A Passage of Stars (7 page)

L
ILY WOKE TO THE
sound of her own voice, a faint, peculiar counterpoint to the dull ache in her head.

“… nevertheless this matter of gathering firewood for the school remained unresolved,” she heard herself say.

“What be firewood?” asked a new voice.

Lily sat up, immediately regretted it. “Ah,” she said—felt herself say this time—bringing a hand to her forehead.

“Min Ransome!” The second voice raised considerably, a lance aggravating the pain. “Want ya water?”

“Quiet,” said Lily. Reconsidered the phrase. “I want quiet.” About four meters away, leaning against the opposite wall, sat Paisley. She held a metal flask in one hand as if frozen in the act of handing it over. Next to her hovered Bach. He rotated a quarter-turn and sang a muted question.

“My head hurts,” replied Lily. “But I think I’m all here.”

“I got ya food and water,” whispered Paisley. “Might help.”

“Hoy,” said Lily, but she reached and took containers from the girl and drank and ate. Bach and Paisley waited, patient as only robots, those long used to poverty, and true hunters can be.

Lily rose gently to her feet and paced out their cell. About four meters by four meters of grey wall, so high ceilinged that it seemed out of proportion. A door-shaped seam was in one wall, with a recessed control panel next to it, encased behind plastine. She sat down finally and looked at Bach.

“I didn’t know you could do that,” she said.

A rising second from Bach.

“Do what?” asked Paisley.

Lily took another drink from the flask. “My voice.”

Bach sang,
Thy voice know I best.

“What’d he say?” asked Paisley.

“Sure,” said Bach, the girl’s voice now, “and glory.”

Paisley shrieked and started away from him, then giggled.

Lily whistled a long phrase.

“What’d that mean?” demanded Paisley. “If he kin talk, why’s he make ya music? Why don’t you just talk to him?”

Bach sang back to Lily and she smiled faintly, looking at Paisley. Against the grey monotony, the girl’s tattoos seemed muted. “At first, when I found Bach, it was the only way we had to communicate. By the music. Later of course I discovered he knew Standard, and he got into the computers, and it would have been easier, sure it would have, but less of a challenge. And much less efficient for Bach.”

“Oke,” said Paisley, trying to look wise. “Maybe, I guess.”

“Consider this,” continued Lily, “it keeps me sharp, staying in that kind of practice. And the two of us can communicate and no one else can understand us.”

“Sure.” The girl found firm ground here. “Like ya hand talk. No one else knows.”

“Right.” Paisley beamed like a student just given the day’s gold star. “After all,” Lily finished, “the extra effort gives you the advantage.”

Paisley nodded sagely, surveying Bach with a more calculating eye. “Once we scam here, we could haul ya fast imperial.”

Bach sang,
If thou pleasest, couldst thou translate?

“Does that mean theft?” asked Lily.

“Oke much!” said Paisley, growing enthusiastic. “With min Bach we could run ya real—” She faltered. Bach was singing in a dissonant key to Lily, who frowned. “I didn’t mean it!” cried Paisley. “I just—” She caught her breath. “I really do want to be ya tech. Honest lock. Not nothing else. Glory hang me if it ain’t true.”

Lily blinked. “I believe you. It just occurred to me that to—ah—scam this place we might have to burglarize our way out. Out of wherever we are. Both of you”—her gaze fixed them together—“I need a complete description of everything that happened. Everything you saw, or think you saw, or heard.”

“We be gone,” said Paisley. “You went down, min Bach went all bright, so I couldna see. One of ya boyos grabbed me and I couldna shake loose and he dragged me in.” She appeared, for an instant, forlorn, but her face brightened. “But I lit fussy, sure,” she concluded.

The young lady did most commendably bite, kick, scratch, and scream. God in Heaven alone knoweth what alarms her commotion raised down the section. As thou wast interred within the vessel, it seemed most prudent to me to follow. At this time seven Kapellan crew members arrived at the lock.

Lily whistled for an interruption, and Bach closed his phrase elegantly. “What did you call them?”

They register to the description of Kapellans, an alien sentient bipedal species native to a star system near the one which humans once referred to in the common Terran usage as Kapella. However, according to all current information in my data banks, their presence in this sector of space is anomalous, therefore
—He halted abruptly midphrase.

The ship shifted like a great animal beneath them. Bach rolled slightly in the air. Paisley lunged out with a hand to steady herself. The watch call echoed above them, three short chimes, one long one, and a brief spoken phrase.

Vectoring to window,
sang Bach.
Thou desirest estimate?

“Yes.”

I transpose. Window transition will occur in twelve minutes.

“What’s for eating?” Paisley’s attempt at a calm voice failed. She had shrunk against the wall, one hand tugging her shift in an unconscious gesture down over her wildly patterned knees.

“We’re going over,” said Lily grimly. “I can’t have been out that long. They must have got to Tagalong. Hoy. They must have power.”

“We on ya road?” Paisley’s eyes widened. “I never thought.”

Bach sank down to the grey floor next to Lily.

You mentioned them before.
She put a hand on his cold metal surface. “Kapellans.” She tried the word slowly in speech.

“What?” Paisley pushed herself upright and walked across the cell to sit beside Lily.

“Imperial class ship,” Lily muttered. “Anomalous. This sector—sector?—of space. Therefore what, Bach?”

Therefore data doth not compute. Thou wilst find nevertheless that it alone fits the required specifications.

There was a silence. Paisley pulled a comb out from her mass of braids and, unraveling a slender plait near one ear, combed the hair out, a cupped hand holding loosed beads, and began braiding it again.

“What happened after we were all in the lock?” asked Lily.

“See,” said Paisley, her deft fingers unslacking in their task, “we was all on, so I stopped fussing and started looking. Ya boyos didna like me much. They let me go and herded me, much as they could. Just corridors, smaller’n Station. Closed doors. I counted, though. I could scam us out easy as frilled back, honest lock. Didna hear naught. Saw three of ya boyos in different clothes off to one place. None more. They tossed us here. Bit later we hooked off from Station. Noisy, that. And here we be.”

Bach’s description was more detailed, if about as succinct. He had monitored color changes, heat patterns, sound referents, He had found one clue: using his internal lights he shone a map of the ship on the grey floor. Paisley oohed gratifyingly and traced their route for Lily. Bach, diverted, complimented her on her sense of direction.

And?
prompted Lily.

Here.
(A green light.)
Through one closed hatchway not immune to heat sense awareness
—he began to digress on Kapellan optical sensory evolution; Lily cut off this variation—
was a human pattern.

Then these Kapellans aren’t human?

Negative.

And this pattern?

Definitely human. Enclosed in such a cell, seemingly, as thou and I and the child.

You can sense through this seal?
She looked to the seam in the grey wall.

Certainly. I am, as thou seest, equipped to mimic most sentient sensing patterns, in this case infrared heat patterning.

Is anyone out there?
Lily stood abruptly, walked over to the seam.

Negative.

She turned and walked to the other side of the cell, walked back.

“What you be talking about?” Paisley demanded.

“We’re being held by aliens, who are evidently called Kapellans. And I believe the man I’m seeking is on board this ship, too.”

The ship jolted; chimes echoed above. Paisley fell forward. Bach rolled almost half over, and he began to sing an incomprehensible melody. Lily kept her feet.

They went through.

She saw the kata whole. The moves branched out in a lattice into infinity, but simultaneously came to rest at their beginning—finite circle of endlessness. The finger bent just so, the wrist, the angle of the knee here, the window made by the hands: “to look at the sky.”

Die Kunst der Fuge. Countersubject. B-A-C-H. Ah. So it is finished.

The universe patterns. Energy without end. We dance, each from birth. Each dance patterns uniquely. Each pattern so marks its subject/owner/object/worshipper. The colors move on the body as the body moves. The pattern defies stillness. Such do we pattern you, child, so you may understand. Learn your pattern. Wear it proudly.

And came out.

First, the silence of reorientation. Lily still stood, centered, and her hands began to move, rising together. She sighed and dropped them. Paisley, flung onto the floor, gasped and pushed herself up to sit again. Bach had righted himself; now he sang quietly,
Vom Himmel hoch da komm’ ich her!

“Where are we?” said Paisley in a very small voice.

Lily crouched beside the girl, laying a hand on her shoulder. “If we go over again, we’ll be coming into Remote. But if we’re coming into system now, it’s Dairy. I don’t care how much power these spooks have, it’s got to be one or the other.”

“Spooks?” ventured Paisley.

Lily sat back on her heels. “You’ve never been downside, on planet?”

“Never.”

“Hoy.” Lily stood and paced back to the seal.

“See,” said Paisley, “we can’t go much of anywhere.”

“We?”

Paisley lifted her arms. The tattoos twined in their vivid pattern down flesh, lost themselves under her tunic.

Lily sighed and turned her head toward the opposite wall.

“Spooks? Funny word.” Paisley waited.

“It’s a thing, a creature; we also call it Boo, the ghost. It lived down there on Unruli before ever we came. So we call anything funny or weird that, people sometimes, but mostly just—well, those things, they’re nothing like us. Folk say they capture the souls of dead people. Who knows if they have any awareness at all.”

Paisley sighed, an unconscious mimic, and dropped her chin to rest on one fist. Lily walked to the door.

When they came out of the berth, it was you they recognized.
She turned to gaze at Bach.
You they stopped for. They knew you. But no one
here
knows you.
With one hand she drew her hair back, let it fall forward.
What did you mean, another sector of space?

Bach sang a gentle end to his piece, paused. His lights winked, and a spray of bright points of light scattered around him, spreading on the floor as he rose higher above it.
Thou, my patroness, didst commission me in this district.
A light blinked red. Paisley slipped back as the pattern spread, staring at it in awe.
My calculations indicate we have appeared here.
(A blue light.)
Or here.
(A second blue light.)

Where is Central?

“It be ya star map!” cried Paisley.

Data incomplete. My investigations indicate thy sphere of trade encompasseth limited regional boundaries. Navigation links nonexistent beyond such sphere.

“You been telling me,” said Paisley, “’bout growing up. Where be you born?”

At first neither Lily nor Paisley saw the two green lights flash. But when the section of stars they were looking at made no change, their eyes roved further afield.

“Impossible,” said Lily.

“Sure,” said Paisley in a breath, “and glory.”

Where do you think this ship came from?
asked Lily.
You said before, the common
—she hesitated over the unusual pattern of notes—Terran
usage.

A new light, yellow, winked on closer to the green ones than the blues and red, but still far—almost the cell’s width—from either. Bach had risen high enough now that the scattered points filled the floor, dappling Lily and Paisley.

“Paradise,” breathed Paisley.

“Who?” Lily turned to the girl.

Paisley began to sing in a high, slightly nasal voice:

Ya Dancer hae, he come, he come,

Tae lead us far, tae home, tae home.

Lost we are, belly down day,

Through ya mountains winds ya way.

She paused, regarded for a long, silent moment some aspect of the tattoos on her right arm. “But no one knows ya way no more. Ya way back.”

“No one knows ya way,” echoed Lily.

Paisley’s expression cleared. “You know ya story, too?”

Lily shook her head. “I don’t know it. Is it a Ridani story?”

“Sure. It be ya story about how ya people, us
tattoos
”—she spoke the word like it was a curse—“come to be here. Long ago, there be ya place where many o’ ya people lived in sore poverty. Not so much different, really. And ya govinment wanted to be rid o’ them—allays has, here or there, cause they never understood ya patterning,” She lifted a colorful hand as if in illumination. “But there be no way, as ya people be too poor to go elsewheres, despite wishing for ya better home. Until Dancer come. He were one o’ us, you see, but graced with ya power to see farther into ya pattern. Ya story starts with him.”

“Tell us,” said Lily.

Paisley’s voice changed, took on a deeper, even huskier tone.

Dancer come took his folk out

Morning bright-o day,

Said, “Follow my pattern,” hey come ho

Sun shine bright-o morning.

Folk they had not one day’s bread

Morning bright-o day

Nor job nor rooftop hey come ho

Sun shine bright-o morning.

Dancer say, “We go on ya road”

Morning bright-o day

“Tae green grass land come” hey come ho

Sun shine bright-o morning.