Ceremony

Chapter Thirty-One

I

Marika's voidship drifted slowly through the clutter and confusion of the leading trojan point. She could make better speed down on the surface of the planet. Here she dared not fly herself, trusting only herself, for there were so many obstacles to navigation. Passage through the site required the combined efforts of a Mistress of the Ship and a Mistress-qualified pilot-passenger working from the axis. Marika could not imagine how the brethren kept track.

Three years had passed. Initial construction was just beginning. The support industry down on the planet's surface was not yet more than thirty percent of what it would have to be. Ninety percent of the off-planet effort, so far, had been devoted to the leading mirror.

It would be a demonstrator, in a sense. If it went active and did no apparent good, the rest of the project would collapse.

Marika reached with her touch and scanned the confusion. She remained awed by the magnitude of what she had set in motion. Designing it, planning it, talking about it was not the same as seeing it.

Flares of light speckled the night as crude brethren ships moved materials. Already Bagnel was complaining that they had chosen the most difficult way possible of building the mirror. He was agitating for a giant pack of balloons in the trailing trojan. His brethren had orbited a two-hundred-mile gas-filled reflector the week before. Its energy yield was directed at the developing oil field in the Ponath. Its value might have been more psychological than actual. The workers there claimed they sensed a change in the bitter cold already. Marika had visited and had been able to find no evidence of any local temperature increase. She suspected most of the energy was being absorbed before it reached the surface.

A remarkable vigor and an even more remarkable spirit of cooperation still animated the venture. There had been far fewer conflicts than anticipated. Yet even now Bagnel's best estimate had the leading mirror eight years from completion.

That protracted unity, in part, sprang from the project's single biggest problem, which existed down below-a sabotage campaign by those residual brethren still committed to the cause of the departed villains.

These criminals were more subtle than their predecessors. Marika's old tricks for digging them out did not work nearly as well. But still, enough were taken to keep the mines working at capacity.

Few of the taken had any direct connection with the brethren. More and more disturbing to Marika was the fact that the criminals were able to continue recruiting. And that they now were taking a few females into their ranks. The great hope of the mirror project had not adequately fired the hearts of the mass of bond meth. Marika was distressed, but did not know how to convince ordinary meth that they had as great a stake as the powerful who ruled their lives.

The mines were a problem not yet unraveled. In the past there had been no need for mechanization there. The structure of society had been such that no demand for ores had been so great that plain physical labor could not meet it. Meth did not mechanize simply for the sake of efficiency. They did so only where a task could not be performed by meth alone. But now ...

Bagnel had been correct. The project was restructuring society. Traditionally labor intensive areas like mining and agriculture had to be mechanized either to up volume or release labor for the project. Marika was, she feared, creating the possibility of compelling some of the changes the rogue brethren had aimed toward. Some could not be avoided. There were times when she agonized. She was in the incongruous position of being the principal defender of the silth ideal while not believing in it herself.

Marika's Mistress of the Ship reached the sunward position she desired, just miles from the heart of the expanding framework. The titanium beamwork sparkled, arms radiating from the anchor point. Marika recalled some old steel bridges, brethren-built, that spanned the river at TelleRai. Bridges constructed with incredibly complex girderwork intended to distribute load stresses. Bridges built in later times were much simpler in design. Was there a similar design problem here? Was the framework needlessly complex? Or, like those old bridges, was the design state of the art for the knowledge available, for the metallurgy of the moment?

Rotate your tip so the framework is overhead, Marika sent. Your glow is obscuring my view.

The framework rose, filling the sky.

A tinny voice spoke in Marika's ear, from the tiny radio earplug there. "Hello, the darkship. We will need you to pull back a few miles. We are coming through your space with girderwork."

There was a time when no male would have dared think of speaking so to silth. But in space the laws of physics often overruled tradition. Maybe these brethren would have to be destroyed in the end, lest their easygoing, not so subtly insubordinate ways infect the rest of the meth race.

Marika scanned the night for a brethren workship towing a string of bundles and spotted its flare. She touched her Mistress, relayed instructions. The darkship began to drift backward.

She was pleased with what she saw at that trojan.

She would be remembered. The meth race would recall that Marika the Reugge, wild silth of the Degnan pack of the upper Ponath, had lived. Even if the project failed, if it died in squabbling between the sisterhoods, it was something that would not be forgotten. She, its instigator, would be remembered with it.

Already the mass of materials reflected enough light to be visible from the planet's surface. In a few years it would be the brightest object in the heavens, bar the moons. When it was complete only the sun itself would outshine it.

There was nothing she could contribute here, other than encouragement. She touched several senior sisters who were working the site and sent her wholehearted approval, then touched her Mistress. Proceed to the other site now, please.

The darkship began easing out of the clutter.

It took an hour to reach space where the Mistress dared move swiftly. During the wait Marika ducked through her loophole into the realm of ghosts, through which she worked her silth magic, and continued a long-term effort to further familiarize herself with the odd those-who-dwell of the void.

She was accustomed to them now, and used them as she did the ghosts down below on her homeworld. Their immensity and power no longer disturbed and intimidated her, perhaps because by dealing with them she developed her own strength and power. There were none of them so mighty she could not take them into control and use them to pull her voidship or perform some task ordinary meth would perceive as witchery.

She knew them, and the void, but still she had not realized her dream. Still she had not traveled to an alien star, even as a passenger upon another Mistress's darkship. Still she had not dared breach the Up-and-Over, where light became a lagging pedestrian. For reasons deep within her, reasons she could not fathom herself, she was frightened of what she might encounter there.

Darkfarers told her hers was a problem all voidfaring Mistresses and bath faced before faring the Up-and-Over. They called the fear the Final Test. Those who conquered it joined the most elite sisterhood of all, the few score who flew the darkships to the starworlds. Those who did not conquer it seldom fared past the orbits of the meth homeworld's major moons.

Marika extended her touch, her sensing, farther and farther outward ... There it was, that dark something-remote, lying outside the system itself, vast, colder than the indifferent void. A sense of darkness radiated from it. And it terrified her.

She sensed it every time she passed outside Biter's orbit. Kiljar had told her it was the ultimate in those-who-dwell, more vast and powerful and deadly than anything she had yet experienced. It lurked in the gulf between the stars, and had to be appeased by any voidship that passed out of the system. It had appeared there soon after the first silth had penetrated the deep.

It was the thing that made Bestrei, the Serke champion, the most terrible of living silth. Three living silth could manipulate that great darkness. Bestrei could control it better than any other. She could call it and hurl it against any challenger. None had the strength to steal her control and drive it away.

Kiljar said Bestrei meshed with it so well because inside she was just as cold, deadly, and vacant.

Marika feared it because she sensed it in her future. The script was written. The very nature of meth, silth, and the silth ideal made certain eventualities inevitable.

Someday ...

Unspoken by anyone, tacitly assumed and accepted by every silth, was the fact that one day Marika would have to meet Bestrei in darkwar. The confrontation was fated by the All. There was no escaping it.

When Marika reflected upon that chance she was afraid, for she was unsure of herself with the great black, with Bestrei. Most of her life she had been hearing about Bestrei and how terrible the Serke was. The one time their paths had crossed she had been awed by the raw power in the silth. The Serke and their rogue brethren allies had mounted several incursions into the home system the past few months, attacking the mirror project. Bestrei had not participated. Bestrei would not pariticipate in such trivialities, in the estimation of silth who knew her. She would be contemptuous of such nuisance tactics. She would not be seen till she was offered a traditional challenge with dramatically high stakes.

As seemed inevitable, fate stalked Marika's trail. As her Mistress of the Ship began to put on speed toward the trailing trojan point, Marika received a generalized touch from a fartoucher sister riding a picket darkship far out in the direction from which Starstalker and the raiders always appeared. It was brief, cut short.

Turn about, Marika sent to her Mistress. Starstalker is coming.

The plane of the touched reeked with the fear of the Mistress and bath. The Mistress returned, This is not our proper task, mistress.

Turn about. Set course upon the Manestar.

The darkship wheeled.

The speaker in Marika's ear began to babble as slower electromagnetic waves brought the warning.

II They are very daring this time, Marika sent. Many minutes had passed. Starstalker and the raiders were closing with the leading trojan. Never before had Starstalker come in so close. The Serke had been afraid to risk her. Losing her would mean losing the brethren she had brought aboard her.

Marika's Mistress of the Ship returned, They must be armed with more powerful weapons.

The possibility had occurred to Marika. A few bombs of the kind that had destroyed TelleRai could kill the project. Having them delivered might seem worth risking Starstalker.

She opened to the universe, sensed the movement of everything nearby. A dozen brethren ships and five darkships accompanied Starstalker. For the moment Marika was alone, the only defender capable of intercepting the raiders. The sisters down below remained confused, as always. Those within the work site could not get out into free space in time to save themselves, let alone do any defending.

Did the Serke know she was here? Had they recognized her? There was no indication in their behavior. The rogue ships were headed toward the mirror. The silth were forming a screen meant to intercept help coming up from the planet. Marika was tempted to strike at Starstalker itself, to destroy any chance for the criminals to escape, but she feared that might allow the rogues a chance to kill her project.

The rogues had to be halted first.

She went out the long arm of the darkship, her specially built wooden darkship, her darkship that so amused the sisters of the great titanium crosses. The struts bore shields showing her own personal and Degnan witch signs instead of those of a particular cloister, as was the case with all other darkships. She reached the Mistress of the Ship and sent, I will take it now. I am fresher. You guard while I attack. Do you understand?

Yes, mistress. The silth responded with an absolute lack of enthusiasm, despite understanding the necessity presented by the situation.

Marika assumed control, urging the darkship onto a course that would cut that of the rogue vessels from behind.

She put on velocity till she felt her bath begin quivering with the strain of her demands, felt the displaced Mistress shuddering, wanting to tell her to ease back, that they were too near space cluttered with materials for the mirror.

Marika swooped into the wake of the rogues and tasted the bitter flavor of ions from their exhausts. She gained rapidly, reaching ahead to see what she faced.

Two ships carried no crew at all. She allowed the darkship to drift while she captured a stronger ghost and took it forward for a closer look.

The uncrewed two were loaded with what must be bombs, great cumbersome devices with a jury-rigged feel. She explored one rapidly, but could find no way to disarm it or to detonate it prematurely.

She took the ghost into the fuel stores of those two ships, compressed it to marble size, put spin on it, and used it to perforate the tanks. She returned to flesh in time to watch the second flower of fire blossom against the night.

She felt the rage explode among the thwarted rogues, felt them begin sweeping the surrounding night. She returned to the otherworld and began stalking them.

They could not see her! Their radars could not pick up her wooden darkship. She was running right up to them, and they could not see her!

She hit one ship after another, just as she had taken the bomb drones. They scattered so she could not massacre them all.

Mistress. Come out. The Serke have turned our way.

She had known that would come and had ignored it.

Five of them to her one plus a spare Mistress. The odds were too long, strong as she was. Yet there was no way to hide from them. To do that she would have to abandon the talent entirely. To do that in the void meant instant death.

She curved after a rogue ship belching flame in an effort to escape, closed up, killed it, began looking for another.

Mistress ...

There is time. Do not distract me again. Six brethren ships had been negated. They would remember this raid as a disaster. Just guard me.

Let the Serke come. She was strong and treacherous. If nothing else, she could outrun them.

She was closing on another rogue when the Mistress touched her again. She suppressed her anger at being interrupted.

She did not need the warning.

Astounded, she forgot the rogue as she stared at a glowing darkship that had materialized only a few hundred yards away. She recovered barely in time to help the Mistress turn the attack.

This Serke Mistress was weaker than she. Grimly, Marika ducked through her loophole and seized a ghost, hurled it back.

The darkship vanished.

Another appeared an instant later, in another quarter, and vanished again before she could do it harm.

She finally understood. They were trying to attack her through the Up-and-Over.

How could she get out of this?

She could see no escape.

Decision came instantly. She swung the tip of the wooden dagger toward Starstalker and accelerated.

The Serke recognized her intent. They flung themselves into her path. She and the Mistress brushed their attacks aside and continued the drive toward the great voidship. Soon the sisters there would have to move or be rammed.

The Serke tried placing a preponderance of strength in Marika's path. But once they did that she knew where to expect their appearances. She recovered her advantage of her superior grasp of the dark side.

Short, sharp touch-shrieks filled the void as a Serke Mistress's heart exploded and her bath realized they had no hope.

Marika continued gaining velocity.

Starstalker vanished.

Marika searched the void, wondering where it would return from the Up-and-Over. If she chased it hard enough it might not be able to recover the rogues before darkships rose up from the planet's surface or came from other work sites. The rogues might have to be abandoned.

A lance of fire cut past her. She had not kept close enough track of the rogues. She had allowed one to sight her visually. Hurriedly, she threw a ghost its way, destroyed it, and returned to flesh to find her Mistress almost overwhelmed by the Serke. A pair of darkships drifted nearby, radiating elation, thinking they had her.

Marika hammered at one. Again the dark filled the despair.

The second darkship vanished.

Marika spotted Starstalker again, far away, and darted toward it.

It was going better than she had expected. She was as strong as ever she had been, as quick, as deadly, as finely tuned in her instincts. She had won the victory already, even if she were destroyed. The raiders could no longer damage the project.

The surviving Serke were gathering at extreme range. She suspected they would jump at her together. She could not see herself and one sadly weakened Mistress fending off all three.

She had to shatter the fear barriers and hazard the Up-and-Over herself. There was no other exit. They would make no more mistakes.

How long before help arrived? Surely there had been time for darkships to complete the long, slow climb from the planet's surface. Surely someone could have arrived from the moons or have wended her way out of the jungle of metal at the trojan point.

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."

"Marika, please understand when I say I don't approve. I don't think ... "

"I know, Bagnel. And I appreciate your concern." Marika close her eyes. For several minutes she did nothing but relax, comforted by his presence. Much of their friendship remained tacit, undefined by confining words.

"Bagnel?"

"Yes?"

"You have been a good friend. The thing we mean and wish when we use the word friend. The best ... Oh, damn!"

Bagnel was startled. Marika so seldom used words like damn. "What is the matter?"

"There are things I want to say. That should be said, for the record. But I can't pry out the right words. Maybe they don't even exist in the common speech."

"Then don't try to say them. Don't look for them. I know. Just relax. You need rest more than talk."

"No. This is important. Even when we know things, sometimes it takes words to make them concrete. Like in some of our silth magics, where the name must be named before the witchery can be." She paused a time again. "If we had been anyone but the meth we are, Bagnel. Anyone but silth and brethren, southerner and packsteader ... "

He touched her paw lightly, diffidently, actually squeezed it gently for a second, then hastened out of the cubicle.

Marika stared at the cold white door. Softly, she said, "They might have made legends." She could recall him having touched her only once before, for all they had been in close contact for so many years. "We will have to make them for them, for they will never be."

He had dared, at last. And fled.

One did not touch silth.

She had touched him once, before she had known him, atop a snowy ridge as they stared down upon the nomad-gutted remains of the place he had called home. It had been his responsibility to defend that place, and he had failed.

Silth did not show fear. Ponath huntresses did not show fear. Neither did either weep.

Marika wept.