The Navigator of Rhada (5 page)

“You’ll find no one more
realistic,
as you put it, than I anywhere in the galaxy, my dear general. I know what I’m doing.”

“I have no doubt you think so,” Tran said. “But I’m afraid I must begin to correct some of your more naive notions.” He turned to regard the young man with those cold, silvery eyes. “When my agents reached you and offered to speed your father’s incapacity so that you could rule on Gonlan, we expected nothing less than your agreement. All the Rhad are nothing if not greedy for power. Or am I being too severe on you outlanders? No matter. We’ve done our part, in any case. Though I must admit that I was a bit surprised at your willingness to have your father --ah, eliminated.” The eyes grew even more metallic in the bright daylight. “But you were never close to Kreon, were you?”

Karston stared sullenly at the general. This interview wasn’t going well. It wasn’t bringing him any closer to his objective, which was to be returned now to Gonlan with an Imperial starship and troops for the war of annexation against Aurora.

“Kreon’s favorite was always your bond-brother, I believe,” Tran said.

Karston made an impatient gesture. “Kynan is lowborn. He does not figure in this.”

Tran smiled and shook his head. “Karston the Proud. You’re well named, my arrogant young friend. But listen--listen carefully. Kynan figures in all this far more than you realize. I am surprised you haven’t been able to sort out the realities of the situation even yet.”

“A priest--a Navigator. He’s not even a real Rhad. My father adopted him.”

“Exactly. And with you--ah, missing--who is now star king in Gonlan?”

Karston paled angrily. “Not Kynan. Never Kynan!”

“Who else but Kynan? The shock of what has happened will be wearing off soon among the Rhad at Melissande. Crespus is a blustery old fool off a battlefield, and Tirzah’s as arrogant as you are. But the warlock Baltus and LaRoss are realists. It wouldn’t be the first time in history that a Navigator became star king of an Imperial province.”

“But
I
am the heir!” Karston said, in a strangled voice.

“No one knows whether or not you are alive, now, do they?”

“I must return to Gonlan at once, then!”

“Slowly, slowly. Everything in its proper place. You here. Kynan at Melissande--” Tran’s smile grew icy. “And Janessa in the hands of your warlike outland relations.” The smile faded, and the general’s face seemed suddenly to be hewn from stone. “I must have war between Gonlan and Aurora. I must have rebellion in the Rhadan Palatinate. That’s what all this has been about. You didn’t imagine I’ve set all these forces in motion just to put you on a petty throne? You couldn’t be so limited in your viewpoint, Karston, not really.”

Karston frowned. His throat felt dry, and his heart had begun to flutter in his chest. “You never intended to take Janessa--”

“What possible good would she do me here? I wanted the Rhad of Gonlan to take her. Kidnaping. A breach of courtesy, of a marriage contract--and a long-standing peace. What could be better?”

“I don’t understand,” Karston protested.

General Tran sighed heavily and looked again at the quiet valley. “Each man plays out his part on the stage intended for him by fate, destiny--whatever you wish to call it, Karston. I was born a great prince. In truth, I should have become Galacton.” He shrugged. “But it wasn’t to be. I’m a Vegan. When Glamiss the Magnificent founded the Second Empire, a member of my clan stood at his side. When the last Pretender died after the Battle of Karma, an ancestor of mine held Glamiss of Vyka’s sword.” Tran indulged his thin smile again. “Perhaps if he had
used
it at that moment, history would have been different. Perhaps I would rule in Nyor now instead of Torquas---and Torquas could spend his life writing those silly poems he loves so. But it didn’t happen that way--and I am the Prince’s general, not the Prince. Still, with the Empire saddled with a Torquas--someone must actually
rule.
For twenty years,
I
have done that.” He turned to face the young warman sternly. “But for each of those twenty years, I’ve been dogged and balked and harassed by the Navigators.” His voice turned scornful and angry.

“Our holy men. Because they control the starships, they imagine they are our moral preceptors. They’ve done much that’s useful--I’d be the last to deny that. But their time is gone. Their age of faith is over. There is not room in the galaxy for
two
powers. It must be the Empire or the Order. It can’t be both. And your little war on the Rim is the fuse that lights the charge that destroys them at last.” He began to pace the terrace restlessly. Below, the troop of Vegan warmen had reached the lodge gates. The officer commanding called out to the general, holding aloft the object that had hung at his saddlebow. Karston, though accustomed to violence and bloodshed, was shocked to see that it was a human head.

Tran raised his hand in acknowledgment. “Well done, Captain!” he called. He turned to regard Karston coolly. “A Navigator’s head, young sir. Specifically, the head of the Navigator who flew the starship that brought you here from Aurora.”

Karston gasped at the sacrilege and unconsciously made the sign of the Star.

“It had to be done,” Tran said. “He knew it, too. That’s why he took refuge with the Saclarans in the valley.”

Karston’s senses were reeling. Priest murder was a deadly sin among the men of the Rim worlds.

“When the war begins between the Rhad and Aurora, Karston,” the general said quietly, “I shall intervene with an Imperial division. You know of the enclave the Navigators maintain on Aurora?”

Karston nodded dumbly.

“Do you know what they mine there?”

“Holy metals--”

“Holy metals indeed. Uranium. For nuclear bombs. Have you read your history? Do you know what brought the Dark Time?”

“Sin--”

“Fusion bombs. Open-ended nuclear weapons. Bombs that could smash whole continents. That is what the Navigators are doing on Aurora--mining the metals that will make those hell bombs possible again.” The general’s face was drawn, his voice savage.

Karston stared, not knowing what to say. The notion was almost impossible for him to grasp. For a hundred generations, men had gone in racial terror of the weapons that had destroyed the Golden Age.

“You will stop them, of course,” he said in a shocked voice.

General Tran’s eyes widened with surprise. “You are even more provincial than I imagined, young Karston.
Stop
them? By the Star, of course not! I intend to have those weapons and the men who make them. When fate hands a man the power of a hundred suns, does he throw it away?” He began to laugh. The harsh sound grated on Karston’s shattered nerves. “In recent times,” Tran said, “the Empire has begun to be reinfected with an old, old virus. There’s talk again about the rights of man, democracy, home rule for the provinces, the authority of the mob. All that has been tried too often and has failed too often. What’s wanted is the rule of power, character,
order.
The Navigators aren’t fit to dispose of the weapons of absolute mastery.”

Karston stared hard at the Vegan. The sun was hot, but he felt the inward touch of an ancient, icy wind. “But you are,” he said.

Tran drew a deep breath and looked out over the deceptive spring peace of the broad valley. His voice was harsh as the cutting edge of a sword as he asked, “Who else is there, Karston? When you see our great Galacton, you’ll understand.” Then he smiled swiftly and shook the younger man’s shoulder with a surprisingly warm gesture. “Cheer up, young Karston. Who of the Gonlani-Rhad has ever been able to participate in the founding of a new age? Pray to your beatified Emeric to give you the strength to face greatness. With your help, I shall bring the Navigators down. You shall have your place in history.”

His words filled Karston with dread.

“If not in the holy dogma, nor yet in our command of the starships--then where, Grand Master, lies the strength of our Order?”

“In the searching minds and brave hearts of our young Navigators. Only there.”

Emeric of Rhada, Grand Master of Navigators,
The Dialogues,
early Second Stellar Empire period

From out of the night of a million stars came our savage brother, man, and we found meaning. We also found death. So be it. This, too, will pass.

Vulk lament, authorship unknown,
Interregnal period

Kynan awoke.

He had been dreaming that he had been in a battle on a rain-swept cliff far above the sea. In the dream he imagined he heard the death songs for Kreon, the star king; women’s voices and the sound of muted battle horns. There had been some pain, too, but below the level of complete perception. Now he lay in a barely conscious peace, aware of the soothing comfort of a Vulk mind-touch.

He opened his eyes and saw the raftered ceiling of a familiar room. He was in his own chambers at Melissande. Firelight splashed the timbers and ancient stones. Through a partially open window, he could hear the sound of the Gonlan Sea.

He remembered. It had been no dream. Two priest-hating AbasNavs had tried to kill him on the track to Melissande.

“The war mare led us to you,” a sibilant voice said.

Kynan turned his head to face the speaker. It was the Royal Vulk of Rhada--the mind-touch had told him as much--an ancient creature whose featureless skull shone pale in the firelight.

The young Navigator was fresh from Triad--that periodic mind-sharing between human Navigators and Vulks that was now an established part of the Order’s ritual. The human-alien contact left the spirit refreshed and receptive and alert, needing little verbalization. Kynan’s Triad had taken place on Omicron Lyri Nine with two young Vulks of the star king’s court only a month ago. Consequently, thoughts flowed freely between himself and the alien mind.

“I am called Gret,” the Yulk said.

“I know of you.”

A warmth of feeling radiated from the creature.
And I of you, Kynan.

Kynan’s hand sought the place on his thigh where the priest-killer’s lance had pierced him. The tissue was ridged; a fresh scar was forming. The Vulk had apparently healed him. He had heard that they had such powers, but he had been told that they could repair human tissue only in Triad.

It was said that only when the minds of two Vulks and a human symbiote were in shared equilibrium could such “miracles” be wrought. Yet this single Vulk had closed his wound. He must be, Kynan thought wonderingly, incredibly old and wise.

Old enough, Navigator,
the Vulk assured him.
Though I could do better with the help of my
--the concept was so alien that the human mind could only partially translate it into “mate”--
the Vulk Erit, she who shared herself with Ariane
--

Ariane! The young Navigator’s romantic mind soared into realms of history and legend. This creature Gret bore the title of Royal Vulk in perpetuity, a gift from Kier, the second star king of Rhada, great-grandfather of the present old prince, Alberic. He had touched minds with Kier, and with his queen Ariane, who had been a royal princess of the Empire, the daughter of Glamiss himself.

Through this creature’s mind Kynan could, if the Vulk so desired it, return in spirit to the age of the great folk heroes of the Rhad. In spite of his present situation and because he was very young, Kynan felt sure that he would have been happier--possibly a folk hero himself--if he had lived in those great times--

He closed his eyes and began to slip into a dreaming sleep. But the Vulk said regretfully, “I would like to let you rest and dream, young Kynan. But it cannot be. Stay awake.”

Kynan opened his eyes again. This time he regarded the Vulk more carefully. Though Vulks were so incredibly long-lived as to be virtually immortal on the human time scale, this one was actually beginning to show age. The slender body looked as though it consisted only of pale skin and corded muscle stretched over the delicate bone structure. The ridges of face and skull were clearly defined above the sensitive mouth, and the short kilt of metallic cloth hung loosely from the narrow, bladelike hips. The royal arms of the Rhadan Palatinate were embroidered on the creature’s dark shirt, and he carried no weapons, only the customary Vulk lyre slung across his back.

The finely made lips formed a very human smile.
One day I will share Triad
with
you and Erit, and we will let you live those times we had with Kier the King and Ariane. Oh, they were thrilling days, young priest. I have lived so long among men that I know what pleasure it would give you to walk in the footsteps of my friend
(and here the human term was so enriched with love and devotion that Kynan almost felt the presence of the long-dead Kier, who was said to be the noblest of the Rhad).

The Vulk’s thought continued to touch him, brushing like a wind across his mind.
But there is no time for that now.
A sadness, a gentle grief and compassion permeated the mind-touch.
Kreon, your bond-father, is dead.

Tears sprang into Kynan’s eyes. He was too late after all. The death song he had heard in his delirium had been real, too real.

With a delicacy typical of his kind, the Vulk withdrew his mind from the grief in the young Navigator’s, leaving only the gentle thought that family sorrow was a private thing. He said aloud, “I have the feeling that much died with Kreon--much that we should know. But it cannot be helped now. We must make the best of the situation as we find it.”

Kynan felt a tremor of anger in his own breast. He might be an orphan by birth, unknown, of uncertain ancestry. But he was a man of Gonlan and a Rhad by adoption and conviction; bond-son to a Rhadan star king. He began to think of bloody revenge.

“Was
it the Aurorans?” he asked.

The Vulk shrugged his narrow shoulders. “It happened on Aurora. That much is certain, “that
only
is certain.”