'Captain ... if you'd board now?'
'Thank you. I'm sorry. I was held up.'
'It's not a problem, ser.'
Behind me, I could hear voices.
'... who's that?'
'... name is Tyndel... say something special about him ... no one says what... young, but there's a waiting list to officer under him ...'
I frowned - a waiting list for me? Because I'd managed to survive at a time when a few needles had disappeared? That could have been mere chance. Was it because people were looking for some reason to think I was special? As I eased into the front couch in the magshuttle's passenger section, my thoughts skittered over the debriefing and the words I'd just heard. Something special? Honesty out of fear? Fear that you won't be honest? Fear that your honesty is a fraud?
I could sense the fear of others as well, especially of Commander Krigisa - the fear that the absolute power represented by Engee was a threat to Rykasha. Fear that the whole overspace system was about to crumble - or that faith in it was. That was almost the same thing, given that faith and the ability of the needle jockeys were what made the technology work.
If the Authority lost faith in the needle jockeys ... if the other jockeys lost faith in themselves ...
I'd asked, once, what a Rykashan was and found no answer. I had part of the answer - a Rykashan was someone who dreamed beyond the confines of earth, dreamed and worked to realize the dream, not just contemplate it.
Every society, I understood, had to have faith in something beyond itself, beyond the day-to-day. For the ancients, it had been religion, irrational and constricting as it had been. For Dorcha, it was the way of Dzin. For Klama, the way of Toze. For Dezret, the way of Ryks.
And Rykasha? The stellar dream.. .the dream that nothing is beyond the souls and aspirations of demons? Such fragile arrogance ...
80
Belief in destiny becomes an excuse for inaction or a rationale for self-centered action.
Late fall was in the air, the mold of leaves fallen and about to freeze, the ice curtain of winter about to drop across the calm shimmering surface of the lake. Cerrelle and I sat inside, protected by the glass, warmed by the sun, a mug in my hand, a tall beaker in hers. In a way, it was totally incongruous.
There was the possibility of an enormously powerful intelligence that might well change all of Rykasha merely by its presence. The interstellar travel system of Rykasha was certainly threatened, and we sat and drank. Yet... what could either of us do? I was a needle ship pilot who, because I'd been honest about what I'd sensed, was effectively grounded until the Authority made up its mind what to do with me.
Cerrelle was a mid-level transport troubleshooter considered far below the problem facing Rykasha.
'Things are getting worse,' I mused.
'How bad?'
'They had Aleyaisha up on Orbit Two to monitor every part of every needle jockey after each inbound.' I took a sip of Arleen and thought, my eyes looking out at the surface of the lake, where, on the far side, the winds had begun to whip the silver surface into low whitecaps. Soon, the wind would reach our shore. 'You never told me how fragile the system is.' I turned sideways and studied the clean and strong profile, my lips curling into a smile as she brushed back a vagrant wisp of short red hair.
'I wouldn't have used that word.'
'Fragile? I suppose not. In some ways, Rykasha is almost indestructible ... except it's not. Societies run on myths, and one of the great myths is that we hold the stars the ancients couldn't. What happens if, one by one, we lose ships and pilots? The myth dies.'
'That's what happened in Dezret,' Cerrelle said, taking a delicate swallow of the icy veridian liqueur. 'The Saints believed that they were the sons of God and that the world would be theirs, and that all would come to accept their vision of salvation, and that the land could be used and abused without consequences. It didn't happen that way, and the lake turned to salt and the rivers dwindled, and the winds blew harder, and the outsiders laughed ... and slowly the men turned bitter, and the women were beaten into acceptance, those who didn't flee, and the winter gales brought down the temples, and no one has the time or the tools or the strength to repair them. Yet the records here show that the climate has not changed that much in millennia.'
'Their perception did?'
'The lake was shrinking when they settled the area, in geologic terms, but they wouldn't see it. So much of their belief ... their myth ... wasn't in accord with reality, and they couldn't or wouldn't change it, and then it was too late.' Cerrelle nodded. 'Isn't that what you mean?'
'It's what I worry about. Overspace is dangerous. They don't really say that in training, but the training makes it clear. A few needle ships were vanishing over each twenty-year period or so, and those losses were downplayed, accepted. But two a year is far more than one a decade. There were only ninety-five pilots and sixty-one needle ships, and we've lost five ships, and pilots, I think, in the last three years. Or maybe six or seven.' I frowned, trying to add up what I'd heard over the past years, because the numbers weren't in the data system. 'That's what I've been able to discover. That's more than a tenth in less than five years. One's been built in that time. We can't keep taking those losses and still support the planoforming projects or supply the few high-tech items that will keep the smaller colonies from slipping back into low-tech states ... or barbarism.'
'That's why Krigisa and Erelya are worried,' Cerrelle pointed out. 'That's why you're worried.'
'In some ways, I worry more about the mythic side.' I took another sip of Arleen. 'If the star dream goes, what's there to replace it? Engee? Then how are we any different from those of Dorcha ... or Dhurra ... or Klama?' I set down the mug. 'Yet there's nothing I can do. Part of me worries that my own honesty keeps me from piloting. What if I'd just said I'd sensed some vague energy?'
'Then you'd have been grounded for lying, and in bigger trouble,' Cerrelle pointed out. Aleyaisha may be sympathetic, but she would have to have reported that, and the equipment is sensitive enough to reveal deception on that scale. Remember, they have your entire medical and psychological profile at hand.'
'It still bothers me.' I picked up the mug and looked across the lake, so placid, as if nothing in the universe had changed since it had been formed by glaciers fifteen thousand years earlier.
'The man who didn't want anything to do with needle ships is now worried about their demise.' A faint smile crossed her lips, and the piercing green eyes sparkled.
'That man has seen what dreams mean and do. His problem was that he didn't understand them because he'd been schooled that dreams of aspiration were dreams of vanity.'
'All dreams are dreams of vanity,' she pointed out. 'All dreams are a search for meaning beyond impermanence. Even a long-lived demon is a mayfly on a universal scale.'
'I don't know that I like being a mayfly.'
'That's why you're building a garden you want to be so beautiful that no one will wish to remove it.'
'That's part of the reason. I don't want to be impermanent in your mind and life, either.'
She reached out and touched my hand, then curled her fingers around mine. 'You won't be impermanent.'
Even as I worried about a universe far bigger than the demons conceived, possibly far more hostile to dreams, especially stellar dreams, I squeezed her hand in return, taking comfort in the small island of warmth in which we basked, impermanent as it might be, waiting to see what my fate might be ... what all our fates might be.