chart.”

“How far?”

“It would take us more than a year under conventional propulsion to reach the inner orbits where the gate should be.” He made a huffing sound. “This is what happens when you're the first to go somewhere.” He shrugged. “We're going
to make a tertiary [jump] which will bring us a lot closer. There's something which actually makes it easier for us, though. All the incoming data indicates that there isn't a single planet orbiting.”

“Not one?” Cale asked.

“Not one. Nothing of significant mass. Maybe we'll find what amounts to a giant hunk of rock or ice, but nothing big enough to cause us any trouble when we remerge. We should be able to get in close enough to start searching for the gate right away.”

“Any chance we could remerge with the gate and destroy it?”

Myrok grinned. “Sure, there's a chance. But there's probably a better chance you'll spontaneously combust in the next five minutes.” He got up from the seat. “You should head back to your cabin. Coordinates are set, and the launch sequence is on to make the [jump] in six hours.”

 

Cale remained in the observation lounge for a time, however, losing himself again in the stars. So far from Lagrima, from Conrad's World, from everything in his life. In some other time as well as some other place.

They had made the first leg of their registered itinerary, transuding to Winter's Eye and docking at the orbiting transit station. There they'd sold and offloaded the cargo slated for sale to that world, but instead of arranging for the purchase of replacement cargo, they'd sold off the rest of what they still carried—intended for other worlds and better prices—trimming the ship substantially. Three weeks later, with no signs of a Sarakheen or other ship trailing
them, they'd left the system and made the [jump] which had brought them here.

This last [jump] would bring them near the gate. Until now, he'd tried not to think of the possibility that the gate no longer existed, or never had. Or that they had not accurately read the codex's holographic chart and the gate was located at some other star that they would never find. He shook his head at himself—it was far too late for doubts or second thoughts.

He got up from the seat, opened the floor hatch, and lowered himself through it.

 

The ship [jumped] again . . .

. . . and once more remerged into real space.

 

The sun blazed before them as the star's image filled the wall screen in the bridge. A bright silvery light tinged with . . . red . . . orange . . . Cale sensed movement from Myrok's hand and the image shrank, the sun pulled away from them until it was no more than a fourth of its original size, letting the surrounding night and stars appear on the screen.

“Not much to see, really,” Myrok said. “A sun. Nothing unusual about it, nothing new for us. We're just a lot closer now.”

“And the gate?” Cale asked.

“We're searching for it. Nothing yet. It doesn't help that we don't know what we're looking for. If the Jaaprana wanted us to find it, you'd think they would have been more
specific about just what it was.” He snorted. “
Gate.
What the hell's that supposed to mean?”

“I don't think they were interested in making it easy for us. Or for anyone else.”

“Maybe so. I'd settle in for a while, if I were you. We might find it in a day or two, or it might take us weeks, even months.”

“Or we might never find it,” Cale admitted.

“I'll just pretend you didn't say that,” Myrok replied.

 

Cale dreamt of Harlock and Cicero. Harlock had leathery wings tipped with feathers, one of the wings broken and dragging in the sand, and Cicero swayed and chanted out visions to his enraptured companion as they crouched before a burning shack. Cale felt disembodied, as if he were only observing from nearby but not actually present in any real way. He knew somehow that Cicero was having visions and relating them to Harlock through the chants, but Cale couldn't make out any of the words.

A bell chimed and Cale looked around, searching for the source of the sound, but the area around them was a wasteland, flat and empty and uninhabited except for the three of them—or the
two
of them, since he wasn't really there. The bell chimed again. Neither Harlock nor Cicero responded.

Then Cale realized that he was dreaming, that the chiming came from outside his dream, and that he needed to waken. But Cicero's chanting held him, and now Harlock turned to him, acknowledging his presence. Harlock's expression told Cale to stay, that Cicero had messages for him,
messages from some other place and time that were meant for him and him alone.

The bell chimed again, and Cale sensed an insistence to it. He forced himself to pull away from Harlock and Cicero and dragged himself up and out of sleep, struggling until at last he was able to open his eyes to the darkness of his cabin and the chiming of his door.

Weariness weighed him down, but he managed to get out of the cot and stagger to the door, pressing the square panel that opened it.

Myrok stood in the pale blue corridor light that marked night on the ship. “Found the gate,” he said.