Jeffrey Carver - Eternity's End

Riggers, if you are satisfied with your test, please come out, said Fre’geel, on the com.

I find no problems, said Palagren. Legroeder?

Seems okay.

Rigger Deutsch?

Legroeder turned to Deutsch, resting in silence at the stern. You must give your judgment. You are the one who has flown this ship.

Even in the net, Deutsch’s glass-lensed eyes gleamed enigmatically. Yes, he said at last.

Then let us meet on the bridge, said Palagren.

The debriefing was conducted over a light meal in the galley; afterward, Fre’geel dismissed them for the night. Legroeder, mindful of his assignment, approached Deutsch. “Is there someplace we can go to talk in private?”

Deutsch stared into space. “Talk about what?”

Legroeder shrugged. “We’re going to have to work together. I have to know if I can trust you. And you have to know if you can trust me. So I thought—at least, we ought to know something about each other. Know what we’re capable of. What to expect.”

Deutsch’s expression was utterly unreadable. Disdain? Dismay? Embarrassment? He answered in a soft voice, “In order that we may take you to your imprisonment that much sooner?”

“If you want to put it that way.”

Reluctantly, it seemed, Deutsch turned his hand up. “We can use my cabin, if you wish. Your commander magnanimously allowed me to keep it.”

“All right. Let’s go, then.” Legroeder spoke to the Narseil marine assigned as guard, and asked him if he would keep his vigil outside Deutsch’s cabin.

Behind the sliding, metal-composite door, Deutsch’s quarters were small but well appointed. The walls had many curtains and hangings, as if in counterpoint to the mechanically hard shininess of Deutsch’s own person. An odd sort of reclining seat occupied one side of the room where a bunk might have been; on the other was a desk and a flat-seated stool, plus a straight-backed chair pushed back against the wall. On the desktop, a clear case held half a dozen luminous, faceted shapes, each glowing a different color in the light of the desk lamp. Legroeder felt a rush of wistfulness. “Meditation crystals?” he asked. Just the sight made him long again for his pearlgazers.

Deutsch’s eyes gleamed. “You know them?”

It had been so long. “I had pearlgazers once. I lost them when my ship was—when I was taken prisoner.” In his early years of rigging, the pearlgazers had been a valuable training tool, a focus for image-creating. Later, they’d been a comfort in times of loneliness. His sessions with the pearlgazers had been rather like a prayer time.

Deutsch floated over to the desk, opened the case, and lifted a ruby-red crystal into the light. “Mine were taken also. I bought these a couple of years after. They were my first purchase when they put me on a cash rating.” He peered over at Legroeder. “Without them, I think I would have gone mad long ago.”

Legroeder didn’t answer. When he lost the pearlgazers, he’d lost the meditative habit—not that he’d had much opportunity for quiet reflection as a prisoner, anyway. But now, as he stared at Deutsch’s crystals, it all came back in a rush.

Deutsch seemed to be reading this thoughts. “Would you like to try them?”

Legroeder started, then shook his head reflexively. Losing himself in a meditative trance in the presence of a just-conquered enemy was probably not the best way to establish authority. Bad enough he was having to do this at all. What was his purpose here—to win Deutsch over? Or to find the pirate’s weak spots, so he could be controlled? Legroeder hated this, hated being someone’s handler, which was more or less what Fre’geel wanted him to be.

“If you haven’t tried it with implants, you may be underestimating their value.” Deutsch gazed at him probingly. “You said you wanted communication.”

Legroeder blinked. “So?”

“Well, they’re good for solitary meditation, of course. But they can also interact. Your augments could mediate that—if you want.” Deutsch hefted the crystal in one hand.

Legroeder frowned. He hadn’t thought about communicating with these. But he was the one who’d said they needed to learn about each other, to gain trust. Maybe Deutsch had a point. If they were to have even a prayer of penetrating the raider fortress, they needed to have some understanding of the place ahead of time. It would be better yet to see it through another’s eyes. Still… there was an intimacy to this sort of joining; it was something you did with friends. Good friends.

“No need, if you don’t want to.” Deutsch replaced the crystal in its case and floated to his recliner. The levitator housing that passed for his hips settled into a recess in the seat, and the entire apparatus tilted back about fifteen degrees. It looked as though it reclined fully for sleeping.

“Perhaps—” Legroeder began, driven more by some inner momentum that he didn’t understand than by logic “—perhaps a short session would be useful. At a moderate level.”

They were not friends. And yet, they were already linked in a way that reminded him of his bond with Maris—brought together by circumstance, by the condition of being fellow prisoners. Could the same bonding force work here? Was it something that could be summoned? In the back of his mind, stirred perhaps by his own implants, he felt a growing curiosity about Deutsch.

Deutsch gazed at him assessingly. “You might find these somewhat more powerful than your pearlgazers.” He said it as though they were two men standing in a shop talking about the latest innovations in meditation gear, the tensions of the recent battle forgotten.

Legroeder nodded. “May I?” He reached out to touch the tip of a long, blue crystal. Deutsch’s arm telescoped out and picked the crystal out of the case and handed it to him. Legroeder sat back in the desk chair and held the sapphire-like gem up to the light. It appeared to have its own inner fire: threads and facets of self-contained light.

“We start separately,” Deutsch said. “The interaction between the crystals will come, as we meditate. If that’s a problem…” His silver eyes peered at Legroeder. Legroeder shook his head. “All right, then.” Deutsch held the ruby crystal almost reverently in his hands.

Legroeder allowed his gaze to drift downward into the depths of the crystal. It already felt different from the pearlgazers: more active, more alive. And yet the approach was the same, to let his thoughts flicker inward… to let them settle into the object’s inner fire, until the stirrings of the subconscious sent them swirling in a new direction.

He heard his augments urging him on; then they melted out of sight.

Slow, deep breathing…

He felt himself slipping downward, drawn by the crystal. His thoughts came together in sparkles of cerulean blue, like plankton in the sea… or particles of knowledge in a datanet, forming threads of light, commingling and joining. Voices chattered in the distance. His own thoughts? The implants?

He became aware of droplets of light moving against darker surroundings, sketching zigzagging paths outward. The augments, reaching out… as if they knew what they were doing, even if he did not. He watched, hypnotized by the patterns drawn in liquid light…

Only gradually did he become aware of crosstalk between crystals, voices murmuring distantly. So many inner voices… asking why he was doing this. Why he was doing the mission.

Because I must.

But why?

For my friends… for me…

A tangled vine of voices, his own inner voices, curling around the knots of questions.

To strike at piracy… to find truth…