Within five minutes Paladin had the Diligent preflighted. The first time Blair had seen the merchantman, he had thought that she resembled a twenty-five-meter-long Ping-Pong paddle. His appraisal had not changed, but his affection for the vessel had deepened. Though no visual thrill, the old girl had, according to Paladin, never failed him. He sat at the portside helm controls while Blair handled navigation. They received clearance from Boss Raznick and rumbled out of the hangar, soaring up into the endless folds of interstellar space. A patrol of Rapiers had already been launched and had fanned out to scan the Area of Operation's perimeter. Blair caught sight of one of the fighters through the starboard viewport and double-checked his course, making sure he would avoid the fighters' vector.
"Initiate residuum scan," ordered Paladin.
Blair shifted to a small touchpad and tapped in the command. One of the nav station's screens mounted to a swivel arm abruptly illuminated with columns of data regarding the composition of the void ahead: mostly hydrogen, with traces of nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon detected by their radio emissions. Then the screen flashed as it picked up a concentration of gravitons and anti-gravitons-the residuum from the supercruiser's jump. "Locked on to her jump point," he informed Paladin.
The commodore looked askance. "Thought you'd be full of questions. You all right?"
"Yeah," Blair answered softly. "And / am full of questions. But I'm not sure you can answer them."
"Try me."
"Do you… ah, it's ridiculous." Blair pursed his lips, returned his gaze to his instruments.
"You didn't look so well after our jump. Something happen?"
"Sort of. It's about my mother."
"A lovely lady."
"You knew her?"
Paladin thought a moment, a smile slowly curling his lips. "I introduced her to your father."
"Why haven't you told me?"
"When you were ready to know, you'd come asking. I've already told you a little about how the Pilgrims rose to power, then plunged to defeat. But there's so much you don't know."
"That's what my mother tells me."
A curious glint came into Paladin's eyes. "Your mother died on Peron during the attack."
"I know. But sometimes when we jump… I don't know. That moment between points, when you don't feel anything, when it seems like-"
"You see her. You talk to her."
"Yeah. I mean, is it really her? Am I talking to somebody else? To a ghost? To God? Am I nuts?"
"Have you done any research on this?"
Blair frowned. "I thought this was only happening to me. Is speaking to the dead common among Pilgrims?"
"You're not talking to the dead. According to one theory, you're tapping into a script that lies in a parallel dimension. It's been suggested that the human brain isn't a device for storing information but a tool for scripting it. This other dimension, they've dubbed it the Tanque Dimension, holds the scripts for every human being that ever lived, but Pilgrims can tap into that information. That's why when you get near a quasar or pulsar or what have you, you can sense a course through it. You're actually tapping into a script written by the first Pilgrims who navigated through."
"So it's nothing mystic. It just has to do with the ability to read that information," Blair concluded.
"Yes, but explain to me how you can interact so intimately with a piece of stored information. There's no advance Al at work. I think that's when it gets mystical."
Blair thought back to his first ride with Paladin. "When we jumped Scylla, you seemed surprised that I was able to navigate through her. And if you're a Pilgrim and you can tap into these scripts like me, then why didn't you jump the well itself?"
"I could have, but I couldn't have done it as easily as you. Why do you think I have all of those Pilgrim maps back in my quarters?"
"I don't know, but you're a Pilgrim."
"We're not all the same, Blair. Some say we evolved from savants. There were 'zappers' who were experts at electrical sys-tems; 'chipheads' able to engineer flawless hardware designs; 'toolkits' who could fix things with whatever happened to be lying around; 'crunchers' who could perform complex mathematical calculations without computers; and 'rabbitfoots' who supposedly brought good luck to missions. From there, other types of abilities emerged, and one in particular is the most interesting to us: the compass. These are the Pilgrims I told you about, those with a flawless sense of direction. They were subcatego-rized into the visionary, the explorer, and the navigator."
"Which one am I?"
"From what I've seen, you're a navigator. Me, on the other hand, I'm a visionary. I can determine which systems would prove most valuable for human expansion. Visionaries can throw their minds across the galaxy, seek out new systems, and analyze their composition. You don't even need to send a ship out if you have a visionary on your team. I have to admit that my skills are pretty limited, and I've been wrong on more than one occasion. I wish I were a navigator like you."
"What about the explorers?"
"They're able to navigate through uncharted regions. Most of the Pilgrim holocartography we have today was created by explorers. Some argue that of all three subcategories, explorers are the most powerful."
"What do you think?"
"I think there's one Pilgrim who's more powerful than any individual. He's a visionary, an explorer, and a navigator, and his name's Johan McDaniel, the last living descendant of Ivar Chu McDaniel. He's kind of a legend. I met him once. Nice old man- until you cross him. We're out here now because I want you to tap into his script. It's out here somewhere."
"His script? Why would it be-" Blair answered his own question before even asking it. "He's on board the supercruiser."
"Amity knows him as well as I. She's using him as a supplement to her hopper drive. The calculations involved in creating and jumping a gravity well are sometimes too complex for the NAVCOM. McDaniel is handling that for her."
"What is she? A navigator like me?"
"No, she's an explorer." Paladin's hand went reflexively to his chest. The Pilgrim cross that hung hidden beneath his shirt had been given to him by Amity. Blair had once borrowed the cross and had read the inscription on its back. She wanted him to remember love across the cosmos, to remember her. Blair smiled bitterly as he realized that Paladin wasn't the only one who would remember her now.
Blair's nav computer chirped a warning. "We're right in the residuum now," he said, reading his screen.
"Okay, Mr. Blair. Get to work."
He gave his mentor an awkward look.
"Reach out and find that script. Learn where they're headed."
"Okay," Blair said sarcastically. "But I don't even know how to reach. When I jump a well, the feeling is there. I don't have to look for it."
"You learn something new every day. And here's today's lesson. On your feet, mister. Go the viewport. Just look out there. I mean really look out there." Paladin's voice came in a breathy lilt.
Blair stood, worked out the kinks in his legs, then went anxiously to the viewport. He tossed Paladin a worried look, earning himself an insistent, wide-eyed stare.
Stars, nothing but. Pinpoints against a void so familiar yet so alien that nothing Blair could do would ever change that. What am I supposed to see?
"Me, probably," came a voice from behind.
Whirling, Blair came face-to-face with an old man dressed in a strange white robe and dark sandals. He looked past the man to Paladin, who sat motionless and unaware at the helm.
"So, Brotur Christopher. I take it you'd like to know where we're going." The old man's hazel eyes flashed like light through a prism, and his skin held a ruddy sun glow. He stood quite erect for a man so wizened, his chest bulging like a powerlifter's beneath his robe.
"Are you part of a script? Am I accessing your data?"