The New Space Opera 2 (49 page)

~Make yourselves ready, Pilot Candidates.~

They spread out on the platform, all hundred and seventy-three of them, separating by psychological more than physical distance: they were on their own.

Finally, Graduation.

All the years of childhood—his first decade spent on a human world,
then the joy of Labyrinth, all the more wondrous for his realspace beginnings—and the growing sense of purpose, the internalizing of discipline, the sense of destiny in life: a rush of memories cascaded through Carl, poignant, making him want to cry.

I can't face this.

High up on the Great Shield, one of the scallop shapes moved.

Too late.

Graduation was starting, and the possibility of running was gone. He could only watch as a white frosty ribbon-path extended from the scallop-door, meandering snake-like toward the platform. It touched, then shivered into stillness.

No one moved.

~Pilot Candidate Ruis Delgado, step forward.~

A slight-looking Pilot Candidate took a step, paused, then walked to the platform's edge.

~Rise and be judged.~

One more pace took him onto the ribbon-path. It began to flow, bearing him upward to the retracting scallop-door. Far off to one side, a giant holo grew, granting everyone a close-up view of Delgado's progress.

He reached the opened doorway and stepped through. Inside was a great pale hangar, and, in the holo, everyone could see what hung there: a ship, purple and cobalt-blue, richly colored and strong.

No one applauded yet.

Tiny beneath the ship, Delgado walked beneath her and held up his hands. When he touched the hull, the ship quivered. Delgado bowed his head.

Then a carry-tendril snaked down from the ship, wrapped around his waist, and lifted him up. On top, the tendril lowered him through the dorsal opening into the Pilot's cabin, onto the control couch he was born to occupy.

As the tendril retracted and the hull sealed up, the Pilots cheered. Applause washed around the great space, echoing in the chill air as the scallop-door closed. Now the holo showed the purple-and-blue ship rising, turning, then flying along a blue-lined tunnel through Ascension Annex.

The watching Pilots quietened.

When the new ship burst out into golden mu-space, everybody roared. Delgado's maiden flight was a triumph. He soared off toward a crimson nebula that shone against a backdrop of black fractal stars: a destination of his choosing.

The holo faded to transparency, a waiting ripple in the air. One hundred and seventy-two candidates breathed out, trying to calm themselves. Some blinked away tears. Delgado's ship had looked strong, capable. A good start.

~Pilot Candidate Adam Kirov, step forward.~

This time the ribbon-path came from low down on the Great Shield.

~Rise and be judged.~

It carried Kirov to the hangar. The waiting vessel was long and bronze, ringed with shining green. When Kirov touched the hull, he tipped his head back and laughed, a joyous sound replayed and magnified from the giant holo's audio. Once more the Pilots cheered and clapped as the ship took Kirov inside. Within a minute, they had burst out of Labyrinth, aimed at a black star, and soared away.

~Pilot Candidate Helena Tchahl, step forward.~

Carl didn't know her. She was wearing a brown tunic with yellow panels, so there was quiet acceptance when a ribbon-path carried her to a bay that turned out to be empty.

~No ship. This candidate has a different path to follow.~

The ribbon-path took her back down, to a platform floating off to one side. Where the losers waited. Tchahl lowered her head, and Carl thought she might be crying, even though her colors indicated that life on a realspace world was what she wanted.

I wish I wasn't wearing black.

There was no escaping humiliation now.

~Pilot Candidate Riley O'Mara, step forward.~

Carl whispered: “Good luck.”

Riley walked onto the ribbon-path, tensing his shoulders. He looked strong as the path's flow took him to an opening hangar where a bronze-and-steel ship waited. Tears glistened even as he grinned.

I can't do this.

Soon, Riley had flown out of the floating city, disappearing into golden void. One more triumph.

I really can't.

Somehow Carl remained standing while thirty-one more candidates—he counted—were carried to bays. Twenty-nine of them gained ships. The other two joined Tchahl on the losers' platform. Shipless Pilots.

~Pilot Candidate Carl Blackstone, step forward.~

The waiting path was sparkling white from luminescence and from the blurring of Carl's eyes, peripheral vision darkening under stress. Blood-
rush washed in his ears. It was hard to remain steady as the path began to flow, carrying him over the chasm, up to the Great Shield where shame was waiting.

A scallop-door retracted to reveal an empty bay.

This is awful.

He looked back, unable to make out faces, just patches of color.

~No ship. This candidate has a different path to follow.~

Then the ribbon-path bore him down to the platform where Tchahl and the other failures waited. Shaking, he took his place, trying to accept what was happening. Worse than expected, and he'd known it would be bad.

He looked up only twice: once when Soo Lin gained his ship, a bronze-and-turquoise vessel with bold curves; again when Marina rose for judgment.

In the holo, her face was radiant, and no wonder. Her ship was of sweeping silver, a strong yet elegant flower, a spreading teardrop with no need for the usual delta-wings. For such a striking ship to have grown in Ascension Annex, her Pilot must be a person of unusual talent.

Carl had always known Marina was special.

Applause began even before the ship took her inside. Then she was soaring through a tunnel to golden space, launching into fractal infinity, heading for Mandelbrot Nebula: the boldest choice for a maiden flight. The cheering lasted after the holo faded.

On the losers' platform, Carl began to cry.

 

He drifts in golden sleep.

One of the neurolinguistics instructors, back when Carl was an Academy student with years to go before humiliation, talked about yawning, the way that yawning was an interesting phenomenon, although it tired some people as it made them want to yawn now when they thought about—

Carl had been the first to laugh, fighting down the yawn that everyone was starting to manifest. A holoscan had flared—tuned to Soo Lin—showing activity in the left cortex, orchestrated with the voice- and semantic-processing centers of the right hemisphere. And it had delineated the changing neurology—in the precuneus nucleus and anterior cingulate—that forms the basis of hypnosis, because the instructor had used subtle tonality to slip mesmeric suggestions into his voice.

Now, though Carl is asleep, his hand is rising.

Some part of him is aware of golden light flooding his surroundings, passing through everything, while his sense of time vibrates to the possibility of fractal flow. There is no place he can be except mu-space. His hand is almost at the delta-band—

No!

—when everything grows cold, and his hand drops back. The ship is plunging into realspace. He has missed his chance.

Someone powers off the delta-band and pulls it from his forehead. “Ugh.” He squints, trying to focus. “Where—? Ugh.”

“Where are we?” It sounds like the father of the family. “What kind of ship is this?”

Carl pushes himself up, puts one foot on the floor, ready to stand, then decides to stay where he is. Flowmetal walls have configured into a row of nozzles: the business end of smasers. Coherent smartatoms can tear through anything.

An invisible smartmiasma would be even deadlier, but less intimidating. Then again, this has to be a Zajinet ship, and their understanding of psychology is hard to judge.

A short laugh sounds from Carl's left. Scarface is sitting up, staring at Xala.

“This ain't no scheduled stop,” he says. “This is a robbery.”

Xala stares back, her face impassive. But her motile tattoos are scrolling across her scalp with agitated speed.

“No robbery,” she says. “We have a little problem.”

The other false priests are also sitting, making no attempt to leave their couches. They've seen the smasers. Luckily, the children are still asleep. Xala has removed the delta-bands only from the adults.

“It's the Pilots, isn't it?” moans the kids' father.

“Say what?”

“They're coming to get us, to blow us out of—”

“Oh, shut up,” says Xala. “Someone here isn't who they claim to be.”

Among the “priests,” only Graybeard appears calm, his brown eyes tranquil, as if in prayer. The others look ready for violence.

“Look, sister,” says Scarface. “Just 'cause we have the collars and all, doesn't mean we're really pretending to—”

“One of you isn't quite human.”

Oh, shit.

How can they know? Did they see his hand rise under autohypnotic suggestion while he was deep in coma?

I can't move faster than a smaser beam.

If they want him to die, he's going to. Today, now, with memories of humiliation refreshed in his mind by the sight of Marina in Fairwell Rotunda. Churning waves of acid shift inside him, a neurochemical tide, a certainty of ending.

He might as well try something.

Now.

He is ready to move, but Graybeard appears to flicker among dark shadows and then he's behind Xala, one hand cupping her chin, the other at the back of her neck. She is between him and the row of nozzles. The delta-bands lie at her feet.

“Bad mistake.” Graybeard's voice is gentle. “Threatening your passengers.”

“Too right.” Scarface swings his feet to the deck. “We ought to—”

“Stay where you are,” says Graybeard.

Scarface holds himself still. So does Carl.

Not me. She didn't mean me.

The false priests have also frozen. They're professionals, trying to assess the tactical situation.

“Mmph.”

“No need to speak, sweetheart.” Graybeard tightens his grip on Xala. “I'm talking to your masters. I
feel
you out there, you bastards.”

For a second, shards of darkness appear to revolve through the air, then nothing. What the hell is happening?

There is an awful calmness in Graybeard's voice.

“Change of plans,” he says to Scarface. “We're going to drop off as before, but a different place, and you're not coming with me.”

“Bug out?”

“Back to Molsin, then your individual routes, which I don't want to know. They're not compromised.”

“But we—”

“And you've already been paid,” says Graybeard. “Check now, if you like.”

Xala's skin is white where his fingers are digging around her mouth. He backs away, pulling her with him, until they're standing beside something on the deck. The case he was carrying earlier.

One of the fake priests examines a financial holovolume, nodding.

“It's all there.”

Behind him, the flowmetal wall begins to split and curl apart. He steps
aside. In the opening, a fiery lattice of red light is floating. Beside it, what appears to be a mass of blue sand, about the same size, stands on the deck.

They are Zajinets. The glowing lattice is their natural form. Sometimes they clothe themselves in matter: gravel, sand, organic material. The red entity begins to pulse, which may be a sign of emotion; but with Zajinets, nobody knows.

“You both came,” says Graybeard. “That's nice.”

<<
Darkness will not flee
.>>

<<
Weak agents so we do not care
.>>

<<
Strength in coherence
.>>

<<
Beware the light
.>>

The quadruple communication comes from the unclothed Zajinet, though how Carl knows this, and how he can hear the words which are not truly sound, he has no idea. Each Zajinet mind is a quantum superposition of overlaying neural plexi—or so the theory goes. He never expected to meet one in person.

Every conflict between Zajinets and Pilots has been short-lived, no matter how violent. No one knows what to make of that.

“I think you're bluffing.” Graybeard squeezes Xala. “I think you do care about her.”

Carl blinks.

He understands it?

This may be the strangest thing to have happened today. What did Xala say?
One of you isn't quite human
. And the subject of her sentence turns out to be Graybeard.

Those shards of darkness, a shift in nothingness…a motion of
absence
. Right now, Graybeard looks like an ordinary person, but it's some kind of facade.

Xala's scalp tattoos are writhing. Her eyes are bulging.

You know the lightning
.

It's a memory, the voice of one of his instructors.

You know how fast it moves
.

The words can trigger behavior laid down below the conscious level, in the amygdala where the brain reacts at speed.

Become the lightning
.

It's time to move. Carl shifts forward just as Graybeard's tu-ring flares red, and the shining Zajinet's lattice-form is tugged as if caught on a hook.

Carl pulls himself back.

“You'll drop me off at a location you know well,” Graybeard tells the Zajinets. “And you'll do it for your own sakes as well as the woman's.”

Just for a second, there appears to be a redness in the air.

<<
Entanglement is mutual
.>>

<<
Beware beware beware
.>>

<<
Agree to projection
.>>

<<
Severance or mutual death
.>>

Graybeard smiles.