Seas of Ernathe (23 page)

Seth rose to answer the challenge, but he was forestalled by another interruption. Mona Tremont burst into the room, followed closely by Andol Holme. She spotted Racart in the group, but paused to address the stage. "You might have told me he was here!" she yelled coldly. "If Andol hadn't come and gotten me, I'd be boarding a ship right now." She scowled at Mondreau, then pushed through the crowd of Nale'nid to Racart and almost knocked him from his seat with her embrace. Andol caught Seth's eye and winked. Seth grinned, despite the angry officer beside him, and nodded approvingly.

Mondreau fumed and shouted for order. He was almost ignored, at first, but eventually he got everyone's attention except, perhaps, Racart's and Mona's. "Now then," he bellowed. "We have a question on the floor regarding the Nale'nid, and whether or not they are taking our offer seriously." The Nale'nid watched him placidly. He scowled. "I, for one, have my doubts. Comments?"

Again, Seth took a breath to answer—just how, he wasn't sure—and again he had no chance. Racart broke the silence, astonishing everyone, including Seth. "Comment," he growled. He stood, gently disengaged himself from Mona so that he could face the stage, and took her hand as she stood beside him, glaring darkly herself at Mondreau. "All right. I've been listening to talk about the Nale'nid. About the way they've treated you, the way they've treated me." He glanced quickly at Seth, then turned his scowl upon First Officer Londel. "Yes. I've been through something the rest of you can only guess at—Seth could guess better than anyone else, I imagine—and someday maybe I'll tell you about it. Let's talk about these people, some of the things Seth has been trying to tell you but you won't listen.

"Well, they're different. They're Nale'nid. Different ways, different values—
no
values, some of you would say. Different abilities. Yes, they can fly your starships. Yes, they can build underwater cities. Yes, they can explore worlds
you
didn't even know
existed."
He paused, breathing with difficulty. "Forgive me—this
focus
is not an easy one to hold."

Seth waited. Racart said, "I have returned here to speak with you. I shall soon go back to the Nale'nid city, Pal'onar, to live. With Mona, if she also would like to learn of the Nale'nid." He turned to Mona; she squeezed his hand visibly for all to see, and displayed no obvious concern about the suddenness of the decision.

"Do you wish to be a cultural ambassador to the Nale'nid?" Kenelee Savage queried.

"If you must phrase it that way," Racart said easily. "But, for the sake of my friend Seth, and his and Mona's friend, Andol Holme, I wish first that I could find a convincing expression to ease your fears about your new future starpilots." He fell silent, though, apparently searching for the words.

Seth stood with enormous and grateful relief. Racart was a changed man, no question; but he had reaffirmed a friendship, and that was all he needed to say. "I ought to point out," Seth said, "that I am risking my own position, since these people may well make me useless, along with all my fellow pilots. I wouldn't do that for a bad risk.

"You're concerned about not understanding their ways, and
their
not understanding
ours
. But you've overlooked something." He looked at Lo'ela.
Yes?

Yes.
She blinked, touched his arm.

"Lo'ela and I have already managed it. We've met somewhere in the middle, we've crossed that barrier on both sides—we've shown that a starman and a Nale'nid can not only understand one another, they can love one another.
Focus,
Mr. Mondreau, Mr. Savage.
Focus,
Captain Gorges, Mr. Londel."

He eyed Lo'ela.
"Focus."

There was a long silence—and at the end of it even Richel Mondreau's perpetual scowl was beginning to fade.

"Mondreau admitted that for a starpilot I wasn't really all that bad a planetary mission officer," Seth said wryly. "That's something, I guess. Maybe he's actually convinced."

"Wouldn't be taking the people on if he weren't," Racart said, squinting across the water to the far land segments.

"It would have been difficult to oppose, once Captain Gorges came out squarely in favor of it." Seth shifted on the rocks, repositioned his shoulder under Lo'ela's resting head, and ran his fingers through her golden-brown hair. "Think you'll like traveling to Rethmere, Lo'ela?"

She looked up mischievously. "No!" she said. She was still for a moment before laughing.
I am still focused on you, starman. And I want to see your worlds
.

And fly a starship?

Perhaps. If we can be a team. Perhaps I will leave that to my other people.
She looked down into the water. She seemed to be expecting something.

Two pairs of skrells screeched raucously overhead. It was a fine, almost clear day outside Lambrose—the sea green and translucent and flashing, the sky steel blue with bits and pieces of high-level cloud and Lambern burning golden and bright. Shielding his eyes from the sun, Seth wondered how it must have looked when it last flared with deadly, radiation, and he marveled that a people—of whatever race—could have escaped and adapted as had the Nale'nid. Lo'ela caught his thought and touched him with her mind, caressing gently, saying nothing.

Mona stirred, near Racart, and looked northward over the water. The others followed her stare. There was a wave of sea-mist advancing slowly over the water, along the shore. The front of mist looked no different from any other, but something told Seth that it
was
different, that it was like a mist front he had seen earlier.

Something more than mist.

They watched in silence as it advanced, first to encircle and then to enshroud them. Lo'ela and Racart seemed utterly relaxed, while Mona and Seth regarded the mist with uncertainty. The air about them turned slowly silver and white and glittery, as if filled with pinpoints of light from stars not in the sky overhead but in, or through, the world within the world. Images of flux-space filled Seth's mind: turbulent currents of color and light, and flickering landscapes of the darting, fearful, joyous inner mind; the tides flowing beneath the world and between the worlds, between all worlds of all suns—interstellar space a convective ocean of movement, of free flowing tappable energy. A world he had glimpsed only in his dreams and in his travels with the Nale'nid. Would he see it from the control pit . . . no, from the rigger-net of a speeding starship? With
mynalar-g,
or without the drug but with
focusing
Nale'nid at his sides, in his thoughts?

We will try, my starman, we will try.
Lo'ela nudged him.

When the mists parted, Lo'ela was already rising to greet Al'ym and Ga'yl, come to make their farewell. And Racart, too, was rising to greet the two Nale'nid of whom he had once been a captive. Seth nodded unsurely to all four of the new arrivals; he had never learned the names of Racart's friends, and perhaps now he never would. Lo'ela spoke quickly with her brothers for a few minutes; then she spoke with Seth.
We have made our farewells.
Sadness traced her mind-voice. She said aloud, to all, "They have said, 'We welcome Mona and Racart to our city. We wish Seth success and happiness in his journey among the stars with our sister. We hope we have properly conceived of ourselves in your human terms.'" She smiled and turned again to her brothers.

To Seth, Al'ym and Ga'yl appeared to recede as in a dream; they danced and skated backwards on the water, gleaming beneath their feet like ice, and in a moment fresh mist wrapped itself about them, and they were gone.

Seth faced Racart, sadness welling abruptly, forcibly in his throat. He found it quite impossible to speak for a period of many heartbeats. How long had he actually known Racart?—and yet it seemed so very much longer. It seemed fitting that, as he himself departed with a Nale'nid woman, Racart should be departing, in his own fashion, for a whole Nale'nid people.

"You will be back," Racart predicted, emotion tingeing his voice only slightly. "You will return to persuade more of these people to join you—and who knows?—I might be ready to join you myself."

Seth nodded. It was unlikely—but as Racart had said, who could know? "Don't forget your own people, now. And—" He broke off and shook Racart's hand firmly, for a long second; then he turned and gave Mona a close hug and kiss. Before he could think of anything more to say, his Ernathene friends had linked arms with the two Nale'nid men, and vanished as quickly—more quickly—than Al'ym and Ga'yl. He looked after them, over the sea, and wished that he could have said a better farewell.

Come, starman.
Lo'ela drew him to her side, and turned with him to walk back to Lambrose, to the waiting
Warmstorm.

Jeffrey A. Carver
was a Nebula Award finalist for his novel
Eternity's End
; he also authored
Battlestar Galactica,
a novelization of the critically acclaimed television miniseries. His novels combine thought-provoking characters with engaging storytelling and range from the adventures of the Star Rigger universe (
Star Rigger's Way, Dragons in the Stars
) to the character-driven hard SF of
The Chaos Chronicles.
Sunborn,
published in 2008, is the fourth novel in the Chaos series, which began with
Neptune Crossing
and continued with
Strange Attractors
and
The Infinite Sea.

A native of Huron, Ohio, Carver lives with his family in the Boston area. He has taught writing in a variety of settings, from educational television to conferences for young writers. He has created a free web site for aspiring authors of all ages at http://www.writesf.com
.
Learn more about the author and his work at http://www.starrigger.net.