A Talent for War

XXI.

WE RODE THE Grainger out to Saraglia. Grainger was the Capella’s sister ship, and I thought a lot about Gabe while we drifted down the long gray tunnel.

The observation ports were, of course, shuttered. The view outside is a bit hard on the comfort level for most people; but there are a few places on the ship where a curious passenger who wants to see the nether world can indulge himself. One of them was a lounge called the Captain’s Bar at the forward section of the topmost deck.

Chase and I retreated there after I recovered from the plunge into hyper. My reaction, by the way, seemed to be getting worse with each successive trip. And I sat there that first evening, refusing to say very much to anyone, morosely recalling my pledge to myself—it seemed a long time ago now—that I was returning to Rimway to travel no more.

We drank too much. Starship bars always do very well. And, with too much time to think, I got to wondering why the research team on the Tenandrome had agreed that they would say nothing of their find. And I worried about that.

I didn’t eat well, and after a while even Chase seemed to grow moody. So we worried our way through the formless flux of a dimension whose existence, according to some, was purely mathematical in nature.

Eight days later, ship time, we made the jump back into linear. The passengers, as they recovered from the effects of the transit, crowded around the ship’s viewports, which were now open, to gape at the spectacle of the Veiled Lady.

At this close range, it bore no resemblance to anything on a human scale. Even the nebular structure was no longer recognizable. Rather, we were staring at a vast congregation of individual stars, a blazing multitude of dazzling points of color spearing the soul, a river of light passing ultimately into infinity. How poor had Jacob’s representation been in the study at home.

After a while, when I could stand it no more, I went into the bar. It was crowded.

The longest part of the flight now lay before us: the journey from the re-entry point to Saraglia itself, which, in the event, required two and a half weeks. I read a lot, and took to playing cards in the Captain’s Lounge with a group of regulars. Chase frolicked in the gym and the pool with a young male whose name I’ve forgotten.

A pair of shuttles rendezvoused with us at the beginning of the third week. They carried passengers and cargo for the next phase of the Grainger’s flight, and removed everyone bound for Saraglia. Chase said good-bye to her friend, and I was surprised to discover a sense of well-being at our departure.

Saraglia is a construct approximately the size of a small moon, orbiting the collapsed remnant of a supernova. Its mission was to serve as an observation station. But its proximity to the super dense star led to its development as a commercial center, specializing in a wide range of processing services for manufacturers whose products required the application of ultra-high pressures for extensive periods of time.

The station looks a trifle haphazard: the original structure was little more than a platform. But that’s been long since encased within environmental pods, manufacturing shells, power extraction nets, loading and docking facilities and automated factories.

A substantial dust cloud—held in place by artificial gravity— orbits the complex, providing a shield against the harsh light of the Veiled Lady. Once inside the perimeter of the cloud, an observer is struck by the relatively soft illumination of the cylinder world, which spills out of a hundred thousand windows and ports and transparent panels and receiving bays. If Saraglia is on the edge of man’s universe, it is also the warmest of his habitats.

We rode our shuttle into one of the bays, disembarked, and checked into a hotel. Chase immediately began preparations for the second phase of the journey.

I needed some recovery time though. So I went sightseeing among the forests and glades, and even spent a couple of afternoons enjoying one of its seacoast lodges.

Several days after our arrival, we were on our way again, in a leased Centaur. It wasn’t as large as the vehicle that Gabe had authorized, and the accommodations were (as Chase pointed out with some asperity) rather Spartan for a long trip. But I hadn’t got accustomed yet to controlling large amounts of money, and the price for the Centaur was sufficiently exorbitant.

As soon as the engines had built up a sufficient charge, we made the jump back into Armstrong.

"We’ll make our re-entry in fifty-seven days," she said. "Shipboard days. Also, we have a decision to make."

"Go ahead."

"This is a long flight. Confederate regulations don’t really apply out where we’re going, but we’re supposed to abide by them anyhow. If we follow the guidelines, we will allow three hundred A.U.s for reinsertion back into linear. Factoring in our inability to be precise, we might find ourselves very easily five or six hundred A.U.s off the target. Now, a Centaur’s a lot slower in conventional space than a big commercial liner. If we aren’t lucky, we could find ourselves with a long trip to get where we’re going. Best bet would be to just go ahead and jump back in as close to the target as we can."

"Hell, no," I exploded. "We’ve waited all this time. I don’t mind a little patience now."

"How about a lot of patience?"

"Oh," I said. "How much time are we talking?"

"Possibly the better part of a year."

"I don’t think," I said, "you mentioned this before."

"I was making assumptions about how you’d want to handle it. Alex," she smiled and assumed her most soothing manner. "The chances of our actually materializing inside something are virtually nil. There’s an enormous amount of empty space within the entry area we’d be using. You’d be safer than flying a skimmer at home."

Her smile widened.

"That’s not exactly reassuring," I said.

"Trust me," she beamed.

I’ve always been careful to ration my exposure to electronic fantasy. But that long ride out into the Veiled Lady provided the perfect excuse to dispense with old inhibitions. I retired to my cabin rather early in the voyage.

I traveled extensively through the ship’s library, vacationing in a dozen different luxury spots. Some of them actually existed, some did not, some never could. There was always at least one lovely woman on my arm. And their characters, of course, were amenable to my programming.

Chase knew. She stayed up front in the cockpit most of the time, reading and staring out into the gray tunnel which opened endlessly before us. She said little when I wandered up periodically to crash into a seat beside her. It was always mildly embarrassing, and I didn’t know why. So I grew irritated with her.

Eventually I tired of the standard travelogues. I’d brought along some archaeological puzzle scenarios from Gabe’s collection. These were elaborate adventures, set in mythical ruins against exotic locales: find and identify a curious artifact in a submerged temple peopled with grotesque, animated statuary; translate a set of three-dimensional symbols afloat within a cluster of translucent pyramids on a frozen tundra; piece together the meaning of an ancient sacrificial ritual which seems to hold the key to explaining how the original inhabitants produced, within a few generations, a savage race.

There was in all this a surprise.

When I got in trouble trying to get through a water-filled passageway in the temple, I was rescued and dragged into a stone basin by an exquisite, half-naked woman whom I remembered but was slow to pinpoint.

Ria.

The woman in the photo in Gabe’s bedroom.

She showed up again as a lovely savage in the ruined city, and among the pyramids as a magnificent wind-born creature with wings. Always she was there to rescue the adventurer and inform him he had lost the game; and on the one occasion that I got through to the end, she was waiting.

Her name was always Ria.

I became increasingly absorbed until, on one occasion while I was being stalked by an invisible thing through a mountain fortress that seemed to have no exits, the sequence dissolved, and I was on my back in a bunk in a dark space.

For a long time, my heart pounded while realization gradually set in that I had returned to my cabin. And then I felt movement, detected a silhouette.

"Chase?"

"Hello, Alex," she said. Her voice sounded different, and I could hear her breathe. "How about some reality?"

On the seventeenth day, we saw a shadow on the Armstrong scanners. Only momentarily, and then it was gone. "It was nothing," Chase said. But afterward, she was frowning.