Tactical Error (16 page)

“I know that this is Alameda,” she told him. “That was not
the primary purpose of my mission, but I cannot accomplish anything more without
the help of a Starwolf carrier. And I have my doubts even then that we will
ever find what we are looking for, this world has been so thoroughly wrecked. I
might just as well go to see this thing that scares Feldenneh. What is
it?”

“That’s the surprise that we’ve been saving for you. And
it’s so strange, I’m frankly hesitant to tell you about it because
you might think that I’m either lying or simply insane. You’ll have
to see this one for yourself.”

Another long day of flight had brought them to the far north of the eastern
edge of the mid-continental mountains, on their way to very base of the
towering face of the retreating glacier. They had long since returned to lands
that, until relatively recent times, had been buried beneath the massive burdens
of the continental glaciers. With such a complete lack of information on
Alameda, Keflyn had no idea just how far the glaciers had extended at the time
of the original colonization. She was only guessing that Alameda was still a
colder world than it had been, since she hardly expected that humans would have
established a major colony on a world that was so consistently cold. Jon
Addesin disagreed with that assumption, pointing out that humans would live
anywhere it profited them to live. She thought that might be true for a minor
colony like Kanis, but hardly a major one.

Keflyn hoped that she was not just wasting her time. She had no limits set
upon her, but she knew that she could not remain here for more than two or
three weeks more at the most. And once the
Thermopylae
left with the
skyvan, her explorations would be at an end... unless she could contrive to
borrow or buy the thing from the Traders. But what was she to look for that
Addesin and the Feldenneh did not already know? Her best bet was still to let
them show her what they would.

And if this present little trip did not produce results, she was going to
begin to get annoyed. Something was out here that the Feldenneh were very eager
for her to see, but they were a very secretive folk, slow to give their trust
and nearly as cautious with their own kind as with others. According to their
own logic, it was infinitely preferable to show than to attempt to tell. She
really did not blame them for being so reluctant to part with any secret that
they found frightening. For one thing, if trouble came of it, they would be
caught in the middle.

Jon Addesin was a different matter entirely, and she liked him far more than
she trusted him. He was frightened about something, facing a point of no
return, and it had something to do with both her and what he was bringing her
to see. He was playing a game, and she was both the problem and the prize. She
suspected that it was just his very sincere interest in her, balanced by a
healthy fear of Starwolves. Her natural telepathy was not enough to give her a
clear answer, but she believed that he was trying to decide whether to try to
seduce her before it was too late – before the reason for their journey
together was lost – or whether he should just leave well enough alone. He
was certain that she had enjoyed an affair with Derrighan and, for some reason
that she could not completely understand, that had stung his pride rather
severely. Perhaps he understood that her interests concerning him were only
those of curiosity, while her deeper feelings were given to Derrighan.

She asked herself what she wanted to do. Could she make love to a human
without hurting him? It was a very real danger for most Kelvessan, but she was
a very gentle lover. Did she want to try? All that she knew about humans argued
that they were rather bland, and yet she had always thought that Commander
Tregloran and Lenna Makayen made a very odd but generally satisfied pair.

“How old are you?” she asked suddenly.

“Older than I look,” Addesin replied without looking away from
the skyvan’s controls. “I’m actually 57 standard years. Of
course, Traders generally live to be 160 or so.”

“Oh.” Keflyn could not hide all traces of her dismay... not at
his true age but that reminder of his mortality. Standard Kelvessan lived about
four centuries. No one knew for certain just how long the High Kelvessan lived,
although the best bet was that, like the Aldessan, they would live four to six
thousand years.

He glanced at her. “How old are you?”

“Twenty.”

“Oh!” Addesin mocked her with exaggerated dismay.

“I was just wondering how you came to be the commander of a ship like
the
Thermopylae
,” she said, watching the forest out the side
window of the van.

“A tottering wreck, you mean?” he asked, amused. “I had
done very well for myself as the cargo master on board one of the larger family
ships. The
Thermopylae
is exactly the ship she appears to be. Not so old
as you might guess, but she fell on hard times because of mismanagement, went
broke, and was finally impounded for failing to pay her port fees. The Traders
Affiliate bailed her out and asked around for someone willing to take a chance
on a bad bet. I could have had a better ship of my own by waiting a couple of
more years, but I thought that I might enjoy the challenge.”

“How does it go?” she asked, noting his obvious love for that
old ship.

“Oh, we’re on top of things!” he declared, tremendously
pleased. “That overhaul you gave her engines and generators will make a
big difference. Now we have just about enough saved up to put the
Thermopylae
into one of our own refitting docks for a complete overhaul, and that old ship
will be as good as new.”

He turned to her with an intent stare. “That’s something that
you have to understand about Free Traders. The only thing that any one of us
wants is a ship of our own. And nothing and no one ever comes between us, from
the captain to the newest crewmember, and our ship. I don’t suppose
that it can be quite the same with Starwolves and your big warships.”

“Are you kidding? Our ships can talk back.”

Night was already beginning to fall when they arrived, and Keflyn had only a
brief glimpse of the immense white cliff face of the glacier, glowing like
burnished gold in the fading light. Jon Addesin settled the skyvan into a
sheltered depression in the woods a couple of miles away from the edge of the
glacier itself, where they would be protected from the worst of frigid air
coming directly off the ice. The retreat of the glacier had left this a rough,
broken land, full of snaking ridges and sudden depressions littered with sand
and rounded boulders.

A ring of blackened stone marked the fires of a previous camp, a sight that
helped to reassure Keflyn that they had found what they were looking for. With
night falling quickly, Addesin begged off taking her to see his great secret
until the next morning. The light of day was fading quickly, and he seemed to
have no ability to see in the dark. He immediately set about converting the
back of the van into his private bedroom. Since Keflyn did not sleep, she would
once again have to find some way to entertain herself until morning. She was
presently more interested in dinner.

Addesin jumped down from the back of the skyvan and sealed the hatch, then
paused a moment to look about at the sky. The sun had only just slipped below
the horizon, and the first hints of color were beginning to climb into the
night sky.

“Come with me,” he said eagerly, hurrying to draw Keflyn along
with him. “There’s something that I want to show you.”

“Your great, mysterious what’s-it?” she asked.

“No, just something pretty and unimportant. Come along.”

She followed him perhaps half a kilometer through the wooded, rugged land,
until they came at last to a small, deep dell. The long, slender ribbon of a
waterfall dropped over the rounded boulders of sheer cliff at the opposite end
of the canyon, raising a cloud of fine mist as the icy meltwater splashed
almost musically into the deep oval pool at the base of the cliff. Addesin led
her along the edge of the lake to one side of the waterfall, where they could
watch the final moments of daylight through the spray.

“The Feldenneh are the most quietly decadent people I know,” he
said as he sat on a large boulder, as if waiting for a tram. “They have
an almost magical talent for finding things like this.”

“It is nice,” Keflyn agreed. “What does it do, besides
give me an overwhelming desire to piss?”

Addesin afforded her a look of disgust. “Starwolves must be wretched
romantics.”

“We live our entire lives in starships,” she explained.
“What we see of nature is generally on a much larger scale. I find this
all very interesting, I promise you. I just wondered what you wanted me to
think.”

“I just wanted you to see something quietly unique,” he told
her. “Just watch for a moment.”

A sudden shock of sheet lightning leaped across the sky from east to west,
tracing a fiery spider’s web across the dark sky. For one long, sustained
moment out of time, the land below stood out in brilliant relief as the
rippling flash threw flickering shadows. The harsh glare of lightning faded,
and twilight again settled heavily over the land.

Then it began, slowly at first, as a single, slender column of golden light
leaped up from the western horizon. It seemed to linger for a long second, like
a fountain of water that ebbed and pulsed, before it sank back down. The glow
across the edge of the western sky continued to grow, spreading slowly north
and south, and now three columns of light climbed into the night. Each pulse
brought an ever-widening fringe of light, spreading slowly north and south
until it consumed fully a third of the horizon. Now it alternated in an
increasing variety of colors – red, green, and blue, as well as gold.

And with each pulse of light, the waterfall and its veil of icy mist glowed
with the same color that filled the sky behind it. As minutes passed, the
changing of color both in the night sky and the waterfall became more rapid and
regular. As the evening deepened into darkness, the pulsing of light came
faster and faster until it steadied into a ragged curtain of misty illumination
that rippled in slowly changing colors.

Keflyn sat, enthralled, hardly aware of the passing minutes as evening
deepened into true night. She had watched this display every night since her
arrival, but she had looked upon it as a remarkable display of static energy,
filtering down through the planet’s upper atmosphere, the tides of the
powerful magnetic forces that raged above this world. She had wondered how the
total of those forces compared to the power of a starship. She had wondered if
this spectacular display was unique to this one world.

For the first time, she saw it as a thing of captivating beauty.

“This is the price we pay, Starwolves and Free Traders, for living
always in space,” Jon Addesin said as he slipped away from her side,
retreating a few short meters into the forest behind. “We miss the
wonders of a worldly life. Even when we see things like this, we tend to see it
as we would from the outside. We look out our windows and see whole worlds as
small, simple, and largely bland and uniform places. You have to stand here, in
a place like this and be surrounded by the immensity of nature, to understand
what a vast and complex place a world really is.”

Keflyn sat in silence, watching the waterfall. At that moment, a sudden
sound rang out across the deep valley, an animal sound unlike any that she had
ever heard, like the piping of a distant flute. She started, a
Kelvessan’s aggressive reaction to fear, as if ready to throw herself
into battle with some attacking beast.

“What is that?” she asked anxiously.

“What?” Jon Addesin asked, as if he had heard nothing. He
laughed. “It was nothing, just a night bird singing in the trees.
You’ve heard birds before, I’m sure.”

“No, not so close,” she answered. Birds were known to this world
but very scarce; Keflyn thought that few breeds had survived the violence of
the deep ice age.

He returned a moment later, holding a length of some tough vine of large,
dark leaves and half a dozen large, red flowers like roses. He twisted the ends
together and slipped it around her neck. “Flowers, growing on the very
edge of ice. That’s the remarkable thing. Nature can make a thing of
beauty to fill half the sky or small enough to fit in your hands, both of equal
complexity. The first is as thin and transparent as mist, yet can rival the
power of a starship. The other is fragile enough to crush carelessly in your
hands, and yet it thrives within sight of glaciers that crushed an entire
civilization from existence. Can Starwolves smell flowers?”

“Just barely. Our designers saw no great need for that sense.”
She still made the gesture of inhaling the soft fragrance, doing honor to the
gift. As a matter of fact, she could smell nothing at all. She looked up at
him. “I never expected that you would suddenly turn into a poet.”

“A fair night brings it out in our kind, like wolves howling at the
moon.” He stood for a moment, listening to the singing of the night bird.
Its call had begun as a series of almost questioning calls, settling now into a
simple, fragmentary song, as if answering some music that only it could hear.
“They say that there is magic in a night like this.”

“I have heard that said,” Keflyn agreed. “I never thought
there was any truth in that.”

Addesin offered her his hand. “What do you suppose would happen, if a
mortal like myself happened to kiss a Starwolf?”

Keflyn laid aside the vine with its flowers, which had come apart and fallen
from about her neck. She took his hand, rising gracefully to stand close before
him. “I expect that nothing at all would happen, as long as a certain
Starwolf was careful about her strength.”