Melissa Scott - Heaven 02 - Silence in Solitude

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The Second Book of
"The Roads of Heaven"
by Melissa Scott
Copyrights 1986 by Melissa Scott
Customer Reviews
Avg. Customer Review:
Rescued the trilogy for me, December 3, 1999
Reviewer:
This is the second of Melissa Scott's Five-Twelves of Heaven trilogy (Five-Twelves of Heaven, Silence
in Solitude, and Empress of Earth) and a dandy book it is, too. Scott's description of space drives
depending on "harmony" and Neo-Platonic imagery is as marvelous as ever, but it's the plot that really
moves this book along. Little touches, like Silence's relationship with her husbands, or the description of
the life in the Women's Palace, bring this story very much alive. Silence is a maga in training, a woman in
concealment, always trying to get out of the maze the events in book 1 have led her in to. (slight spoiler)
By the end of the book, she and her husbands have come to a certain arrangement with the Hegemony,
which leads into the events in the last book. It's probably my favorite book of the trilogy--I was working
on my doctorate at the time of reading it, so empathized heartily with some of Solitude's experiences!
The Roads of Heaven:
Five-Twelfths of Heaven
Silence in Solitude
The Empress of Earth
Melissa Scott began her science fiction career with the publication of The Game
Beyond in 1984, a space operatic romp that showcased her burgeoning talents. In
1986 she earned the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, at least partly
due to Five-Twelths of Heaven, which marked the start of her Silence Leigh series
about an aspiring space pilot. She continued the Silence stories with Silence in
Solitude and The Empress of Earth, which were collected together with
Five-Twelths in The Roads of Heaven.
Other works by Scott include Burning Bright, Dreamships and Trouble and Her
Friends.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 1
THE APPRENTICES' HALL WAS DANK, AND SMELLED faintly of the cheap incense used in
the workrooms on the floor above. Silence Leigh sighed, rubbing her cold fingers together in a futile
attempt to warm them, then held her hands just under the tube of fixed fire that lighted her section of the
table. That was a little better, but she knew from experience that the warmth would vanish as soon as she
took her hands away from the lamp.
In the six months she had been on Solitudo Hermae, she had grown to hate the damp chill of the
apprentices' hall. The partitions to either side, which hid her work from the other apprentices who shared
the long table, gave privacy but did nothing to cut the cold drafts.
She sighed again, and let her hands fall back to the photoflashed text that lay open before her.
Unfortunately, there was no avoiding the daily study sessions in the hall: half the texts she and the other
apprentices had to work from were restricted -- literally chained to the edge of each apprentice's section
of the communal table.
There were three more books besides the open Theater of Meditation in her cubicle, their silvery
chains glittering in the light from the fixed-fire lamp. Idly, she ran her fingers along the chain running from
the Theater of Meditation to the massive staple embedded in the table top. She could feel the lingering
resonances of the power the magi had used to forge the special metal and, after six months' intensive
study, could begin to guess at the processes involved in the forging. She gave the chain a gentle tug,
wondering just what it would take to break the bonds between chain, staple, and table. Then she smiled,
slowly. That was a most improper thought for a magus's apprentice -- they were supposed to wait until
their masters deemed them ready for new knowledge, not to seek such knowledge on their own. But
then, she was hardly a proper apprentice.
Her smile faded. Less than a year ago, she had been a starship pilot and nothing more. The position
had been hard for a woman to win, but steering her grandfather's trading ship Black Dolphin from world
to world had been all she had ever wanted in life.
But then her grandfather had died, and she had been plunged into an increasingly complicated and
dangerous series of adventures. First, her uncle, who was her legal guardian unless she married, had
cheated her out of her rightful inheritance, the Black Dolphin. Then he had tried to trap her into working
for him in his search for the lost, semi-legendary home of mankind, Earth. She had escaped that by taking
the first job that was offered -- piloting for Denis Balthasar aboard the half-and-half Sun-Treader -- and
had bought her legal freedom from her uncle by joining Balthasar and his engineer, Julian Chase Mago, in
a three-way marriage of convenience.
She smiled again, a little wistfully this time. They were good men, both of them, and she did not regret
her choice, but the marriage had thrown her straight into even more trouble. Denis Balthasar was a
courier for the pirate combine Wrath-of-God, and Wrath-of-God had been engaged in its final battle
with the Asterion Hegemony. The captains of Wrath-of-God had mustered every ship in their fleet, from
the warships down to couriers like Sun-Treader, for a raid on the frozen world of Arganthonios -- and
had been ambushed and defeated. Sun-Treader's crew were among the lucky ones, Silence knew: the
Hegemon's navy was desperately short of men to crew its ships, and had bound some of the surviving
pirates to its service. She, Balthasar, and Chase Mago had been so bound -- the geas had nearly killed
Balthasar -- and assigned to crew a mailship carrying a special passenger to the siege of Castax.
It was then, Silence decided, that things had really begun to change. She had taken the first steps
during the nightmare passage between Arganthonios and the navy depot on Sapriportus, discovering a
power within that allowed her to resist the geas. But it was aboard the mail-ship that she had first seen
how to use that strength. She had broken her own geas, then freed the others, but their escape had been
blocked by their passenger, the magus Isambard. And that, Silence thought, was the real beginning. If we
thought we had troubles before....
That was not entirely fair, and she knew it, but there was enough truth to it. Balthasar said as much at
every opportunity. The mailship had carried no weapons that would be effective against a magus. In
desperation, Silence had offered a bargain. She owned an ancient starbook that gave the road to lost
Earth. She would take the magus to Earth and share the fabulous secrets they were sure to find there, if
he in turn would protect them from the Hegemon's people. No magus could have resisted that offer.
They had made the attempt, but the Earth road was blocked by Rose Worlder siege engines, and the
badly damaged mailship had barely limped into the nearest port, on Mersaa Maia. There, with the Rose
Worlder authorities looking for any excuse to arrest and imprison them all, Isambard had calmly informed
the three that, contrary to all the known rules of the magi's art, Silence was herself potentially a magus,
and offered to train her -- if she would keep her part of the bargain and help Isambard reach Earth. She
had agreed, and in a final, delightful act of revenge had stolen back the Black Dolphin, which had also
come to Mersaa Maia in search of the Earth road.
That had been six months ago, and now, sitting shivering in the apprentices' hall on the magi's world
Solitudo Hermae, it was hard to believe it had all happened. Silence shook her head slowly, not seeing
the book that lay open before her. Isambard had had a hard time convincing the magi who oversaw the
school that she, a woman, had the potential to become a magus, but once they had agreed to accept her
as an apprentice, she had been completely absorbed into the system. Over the past months she had
immersed herself in the Trivium -- the Three Arts of symbology, perception, and manipulation that were
the basis of a magus's knowledge. Soon she would master them, she hoped, and be able to proceed to
the Quadrivium; but in the meantime there was work to be done.
She looked again at the book in front of her, forcing herself to pay attention to the elaborately
symbolic drawing. It was very like the illustrations in her starbooks, and she felt a sudden surge of
loneliness. Piloting she knew, had already mastered completely, not like the Trivium. But more than that,
to be a pilot again meant to be in space with her husbands. At the moment, she envied them bitterly: they
had already been off-world half a dozen times, first to see Black Dolphin refitted, and then to see if
Balthasar could reestablish contact with whatever was left of Wrath-of-God. They were off-world again
now, and Silence found herself torn between envious resentment and the desire for their return.
She shook herself hard and pulled the book closer to her, trying to concentrate on the image. A
woman in antique half-armor stood silhouetted against a sky that was half stormy and half clear. She held
a spade in her right hand; her left rested on the ring of a huge anchor. Silence stared at it for a long
moment, trying to deduce the special meaning behind the image, then sighed and reached for the
hieroglyphica chained to the table in front of her. The main image, the standing, armored woman, was a
common topos for metaphysical strength. The anchor, according to the hieroglyphica's table, could be
anything from hope to the submaterial universe, depending on the surrounding images. She made a face:
the magi's symbols were so much less precise than the pilots' voidmarks. But before she could find the
final component of the drawing, something touched her foot.
She started, and in the same moment a familiar voice whispered, "Silence."
The pilot leaned back in her chair until she could see around the partitions, and glanced casually to her
left. The apprentice sitting there, a thin, sharp-faced blond, gave her an urchin's grin.
"What is it, Kaare?" Silence glanced over her shoulder for the spidery homunculus that monitored the
hall to keep the apprentices at work. It was nowhere in sight, and the pilot breathed a sigh of relief.
"You wanted me to keep a lookout for a ship coming in -- Recusante?" the other apprentice
whispered back. "Well, Master Fynn sent me to the port today, and I got a look at the board. Recusante
's due in tonight."
"Thanks," Silence said, and turned away, fighting down her sudden excitement. Black Dolphin,
renamed Recusante now after her refit, was back at last. She would have to tell Isambard, as soon as
the study session was over. But Isambard had forbidden her to visit the port, and she wanted very much
to meet her husbands there.
She took a deep breath, forcing herself to think calmly. Isambard's reasons for keeping her away from
the port were good ones: both the Hegemon and the Rose Worlders were still looking for a woman pilot
who had escaped under mysterious and inexplicable circumstances. If Recusante were compromised by
being connected with a woman pilot, there would have to be yet another expensive change of name and
markings before they could make the attempt to reach Earth. Even Isambard did not have unlimited
resources; a second refit might well be beyond his means. But... Silence glanced down at herself and
smiled slowly. She was wearing an apprentice's smock and trousers -- boy's clothes -- as she had been
since beginning her studies on Solitudo Hermae, and her hair was cut as short as any boy's. If she could
borrow something less conspicuous than the apprentice's glossy white smock, she could probably pass
as a dock worker. And that, she thought triumphantly, would remove Isambard's only good reason for
keeping me away from the port.
She turned her attention back to the Theater of Meditation, but it was impossible to concentrate on
the elaborate drawings. Finally, she abandoned the struggle and leaned her chin on her folded hands,
counting the minutes until the study session ended. When the three-toned chine finally sounded, she
closed her book and rose without haste, timing her steps so that she reached the door at the same time as
Kaare.
"I need your help, Kaare," she said, without preamble.
"Again?" the blond grumbled, but let himself be drawn aside into the shadow of the refectory.
"I just want to borrow some clothes," Silence said, running an assessing eye over the other
apprentice's body. Kaare was about her height, or maybe a little taller; his clothes should fit, and loosely
enough to disguise her figure. "A shirt and a long coat -- anything that isn't apprentice's stuff. Will you
lend them to me?"
Kaare hesitated a moment, then grinned. "You're going in to the port, aren't you?"
Silence nodded.
"All right," Kaare said. "I've got some things that ought to fit you. I'll bring them to your room after
dinner, all right?"
"That's fine," Silence said, then wished she had insisted on his bringing them immediately. Kaare was
not known for his punctuality, and the longer she waited, the more likely it was that Isambard would
guess her plans and prevent her.
But for once, Kaare kept his promise. He arrived almost as the clock chimed the end of the dinner
hour, a bundle of clothing tucked under one arm. He opened it to reveal several shirts and a shapeless
vest wrapped in a crumpled, knee-length coat, then politely turned his back. Silence hastily selected the
largest of the shirts and pulled it on, then the vest. She shrugged herself into the heavy coat, and turned to
face the narrow mirror.
The reflection that confronted her was not her own. Silence drew a slow, soundless breath, and lifted
one hand to tug at the loose neck of the shirt. The image copied the movement. It was she, then this
lanky, black-haired youth, and Silence smiled with growing satisfaction. The reflection smiled back at her,
and Silence shook her head to see even that familiar expression transformed. Experimentally, she set her
feet well apart and jammed her hands into the pockets of the still unfamiliar trousers, scowling at the
mirror. It was a half-trained dock worker that scowled back at her, her moderate height turned to
half-grown awkwardness, her body's curves hidden beneath the layers of loose clothing.
From behind her, Kaare said, "You'll do."
Silence saw her mouth twist wryly, and looked away again, suddenly unsure of herself. She had never
seriously attempted to pass as a man before. She had originally adopted the smock and trousers to try to
fit in with the crowds of adolescent male apprentices, and had never made any other effort to disguise
herself, though her voice was naturally low enough to fall within the adolescent range. But it was a
different game altogether to attempt to pass herself off as a man in Solitudo's port and field complex.
As if he had read her thoughts, Kaare shook his head. "Trust me, Silence, no one will guess. And
even if someone does, what does it matter? Solitudo isn't a Hegemonic-law planet, and even if it were,
they couldn't do anything; you're Isambard's apprentice."
He was right, of course. Solitudo's laws did not actually require that women go veiled and escorted; it
was merely customary for them to do so. She could not afford to be recognized for other reasons.
"I know, Kaare. But I like to do things right."
The blond nodded. "I understand. Don't worry, you won't have any trouble." He stood, stretching
easily. "Are you ready?"
"As I'll ever be," Silence answered. She gave the mirror a final, measuring glance, then turned to pick
up the tool bag that lay at the foot of her tidy bed. She unlatched it, checking for the worn grey binding of
her Gilded Stairs, then relocked the bag carefully. Kaare was watching her with some amusement.
"What do you keep in there? I don't think I've ever seen you without it. "
Silence hesitated, then managed what she hoped was a convincingly rueful grin. "My starbooks," she
answered. "Pilots' habits die hard."
"Don't you trust the magi?" Kaare asked, laughing, and pushed open the door of the room.
Clearly he wasn't expecting an answer. Silence followed him through the maze of corridors without
speaking. But he's right, she thought, more right than he knows. I don't trust the magi at all, though it's
only one of my books I have to worry about. Involuntarily she tightened her grip on the bag's shoulder
strap. That single starbook -- an edition of the Gilded Stairs printed before the Millennial Wars that had
destroyed the ancient, Earth-founded Union of the Human Sphere -- held the key to the lost roads to
Earth. Earth, and the reasons behind the broken roads and vanished records, were probably the greatest
of the mysteries that still nagged at magi, star-travellers, and homeworlders alike. If the magi, or any of
the thousands of others obsessed with the search for Earth, realized what she had, they would not rest
until they had taken it from her.
Kaare pushed open the door that led to the main courtyard of the teaching compound, and Silence
caught it automatically. The night air was cool and sweetly scented from the gardens, but there was a
lingering harshness beneath the fragrance. Silence sniffed hard, frowning, and Kaare said, "The wind's
from the north."
From the north and from the sea, Silence thought, and that explained the odd taint to the air. Not salt
-- there were no salts in the sterile waters of Solitudo's artificial seas -- and not anything else, but rather
the absence of the smells that made each world unique. She shook her head thoughtfully. The creation of
Solitudo Hermae was a tremendous accomplishment -- and the further her studies progressed, the
greater it seemed -- but it was still unmistakably an artificial world.
Kaare gave the door a little push, and Silence started. "Thanks, Kaare, " she said. "You've been a big
help."
"Good luck," the other apprentice answered. "There's usually a flat at the gate around now."
"Thanks," Silence said again, and started across the shadowed courtyard toward the compound's
central gate.
As Kaare had promised, a transport flat was waiting there, its open bed empty of passengers. The
servant at the gate gave her no more than a cursory glance, but woke up enough to nod when Silence
asked if the flat were headed for the port. The magi, who controlled everything on this, their private
world, had no reason to restrict the apprentices' movements. She nodded her thanks and pulled herself
up into the flat, trying not to look at its underside. She had spent most of her life in space, where
homunculi did most of the heavy work, but neither that time nor the six months she had spent on Solitudo
had erased her instinctive dislike of the magi's created beings. It didn't matter whether they had the
quasi-human shape of the most common homunculi, or the more exotic forms developed for specialized
tasks, like the transport flat itself: she disliked them all equally.
She set her foot on the single step, and one of the eight pairs of legs that carried the flat shifted to
compensate for her weight. The caricatured head, set in a low socket at the front of the flat, swiveled to
face her. Silence suppressed a shudder at the sight of the dull glass eyes sunk in the folds of grey
pseudo-flesh. The flat, its rudimentary intelligence satisfied, turned away again.
Silence allowed herself a soft sigh of relief, and crossed the empty bed to settle herself as far from the
head as possible. She wished, not for the first time, that there were some other way of getting to the port
complex. But mechanical transport, though admittedly cheaper and more efficient -- at least at this
particular task -- interfered with the magi's Art. On their own world, if nowhere else in human-settled
space, the magi could afford to ban all mechanical devices.
Silence jumped as the head swiveled through three hundred sixty degrees, checking its cargo. The flat
lurched unpleasantly as the multiple legs shifted to take their first step, and she grabbed hastily for one of
the handholds that studded the walls. It bounced erratically for a few moments longer, and then the
sixteen legs settled into an efficient, bone-jarring trot. Twin globes of fixed fire flared briefly on the front
of the flat, then coalesced and focused to throw long cones of light across the roadway.
As the flat swung southeast along the sea cliff road, its lights swept across the teaching compound,
momentarily illuminating the lush gardens, then flashed along the barren ground just beyond the
compound's low wall. The contrast between the elaborate greenery and the untransformed rock was
dramatic enough in daylight, but at night it had the unreality of nightmare. Silence shivered, and looked up
to the familiar stars. Soon, she promised herself, she would be back in space -- and not merely as a pilot,
but as a magus.
There was a sudden flash of light among the familiar constellations, the coruscating dissonance of a
starship's keel striking atmosphere. Silence watched it cross the sky, the flickering dot growing to a
delicate wedge as the ship fell toward the field complex, balancing against the harmony of the landing
beam. Then the ship reached the horizon, and was hidden in the haze of light that surrounded the field
itself.
Silence looked away, trying to deny the longing she felt. You wanted to be a magus, too, she
reminded herself, and as badly as you ever wanted to be a pilot. But the memory of her first taste of
power had faded during the months of her apprenticeship, eroded by the daily routine of advances and
failures that had marked her struggle to achieve mastery. Piloting... She had mastered that art years ago,
was comfortable with it in a way she could never imagine being with a magus's power, and right now she
wanted nothing more than to return to that position of strength. If I'm not spotted, she thought, if no one
recognizes me, still searching the sky for another flash of keel-light, we could get away. Denis and Julie
could smuggle me aboard, and make some excuse to make a quick turnaround. We could lose ourselves
among the star-travellers, and Isambard wouldn't know where to begin looking for us....
She sighed then, and shook her head at her own stupidity. In the first place, Isambard was no fool. He
knew the star-travellers' culture fairly well himself, and was known in ports from the Rusadir to the
farthest planets of the Fringe. More than that, he had helped his fellow magi often enough, and would not
hesitate to call in those debts. And even if they were clever or lucky enough to outrun Isambard's pursuit,
the magus was not the only person interested in them. The Hegemony wanted her -- no one else had ever
broken free of the Navy's geas -- and it was the most powerful political entity in space, fresh from its
conquest of the Rusadir. None of the Fringe Worlds, not even powerful Delos, would dare to protect
her. Only the Rose Worlds might have the strength to stand up to the Hegemon, secure in their ring of
closed worlds, but the Rose Worlds were blocking the road to Earth. Her first and only attempt to fly the
Earth road had proved that, and warned the Rose Worlders that she knew at least a part of their secret.
She would find no refuge in their trading circle.
Silence smiled wryly to herself, glad the darkness hid her face. No, once she had made her bargain
with Isambard, she had no choice but to carry it through to the end. It was not as though she gained
nothing from it: Isambard had agreed to teach her to use the magus's talent she should not have had, and
they would all four share in the profits from finding Earth. But she disliked being under obligation to
anyone.
The flat lurched again, and Silence grunted as she was jolted painfully against the side wall. It was
coming up on the field perimeter, defined by another of the low retaining walls. This one was barely
knee-high, but as deeply rooted in the planet's soil as the one that surrounded the teaching compound.
There was no real gate, merely a pair of simple, shoulder-high pillars on either side of the road, but the
ground within the enclosure was abruptly fertile, carpeted with coarse grass.
The flat slowed to a jog, swerving slowly to pass between the lines of tuning sheds. It was heading for
the row of warehouses, and Silence leaned forward reluctantly.
"Take me to the main terminal."
For a long moment, she thought the homunculus had not heard, and she nerved herself to slap the
rough pseudo-flesh of its head. Then, ponderously, the flat turned back, passing between the last of the
sheds and the first of the docks to stop beside the main terminal. It had chosen the back entrance, the
one reserved for the magi's servants.
摘要：

TheSecondBookof"TheRoadsofHeaven"byMelissaScottCopyrights1986byMelissaScottCustomerReviewsAvg.CustomerReview:Rescuedthetrilogyforme,December3,1999Reviewer:ThisisthesecondofMelissaScott'sFive-TwelvesofHeaventrilogy(Five-TwelvesofHeaven,SilenceinSolitude,andEmpressofEarth)andadandybookitis,too.Scott's...

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