Star Rider

Book 380: Gateway Essentials

by Doris Piserchia

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Doubleluck...Home...with its streets of flowing gold, waterfalls of diamonds, lakes of perfume - and its deadly curse! Jade is the one human with the will to challenge all odds and find the key to save her species. Fellow creatures fear her ability to dream. The powerful Rulon will exterminate all galactic life unless he can possess both Jade and the riches of Doubleluck. The brutal Dreens seek to mate with her to improve their inferior stock. Escape from each of them brings her one step closer to the perfect monument that is Doubleluck - a monument that covers a lonely grave.

Release date: May 31, 2013

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 200

Sample

Out of the D-2 void we came to stand on a barren asteroid in a sky full of hot bits of debris. Hinx had made a rough landing to show me he was insulted by my long silence, but I paid him no mind. It was good to be real and solid again.

I jinked my mount from the top of his head to the soles of his four feet. Hinx and I together were something going somewhere. Separated, we were stranded wherever we landed. He couldn’t go anywhere without a jak on his back and a jak needed a mount under him to take a trip.

I thought about not having a mount, looked up at the stars, imagined how it would be to have to stay in one place. The longing for those lights hit me like a fist, clawed deep down into my brain and stirred up things sleeping under the debris.

I said to myself: They’re yours, gal, any time you want them, so what are you aching for?

I knew the answer. It was raw hunger. I had to have a beckoning light and a mount to carry me there. That was a jak.

“Settle down, Hinx, you’ll throw me,” I bawled.

Startling the heck out of me, he stuck his nose straight at the sky and let out the weirdest howl I ever heard.

“What was that for?”

“Don’t know,” he said. “Something came over me.”

“I’ll come over you, right across your rump with an old-fashioned beating.”

“Do you mind if I do it again?”

He didn’t wait for an answer. His nose tilted up just as a big cinder whizzed by, and the next thing I knew we were in D-2 with me hanging on by a tuft of his fur.

“Sorry,” said Hinx, as we landed on a bigger asteroid.

“What’d you come here for?” I yelled. I wanted to dismount, but there were flashing cinders here, too, and he might spook again and catch me unaware.

“You worried about being left behind?” He sounded as if he might be grinning.

I settled back, let my feet dangle at his sides and began picking my teeth with the straw I always carried behind my ear. “Hunters all over the place. Hitch a ride any time I want. Of course, if that happens, I get myself another mount. If you can’t trust a mount, you might as well commit suicide. Damn things go loco once in a while and then it’s the pasture for them.”

“Do that to me and I’ll never speak to you again.”

“Kind of tired of you. A lifetime of your bellyaching has been enough to make me gag. What’s the matter with you?”

“Told you I was hungry.”

“We ate a while ago. You forget that planet we stopped at?”

“Not that kind of hunger.”

I leaned on his neck and scowled. In some ways, Hinx had more jink than I. Usually, a half-grown mount was frisky and dumb as a rock, but Hinx was a serious thinker and could jink things far away.

When you jinked, you got a thing up close and swarmed all over it with your mind. You didn’t go after it to look it over; you dragged it close and pawed it up one side and down the other. Naturally, you didn’t pull the actual thing to you, just an aura of its essence.

“We’re nowhere near anything interesting,” I said. “What the heck can you be jinking?”

He sat so far back on his rump that my own backside almost touched the ground. “Don’t know. A powerful hunger’s building in me.”

“Wish you’d quit dumping us in D so fast.” I spoke neither too gently nor too harshly. He was a good mount and there was love between us. I didn’t know it then but the clawing longing I’d had a minute ago had gotten under his hide. He didn’t know it, either. Time, place, circumstance; those were all it took to make a miracle, or a hell of a mess.

Anyhow, I sat there and he sat there and suddenly the odd tilt of his shaggy head made me feel creepy. I said, “One of these days I’ll be slow getting my shield tight around me and the danged vacuum on one of these rocks’ll pinch my whistle permanently.”

The nose of Hinx quivered. Straight up it jutted. Howl? Enough to give me the shudders.

“I gotta go, love,” he said, and I automatically gripped him tight. Bang, D-2. That space-busting maniac under my seat took me like a babe and I made up my mind to have him psyched if I ever got the chance. He needed his brains cleaned out, needed to be put to pasturing and pleasuring on one of those resort planets for blown mounts.

“Whoa,” I said, but he paid me no mind. “Damned nag,” I swore, and with good reason. He was climbing a string of asteroids as if they were a pile of rocks. My guts jiggled and my brains rattled as I hung on and cussed him to galaxy’s end and back. Bang, D-3, with his feet on an asteroid. Bang, D-2, with the wind of nothing in my ears and the black of perdition tearing at my throat. Bang, D-3, with his feet reaching for that little piece of ground ahead, and the son of a clumsy bitch slipped and threw us into D-2 so fast I thought I was a goner.

He finally hit one of those rocks solid, but did he stop and apologize to me, who hung onto his mangy fur for dear life? He did not, just tippytoed across that stone fancy enough to give me scrambled internals, then stuck himself up on his hind legs and gave a bloodcurdling shriek.

“Hot damn, this is it,” he said, and licked his chops.

Flat on his back, I lay flat on my back, seeing stars, different bunches with each eye. That day I had crazy vision.

Thought I, if he takes off into D-2 now, I’ve had it, because I couldn’t hang on to a feather, let alone him.

“Hinx, don’t do it,” I croaked. “We been together …” I couldn’t finish, I was that pooped. The stars over my head, long might they prosper, but I wished they wouldn’t swarm all over the sky that way.

“Ahooeee. Hot damn.”

My breath was back, so I sat up and took hold of his tail. Weaving in the saddle like a drunkard, I mumbled, “Go ahead, let’s go.”

“Where?”

I grabbed his tail tight. It wouldn’t do me any good, though. When he jumped, I was going to go flying.

“Gotta think it out,” he said. “It jinks so good I can’t stand it.”

Fumbling behind me with one hand, I got hold of the long hair on his neck. “You’re fixed?” I said. “Not going? You’re sure?”

“Sure.”

“Okay, then, damn you, we’re gonna square off right now and have a tussle. You almost lost me.”

He didn’t sneer but he sounded as if he wanted to. “Couldn’t lose glue, could I?”

“All I had was a couple of hairs to hold.”

“That’s enough if they’re mine. Jinked you all the way. Ready to go either direction to stay under you. We’re together in this.”

“All the way, but I’m boss.”

“Let’s argue about that.”

“Don’t intend to argue,” I said. “You know I’m the boss.”

“Fine, be the boss. I’m just sitting here. Give me an order.”

Of all the stubborn … “I got no orders to give you right now. You told me you jinked something. Well, jink it out of your system.”

“You don’t fool me. You’re curious.”

“Of course I’m curious.”

He forgot what he had been about to say. “Hot damn,” he whispered eagerly. He sniffed. He pranced. “Something, something, but what is it? The old blood sings and I just naturally have to poke my nose in the air and go. … Ahooeee.”

I got off him and walked on that asteroid. Put my hands on my hips. Looked around. Nothing there. Jinked another asteroid way off. Nothing there. Overhead the stars were white freckles on a dark kisser, an ugly face unless you were a jak.

“I’m gonna jink me that star over there,” I said.

“Ahooeee …”

Jinked that star. Piddling little old thing. Jinked those planets. Eight poor dead hulks. Knew ’em by name, knew ’em down to their sterile atoms.

Again I felt that star. Old as hell. Of course, everything was old, except for living creatures. We jaks hadn’t been around too long. Think it was only millions of years ago that we started.

“Hinky,” I said suddenly.

“Don’t call me that.”

“Hinx, you feel that star?”

“What for?”

“You feel those eight planets?”

“What for?”

Loud as I could, I yelled, “You bust my brains leapfrogging these asteroids, now you say you don’t want to bother jinking anything.”

“Already jinked something.”

I glared at him for a long minute. “You know this system same as me. One sun, eight planets, no moons and enough asteroids to choke a giant.”

He wagged his big head, dug his haunches into the hard rock and sat like a lump of lead.

“Kind of restless,” I said. “What say we light out for Veraka? They got blue grass and big crowds. We can panhandle a couple days to get a stake.”

“No, thank you.”

Cranky, I walked toward him. “How about Adrax? You like all those spooky caves.”

“Seen ’em a hundred times.”

I was sick of yelling so I said softly, “What do you want to do?”

“Excuse me, sweetie, but something around here smells.”

“Not to me.”

“You’re blind when you’re mad. Me, I never get mad so I’m never blind. What say you relax awhile and get the feel of the place, and then if you don’t jink anything, we’ll take off?”

That sounded reasonable so I walked away to do what he said. Felt uneasy, I did; jumpy as a young mount hitting D-2 for the first time.

Me feeling strange wasn’t usual. Needed thinking about. Sat down on the ground and considered it.

Nothing on this asteroid to cause Hinx to lose his mind. Chunk of rock so small I felt light even with my shield in place. I had taken some atmosphere from the last oxygenated planet we landed on. Hinx had done the same thing. Carrying along an environment wasn’t difficult to do, in fact it became more or less automatic to a traveler after he had practiced it a few times. The mind formed a cage of force around the body, and the atmosphere was captured inside. Its density was determined by the amount of gravity on a planet and by the mass of the traveler. There wasn’t any gravity on an asteroid like this one and my shield was so dense that its outer side lay a fraction of an inch away from my skin and just barely covered the hair on my head. I could use the shield I had for about ten hours, after which I’d have to pick up some fresh atmosphere.

I was twelve when I took off on my mount to hunt for the legendary planet. Doubleluck was its name, and I was still hunting for it. Good old Doubleluck. With one hand clasping the long hair on Hinx’s neck and the other dug deep into the fur on his rump, I sat in the depression in his back and rode like a fiend. For two years.

How many times I’d promised my mount, “We’ll get there first.” The devil could take the others, we’d find the place and make it ours. Everyone would throw their hats in the air and shout that jaks were kings of the universe.

If only the universe hadn’t been so small. If only we could have gotten out of our galaxy and reached that other one way over there across a big ocean of black space.

That was the real reason Hinx and I rode, only I didn’t know it at the time.

The mind could do anything, and mind was just about what a jak was. Mounts, too. Both species climbed the evolutionary ladder close together and though there were animals all over the galaxy there were none like us.

The mind could soar but not the body. I had a good body but it couldn’t take me to the stars, nor could Hinx’s body take him. Our minds could do it. Linked, we became D-2, a thing that had no depth, created no friction and was unaffected by vacuum or inertia.

Now I sat on a hard rock in the middle of nowhere and wondered what was the matter with my mount.

My mind, it went out. Calm now, no longer mad at Hinx, I let it go. Out. Up. Sideways.

That star up there; pretty little furnace all red and white; worked hard for a long time just so jaks could come and see it.

Eight planets; two little ones close to the furnace, five bigger ones farther out and another little one, that last one packed in ice and getting colder every day.

Moon …

Click.

“Hold on, mount, I jink.”

Hinx glanced at me across the gray rock. “What?”

“Quiet. Needs thinking on.”

What was it about numbers? Not much at math, I counted on the fingers and toes in my mind. Went down deep to do that counting.

“At least one heavenly body in this system is missing,” I said over my shoulder. “Recollect there ought to be—”

“My recollect’s as good as yours and none are missing.”

“Jink me,” I said. “Count with me.”

“One, two, three, four. …” He finished the count after I did.

“Where’d you get those two extra ones?”

“From your mind.”

I got up off the ground. “I’m in my own mind. Know what’s there and what isn’t.”

“Archetypes,” said Hinx. “Hey, that popped into my head.”

“Pop some more.”

He growled and scratched his ribs with a hind leg. “Can’t. Jinked it for a second and then blooey.”

“Archetypes out here in this dinky dump? Even if you’re spelling it out right, why should any aura reach you? You mounts originated in the Bowkow Point, sure as hell not in this bunch of backwoods islands.”

He grinned. “Sure as hell you didn’t come from here, either. You come from the Ridge Cluster, you can’t even talk good jak, and damned if you didn’t teach me the same. Only how come I can read something in your mind you can’t read?”

“Let me think about it some more.”

Went away to consider. Sat down again, leaned back on my elbows and dreamed me a dream of stars and gold.

Out of the dim tunnels in my mind came a trailing thing; god, how slow and loggy was it, sneaking up back paths through high canyons, hollow as a reed and its name was Memory.

“Point,” said I, and the wispy thing grew a finger. It said, “There,” and behind me Hinx said, “Oops,” and a second later nobody sat on that asteroid but me.

“Where’d you go?” I yelled, standing up to look around.

“Damn if I know,” Hinx answered.

No matter where he was, he couldn’t get away from me if I held on to him, and I held on tight. “Come on back,” I said.

“Pull me. I hate this place. It’s nowhere.”

I could toss his carcass all over the galaxy if I wanted to. That’s why I was boss. I pulled and he came yelling.

“Moon, moon, moon.”

“There isn’t any,” I said, and dropped him hard beside me.

“Did you jink me while I was gone?”

Scratched my backside. “Forgot.”

“Well, for the love—”

“Go on back to that rock where you were before. I want to try that again.”

He looked at me as if I had asked him to give up breathing. “You want me to go back to nowhere?”

“Yeah.”

He didn’t like it, but he went, stomping all the way. I turned my back to him and talked to myself to get it all clear and down pat.

“Let’s see, what was I thinking about before? Oh, yeah, gold and that thing down there in my mind. Hinky called it an archetype. It doesn’t look like one. Not that I know exactly what they look like.”

The thing was still there, down deep. Fishing it up a ways wasn’t too difficult, because it wanted to come. Slippery as grease, it wriggled out of the abyss and stared me in the face.

“Oops,” said Hinx and disappeared.

Just me and the asteroid again.

“You there?” I called. “Is that place somewhere?”

“Nope, and I still don’t like it. Pull me in before I take a fit.”

“What are we doing wrong?” I said when he was back beside me.

He started to answer and then changed his mind. His head went up and his nose twitched.

“Rider coming.”

He was right, and somebody had a lot of nerve butting into our territory. Whoever it was, he obviously had no manners.

A scowl on my face, I turned and watched a blank patch of space.

The biggest jak I ever saw came riding out of a window of ink. In slow motion he appeared, and before he settled into the solidity of D-3, I had a couple of seconds to look him over. He was huge and his baggy duds did nothing to hide the muscle packing his bones.

The best clothes anywhere were the skins of lanion pods. They could be found all over, and just about everyone wore them. Only the pods that hadn’t ripened were unusable, and those could be recognized by their gray color. You simply broke off a ripe one that was bigger than yourself, stepped on the end so the insides popped out and then you hauled the skin over your head, fit it to your body and ripped off the excess. The skin would settle around you in a few seconds. It wore well and it was soft and shiny and smelled pleasant. Lanion pods came in all colors. I usually chose green or yellow. The big jak coming out of D-2 was wearing black. He had chosen a pod that was way too big for him, which meant he didn’t like tight clothes.

Anyhow, his legs were stiffed out and his toes pointed straight at the sky, and he rode loose and easy as if he thought he owned everything. His mount was a grizzled old giant with rolling eyes and irritated ears. One glance at the pair and you knew they were made for each other. This duo was ugly as sin and tougher than stone, a couple of lonesome bums who would blow you down if you got in their way and cuss you when you complained.

That mount had a sense of humor, came climbing down empty space as if it were a steep trail. His four legs prowled for clods and he didn’t give a damn when he found none. Hair as long as my arm hung from his body, thick and curly stuff that would have afforded any rider a generous grip, but this mount’s rider hung on by nothing but the seat of his pants. Big Jak always rode that way, as I found out later, but that day he had good reason to travel freestyle. One hand was full of a big hat, the other held on to a body.

“Couple of showoffs,” Hinx whispered to me. “That jak is full of ham and that mount is the sorriest—” He shut up when that mount landed solid and showered him with asteroid dirt.

It was done purposely, sure as certain. Just as certain, they had heard Hinx. In D-3 they were a spook and a dragon, and I started wondering if I ought to get lost in a hurry.

The big jak gent had skinny yellow eyes long gone in ice. He sat on the gray giant like a monument and stared down his long nose, and all the while his eyes tried to freeze me. “What’s your name?”

“Don’t have one. My mount here calls me Lone.”

“All right, Lone, you’ll come along with me now.”

“Don’t reckon,” I said.

“Reckon you will.”

“Don’t see why you haul down on a pair of innocent strangers.”

He didn’t smile because he didn’t know how. Lines showed in his forehead and his slitted mouth grew more invisible. Plainly, he wasn’t accustomed to getting back in kind. “I say I was hauling down on you?”

“Can’t swear you did.”

“Tone counts more than words,” growled Hinx.

The big gray mount lifted a hind leg and did something no self-respecting animal would be caught dead doing in public. What’s more, he took his time about it. After a long minute, he gave a satisfied snort. Looking at Hinx and with a grin on his face, he said lazily, “Howdy, pup.”

Right then I knew the pack of us were off and running in a bitter feud. Four rubbing four the wrong way could only mean a square-off.

Big Jak shifted his thighs. His face slammed together in a second and his eyes were deep and solemn. “Need a little assistance is why I interrupted you.”

He ignored the mounts. I had the feeling he was ignoring me, too. If there had been any wind I’d have known he was talking to it. I should have headed in the other direction at a fast clip. What he was actually doing was taking me by the nose and leading me to a deep well, and as soon as he got good and ready he intended to kick me in it.

“Picked up this fellow in limbo and aim to take him to a safe place for a good rest,” he said. Jerking his head toward the jak slung over his shoulder, he added, “He’s bad scrambled and might send my mount off course if I keep traveling by myself. Could use you two as steadiers.”

I walked around him in order to get a look at the other jak’s face. “He must be pretty good if he can do anything while he’s unconscious. Don’t look to me like he can wiggle.”

One corner of Big Jak’s mouth drooped. “You arguing without all the facts?”

“Never did that and don’t plan to now. Certainly I’ll lend a hand. We’ll put our mounts side by side and I’ll help hold—”

“Get behind me,” he said gruffly. “Hold on with jink, that’s all.”

Why he didn’t just plain say, “Eat dust and founder,” and get it done with, I didn’t know, because that’s what he had in mind.

I could have kicked that gray mount in the tail for sticking it in our faces. From my humi. . .