Glen Cook - Ceremony

But a quick fling of the fartouch brought no response.

It was the Up-and-Over or death.

She knew what she was supposed to do. Technically. She had reached out and collected the appropriate ghosts occasionally, but had come up short on nerve. And never had she allowed herself to be taken through by someone else, though that was the customary way of learning.

There was no option. The Serke were poised.

She gathered ghosts.

The Serke darkships vanished.

Marika sealed her eyes and opened to the All, twisted her ghosts, and bid fear be gone. She reached for the Up-and-Over, twisted again.

The stars vanished. Everything vanished. For several seconds nothing surrounded her but a chaotic sense of ghosts and screaming. She had penetrated a vacancy that made the void seem warm and homey.

Stars reappeared, spinning. The darkship was tumbling. Marika looked for landmarks, and nearly panicked when she could spy nothing familiar. The world! Where was it? Where were the Serke darkships, the brethren ships, the mirror, Starstalker, the moons? She saw nothing at all. Only stars, distant stars. Had she hurled herself into the gulf between?

Something huge and dark stirred nearby, aware of her presence, so powerful she could feel it without reaching into the plane of ghosts. It was the great grim dark thing she had so often sensed waiting at the lip of the system. Her skip through the Up-and-Over had thrown her almost into its grasp!

Still battling panic, she steadied the darkship, polled her companions, found them frightened but safe. Her Mistress had no experience of the Up-and-Over either. What do we do now? she sent.

Find the direction home.

Marika scanned the void opposite the crawling darkness, and found a star that seemed brighter than any other. That one?

The Mistress knew where they were too. Must be. Only the sun would be so bright from here. Hurry. It knows we are here and it is coming to see ...

The darkness had begun to move.

Marika turned the darkship toward the sun and began moving inward, accelerating. Can we make it? She did not have the courage to hazard the Up-and-Over again.

We must try. We cannot go through again. Another time, not knowing what we are doing, and we could be too far away to find our way. In the face of a problem less savage than the Serke the Mistress was perfectly calm. More rational than she, Marika thought.

The homeward passage took three days, despite the incredible velocities Marika attained. She reached lunar orbit at the edge of exhaustion, with her bath and Mistress all but burned out, and had to be rescued by brethren ships working the mirror, for she and her meth did not have enough left to take the darkship down.

III Bagnel came to Marika where she lay in a bed aboard the workstation the brethren called the Hammer because of its shape, two pods upon the end of a long arm rotating to create an illusion of gravity. He said, "I heard you cut it pretty close this time."

She had not been awake long and he was her first visitor. "Very close. I wasn't sure I would make it this time."

He eyed her intently while shaking his head.

"I tried something I didn't know how to do and almost did myself in. Is that what you want me to say? I've said it. But I'll also say I didn't have any choice. It was the Up-and-Over or die. The Serke were closing in."

"I understand."

"How bad is it? How much damage did they do?"

"The raiders? None at all. Unless you count a little caused by one of the wrecks. It ploughed through an area where we had some materials tethered. We'll have to replace a few hundred sections of beam that got warped."

"That's all?"

"Evidently you took them completely by surprise. I hear there's a great deal of despair among the recidivists down on the planet. This was supposed to be a killer blow."

"Then the other darkships did get there in time to keep them from wrecking everything."

"Not exactly."

"What?"

"They ran away. The Serke. Before the darkships ever arrived. We heard the warning, but for a long time we did not know what had happened. Actually found out from a captured rogue."

"But ... "

"Marika, nobody knew you were out there. I mean, some of the workers remembered a darkship nosing around, but they didn't know whose it was. You didn't tell anybody where you were going or what you were up to. Meth only started wondering about where you were after we captured the rogue and could not find any silth missing who were supposed to be out there at the time. Meth were talking about a ghost darkship for a while. Then when nobody could find you anywhere down below ... Marika, you have to stop doing that kind of thing. You could have died trying to get back. If you had told somebody what you were up to, anybody, silth could have gone looking for you. It's hard to save somebody when you don't know they're in trouble."

"All right, Bagnel. Don't get excited. I get the message. It doesn't matter now, anyway. Everything turned out for the best. I'm safe."

He scowled. There was much more he wanted to say, but he held his tongue.

Marika said, "The problem has become how to protect the mirrors. They would have destroyed the project but for the accident of my having been out there. Two of those ships were carrying bombs like the ones they used on TelleRai."

"Accident? What accident?" There was an odd glint in Bagnel's eyes.

"What is it? I don't like the way you're looking at me."

"You always discount the notion that you are fated. I don't like superstition any more than you do, Marika, but this time I really have to wonder."

"Don't you start. I get enough of that nonsense from silth. Anyway, if you assume I am a fated thing then the mirror would have been destroyed. Isn't the pattern one of destruction? That's what they keep telling me."

"Maybe that was to prepare you for the turnaround."

"Enough of this, Bagnel. I won't have it from you. It's pure silliness."

"As you wish. I came to see how you are. I have my answer. You're as nasty as ever. And those who had hopes of your early demise will be disappointed again."

"Right. I intend to keep disappointing them, too, because I intend to outlive them all. I have too much to get done to waste time dying."

He looked at her hard, surprised by her intensity. "Things such as?"

"The project has reached takeoff. It is running itself. Not so?"

"Pretty much."

"This misadventure got me to thinking. There is very little I can contribute now, unless it's protection. Or if I just help lift materials from the surface. The rest of the engine is running on its own impetus."

"So?" He sounded suspicious.

"So I think it's time I went looking for trouble instead of waiting for it to come to me. No smart remarks! Remember when I was young? Remember how the novice Marika always jumped to the attack? She hasn't been doing that since she got older. That antique factor in your quarters that time was right."

"You're so old now? About to turn into one of your Ponath Wise meth? Eh? Eh? I know. You attacked even when you didn't know what you were attacking. Yes, I remember that Marika very well. She was a fool, sometimes. I think I like today's Marika a little better."

"Fool. That Marika made things happen. This Marika just sits around reacting. Mainly because she has been too cowardly to take what she knows to be necessary next steps. Before Kiljar finally gives up dying and actually yields up her spirit to the All-which may not happen for another century, the rate she's going, always going to die tomorrow and going on for another year-and maybe leaves the Redoriad Community in the paws of somebody less sympathetic, I'm going to learn the ways of the gulf and the Up-and-Over. I am determined. I will defeat fear, learn, then go hunt those who would destroy us."