For Love and Glory

XII

Lissa spent the day before departure with her parents.

They were at the original family home, on Windholm itself. A stronghold as much as a dwelling, Ernhurst offered few of the comforts, none of the sensualities in mansions and apartments everywhere else. Yet Davy and Maren had refrained from enlarging it, and often returned there. It held so many memories.

From the top of a lookout tower Lissa saw immensely far. Southward the downs rolled summer-golden to the sea, which was a line of gleaming argent on that horizon. Wind sent long ripples through the herbage; cloud shadows swept mightily over heights and hollows. It boomed and bit, did the wind, but odors of growth, soil, water, sunlight brought life to its sharpness. Northward the land climbed toward hills darkling with forest. Other than the estate, its gardens and beast park, the sole traces of man lay to the west, toylike at their remove, a power station, a synthesis plant, and the village clustered around them.

“Oh, it’s good to be here again,” she sighed.

“Then why are you so seldom?” her father asked quietly.

She looked away from him. “You know why. Too much to do, too little time.”

His laugh sounded wistful. “Too little patience, you mean. You’re trying to experience the whole universe. Relax. It won’t go away.”

“I’ve heard that aplenty from you, when Mother hasn’t been after me to settle down, get married, present you with another batch of grandchildren. You relax, you two. That won’t go away. My next cycle, or the next after that, I’ll be ready to start experimenting with domesticity.” Assuming I find the right man, she thought—as how often before? One I could really partner with. None so far. In all these years, none. Unless maybe now—

“If you live till then.” She sensed how he must force the words out. “We were content to let you enjoy your first time around in freedom, like most people. But your enthusiasms are never just intellectual or artistic or athletic, and your idea of a truly grand time is still to hare off and hazard your life on some weird planet.… I’m sorry, my dear. I don’t want to nag you again, on this day of all days.” Her right hand rested on the parapet. He laid his left over it. “We’re afraid, though, Maren and I. How I rue the hour I asked you to go meet that Susaian. Ever since, you’ve charged breakneck forward.”

She bit her lip. “You could have taken me off the project. You can still.”

Aquiline against the sky, his head shook. “And have you hate me? No, I’m too weak.”

“What? You?” She stared.

He turned to smile at her. “Where you are concerned, I am. Always have been, for whatever reason.”

“Dad—” She clung to his hand.

He grew grave. “I do need to talk with you, seriously and privately. This seems to be my chance.”

She released herself, stepped back a meter, and confronted him. He had now put the well-worn importunities aside, she knew. Doubtless he had only used them as a way into what he really had to utter. Her heart knocked. “Clearance granted,” she said, and realized that today this was no longer one of their shared jokes.

“You’re bound into an unforeseeable but certainly dangerous situation—”

“No, no, no!” she protested automatically. “Must I explain for the, it feels like the fiftieth time? The environment’s safe. Orichalc saw no extraordinary precautions being taken.”

“But Orichalc did learn that an extraordinary event will occur there in the near future. Who knows what it will involve? If nothing else, the Susaians won’t be overjoyed when outsiders break in on their ultra-secret undertaking. Their resentment might… express itself forcibly.”

“Oh, Dad, that’s ridiculous. They’re civilized.”

“There are Susaians and Susaians,” he declared, “just as there are humans and humans. The rulers of the Great Confederacy are not the amiable, helpful sorts who lead most of their nations. It isn’t general knowledge, because we don’t want to compromise our sources, but some of our intelligence about them makes me wonder what we may have to face, a century or two from now.”

She didn’t care to pursue that. The immediate argument was what mattered. “Anyhow, we’ll be in clear space. If anything looks threatening, we’ll hyperjump off in a second. No, a millisecond. Dagmar computes and reacts faster than any organic brain.”

“Understood. Otherwise I’d never have authorized the venture. But you in turn understand—don’t you?—you can’t depend on the ship to handle everything, especially make the basic decisions. If she could do that to our satisfaction, she wouldn’t need a master, nor even a scientific team aboard. Lissa, the more I’ve considered your choice of personnel, the more I’ve discovered about them, the less happy I’ve become.”

She clenched her fists. “Orichalc? He’s got to come along. Guide, advisor, and, well, hostage for his own truthfulness. Yes, we know very little about him, but that’s hardly his fault.”

“Orichalc worries me the least,” Davy replied. “Why did you co-opt Esker Harolsson?”

“Huh? You know. He’s an able physicist, specializing in astronomical problems. Bachelor, no particular attachments, easily persuaded to join an expedition whose purpose he won’t learn till we’re in space. If anybody should be loyal to us, that’s Esker.” You made him what he is, Dad, recognized the talent in a ragged patronless kid, sponsored him, funded him through school, got him his position at the Institute.

Davy frowned. “Yes, I assumed as much myself, till it occurred to me to order an inquiry. I’d lost touch with him. Well, it turns out he’s not popular—”

“Abrasive, yes. I’ve generally gotten along with him. Consulted him about stuff relating to various explorations, you remember.”

Davy’s lips, quirked a bit. “You don’t feel his arrogance, as his inferiors do.” Earnestly: “Also, I suspect that— Never mind. The fact is, he is… no gentleman. Less than perfectly honest, in spite of that raspy tongue. And I daresay an impoverished childhood like his would leave many people somewhat embittered, but most wouldn’t make it an excuse for chronic ill behavior.”

“As long as he can do the job—”

Lissa broke off, went back to the parapet, gazed over the vast billows of land. After a moment she said, “I think I know where part of his trouble stems from. He’s a scientist born. Nature meant him to make brilliant discoveries. But there aren’t any to make anymore, not in fundamental physics. Nothing new for—centuries, isn’t it? The most he can do is study a star or a nebula or whatever that’s acting in some not quite standard way. Then he puts the data through his computer, and it explains everything in conventional terms, slightly unusual parameters and that’s all. When I hinted we might be on the trail of something truly strange—you should have seen his face.”

“Scientific idealism, or personal ambition?” Once more, Davy sighed. “No matter. Too late now in any event. I’m simply warning you. Be careful. Keep on the watch for… instability. If he proves out, fine, then I’ve misjudged him; no harm done.”

Lissa turned to face him again. “Have you anything against the rest of the team?”

“Noel, Elif, Tessa? Well, you told me he nominated them to you, but otherwise— No, they appear sound enough, except that they lack deep space experience.”

“Dagmar and Captain Valen supply that.”

She saw the change in him. It was as if the wind reached in under her coat. “All right, what is it, Dad? Speak out.”

“Gerward Valen,” he said bleakly. “Seemed to me, too, as good a choice as any, better than most. But why did he abandon his career, drift away, finally bury himself among us? That’s what it’s amounted to. If he’s certificated for robotic ship command, he was near the top of his profession. Here, the best he might ever get was a captaincy on some scow of an interplanetary freighter—until you approached him. What happened, those many years ago?”

Lissa stood braced against the stones. Their hardness gave strength. “None of our business,” she replied. “A tragedy he doesn’t want to talk about, probably not think about. My guess—a few words that slipped loose a couple of times, when we were sitting over drinks—he does drink pretty fast—I think he lost his wife. If they’d been married a long time, maybe since his first cycle, her death would hit hard, wouldn’t it?”

“Not that hard, that permanently, if his spirit was healthy,” Davy said. “Why has he postponed his next rejuvenation so long? Another two or three decades at most, and it will be too late, you know. I wondered, and got background information on him. He’s making no provision for it, financial or otherwise. How much does he want to live?” He raised a palm. “Yes, of course I had no legal or ethical right to pry. To destruction with that. My daughter’s life will be in his hands.”

“Not really.”

“By now he’s integrated with the ship. Her skipper. His orders will override anyone else’s.”

Defense: “Yes, down underneath, he is a sad man. I think this voyage, this fresh beginning may rouse him out of that. But mainly—Dad, I haven’t survived so far by entrusting myself to incompetents. Look at Gerward—at Valen’s record, just in this system. The Woodstead Castle wreck, the Alanport riot. Both times he earned a commendation. No, whatever his emotions are, they don’t cloud his judgment or dull his sense of duty.” Lissa felt the blood in her face. She turned into the cooling wind. It tossed her hair.

“I took that for granted, given the facts,” Davy pursued. “But were they sufficient? Finally I sent an agent to Brusa, Valen’s home planet.”

She gasped. “You did? Why, the—the cost—”

“It was your life.”

She flared. ‘‘‘And you didn’t see fit to tell me.”

“I did not,” he replied. “You’d object. Even if you promised to keep silent, I feared you’d let something escape to him.”

We know each other too well, Dad and I, she thought.

“Well,” Davy continued, “the spoor was cold, and it led off Brusa, and the upshot is that I only got the report yesterday. I think you’d better hear what it said.”

Her neck had stiffened till it was painful to nod. “Go ahead.”

He regarded her with a pain of his own behind his eyes before he asked low, “Do you remember the Naia disaster?”

The foreboding in her grew colder. “Yes, of course I’ve read about it. But it was long ago and far away. Who on Asborg has given it any thought for decades? I’ve almost forgotten.”

Remorselessly: “Let me refresh your memory, then. Human-colonized planet. A large asteroid was perturbed into a collision orbit. It happened suddenly and unpredictably. A recently settled planet, the system not yet properly charted, no adequate skywatch yet established. The asteroid passed near a gas giant with many moons. Chaotic events occur sometimes in celestial mechanics, as well as on smaller scales. Factors are so precariously balanced that an immeasurably small force can make them go one way rather than another. This asteroid was flung almost straight at Naia.

“Almost. It plowed through the atmosphere. That would have been catastrophe enough, the shock wave, a continent ignited, but friction slowed it into capture. An eccentric, decaying orbit, bringing it back again and again. At each approach, more broke off, huge chunks crashing down on unforeseeable spots. They touched off quakes and volcanoes. The tsunamis from ocean strikes were nearly as bad. A war passing over the planet would have done less harm than that asteroid did, before the last fragment of it came to rest.

“Meanwhile, naturally, as many people as possible were evacuated. Temporary shelters were established on the Naian moon, to hold the refugees till they could be transported outsystem. Spacecraft shuttled between planet and moon. An appeal went out, and ships arrived from far and wide to help. Yes, some of them were nonhuman.

“Your friend Valen was among the newcomers. He commanded a robotic vessel chartered by the Cooperative Stellar Survey. Her owners put her at the disposal of the rescue effort. For a short while, Valen was a busy ferryman.

“Then the asteroid returned. The next bombardment began. He got in his ship and fled. Raced out of the gravity well, sprang through hyperspace, slunk home to Brusa.

“He could offer no excuse. The owners fired him. His wife left him. He went on the bum, drifting about, living hand to mouth off odd, unsavory jobs, now and then wangling a berth in a ship that’d take him to some different system. Finally, when he reached Sunniva, he pulled himself together and got steady employment. But his promotions—I’ve verified this for myself—they haven’t been due to any particular ambition on his part. He’s merely moved up the seniority ladder.

“That is your captain, Lissa,” Davy finished.

She stood a long while mute. The wind skirled, the cloud shadows hunted each other across the downs.

“I’m afraid it’s too late in this case, also,” she said finally, dully.

“No, we can replace him. Chand or Sara aren’t really totally unsuitable. Or I can look outside our House.”

She shook her head. “Any replacement would take too long. Ship-captain integration. Orichalc keeps reminding us that the climax will come soon. Any day now, perhaps. If we showed up afterward, could we discover what the Susaians did? Besides, it’s a cosmic-scale thing. The environment later may be lethal.”

She attempted a grin. “Anyhow,” she said, “aren’t you glad we’ve got a cautious man in charge?”

Schooled in public impassivity, he still could not entirely hide from her what he felt. It was well-nigh more than she could bear.

“Come on,” she proposed, “let’s go down and say silly things at Mother, the way we used to, till lunch.”