Rhapsody in Black (3 page)

‘The galactic rim.'

Call it what you will.

All this merry chit-chat, of course, wasn't getting us any place. But it was helping to reduce my burden of fatigue. To look at the world with a kindlier eye is to be no less a realist, but serves to make fearsome the possibilities of failure and doom.

I suppose that I could even become amenable to the hardness of my fortune, if it wasn't for the delight which Charlot took in keeping me firmly under his thumb. And also for the lunatic notions which he used as chessboards on which to push his pawns. Like recovering the
Lost Star
treasure from the heart of the Halcyon Drift.

And, in all likelihood, like the present jaunt.

Picking up Splinterdrift on Attalus, and giving them a free ride home....

I hated Attalus.

It was always foggy on Attalus.

I really don't know how they ever came to build a major spaceport on a world so blatantly useless. Certainly not in order that it should become a home from home for refugees from God's Nine Splinters.

Probably it was because Attalus's star was practically cheek to cheek with Fomalhaut. Because they were visible targets, early starships had a tendency to head for stars that looked bright and beautiful in the dilute skies of Mother Earth.

Colonies thus tended to spring up in such regions, even if said stars were no great shakes from the point of view of utility, and pretty run-of-the-mill by transgalactic standards. The first spacemen, of course, didn't
have
transgalactic standards, but that doesn't wholly explain a blithe disregard for economic convenience.

In any case, Attalus survived by virtue of long establishment and a little extra effort. And, by pure coincidence, it did happen to be rather close to the system where the Church of the Exclusive Reward established God's Nine Splinters. Even Attalus couldn't be described as convenient, because the Splintermen had deliberately tucked themselves out of the way, but it was near enough to be the jumping-off point for exiles, and the transit station for such ships as ever did go that way.

The Attalians accepted as a matter of course that they were the middlemen between the Splinters and Civilisation. As a trade route, it was virtually useless, but on worlds whose continued success is fairly fragile, everybody has to count the last cent and a half. Every little helps.

I was in a damp mood anyway, when I set the
Swan
down on Attalus field, and my state of mind grew progressively worse as I saw the fog, the port and the hotel, in that order. I'd been commanded out here without a word of explanation, and to make things twice as unbearable, Titus Charlot had come along in person. This was his private mission, and couldn't be trusted to agents and hirelings. Especially not after what had happened with regard to the
Lost Star
.

Charlot hadn't stopped seething yet over that little matter. It didn't show in his general conduct—especially not where Nick delArco and Eve were concerned—but I detected the occasional edge to his voice and glint in his eyes when he addressed himself to me.

Even at his best, he was never the life and soul of anybody's party. With that memory and its attendant suspicions still rankling in his brain, he was a real bastard. The others managed to get along with him, with the possible exception of Nick, who—as captain of the
Swan
—felt the heaviness of his presence on board rather more than Eve or Johnny. But I found his standing beside me while I rode the bird to be a considerable annoyance. He didn't care. He had no interest in owning a happy ship. He just wanted a crew that he could manipulate to his own ends, and one that he could be seen to manipulate. A vain man, was Titus Charlot.

I'd warned Eve and Nick and Johnny before we even lifted for Attalus that they'd be better off working for someone else. But no matter how much better off they might be out of it, they were hanging onto the
Hooded Swan
. It made sense, in its way. There wasn't yet another ship in the galaxy that was anything like her, and they were all as close to her, each in his/her own way, as I was.

Nick had built the
Hooded Swan
. He had got the contract to turn an idea and a set of drawings and a mound of computer printout into an entity of matter and energy, a living being with a soul. And then they had offered him another contract—this one to become her captain. How could he have refused? How could he back out?

And in her pretty belly, the
Swan
carried Johnny's first baby. His engine. His drive-unit. Rothgar had taught him how to feed it and fondle it and clean it and attend faithfully to its every need and whim, but now it was all his. He and he alone was pacemaker to the heart of the most beautiful ship that ever flew. He couldn't give it up. He wasn't Rothgar, to absorb the whole experience in one trip and then need no more of it for it to be with him forever. Johnny was only a boy. No experience, no rank. Apart from the
Hooded Swan
, he was a nothing. Wild horses, as they say, couldn't have dragged him away.

Eve's reasons were somewhat more subtle. Difficult to see and difficult to understand. There was something odd between Eve and her brother, despite the fact that she hadn't seen him since she was a child. When I'd brought home news of her brother's death, she'd transferred some part of that relationship to me. It was nothing so crude and vulgar as being in love with me. In a sense, it was as though I were Lapthorn's ghost. I was nothing like Michael Lapthorn, of course—we could hardly have been more different. But she didn't know that. To her, I was her brother's hero, her brother's partner- all that was left, in fact, of her brother. (In actual fact, she was much closer to being Lapthorn's ghost than I was. The facial similarity was no more than one would usually expect between siblings, but I could sense in her a weird echo of Lapthorn's
hunger
—his greed for experience and his insatiability.)

And Eve had an extra reason, above and beyond wanting to stick close to me. She too was a pilot. She had her own hood and her own electroplates stowed somewhere aboard the ship. She had ridden the bird—in atmosphere only—on her initial test series. She was enough of a pilot to know that I was a damn sight better one, but she was also enough of a pilot to love this ship, forsaking all others. Steering a flying tin can was no way to live once you'd actually felt the
Swan
's wings in your fingers, and her heart inside your body.

So we were all stuck with the ship, for one reason or another. My reasons, of course, were simplest of all. Titus Charlot had legal title to a two-year lease on my soul. I was in no position to argue. Quite apart from that, the
Hooded Swan
was the best ship in existence. I was the best pilot. We deserved one another.

The four of us who were the crew on the
Swan
were mismatched, though. We had started out on a note of falseness and mistrust, but eventually we were forced into coexistence and mutual tolerance, so that wasn't the reason. I'm not quite sure what the real reason was. It could simply be that we were out of one another's contexts—that our personal interactions weren't aligned with our status aboard the ship. Nick delArco, for instance, was a nice guy, but he couldn't command a rowing boat. He was too soft and he knew next to nothing about deep space. He was a counterfeit captain, strings pulled courtesy of Titus Charlot. I had no beef with him whatsoever as an acquaintance or as a shipbuilder, but as an immediate boss, in between me and Charlot, he was an unnecessary embarrassment.

And so, for that matter, was Eve. I didn't want an understudy aboard any ship of mine, especially not one who thought I was the shade of her long-lost brother.

Johnny, I guess, would have been perfectly OK in any other crew. Nobody had anything against Johnny. But he tried too hard. He was always trying to push people the way he thought they ought to go. He reacted too hard. He admired delArco far too much, he was infatuated with Eve, and his picture of me was far too good to be true.

The whole set-up was a mess.

Charlot's intellectual speciality was mixing, blending, sorting, separating and using. He was a perfect New Alexandrian. We were as much his toys as were his computer programmes and his beloved syntheses of alien intellects.

My first thought, when we were ordered to Attalus, was that he had found some new toys to provide him with a temporary diversion. That impression seemed to be confirmed when the first thing he did, after landfall, was to search out the current head man among the exiles from God's Nine Splinters.

That man was Rion Mavra. Charlot introduced us to him, but didn't explain what he wanted with Splinterdrift. At that point, he probably hadn't explained to Mavra either. We also met several other examples of the Splinter culture at the same time, including Mavra's wife, Cyclide, and his cousin, Cyolus Capra. There was no hint of any warmness in any of the greetings. You'd think that the exiles would be grateful for someone seeking them out and talking to them. After all, they'd been kicked off their home world onto an under-populated, rather unpleasant world which might tolerate them, but certainly wouldn't make them welcome.

But the exiles remained cold and distant, trying to demonstrate that they were a considerable way above such considerations as loneliness. They seemed pleased to be able to withdraw from our company as soon as the formalities were over, but Charlot made arrangements to talk to them all again in the near future.

Then we went
our
way, to the hotel.

‘Well,' said Charlot, as we walked through the fog-bound streets, ‘what do you think of them?'

I think the remark was addressed to delArco, but Nick wasn't paying attention, so it was me who answered. ‘What are we supposed to think? You haven't told us what's going on yet.'

He laughed gently. We reached the door of the hotel, and went through into the warmth and light. I was in urgent need of the customary shower and change of clothes after three days in the cradle, but Charlot obviously wanted to talk to us before going to his arranged meeting with Mavra and his companions. He ushered us into the lounge, and we seated ourselves around a low table. Nick ordered us some drinks.

‘Rion Mavra comes from Rhapsody,' said Charlot.

‘And that's where we're going?' asked Nick.

‘That's right.' He turned to me. ‘Have you ever been to the Splinters?'

‘No,' I replied. ‘By all accounts they aren't worth a visit. Besides, the principle of Let Well Alone operates.'

‘The principle of Let Well Alone doesn't operate,' said Charlot. ‘It merely exists. A ridiculous institution.'

‘It's worth taking notice of,' I told him. ‘It isn't applied without reason.'

‘It is applied purely and simply to help maintain the fiction that the Law of New Rome has some kind of universal validity and jurisdiction. Anywhere which refuses point-blank to pay even lip service to the Law is labelled “Let Well Alone”, on the grounds that any citizen of the galaxy is beyond the protection of the Law on such a world. But you, of all people, should know how little protection the Law offers to anyone on any world outside the core. The principle of Let Well Alone is a tourist guide, nothing more.'

‘Any world,' I said, ‘which refuses to accept even the spirit of the Law of New Rome is
ipso facto
dangerous.'

‘The Splinters reject everything which is offered to them or asked of them, by the galaxy. They're an isolationist group. But they're a religious community. Certainly not lawless.'

‘It doesn't necessarily follow,' I persisted. Not that I really thought that Rhapsody was a hotbed of murder and rape, of course. I just didn't particularly want to go there.

Charlot knew I didn't have any real quarrel, so he pressed on.

‘We will probably have passengers,' he said, ‘and time is very much of the essence. We must make Rhapsody in the least possible time. Luckily, there is no other ship on Attalus capable of making the trip.'

‘There's a fast yacht out on the tarpol,' Johnny interrupted.

‘No good,' I said. ‘Rhapsody's in the hyoplasm of a blue giant. There's not much distortion there, but the radiation and the gravity prevent p-shifters from operating. Only ramrods can reach the surface-lock.'

‘Surface-lock?'

Charlot took over again. ‘Rhapsody has only an internal atmosphere. Its towns are built in several subterranean labyrinths. There is nothing on the surface at all. It would be as easy to live on Mercury.' Johnny was Earthborn, so he understood the allusion.

‘As Grainger says,' continued Charlot, ‘only ramrods are equipped to make landfall on Rhapsody. The solar hyoplasm has no effect upon the mass-relaxation drive, and they carry enough shielding to withstand the radiation. But ramrods are very slow, and there's only one within twenty light-years of her.'

‘Where?' I interposed, already having a sneaking suspicion.

‘By now,' he said, ‘it's probably on Rhapsody. That's why time is of the essence. The ramrod probably took several days to make a landfall, but it had a considerable start. We must make the trip in a matter of hours.'

‘Can we?' asked Nick.

‘Easy,' I told him. ‘No distortion, no trouble. These close-orbit worlds always look difficult, but there's no real trouble involved. Bright light and a big pull aren't going to bother the
Swan
.'

‘We shall have no difficulty getting there,' said Charlot, in a tone which suggested that he didn't expect much difficulty once we were there, either.

‘What are we going there
for
?' I asked tiredly.

He settled himself in his chair, preparatory to delivering a lengthy discourse. I sighed. The answer was obviously going to be buried in a lecture. If, that is, he bothered with the answer at all.

‘God's Nine Splinters,' he said, ‘were colonised by a religious sect known as the Church of the Exclusive Reward. Their faith is fundamentally anti-Monadist, and during the Monadist resurgence some two centuries ago, they decided that the only way to their own unique salvation was via isolation from the morally polluted galaxy. Their faith stresses the necessity of hardship and struggle for existence, if the Exclusive Reward which they seek is to be attained. Hence they chose for their colonies the nine worlds which were associated with two unstable and unfriendly suns. Not one of those worlds is really fit for human habitation. And they're about as isolated from the rest of the galaxy as it is possible to be without going out beyond the rim. The nine worlds are Ecstasy, Modesty, Rhapsody, Felicity, Fidelity, Sanctity, Harmony, Serenity and Vitality.