Firebird

by Charles L. Harness

Genres: Hard Science Fiction; Space Opera

Synopsis

From the distant dipoles of the universe, two telepathic computers, Largo and Czandra, known as Control, rule over life on all civilized planets. And now, with Project Cancelar, Control has formulated a plan for achieving immortality...a plan which requires as fodder the collapsing of the universe and the destruction of all life. And there is nothing the humans can do. But there is another force in the universe, hidden in the abyss of the Silent Quarter...plotting destruction of Control. A force that is about to be demolished! Before it expires, it launches from its depths a magic ring, an elixir, and a man and a woman in love - riding within the living spirit of a remarkable spaceship to do battle against the cumulative technology of the entire universe.

Release date: July 30, 2015

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 192

Sample

Over us the years have swept

Like tides upon an ancient shore.

Now everything is gone except—

Memories. Oh, never close the door!

—Tetrameters on a Trioletta,Gerain of Aerlon.

The woman spoke into the voice tube. “You’ll find a clearing just over the next rise. Will you have enough light to make a landing?” Her voice was quiet—almost too quiet. Yet it held a commanding timbre.

The pilot of the little hoverel glanced at the horizon. The twin suns of Aerlon had set thirty tench ago, and the mountain crags were casting tricky shadows in the deepening dusk. But he was skilled and knew his business. He turned his head briefly and smiled at the group behind him in the cabin alcove. “Plenty of light, excellencia.”

“There,” she said, “off to the left.”

The pilot nodded and let the little craft float down to the gravelly apron, which was hardly more than an indentation near the mountain crest.

The great height was chilly. Above lay patches of blue snow. Below, the straggly trees began.

“Would milady wish me to take the trioletta?” The factor pointed with his clipboard to the little stringed musical instrument that she carried by the neck.

“No. It’s no trouble.”

He shrugged. She wrapped her thick furs about her body as he helped her out onto the ground. Her masked maid and the pilot followed behind them. Their breath hung about them all in crystalline fogs.

“Careful, excellencia,” warned the factor.

She ignored him and walked with a lithe step close to the edge of the cliff. She carried the trioletta with a languid feral grace. Her stomach was taut, her spine erect. Her breasts were fully evident despite the sheltering bulk of her furs.

Below her was a drop of some ten thousand jurae. A cold wind swept up the crag, rippled her fine facial fur, and blew her white hair into uncontrollable curls and eddies. She raked the strands from her eyes with long retractile fingernails, and her chatoyant iris slits opened as she looked out over the valley. The far reaches were lost in ambiguous blue haze.

Her little staff had mixed impressions of her. How old? Hard to say. Except for the white hair, perhaps in her early forties. A matter they did agree on: their mistress was very rich, had traveled much, and had seen terrible things.

“No lights anywhere,” she mused.

“Nothing, excellencia,” said the factor. “Long ago, it is said, there were towns and villages there. But then the black ships came and destroyed everything. A few stone foundations are left, but that’s all. The valley is filled with ghosts.”

“Control did that?” asked the lady.

“So it is said, excellencia. But it was long before I was born, so I do not really know.”

“Do the stories say why it was done?” asked the woman.

The man shrugged. “Just wild tales.”

The maid broke in. “’Lencia, may I speak?”

“Of course, child.”

“The valley was once a prosperous keldarane.” The girl lifted her mask, the better to speak against the whistling wind. “One of the females in my family was in service to the princess—”

Jewels flashed on the hands of the woman as she turned to listen to the girl. “Do the stories give the name of this princess?”

“Gerain, ’lencia.”

The rich woman stared at her sharply. “A strange name. Does it have any special meaning?”

“I am not educated in these matters—however, I think it means ‘ice tigress.’”

“Go on.”

“Control selected the princess Gerain to marry a keldar on a distant planet and sent a courier to pick her up.”

“And the name of the courier?”

“The stories give different names. Perhaps it was Dermaq.”

“Continue.” The woman’s eyes had lifted from the growing dark below to the darkening skies above. The wind was stiffening and growing colder. She did not seem to notice.

“The courier took the princess to the planet of her intended husband,” said the maid. “And then a great thing happened.”

“Excuse me, excellencia,” said the factor. “It was not a great thing. It was a catastrophe.”

“Let me guess,” said the woman dryly. “The princess and the courier fell in love and ran away. That was the great thing. And then the Commissioner of Kornaval sent the black ships here to show that Control cannot be trifled with, and that was the catastrophe.”

“Why, yes,” said the maid in wonder. “How did you know?”

But the very rich woman did not seem to hear her. She was studying the pinpoints of light in the silent heavens and but half listened to the voices behind her. The pilot was arguing that the princess should not have thwarted the will of Control. But she did it for love, argued the maid. But Control is invincible and immortal, insisted the pilot. You simply don’t tangle with Control. Nothing can defeat Control. Love can, said the girl.

The woman’s head jerked up. A hairline streak of light had burst over the far horizon. A local planetary freighter? A starship? A Control cruiser? Landing? Taking off? No way to know. But perhaps its very anonymity permitted her to frame, in her mind, an imaginary identity. She stared, as though in lost remembrance, and whispered a name. Then, “Go,” she hissed. “Go! Go!” And the distant sun-struck trace did in fact seem to accelerate a bit just before it winked out.

For a long moment she transfixed the vanish point with glittering eyes, and she blended with rock and time and sky. The trioletta dangled almost loose in her hand, and it seemed she might drop it. The factor took half a step toward her, then stopped. Actually, none of them dared approach her.

Slowly she relaxed. She smiled reassuringly as she walked back to them. She spoke to the factor. “Ger Buon, you will buy the valley.”

“The entire valley, excellencia?”

“Across to the parallel mountain range.” She pointed. “And down to the confluence of the rivers.”

The factor bowed gravely. “Consider it done, excellencia.”

The night snow was beginning to fall, and it was suddenly much colder. The maid’s teeth began to chatter behind her mask. The woman looked at the girl sharply, then removed her surcoat and draped it over the protesting girl’s shoulders. “I think we might return to the villa now,” she said. “It’s getting cold here.” They tried to help her up the stairs of the hoverel, but she shook them off and climbed up by herself.

Little ship, who named thee?

(And where was sense, when this occurred?)

Whoever heard thing more absurd,

To lock fate in so dire a word?

—Tetrameters on a Trioletta,Dermaq of Kornaval.

Old Gonfalks rose carefully from his computerized 3-D drafting board, passed around the photon-drive model hanging from the ceiling, and walked over to the window. He rubbed his stubbly chin as he squinted down toward the busy shipbuilding complex. Specifically, he considered the just-finished craft perched in the far corner of the yard. The workmen were rolling away the motorized scaffolding from her glittering duralite flanks.

He backed away a step and faced the others in the room almost defiantly. “She’s ready. And I get to name her. It’s my turn.”

“Last time it was Zolcher,” laughed the young designer at a nearby desk.

“And the time before that it was Whoomba,” said the H-drive draftsman.

“Those are the names of flying things on my native Aerlon,” said the old man stiffly. “They are perfectly serviceable names. However, this new name is different. It came to me last night as I slept. There’s no mistake. I have it all on a dream recorder.”

“It’s only a Class Four,” said the supervisor, who had been listening with half an ear. “Mass, one megalibra. Does it really need a name?”

“One mega and up, they get a name,” said the old man firmly. “You wrote a memo on it last year. I have it around here somewhere.” He began rummaging through his desk files.

“Oh, never mind,” said the supervisor hastily. “Do whatever you want. Not too far out, though.” He shook his head. Sometimes he thought Gonfalks was unControlled—perhaps even under the wispy influence of the Diavola. But again, perhaps it was just old age. He had already recommended forced retirement. Monads ago. But things moved slowly.

“What is the name?” asked the young designer.

“Firebird,” said Gonfalks proudly.

“Curious,” said the H-drive expert. “Yet not too bad.”

“Does it have any special meaning?” asked the supervisor.

“In very ancient Aerlon,” said Gonfalks, “long before star travel, when a great chieftain died, his people would put his body in his best water-sailor, along with his weapons. Then they’d set fire to the ship, and it would sail off into the sunset. They called the ship Firebird.”

“Rather grim,” said the supervisor. He lost interest and walked away.

“Nonsensical, really,” observed the young designer.

“But adequate,” said the H-drive draftsman. “And anyhow, it’s his turn to pick the name.” He thought to himself, And may the two-headed god pity the Controlman that pilots this ship.

“Sign here … here … and here.” The commissioning officer shoved paper at the courier, who scribbled his signature at the x’d blanks without reading: “Dermaq of Kornaval.” Pieces of paper for somebody to file away … things to show he had (on paper) taken possession of the ship.

The officer studied the courier briefly and without curiosity. Dermaq of Kornaval was neither handsome nor ugly, neither tall nor short. He appeared to be a very average Controlman, dressed in Control’s very average official trousers, pullover jacket, and boots. The uniform lay in loose folds against well-brushed body hair. The officer knew that the casual anonymity of that light blue uniform hid a shoulder computer and that coils of conductive netting laced the man’s chest hair. He noted also the small leather weapon sac that hung from the jacket.

The officer (in the act of deciding that he was not impressed) was distracted by a faint rhythmic drumming. He looked down. The Controlman’s boot tips were cut away in the standard fashion to permit the retractile toenails to extend for greater ground traction. Just now the nails were sliding slowly in and out and making soft clicking sounds on the paved surface of the shipyard. The officer shrugged mentally. This man evidently had problems. He cut it short. “Here’s the bow ring.”

The courier took it and looked at it gloomily. A simple metal circlet. All ships had to have a bow ring. It identified them precisely and told the port authorities that a particular ship was not the dreaded Hell-ship that might someday destroy the universe. He placed it on his ring finger in silence. It was half hidden in digital fur.

“And your assignment.” The officer handed Dermaq a packet sealed with red wax. The Controlman broke it open and scanned it rapidly.

You will proceed forthwith … the planet

Aerlon, Twin Suns 486-K (Gondar), Sector IX …

As he read, his irises narrowed to dark vertical slits and a barely audible growl rumbled up from his throat. An interstellar job. 486-K. Fifteen light-meda. He knew without looking it up. So near, yet so far.

“Courier, you’re supposed to open your assignment in private,” admonished the commissioning officer.

Dermaq laid tufted ears back against a carefully tonsured mane and read on in silence.

You will pick up and return with the Princess Gerain, for her

forthcoming marriage to the future Mark, Keldar of Kornaval.

He crumpled up the paper, stuck the wad in his inner jacket pocket, and hissed out his question through overhanging felines: “Where is the ship?”

“Northwest corner of the yard. The new one. Firebird. Good voyage, and miss the Hell-ship.”

The courier left without replying.

As he walked across the construction yard, he tried hard not to think. Thinking did no good. And yet here he was, thinking—and comparing. The sadistic irony of the comparison was not lost on him. Control had dragged him from his marriage bed to travel fifteen light-meda to fetch a woman to her marriage bed. A thing neither of them had asked for.

Yesterday he and Innae had been married. Two jars ago Control had awakened him. He remembered now the semidark and how hard it had been to wake up. Innae was already sitting up, trembling. He reached over her naked body and turned on the speaker and the lights. And then the argument with Jaevar, the Commissioner. “I am on official leave. This is my wedding night.”

“Leave canceled, Courier.”

“I resign. I’ll get a job in industry.”

So then Jaevar activated his cranial overlay, took over his mind and body, and made him shave and shower while Innae wept.

Control was well named. How did they do this? He knew how. For millennia, all members of the species Phelex sapiens and all other humanlike creatures of the order Phelex sapiens had been born with a monomolecular patch over the cerebral cortex, and this patch was receptive to thought messages sent from millions of Control centers throughout the universe. Exceptions and imperfections were eliminated: people whose genes failed to produce the receptor patch and people who somehow had been able to destroy the patch.

Control was truly Control.

Fifteen light-meda—fifteen long circuits of Kornaval around the sun—to a backwoods planet to fetch away some village princess (just now an infant in diapers)—another fifteen to return to Kornaval. With the combination of the ship’s deepsleep casket and the inherent slowing effect of shiptime, he would age only a few days. But Innae would become an old woman. He ran through the equations mentally and groaned. It had been wrong of him to marry in the first place. Love had unbalanced his reason. Never again. In whatever lies ahead, he thought, may I never encounter a great love.

As he stood now at the foot of the roll-away stairs, he studied his ship. She was new, sleek, and beautiful. He hated her. What was her name? Yes, there it was, in fused ceramic letters: Firebird. And below the name some sort of insignia, some sort of fowl with outstretched wings of flame. Crazy. He shook his head and grimly climbed the stairs.

On board he quickly ran off the checklist. Close the entrance hatch. Take the coded travel plate out of his assignment packet. Plug this in to the autopilot. Check fuel, food, water. Charts. (Why would he need charts?) Deepsleep caskets functional. They didn’t really need a live pilot. They might as well send a computer. Except for that little unpleasantness that was sure to await him on Aerlon.

He sat at the drive console and spoke into the microphone. “Traffic, this is Firebird. Request planet exit clearance.”

There was a five-vec delay. “Firebird? I do not read you. Is your bow ring in place?”

Dermaq looked at his left hand and grimaced. He had forgotten the ring. “One moment, please.” He pulled the ring from his finger and put it in the transfer box in the console. The automatic mechanism would now carry it to the nose of the ship. If he had taken off without it, he would have been blown out of the sky.

“Ring in place,” he said.

“Firebird, you are cleared.”

There was a brief burst of movement as the ship lifted off. Then nothing. He went back to the deepsleep room, changed into his dormants, and climbed into one of the three capsules. “Awaken me two hours before touchdown,” he tol. . .