Marika noted Grauel and Barlog hovering. They were polite enough to remain out of earshot, but they were there, eager to discover the meaning of Bagnel’s appearance. Marika asked, “You’re sure this isn’t business? That someone didn’t send you out to get me to come home?”
He looked surprised. “No. Why do you ask that?”
“We get very little reliable news out here. What we have gotten are rumors about increasingly bad rogue trouble. Trouble nobody seems able—or maybe just willing—to solve. I thought maybe someone sent you to get me to come back and deal with it.”
“Marika… I might as well put it bluntly. The vast majority of silth are very happy that you are out here instead of at home. That’s why you get the support you do. The farther away you are, the happier they are.”
“Oh.”
“The rogues have become a problem again, though, that’s for sure. They’re much better organized this time. They learned a lot.”
“I believe I predicted that. I believe no one would listen to me.”
“Right. It’s no longer possible to use the tactics you developed. One cannot be taken and forced to betray scores more by subjecting him to a truthsaying. They have structured their organization so that few members know any of the others. And they are careful to keep the risks low whenever they choose to strike.”
“That was predictable too.”
“And even where the hunters know who they are looking for it has been hard to track a culprit down. Your Kublin, for example.”
“Kublin?” Marika had done her best not to think of her littermate over the years. It had been her thought to destroy his hope by shattering the support lent by the Serke and their rogue companions. But the Serke remained unshattered.
“He is rumored to be the mastermind, the one they call the warlock. Not one hunter has been able to find a trace of him since his escape from you. Whenever someone does get a line on him he is found to be gone by the time the hunt closes in. There is still strong support for him and those who fled with the Serke among the bond meth and even our worker brethren.”
“I can find Kublin.”
“No doubt. You have always done whatever you set your mind to. I will mention that to anyone who is interested. My own opinion is, you should continue the search for the Serke. Step it up, even. It could be important.”
“Ah? Is that it?”
“What?”
“The true reason you put yourself through what it takes for a meth unfamiliar with the Up-and-Over to come out here?”
“I came for a vacation, Marika. I came where I could see a friend who has been missing from my life for far too long. I’m just trying to tell you what is happening at home. If you care to interpret that as an attempt at manipulation…”
“I’m sorry. Go ahead. Tell me the news.”
“Last month we finally caught a courier from the rogues trying to sneak in. Two of them, actually. Both brethren who had gone into exile aboard Starstalker. I was brought in for their questioning because they had things to say about the project.”
“And? Did you get any hints as to where they are hiding?”
“Just one. Inside the dust cloud. Which you suspect already. Naturally, they would not have been risked had they known more. I wish we could have taken the Mistress of the Ship who brought them in.”
“Of course. What did they have to say otherwise?”
“We learned a lot about what they’ve been doing, which is mostly marking time and hoping the aliens find them before you do. They are no longer so confident of Bestrei.”
“What?”
“It turns out that our estimates of the Serke situation were not quite right. They have no direct contact with the aliens. What they have is a very large alien ship orbiting a planet. They have been studying it and appropriating from it, while they wait for its builders to come looking for it.”
“But…”
“Give me a chance, Marika. There is a story. I’d better tell it so you know what I’m talking about.”
“I think you’d better. Starting from the beginning.”
“All right. Here it is. Way back, a venturesome Serke Mistress of the Ship…”
“Kher-Thar Prevallin?”
“Exactly. That most famous of the farwanderers. A legend of our own times. But if you keep interrupting you will never hear the story.”
“Sorry.”
“Way back, Kher-Thar decided she wanted to see what lay on the far side of the dust cloud. While she was passing through she decided to rest her bath at a particular world. An almost optimally friendly one, by all accounts. After several days down she had just reached orbital distance departing when the alien ship appeared, I take it out of the Up-and-Over. The way I was told, it was not there one moment, and there the next. It detected the darkship and gave chase. Out of curiosity, apparently.”
Marika grumbled beneath her breath. He was stretching it.
“No. There was no evidence the creatures aboard were hostile. But Kher-Thar, you will recall, was not known for her cool head. She panicked. Thinking she was being attacked, she attacked first. The aliens were unable to deal with her, though she was not known for the strength of her talent for the dark side. The aliens abandoned the chase. Kher-Thar scrambled into the Up-and-Over and scurried home, nearly killing her bath.”
“I always thought she was overrated. She was a total misfit, which is why the Serke put up with her wandering in the first place. They wanted her out of their fur.”
“You would understand that better than I.”
“Vicious, Bagnel. Tell your story.”
“Let me.”
“Well?”
“The aliens who survived Kher-Thar’s attack managed to get their ship into a stable orbit around the planet, but could not save themselves. When Kher-Thar returned, accompanied by a horde of Serke investigators, they were all dead. The investigators knew the importance of their find, but could make no sense of it. After long and often savage debate their ruling council voted to ask the dark-faring brethren bonds for help. Ever since, for more than twenty years, they have been studying the alien ship, appropriating equipment and technology, and waiting for another ship to come looking for the first.”
“Why do they think one will come? We seldom send anyone to look for a lost darkship.”
“I am not certain. But they are convinced one will. Perhaps because of the investment such a vessel would represent. The prisoners said it is huge. That for us to build, it would take an effort on the scale of the mirror project.”
“Then everything they did to us in the Ponath was purely on speculation? They might have gotten nothing at all for their trouble?”
“Apparently. Even under truthsaying the prisoners insist that no meth has ever met one of the aliens alive.”
“Idiots.”
“Maybe. You don’t know how you would have reacted in identical circumstances. One like your Gradwohl, obsessed with making the Reugge Community into a power, might have done the same. Or worse. You dare not fault the Serke without faulting all silth. They were being silth.”
“I will not argue that. I will only say they behaved in the most stupid fashion possible in being silth. And they continue in their stupidity. All those years and no ship has come? And they have not given up?”
“How long have you been looking for them?”
“More years than some care to count. Grauel and Barlog are not happy with me.”
“It is the only hope they have left, Marika. If the aliens do not come, sooner or later you will. And, as I said, they are afraid Bestrei is no longer what she was.
“Suppose that ship was an explorer, the same as Kher-Thar’s? With no more fixed a routine than hers? Suppose she had been lost instead? How long have you looked, knowing the place existed?”
“Even so… I suppose I understand.”
“So I think you should go on looking, though I am sure the search is wearing. You have to be getting closer, if only by the process
of elimination. But so must the aliens. I wouldn’t like to guess what might happen if the Serke were to make common cause with them.”
“The weapons that destroyed TelleRai.”
“Not to mention those mounted on the ships the rogues used. We have studied those endlessly, from fragments we captured, and we can make no sense of them. I fear we are just too far away in knowledge and technology. They might as well be your witchcraft. Nevertheless, brethren in the sciences believe larger weapons of the same sort could be used against planetary targets.”
“I will admit I have been tempted to give up the hunt.”
“I thought so when I saw you, Marika. You look tired. As if you’re ready to accept defeat. But enough of that. I really did not come here on business. I’m dedicated to carrying out my orders, which are to spend a few months without worrying.”
“How is the project coming?”
“Seventy percent completion on the leading mirror. Forty on the trailing. The orbitals for making fine and local adjustments are in place. We’re getting almost forty percent of peak output. I understand that they have begun to have an effect. There was no measurable advance of the permafrost line this past winter.”
“How far did it get?”
“Almost to the tropics. Well past Ruhaack. But it should begin to fall back soon. If the dust gets no thicker. And the probes we have run in the direction the sun is moving show no increase in density along the path to be followed for the next five hundred years. I think we will win the battle against the long winter. And, though you have spent very little time on it since you got it going, you will be remembered as the dam of the project.”
“I am not much concerned about how the future recalls me, so long as there is a future. And I am still battling for it out here. In a hunt that, I am sure, will not be in vain, and that will not last much longer.”
Bagnel bowed his head as if to mask his expression.
“Well, tradermale. Adventurer. Want to make it a working holiday? I can squeeze another body onto my darkship. You could be the first male ever to see new worlds.”
III
Bagnel stepped down off the darkship and surveyed the encampment with the look of one returning home. “I’ll confess this, Marika. I never once worried about the project.”
Marika lifted a lip in amusement. “It could not have been that bad. It wasn’t the same as traveling in High Night Rider?”
“No. It was not the same. As you know perfectly well. It was more like falling forever. It was more unnerving than riding a darkship at home. There is something under your feet there, even if it is several thousand feet down. Still…”
“What is that look in your eye?” Marika kept one eye on her bath and Grauel and Barlog, making sure they made sure the darkship was being readied for its next journey. She ruled the base strictly. She insisted all darkships be ready to lift at a moment’s notice. The Serke could strike at any time. Would strike, she suspected, if they knew where to find her. She was stuck to their trail like the stubbornest hunting arft.
“Wonder, I suppose. I have to admit that, harrowing as it was, the experience touched something in me. I could develop a taste for exploration.”
“Give up the mirrors, then. I am here. The darkship is here.”
He looked at her narrowly, startled and tempted. “I think not, Marika. Your sisters would not understand.”
“I suppose not. It was just a thought. Maybe someday. When the project is complete. When the Serke have been disposed of. When the aliens have been found and some sort of accommodation with them has been reached. Wouldn’t it be in the grand tradition for us to fly away and never be seen again?”
He picked it up as a game. “Yes. We could just go on exploring, skipping from star to star, forever. We might be touched occasionally, in the far distance, and rumors would rise about a ghost darkship flitting out on the edge of the void. Young, fresh Mistresses would bring their darkships out to hunt the legend.”
“But it couldn’t be. We couldn’t carry enough stores. And where would I find willing bath?”
“Oh, well.”
“Tomorrow we will go out again. There is no end of stars in this sector—though those really worth investigating are running short.”
But Marika returned to space much sooner.
The night was just hours old when a sudden, sharp, panicky touch smote Marika. Darkship! Starting down. Not from home.
Marika rushed from her hut. The base began coming to life around her. Darkship crews rushed to their ships. The touch came again. Serke! Oh. They have detected us. They are starting back up. They are fleeing. They are very frightened. The otherworld reeks of their fear. Hurry!
“Grauel! Barlog! Will you come on? We’re going up!”
Sleepy-eyed, the untouched huntresses had come out to learn the cause of the commotion.
Marika’s bath raced toward the wooden darkship, pre-flight rites forgotten. Marika tossed her rifle across her shoulder and dashed after them, shouting, “Come, you two. The Serke.”
Grauel and Barlog raced for the darkship after snatching their weapons.
One voidship was off the ground already, rising swiftly. Marika’s eyes were fiery as she glared at her senior bath, who was not hustling the silver bowl around fast enough to suit her.
“Wait!”
Bagnel wobbled toward them, trying to keep his trousers from tripping him by holding them up with one paw.
“No,” Marika said. “This is the real thing, Bagnel. There are Serke up there.”
Bagnel played deaf. He lined up for his turn at the silver bowl. The bath muttered something unappreciative, let him sip. Grauel extracted another flask of liquid from the locker under the axis platform and dumped it into the bowl. Then she dug out a spare rifle and forced it upon him. “One I owe you, male.”
“I see you still carry the one I gave you at Akard.”
“It has been a faithful tool. Like me, though, it is getting old and cranky.”
Marika swore. The other darkship was aloft now. The first had dwindled to a speck, its Mistress driving it hard. And she had not yet gathered her ghosts. “You meth strap down good,” she said. “Everyone strap down. This is going to be the ride of your lives.”
Bagnel was strapped already. He began disassembling the weapon Grauel had given him. The huntress nodded with approval. Seated, she and Barlog did likewise with their own weapons.
Marika snatched the bowl from the senior bath, gulped its contents, then bounced to her place at the tip of the wooden dagger. She went down through her loophole and snagged ghosts, lifted off, and continued gathering ghosts as she rose, dropping smaller specimens as she snatched ever bigger, stronger denizens of the otherworld. She pressed mercilessly.
She overhauled one darkship at fifty thousand feet and the other before it made orbital altitude. All the while she caressed the void with the touch, tracking the Serke darkship as it fled toward where it could clamber into the Up-and-Over. She soon had its line of retreat clearly defined in her mind.
It pointed toward a section of cloud she had not yet explored. She sketched an imaginary circle around that line, finding only four stars within it. She discarded the one farthest off center.
She reached with the touch and told the other two Mistresses of the Ship, We will pursue. There are three stars close to their line of flight. I will take this one. She sent a picture of the stars and indicated which she had chosen for herself, then assigned each of them one of the two remaining. Push yourselves. Try to arrive before they do.
That was unlikely, she thought. Even for her, with her advantages. Though time lapses in the Up-and-Over depended on the strength and talent of the individual Mistress of the Ship, the Serke Mistress had a long start and death raving behind her to motivate her.
Marika began pushing down her chosen course before she reached orbital altitude and began gathering ghosts for the Up-and-Over long before she reached the traditional jumping distance. She grabbed at the Up-a
nd-Over only minutes behind the Serke—long before she should have. Echoes of silent terror came from her bath, whom she had pushed near hysteria already with her demands.
Blackness, twisting. A sensation of infinite nothing. A hint of a deep space ghost, a great black ghost, startled by the voidship’s passage.
Then light again. The target star lay nearby. Marika struggled to gain her bearings, groggy from the violence of her plunge through the Up-and-Over.
The bath recovered more slowly than she. While she waited on them Marika reached into the surrounding void, searching for the Serke darkship.
Mentally righted, the senior bath left her station to prepare another silver bowl.
Marika’s probe revealed that the star had no planets. It might have had at one time, but something had happened. Perhaps too close a brush with another star. The surrounding void teemed with rocky fragments, some of them bigger than the moon Biter back home. None were big enough to retain an atmosphere, and nowhere could Marika sense the betraying glow of life.
There were no Serke bases here.
And no Serke darkship.
She stalked up the blade of the wooden dagger to see how Grauel, Barlog, and Bagnel had fared. She had drawn upon them as well as upon the bath, though the strength they had to lend was feeble.
Bagnel looked sick, like he might vomit any second. He was down, clutching the framework with his eyes sealed. Grauel and Barlog looked strained and a little stunned by the savagery of the passage, but they had been with her long enough and had been through enough to be accustomed to the occasional violent passage. Though this had outdone everything that had gone before.
Marika touched Bagnel briefly, gently, encouragingly. The one silth ability for which she had very little talent was healing, but she tried to let well-being flow from her to him. He nodded. He was all right. He was just shaken.
She suspected, in her more dark moments, that she was a poor healer because she was not sufficiently whole and at peace within herself.
She started back toward her station.
Plop!
It had the feel of the sound of a pebble falling into water as heard from beneath the surface, only it fell upon the silth part of her mind.