Jeffrey A. Carver - Star Rigger 2 - Star Rigger's Way

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STAR RIGGER’S WAY by Jeffrey Carver
STAR RIGGER’S WAY
by Jeffrey Carver
Star Rigger 2
1
Star-Freighter Sedora
Gev Carlyle struggled to put the frustration out of his mind. It was
essential to maintain control of himself; he knew that. But the alien just
kept staring at him from across the ship’s gloomy bridge like some
frightful catlike apparition.
Who could stay calm looking at something like that?
“Cephean,” he said, his voice trembling. (A rush of impatience interrupted
him—the alien’s.) “Cephean!” he demanded furiously. His eyes went out
of focus as he tensed, struggling to frame his words. He refocused and
gazed at the creature again. The cynthian was as large as a tiger and black
as coal dust, and he was plump and furry like an enormous Persian cat.
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STAR RIGGER’S WAY by Jeffrey Carver
Cephean’s eyes blinked slowly, indignantly. They were gold-flecked
obsidian, with irises of molten copper.
“You told me that your ship operated the same way as mine. And you
know how to fly your own ship. Correct?”
“Hyiss-yiss,” insisted Cephean. “Hoff khorss.”
“Of course,” Carlyle muttered. He reminded himself: there must be
confidence before it can work. The cynthian said that he was capable; but
who could be sure? The telepathic link with the alien was incomplete and
largely one-way. The cynthian perceived the thoughts behind the human’s
words, but somewhere in the communication, the cynthian was
misunderstanding Carlyle’s instructions. There was only so much he could
explain about flying the starship, anyway. How could he explain intuition?
Cephean stared at him with coppery eyes. Waiting behind his front paws
were his two small companions, the riffmar, which followed him
everywhere. The riffmar were thin-trunked, walking ferns with root-toed
feet; from their midsections they waved muscular, slim-fingered branches.
They pranced about and squeaked and twitched their fingers
disconcertingly.
“All right,” Carlyle said. “You have to feel what I am doing when I fly.
And you have to help me. When I guide the ship, when I turn it, you back
me up as steadily as you can. Don’t struggle, and don’t work against me.
Do you understand? Just follow.”
Cephean looped his tail behind his triangular ears. His eyes flickered. “Hi
khann ff-hollow, Caharleel,” he hissed.
Carlyle nodded, thinking that they should be able to work together—they
had to, if they didn’t want to die together, adrift between the stars.
Whatever their differences, they were both riggers in their own fashions.
“Let’s go, then.” He pointed the way. (He felt a twinge of preoccupation—
Cephean’s.)
“Are you paying attention?” he asked quietly, angrily.
Cephean sputtered—then dipped his head and padded over to the stern-
rigger’s alcove, with the riffmar dancing behind. He stopped and sat in
front of the rigger-seat which Carlyle had dismantled and adapted for his
use.
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STAR RIGGER’S WAY by Jeffrey Carver
Carlyle shook his head. He swung the seat pad forward to rest against the
cynthian’s furry spine. The cynthian tensed, fur rippling and eyes flashing
—then slowly relaxed. Beside him, the riffmar settled down to wait out
the, session. Carlyle crossed the bridge to his own pilot-rigger station. He
averted his eyes from the sight of the empty alcoves which his crewmates
had once manned; and, resisting a compulsion to relive that horror, he
lowered himself into the seat and rested his neck against the neural-foam
pad. Engage, he thought.
Numbness spread through his body, stealing his hearing and touch. His
eyesight darkened and collapsed. Then his senses sprang from his body
like electrical fire and blossomed out of the starship and into space, into
the rigger-net. Into the Flux. He stretched and looked around.
The view was an atmospheric panorama: the starship floated in a vast,
luminous space. Sculpted lemon clouds drifted in the distance, and russet
layers of smoke twisted outward to form a sea as broad and as deep as the
entire arm of the galaxy. This was the “subjective sea,” interstellar space
rendered as an airy red and orange-yellow watercolor, with sloping and
intersecting layers, and rivers which ran and twisted at all angles. Some
stars were visible, mostly as flecks of carbon dust adrift in the luminous
space; however, a few stars and their associated nebulae stood out more
clearly, as whorls or discontinuities in the flow of the sea.
The image—which was partly real and partly a creation of Carlyle’s
imagination—was a good one. It was vivid and bright, and a good
analogue of normal-space. He hoped that Cephean could interpret the
landscape, and more importantly, that the cynthian could follow his lead.
Sedora’s rigger-net sparkled around him and pulsed with energy as he
flexed his limbs. Below the net he sighted his immediate objective—a
dark, channeled intersection of two planes. That was the Reld Current, a
smooth-running river deeply submerged in the multilayered sea of the
Flux. It was a major current in the Flux moving toward Sedora’s
destination, and as safe a place as any for practicing teamwork with
Cephean.
The Reld Current would be easy.
But after the Reld, they had to sail into the Hurricane Flume, and that was
a different sort of current altogether. The Flume was a “channel” where
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STAR RIGGER’S WAY by Jeffrey Carver
dozens of streams came thundering together, meeting and tangling with
terrible energy. They would reach it in six or seven shipdays. The Flume
was a perilous place to take a ship, but they had to go through; from
within its chaos streamed the upwelling currents to Cunnilus Banks, and
that was where Sedora was bound. In Cunnilus Banks lay the star-havens
and safety. If they could fly on through to Cunnilus Banks, they would be
virtually home free.
But to reach the Banks, they had to go through the Flume; there was no
other way. Carlyle was almost too frightened to think about it. Sedora was
not a one-man or even a two-man ship. She was a four-rigger freighter, a
massive hulk riding on a lone rigger’s back. Sedora had carried a crew of
five; and Carlyle had been the fifth, the extra. But that was before the
accident. Of the original crew, now only he remained—with this alien,
Cephean. Singlehandedly, he could manage the ship in the easy current of
the Reld. But the Flume would hit them like a cyclone—and if he and the
shipwrecked cynthian did not function as a team, the Flume was going to
be the end of Sedora, and of them.
He glanced around to the stern. You there? he asked.
Hyiss.
He released the stabilizers and reached his steely, spidery, sensory arms
outward and down into the Flux. Slowly he coaxed the ship downward
toward the Reld; and he hoped that Cephean would assist him.
As Sedora reached the streamers at the edge of the Reld, Carlyle cursed
the cynthian’s clumsiness. His anger rang in echoes round the net and
vanished to the winds of space. Somewhere astern, the cynthian hom-
humm’d to himself and responded late to Carlyle’s guiding actions. The
ship bucked and plunged like an angry whale.
Gently, Cephean! Do you see the river?
Whass? Whass?
A “river,” yes—that would be a good functional image, and it was
consistent with the actual flux-currents they were riding. Carlyle settled
the image in his mind. The misty lanes of the Reld congealed beneath
Sedora and darkened to the color of molasses, then flattened to water
swirling downstream between low-profile river-banks. The sky overhead
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STAR RIGGER’S WAY by Jeffrey Carver
turned to night, glittering with fairyland stars. Sedora’s net shimmered
and passed into the dark surface of the river, and Carlyle eased the ship
down until her hull settled in its waters.
Carried by the flow, Sedora moved downstream in the night.
Somewhere, lost in the distance ahead, was the Flume. It did not yet
betray itself, but Carlyle knew it was there. As he studied the horizon
where the meandering Reld vanished into darkness, he detected a dim
streamer rising, almost imperceptible against the stars. Above the river’s
end, in the night sky, the streamer met Cunnilus Banks, a faintly gleaming
cloud of particles above the horizon. The sight gave him the first surge of
hope he’d felt in many days. Regardless of how distant his goal lay, it was
reassuring to glimpse it.
He plunged his “hands” deep into the river, just to feel the cool slipstream.
The ship lurched, and yawed to one side. Cephean had bumped the stern.
Cephean! Follow!
Ff-hollow-hing, Caharleel!
No rapport, he thought, despairing. He strained against the current to bring
the ship into line. What was it his old friend and crewmate Janofer had
once told him? That a crew needn’t necessarily understand one another…
that the crux of teamwork was congruence, simple congruence of vision.
And his friend Skan—that without unity none of the rest was worth a
mote in the Kryst Nebula. Indeed, that was why they had asked him to go
and to train for a time on Sedora. It had been their hope, and his, that on
Sedora he could learn something which they had been unable to teach;
and perhaps later, with more experience behind him, he might return to rig
again with his friends.
It seemed as though he would learn now, or he would never learn at all.
This Cephean was an enigma—a bit like Legroeder, so alone with his
thoughts, even in the net where personal barriers tended to relax. But
Legroeder, despite his alone-ness, had always worked in harmony whether
as leader or follower. Carlyle suspected that Legroeder was fearless, but
Janofer and Skan said that he simply gave what was needed, and no more.
But this was Cephean here with him, not Legroeder, and Cephean wasn’t
giving what was needed at all. Carlyle guided the ship into a gentle turn;
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STAR RIGGER’S WAY by Jeffrey Carver
the cynthian responded late, and incorrectly, and the ship swung toward
the riverbank. Carlyle was forced to reach deep into the waters, using his
hands as rudders to bring the ship back into line with the current. He tried
again, coaching: Gently, Cephean! Steer very gently! But again the ship
went off course, and again Carlyle had to correct for Cephean’s mistakes.
The Reld Current was running smoothly, but, despite that fact, the ship
drew closer and closer to the shallows.
Finally he cried: Cephean, pull out of the net! The cynthian obeyed,
humming and grumbling; and when Cephean was gone, Carlyle
straightened the entire net himself, then turned the ship and held it against
the drift, until it was safely back in the mainstream. The effort was
exhausting, and as soon as he could manage, he set the stabilizers and
withdrew from the net.
He blinked and gazed about the gloomy, reddishly lighted bridge.
Cephean and the riffmar were gone. The rigger-stations were empty. Most
of the instruments, burned out from the accident, were lifeless. The bridge
looked as though it were dying with its former crew.
Carlyle went straight from the bridge to the commons. He drank an ale so
quickly he scarcely noticed its taste, and then he went at once to his cabin.
He needed to sleep, to regain the feel of his own body. Soon enough he
would find the cynthian and face the melancholy bridge, and try once
more.
2
The Riggers
Since its inception in the Twelfth Century of Space, starship-rigging had
been regarded as one of the most peculiarly demanding of professions.
Piloting a starship involved a mastery of technology, of course; but more
than that, it required curious aptitudes of personality, of emotional set.
Star-rigging involved not only spaceflight but also the mastering of the
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Flux—that subjective realm underlying the normal-space of Prime
Reality, a realm akin to but distinct from freewheeling fantasy, and as
intricate as a mistily mapped waking dream.
Successful navigation of the Flux demanded the exceptional dreamer—the
rigger, trained to construct a vision and then to reach into it and to gain a
literal fingerhold in a reality where the spaces flowed as oceans and the
currents were unconstrained by the laws and distances of normal-space.
The rigger’s net was a harness, trussing the ship to him like a backpack as
he rode the ebb and flow of the space itself. Rigging was an exquisite
mating of imagination with the reality of the Flux—a strange way to live,
in many eyes, but a fine way to travel among the stars.
The net itself was a glittery spangle of ghost neurons flung into the Flux
like the exploded tentacles of a man-of-war. Interfaced through organic
neural foam and amplified by the flux-pile, it was the rigger’s skin against
the elements, his wings and fins in the turbulent air/sea among the stars. A
rigger navigated by intuition and by experience, by his own individual
imaging powers, and by the currents of the space itself.
The dreaming could be difficult; but far trickier was the intuition,
especially among members of a crew. Because no two riggers viewed the
Flux identically, teamwork in the net demanded a gestalt, a near-perfect
melding of visions, perceptions, and intuitive judgments. Several riggers
functioning as a gestalt could sail a ship smoothly and speedily between
stars. But working at odds in the net, they could tear a ship apart and leave
the pieces bobbing lifeless in the Flux.
To Gev Carlyle the most intimidating aspect of rigging, by far, was the
teamwork. He had never ceased fearing the nakedness, the emotional
turmoil—the laying forth of embarrassments, of fears, of weaknesses both
real and imagined. But one rigger had to know another’s fantasies, both to
find the common lines of strength and to know what images should not be
trod upon; indeed, sailing a ship in a space built of fear was surely
courting disaster.
But sharing was so difficult with fellow humans, with his friends. How
could he possibly hope to succeed with this alien stranger?
Would he have to resort to the dreampool?
He hoped not. Lord, he hoped not!
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STAR RIGGER’S WAY by Jeffrey Carver
Gev Carlyle’s sleeping dreams were filled with visions of old friends.
There was Legroeder: dark little man, pilot-rigger of Lady Brillig and a
lover of dream-gestalt plays; friendly, but often shut away in his cabin, a
place secluded and strange, and madly adorned with mystical-sequenced
pearlgazers which no one but he understood. And Janofer: gentle,
beautiful keel-lifter, fond of stories and music even in the net, briefly a
lover and always a friend. And Skan: com-rigger and hard-balanced
thinker, the one to believe in when decisions fell due, but fearsome when
his balance failed and he plummeted into one of his black depressions.
They were the three who had sent him here to Sedora. Why couldn’t they
be here now—or he back with them on the deck of Lady Brillig?
Ah, Lady Brillig—glittering domed beauty of a ship, light and
comfortable and responsive as a kite! Who was the fourth in her rigger-net
now? Who, Lady Brillig?
Such dream remembrances gave way to others, though. Darker memories.
Memories of danger and fear here aboard Sedora, of burned flesh and
dead men. What were their names?
Thoughts better left unremembered.
Carlyle awoke feeling troubled. After eating, he went to seek out Cephean
in his makeshift quarters, halfway around the circle of crew-deck from his
own. Cephean made the human cabin look small, both by his own
physical size and by the astonishing litter created by his personal
belongings. The cynthian seemed unaware of Carlyle’s entrance. He sat
with his back turned three-quarters to the door; he was idly batting the two
riffmar into floating somersaults. Carlyle cleared his throat. The ferns
squealed and scuttled away behind Cephean, their oversized hands flailing
excitedly. How strange, Carlyle thought, to be so utterly dependent—both
Cephean and the riffmar. Cephean was clearly the master, but the riffmar
possessed the prehensile branches, the hands. Would Cephean be helpless
without them?
He shook his head. “Cephean, let’s talk.”
The cynthian gazed at him, ears raked forward. (He sensed mild interest.)
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STAR RIGGER’S WAY by Jeffrey Carver
“Hyiss?”
“Cephean,” he said, and hesitated. Where to start? “All right. You need
my help and I need yours, and we’re both incredibly lucky even to be
together here to try. But why isn’t it working? We both know how to fly,
but the last time in the net was worse than ever.” He gestured pleadingly.
“Don’t you want to reach port, Cephean? Don’t you want to go home
again?”
“Hyiss-yiss,” Cephean said, his whiskers curling and springing straight
again.
“Did you have trouble understanding the image?” That was the kindest
assumption he could make.
“Hh-no.” (Carlyle sensed… something… and was disturbed that he could
not identify the feeling.) “Hi heff ffly wiss hyou,” Cephean hissed, his
black velvet face split in what seemed to be a grin.
“What went wrong, then? Why didn’t you coordinate with me?”
Cephean’s breath whistled slowly in and out as he apparently considered
the question. Behind him, the riffmar rustled and sssk’d quietly as they
buried the roots of their feet in a nutrient tray. Cephean touched a forepaw
to his nose and rubbed slowly. “Hi ss-ry.” (An impression of shame
flickered across Carlyle’s mind.) “Hyou ffly halone, Caharleel.” (He
sensed a strange, dark longing, unidentifiable and then gone altogether.)
Why did he have to play these guessing games? What was Cephean really
thinking and feeling?
The cynthian stirred, watching him carefully.
“No,” he said. “We’ll try again, in a while. But if things don’t work better
this time, we’ll just have to try another method.” He did not name the
dreampool, but it loomed in his thoughts. The cynthian started, and
suddenly looked away.
Odomilk. An image of the strange pods drifted eerily through Carlyle’s
mind. Responding to the commands, the riffmar leaped out of the nutrient
tray and danced across the floor to a wooden cache. They lifted out two
odomilk pods and carried them back and placed them on the floor in front
of Cephean. The cynthian carefully cracked a pod with his teeth and
sucked at the yellowish liquid which oozed out. He looked at Carlyle with
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STAR RIGGER’S WAY by Jeffrey Carver
upturned eyes, making plain his wish to be alone.
Sighing, Carlyle went back out into the corridor. He paced and then went
to the commons, in the center of the crew-deck circle. It was a silent
place, a human lounge empty of human voices, human presence. He
shivered; the lounge was haunted by memories. His thoughts drifted to the
men who had relaxed here with him, and tears began to blur his vision. He
blinked angrily. He strode to the counter which curved along one side of
the lounge and drew himself a beermalt. Then he sat on the opposite divan
and tried to steady himself, to clear his mind. He toyed with a flo-globe,
watching the colors flash mistily, randomly. They reminded him of the
unharnessed Flux after the accident, after the deaths. Dropping the globe,
he switched on the wall-generator and watched sparkle-patterns flash in
ringlets around the room, the patterns, changing slowly: stoic… erotic…
pastoral…
Slowly his thoughts dissipated, and he stared darkly at the wall, the
beermalt growing warm in his hands.
The next session in the net began not much differently from the last.
Cephean hummed away at the stern with his own thoughts, while Carlyle
pleaded, pressured, cajoled—and Sedora sideslipped and trembled in the
smooth-flowing Reld. They were sailing, an image of streaming clouds.
Cephean, open up—listen—turn your thoughts out into the net.
The cynthian whistled an unintelligible reply; and the ship swayed in the
clouds, thumping.
Follow! Dammit, Cephean!
F-hollow-hing.
Carlyle flew a practice turn. Then, as before, he had to strain, working
against Cephean’s mistakes to bring the ship back onto course. He flew
straight, resting. Janofer came to him in his thoughts, quietly, unbidden.
Her presence surprised him, but he said nothing and waited until she
spoke.
Can you go it alone, Gev? You may have to try.
Don’t ask me that, Janofer. Dear Janofer, sweet keel-girl, you know I
can’t go it alone. But you always ask.
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摘要：

STARRIGGER’SWAYbyJeffreyCarverSTARRIGGER’SWAYbyJeffreyCarverStarRigger21Star-FreighterSedoraGevCarlylestruggledtoputthefrustrationoutofhismind.Itwasessentialtomaintaincontrolofhimself;heknewthat.Butthealienju\stkeptstaringathimfromacrosstheship’sgloomybridgelikesomefrightfulcatlikeapparition.Whocoul...

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