The Queen of Space, page 4
Walking into town along the road where she had come so many times with her grandfather, at first she was whistling the Legion marching tune he had taught her the year she was four, but she soon fell silent. The road was potholed and empty, walled with the dusty weeds. The town looked almost abandoned when she neared it. Paint was peeling from rusting sheet metal, and red rain streaks ran down leaning concrete walls. Suddenly she saw it as it must have been to her mother: a forlorn little outpost against killing desolation.
The Cluster Suns Trust was gone, the empty windows splashed now with spray-painted Antiac slogans. Wind-blown litter was piled on the cracking concrete steps outside, but she picked her way up them to Kere Nyaga’s office. Breathless with anticipation, she pushed inside. It looked and smelled just the same, cluttered and dusty, but fragrant with the Terran roses he somehow coaxed into bloom in a tiny window box. He blinked up at her across the overloaded desk with the same worried frown she recalled.
“Mr. Nyaga—”
“Miss Jil!” He had recognized her voice, but she saw his first delight fading into shocked dismay. He sagged slowly back into his creaky chair, open-mouthed and staring. “They said you were dead!”
“I did leave home,” she said. “I guess I’m dead to them.”
She shrugged. “But here I am. Eighteen, by the Legion calendar. I’ve come about the estate—”
“But—Mr. Brendish brought documents—” He shook his time-dried head, squinting at her in dazed disbelief. “If you’re alive, they’ve done a terrible thing!”
She waited for him to tell her. Begging her to sit, he shuffled back to his own chair and collapsed into it. Still she waited while he pulled his mind together.
“Not long after your grandfather died,” he began at last, “your mother called from Alpha. Said you’d run away from home. Macham called back a few days later to say you were dead—killed by infection from a strange, slow-acting virus the medics thought you must have caught from a laser-diamond your father brought out of the nebula.
“How was I to know?”
He spread his lean old hands, his shrunken face a black mask of sadness.
“A Mr. Rem Brendish came as your mother’s legal agent. He brought legal records. Forged—that has to be what happened—but the court here accepted them. Your trust was terminated. As next of kin, your mother inherited. The estate was settled. Mr. Brendish collected the residue for your mother. A very considerable sum. You could have bought your own starcraft—”
His whispery voice faded dismally away. She sat staring past him at the yellow roses.
“But now—” She tried to pull herself together. “What can I do about it?”
“Nothing, I’m afraid.” He studied her gloomily. “Nothing here. Criminal charges should be filed, but that can be done only on the planet of residence—”
“Which I don’t even know. The locater program on Alpha III has nothing current on them.”
“If that’s true, you can hardly hope for restitution.” He sat blinking at her for a time, then limped abruptly to the window box and cut a yellow rose. “Miss Jil, I wish I could do—something.” Frail hand shaking, he gave her the rose. “My own circumstances—” His voice faltered. “Difficult.”
“Don’t blame yourself, Mr. Nyaga.”
Seeing the folded blankets on the sofa beneath the window box, she guessed that the narrow office was also his dwelling. Her grandfather had always called him too honest for his profession. She caught his arm to stop his stumbling apology.
“We’ve both been hurt. But I’ll be fine. Here I am, already halfway into the nebula. I’ll get there!”
Groping for any reasonable hope, she found herself trudging up the rutted road she used to climb with her grandfather, toward their old home on the hill. It was weed-clotted now, the ruts washed deep. The old house was gone when she reached the site, perhaps sold for scrap metal. Only the stone foundation walls remained, jutting from red thickets of sharp-reaking leatherweed.
She stood there a long time, looking sadly back to those wonderful times when she was young. What had gone wrong to spoil all their lives? That cruel question nagged her.
In her heart, she couldn’t blame her mother. Selfish, perhaps. Sometimes silly. But she hadn’t hated the Legion when her father was home, or been more than just a friend to his best friend. Certainly she had never been either evil or crafty enough for such a crime as this. Somehow, the changed Macham had changed her. But what had made that dreadful change in him?
She remembered that brief glimpse of Brendish hovering over her mother on the slidewalk, clutching her like some greedy insect about to feed while he warned her not to try to leave the movement.
What was Brendish . . .?
A sharp explosion startled her. A seed pod had burst in the leatherweed behind her. The mobile seeds rose and scattered, flying like a swarm of golden moths. One dropped in her hair and clung there, bright wings beating, as if trying to bore into her brain.
Brushing at it, she shivered. The wind had shifted as she stood on the broken foundation, blowing colder off the ice plateau beyond the mountain and edged with the taint of the bogs around Black Lake. Macharn’s odor. It chilled her with a dread she didn’t entirely understand.
Suddenly she knew she would never press any charges against Brendish or her mother or Macham. They were somewhere far behind her now, and she wasn’t going back. All that mattered now was the nebula ahead. She tossed Kere Nyaga’s yellow rose across the broken stones and turned toward the future.
The town and the twin starports made tiny gray islets on the waves of red-black weed. She found the bright glint of the starcraft standing on the Legion field. She hiked back down the hill and on out to the base to ask for any sort of berth on the Sunmark.
6
The private at the gate was a young man and lonely, glad to talk and anxious to please her. He looked distressed when he had to tell her that the Legion wasn’t signing anybody on, not anywhere he knew about, for sure not here at Hawkshead Base. The nearest enlistment office was out on Alpha IV.
The Sunmark had been at the service dock for weeks, he said, getting something done to her particle-weapons system. No, he didn’t know who was her commander.
“If it’s Kynan Star, I want to see him,” she persisted. “Pilot-Major Star when I met him a long time ago. He has probably been promoted.”
Doubtfully he called the starcraft.
“It’s Star.” The doubt was gone. “I guess he hasn’t been promoted, but he’ll send for you.”
A yeoman in a service truck took her to the repair dock. Kynan Star came off the craft to meet her. Time had thinned his hair and creased his lean ray-burnt face, and he wasn’t quite so straight as she recalled him.
“Jil Gyrel!” Like the private at the gate, he seemed delighted with her, but the warm smile went out when she spoke about her father. If she had come to ask for news about him, there was none.
He invited her aboard.
“You’ve changed since I saw you.” She liked his quick boyish grin. “You must have been about seven.”
They sat in his private cabin, and he opened a bottle of the Nebulon wine her father had loved.
“We were friends,” he told her. “Ever since my first year at the Academy. He was teaching then, and I took his course in nebular dynamics. We flew together later. After he was lost, I begged for permission to search. Never got it granted, because the Legion was always stretched too thin. I do keep alert for clues, but you know the nebula.” His lean features tightened. “It plays a hard game, by rules we’ve never quite been able to learn.”
He sipped his wine, frowning soberly, and asked what she knew about Shon Macham.
“Nothing good!” she said. “He never got over that sickness, whatever it was. My mother married him—I’ve never known why. Because he’s still—still so—”
She could only shake her head.
Kynan Star sat waiting for her to go on. Feeling he would understand, she caught her breath and tried to tell him how Macharn had changed, how they had tried to make her join the Antiacs, how he had attacked her, how they had taken her inheritance.
“Once he was so wonderful! To me. To everybody.” She leaned to search Star’s troubled face. “What happened to him?”
“I still lie awake over that.” He shrugged uneasily. “Something I hope we don’t confront again. I wish he had let the medics examine him—and I still wonder why he wouldn’t.”
“Anyhow, that’s all behind.” Eagerly, she lifted her glass. “I always dreamed of a life in the Legion. Getting into the Academy looks unlikely, but at least I can enlist—”
She had seen his frown.
“I’m afraid you can’t.”
“Because I’m a woman?”
“Not entirely.” A bleak regret seamed his face. “These have been bad times for the Legion. The Antiacs are gaining power. Cutting our forces and starving us for funds. Now their friends in the Hall of Stars are trying to pull us out of the nebula.”
His tone turned sardonic.
“They claim to be afraid our armed presence would antagonize undiscovered sister cultures in the nebula that might otherwise become our friends. A noble theory, maybe—till you begin meeting creatures like the cliffdrillers.”
“Could you—” Her voice caught. “Could you take me on the Sunmarkl”
“Jil, I’m sorry.” As if to cover his own discomfort, he paused to refill their glasses. “But I have a full crew. Anyhow, the Sunmark wouldn’t be the opportunity you want. We’re tied up here, waiting for a replacement core for the main particle gun. Shipment has been delayed. Twice, by sabotage at the arsenal.” His frown lines bit deeper. “We could be lying here for months, with nothing at all to do.”
“I was hoping—hoping so much—”
“I hate to hurt you.” He tried to smile. “Because I can see how much alike we are. Both of us born to old Legion families and taught to live by old traditions. I came into the Legion with ideals as fine as yours.”
Sighing, he sipped his bitter wine.
“That was nearly twenty years ago. I’m still a Star—and proud to be, at least till lately. I’ve done my duty. Often more. I’ve marked starlanes and surveyed new planets. I’ve played my share of games with danger.
“And nobody cares.”
With a tired shrug, he set down his empty glass.
“Believe me, Jil, the heroic ages have ended. If we’re really ordered out of the nebula—I expect we will be—I’m going to retire. I’ll look for something more rewarding. I don’t know what—”
He fell silent, staring moodily at nothing, until she was rising uneasily to leave.
“Forgive me, please!” He stood up quickly. “Sometimes I think too much. Please stay; let’s at least finish the wine.” He looked at her again, that quick grin lighting his face. “Will you have dinner with me?”
He saw her about to refuse.
“Nothing beyond that implied.” He smiled disarmingly. “Not yet, anyhow. I’ve been at loose ends here, and you’re a welcome break.” He turned graver. “I wish it had been a happier meeting for you.”
“I’m going on into the nebula. Though I don’t quite know how—”
He saw her falter, and his gaze grew sharper.
“What’s the trouble?”
“Money.” She felt herself flush, but his concern seemed real. “I was counting on that legacy. Without it, I don’t even know where I’ll stay tonight.”
“Let me call the Hawkshead House,” he urged her quickly, “to guarantee your bill.” He added quizzically, “Nothing more implied.”
“I couldn’t ask—”
“You didn’t.” He beckoned her back to the table. “Let’s talk about the nebula and you.”
“It’s all I ever really wanted.” She sat again, grateful for his concern. “I used to dream that I might inherit my father’s pilot sense.”
“That’s sex-linked, I think.”
“Not in those old dreams.” His quiet smile encouraged her. “I wanted to be another space hero, like your own great ancestors and all the others Captain Shon used to tell me about. Serving in the Legion and defending the people of the nebula from new space enemies. I even used to dream that I might grow up to be the Keeper.”
“I had dreams.” Sober again, he poured the rest of the pungent wine. “In fact, I brought them with me to the nebula—and watched them crash into cruel reality.”
“The nebula isn’t always cruel.”
“It used to be kinder,” he conceded. “Back in your grandfather’s youth, it did offer room and wealth and freedom to a few of the luckiest and boldest. But the richest lodes were worked out before you were born, and there was never much but mining. Farming has nearly always failed, because the native biocosms aren’t compatible with ours. Terran plants won’t grow, and we can’t eat most of the native stuff. Food’s synthetic or imported, expensive either way. The drive for more new strikes has always taken us too far in, through deadlier dust and hotter radiation, to planets where a man’s working life was too short for anything he could hope to Find. We’ve pushed our limits too far.
“Now the nebula is pushing back.”
She waited to see what he meant.
“Not with anything you can zap with a particle gun. Or even erase with AKKA. Nothing, in fact, that looks convincing in official reports to the Hall of Stars. But too many starships have disappeared the way your father’s did, often now on routes we used to think were safe. Cliffdrillers attack too often, sometimes now on long-settled worlds where they had never been a problem. The medics have begun reporting other cases as baffling as Macharn’s.”
He shrugged unhappily.
“If the Legion is pulled out, the reason will be that we’re already beaten. Partly by the peace kooks. Partly by—I don’t know what. But all of it’s reason enough for you to stay out.” He bent intently toward her, brown eyes oddly grave. “You haven’t asked for my advice, but I beg you to consider it. Forget the nebula. You’ll find a hundred better careers back in civilization.”
“I’ve seen Alpha III—”
“You’re attractive—more than just attractive.” Admiration swept the trouble from his face. “Young and evidently gifted. Splendid, if you’ll let me say it. Far too fine for any future you can hope for out here.”
His voice lifted when she shook her head.
“Listen, Jil! My sister lives back in Kalam III. A tachyonics professor at Kalem Tech. Let me call her. She saw too much of the nebula when she was a girl, and she has always wanted me to get out. She can steer you into something more rewarding.”
“You’re very generous.” She felt touched. “But the nebula’s all I want—”
“Sir!” A younger officer shouted hoarsely from the doorway. “Dreadful news!”
“Let’s have it.”
He was breathing heavily, and they had to wait for him to find his voice.
“A scrambled signal, sir. From Alpha V. About the Keeper—the Keeper of the Peace. I couldn’t believe it, sir. Called back for confirmation on the secret frequency. The Special Command does confirm it, sir—”
“Confirm what, Greb?”
“The Keeper, sir. Murdered!”
“I see.” Kynan Star was on his feet, his face grimly grave. “Has the killer been caught?”
“I think not, sir. Her body was just discovered. Details will follow. But, sir, that’s not the worst. AKKA—AKKA—” They waited while he gasped again for his uncertain voice. “They’re afraid, sir—afraid it’s lost!”
7
Gravely courteous, Kynan Star asked her to excuse him.
“I’ll be going—” She was rising.
“Please.” He beckoned her back. “Please wait till we know more.”
She waited, shaken with a sense that the whole universe had tilted. If the Keeper was really dead, AKKA really lost, all the human worlds were suddenly defenseless. She wondered bleakly how the Antiacs would feel if they found their home planets naked to invading creatures as powerful and ruthless as the Cometeers had been.
Thinking of Kynan Star, she tried to decide what she felt about him. Respect for his quiet competence, for his long loyalty to the Legion. Appreciation for his kind concern. A deep, instinctive liking—which touched her with a vague alarm.
She hadn’t come to fall in love, certainly not with an embittered veteran so many years her elder. The Legion must have filled his life, leaving him too little time or feeling for anything outside it. She recalled too well her own childhood and all that anxious waiting for her father in the nebula.
Anyhow, she wasn’t ready. Macharn’s attempted assault had brought her childhood nightmare back, that dreadful dream where she was sinking into the frozen bog, stifled with its evil stench. Since, avoiding her more amorous school companions without quite knowing why, she had spent most of her own energies on yawara.
What she loved was the nebula itself.
“Miss Gyrel?” The younger officer spoke from the doorway, deferentially. “The crisis is detaining Pilot Star. He asked me to explain. He is anxious to talk to you again. If you can stay, I’ll bring you a meal.”
She said she would stay. The meal was a Legion space ration, served in its self-heating sealer. Finding an unexpected appetite, she scraped the sealer bare and kept on waiting.
Kynan Star came striding in at last, absently whistling the Legion march. She had imagined him shattered by the impact of disaster, but somehow it had been good for him. He looked younger, more erect, alive with fresh purpose.
“Thanks, Jil.” His smile seemed boyish, oddly untroubled. “I had to see you again.” He glanced at the empty ration sealer, his brown eyes quizzical. “I’d meant to offer you something tastier.”
“It was good enough.”
He set the sealer and their empty glasses off the table and sat across from her.
“Since you heard what you did, I owe you more.” His tone turned graver. “If you’ll promise not to talk.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” she told him. “But, of course, I promise.”
