The Novels of the Jaran (279 page)

She paused. Benjamin was still eating, spearing broccoli with neat stabs, and Florien was on comm duty on the bridge. Moshe sat with chin propped on hands staring dreamily at the opposite wall, as if he could read a secret message in the swirling wood grain.

“I don’t truly understand what this means, a
singularity.
Is this something that exists already? Or is it created?”

“In the early days of expansion, after humans met the Chapalii and before the Chapalii coopted the League into their Empire, there was a great deal of debate on that very point. As soon as the League was subsumed in the empire, though, the Protocol Office put an end to public debate.”

“They said it was ‘unseemly,’ ” said Rachelle sarcastically.

“Which means the debate goes on in private,” added Branwen. “Which means there’s no consensus yet. Do the relay stations create the singularities? Can technology do something that massive?”

“It can’t only if we suppose that technology is limited to what we understand of it,” interposed Summer.

“Or are the relay stations just set up to take advantage of singularities that already exist, that have been mapped? If that’s the case, are there singularities out there that the Chapalii might not have mapped which we can use, to get around them? Because they control the shipping routes, with the proverbial iron hand. Well, it’s not something that any of us but Florien sit up nights worrying about.”

“Oh, I do,” said Benjamin, a forkful of sautéed onions poised just beyond his lips. “If I could figure it out, I’d be rich.”

Rachelle snorted.

“So have you scouted no other routes in Chapalii space?” Anatoly asked.

“We
can’t
,” replied Branwen. “We’d certainly like to. I don’t know how much you know of the history of the League and the Chapalii, but until the elevation of Charles Soerensen to the dukedom, no humans had been allowed to pass beyond the boundaries of League space at all. He was the first human to set foot on Chapal, when he went to be invested before the emperor.”

“Actually everyone thought he was being taken there to be executed, after he led the failed rebellion against the Empire,” said Rachelle. “Imagine the surprise when he returned as a duke.”

Anatoly tried to imagine this, but could not. In fact, a wise ruler knows that it is not enough just to conquer and kill; those conquered—the right ones, chosen carefully—must be given a stake in the Empire so that it becomes in their interest to help maintain the peace. That had been part of Bakhtiian’s strategy all along.

Florien’s voice leapt out of the console embedded in the center of the table. “We have clearance to cross over. Window at oh nine forty.”

“Shit!” swore Rachelle. “That’s in only thirty minutes and I wanted to take a shower.” She jumped up and raced out of the room.

“She’ll take one anyway,” groused Benjamin. “We can’t be leaving already. There’s a consignment of flower rubies I’ve been bargaining for down at Viery Market. They’ll be gone by the time we get back.”

Branwen had already stood and was efficiently clearing her utensils and plate away, stowing them in the sonic cleaner. “Summer, get the hatch cleared. Benjamin, you’re going to have to do a quick run around the ship and make sure everything is batted down. Moshe—”

“We never got this short a notice before,” said the boy, coming out of his reverie.

“Help Summer with the hatches. Anatoly, uh, probably if you’ll clean up here and then come up to the bridge, that would be the best place for you.”

He nodded and began stacking plates. It was not, truly, a man’s job, but he had long since discovered that the khaja of League space did not have as strict a sense of order as the jaran did, knowing which duties belonged to which people, which was no doubt why the Chapalii Empire had been able to absorb them so easily. Finishing, he sealed all the cabinets closed and secured the chairs to the table, and then pulled himself up two flights of ladder to the bridge. Here, at about half gravity, all his movements felt awkward, although he had seen Branwen and Rachelle take leaps and bounds and spins when the yacht was in its brief periods of freefall that left him breathless or nauseated. The other two men, like him, seemed more bound to gravity.

Six crash seats ringed the bronze access tube that ran the length of the ship, from the prow all the way down to the engines. He strapped into the seat that faced the courtesy screen, as Rachelle called it: a big screen that gave the appearance of being a window onto the outside, although of course it was merely a projection. Rachelle, hair bound back in a complicated braid, was there before him. She sealed herself into her pilot’s chair, a contraption that covered her hands, and an oversized visor curled out to cover her eyes. Branwen sat in the captain’s chair, her fingers flying over a numerical keypad, mouth lifted in a half smile that Anatoly recognized as intent concentration. Other than the faint clacking of her fingers on the pad and the hollow thrum rising up the access tube like a distant heartbeat, the bridge was silent. Florien turned, saw Anatoly, and flipped the comm onto the open speakers, another courtesy which Anatoly appreciated.

“Hatches secured,” said Summer over the comm. As if in response the station controller said, “You are clear to detach.”

“All hands secure,” said Branwen without looking away from the keypad and whatever the screen embedded in her chair’s arm told her.

One by one, all hands reported in: Rachelle (sounding preoccupied), Florien, Summer, Benjamin (sounding irritated about his lost deal), and Moshe. Last, with a start, Anatoly remembered that he had to report in as well.

“Secure,” he said, a little embarrassed. Branwen glanced up at him and flashed him a swift, sweet smile, reassuring, before she went back to her calculations.

“Detach commenced. Accomplished.”

“Heading mark two seven eight,” said Branwen. From the depths of her chair Rachelle responded with a word that sounded more like a click, or else a word in a very strange language. They continued to trade numbers as the yacht backed away from Crossover Station, banked, and headed out to the point where they would rendezvous with the window—with the
singularity
, Anatoly corrected himself. It was the one element of travel across the oceans of space that he had yet to get used to: For that instant, which was not an instant, going through the window, he had a notion that he ceased to exist or that he was somehow thrown into a different time. Sometimes he would see brief visions, a memory from his childhood or from a battle, or catch a remembered scent, the stench of a spoiled water hole or the perfume of grass, or he would feel the touch of a spear biting into his thigh or the touch of his wife brushing a finger down his chest. As he considered this mystery, the
Gray Raven
passed imperceptibly into the singularity.

Genji walks toward him down a corridor filled with light. Her robes fill the passageway with a sound like the laughter of wind through dense leaves.

He was back on the bridge, straining against the straps, broken out in a sweat. She had been watching him. He would swear to it. Only, how could she? It was impossible, of course. It was only a vision induced by the singularity. Wiping his brow, he glanced around the bridge, but neither Branwen nor Florien paid him any mind, and Rachelle, of course, was enveloped by her chair.

A rush of alien words spilled out over the comm. On the screen, Anatoly saw a distant blue-white sun and the graceful red curve of a planet and, closer, winking lights floating in a geometric pattern, marking some kind of station.

“Damn,” said Florien. “The translation program hit the standard loop again. Has Benjamin been playing around with it?”

“I’ll go real-time,” said Branwen. “Signal me when you’ve got it running.” She began to speak in standard Chapalii. Her pronunciation was rough, but the phrases slipped off her tongue easily enough, standard phrases that any human could learn. “This is Hao Branwen Emrys, of the
Gray Raven
, daiga class ship under the protection of the Tai-en Charles Soerensen. Request coordinates for the next vector.”

The station remained silent for some time. By the time the alien controller replied, Florien had the translator fixed. The voice came out in a tinny monotone.

“Your registration notice is in order. No protocol request has been filed in advance.”

“We are bound for Chapal, under the protection of the Tai-en Charles Soerensen, this journey authorized by the voice of the Tai-en Naroshi Toraokii. Sending clearance code now.”

After another pause, the voice returned. “What road do you request permission to enter?”

“The Mirror Road, bound for Paladia Minor.”

“No,” said Anatoly suddenly. “We want the swiftest road for Chapal.”

Branwen and Florien swiveled around to stare at him. Rachelle, of course, could not, but he heard her mutter something under her breath, and her neck—all that was visible of her—tensed.

“Who countermands the authority of the Tai-en Naroshi Toraokii?”

“I am Anatoly Sakhalin, prince of the Sakhalin tribe. I countermand this order. I am on my way to see the emperor, and I wish to reach him quickly.”

“Merde!” said Florien. “I’m getting a flood of coordinates.”

Branwen hunched down over her screen. “I’ve never seen any of these before. These are nothing like our usual coordinates.”

“We’re being given priority to go through.” Florien’s voice shook.

“Rachelle, are you on it?”

“I’m ready.”

They traded numbers back and forth and the ship moved on, leaving the geometric pattern of lights behind as it arced around the gilded line, as round as a cupped hand, that marked the planet against the heavens.

They broke past the singularity. Anatoly smelled smoke, sharp on a winter’s wind, and then it was gone.

“Fucking bloody hells,” said Rachelle, her voice muffled through the visor. “I’ve never seen this place before.”

“New stream of coordinates coming in,” said Florien. “They didn’t even ask for identification.”

“And he does dishes, too,” said Rachelle.

“All hands,” announced Branwen, keying into the shipboard link, “we’ve got clearance to go forward. We’ll take this next window, but then we’re breaking to check for stress on the hull.”

They took the next window and at once the Chapalii station control fed them a new set of vector coordinates. No one had the slightest idea of where they were, but Branwen set the modeller onto a search program and by the time they’d checked the ship twice and all had a sleepshift and a shower and a meal, she had found three probable locations.

“Based on the maps we have,” she said to the crew, who were gathered in the galley over a breakfast of aebleskiver and fresh raspberry jam, “we’re either way the hell beyond Imperial space or else sitting pretty more than halfway to Chapal.”

“Ship’s chart says it takes about forty Earth days to reach Paladia Minor,” said Anatoly. “By the standard route.”

They all looked at him. “It does,” said Branwen finally. “If there are no delays, which means, where we stand in the queue and how heavy the traffic is that week, and if no other more important ship gets priority.”

“Only now,” said Rachelle, “we’re the ones cutting to the front of the line.”

“Anyway,” added Branwen, giving him
that
look again, the one they were all giving him, as if he had suddenly turned zayinu in front of their eyes when they thought he had been human all along, “this is clearly not the standard route. No bets now on how long it’s going to take.”

“Twenty days,” said Benjamin. “Bet it cuts the journey in half.” There were no takers.

They reached Chapal three days later. Not the Paladias, which were, according to Branwen and to the navigation charts, the access routes into Chapal. The
only
access routes, according to what humans knew, their best intelligence gathered by Soerensen’s people and the
Gray Raven
itself.

They just winked into the system within long range scanning range of Chapal, climbing at a steep rate so that their velocity altered perceptibly as they passed through into the ecliptic. Alarms went off all over the yacht. The steepness of the climb pressed Anatoly deep into the cushion of his crash seat and then, shifting hard, flung him against the straps. Bile rose in his throat, but he kept it down. The others on the bridge—that meant all of them, except for Florien down in the damping bay to keep a close watch on the engine fields—took it in stride, but they were experienced spacers.

Rachelle swore colorfully under her visor. “Cutting it close, aren’t they? What is this—?”

She broke off.

No one spoke.

“Holy Tits,” said Summer. “That’s Chapal. No other planet’s got that porcelain gleam.”

“Lock these files,” said Branwen in a low voice, “and save them with access only to the crew, and to Soerensen.” She glanced back at Anatoly. “And Sakhalin,” she added, as if on an afterthought. She looked wan.

“Do you know how much this information is
worth
?” said Benjamin on a rising arc.

“Your life,” snapped Branwen. “It shouldn’t be possible to get here that fast.”

Hard on her comment, the comm snapped to life. Chapalii poured out, a stream of words gushing into the sudden silence on the bridge.

“Translation program isn’t picking this up,” said Summer. “It keeps bleeping unreadable.”

“Oh, damn, it must be formal court Chapalii or something,” muttered Branwen. “We’re not allowed to translate that into our primitive tongue. It isn’t seemly.”

The words kept coming, a flood, rising.

“This is Anatoly Sakhalin,” said Anatoly into the air. “Speak Anglais, which is the language I understand.”

The words ceased.

Then, awkwardly, a voice—not filtered through a translation program—spoke in Anglais, vowels clipped and consonants rounded in an alien fashion.

“Prince of the Sakhalin, a transport is sent for you, most honorable.”

“I’ve got incoming,” said Summer at the tracking console. “On screen.”

The ship that flowered into view was no bigger than the
Gray Raven
, according to the stats that scrolled underneath the screen: estimated volume, mass, length. She was atmosphereworthy, Anatoly was fairly sure, because of her sleek line and trim curves. Otherwise she was fairly ordinary. He unstrapped and rose, somewhat unsteadily, to his feet, but luckily no one was looking. They were all staring at the ship.