Empire Dreams (8 page)

“Oh, no, thank you, Fraser, I’m not all that hungry … I don’t seem to have the appetite I used to.”

The fact is, he doesn’t seem to have an appetite at all because you have never seen him eat. And he mustn’t need as much sleep as he used to either, because some mornings you have seen him sitting there at one or two or even three o’clock, just sitting there as still and solid as that iron bollard beside you.

“Christian, why do you tell me all these things?”

Christian smiles. “Who can really say why we do one thing rather than another? But, enough talking, for the wind’s up and the sun’s bright and the day’s just perfect for flying a kite.”

THE STORY OF THE PILOT AND HIS PUPIL.

THIS IS A
love story, and like all love stories there is more pain and cruelty in it than love.

Now, there are two types of men who sail between the worlds. There are those who love to adventure in uncharted skies and feel the long wind in their sails, and there are those who love to specialize in one part of space until they know the weave of its fabric like they know their own skin. The Pilot was one of the latter. For more worldbound years than you would guess, Fraser, he had conned SailShips through the singularity until it was said that he knew Cape Infinity better than he knew his own doorstep. And there was many a word of truth in that, for he was the kind of man who lived two months out of twenty years in his little house on Water Street, who was only truly happy with a ship’s deck under his feet, and who had as many marks on his staff as a man of three times his subjective years. He remained changeless while the people he passed in the streets of the city grew older and they muttered to themselves that no one could cheat God and not reap the reward some day.

Now, about this time the Admiralty commissioned a ship for a seeding run to the then-uninhabitable New South Georgia Colony. Never a popular business, this planetary seeding; you’d think that in return for a whole new world the Admiralty would be a little more generous with their bonuses than they are. The name of this ship was
Esperanza
and there was never a ship quite as fine as she; bright and clean as a new-minted florin and still ringing from the hammers of the building docks at Coble. Everything about her was as new as ninepence, including her Master, and an apprentice sent from Trinity House to sail Cape Infinity under the staff of the Pilot. Two more different people than Master Roche and Apprentice Anelle you would be hard put to imagine, Fraser. Roche was a great heavy slug of a man; newly symbiosed and unable to do any wrong: his machineself was from an Admiralty warship crippled in a skirmish with Commonality privateers and his fleshself had been Chief Engineer on a decommissioned Company trader. A recipe, Fraser, for as boorish and insensitive a creature as ever aspired to the command of a star vessel.

Anelle was unlike him as black is white. Now, it’s not unusual as you might think to have woman Pilots, for no one can say where the gift of foursight will rest, but it’s said that for women and ships, where beauty leads sorrow always comes following, and Anelle was as beautiful as a Darkwinter’s night is long. There was never one as lively, as quick to learn and laugh, as Anelle, and of course the Pilot soon came to love her for her dark beauty. But it is not wise for any teacher to love his pupil too much. And if the Pilot came to love his apprentice, he also came to hate his Master, and this is why.

The advice of a Pilot is never to be taken lightly, as every shipmaster knows. All save Master Roche, who believed only in his own infallibility. To impress the Admiralty Selectors who had symbiosed him to this command he programmed his machineself to take
Esperanza
on the fastest, most direct course through Cape Infinity to the New South Georgia Colony. Now, all Pilots make their approach to Cape Infinity through the north or south spinpoles, which, though slow, is safe, and only a fool would attempt to take a ship straight through the accretion disc where the event density is so high as to render even foursight unreliable. But though the Pilot argued day in, day out, Master Roche would not be swayed, and as the navigational computers were not just under his command, but an actual part of him,
Esperanza
held her course into the heart of the black hole.

One day, after another futile debate which only set Pilot and Master further at odds, the Pilot stormed from the flight deck in search of Anelle, for these days only her brightness and kindness made living bearable for him. He stamped into her room in a dreadful humor, and then stopped, and stared. He should have been horrified, he should have retched and covered his eyes, he should have turned his back and run away through the miles and miles of corridors to the furthest parts of the ship. But he did none of this. All he did was stare. For Anelle turned to greet him, and her breast was open and within delicate mechanisms moved and molecular circuits oozed.

Then she told him that she was the first of the new race, that after a thousand years of study the machines had identified and isolated the phenomenon of foursight and had learned how to duplicate it artificially. So that no human should needlessly cast wind and limb to the sky again, they had built a new race of machines ready to step forward to take man’s place on word of Anelle’s success. She was a machine, and still the Pilot loved her.

Then the Pilot felt the whole million-ton bulk of ship and transport shudder beneath his feet and he knew that they had arrived at the black hole and now he must call the Master’s bluff. Reaching out with his foursight he beheld the rainbow ring of the accretion disc, and ordering short-sail, he took his ship down into the maelstrom. The buffets struck like the fist of God and
Esperanza
rolled and yawed like a pig, but he held her and the wind screamed into the singularity, seizing the ship like a glass float in a hurricane and driving her down that great gullet past shards of shattered planets, round gravitational whirlpools deep enough to drown whole worlds in.
Esperanza
plunged towards the shatter-point, and just as gravity reached out to smear her into a radio-stain on the thin edge of the accretion disc, the Pilot took her up and out and over and the ship howled across the face of that ring of solid ylem like every demon of Samhain Eve was after her soul, her way lit by insane neutron lightnings that crawled across the crust. Ahead lay the singularity and the sight of it awed every soul aboard into silence. Even Master Roche crawled from his cozy parlor to stare in wonder and horror, unaware that it was his foolishness and the Pilot’s arrogance that had brought them to this terrible place. But at the sight of him the Pilot felt the rage boil over inside him, and his concentration broke and his foursight vanished like a burst bubble.

Then it happened that a gobbet of unimaginably dense matter broke away from the accretion disc and spun into
Esperanza’s
path. So close to the horizon it was invisible to normal senses, and though it brushed
Esperanza
as soft as a butterfly’s kiss, that kiss swept away the portside arms and sails and crewmen in an instant. Worse, it threw
Esperanza
into a funeral orbit spiraling down to a final rendezvous with the Edge. Lacking enough sail to break free, the Pilot calculated that in less than an hour the ship would drop below the horizon and be lost. But if the crew could blast free from
Esperanza’s
hulk in the cargo modules, they could use the darksun’s momentum to fling them into the polar approaches and safety. All agreed that this was the only means of survival.

All save Master Roche. His mission would not be abandoned, his ship would be repaired using the automated systems of his machineself, passage would be effected and no dissent brooked. Twice he called for all hands to damage-control. Twice he was refused. A third time he ordered them, and, being refused a third time, turned to face the Pilot and ordered the men to arrest him. And the Pilot’s fury broke. With a cry he swung his silver-shod staff high and brought it down on Master Roche’s head. There was no doubt that he died then for everyone heard bone snap. For an instant they stood stunned at the thing the Pilot had done, and then hurried to save themselves before Roche’s machineself recovered from the death of his flesh.

But Anelle would not come. You see, Fraser, she was a machine and machines are not as free as you or I. The Pilot pleaded and begged and told her she would surely perish, but she thought not. Working at machine speeds, she could indeed repair
Esperanza
as Roche had maintained and return her to port.

Then the Pilot said that if she loved him she would come and at that she was sad-and said, “But I am not yours, Mr. Christian Pilot, that I am free to come. I must remain here where time runs out and centuries pass like seconds, but I will not forget you if you will not forget me. Look for me in the steely-bright flash of summer shooting stars or the winter-shadow of my sails across the moon, for one of these years I will return to you, I promise.” And with that she turned a joyful cartwheel across the flight deck and the Pilot went down to the waiting cargo module and never saw her face again.

Now, Fraser, they say there’s no sin in a man loving a machine, for all men agree that in love the outward form is of no consequence and many men have loved machines that are not even remotely human. But what if the machine loves him back?

And this is the second part of Christian’s story.

* * * *

Above the dirty skylight, wisps of blue are at last showing through the wet-cotton clouds where the gray rainkite keeps watch. You sit together in the airy space of a disused packing shed, each of you absorbed with your own thoughts. Christian’s fingers play over the bottom end of his staff, like a blind piper, over the place where there are no notchmarks. Who can tell what he is thinking? Your head is full of heroes and villains. Which was the Pilot? Hero, for playing the brave navigator saving his crew? or villain, for letting his stupidity get them into trouble in the first place? He killed his captain with one blow from his silver-shod staff; does that make him a hero or a villain? Villain in the eyes of the Law, but a hero to you, you decide.

Kicking your way home through the damp sand you find that the circle of your thoughts has brought you round to Christian’s caravan in the dunes. It looks old and shabby on this gray afternoon. Paint blisters are popping on the door panels and the steps are worn white with traffic, but there is really no better place for you to be with Christian’s story rattling round in your head. How nice it would be, you think, to have a Black Kite of your own to float on the edge of the world like one of your little driftwood dreadnoughts. And with that thought comes a terrible certainty of what you want to do, and you creep up the stairs into the caravan.

Its perfect blackness outshines any of the other gaudier kites. “Black as the Black Sun,” you whisper and reach out to take it, to feel an echo of that neutron lightning. Your fingers sink into the blackness, there is nothing there to touch. Startled, you jerk your hand away and the fabric comes with it. Stuck to your fingers, the black material tears silently.

Horror drives all the air out of you. It is like heaven has fallen. For a numb second you cannot breathe. You imagine Christian’s iron tread coming up the stairs, finding you as he found you that first time. You search for a place to hide the pieces of shredded kite but there is nowhere where Christian will not see the desecration.

In your ears is a tight singing like you are going to cry, but you dare not afford that luxury. You scoop up the Black Kite, its delicate ribs snapping like sparrow’s bones, and hide it under your raincoat. Ribbons of black nightmare trail from below the hem. You run from the caravan, run from the skewbald pony who is watching and knows, run all the way home as if Hell itself has opened up behind you.

* * * *

Now that you have had time to think about it, everything seems so very much worse. Of course it is only a matter of time until Christian finds his replacement Black Kite missing, and that makes you a thief, which is much much worse than a vandal. How you wish you had not taken the Black Kite, how you wish you had never touched it, how you wish you had never met Christian and his wretched kites! It is no use wishing now.

Consumed with dread, you sit by your bedroom window. Downstairs you can hear the faraway, safe sounds of the patrons making merry. You can clearly pick out Da’s voice and the cheeky step-a-jig of brother’s mandocello. The binoculars are by your hand on the windowsill. You could pick them up and see if Christian is still flying the first Black Kite, but you are afraid that if you do you will see only empty sky. The wind is rising, quarreling round the rooftiles, but you daren’t look out to watch it. And you daren’t look under the bed either, for there you have hidden the splinters of kite.

The later it gets the more the fear grows. What if Christian already knows what you’ve done through foursight? Will he then forgive, or is he preparing some punishment too dreadful even to think about? Hero, or villain? There is no doubt about which role you play. You wrap your quilt around you and wish wish wish that this night was over.

Tomorrow you will explain. You will take the kite and tell him it was an accident, and you won’t mind what he does because anything,
anything
, is better than this waiting in fear. Firm with resolution, at last you slide into a shallow, dream-ridden sleep.

The tapping wakes you. The wind is really wild now, snatching at the guttering and beating the pear trees in the garden together. Lashing branches and storm-driven clouds racing through the twilight throw crazy, scary shadows over the carpet. For a moment terror holds you, because you think that he has stepped out of your dream into the world of shapes and substances. Then you listen. The inn is quiet. It is well past even the unofficial closing time, but there is this tap, tap, tap; clearly audible over the shrieking of the storm, like a little winter-blighted bird seeking entrance at the window. You turn to look, and there it is.