Starquest: Scourge of the Spaceways, page 17
In fact, the eye began to throb the moment it was exposed to light. "How much? What would it cost to fix?"
"Merely to clean and calibrate the lens, and balance the nerve-feed? Sir, I could not charge you for that. That would be a free service. May I?"
And, before Flint could raise a hand or think to resist, the speculum floated up to his face, attached itself to his prosthetic eye with a click, and directed thread-thin manipulators into the lens-collar.
A minute later, the speculum closed, and floated away. The pain in his eye was gone. For the first time in fourteen years, he could see with both eyes, clearly, with no ache and no irritation. Everything was the proper hue and saturation. Everything was clear, as if the scene were etched out of luminous crystal. The decorations of the guild hall now seemed twice as splendid as before.
The surgeon said, "We could regrow and replace your biological eye in an hour. Step over to the anesthetist to have a gene-sample taken — naturally, we can encipher the genetic information if you have an ordinary comdisc needle, so that we could not read it after use. Your biometric information is your property, of course, and that includes coding strands and medical data."
"My property…" Flint said. "My … mine …"
He had never been told he owned anything before. He had been assigned gear. His body had been grown in a vat to serve the Empire.
Here, he was his.
Flint turned away from the surprised surgeon without a word, and stumbled out into the dazzling light of the half dozen suns. The red and orange stars were clear of the equatorial cloud-band of advertisements, so all six suns were visible, and shedding lights across the prosperous, unwalled town, the peaceful farms and their floral gardens, the glittering waters of the bay, adorned by yachts and pleasure craft.
Gentlemen and ladies, matrons and maidens, folk of many races and worlds dressed in riches thronged the happy streets, vendors chanted and called and promised, street clowns in festive masks strummed lutes, and ballerinas danced.
He had not seen the world in proper color and depth ever since the death of Orgulus. Now, all seemed new.
Red seemed vivid and red again, green was lush and emerald green, yellow was aflame with gold, blues were cool and deep. Trees were trees once more, each leaf distinct and clear to see, and people were people.
Chapter 7: Quest Of Starquest
1. The Horsetrader
Flint looked up. This world was turning swiftly: the red sun had set in the west, and the orange sun was descending. Another fairy night might come, but now the suns, travelling at different speeds, were farther spread apart, so any next night would be shorter.
Up in the sky, jostling among the parasols with their advertisements and guildhall heraldries and corporate logos was a small and plain image of a hooded wanderer leaning on a staff, surrounded by a horseshoe, a bumblebee, a rabbit, a parrot. Flint could see the arrow well enough.
Flint began to laugh. When the old man had said he would post a sign in the heavens, he had meant it literally.
A few miles outside town was a vineyard of many acres, in the midst of which was a winepress and a tower. Abutting the tower was a smithy and a corral. Across the road from the tower was a public house, whose awnings shed clusters of overlapping shadows, each a slightly different color in the slanting light of the several suns, which shone down at different angles. Above was a large sign showing a winged snake-monster, frothy mug in one claw, a flowering branch in the other. Letters read SNAPDRAGON'S.
Seated at a small wood table on the porch, leaning back in his chair, sat the Grandmaster, puffing his long pipe. His mystic sword was lying in a plain brown scabbard across the table, next to a beer stein and an ashtray.
A post like a totem pole was thrust in the strip of ground between the public house and the public road, carven into faces of horses, bees, and coneys. A sign above read: UNCLE JAY Horsetrading. Hyrax. Apiary. Aviary. Ask me to dicker!
He looked up from under his white eyebrows when Flint marched up. "So, laddiebuck. Convinced yerself yet?"
Flint sat in the other chair, not waiting to be asked. The Grandmaster waved at a saucy barmaid, who sauntered over, hips swaying. She placed a foaming beerstein before Flint, a fork and knife, and a sizzling platter of pepper-seared strips of coney meat over rice. A wad of honeycomb to one side rested on a buttered baguette.
Flint looked at the plate. "Is everything on this world grilled?"
The Grandmaster said, "In a world of many suns, one need only raise a lens to get a cookfire started. I see you kept your old eye."
Flint raised hand, rubbing the scars on his cheek surrounding his prosthetic. It did not ache, not even a twinge. "I am of the lineage and legacy of Grand Admiral Suusaandar. I was not ready to let my genes-code fall into the hands of rebels." He looked down. "Am I eating one of the rabbits I fed aboard the Sluggard?"
The Grandmaster nodded. "Remember to thank him for his sacrifice. The wee creature dies that we might live!" Pipe smoke drifted up from the corners of his wry smile. "And, while so, remember to thank the stars that formed his atoms, and the star-maker who breathed animal spirits into him, and granted us dominion. Every bite is an excuse for thanksgiving."
Flint took a bite, paused, and looked down at the plate. He tasted pepper and ginger, chili and zested orange. "This tastes like Ksora."
The Grandmaster nodded toward the open-air kitchen nestled to one side of the bar behind them. "The marinade recipe you used aboard ship, I instructed to the landlord here, goodman Snapdragon, lest the memory of that world perish entirely."
Flint scowled and blinked. It had only been in the little bistros in Ksora-al-Faras that he had tasted this, or on those rare occasions since when he was at liberty to cook for himself, and had the ingredients at hand. But he said, "It takes an hour to prepare. This dish is hot. How did you know I would come here? How did you know when?"
"You walk at an even pace. In a dream, I saw you pass the milestone on the Buttercup-White Rose Road out from Sleepless Town. You can tell which road is which in this world by what grows by the roadside."
Flint said, "You were following me in astral form."
"Maybe a wee bit. Mostly, I was selling horses. The planter here, Lord Hollyhock, bought the whole herd, so I can refuel the Sluggard and go me merry way."
Flint said, "Aren't you the leader of a mystic sect of warlock-knights with mind powers? Why are you shipping horses?"
It was a question he had pondered for a month. Only now did he ask.
The old man spoke serenely, but there was sadness in his voice. "I can only ship a few. So very few. They miss us, you see."
"Come again? I don't copy."
"I know where they are. I was led to worlds abandoned during the war, where the stables of the colonists were set free into the fields to fend for themselves. Those stallions who prefer a life of useful work and proper feed and warm stalls on a cold night, over a life of woe in the wild, are swift to come when I land my ship and send out a dream to call them. They bring their harem and herd with them. These innocent creatures adore us, as we adore the stars, as higher orders of being. They help me in turn, what with me in need of cash for fuel and upkeep. There is not much money to be had in mystical warlock-knightery."
"With your powers, you could have anything you wanted. By taking it."
"Could I now? Well, well! Take up thieving at my age? And how could I face my daughter, if she found me filching and snatching, then?" He knocked the dottle out of his pipe bowl, and tucked the pipe away beneath his cloak. "There must be other ways. Aha! Want to see me levitate the peanut bowl? I bethought me doing finger-tricks in a sideshow, but it might be unseemly for a holy hermit to follow such a calling."
Something in the old man's nonchalance irked Flint. "You're not a hermit! Hermits do not mount rescue operations or break into bases!"
"I am a poor hermit."
"You are only poor because you did not steal funds when you were stealing prisoners!"
"Ah! I am not a poor hermit. I have coin enough for my need, no more. But I am a poor hermit. Whenever I try to hermit like a hermit, I fail. I end up in madcap scrapes with all sorts of folk, rubbing elbows in the thick of throngs instead of hid in a cave." He shrugged. "I can get my knee-scraping done during long cruises, though. Be guided by the stars, and all turns out well."
He pointed his finger. The peanut bowl on the bar counter in the common room now slid through the air, silently and evenly, and came to rest at the Grandmaster's right hand. He cracked the nuts open with his fingers, tilted back his head, and flicked the kernels into his mouth with his thumb.
Between bites, the Grandmaster said, "The suns here play tricks with your sense of time. We are in the dogwatch now. So, young squire, have you thought of where you are going to sleep tonight?"
Flint dropped his fork. "You called me squire. That means we continue together."
"Aye, but whither and whereaway?"
"You are asking me? You're the Templar Master. You're Jaywind Starquest! You tell me where we are going!"
"So I shall, once you tell me where you are going."
Flint stabbed his knife into the table board with an angry fist. "Why do you talk nonsense? I feel like I am going mad when I am around you! Am I mad? Are you mad?"
"They say that Emperor Stagno the Severe in the Second Century had every child born on the rebel planet Giauzar blinded at birth with delta-rays. So it went for generations, until they forgot the words for sun and moon. A one-eyed sailor shipwrecked on Giauzar spoke to them of light from heaven, and they locked him in the madhouse.
"So with me," continued the old man, cracking another peanut. "I have my feet on the mortal world, but I walk the way of the immortal stars. How can the world not call me mad?" He tossed the peanut kernel into the air, catching it in his mouth.
2. The Great Dreamer
They sat in silence for many minutes. The Grandmaster, eating peanuts and drinking beer, showed no sign of impatience whatsoever, and did not press Flint for his answer.
Flint eventually said, "You want the location of Imperiala from me, the Throneworld. That is a secret of the highest order. I cannot reveal it."
The old man coughed on his peanut and slurped up his beer, clearly taken by surprise. Then he wiped his moustache and smiled wryly. "I should have known not to dream dreams aboard a ship with a Sphingali. You've been spying on the phantoms of my sleep! Well, that be a fair turnabout for my trailing you today in astral form, prying in your dealing. Remind me to put a bonus in your pay come Michaelmas."
"You don't pay me."
"Then don't remind me."
Flint said, "Aboard ship, in dreams, I saw you with your sword. You were battling great shadows in the shapes of snakes, tigers shaped of fire, and loathsome toads."
"These were sendings from Mandor. He is a Dark Overlord of the Stygian Arts, and mightier than I. All the sleights and Kirlian mind-tricks I had to play on the starport guards during our get-away could not be hidden from the likes of him. We managed to elude him. For now."
"You did not speak of this."
"What could you have done to help? You show promise. For this reason the stars led me to come fetch you. But you are not a squire yet, not really. Such things are made by oath, vowed upon the unchanging stars, and I cannot ask a false oath of you. Are you ready to foreswear the Empire and all of its lies and deceptions, false pomps and empty promises? You cannot be reborn as a child of truth until first you die to the father of lies."
Flint spread his hands and gestured to the many-colored suns, the cloud-flotilla of festive masks in the sky, the flowering fields, the rolling hills and merry cottages. "How do I know this is not all fake? This place, with these people, all could have been set ahead of time to fool me!"
"Could it, now? Say you so? 'Tis news most wonderful! I had no idea a Templar could create whole worlds to fit his fancy. Tell me, I can mesmerize wide planets, hide all sign of war and woe, made poor folk rich, and stock their markets full of goods to bursting, and have a man heal the glitch in your eye — but why can't I just crush the Empire beneath my big toe? Seeing as I can do all this?"
"The rebel government could prop up one small town and fill it with riches."
The Grandmaster leaned back in his chair. He waved his hand at the horizon. "Well said! Go look at other towns. Find a big one. Go look at other islands. Not enough? Take my ship. Find another planet. Find a dozen." He took the key-needle to operate the ship's navigation brain out of a needle card and tossed it across the table. Impossibly, it landed on its point next to Flint's knife hand and stuck into the wood, quivering.
"You are giving me your ship?"
"Aye. Instead of wages. Concoct a better name. Hasty Sluggard. What was I thinking?"
"It's your ship!"
"A Templar ties himself not down with mere possessions, lad." He said loudly. Then, with a wary eye turned toward heaven, he leaned in and whispered, "Not a clumsy old rustbucket like that, anyway. Faith! Had I no special powers, that leaky rattletrap most like would have killed me dead." He leaned back in his chair again and spoke normally. "So! Want my list of repair work needed before you lift off, do you think?"
Flint stared at the needle-key as if it were a venomous insect reared to strike. "I do not need your ship in lieu of wages."
"You were my cabin boy and horsegroom for five weeks, not to mention cleaning bird cages and rabbit hutches. I owe you something."
"No. I am with you. A squire is paid in instruction."
"Are you, now?"
"You know you answer every question with a question?"
"Do I, now?"
"It's annoying!"
"Is it, now? You don't say." Jaywind nodded at the needle. "The location of Erebus is still in the log: Mandor never sensed you aboard, only me. Your promotion is still awaiting you. An estate and a title. Lord Mandor means to make you a Stygian, and teach you the secrets of the Dark Will. Learn what Orgulus knew. As you've always craved."
Flint plucked up the needle and passed it back to Jaywind.
"You sure of this, lad? You could tell Mandor all you know of me, and help him hunt me down. You'd get a shiny medal, and a kiss from the Empress. Isn't there a medal that lets you into the Throneworld? It'd be yours."
Flint said, "You speak of the Imperial Ebony Sun of Honor. Yes; it carries a stipend and the reward of an audience with the Empress."
"That fellow who was being feted and fawned on when I was there, did he get one?"
"Herlathing. No, he got the Victory Star, which is a second rank honor below the Imperial Ebony Sun. Only a deed of legendary bravery, greatly aiding the Empire, can win the Ebony Sun. Mithradites got one for poisoning Raphean Lone, Doomshadow's treasonous son." Flint's voice trailed off into a mumble.
"Did he, now? This will be disquieting news for Duke Raphean, to find himself passed away after all these years, after fathering five children. His kids will take it worse, finding they'd never been born at all. Ruin a man's day, learning news like that."
Flint's one eye narrowed. "This is a trick. There is no Lone. Count Mithradites would not have been rewarded for failure. The Empire does not reward failure."
"Look through the coins in your poke, lad. You'll find him."
In fact, Flint found the face on the same large gold coin he had had in hand before. He had not scrutinized the obverse.
On the other side from the Eagle-and-Stormbolt was the profile and superscription of Duke Raphean Lone. The face showed a stately man in late middle age, hook-nosed, streaks of white at the temples, calipers of stern expression in the wrinkles about his mouth, eyes marked with smile lines, crowned in a wreath of oak leaf. Ipse Solus.
Flint said, "How can Raphean Lone be alive? We killed him. How can the Queen of Coma Berenices be alive? You killed her. It is war."
"Not much of a war. It will get bigger soon, unless you help me stop it."
"Not much? Who have we been fighting all these years? What have we been doing?"
"You've been committing acts of petty piracy against a few isolated worlds on the outskirts of the galaxy, worlds whose charts were lost or hidden or destroyed during the mad days at the end of the war."
"It can't be."
"Can't it? Your war effort is so small and your worlds so few, that months and years of searching by my Templars could not find you. The galaxy does not know you still exist. I tried to tell them; I was ordered into silence by both Consuls. Just like the Empire would have done! So I say no more to them, and none know where I go.
"The galaxy thinks I am searching for a mythical lost world called Arcadia, me and all my knights, and half the squires. A great quest among the stars!" He laughed and shook his head. "Most of my knights went to Chara. Nice weather there. There were temples built on the sea bottoms by the children of the Ceti, long ago. Kragen live there now, and carry towns on their backs. It is called the Planet of Joy. No war has ever been fought in its waters, not in all the years of time. During the Unholy Wars, the Pavo never attacked this world, and during the rebellion, she was neutral."
He laughed again. "Strange place! Too many suns in the sky, like here. Hard to sleep there. The dreamland is too loud. But some scholars think the Library of Arcadia is there, or was once, so a number of my squires vowed the Quest, and scooted off there, and loitered to sunbathe and windsurf. Older knights of mine went stalking after boiling planets among the radiation hells of the galactic core, or crawled amid the frozen iceballs under dying suns. Who was wiser?"
Flint was puzzled. "You are not looking for this mythical planet?"
"No, I was looking for you. Saving you, my dear squire, is my true quest. So you can find the lost Empire. Someone else will see to the lost planet Arcadia."
"The Empire cannot be lost. The Empire is extensive."
"Is it, now? Do tell."
"I've been stationed to dozens of planets. Walked on them, breathed the air!"
"A dozen grains of sand in the desert of dunes. The galaxy is big. Very big. Losing an Empire is no great trick. Erase the maps and nav logs as you go on any planet you leave behind. Only the Templars bother to keep writings in scrolls and books, which your friends, the Transhuman Machines, cannot erase in an eyeblink."
