Grauel and Barlog practically whined with fear. The bath were unafraid, but stricken with awe.
Onward. And this time with care, for the next target was a wobbling star that, even from so far away, could be heard screaming as it died. A sister who had been there had told Marika that that star had an invisible companion that had to be treated with great respect, for it was a cannibal star, devouring the stuff of its visible sister the way some insects devoured the stuff of others.
The electromagnetic fog around that third target was more furious than anything Marika could have imagined. For minutes she remained disoriented, unable to select her next target, her last. It was hard to find. It was a normal little star much like her own sun, and it defined the outer known limits of exploration in this direction. It lay against the flank of the dust cloud.
Marika battled the numbness creeping over her. She recalled the most furious thunderstorms of her puphood in the Ponath. This was a hundred times more terrible.
She clung to her ghosts mostly by instinct and urged the darkship away, gaining velocity as the impact of the star lessened. In time she was able to think clearly enough to locate her target star. With head aching, she commanded her ghosts and pulled into the Up-and-Over.
The headache passed. Soon she found herself letting go almost automatically, almost without conscious calculation. The darkship fell into normal space, drifting toward her target.
This star boasted a world that could be used as a way station. It was a friendly world, the record said, but it was nothing like home. It was uninhabited. It would be a fair place to rest. A place where Grauel and Barlog could get solid ground beneath their boots once more.
She located the world and guided the darkship into orbit, released the massive stores pod after Grauel and Barlog and the extra bath had removed what might be needed below, then descended.
It was a hot, humid world with an atmospheric pressure much higher than that at home. Having descended to the level of discomfort, Marika cast about till she found a tall mountain. There she made her landing.
She had gone to the very bounds.
Soon the hunt would begin.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
I
“Marika!”
Grauel’s tone startled Marika. She threw a hasty touch toward the huntress, fearing she had encountered something deadly. But it was not danger, just something she had found. Something that had her excited. Marika hastened to join her.
This was at least the hundredth habitable world and thousandth star they had visited since leaving home. The number of stars inside the radius Marika considered logically limiting, worth investigating, seemed infinite. She had lost track of time.
Time had little meaning when all worlds were different and each begged to be explored. She had thought the film Bagnel had given her, in rolls upon hundreds of rolls, was a ridiculous oversupply. But now most of it was gone, exposed, sealed, ready to be returned to those who would be avid to search it for the new, the weird, the terrible. The universe seemed capable of producing an infinitude of wonders.
More than three years had passed. None of Marika’s original bath were with her anymore, having one by one proved out the value of her experiment or simply having grown homesick and opted to return on the Redoriad voidship High Night Rider, which resupplied Marika’s base every few months.
Marika scrambled across a decomposed rock face where striations glistened unsettlingly alien blues, perched a hundred feet above a patch of tableland where Grauel crouched, studying something. “What have you got, Grauel?”
“A campfire site,” the huntress called back. “Come down and see. Your talent might find something I cannot.”
Marika’s heartbeat picked up. Campfire site! There was no intelligent life on this world. And it had not been visited by any meth before, unless by the Serke. Maybe after all this time, chance had brought her to a warm trail.
She had discarded the world as a possible Serke hiding place only seconds after making orbit. The presence of silth would not have been hard to detect. These years among the stars, reaching out to find an enemy never there, had stretched her far-touching talent till it would have shamed the most talented of far-touchers back home. She did not believe anyone with the talent could hide from her long.
Aliens of the sort she sought should not have been hard to detect either, if only by the talent vacuum the brethren suspected should exist around them. She had grounded only because they all needed to rest, needed to feel a planet beneath their feet.
She was very strong now, able to make venture after venture without pause. She was not the least uncomfortable with the void or the Up-and-Over. It was as if she had been born to stalk the stars. But her bath reached their limits after six or seven passages and needed several days to recuperate. Grauel and Barlog never became comfortable with starfaring. She had taken them all to their limits this time. This site she had chosen only because it looked safe and comfortable.
Talus bounded around her boots as she slipped and slid down the slope, thanking Grauel’s increased propensity for wandering while they were down, thanking the All for interesting the huntress in the oddities produced by the worlds they visited. It had paid a dividend.
Maybe.
Grauel remained crouched over a circle of stones blackened on one side. The circle lay away from the foot of the cliff, but was still sheltered from the prevailing winds. A glance told Marika it was an old site, barely recognizable for what it was.
Grauel glanced up. “It was not like this when I found it. I had to reconstruct it. I noticed some stones that looked smoked on one side scattered around. Then just a hint of a smell of smoke still in the ground here. Once I started looking around I found more stones. It all came together fairly easily.”
Marika nodded. “What can you tell me about it?” Grauel was the huntress. This was her area of expertise.
“Very little, except that it’s here. And it shouldn’t be. But it did seem that this ledge would be a good place to ground a darkship.”
“How far afield did you go?”
“Not far.”
“Let’s snoop around, see what we can find.”
Careful visual search turned up nothing more.
“If they were here, they must have had a latrine and some place to dump their garbage,” Grauel said.
“They may have had huntresses with them,” Marika chided. Grauel and Barlog, treating the search as they would a hunt in their native Ponath, left every resting place pristine, naked of evidence that anyone had visited. Both huntresses believed the Serke were hunting for them in turn.
“One doubts it. No skilled huntress would have left a fire site so obvious to the eye. My thought was that you might use your talent to look where the eye cannot see.”
“You are right, of course.” Marika went down through her loophole and caught a suitable ghost, then searched the area again, using the altered perspective of the otherworld. She found what Grauel wanted in a crack to one side of the ledge. She returned to flesh. “You were right. Over here. Whoever they were, it looks like they used one natural hole for a garbage pit and a latrine both.”
“Grab yourself a stick,” Grauel said.
“A stick?”
“Do you want to stir through it with your paws?”
“Of course. All right.” Marika collected pieces of dead wood. Grauel used one to dig at soil that had been used to cover the wastes.
“Been a while for sure,” the huntress said. “It has all decayed away to nothing. It must not rain or snow much here, for the black on the rocks to have remained noticeable. But we’re wasting our time. There’s nothing…. Hello!” Grauel dropped onto her belly and reached into the hole. She wriggled forward, bent at the waist, got hold of something, wriggled back and sat up. She held a lump to the light. Marika saw nothing special till Grauel spat upon it and cleaned it on her sleeve.
“A button.” It was a tarnished metal button with a few fibers of thread still attach
ed. It was embossed. Grauel passed it to her. Marika studied it, then compared it to the five upon the left wrist of her jacket. “That is a Serke witch sign on it, Grauel. We’re on the trail. They’ve been here. I have a premonition. We are within a few passages through the Up-and-Over of catching up with them.”
“That’s what you’ve been saying since we established our first base.”
“This time I am right. I can feel it. I am convinced.”
“I hope you are.” Grauel sounded sour.
“Grauel?”
“I do not want to die out here, Marika. How would the All find me?”
“What?” This was a surprise.
“In fact, if I had my choice, I would spend my final days in the upper Ponath, at the packstead that gave me life.”
Marika was baffled. What had brought this on?
“I am getting old, Marika. In the Ponath I might already be one of the Wise. Likewise Barlog. The witchery and medicine of the silth have kept us young beyond our time, but time never stops gnawing. Lately I find I cannot help remembering that we are the last of the Degnan pack, and that our pack lies beneath the northern ice still unMourned.”
“Yes. I know all that. You are indeed old for the Ponath, but not old by standards of the silth. There will be time, Grauel. We will see to the Mourning. But we can’t go now. We’re finally making some headway out here. We’ve finally found something besides a place where they aren’t and haven’t ever been. Maybe this world is a regular stop. Maybe if we just sat here and waited…. I know what I’ll do. I’ll make this world our new base. We’ll continue the hunt from here.”
“Which means a whole new globe of space to search,” Grauel countered, showing no excitement. “It will be like starting from the beginning.”
“Think positively, Grauel. Think lucky. Let’s go tell the others.”
“What I think is I wish I had not called you down here.”
That evening Marika climbed a peak while the others rested. She stood staring at the stars. There were few to be seen, for the dust cloud spanned the heavens of that world. She selected the next half-dozen stars that should be investigated. Into the cloud itself this time? Yes. What better place to hide?
For the most part she had avoided going into the cloud during her search. She was much less comfortable operating there because there were so few landmark stars. She had reasoned that the Serke explorers would have suffered the same reluctance. But perhaps one of their more-daring Mistresses of the Ship, possibly a Bestrei, might have dared the darkness and found the aliens.
What lay beyond the cloud? No one knew. No one had tried to reach its nether side. Maybe no one but the Serke had had any contact with the aliens because they were over there and they too were reluctant to enter the dust.
The dust cloud it would be, for a time.
II
Marika’s bath had again been rotated. Grauel and Barlog had begun to show gray and even lose a little fur. Marika herself had begun to feel age in her bones when she rose some mornings. And there were moments when the homeworld called so strongly that her resolve almost broke. There were moments when she was tempted to go home just to discover what had happened in her absence. Sometimes, during the on-planet resting pauses, she lay awake when she was supposed to be sleeping, wondering about Bagnel, longing for his company, and wondering about the progress of the mirrors she had imagined into reality, and even about the warlock, her littermate, Kublin.
She knew very little about what had happened since her departure. But for the regular visit of High Night Rider, and the occasional appearance of a Mistress of the Ship with an adventurous spirit, a desire to visit the strange worlds Marika had reported, and a knack for assembling bath of like temperament, she had no ties with home.
Grauel and Barlog had recognized the process at work and had ceased their importunities for abandoning the quest, fearing their petitions would harden her resolve.
She was finding it increasingly difficult to convince herself that the hunt was worthwhile. There was no end to the universe, even within the dust cloud. There was always another star. And, inevitably, always another disappointment.
It was time for High Night Rider to come again. She felt she had reached a time of decision. If the news from home were bad, she would return.
The mirrors, insofar as she knew, were coming along well. A brief note half a year earlier, written by Bagnel, had told her the mirror in the leading trojan was well ahead of schedule. So much for his doubts about his management skills.
But he had mentioned trouble down on the homeworld’s surface. The old rogue male trouble had begun to reassert itself. The Communities seemed unable to stem it. This time the outlaws seemed to be working independent of the brethren, under the dominance of their wehrlen, but there were those, according to Bagnel, who did not believe the warlock was the true source of their witchcraft. Silth did not want to believe a male could be so strong, so felt the rogues had to be getting aid and encouragement from silth smuggled in by the Serke.
On its last visit High Night Rider had brought word that the rogues were sabotaging the brethren as well as silth, that assassination had become their primary weapon. They were using their talent-suppressing device again, and the sisterhoods could not cope.
Marika suspected they could not cope because they did not feel motivated enough. Even now, after all the disaster they had wrought, it was difficult to get silth to take males seriously as a threat.
Marika did not want to take up that task again, but it seemed she might have to, if the vague reports she received indicated the way things were actually moving. If the Communities themselves would not spend the effort and energy to defend themselves adequately.
A wave of undirected touch passed over her. She looked at the sky as one of her bath called out, “Mistress, High Night Rider has come.”
A blob of light moved across the sky, visible even in daylight. It slowed, maneuvered, fell into orbit. Marika rose and stalked through the camp, which today housed nearly a score of meth. Two other darkships were operating from her base, not participating in the hunt, but examining more closely the most interesting of the worlds that Marika had discovered. Their Mistresses were young ones, filled with a desire to expand the frontiers, and they had found themselves teams of bath willing to join their ventures.
Marika’s reports home had had one effect: They had somewhat revivified the old spirit of exploration. Once she had blazed a trail others were eager to devote closer attention to what she had found.
She suspected Bagnel was irked. That meant darkships scattered about the void contributing nothing to the mirror project. She suspected the tedium of construction work was what had encouraged these younger Mistresses and bath to come out to the edge of beyond.
The explorers could do little to truly expand meth knowledge. There were more curiosities among the starworlds than could have been cataloged by ten thousand darkship crews in ten thousand lifetimes.
Of late even Marika had been spending more time looking at those curiosities than she had been being driven by her need to overhaul the Serke.
“Darkships coming down, mistress,” someone called. “At least three of them. Maybe four.”
That was to be expected. There were supplies to be delivered, and always there was another group of explorers who had saved themselves effort by scavenging a ride aboard the giant voidship.
Though the darkships would not ground for a long time yet, Marika went to the landing area with the others. They all stood around waiting, joining in speculation about what news would come from home.
The first darkship down carried a passenger.
“By the All! Bagnel!” Marika swore as the tradermale stepped down. He was shaking, numb with awe. “What are you doing here?” He did not hear her. Whether he was amazed to have arrived healthy, or overawed by having traveled so far, he was completely turned inside himself. She rushed over and repeated her question as meth yelled about clearing the area so the
next darkship could ground.
Silth stared. A male! Out here!
Bagnel shuddered as though shaking water off, and said, “Marika.” He looked her over. “You have changed.”
“So have you. Is that gray I see there? Time gnaws, does it not? It must be fate. I was just thinking about you—and here you are. What are you doing here? Come with me. Before that Mistress gets impatient and plops down on our heads.”
“Are you all right? You look tired.”
“I am tired, Bagnel. I have looked at more stars than you can imagine even exist. Though you must have seen how many there are when you spanned the reach outside the cloud. Come. Let’s get something to eat. You must be starved.”
“My stomach is too unsettled. That passage… It was too much for me, I fear. The Up-and-Over… I find myself dreading the return trip already.”
“You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here. Has something happened?”
“No. Except that I have been stripped of my job and prerogatives. Whoa! It’s only temporary. A cabal of senior factors and high silth ganged up on me and ordered me to take a vacation. They said I was pushing myself too hard, that I was on the edge of a breakdown because I was trying too hard to keep the project ahead of schedule. They stripped me of my powers so I would have no choice. Since they wouldn’t let me do anything at all, and the Redoriad were willing when I approached them, I decided to come walk the stars while I had a chance. You invited me, you’ll recall. I think I am sorry I did it.”
“I recall. I believe I invited you to come after I caught the Serke.”
“But you haven’t. You’ve been out here forever. It begins to seem unlikely, doesn’t it?”
“I am narrowing it down, Bagnel. Narrowing it down. I have a very good idea where they’re not.”
“You are still able to be amused at yourself.”
“Not often. But I don’t think it will be too much longer.”
“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.”