Michael Hudson - Thieves of Light

Parcival chortled and reached out to a touchplate on the right wall. "In here," he said as the doorway appeared.

The cabin was no larger than a walk-in closet even before Parcival showed Jarvis how to fold down the cot and unfold the collapsed storage bins. "Sergeant Li-hon couldn't turn around in here, much less relax," Jarvis said. "Are all the cabins this small?"

"Yes and no. The sergeant has a double-wide. And the cabins are modular-the shipwrights can customize the space to the species that are going to be aboard. This is a standard human berth. Mine's just like it."

"How many people are on this ship?"

" Fraanic can accommodate eight. But you've already seen everyone who's aboard."

"You and Li-hon are the whole crew?"

"You're thinking about this all wrong. You wouldn't say the family car had a crew, would you?"

"Do you mean flying this thing across the galaxy isn't any harder than driving the Buick to the grocery?"

"Actually, it's easier."

"Who's the pilot? Li-hon? Or you?"

"The ship is," Parcival said, edging toward the door. "Nothing personal, Chris, but you've played four matches today without a shower. Why don't you take some time to check out the washrooms and then come on back upstairs? There are fresh coveralls in the washroom locker. You can leave your Photon gear in the storeall there. You won't be needing it."

Jarvis frowned. "I'd like to watch us leave orbit. How long until we get under way?"

"We're already under way."

"But I didn't feel anything-"

"Why did you expect to? It's the fractional drive that's moving us, not a reaction engine. No rocket that's ever been invented would get us where we're going in less than a thousand years. And if anything faster had been invented, we'd be splattered over the aft bulkheads the first time we lit it up. We're not going to the moon, Chris-our destination's nineteen light-years away."

"Nineteen light-years," Jarvis repeated."I have no idea how far that is. How long will it take us to get there?"

Parcival smiled. "A little less than two days."

A distracted look came onto Jarvis's face, and he nodded in absent acknowledgment. Parcival turned away and slapped the touchplate familiarly.

"Parcival?"

The youth looked back.

"Why do you call me Chris, but he calls me Bhodi Li?"

"Because I understand that your Photon name is something you put on and take off with your gear. Because Bhodi Li happens to be a warrior name in his language. Why'd you pick that name, anyway? It doesn't mean anything in English."

"No. I made it up. I wanted something sort of exotic sounding, Oriental-like a kung fu name." He hesitated. "What does it mean to Li-hon?"

Parcival studied Jarvis for a long moment before answering. "Battle-child."

"Battle-child," he repeated. "Okay. I'll be up in a little while."

"Okay," Parcival said, turning away again.

"Parcival?"

"What?"

"I think maybe it'd be simpler if you called me Bhodi Li, too."

Parcival frowned disapprovingly, then shrugged. "If that's what you want-Bhodi Li."

The doorway contracted behind him, leaving Jarvis alone with the disquieting sense that Parcival understood something about him that he himself did not.

Why should he care what name I use? It doesn't mean anything either way -

But it did mean something. It had pleased him to hear the alien call him by his Photon name and pleased him even more to learn that chance had given that name appropriate meaning.

He knew that there was a clue in that which could tell him what had troubled the youth, but Bhodi Li could not read it. So he did what he had always done when understanding escaped him-he dismissed the matter from his mind. He wanted a shower, and then he wanted more answers-many more answers. The moratorium on questions had ended when he proclaimed his first refusal, and Bhodi Li intended to take full advantage of his freedom while it lasted.

It was the strangest shower Bhodi Li had ever taken. There was no shower head; when he touched the controls inside the bathing enclosure, droplets of lukewarm water began to fall from the entire surface of the ceiling as though he were standing outside in a drizzle. There was no way to shower and not wash one's hair at the same time; in fact, there was no place Bhodi Li could stand and not have water running down his face and into his eyes.

Further fiddling increased the intensity of the falling water to that of a summer squall, but if there were a way to alter the temperature, Bhodi Li never found it. Maybe that's the point, he thought. Maybe in the rest of the galaxy they only wash when it rains.

There were no towels and no obvious substitutes, like a blower or radiator. Bhodi Li eventually used one pair of coveralls to dry off before climbing into a second pair. The wet garment went with his fragrant arena clothes into a receptacle that Bhodi Li hoped was a hamper and not some other species' version of a toilet.

Returning to the upper deck, Bhodi Li made his way down the corridor compartment by compartment, less to look for the others than to cement his mental picture of the ship's plan. He understood little of what he saw but made himself remember enough to distinguish one room from another.

He found Li-hon and Parcival both in the relatively spacious arrowhead-shaped compartment at the end of the corridor. But he paid almost no attention to them. His attention was captured by the three broad rectangular windows-right, left and center-inset above the U-shaped bridge console.

The two side windows were pure black, telling Bhodi Li that they were not windows at all but some sort of video display. But the forward window was alive with streaks of reddish light radiating outward from a central focus; it looked as though Fraanic were diving through an exploding fireworks shell.

"What makes the stars look like that?" Bhodi Li asked, pointing.

"Those aren't the stars," Parcival said tolerantly. "We're traveling too fast to see anything but tachyons, except there turns out to be no such thing."

"Then what is that?"

"Harl-ben-qi-jaslan," Li-hon said. "The Female Wept Twice."

"What?"

"It's a poem Li-hon is working on," Parcival said. "One of his better ones, too."

"Flattery won't change your duty load," Li-hon said.

"A poem?" was Bhodi Li's skeptical reply. "A poem is 'How do I love thee?' or maybe 'There once was a lady from Kent-' "

"This is a color poem," Li-hon said. "Very popular on Bree-nech."

"But there's no words."

"It is meant to stimulate the mind directly," said Li-hon.

Bhodi Li watched the changing patterns for a few seconds. "I'm not getting anything."

"You have to learn how to open yourself," Li-hon said, unperturbed. "But if you never learn, don't worry. I write word poems, too."

Bhodi Li turned a quizzical look on the alien. "Isn't that a little strange, for someone who looks like you-a Guardian of the Light-to write poetry?"

"On your world, do warriors only know how to kill?"

"Well-no, I guess not. But they find other ways to spend their spare time."

"Cultivate the whole," Li-hon said, sounding like some sort of golden-oldie guru. "If you define yourself by what you do, you will lose sight of what you are."

"Sure," Bhodi Li said noncommittally. Silently, he was thinking, a kid warrior and a sergeant that spends his spare time writing poems you have to watch-the First Guardian must be harder up for good people than they're letting me think. Or maybe these are just the First Guardian's errand boys, and the front-line troops are cut from different cloth. "When are you going to tell me what this war is all about?"

"Are you ready for the Truth of Photon?" Li-hon asked.

"Sure."

"Then sit, Bhodi Li, and learn."

The lights dimmed on the bridge as the color poem vanished from the center window, leaving the compartment in darkness. "Before time, before light, before life, there was Photon," Li-hon said, and a swirling ball of blue-white light appeared behind him. "In simplicity and completeness, Photon contained all energy, embraced all of space, embodied all order. There was balance, but there was also stasis. So, to gift the universe with growth and change, Photon chose-"