For Love and Glory

XIV

The ship accelerated outward, seeking free space for her leap across light-years. Aft, Sunniva dwindled. Forward and everywhere around, night glittered with stars, the Milky Way was a white torrent of them, nebulae glowed or reared dark across brilliance, sister galaxies beckoned from across gulfs that imagination itself could not bridge.

In her saloon, revelation. The physicists—Esker Harolsson, Elif Mortensson, Noel Jimsson, Tessa Samsdaughter—stared over the table at Orichalc. After a moment their eyes swung toward each other’s, as if for comfort or comradeship. Watching in a corner, Lissa saw lips move silently and caught Esker’s muttered, amazed obscenity.

He, the team chief, recovered his wits first. But then, he had always kept his associates dependent on him. “Have you no clues to what the object may be? he demanded.

Curled on the opposite bench, head uplifted, the Susaian considered before responding. “None that appear significant. We common crew were seldom allowed as much as a look out; viewscreens were kept blank most of the time. I obtained my star sightings, from which I later calculated the location, when I went forth in a work party to retrieve a probe that had failed to dock properly with our ship.”

Esker’s dark, hooknosed features drew into a scowl. “How did you take measurements, anyway?”

“I had fashioned an instrument while home on leave, and smuggled it aboard in my personal kit. On a prior trip, despite the unfamiliar shape of the Galactic Belt, I had recognized certain navigational objects, such as the Magellanic Clouds. When this opportunity came, I withdrew from my gang, telling them I had spied what might be a loose object, missing from the probe. When out of sight, I quickly made my observations and discarded the instrument. The numbers I stored in my mind. I had been confident such a chance would come, because the probes frequently had difficulty with rendezvous.”

“Yah, your Susaian robotics aren’t worth scrap. And we’re supposed to proceed on your memories of your amateur star shooting?”

“We’ve satisfied ourselves that the data are adequate,” Lissa declared.

Esker glanced her way. “Uh, sure. Sorry, milady.” Half ferociously, he turned back to Orichalc. “But did you never see or overhear anything? Did you never think what this might all be about?”

“The Dominance knows well how to keep secrets. Given our species’ ability to sense emotional states, perhaps it has developed a few methods slightly better than you conceptualize.”

A shame, Lissa thought, that the trans just gives out unemphatic Anglay. What’s Orichalc really saying with overtones and body language?

“But you must have speculated,” exclaimed Tessa.

Esker threw her a glower. “I’ll handle this discussion,” he said.

Well, Lissa thought, everybody babbling at once would make for confusion and wasted time. Nevertheless—

She admired how Orichalc remained dignified. Or did he not care whether the bipeds were polite? “Since the location is in interstellar space, the phenomenon is presumably astronomical,” the Susaian said. “The probability of someone having come upon it by accident is nil, considering the volume of space involved.”

Was that a studied insult? Certainly Esker flushed. “Doubtless something was noticed from afar. Most likely this was in the course of a general astrographic survey. The Great Confederacy, like most nations that can afford to, has mounted several during its history. They do not significantly overlap, as huge as the galaxy is. One of these ships detected some anomaly, such as a peculiar spectrum, and went for a closer look. The report that it brought back caused the Dominance to make this a state secret and mount its own intensive investigation.”

Esker tugged his chin. “Well, yes, your reasoning is, uh, reasonable. Have you any further thoughts?”

“Mainly this. Given the character of the Dominance, I am sure that its members hope for some outcome, some discovery, that will greatly strengthen the Confederacy and therefore themselves. It may be military, it may be economic, it may be something else. I do not know, and doubt that they know, yet. But in their minds, the possibility justifies the effort—which is, actually, a modest investment, a small gamble for a perhaps cosmically large stake.”

Esker straightened on his bench, as if he were a judge. “And you’re betraying your people?”

“They are not my people,” Orichalc replied, his natural voice gone soft.

Lissa stirred. “That will do,” she ordered. Things looked like getting nasty. The expedition could ill afford quarrels.

Esker shifted his glare to her. “Milady, I’ve had a hard life,” he said. “I’ve learned lessons a patron like you is spared. A traitor once is apt to be a traitor twice.”

“Our comrade’s motives are honorable,” she clipped. “Watch your language, Remember, it’s going into the log.”

Embarrassment yielded visibly to relief among the subordinates when Esker hunched his shoulders and growled, “As milady wishes. No offense meant.” And maybe, she thought, that’s true. Maybe he does not perceive his own boorishness.

Noel plucked up courage to say, “I beg milady’s pardon, but what’s this about a log?”

“A robotic ship records everything that happens on a voyage, inboard as well as outboard, unless directed not to,” Lissa explained. “It isn’t normally a violation of privacy. We have very little of that anyway, while we travel. As a general rule, at journey’s end, the ship edits everything irrelevant to the mission out of the database. But we can’t foresee what may teach us something that may be valuable in future operations. Psychological stresses are as real as physical, and as dangerous, when you’re bound into places never meant for humans.”

Had Valen been listening outside, or did he chance to enter at that moment? His body filled the doorframe vertically, though its jambs stood well apart from him. “Pardon me,” he said in his usual mannerly style. “I know this has been a big surprise sprung on you four and you have a sunful of questions; but we’re just a couple of hours from hyperjump, and I need to make a certain decision first. Would you come confer with me in my cabin, Orichalc?”

“Indeed.” The Susaian flowed off his bench and stumped to the captain. They departed.

The rest gaped after them. “Well,” said Esker. “Isn’t he the important one? What might this decision be that we commoners mustn’t hear about?”

Why does that irritate me? wondered Lissa. Aloud, curtly: “I daresay he wants to consider possible hazards, without ground-siders butting in. You, sir, might best be preparing yourself and your team for your job, once we’ve arrived.”

And what will mine be? she thought, not for the first time. What’s waiting in space for me? I’m only a planetarist. And even that title is a fake. I don’t do geology, oceanography, atmospherics, chemistry, biology, ethology, or xenology. I dabble in them all, and then dare call myself a scientist.

She rose to her feet. I help get the specialists together, and keep them together, and sometimes keep them alive. That’s my work. That justifies my being here, though I had to force it every centimeter of the way.

Esker got up too and approached her. His squatness barely reached above her chin. As he neared, he made a dismissing gesture at the others. They didn’t leave, but they sat where they were, very silently.

“Maybe I could put a few of our questions to you, Milady Windholm,” he said.

“Certainly,” she replied. After all, it was she who had co-opted him into this, and for justifiable reasons. She knew him for able, quick-witted, fearless. That she sympathized with him, felt sorry, would like to give him a shot at his dreams—these things were beside the point. Weren’t they? “I’ll answer as best I can. This isn’t a military mission.”

He cocked his head. “But we are under confidentiality. There might be some advantage to our House.”

She picked her words with care. “Possibly. Still, you know Windholm isn’t interested in conquering anybody. We simply want to… stay on top of whatever wave we’ll be riding. Keep the power to make our own fate.”

“Of course. But then why are you willing to cede New Halla to that creature?”

“We won’t necessarily. An assembly of the House will judge how much Orichalc’s help was worth to us.” I never felt more proud of what I am than when he agreed to trust our honor, he who can feel our feelings. “We will take good faith for granted and into account. The island would be no great loss to us.”

“But why does it, uh, he want the place?”

“Well, you see, Orichalc is a… a crypto-dissident in his nation. I don’t entirely understand the situation. Maybe no human can. But it seems—we’ve verified—there’s been a movement among the Susaians, starting several centuries ago. The trans calls it the ‘Old Truth.’ A religion, a way of life, or what?” Lissa spread her hands. “Something that means everything to its believers. And that doesn’t fit well into most Susaian societies. It’s been generally persecuted, especially in the Great Confederacy, where it was finally forbidden altogether. Orichalc’s lineage is one of those that pretended to convert back to orthodoxy, but has maintained the rites and practices as best it can in secret, always hoping for some kind of liberation.”

Esker gazed at a bulkhead. “I see. …”

“New Halla would be a haven for the Old Truthers,” Lissa proceeded. “They aren’t so many that they need more, and probably quite a few couldn’t manage to leave their planets anyhow. But Orichalc does have this idea of a refuge for them.”

“Yes.” The black eyes caught at hers. “They’ll be under Asborgan sovereignty. We’ll be their protectors. And they’ll multiply, and move into other parts, and eventually our evening star will be full of them, won’t it?”

“How would that harm us?” she retorted. “They’d acquire any further land legitimately. We’ve made sure that their principles are decent. I should think there’d be pretty wonderful potentials in having beings that different for our friends and neighbors.”

“Well—” The hostility dropped away. He shivered. “Maybe. Who knows? You understand, milady, don’t you, I’m concerned about our House. It’s mine, too. I’m only a client, adopted at that, but I belong with Windholm.”

Pushy, she thought; and then: No, that’s unfair. Isn’t it?

Encourage him. “Leave politics to the patrons, Esker. Look to your personal future. Why would the Dominance be so interested in this thing ahead of us, if they didn’t believe it may lead them to something really new? Something maybe as revolutionary as, oh, quantum mechanics or nuclear fission and fusion or the unifying equation.”

She saw the pallor come and go in the blue cheeks, the hair stir on the backs of his hands. “Yes,” he said, “yes, that’s possible, isn’t it? Thank you, milady.”

The upward blazing wish to discover, to know, briefly transfigured the ugly face.