Ceremony

Chapter Forty-Four

I

Years came and went and were lonely. Marika grew older, and was all too conscious of aging. Contrary to her expectations, darkships continued visiting the alien. Few had permission from home.

In the quiet following the horror on the homeworld all voidfaring silth turned outward, away from yesterday. A new era of exploration began. Silth soon probed far beyond limits reached in older times. Marika herself occasionally ventured out, guiding favored Mistresses through the cloud to see the shoals of stars beyond.

She undertook no new explorations. She did not stray far. Starstalker remained unconquered. But she listened to others avidly, and insisted explorers maintain meticulous records.

Many who visited came to learn. She taught, if less than eagerly. These were young silth, of a new generation, less shaped by ancient thinking, more flexible and less afraid.

They wanted to pick her brain for what she had discovered about those-who-dwell, about the dark side, about undertaking extended journies through the void. Many wanted to serve her as bath, for she continued growing stronger as she aged. Those who served with her could expect to grow stronger themselves. Somehow she opened new paths in their minds.

She was alone seldom, yet always lonely, like some legendary hermit of old tales, seated on her mountain, tutoring all who came seeking knowledge. She had no joy of it, but taught all comers, hoping to shape the new generation. They paid for their education by helping to recover, rebuild, and unravel the mysteries of the alien starship.

"We must cease to be narrow," she preached. "Narrowness nearly brought us to destruction. We must know the tradermale mentality as we know our own. We must eschew contempt, for others have skills of their own that are as wonderful and mysterious as our own." Her use of old-fashioned backcountry words like tradermale amused the new silth. Such language was an anachronism. The ice had devoured those who had used it.

Marika had become a bridge to a vanished culture, last of her kind. The far frontiers of civilization, the low-tech zones, were gone forever.

She had peace, but there was no Bagnel, no Grauel, no Barlog with whom to share it. There was no friend to help cushion the future.

She retreated increasingly into ritualistic patterns set by her foresisters. The young silth were baffled by the paradox: Marika proselytized new ways while devoting herself privately to rituals and mysteries already old at the beginning of history. There were whole days she spent open to the All, alone in celebrating traditional mysteries.

Old ways banished the troubles of the spirit haunting her. She now understood the old sisters who had tried to force her into certain shapes when she was young.

There were times, too, when she took the wooden darkship out alone and drifted through the system contemplating the void. She could not believe that, had it not been for the endless winter and the fury of the nomad, she would now be among the oldest of the Degnan Wise. The Marika within did not feel old. Only the flesh did.

She was waiting too. Marking time. She knew the All had not finished with her yet.

II A Mistress named Henahpla, a footloose explorer such as Marika once had hoped to become, brought the word. Aliens in the cloud. Far down the heartstream of the dust and gas, where it was densest, giving birth to new stars.

The cloud was Henahpla's stalking ground. She knew it better than did Marika. Marika closeted herself with the Mistress. "Where?"

Henahpla sorted charts for which she was primarily responsible, indicated a particular star. "Here. One ship, like this one."

Marika knew the star. Hers had been the first voidship to visit it. It had one planet in its life zone. "A resting place. I will post it off limits till we see what they are doing."

"They are looking for something, mistress. They are searching, not exploring."

"How do you know?"

"I am an explorer, mistress. There are ways things are done. If you do not fall into one pattern you fall into another. I know searching. I search before I explore, lest I stumble upon Starstalker."

"Uhm." Marika had a theory about Starstalker's disappearance. Would this encounter confirm it? "I want you to do a reconstruction of that ship. Some of the sisters who were with me when I visited the rogue aliens are still here. We will see ... But I should go see for myself, should I not?"

"Mistress?"

"There are aliens we do not wish to meet again. And there are those who built this ship. The enemies of the others. Did you get any feel for their plans?"

"None. I stayed only long enough to see what was happening. I think I departed undetected."

"I had better eliminate any information pointing toward the homeworld. Just in case. Then we will go see these aliens."

Marika passed the word. Silth began examining mountains of records. No questions were asked-in Marika's realm orders were carried out without them.

When she rejoined Henahpla she found half a dozen darkship crews assembled, eager to share the adventure. Marika could not in good conscience deny them.

They would venture out anyway, under pretext of going somewhere else.

She followed Henahpla into the Up-and-Over, nervous, yet feeling refreshingly alive. Was this the mission for which the All had saved her?

The voidships plunged into a system naked of an alien. There was no evidence that any had visited.

Searchers for sure. How long before they located her derelict? Home, she sent. Let them come to us.

The alien was there waiting when she returned. His ship was almost identical to her derelict. It was approaching the wreck, but had to do so constrained by physical laws that did not inhibit silth. Marika skipped through the Up-and-Over, hastened home.

The alien matched orbit, but did nothing else immediately. The creatures were cautious.

Marika hastened to the communications section of the derelict's control center. That had been in use for years. "Have they tried to communicate?"

"Frequently," an old male replied. "We acknowledged receipt, but put them off pending your return."

"Open channel and proceed. Test your knowledge of their speech."

The ensuing dialogue went more easily than had Bagnel's on the alien world. These creatures used the language of the derelict's crew. They were more polite. Marika suggested several direct questions. The aliens responded directly. "They have my permission to come aboard if they like."

The aliens accepted immediately.

Marika met them as they entered the ship. She felt young again, fired by the old excitement. This was what had lured her to stalk the stars.

The aliens wore suits recalling those the rogue brethren had worn in battle. They removed their helmets and stood looking at the meth looking at them. Marika lifted both paws. An alien female responded by raising her right, stretching thin pink lips over very white teeth. Marika nodded, indicated that they should follow her. She led them to the control center.

Sometimes the aliens seemed amused, sometimes they seemed baffled, by the repairs and modifications the males had made. Marika watched closely, but did not trust her judgment of their reactions. They were too similar to meth in appearance. It was too easy to assume they should think like meth.

In the control center she told the old male, "Ask them if they are of the Community that built this ship."

The senior alien seemed to understand the question. She responded affirmatively. Marika said, "Tell them they may examine the machinery. Watch them closely." She herself activated the alien's final report.

The six outsiders divided, began doing this and that. Marika suggested, "Tell them about the encounter with the Serke so they may see our perspective."

The outsiders paid little attention. They chattered excitedly as they brought up data no meth had been able to access. They seemed pleased by what they found, and not at all distressed by the vessel's fatal encounter with a startled Serke Mistress.

"They call it a piece of living history," the translator told Marika. "A ship lost for several of their generations. I suspect they are not inclined to long-term feuds. After all, the event antedates your own birth."

Marika grunted, not entirely satisfied. The roots of her feud with the Serke antedated her birth. Today six or seven of them survived. And she was the last of the Reugge, more or less.

She had made several efforts to learn what was known of the alien language. She had had little success. Now she determined to try again.

Silth intuition told her good things were about to happen, that she had come at last to the time for which the All had saved her.

A species from another star! A species created by an entirely different evolution, yet star-faring like the meth!

Puplike wonder overcame her.

III They called themselves humans. Their forebears sprang from a far sun they called Sol, more distant than Marika could imagine. None of these humans had seen their dam sun. Their race occupied a hundred colony worlds, in numbers that left Marika agog. She could not imagine creatures by the trillion. At their peak, before the coming of the ice, the meth had numbered only a few hundred million.

Marika was much more comfortable with these aliens than those she had met before. She learned their language well enough to converse with their senior, who called himself Commander Gayola Jackson.

The outsiders could not believe silth did what they did. "It smacks of witchcraft," Jackson insisted. Though the word translated, the two races invested it with widely different emotional value. What was fearful fact to one was almost contemptible fantasy to the other.

Marika envied the aliens their independence. Their star-ship could stay in space indefinitely. Commander Jackson had no intention of departing before exhausting the potential of the contact. She sent a messenger drone to her seniors.

Marika felt comfortable enough with the "woman" to permit the drone's departure.

Four years fled. The living legend began to shun mirrors.

Marika rolled her voidship, sideslipped, surged forward. Her students slid behind and beneath, nearly collided. She was amused. They were learning, but the hard way.

She glanced at the axis platform. Commander Jackson was shaking. The only human ever to dare it, she could not acclimate herself to silth dark-faring. Marika began rolling as she aimed the tip of her flying dagger at the heart of the system. Go home, she sent.

The touch was another thing the humans had difficulty accepting.

So much for enjoying herself. She could stall no longer. It was time to hear the latest bad news.

Marika gathered ghosts and hit the Up-and-Over. Stars twisted. The derelict materialized. Jackson's dread formed a miasma around the darkship. But she would not yield to it. She ventured out as often as Marika would permit. There was a bit of silth in her, Marika thought. The stubborness of silth.

Marika left the alien female in the paws of her bath, entered the derelict. Now, more than ever, the old starship was the heart of dark-faring silthdom. An incredible sixty voidships called the relic home ...

It was a completely unforeseen result of Marika's struggles with the landbound silth of the homeworld. The terrors she had loosed back when had birthed an isolationism with which star-faring silth could not and would not deal. One by one, one darkship after another had broken with its dam Community rather than give up faring the void. Only a very few Mistresses fared homeward anymore.

A dying breed, Marika feared. No more were in training.

Marika entered the situation room, which had been refurbished by Jackson's people. A half dozen of her folk's starships orbited with the derelict now. Each of the room's ends boasted a vast three-dimensional star chart. Each time Marika viewed one she felt a pang of loss. That Bagnel should have missed this!

The meth end of the room was crowded with agitated silth.

"Ruthgar gone," Marika observed. "And Arlghor?"

An elder sister replied, "It is as you suspected, mistress. Someone is sealing the voidpaths." Golden trails emanated from Marika's star and zigzagged toward the meth homeworld. Though Marika's folk had little intercourse with the dam planet, anomalies in that direction had caught their attention and had led them to investigate. Eight of the marked routes boasted stars hidden inside magenta haze. Those stars were the primaries of the worlds where dark-faring silth rested. Darkships sent to investigate those worlds had not returned.

The elder sister asked, "Will you do something now?"

"No." She did not know what to do. Sending more investigators would be like throwing stones down a well.

Everyone assumed Starstalker was responsible. Marika had grimmer suspicions. The old enemy, with no more than seven very ancient silth to operate it, could not have the power to make deathtraps of so many worlds.

"And Arlghor?" she repeated.

"Nothing yet."

She grunted. It was not yet Arlghor's time. Soon, though. Soon. She strode to the far end of the room. Commander Jackson was considering her own portrait of peril.

Hers was a more vast star chart, filled with clouds of light. Individual pinpricks were hard to discern. The magenta there floated in puffs and streamers. "No change?"

"No. No incoming information."

"That disturbs you?"

"We are a minor mission, far from home space, but there should be courier drones. All we hear is what your people bring us. They don't understand us so their reports make little sense."

For three years Marika's protйgйs had been visiting and trading with the human starworlds. Marika did not understand the news they brought either, but it was evident that the human rogues had come out of hiding and there was a great struggle on.

"Ruthgar is gone," Marika said. "Arlghor is next. If it goes I may leave this ship to you."

"Would that be wise? If what you suspect is true ... " Jackson paused. "To hell with regulations. Marika, you've never seen a warship. These ships here are scientific and exploratory craft. Small ships, armed only lightly. I'm not supposed to admit that anything nastier exists, but I don't want you jumping into something blind."

Marika eyed Jackson. Small ships? Lightly armed? That world she had visited had not shown her anything more sinister.

"They'll be ready for you if they're working with your enemies."

True, Marika reflected. The sealing of the homeward starlanes might be meant to draw her into a trap. But just Starstalker? Would the alien rogues think her worth the bother?

Where did she stand? Damn! She had sworn to ignore the homeworld, to let it go to the All. If the Communities allowed yet another rogue resurgence, so be it. She owed the fools nothing more. But if Starstalker had acquired outside allies ... Had she an obligation to defend the race?

This would become more than a power struggle. Humans were enough like meth that they could not ignore a power vacuum. Jackson's people, nominally friendly, were trouble enough.

She and the woman had become friends, but there was little love lost elsewhere. Silth would be silth, especially in the far reaches of the dark, too often upon the human worlds they visited. Admonitions had little effect. They inundated the humans with arrogance and contempt, for the creatures had no silth class. They were little more than brethren technicians, working with their hands.

Marika sometimes wanted to shriek in frustration.

Perhaps it was in their genes. Perhaps she was more a sport than she suspected.