The Swan Pilot

The Swan Pilot

BY L. E. MODESITT, JR.

I eased myself into the control couch of the ISS W. B. Yeats, making certain that all the connections were snug, and that there were no wrinkles in anything. Then I pressed the single stud that was manual, and the clamshell descended.

You could call a trans-ship a corade or a cockle guided by will across the sea of endless space. You could, and it would be technically wrong. Technically wrong, but impressionalistically right, and certainly the way it feels when you’re alone in the blackness, balancing the harmonics and threading your way from the light matter and through the dark matter and faerie dust of overspace, guiding the ship and all it contains out from light and into darkness and then on to another minute isle of solid warmth once again. Or you could refuse to call it a ship at all, nor the ocean it sails a sea. There is no true sea, the theorists say, just a mist of the undermatter that fills overspace, a mist that stretches to eternity, in which float the brilliant blocks of light matter that can incinerate you in a nanoinstant or the solid dark blocks upon which you can be smashed into dust motes tinier than the stitches on a leprechaun’s shoes.

A pilot is more like a light-blinded night bird with gossamer wings that soars across the mists of undermatter against and through the darkness and light that are but the representations of the universe above. Or perhaps those denizens of overspace perceive us as under-space, blocky and slow and awkward. I could call every flight a story of the twelve ships of the Tir Alir, and that would be right as well.

How many ways are there to explain the inexplicable? Shall I try again?

None of what I experience would make sense to, say, François Chirac, or Ahmed Farsi, and what they would experience would not make sense to me, either. But I’m Sean Shannon Henry, born in Sligo and a graduate of Trinity, and in the universe of the trans-ships, that has made all the difference, for the sky roads are not the same for each of the swan pilots, though the departures and the destinations—and the routes—are exactly the same. Nor can there be more than one pilot-captain on a ship. A second pilot wouldn’t help, because if a pilot fails for a nanoinstant, the ship is lost as well. Oh, the scientists have their explanations, and I’ll leave those with them.

With the clamshell down, I was linked to all the systems, from the farscanners to the twin fusactors, from the accumulators to the converters and the translation generators, and from the passenger clamshells to the cargo holds. I ran the checklist, and everything was green, and both cargo and the handful of passengers were secured.

“Alora,” I pulsed to the second, who handles cargo and passengers from the clamshell in the compartment aft of mine, “systems are go.”

“Ready for departure, Captain.”

A last scan of the systems, and I pulsed control. “High control, Yeats, systems green, ready for delocking and departure this time.”

“Yeats, wait one for traffic in the orange.”

“Yeats standing by.”

Another wedge shape, formed of almost indestructible adia-mante composite, so solid in the underspace we inhabit, slipped out from the glowing energy of Hermes Station, out toward the darkness up and beyond, where it would rise through the flames of translation, phoenix-swan-like, to make its way to another distant stellar hearth, and there untranslate, and glide like a falling brick back into the safe dullness of the reality we require.

“Yeats, clear to delock and depart.”

“Control, delocking and departing this time.” After releasing the couplers and giving the faintest touch of power to the steering jets, I eased the Yeats—a mere thousand tons of composite and cargo—away from Hermes Station, that islet of warmth in the black sea of oblivion that is space.

Like a quarrel arrowing through space, where there is no up or down, the Yeats and I accelerated away from Hermes Station and the world of Silverston. Once we were clear of satellites and traffic, I spread the photon nets, like the butterfly soul of the proud priest of ancient Ireland.

“Stand by for translation.”

“Ready for translation,” answered Alora.

I twisted the energies pouring into the translator. The entire universe shimmered, then turned black, and the Yeats and I fused into one entity, no longer pilot and ship, but a single black swan flying through deeper darkness.

A deep chime rolled from below, and crystalline notes vibrated from above, shattered, and fell like ice flakes across my wings, each flake sounding a different note as it struck my wings, and as each note added to the melody of the flight, it left a pinprick of hot agony behind.

I continued to fly, angling for the distant droning beacon that was Alustre, with the sure knowledge that there would be at least one timeless interlude. One was standard, two difficult.With three interludes began high stress on both the ship and the pilot, and a loss level approaching 50 percent. Only one trans-ship had been known to survive four interludes; the pilot had not.

Unseen cymbals crashed, and the grav waves of a singularity shook me. Black pinnae shivered from my wings, wrenched out by the buffeting of a black hole somewhere in the solid underspace I flew above/between.

Brilliant blue, blinding blue, enfolded me—and passed—and I stood on the edge of a rock, wingless, now just a man in a mackintosh, looking at the gray waves sullenly pounding on the stone-shingled beach less than two yards below. A rhyme came to mind, and I spoke it to the waves on that empty beach.

“So you’d not know a merrow? Is that what you’re saying, captain of a ship that is not a ship?”

I turned. To my right, where there had been no one, was a man sitting on a spur of rock. Although he wore brown trousers, and a tan Aran sweater, his webbed feet were bare, and he was not exactly a man, not with a scaly green skin, green hair, and deep-set red eyes that looked more like those of a pig than a man. He had a cocked red hat tucked under his arm.

“It’d seem to me that I know you, by your skin and hair, but mostly by the hat.”

“For a drowning sailor, you’re a most bright fellow.”

“Bright enough to ask your name,” I answered, not terribly worried about drowning. Overspace captains drown all the way through every voyage. We drown in sensation, and in the unseen tyranny of underspace that presses in on the overspace where we translate from system to system, world to world.

“ ’Tis Coomra, or close enough.” He smiled, and his teeth were green as well. Beside his feet was a contraption of wood and mesh. The mesh was not metal, but glimmered as if it were silver coated in light. It probably was. “And your name is . . . ?”

“Sean.”

“A fine Irish name that is.” He laughed.

“A fine lobster pot that is,” I replied, although I knew it was no such thing. I’d prepared for this moment as well as for many others, for to fly/sail overspace, a pilot must know all the stories and all his or her personal archetypes. That is, if he or she doesn’t want to drown out there. Or here. I had to remember that interludes were real, as real as life underspace, and just as able to kill me, and all the passengers who rode on my wings.

“A lobster pot? That’s what others have called it, but you, Sean Shannon Henry, would you not know better?” The green eyes glittered.

I stepped closer to him, but on the side away from the soul cage. “How old are you? As old as my great-grandfather Patrick?”

“I’m older than any dead man, and any that swim in the sea.”

“He’s not dead. In fact,” I said as I stepped closer, “he’s in his second century now, and feeling like he still has years ahead of him.”

“You’d not be thinking I was that young, now, would you?”

“He’s older than fine brandy,” I pointed out, concentrating hard, before producing an earthen jug. That was a trick it had taken years to master, making objects seem real in overspace, because interludes are short, long as they sometimes seem.

“That’s not brandy, not in an old jar like that.” Still, he cocked his head to the side.

“I wouldn’t know brandy. This is old-time poteen.”

“And I’m the mayor of Dungarven . . .”

“As you wish it.” I pulled the cork and presented the jug.

He did not take it, not immediately.

“I bring you a gift, and you would refuse it?” I asked gently. “Surely, you would not wish to waste good spirits.” I shouldn’t have made the punnish allusion, but the overspace elementals usually don’t catch them.

“You are a hard man with words, Captain Sean Henry, but you are drowning, and drown you will.” But he took the jug, and so heavy was it that it needed both his green hands.

In the moment that he had both of them on the jug, I lunged and grabbed the cocked hat.

The jug vanished, but the hat did not, and I held it, with both hands and mind.

The green eyes glittered, with a copper-iron heaviness and malice. “Clever you are, Captain Henry, clever indeed.”

“I only ask to keep what is mine, within mine, and nothing of yours.”

“So be it.” The merrow cocked his head.

Blazing blue flashed across me, and once more I was spin-soaring through darkness, gongs echoing. I almost thought of the gong-tormented, wine-dark sea, but pushed that away. An interlude in Byzantium would not be one I’d enjoy or relish, and probably would not survive. It wasn’t my archetype, even with the Yeats connection. Instead, I slip-slid sideways, letting the faerie dust that could have been air, but was not, swirl over my wings, as I banked around a sullen column of antiqued iron that was the gravity well of a star that could have shredded me into fragments of a fugue or syllables of a sonnet. The subsonic harp of Tara—or Cruachan—shivered through my bones and composite sinews.

Once more, I soared toward the shimmering veil that was and was not, resetting us on the heading toward the now-less-distant beacon that was Alustre.

And once more, the brilliant interlude blue slashed across me.

I stood under the redstone archway of a cloistered hall. The only light was the flickering flame of a bronze lamp set in a bracket attached to a column several meters away.

Before me stood a priest, a stern and white-faced cleric.

As any good Irish lad, I waited for the good father to speak, although I had my doubts about whether he was, first, truly a reverend father, and, second, good. His eyes surveyed me, going up and down my figure, taking in the uniform of the trans-ship captain, before he spoke a single word. “Your soul is in mortal danger,my son. You have sold it for the trappings of that uniform and for the looks that others bestow upon you.”

It’s truly hell when the elementals of overspace—or their abilities—combine with your own weaknesses. I swallowed, trying to regain a certain composure, trying to remind myself that I was in an interlude and that other souls and bodies depended upon me.

“With all your schooling and knowledge, you do not even know that you have a soul,” he went on.“Knowledge is a great thing, but it is not the end in life. It can be but a mess of pottage received in return for your birthright.”

Mixed archetypes and myths were dangerous—very dangerous in overspace interludes. “If I do good,” I said, “does that not benefit everyone, whether I know if I have a soul or not?”

“Words. Those are but words.”

Words are more powerful than that, but following such logic would just make matters even worse. I concentrated on the figure in friar’s black before me. “Truth can be expressed in words.”

“Souls are more than words or truth. You are drowning, and unless you accept that soul that is and contains you, you will be eternally damned.” His voice was warm and soft and passionate and caring, and it almost got to me.

“I am my soul.” That was certainly true.

“You risk drowning and relinquishing that soul with every voyage across the darkness,” the priest went on.

“Others depend on me, Father,” I pointed out.

“That is true,” he replied. “Yet you doubt that you have a soul, and for that your soul will go straight to Hell when you die, and that will never be when you wish.”

“I have also doubted Hell.”

“Doubt does not destroy what is. Denial, my son, does not affect reality.”

“Then, reality does not affect denial,” I countered. “If I have been good, whether I believe in souls or Hell or the life everlasting,my soul should not be in mortal danger. If I have been evil, then belief in Heaven and Hell should not save that soul from the punishment I deserve.”

“Are you so sure that you have been that good?” The dark eyes probed me, and the flickering lamp cast doubt across me.

“I am not sure that I have been evil, nor that you should be the judge of the worth of my soul.”

“Who would you have judge your soul, if you have a soul?”

Simple as it sounded, it wasn’t. The question implied so much more.

“No man can judge himself, let alone another,” I said slowly.“No being can judge another unlike himself, for the weight of life falls differently upon each.”

The priest stepped forward, and I thought I saw the ghost of wings spreading from his shoulders. The trouble was, in the dimness, I couldn’t tell whether they were ghostly white or ghostly black. “If you will not be judged, then you will be in limbo for all eternity, and that is certainly not pleasant.”

It didn’t sound that way, but it was better than Hell, even if I didn’t believe in Hell—at least not too much. “Well . . . perhaps I need more time to consider. You won’t have to make that judgment, and neither will I, or anyone else, if nothing happens to me right now.”

“So be it.” The father made a cryptic gesture.

There was a stillness, without even background subsonics or shredded notes from underspace filtering up. Then, blue lightning flashed, and, for a moment, I could sense and feel overspace. I had been slewed off course, as can happen in an interlude, particularly one that slips into the pilot’s weaknesses, but I banked and swept back toward Alustre and the ever-closer-but-not-close-enough beacon.

That was about all I got done because the deep swell of a pulsed singularity rolled toward us, like a black-silver cloud. With it came another sheet of glaringly brilliant blue.

Three interludes? That was the only thought I managed before I found myself standing in a dim room.A woman stood in front of me. From behind what was most noticeable was her hair, although I saw little of it, but what I did see was red and tinted with sun, where it slipped out from the black silk scarf that covered her head.

She faced two men in black. They sat at a round table that groaned under the weight of the gold coins stacked there, yet, with all that weight of coin, not a stack trembled. They looked up at me, and their black eyes glittered in their pale faces above combed black beards. They dismissed me, and their eyes went to the woman who had not even noticed me. The two looked almost the same, as if they were brothers, and I supposed that they were, in a manner of speak ing. The only thing that caught my eyes was that the one on the right wore a wide silver ring, and the one on the left a gold band.

The woman was speaking, and her voice was music, silver, gold, yet warmer, and with a core of strength. “You have stolen from me. That does not trouble me.What troubles me is that you stole from me so that the poor would be forced to sell their souls to you.”

“We are but traders. No one is required to come to us.” The man on the right smiled politely, then added a gold coin to the pile closest to him.

“Any man or woman who has a child that is hungry or suffers and loves that child is required to come to you. Anyone with a soul that is worth your golds will come to you to spare another from suffering. Your words are meaningless. They are false.” She laughed.

I liked her, even though I hadn’t even seen her face.

“Why are you here?” asked the trader on the left, pointing to me.

“Because I am.” That was the only response that made sense.

The woman turned to me, and I understood who she was, if not precisely why I was with her and the two emissaries from the netherlands. I could also see why the old tales called her a saint with eyes of sapphire. Her eyes were deep, so deep I wanted to swim in them, and I had to swallow to recall I was in an interlude, a third interlude, and 50 percent of those were fatal.

“You? Are you one of them?” she asked.

“No,Countess . . . I am Captain Sean Shannon Henry.” I paused. “You are the Countess Kathleen O’Shea?”

“Kathryn would be more accurate . . .”

I murmured words. From where they came I could not have said.

“The countess had a soul as pure as unfallen snow and a mind that no evil could know . . .”

“I am not that good. And Gortforge is not so poor as this place here.”

“You are a saint,” I said.

“No. I care that people do not barter their souls to live—or to keep their children from suffering and hunger. That’s all.”

Had I done that? Bartered my soul for something? For what? Interludes have a meaning. That’s why they’re so deadly. If you don’t have interludes, the ship never leaves the departure system. If you have too many, it never arrives at its destination—or any destination any have yet discovered.

Her eyes softened. “Souls ride with you, don’t they?”

“In a way,” I admitted.

“We will add those he is trying to save to the price for yours,” offered the second trader, the one with the gold ring on his finger.

“No!” The words were out before I thought.

“You would doom them, then?” asked the first trader.

“No. I would doom your bargain.”

“You cannot,”Kathleen/Kathryn said. “I have made it, and I stand by it.”

“You’re a saint,” I said again.

“You had best find that out in the world that counts.” She vanished.

I felt my mouth open. That was the first time that had ever happened to me in an interlude.

“Your soul is not worth a thousandth part of hers,” announced one of the traders, “but we will carry you into the depths with us, until the soul of the countess is tendered to the one who paid for it.”

“A bargain under duress is not a valid sale,” I pointed out. “A soul must be tendered freely.”

“She tendered hers freely.”

“She did not. As she said, anyone with a soul of worth would tender it to prevent another’s suffering, and the One Who Is already has judged that you cannot have her soul.”

Both looked at me, and I felt as though I had been skewered by those black eyes.

“And what of your soul, Captain Sean Shannon Henry? Your soul has not been so judged.What is it worth to you?”

“Hers, and more . . .”What I meant was not what I said, because what I meant was that my soul had worth, but, as they had already judged, not nearly the worth of hers. Not yet, anyway.

Something happened, because, before I could say more, the men in black had vanished, and so had the Countess Kathleen . . . or Kathryn . . . O’Shea, and I was in the depths of the ocean, cold and black, water weighing in upon my lungs with such force that all the air I had breathed was forced out in an explosive gasp.

With that, brilliant blue swept across overspace, and black lightnings shattered the blueness.

Then, I was again flying free, banking ever so slightly to avoid the singularity below my left wing tip. Somewhere deep within my swan-form, every part of me ached as I scanned the darkness of overspace, glad that I had emerged from the interlude, but pushing away the questions as I searched for the beacon that was Alustre.

I discovered that we had almost oversoared it and swung into a downward spiral, ignoring the flutter of dislodged pinnae, as we dropped lower . . . and lower—until I could feel the power of the beacon vibrating my sinews/feathers.

Only then did I untwist the energies flowing through the translation generators. Instantly, the black swan was no more, and the Yeats and I were but pilot and ship.

I passed out briefly from the pain when we reemerged into underspace, normspace for those of us who live in it.

“Captain . . . Captain . . .” Alora’s voice finally got to me.

“I’m . . . here . . . Rough translation,” I pulsed, checking, then deploying the photon screens.

“Rough?” A sense of laughter, ragged laughter, came across. “The Yeats isn’t making any more translations without some serious work.”

I hadn’t made the evaluations, but the feelings from my body, and the fact that not all the farscreens and diagnostics were even working, suggested a certain truth to her words. Still, I’d untranslated closer than normal, and that was good, given our situation.

“AUGUSTA STATION, this is ISS W. B. Yeats, inbound from Silverston. Authentication follows.” I pulsed off the authentication, trying to ignore the aches that seemed to cover most of my clamshelled body, as well as the tightness in my chest, and the feeling that I was still drowning.

There wasn’t any immediate answer. There never is, not with the real-time, speed-of-light delay.My head continued to ache, and I had to boost the oxygen to my self-system as we headed down and in-system.

It was more than a few standard hours before the Yeats, with passengers and cargo intact, docked at Augusta Station, the trans-ship terminal for the planet Jael of the New Roman Republic. The pilot and ship were less intact than the passengers and cargo.

“Captain Henry, Augusta control here. External diagnostics indicate extensive maintenance required. Interrogative medical attention.”

I scanned the ship systems once again, although I knew control was right. The fusactors were both close to redline, and the translation generators were totally inoperative. Two of the farscreens were junk. As for me, my nanetics had told me more than once that I was bruised over 21.4 percent of my body, that I had more than a few sub dural hematomas, and that 20 percent of my lung function was impaired. But there hadn’t been anything I could have done until we were in-locked.

“Affirmative. Class three removal requested.” Class two would have meant half my body would have needed attention. Class one would have come from the ship systems or Alora, because Class one med alerts meant the pilot was dead or close to it.

As I waited for the med crew and shuttle, I downlinked to the Roman infosystems, running through the search functions as quickly as I could. Then, I went up a level, for the information on the other worlds of the New Roman Republic. There was no Gortforge on Jael, or on any of the other Roman worlds, nor anything resembling it in name. That didn’t matter. It existed somewhere—and so did the Countess Kathryn O’Shea. Of both I was certain.

The universe is thought, wrapped in rhyme and music, and that’s why the best pilots hold the blood of the Emerald Isle.We know what we are . . . and each time we fly, we have to discover that anew.

For, as a pilot, I have always held to my own two beliefs. First, science is not enough to explain all that is in the wide, wide universe, and without magic, science is as useless as . . . a man without a soul. Second, so long as there are Irish, there will always be an Ireland.

After the med crew rebuilds me, again, I will fly the swan ship that is the Yeats to as many worlds as I can, and must, until I find the Countess Kathryn.

With whom else could a swan pilot trust his found soul?