Even in deep space, there was still oneself. It took time and luck for an esper to aspire to affinity with that violet.
Once, in rare anger, she had seen ruby flashing through the iridescence and in her shame, the ruby had grayed and faded. Such lack of control was common at the beginning of training but - inexcusable - by the time one reached bonding.
Midnight blue and pearl shimmered lazily now. Settling into the long silver chair, she felt it yield around her, adapting to her body, and saw the tray waiting in the slot beside her left hand. With a cup of stim in her left hand, her right on the translucent panel, she grew back into the ship, extending herself into its systems, balancing, warming, preparing. Her breath became the atmosphere system, her nerves the myriad computer connections lacing between all parts, her intelligence, its augmented amplified electronic awareness.
Reading that cargo, supplies, all details were as had been arranged - her decision rippled through the ship, even as her senses tingled with a vague unease.
Was this a sign of what the inarguable rules looked for? This unease? She questioned, even as her quest found no source of disquiet and a golden shimmer of curiosity flickered through the deep blue and faded away. Beneath her hand, the ship made its salute to the port computers and freed itself of formal restraints. Her decision to lift off flowed fully through her/their veins and nerves and lungs as the pressure pressed her softly into her silken cocoon and as gently eased away.
Silken, like her robes, the passages in and out of port grew smoother each time. Nothing she'd been taught on V'le'e quite supported her, but she felt as though the iridescence of the bridge gentled her connection and eased the transition between lift and spacedrive.
And Ship told her this was so.
If her departure from port grew steadily smoother each time, in the pleasure of being one with Ship again, it also grew steadily quicker. Space was her medium now. Ship's agreement with this hummed under her fingers while her left hand broke off a fragment of frencake and brought it to her lips.
She did not need the palm contact for the Ship bond. But after the separation, it was physical pleasure. After a time, she would ration this sensation. But never at the first. Never when she had come back on board. Five years now, this bond had been. This was the pattern.
Lightly, she stretched, the sim-silk slippery against the soft fur of the cradling lounge. Her skin was the pearl in the blue and silver shimmer of chair and here, safe, she slid her left hand over the dark blue silk and enjoyed the long slender self intertwined with its outer shell in its passage through the star spattered dimension outside the view port.
On a long run from the crowded commercial centers to the rim worlds, the cinder she had just left marked only the outer rim of the inner circle. Now the distances between worlds widened. Through the ship's skin, she could feel space open around her. She liked that outward run. And on the inward turn, she had the anticipation of the next outward loop.
So short a time ago, she had been planet-bound and bereft. She stretched again and beneath her right hand, the translucent panel illuminated her flesh. And now, she possessed unlimited freedom.
A check interrupted the flow under her fingers. A pause.
Freezing, she stilled her pleasure and flowed into the Ship. Smooth lights and tone and tingle surrounded her.
What had she been thinking? Freedom. She had been thinking of freedom without limit, passage through the stars with her judgment the control...
Into the smoothness intruded an edge; into the tone, a change in pitch; into the tingle, a stillness.
Quietly, deliberately, Valenn slid the tray back into the slot and swung the chair around and up to sit facing the translucent panel. Reaching out her left hand to splay her fingers across the second panel, she slowly drew a glow from that opaque darkness.
Quietly, she fitted herself even more totally into the ship, forming a complete circuit, both internally and externally. Nowhere did she feel a problem. Not in nerve or breath or conclusion.
This did not happen. In five years, in all she had been taught, lay nothing anywhere about such a - not being - space. Without needing to be directed, the ship under her hands checked and examined itself and found no problem, no malfunction.
Had she been rock bound too long? Did the ship read her longing for freedom as a weakness? Doubt her? Smoothness continued around her, a hint of crystalline brilliance in Ship's song.
Was there some problem for which no question had been phrased? Was there some reason to seek a star port and techs?
The music and current around her swirled and looped around to before the question.
Did Ship/she need the techs of a homeport? Builder techs? Her question was a troubling in the colors and shimmers in the heart of Ship. And Ship flowed around and beyond, not seeing the question.
Never had the currents and music been other than part of herself and she did not argue with part of herself. Neither did Ship argue. It simply did not recognize - something.
Panic - an old frenzied terror - welled up in her.
In a filthy room, she was cornered, held, hurt... A man's hot strength overpowered a half-starved fourteen year old's frantic efforts to escape - grinding her thinly fleshed spine against rough plasticine cubicle walls... Shoving her back, and shoving her back and shoving her back...
She shook her head sharply, twice, and pushed the past back into the shadows, as they had taught her.
What had happened then, when she had been unable to repay her childhood's keep by assuming the profession of her mother and been thrust out into streets that held even worse terrors, had nothing to do with now. Memories obeyed her training and the shadows receded. Ship was not struggling against her.
It had to be a problem inherent in her questions.
Not even a quarter of one work cycle had passed since they had freed themselves from that barren rock. Around her the sea of electrical shimmering quivered so faintly that she doubted what her senses thought they perceived.
Back there - on that rock - had there been an - event - of which she was unaware? Ship checked and paused and then flowed around the question.
Was there a prohibition against her knowing of this - non-event?
At the ability of Ship to totally coalesce at this question, the colors gave the impression of warming. A PROHIBITION AGAINST HER KNOWING. YES.
To what purpose was this prohibition?
Ship did not ignore or evade this. A PURPOSE WAS NOT KNOWN, UNLESS IT WERE TO ACHIEVE DISTANCE BETWEEN THE POINT OF DEPARTURE AND POINT OF DISCOVERY.
Valenn let herself relax slightly. The concept of working against Ship was so totally alien - nothing else would have let the past open cracks in her inner walls. It had undermined her confidence in the only bond she had ever let herself trust. But now that she had asked questions that let Ship regain its congruence beyond whatever had happened, the unity in their link had been restored.
The woman leaning gracefully forward in the long chair with midnight blue silken folds soft around slender limbs and pale shoulders and arms bared by the silk, heard the concept carried on the unity with which Ship had answered.
Her bafflement and fear suddenly intensified to splash beyond her link with SHip and erase the controlled calm of her expression. With a frown creasing the wide brow over the far apart blue eyes, she gave herself time in the singing colors before asking for clarification.
And what was the point of discovery?
Ship gave a point halfway between that disconcerting answer and her first question. Frowning, she saw Ship's assumption that her question implied knowledge she did not possess.
Discovery - discovery...
Her next question needed to be correct or she feared they would slip back into that looping quagmire.
To ask WHAT was discovered - could return them to the loop. If she had to ask what, then there had been no discovery. To ask WHY - would basically repeat what had gotten her into this position.
She could not depend totally on Ship - she WOULD not. It was too easy to function only in link and not outside. But she had walked planetside and Ship had not. She had a technical advantage. If there were actions taken to extend the time between departure and discovery...
Wide apart dark eyes turned to stare at the small view port onto darkness spangled with stars, onto emptiness and space past sane imagining. If there were those actions, it could only mean that there was something to BE discovered. On board Ship.
Actions - actions were seldom taken by THINGS. Ignoring facts would not alter that conclusion. If actions were not taken by THINGS, then it meant - it had to mean - that there was SOMEONE to be discovered on her ship.
SOMEONE.
A stranger, an intruder, was on HER ship. An unknown someone - again she forced down panic. Forced it down before it could take over again.
An unknown... Something without precedent. But not a mystery to Ship. Ship held the facts. Ship held the key.
Calm. Smooth calm was needed. She repaired her ragged reactions as she had been taught.
Logic led her to the next, the only appropriate question. Was any threat to Ship detected in the agent of these changes?
Ship flowed on calmly. NO DANGER HAD BEEN DETECTED, OTHER THAN THAT OF THE INTRINSIC DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ANY SHIP AND HUMAN LIFE FORMS.
"Where?" she startled herself by voicing her question and forced herself inward again, one with Ship and allied against intruders, not one stranded alone against another one. Where was this agent of change?
Extending herself visually through the ship, Ship answered by veiling her view of only one area, thus fulfilling both her needs and whatever instructions the intruder had - HOW could any intruder INSTRUCT Ship?
How could anyone so interfere with her connection with Ship, so override it, that it could veil an area and this attempt to cloud her direct question?
Valenn regarded the dark and light translucent panels beneath her hands as though they were doorways befouled by a monster. Bridges they were, or doorways, but only to give her conscious mind an anchor to steady it against year after year of immersion in the heart of Ship. No REAL doorway lay there.
But to do whatever had been done, the intruder HAD penetrated the heart of Ship.
She felt violated - as though she had been handled in her sleep. Touched without her knowing. Blankly, Valenn's eyes swept the bridge, the meager exposed telemetry. The cargomaster, the engineer, she felt their life threads as always. Their retreat from the outer worlds had not even had the spur of esper but grew from some deeper flaw in the material of their souls. She more loathed dealing with them than with an intruder who could dance through the inner worlds without causing harm.
Without asking the aid of Ship, she scanned the veiled cabin.
Jerome also did not ask for help. Jerome asked for nothing. As Jerome lacked for nothing.
Those around him knew all too clearly that if the slender, dark blond man did perceive a lack, he whose job it had been to supply that need would be instantly and surgically excised from Jerome's world and replaced by another who would have great incentives not to repeat his predecessor's error.
At the moment, Jerome surveyed a question. Those around him felt the winds of eternity whistling around their feet at the possibility that he could perceive some miscalculation on their part had contributed to his troubling.
Only a handful of people disturbed the warm, scent laden air of the lounge at one end of the greenhouse. The greenhouse, the orchids and other rarities that Jerome raised there, were only some of the characteristics that set Jerome apart from the others in the lounge.
Apart from Menlo, distinguished and lightly silvered, known for his scholarship and his library, for a quietly discrete affluence on his estate some distance from that of Jerome. Known to Jerome for his discretion in satisfying some bizarre tastes not apparently shared by a well maintained and attractive wife, tastes that had not flagged as he entered his fifties, as Jerome had thought they might. A man of formidable intelligence, who knew himself and his aberrations and because of them could be controlled to an extent. A sufficient extent.
The greenhouse was the least of what set Jerome apart from Giraden. And for that matter, from the rest of them. From Giraden's companion, Clorea. And Redding.
Redding. Jerome's golden-lashed blue eyes rested upon the man in his forties who persisted in prowling around the perimeter of the greenhouse. An agile, dry-humored, unremarkable man who persisted in watching everyone around him as frankly as Jerome studied them.
Redding. A wild card that Jerome tolerated, used and watched more closely than any of those around him. Except perhaps for Clorea. He watched Clorea but his reasons for watching her were not of the same nature as his attention upon Redding.
He watched the lithe, redheaded woman who was Giraden's companion of some ten years now because he believed that in the purely female animal lay logic of a different pattern. He had several generations' experience dealing with a matriarchy whose opinions clashed with his. He was interested in that logic. He needed to be aware of what could be fermenting in such surroundings. And she was distinctly female and distinctly animal.
If only for watching her interactions with the others and the effects of those actions on Girarden, she merited attention.
The gold-fringed eyes drooped slightly and then turned to her companion. Girarden, the counterpoint to Menlo's slightly effete excesses, was not to be taken for granted. But neither was he unpredictable. Also in his fifties, spare and erect, his bearing forceful and meriting of respect, his background in the warrior elite never left him. The warrier strain woven into his very nature limited him even as it defined him.
But all these things were known to Jerome, as was his awareness of the tension of those others, despite their social equanimity and economic relationship with him. One was never too highly placed to fear. On the contrary, altitude was in itself cause for fear.
This was after all, a minor, if pervasive situation. And Clorea was betraying a promising cleverness in her attention upon Redding. The problem lay more in Menlo's sphere of influence, but it was the wildcard upon whom she focussed.
Sometimes, Jerome thought she might have possibilities beyond the animal. And sometimes, he thought, with a trace of irritation at the prowling man, the value of those wildcards could be overrated.
He had cultivated many such wildcards over the years. A few of his most expensive mistakes had come from those wildcards. And some of his most valuable insights. Redding and his like had, so far, been profitable investments. And perpetual irritants. They could not truly threaten such as him, but they served to keep him from growing overconfident.
"Pity Menlo's people fumbled so badly with that one," Redding spoke from behind the greenery past Menlo's shoulder. "He's not just some anonymous student who can disappear."
Giraden made a wordless sound of disagreement.
Jerome knew that to his mind, nobody was too unique to disappear. Such logic was one reason why Girarden's usefulness was limited. One of several.
Of course, Girarden was right. And wrong. And shortsighted. By splintering off as he had, the man had made himself imminently disposable as well as vulnerable. And possibly useful. To them, if they found him first. To others, if they did not.
Those others were the reason he considered the disappearance of a single man. And Clorea. The others those in the room with him, except perhaps for Redding, regarded in so narrow a manner. Others whose presence, whose existence, as those before them, stayed secondary as long as they were not given some impetus into prominence. And minus that impetus, which he had no intention of providing, they had the advantage of being known to him, and predictable, to a degree...
Those others would know of this disappearance even as he did. And for reasons not known to others in the room. The danger was greater than they perceived, as well as different.
"Remmer did not fumble," Menlo said precisely. "The policy followed was that considered to be the most effective. And Remmer is highly regarded - by many people. Most who develop along those lines, if handled properly, subside back into the society around them with a few years."
"Most," Redding said dryly. "Except for these two, apparently. Two, and one of them, well known, to several groups."
Jerome veiled his interest in that last remark, considering the possibility that Redding too was aware of the ramifications of this particular man.
"Known perhaps," Girarden pronounced. "But no less vulnerable to popular opinion. He has handed us his own sentence. And given Patrol reason to persist in pursuing him."
Shortsighted. Jerome regarded the foliage with unfocused eyes. And unaware. The long balance of power keeping those others in a secondary position, keeping them from actively interfering, had not been maintained by so crude a touch. His eyes sharpened and saw those around him again. Nor had it been maintained by such as them. Which was why they were there and waiting for his decisions. And why there was the smell of fear in the room.
A scent he thought desirable for his orchids. A scent that added to their beauty.
"We can let Patrol follow its own course, for the moment," Jerome said finally. "But," the gold-fringed blue eyes rested upon Giraden, "one would be wise not to allow THEM to create a martyr for the espers." Girarden stiffened slightly. "A word preventing such an - ill-advised - decision, would be to all our advantages, don't you think?"
Of course, they did not. But they would. Jerome was quite sure of that. He always knew how they thought when they left his estate. Or they did not leave.
There were simplicities beyond Girarden's solutions.
Stenell had felt the whispers around him for some time and had persisted in holding the image of dust cloaked emptiness between the two containers. But from the feel, they were off planet some time ago.
And from the length of time before the whisper approached him, his work had succeeded.
He was tired. Tired of running and of hiding. Tired of moving in frozen deliberation. And in defeating the defenses of the ship and pilot, he saw no triumph. He had succeeded only because noone had thought to try, which again struck him with a curiosity that died stillborn, leaving him doubting that only one renegade esper fought to exist in these fringe sewers.
Espers had been too neatly cut out and apart from the rest of humanity. And being unknown, they were irrationally feared. Though after that last flight of hours and what he had so easily done, perhaps that fear was not so irrational. Inaccurate, but not irrational.
He did not even know to what end he persisted in surviving. Only that in his absorption with the question of survival, his mask had dissipated. Unfolding himself from the narrow space, he stood and stretched his shoulders and spine before facing the whispering curiosity he felt humming around him.
And extending his senses, Stenell SAW her, in her silver gray chair on the bridge with its shimmering pearl walls shot with golden lights. Of medium height, he guessed, but she'd look taller standing because of the slenderness revealed by the clinging gown. Ruby sparks competed with golden in the shimmers around the woman with her cap of black hair and midnight blue eyes, pale shoulders exposed by the luxury of the dark blue sim-silk.
And he could feel her anger at his inspection.
He withdrew clearly, cleanly, completely. Angering her was stupid. They would have to deal with one another now he had gotten that far. And face to face, since to her would go the advantage of years immersed in esper contact.
But since he HAD been discovered, he stripped and placing his coveralls in the clothes fresher, stepped into the larger unit until he felt clean for the first time in weeks.
It occurred to him, under the cleansing spray, that he did not know if she could tamper with the clothes fresher, putting him at the disadvantage of literal exposure.
He did not see any virtue in settling the question the hard way. When he stepped out, he also removed his cleaned garment from its slot, draping it over one of the containers.
The narrow bunk looked like paradise to him, even as he appreciated the exotic appeal of her bridge.
He knew pilots chose the appearance of their surroundings but that was done in bonding and his experience of ships lay in the stages long before that. If he were at last going to consider consequences, he should perhaps have looked more closely at the stage between what he knew and what he - and others - feared.
But if what he had done had worked so far, there was no reason to think the rest would fail. She knew he was there now so there was not that fear. Extending his senses into the door mechanism, he bypassed the ship's automatic unlocking and locked the door from the inside.
He HAD rattled her. She had not thought to hit the privacy locks. But then she had found him from WITHIN the ship. It would not occur to her to protect herself there.
Stenell rolled himself into the narrow bunk and closed his eyes.
Valenn found herself fighting the impulse to throw herself back into the cushioning chair like a spoiled child. At that impossible and inappropriate image, bitter humor welled up and forced back hysteria.
Being a spoiled child was one of the few things of which she could not be accused. Nor did she understand, finding herself standing beside the long gray chair, what advantage her mind had seen in bringing her to her feet. An esper, seated or standing, splashed the same amount of water from the dish.
And an esper was safe only alone.
She was esper. She was not alone. She was not safe.
Her eyes turned to her walls. What was the color of fear? But her hard won discipline held her fears, recognized and contained, behind her inner walls. Those outer reflections showed only a fragile gold threading of curiosity. With, she saw then, a sickly yellow-green thread here and there. Rank yellow-green, like unhealthy swamp growth.
She had never seen a swamp, but thanks to V'le'e, she understood the concept and that fear could resemble the putrid stagnant growth of a swamp held a kind of logic. So, one of the colors of fear was that rank yellow-green.
With detached calm, she slid her bare feet through the soft silver plush. Not knowing where or how to grasp onto this - impossibility - she turned to something defined, controllable. Opening her work space, she slid into the seat before the console there.
The artifact in the compartment below was forgotten.
In the slot just above eye-level was the memory cartridge she had been working from, before she had gone off ship. With moves grown automatic, she keyed on the console and ran through to where she had stopped. Then she keyed up the next card and stopped again, falling inward, into the design and title.
The next card was called TIME. A concept she suddenly saw in a different way, with all that she forced back into the shadows reemerging in this vocabulary. Time. A quality that passed and stretched and defined and stopped...
Always at the wrong moment...
Focussing the image of the TIME card on the screen and adjusting it to the size she had chosen for that desk, she ran through shifts of tints until the appearance matched the written description as well as the implied meaning.
In her tension, she misjudged the colors and tones and tints. Wrongness grated upon her nerves and in concentrating on reducing and removing that wrongness, her tension was forced back, forced away..
THAT wrongness, she could do something about. Things in her hands that were not as true to her intention as she could imagine, THOSE she could do something about.
For the rest... A catalog of things she had NOT been able to repair or conquer rolled through her mind. Things, events, people. Things which had taken her finally to V'le'e where she had learned to concentrate on what she could do.
It had helped her then.. It let her survive now. If she could not, at that moment, remove this other problem from her ship, she would do what she could. She could even fight the temptation to push away from the console. Fighting herself - that was one of the most satisfying aggressions. Not one of the preferred on V'le'e but one of her favorites. She could monitor both sides at once, aiming the blow and knowing simultaneously where she was struck.
It was immediate. It was intense. And she had discovered she could always win by redefining at any point her definition of victory and then setting her will behind that.
It had not needed V'le'e to teach her that knowing what one truly wanted was the real struggle. The battle to attain it was anticlimactic.
When the balance was finally right, the feeling of 'rightness' hummed through her. Like a perfect tone or pure color, the beauty of that 'rightness' glowed like an ember somewhere in her solar plexus. It did not breathe or speak, but neither did it strike out and wound. It let her survive. She would not diminish one iota of that 'rightness' by any consideration of what it was not. She leaned back and blinding herself to all but that ember of beauty, she began the reproduction sequence, conscious in some way of the information with which she was surrounded. Aware of the caliber of and time spanned by the wisdom on her shelves.
Assembling the information from which the computer chose color ranges, as well as the ranges associated with particular cards and traditions and qualities had been the work of nearly a year and a half, not counting the research she had done before bonding. Little had been unavailable in some form, if she could provide a clear request.
Framing the question properly had been the key.