Transcendental (7 page)

The galactics relaxed.

“Tell me how you chose him,” Riley said.

“Some choices are not choices,” the weasel said in his characteristic whine.

“So obvious they require no thought?”

“These persons have learned to live in peace by thinking clearly.”

Riley again felt surprised at the eloquence of the alien, so different from the lingua galatica pidgin he had grown used to. Either the aliens were becoming more adept or his pedia was becoming more skillful as examples accumulated; or perhaps the aliens had been concealing their sophistication behind a pretense of patois. “Without emotion?” he asked.

“With logic.”

“Forgive a poor, hotheaded, ignorant human,” Riley said, hoping that irony didn’t translate, “but perhaps you could tell me why you are here on this pilgrimage.”

“In this matter, this person can speak only for itself,” the weasel said. “This person comes from an ill-favored planet where life is hard and cunning is essential. Logic tells this person that evolution has pushed its people into blind alleys. Transcendentalism offers these persons a way out.”

“And you?” Riley asked, turning to the Sirian. “If you will forgive my inexperience?”

The Sirian opened its eyes. “Inexperience is correctable; ignorance is teachable; effrontery is unforgivable.”

“I am a poor, ignorant—” Riley began again

“My native world is the daughter of two suns,” the Sirian broke in, as if to cut off a repetition of Riley’s self-abasement. “And thus my people are drawn in two directions—one hot blue and near and one yellow and distant. We live in the near blue but we long for the remote yellow. Somehow this dichotomy must be resolved.”

Riley would have turned next to the coffin-shaped alien, hoping to get beyond the enigma of its existence, but the ship’s communicator announced the next Jump, and a moment later the illusion of transcending reality began again.

*   *   *

Tordor returned an hour later, escorted by two battered guards. Tordor was unmarked but indignant. “You may expel me from your company,” he said, “but you will have to deal with me before this voyage is over.”

As soon as the guards had left and the hatch had been locked behind them, Riley spoke. “I gather that you did not get along.”

“They would not talk to me,” Tordor said loud enough for everyone to hear. “They would not answer my questions. They would not let me go where I needed to go. Finally I confronted the captain, and he refused to discipline his subordinates. I could not do my job.”

In a lower voice that only Riley and Asha could hear, he added, “The captain agreed that I was not the right representative.”

“What shall we do?” asked the weasel.

“We will have to make a more practical choice. This being”—Tordor pointed at Riley— “is the captain’s species and shares the captain’s language and experience. He can come and go freely and learn what we cannot.

“Because he is human we distrust him. His kind has not yet earned our respect, much less our trust. We do not know what they may do, or why. But I have learned that we must trust if we are to earn our reward. And so I ask that you name this being your representative.”

The passengers milled around before the weasel turned toward Riley, Tordor, and Asha once more and the weasel-like alien said, “We agree.”

Tordor spoke only to Riley and Asha once more. “It had to be this way. First they must see that their choice is impractical. Second they must learn to accept what they cannot change. It is a difficult lesson for beings who have governed the galaxy since humans were living in caves.”

To the other passengers he said, “These humans are barbarous beings. We must watch them closely and control their choices. For that reason I, your first choice, will monitor everything that this being does and report to you what he does not.”

“And I,” Riley said, “am a poor, ignorant human, untutored in the ways of the civilized galaxy, and I must ask your forgiveness in advance for any errors in judgment or information I might make, while pledging myself to consider the well-being of all over my own personal benefit.”

The other passengers muttered among themselves at the far side of the room, next to the food dispensers, but were not upset enough to mount an insurrection. “Well said,” Tordor remarked to Riley.

“They do not believe you,” Asha said, “but they respect your willingness to placate them with fine words.”

“I have a lot to learn,” Riley said with uncharacteristic humility.

“The admission of ignorance is the beginning of wisdom,” Tordor said.

“We humans have a similar saying,” Riley said.

“Rational beings are the same everywhere,” Tordor said, “adrift in an enigmatic universe. Otherwise they could not communicate.”

Riley wondered again at Tordor’s newfound eloquence.

“I will put that into action,” he said, and ventured once more into the gathering of aliens. The group dispersed as he approached, as if trying to avoid contact with the barbarous human. He noticed again what a variety of sentient beings they were, some dressed in what seemed like rags, some adorned in what passed for finery, many of them unclothed and with curious appendages dangling; small, large, humanoid, and vaguely repellant because of the resemblance that had gone awry, utterly alien and repellently horrid.…

“Judge not!” his pedia said. Riley told himself that he must be just as repellant to some of the others, maybe more so. He would have to work even harder to make himself accept these creatures as fellow galactics.

“I desire to serve this group as I desire to help myself,” he said to the coffin-shaped alien, but the alien was as perversely silent as Tordor’s universe. He turned to the Sirian.

“The path into darkness is strewn with pitfalls,” the Sirian said. Riley had to remind himself that for Sirians, under the glare of their overpowering primary star, night was a time not only of rest, but of nirvana.

“We do not expect much,” the Alpha Centauran said. “Surprise us.”

That would not be hard, Riley thought. This pilgrimage was full of surprises, with, he had no doubt, more to come.

He turned and threaded his way through the odorous and cacophonous gathering and went through the hatch into the corridor of the working ship. This time the lock surrendered without a struggle.

*   *   *

No guards waited outside the hatch. A crew member in patched one-piece coveralls glided past without giving Riley a glance, as if Riley, in similar coveralls, was just another member of the crew. Either the word had gone out to give him the freedom to do his job, or the crew had gotten used to him.

Riley hoped the condition of the coveralls did not reflect the condition of the ship. They had a long way to go, and alien territory to explore.

“Here there be Tygers,” his pedia said.

Riley shook his head and started toward the ship’s control center, noticing for the second time the place along the corridor, about shoulder height, where the finish had been worn from the paneling and, here and there, where emergency equipment lockers had been emptied and not refilled.

By the time he passed the captain’s quarters, deserted now, Riley felt depressed. Not only had the
Geoffrey
seen better days; it might not see many more.

The control center seemed as shabby as the rest of the ship. Half of the gauges were broken, and the other half flickered erratically. The captain sat in the middle chair of three placed strategically in front of the computer interface, the communication controls, and the gunnery controls.

“Hello, Riley,” the captain said, without turning.

“Your add-ons could get annoying,” Riley said.

“I like to unnerve people.”

“Particularly old friends.”

“Old maybe. Hardly friends.”

“We’d better get friendlier if we hope to survive,” Riley said. “This ship is a piece of junk that should have been scrapped. And the crew isn’t much better.”

The captain swung around. “We’ll have time to whip them into shape. This will be a long voyage.”

“We?”

“You’re going to have to help, Riley. And maybe Tordor, too, and the woman, Asha? You’ve all had ship-time experience, and the crew hasn’t.”

Riley was taken aback. “Asha, too?”

“So Tordor told me.”

“She didn’t tell me.”

“Maybe she had her reasons. You’re the X factor in this equation. Nobody knows why you’re here and what your intentions are—”

“Is that any different from anyone else?”

“—and I’m sure you’re not going to tell me,” the captain concluded. “You’re not like the rest of these pilgrims, or even like me. You aren’t a starry-eyed dreamer, longing for a grander state. You’re a pragmatist, and you’re a warrior. I’d say you were an assassin except I don’t know anybody aboard whose death would benefit anybody. We’re probably all on a one-way trip.”

That long outburst seemed to have exhausted the captain’s store of conversation. Riley stood in front of his old crewmate wondering if he should say something, if there was any way to address the captain’s accusations. There wasn’t. Not without revealing more than was wise or perhaps, considering his pedia, possible.

“For someone who couldn’t get along,” Riley said, “you and Tordor seemed to have shared a lot of confidences.”

“It was a charade, you know. Tordor knew that you were the natural choice but also that his fellow galactics wouldn’t accept you—or any human, for that matter—unless your choice became inevitable. We agreed on that.”

“I’m touched by your faith in me,” Riley said.

“Faith? No. Belief. Necessity. Tordor felt that way, too.”

“You struck it off.”

“He was the first galactic I’ve met who didn’t exhibit contempt for humans.”

“Or who concealed it best.”

“Maybe.”

“Where does the ship stand now?”

The captain waved a hand and a holographic display took shape above the control panel. At first, the absence of light made the representation seem like a black hole, and then Riley began to pick out a few dim points of light.

“That’s even more disturbing than the display in the passenger lounge,” Riley said.

“We don’t want to upset the passengers more than they already are. The display there isn’t doctored. It’s just a couple of Jumps delayed.”

“I’ll have to share this with them,” Riley said.

“I thought you would. It will help solidify your position with them.”

“Can I assure them that you know what you’re doing and where we’re going?”

“Only if you want to lie. How you handle the passengers is your problem now. You know my situation. I’m waiting for the next Jump coordinates, and there doesn’t seem like there’s much galaxy left.”

“And you want me to handle that?” Riley asked. When the captain swung back to the control panel without answering, Riley turned and went back the way he had come.

As he opened the hatchway door, his pedia said, “Duck.”

He ducked his head as he entered the passengers’ quarters and looked back at the hatchway. At neck level, he could now see, a nearly invisible line had been stretched across the entrance, at the right height to have decapitated him as he entered.

No one was around. Apparently everyone had retired to his or her or its quarters or cubicle. Riley got a pair of impervium gloves from his cubicle, carefully removed the death line, coiled it, secured it with an impervium tie, inserted it into an impervium pouch, and stowed it away in his pack for possible later use.

“Someone thinks you are the Prophet,” his pedia said, “and wants to kill you.”

“Or the Prophet thinks I’m a threat.”

“Your task becomes more imperative: identify the Prophet.”

“You identify him for me,” Riley said.

Someone didn’t like him. Or feared him. Or distrusted him. He needed to find out why, and remembered Ham’s comment that no one knew why he was on the ship or what his intentions were. That was, of course, true. And it would be better for him, and for what he had to do, or decided not to do, if it remained true.

He retired to his cubicle, inspecting all the possible traps his would-be assassin might have planted for him, and went to sleep thinking about why he was there.

CHAPTER FIVE

Riley remembered how his personal pilgrimage began:

The room’s absence of light oppressed him. Not just dark. The light seemed to have been swallowed, consumed. He had the feeling that if he had a light stick with him, it would have cast a cone of black.

He thought he knew what was doing this to him: a phased transmitter that canceled light waves. It also canceled sound better than a room designed as an anechoic chamber. And he knew its purpose: to soften him up, to make him agree to anything in order to regain the real world of sight and sound. But what did they want—and who were “they”? He tried to feel his way around, ignoring the possibility that he could run into something dangerous or even fatal, or that he might be standing at the edge of a bottomless pit, but there was nothing to touch, not even a sensation of touch or even the feeling of weight on his body or the connectedness of muscle, nerve, and bone. Even if he had a light stick, he wouldn’t have been able to feel it, much less turn it on.

Whatever they were trying to do wouldn’t work. They couldn’t make him scream and beg no matter how long they left him in this place. Whoever they were.

He would keep himself sane by going back over the events that had brought him here.

For more days than he could remember, he had lost himself in the sim section of the pleasure-world habitat of Dante off Rigel. Sharn had left him twenty days before, saying that he didn’t need a friend or even a companion, he needed a nurse and a chiatrist. He knew what he needed: a job, a feeling of worth, a confirmation that life was better than death. Governments and corporations recruited industrial and interspecies spies, they hired assassins and mass murderers, but no one seemed interested in the services of an unspecialized soldier of fortune.

He could remember bits and pieces of what followed: ceutically induced euphoria followed by depression eased by more ceuticals; encounters in the dark with what he took to be sims but might have been real women; similar encounters in the glare of midday and the exposure of the marketplace; massages that blended into nerve stimulation that blended into sensory overload and free-associating drift; battles that maimed and slaughtered thousands, and one-on-one barroom fights with their satisfying impact of fist on flesh, given and received; and all sim, including himself. Or so he thought.