Hador was still only a glow
on the lightward horizon when Brim signed out for local leave
and stepped into the fresh sea air beyond Defiant's main
hatch. In the distance, Atalanta's huge fires had burned to a
dull glow, and the two stricken merchantmen were little more than
twisted skeletons collapsed into their ruined gravity pools.
Yet for all its recent chaos, the base appeared to have returned
to normal almost immediately following the emergency. Brim nodded
to himself as he caught a local tram for the base's main civilian
terminal-the little vehicle was no more than a few cycles late.
A hush passed over the passengers when they passed the two freshly
burned out gravity pools-still smoking and littered with emergency
vehicles. But as the tram bounced along its route through the
huge starship base, it was filled and emptied a number of times
by energetic-looking workmen who joked and talked among themselves
as if this were simply another night shift. Haelicians were
tough-he'd learned that in a hurry. And it looked as if Kabul
Anak would discover the same thing himself, soon enough. According
to top-secret situation reports, the Leaguer admiral had recently
transferred his flag to his new super battleship Rengas. The
attack wasn't far off now; Brim could feel it in his bones.
When he arrived at the base terminal, the end of the night shift
was still more than two metacycles away, and both buildings were
nearly deserted. Out in the tram shed, only two large interurban
coaches hovered in the maze of shallow stone alleyways the vehicles
used for a roadbed.
They were tall, old-fashioned-looking conveyances: Brim guessed
as much as twelve irals in height, eight to ten wide, and perhaps
seventy in length overall. Floating on two flat gravity packs
near either rounded end, the floors of the big machines hovered
approximately chest high. Forward, three-pane windscreens extended
from slightly arched roofs halfway to the floor. Lines of similarly
sized windows ran the length of each coach, the top third of each
glazed with green stained glass. Powerful-looking headlamps glared
below the center windscreen panels, directly over each car's number
in brass Avalonian digits. The passenger entrance was a set of
double doors amidships equipped with a retractable step. Open
hatches forward and aft had only a short ladder; they were clearly
for the crew. Car 312 bore three orange stripes painted across
the center of its arched roof; Car 309 had a single blue stripe.
Aside from this, however, the trams appeared to be nearly identical
except for signs at their turnstiles proclaiming MONASTERY and
LOOP 12.
Brim frowned. It was reasonably clear that the former would arrive
eventually at the top of Atalanta's hill at the Gradgroat-Norchelite
Monastery. But what was a LOOP 12? He rubbed his chin for a moment,
then prudently decided on the monastery. If the mazelike Rocotzian
section of town were any indication, he would be much wiser spending
his time in bona fide tourist attractions until he was
fortunate enough to attract another native escort.
He peered around the nearly-deserted car shed; it smelled of stale
food, stale sweat, stale mu'occo smoke, and the sharp stench of
ozone from the humming, hovering trams. He guessed the last odor
would easily reach unpleasant concentrations when the alleys were
filled with coaches.
A green-uniformed worker dozed behind the ticket counter, but
above his head hung a colorful map of the city. It was also marked
with symbols that--wonder of wonders!--matched signs on all the
turnstiles. On closer inspection, Brim discovered that Loop 12
was a route that circled the center section of the hill through
a veritable maze of narrow side streets: A great place to become
lost, he concluded quickly. Nodding to himself, he gently woke
the ticket agent, purchased a round-trip ticket on the Monastery
circuit, and made his way to Car 312.
Inside, the empty coach smelled of hot oil, leather, and ozone;
it was comfortably set up with four rows of carpet-covered bucket
seats and a center aisle. It was also spotlessly clean. Brim took
a window seat near the front where he could see out the windscreens
as well. Then he sat back to wait.
During the next few cycles, he was joined by a number of workmen
leaving early for one reason or another--mostly accidents. One
limped on board with a fresh patch over her eye, two burly men
in stevedore's overalls arrived with bandages around their heads,
and a tall, angry-looking woman struggled up the stairs and into
a seat despite the great cast that covered her right leg all the
way to her knee. She was followed by a brace of grimy, tired-looking
Gradgroat-Norchelite priests who smelled strongly of smoke. Brim
quickly guessed where they came from. There would be a lot of
work for priests at the two burned-out gravity pools. Wreckage
such as he'd seen would allow for few survivors...
At length the crew arrived: conductor and motorman dressed in
dark green tunic and trousers, white shirts with green bow ties,
shiny black boots, and orange-beaked pillbox hats decorated by
a device that looked like a wheel pierced by a golden lightning
bolt. Shortly thereafter, bells sounded officiously, doors rattled
closed, and the floor vibrated beneath Brim's feet while ancient
gravity packs ground into ponderous action, moving Car 312 out
of the station and onto a main alleyway heading inland. As the
big, top-hampered coach picked up speed, she began a rhythmic
swaying motion that, coupled with the monotonous throb of her
packs, had a soothing effect all its own.
Relaxing in his seat, Brim squinted at the window itself. It was
a tall affair with polished wooden frames and brass hardware that
allowed the bottom to be raised past its green stained-glass partner
above-hadn't they heard of environmental control? The transparent
bottom pane even boasted beveled glass! Outside, they were now
crossing a bridge that paralleled the seven moss-covered stone
arches of the Harbor Causeway--he remembered that bridge from
his evening with Claudia.
For a moment, her oval face and soft-looking brown hair filled
his mind's eye--he imagined the musky fragrance of her perfume
teasing his nose. Somehow, she had been popping in and out of
his mind a great deal since that night, much more than she should
have. Truth to tell, he felt more than a little guilty about being
attracted so strongly to her-especially when he was pledged to
someone else.
Then he shrugged. Right or wrong, that was the way things were.
For the next precious metacycles, he intended to relax and enjoy
his anticipated leave. Tomorrow was time enough to moralize...
Car 312's gravity packs increased to a throbbing pulse beneath
the floor as the alleyway began to climb City Mount Hill, and
they entered a confusion of three- and four-story structures built
mostly of whitewashed stone and mortar. By the early-morning light,
Brim could see tiny gardens crowded into every possible nook and
cranny, dappled with flowers that splashed the waking cityscape
with a million dabs of color. These buildings were so close to
the street that their balconies nearly touched overhead. The net
effect was almost tunnel-like as the big car clawed its way up
the steep grade, sharing the narrow street with dogs, barnyard
animals, priests, fishermen, storekeepers, stonemasons, rothcats,
dockyard workers, occasional Blue Capes, and droves of men and
women in colorful native dress. None moved out of the way until
the last possible moment, when the conductor applied the car's
shrieking, ear-piercing whistle--which he was obliged to do almost
every few irals.
All too often, they thundered past burned-out, roofless buildings-abandoned
and left gaping at the sky. Many of the side streets Brim could
see were filled with piles of tumbled brick and stone-clearly
impassable for the duration of the war. Sometimes, whole blocks
had been gutted, with narrow paths cleared through the rubble
to uncover the interurban alleyways. The motorman sped through
these, pursued by billowing specters of gray dust. They made Brim
shiver. No glory here, only the remains of fragile homes, crushed
and broken by the wild, blind lashings of wartime insanity. He
shook his head. Somehow, sights like this never seemed to register
with the leaders. Usually, he supposed, their homes were
well protected...
In due course, the car crossed a stone bridge over a deep ravine.
Brim glimpsed the distant harbor far below. Admiral Hober and
his battlecruisers were just putting out to space: Iaith Galad,
Oedden, and Benwell, great hovering shapes on the placid
morning waters.
Even while he watched, Benwell began her takeoff run at
the head of a towering cloud of water vapor. In spite of himself,
he felt shivers of thrill race along his back while the interurban's
windows rattled in the rolling thunder. Battlecruisers were the
stuff of dreams for him. Especially Benwell--built as replacement
for Nimue, which had mysteriously disappeared more than
five Standard Years ago, taking the legendary Star Admiral Merlin
Emrys with it. Like every young man in the Empire--even in Carescria--he
had worshiped Emrys and the great ebony battlecruiser that ghosted
in and out of harbors all over the galaxy, showing the colors-and
power-of Greyffin IV's Galactic Empire. Their loss had been devastating
at the time. Now, both man and ship were only half-remembered
entries in a casualty list that would have seemed unbelievable
at the time. But they would always hold a special place in his
heart.
At length, the car thrummed across two intricately filigreed metal
trestles, glided through a long, pillared colonnade, and came
to rest on a spacious plaza planted with ancient, ocher-colored
trees and paved with complex patterns of reddish-gold paving stones.
On one side it fronted a colossal saffron granite crag at least
two hundred irals in height and half a c'lenyt in circumference.
A spectacular staircase and balustrade-sculpted from the granite
itself-wound through a dozen switchbacks to the monastery above.
It was occupied by black-garbed priests with high orange collars,
Friars and Sisters in their long crimson gowns, novices wearing
short robes of rough cloth, and an occasional, brightly outfitted
layperson.
Opposite this stairway, the plaza was bounded by another ornate
balustrade, also of saffron granite, but interspersed by graceful,
flower-filled urns twice as tall as a man. From here, Brim got
a spectacular view of the harbor and the great Imperial base thousands
of irals below. He felt the morning sea breeze on his face, cool
and fresh at this altitude. He picked out Defiant on her
gravity pool and grinned to himself. He'd seldom had a chance
to see her at such a distance. "Graceful" was the word
that came to his mind first. She was a beautiful ship, long and
lean as she hovered--impatiently, as it seemed--to break the bonds
that kept her from her own element.
With a whole day on his hands, he relaxed a few extra cycles at
the balustrade, looking down at the many-hued roofs of Atalanta.
Behind him, he heard the coach's doors rattle shut; presently
it ground its way out of the plaza. Somehow its departure severed
a symbolic tie with the war, and he suddenly felt freed--no matter
how temporarily--from the death and destruction that swirled through
the galaxy. He took a deep breath while a feeling of peace swept
over him in the quiet, breeze-swept plaza.
Fifty irals to his right, another staircase-t-his built into the
steep hillside--connected with the streets below. Like its opposite,
it also carried considerable traffic. High overhead, a colorful
Gradygroat Zuzzuous lifted from the monastery and crackled up
into the morning sky. As the archaic little spaceship banked steeply
over the harbor, Brim saw that it was filled to capacity. He shook
his head and smiled. A whole spaceship of Gradygroats flying out
to service weapons systems that generations of Admiralty scholars
dismissed as mere artifacts--unworthy of further study. He laughed
to himself. Talk about wasting manpower! Yet the forts held a
certain fascination for him. Silently, he promised himself that
if he ever had more than a single day on leave, he would try to
fly out and see one for himself. Then he laughed. Fat thraggling
chance of extended leave in a place like Atalanta...
At length, he turned and made his way through the dusk-blue tree
shadows-boots clicking among gently dancing puddles of golden
sunlight--until at length he came to the foot of the great staircase.
He followed a trio of Friars onto the marble treads, and quickly
discovered that Gradgroat-Norchelite clerics set a rapid pace
on the way up. He laughed to himself as he found himself breathing
deeper and deeper. Clearly, the staircase was a daily occurrence
for them--and considerably longer than Defiant's longest
companionway.
He paused at a landing near the top while he caught his breath.
From this high angle, he could see Car 312 with its three orange
stripes following a twisted route back down the hill. He idly
watched the streets he would follow were he walking to intercept
its course. An easy route, he discovered to his surprise. The
hilltop was so steep that the heavy car required numerous switchbacks
to negotiate the slope, and although it had clearly traveled a
long way since leaving the plaza, its actual distance from the
monastery was little more than an easy c'lenyt's walk from the
lower staircase. He even strongly considered making the walk himself
once he completed his visit to the monastery. When he reached
the top a few cycles later, however, all thoughts concerning possible
walks--or anything else, for that matter--were swept away by the
mind-boggling structure looming before him.
Blazing in Hador's late-morning brilliance like a golden icon,
the monastery's colossal, flame-shaped spire stood at least a
thousand irals higher than the two massive, disk-shaped tiers
that formed its base. The bottom story was nearly a quarter again
as large as the top, and both were surrounded by lofty alabaster
colonnades formed of pointed arches and graceful columns
that were easily more than a hundred irals high at their apex.
A second grove of gigantic ocher trees surrounded the sprawling
campus, shading what appeared to be veritable c'lenyts of quiet
paths dotted by rushing fountains and quiet glens.
Before Brim's nearly unbelieving eyes, a wide avenue led across
the first-story colonnade and into a pair of massive, ebony doors
that themselves were at least sixty irals high. At present, both
were open to a darkened space beyond. The Carescrian shook his
head. Never--anywhere--had he encountered such an extraordinary
structure. Greyffin IV's palace in Avalon actually paled in comparison.
Above the massive door frame was a carved motto written in Xantos,
the archaic Universal script that even Carescrian youngsters were
required to learn:
IN DESTRUCTION IS RESURRECTION;
THE PATH OF POWER LEADS THROUGH TRUTH
Brim chuckled as he stepped
across the threshold into a darkened anteroom--Gradygroats made
about as much sense as Sodeskayan Bears when it came to mottoes.
When his eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness, he pushed
open a second, inner door, and...
Unconsciously, he caught his breath. Sensible or not, the great
circular commons room they had constructed was in many ways as
impressive as the whole monastery.
From a stupendous balcony formed by the monastery's second tier,
men's voices intoned one of the Gradgroat-Norchelite anthems--ancient
words and music that stirred the hearts of believers and nonbelievers
alike:
"Oh Universal Force of Truth,
That guards the homeland of our youth,
That bidd'st the mighty cosmos deep,
Thine own appointed limits keep:
Oh hear us when we cry for Grace
F or those at peril far in space..."
Brim followed no particular religion--by any stretch of the imagination--but he nonetheless found himself lifted on a cresting surge of emotion. He'd loved the hymn as a child who dreamed of the stars. Now that he'd found those stars and called them his own, the words were still never far beneath his personal veneer.
Before him like some preposterous crystal plain, the lens-shaped
floor was dotted here and there by figures of men and women who
appeared to be diminished--somehow, humbled was a better
word--by sheer, unmitigated magnitude. Taking a pamphlet from
a table marked, "Information: Imperial Language," he
discovered that the surface actually comprised three concentric
circles. Spaced equally around the outer ring, three inlaid sets
of Xantos symbols faced the center of the room and spelled DESTRUCTION
in shining gold metal. The middle ring contained three sets of
gold inlaid symbols for RESURRECTION, also facing the center.
And the unmarked inner ring served to frame a large, central cone
of gleaming gold-colored metal studded with irregular patterns
of what appeared to be a thousand or more multicolored gems. The
symbol group for TRUTH was deeply engraved three times into a
polished band of clear metal around its base.
Overhead, soaring high above the balcony, a monumental dome modeled
the nighttime firmament over Atalanta with Hador blazing forth
through a lens-like aperture that seemed to hover in the center
of the sky surrounded by the word POWER, in Xantos letters. Brim
frowned as he stared up into this artificial starscape. Something
peculiar about it... He snapped his fingers. Of course. The dome
itself was unquestionably constructed of some translucent material,
and whatever the Gradygroats were using to model Hador shone from
considerable distance behind its surface! He smiled. Clever,
that. A shimmering beam of focused brilliance plummeted straight
from the "hovering" lens to shatter on the jeweled cone
in the center of the floor; its light then mirrored back to the
dome in a thousand separate reflections to form the stars. Brim
nodded in admiration as he studied the cone. Each of its seemingly
scattered jewels had actually been placed with exquisite care!
He wondered what sort of artificial flare the Gradygroats had
placed behind the dome to shine like that one did.
Interestingly enough-a-t least to Brim--the tower itself was almost
fourteen hundred irals high, but the inner dome above his head
extended no more than three hundred irals into it. Rather disappointing,
when he came to think about it. Idly, he wondered what the Gradygroats
did with the remainder of the space-he certainly remembered seeing
no windows in the tower, at least from the outside.
On the surrounding wall, scores of inset display-window tableaux
depicted the long, varied history of The Order. Brim promised
himself ample time to digest these-especially ones depicting the
thirteen orbital forts and their mighty disruptors. Wouldn't Wellington
love this, he thought as he continued his fascinated inspection
of the commons room.
During the next metacycles, Brim availed himself of everything the monastery had to offer: its great circle of tableaux, the library with the rare collection of Primitives, the museum, the art gallery, and the gloriously wooded parks. Each was fascinating in its own way, and to his surprise, neither the Friars nor the Sisters he met attempted to proselytize him or, so far as he could see, any of the other visitors, although there were only himself and perhaps four or five families on a holiday. Wartime, he supposed, severely limited the tourist trade. At length, he deposited a generous--for a Carescrian--donation at one of the intricately carved alms boxes, then strode down the top staircase to the coach plaza. He had most of the long afternoon still before him. Warm breezes carried the voices of the choir from the monastery:
"Far-called, our starfleets melt away;
Dominions and our pow'r depart;
Lo, all our fame of yesterday
Without The Motto, leaves the heart-
From Truth the path of Power leads yet,
Lest we forget-lest we forget!..."
Leaning his elbows on the balustrade, he peered down at the roofs of the city again. An afternoon sea breeze was still surprisingly cool on his face, and the sky was now dotted by ranks of flat-bottomed, fair-weather clouds. He watched one of the big coaches glide into the alleyways, exchange passengers, then growl on its way again, disappearing at length among the giant trees. Once again, he gazed into the distance at Defiant, then at his timepiece. Impulsively, he vowed he would present himself at the sign-in desk no more than a milliclick before he absolutely had to. Then, with a smile of determination on his face, he started down the staircase toward town...