A Passage of Stars Page 6

  Bach’s description was more detailed, if about as succinct. He had monitored color changes, heat patterns, sound referents, He had found one clue: using his internal lights he shone a map of the ship on the grey floor. Paisley oohed gratifyingly and traced their route for Lily. Bach, diverted, complimented her on her sense of direction.

  And? prompted Lily.

  Here. (A green light.) Through one closed hatchway not immune to heat sense awareness—he began to digress on Kapellan optical sensory evolution; Lily cut off this variation—was a human pattern.

  Then these Kapellans aren’t human?

  Negative.

  And this pattern?

  Definitely human. Enclosed in such a cell, seemingly, as thou and I and the child.

  You can sense through this seal? She looked to the seam in the grey wall.

  Certainly. I am, as thou seest, equipped to mimic most sentient sensing patterns, in this case infrared heat patterning.

  Is anyone out there? Lily stood abruptly, walked over to the seam.

  Negative.

  She turned and walked to the other side of the cell, walked back.

  “What you be talking about?” Paisley demanded.

  “We’re being held by aliens, who are evidently called Kapellans. And I believe the man I’m seeking is on board this ship, too.”

  The ship jolted; chimes echoed above. Paisley fell forward. Bach rolled almost half over, and he began to sing an incomprehensible melody. Lily kept her feet.

  They went through.

  She saw the kata whole. The moves branched out in a lattice into infinity, but simultaneously came to rest at their beginning—finite circle of endlessness. The finger bent just so, the wrist, the angle of the knee here, the window made by the hands: “to look at the sky.”

  Die Kunst der Fuge. Countersubject. B-A-C-H. Ah. So it is finished.

  The universe patterns. Energy without end. We dance, each from birth. Each dance patterns uniquely. Each pattern so marks its subject/owner/object/worshipper. The colors move on the body as the body moves. The pattern defies stillness. Such do we pattern you, child, so you may understand. Learn your pattern. Wear it proudly.

  And came out.

  First, the silence of reorientation. Lily still stood, centered, and her hands began to move, rising together. She sighed and dropped them. Paisley, flung onto the floor, gasped and pushed herself up to sit again. Bach had righted himself; now he sang quietly, Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her!

  “Where are we?” said Paisley in a very small voice.

  Lily crouched beside the girl, laying a hand on her shoulder. “If we go over again, we’ll be coming into Remote. But if we’re coming into system now, it’s Dairy. I don’t care how much power these spooks have, it’s got to be one or the other.”

  “Spooks?” ventured Paisley.

  Lily sat back on her heels. “You’ve never been downside, on planet?”

  “Never.”

  “Hoy.” Lily stood and paced back to the seal.

  “See,” said Paisley, “we can’t go much of anywhere.”

  “We?”

  Paisley lifted her arms. The tattoos twined in their vivid pattern down flesh, lost themselves under her tunic.

  Lily sighed and turned her head toward the opposite wall.

  “Spooks? Funny word.” Paisley waited.

  “It’s a thing, a creature; we also call it Boo, the ghost. It lived down there on Unruli before ever we came. So we call anything funny or weird that, people sometimes, but mostly just—well, those things, they’re nothing like us. Folk say they capture the souls of dead people. Who knows if they have any awareness at all.”

  Paisley sighed, an unconscious mimic, and dropped her chin to rest on one fist. Lily walked to the door.

  When they came out of the berth, it was you they recognized. She turned to gaze at Bach. You they stopped for. They knew you. But no one here knows you. With one hand she drew her hair back, let it fall forward. What did you mean, another sector of space?

  Bach sang a gentle end to his piece, paused. His lights winked, and a spray of bright points of light scattered around him, spreading on the floor as he rose higher above it. Thou, my patroness, didst commission me in this district. A light blinked red. Paisley slipped back as the pattern spread, staring at it in awe. My calculations indicate we have appeared here. (A blue light.) Or here. (A second blue light.)

  Where is Central?

  “It be ya star map!” cried Paisley.

  Data incomplete. My investigations indicate thy sphere of trade encompasseth limited regional boundaries. Navigation links nonexistent beyond such sphere.

  “You been telling me,” said Paisley, “’bout growing up. Where be you born?”

  At first neither Lily nor Paisley saw the two green lights flash. But when the section of stars they were looking at made no change, their eyes roved further afield.

  “Impossible,” said Lily.

  “Sure,” said Paisley in a breath, “and glory.”

  Where do you think this ship came from? asked Lily. You said before, the common—she hesitated over the unusual pattern of notes—Terran usage.

  A new light, yellow, winked on closer to the green ones than the blues and red, but still far—almost the cell’s width—from either. Bach had risen high enough now that the scattered points filled the floor, dappling Lily and Paisley.

  “Paradise,” breathed Paisley.

  “Who?” Lily turned to the girl.

  Paisley began to sing in a high, slightly nasal voice:

  Ya Dancer hae, he come, he come,

  Tae lead us far, tae home, tae home.

  Lost we are, belly down day,

  Through ya mountains winds ya way.

  She paused, regarded for a long, silent moment some aspect of the tattoos on her right arm. “But no one knows ya way no more. Ya way back.”

  “No one knows ya way,” echoed Lily.

  Paisley’s expression cleared. “You know ya story, too?”

  Lily shook her head. “I don’t know it. Is it a Ridani story?”

  “Sure. It be ya story about how ya people, us tattoos”—she spoke the word like it was a curse—“come to be here. Long ago, there be ya place where many o’ ya people lived in sore poverty. Not so much different, really. And ya govinment wanted to be rid o’ them—allays has, here or there, cause they never understood ya patterning,” She lifted a colorful hand as if in illumination. “But there be no way, as ya people be too poor to go elsewheres, despite wishing for ya better home. Until Dancer come. He were one o’ us, you see, but graced with ya power to see farther into ya pattern. Ya story starts with him.”

  “Tell us,” said Lily.

  Paisley’s voice changed, took on a deeper, even huskier tone.

  Dancer come took his folk out

  Morning bright-o day,

  Said, “Follow my pattern,” hey come ho

  Sun shine bright-o morning.

  Folk they had not one day’s bread

  Morning bright-o day

  Nor job nor rooftop hey come ho

  Sun shine bright-o morning.

  Dancer say, “We go on ya road”

  Morning bright-o day

  “Tae green grass land come” hey come ho

  Sun shine bright-o morning.

  She smiled, pausing. “It be ya long tale.”

  “Go on,” urged Lily.

  Paisley took a deep breath. “Ya folk certain wanted ya green grass land, but they be scared o’ ya lowroad. ‘Cold as night’s breath,’ it be. ‘Still as death’s hand.’ Dancer, he fell wrath and sore, cause they said they never go on ya ships. So he curse them with ya old grey flat. It be ya worst place o’ all to live. Death and sickness and ya babes crying all day for milk.”

  “And what happened?”

  Paisley began again in her husky singsong, punctuating her words with stylized hand movements.

  Now up then spoke min Bonny’s child

 
Morning dim-dark way

  Jehanna said, “No danger here”

  “Sun is up, come morning.”

  Folk they heartened to her voice

  Morning bright-o day

  Come they back to ya lowroad ships

  Sun shine bright-o morning.

  Jehanna she caught Dancer’s eye

  Morning bright-o day

  He promise green grass land once more

  Sun shine bright-o morning.

  “So they go there,” said Lily.

  “Sure,” said Paisley. “Dancer, he led them on ya lowroad. He be caught by Jehanna, lift her up and now he wish her to pattern with him. Bless be. But Jehanna turn round her bright head, speak out proud. Refuse him. See, she never wanted ya man. She wanted ya green grass land.”

  “What did Dancer do?”

  “Sure, now there be ya story.” The pinpoint lights speckled them, slipping in and out of Paisley’s tattoos as if they had always been part of her pattern.

  Now grew he fierce now grew he cold

  Morning dim-dark way

  Never she wavered hey come ho

  Sunlight dims, dark morning.

  Now cast he folk out on lowroad

  Morning dim-dark way

  And lost they wandered hey come ho

  Sunlight dims, dark morning.

  Jehanna led them far and cold

  Morning dim-dark way

  Till came they here come hey come ho

  Sunlight dimmed, dark morning.

  “And never shall you come back,” he cried

  Morning dim-dark way

  “Never in green grass land abide”

  Sunlight dimmed, dark morning.

  “Not till Jehanna gets child by me”

  Morning dim-dark way

  “And our son grows tae lead you back”

  Sun shine dim-dark morning.

  Now live we far from green grass land

  Morning dim-dark way

  But Jehanna’s proud come hey come ho

  Sun it brings the morning.

  Jehanna she’ll get Dancer’s child

  Morning bright-o day

  Jehane she’ll call him hey come ho

  Sun shine bright-o morning.

  We’ll come one day tae green grass land

  Morning bright-o day

  When Jehane he dance us down ya way

  Sun shine bright-o morning.

  The girl lowered her hands first, like the settling of waves, then let her breath out in a long sigh that filled the room. She looked up at Lily. “So ya people be waiting,” she said in her normal voice. “Till Jehane come to dance us down to ya place where we can live without being hated and poor.”

  Lily raised a hand to brush at her eyes. “It’s a very sad story, Paisley.”

  “Sad?” Paisley looked confused, glancing at Bach, who still hovered silently above, as if for corroboration. “It ain’t sad. You only grow patience by waiting for ya ship what may only come for ya great-grandchildren. That be ya way it be.”

  “I suppose it made me think of my parent’s House, in a way,” Lily said, almost to herself. “I never belonged there. Maybe some people can’t ever find their true homes. Or don’t recognize them when they find them.” She studied the winking spread of lights across the floor.

  “Sometimes you got to lose it first,” said Paisley. “To know what it were.”

  But Lily was now staring at the lights. “It fits!” she exclaimed. She whistled to Bach. The robot flashed a series of lights on his surface, singing, and the projection vanished.

  “What’d you say?”

  “I said I knew he was old, but I didn’t know he was as old as all that.”

  “As all what?”

  “Well.” Bach drifted down to the level of Lily’s head, a soft melody accompanying her explanation. “You know yourself from your story that we all came here—except the sta, of course—from a place a long ways away, a long time ago.”

  “Tirra-li,” said Paisley. “But no one knows ya way back no more.”

  “That’s right. Terra. And no one does know, any more, how to get back.” Lily frowned. “Could you get back there, Bach, given a ship?”

  Negative. Data incomplete.

  “No one kin get back,” repeated Paisley stubbornly. “Ya first highroaders, they tried. But ya way be haunted now, with ya old ghost ship, lost forever. And it be sure horrible torment if ya ghost ship find you looking on ya old way.”

  Lily smiled. “I don’t know if I think it’s haunted, but it’s sure lost. At least to us.”

  “And who not to? Central’d be happy as ifkin to be rid of us.” Paisley paused and with a mutinous expression lifted one patterned hand to touch a patterned face. “Us tattoos.”

  “Then where did these aliens come from? If what Bach says is true.”

  Paisley, much struck by this point, lowered her hand and said nothing.

  Lily resumed her pacing. “Hoy. Bach must have been sitting in that garage for ages.”

  “Don’t min Bach know?”

  “He was deactivated. It’s all a—ah—blank. It was pure chance I activated him at all, anyway.”

  Paisley rose and went over to where Bach hovered, laying a hand on his cool, hard surface. “Sure,” she said. “You tingle.” She looked at Lily. “Min Bach, he ain’t like other ’bots. He be smart. I mean, real smart, not fake smart.”

  Several of Bach’s lights winked. “Thank you, Miss Paisley,” he replied in Lily’s voice. Paisley giggled and patted him.

  Stop that, Bach, Lily whistled. Use a different voice, please.

  Forgive me, patroness. Thy voice and the child’s are the only voices I have had leisure to study at enough length to reproduce.

  Forgiven, whistled Lily, and she came over and touched him. He began, softly, a sweet hymn. “We’ll have to find him someone else’s voice to study,” Lily said to Paisley.

  “Ah,” said Paisley wisely. “What about ya spooks?”

  “Ya spooks,” said Lily. She began pacing out the circumference of the cell, as if she were a moving wall around the girl and the robot. “I’ve never heard or seen anything like them before. They have enough energy to waste on non-premium windows. They have—by the Void—aircars. And Bach says they shouldn’t be here. If that map—” She halted. “If they came over the highroad, to here—maybe, back there, the navigation routes weren’t lost. Maybe them, or our old people, from the places we must have come from, maybe they just didn’t care, to come here. Too far and too unimportant. Or maybe they couldn’t. Or—” Her speculations failed her. “But it explains why they recognized Bach, if he’s from back over the long road.”

  Bach sang, in corroboration, that he was.

  “But what kind of threat are you to them?”

  It appeareth to me that since I have never met any of their kind before, I must therefore be no threat at all.

  “Never?” She frowned. “Then why did they try to shoot you? And in Station, when everyone knows that to shoot in Station—”

  “Five terms,” Paisley supplied, and at Lily’s inquiring look, “It be ya sentence, for lockup, for using ya guns.” There was a pause. “Min Ransome,” Paisley began again, hesitant now, “be you thinking they mean to kill us?”

  “I don’t know. Though if they’d meant to you’d think they would have done it by now.”

  “Reckon they be curious why we be here?” asked Paisley. “Sure, and you did say before that—” She faltered. Lily had suddenly gone very still. Her body mirrored her thoughts, poised, alert, ready to spring. She stared at the opposite wall, as if looking through it to something veiled beyond.

  “Heredes,” Lily said. “They must know we’re after Heredes.”

  “Who be Heredes?” said Paisley promptly.

  “My teacher,” Lily replied mechanically. “My sensei. The man we came for.”

  The watch rang out above them, four short chimes, two long, the alien voice.

>   Docking procedure. Shall I transpose? sang Bach. Docking procedures shall commence in twenty-nine minutes. Therefore, according to thine information, we have achieved Dairy system.

  “They came in fast,” Lily said. “From window to docking.”

  Affirmative, What plans dost thou have for our removal from this vessel?

  “Sure,” said Paisley, “and glory. I never been nowhere but Station. And I told them I’d go over ya highroad someday. They all laughed.”

  Lily was still staring at the wall, an unrevealing expanse of grey. “If they’re from over the way, why do they want Heredes?” she repeated.

  6 Chance on Remote

  PAISLEY HAD NOT EXAGGERATED in calling the docking noisy. For some reason known only to the aliens, the entire sequence of grappling and coming to, in-ship bells and commands, and ship-station communications went on over the intercom. Loudly. When the noise ceased, as abruptly as if a knife had cut it off, the silence felt like a muffling cloth had been thrown down around them.

  “I be hungry,” said Paisley softly.

  “I’m thirsty,” said Lily. She dropped into a crouch beside Bach. Can we see that plan of the ship again? It appeared on the floor. “Show me again,” she said to Paisley, “how we got here. By what route.”

  The girl traced it out, and again, until Lily had memorized it.

  “No doors or locks to go through? Except this one and the station lock? No lifts? This one here, Bach—it had the other human?” Lily settled on to the floor, legs crossed. “We either have to break for it and hope we’re not seen, or grab one for hostage for a safe conduct. Hoy.” She whistled, Bach. Can you get into their com system? Open the door that way?

  Negative. I have not the relevant information on Kapellan computation networks. However, I am in their spoken tongue forty-seven percent fluent according to the specifications of the Habir-Xu xenographic language index. Dost thou desire its compilation figures?

  “I believe you,” said Lily.

  “How we going to run ya scam?”

  “I don’t know.” Lily inspected the thin seam of the door. “Dairy downside is supposed to be a great place to take the holidays, but Dairy Station—I don’t know. It’s an orbiter, I guess. Like Remote’s. But at least I’ve been on Remote Station before. I have an idea of the layout, where we can run for.”