The net itself was a glittery spangle of ghost neurons flung into the Flux like the exploded tentacles of a man-of-war. Interfaced through organic neural foam and amplified by the flux-pile, it was the rigger's skin against the elements, his wings and fins in the turbulent air/sea among the stars. A rigger navigated by intuition and by experience, by his own individual imaging powers, and by the currents of the space itself.
The dreaming could be difficult; but far trickier was the intuition, especially among members of a crew. Because no two riggers viewed the Flux identically, teamwork in the net demanded a gestalt, a near-perfect melding of visions, perceptions, and intuitive judgments. Several riggers functioning as a gestalt could sail a ship smoothly and speedily between stars. But working at odds in the net, they could tear a ship apart and leave the pieces bobbing lifeless in the Flux.
To Gev Carlyle the most intimidating aspect of rigging, by far, was the teamwork. He had never ceased fearing the nakedness, the emotional turmoil—the laying forth of embarrassments, of fears, of weaknesses both real and imagined. But one rigger had to know another's fantasies, both to find the common lines of strength and to know what images should not be trod upon; indeed, sailing a ship in a space built of fear was surely courting disaster.
But sharing was so difficult with fellow humans, with his
friends.
How could he possibly hope to succeed with this alien stranger?
Would he have to resort to the dreampool?
He hoped not. Lord, he hoped not!
* * *
Gev Carlyle's sleeping dreams were filled with visions of old friends.
There was Legroeder: dark little man, pilot-rigger of
Lady Brillig
and a lover of dream-gestalt plays; friendly, but often shut away in his cabin, a place secluded and strange, and madly adorned with mystical-sequenced pearlgazers which no one but he understood. And Janofer: gentle, beautiful keel-lifter, fond of stories and music even in the net, briefly a lover and always a friend. And Skan: com-rigger and hard-balanced thinker, the one to believe in when decisions fell due, but fearsome when his balance failed and he plummeted into one of his black depressions.
They were the three who had sent him here to
Sedora.
Why couldn't they be here now—or he back with them on the deck of
Lady Brillig?
Ah,
Lady Brillig—
glittering domed beauty of a ship, light and comfortable and responsive as a kite! Who was the fourth in her rigger-net now? Who,
Lady Brillig?
Such dream remembrances gave way to others, though. Darker memories. Memories of danger and fear here aboard
Sedora
, of burned flesh and dead men. What were their names?
Thoughts better left unremembered.
* * *
Carlyle awoke feeling troubled. After eating, he went to seek out Cephean in his makeshift quarters, halfway around the circle of crew-deck from his own. Cephean made the human cabin look small, both by his own physical size and by the astonishing litter created by his personal belongings. The cynthian seemed unaware of Carlyle's entrance. He sat with his back turned three-quarters to the door; he was idly batting the two riffmar into floating somersaults. Carlyle cleared his throat. The ferns squealed and scuttled away behind Cephean, their oversized hands flailing excitedly. How strange, Carlyle thought, to be so utterly dependent—both Cephean and the riffmar. Cephean was clearly the master, but the riffmar possessed the prehensile branches, the hands. Would Cephean be helpless without them?
He shook his head. "Cephean, let's talk."
The cynthian gazed at him, ears raked forward. (He sensed
mild interest
.) "Hyiss?"
"Cephean," he said, and hesitated. Where to start? "All right. You need my help and I need yours, and we're both incredibly lucky even to be together here to try. But why isn't it working? We both know how to fly, but the last time in the net was worse than ever." He gestured pleadingly. "Don't you want to reach port, Cephean? Don't you want to go home again?"
"Hyiss-yiss," Cephean said, his whiskers curling and springing straight again.
"Did you have trouble understanding the image?" That was the kindest assumption he could make.
"Hh-no." (Carlyle sensed . . . something . . . and was disturbed that he could not identify the feeling.) "Hi heff ffly wiss hyou," Cephean hissed, his black velvet face split in what seemed to be a grin.
"What went wrong, then? Why didn't you coordinate with me?"
Cephean's breath whistled slowly in and out as he apparently considered the question. Behind him, the riffmar rustled and
sssk
'd quietly as they buried the roots of their feet in a nutrient tray. Cephean touched a forepaw to his nose and rubbed slowly. "Hi ss-ry." (An impression of
shame
flickered across Carlyle's mind.) "Hyou ffly halone, Caharleel." (He sensed a strange, dark
longing
, unidentifiable and then gone altogether.)
Why did he have to play these guessing games? What was Cephean really thinking and feeling?
The cynthian stirred, watching him carefully.
"No," he said. "We'll try again, in a while. But if things don't work better this time, we'll just have to try another method." He did not name the dreampool, but it loomed in his thoughts. The cynthian started, and suddenly looked away.
Odomilk.
An image of the strange pods drifted eerily through Carlyle's mind. Responding to the commands, the riffmar leaped out of the nutrient tray and danced across the floor to a wooden cache. They lifted out two odomilk pods and carried them back and placed them on the floor in front of Cephean. The cynthian carefully cracked a pod with his teeth and sucked at the yellowish liquid which oozed out. He looked at Carlyle with upturned eyes, making plain his wish to be alone.
Sighing, Carlyle went back out into the corridor. He paced and then went to the commons, in the center of the crew-deck circle. It was a silent place, a human lounge empty of human voices, human presence. He shivered; the lounge was haunted by memories. His thoughts drifted to the men who had relaxed here with him, and tears began to blur his vision. He blinked angrily. He strode to the counter which curved along one side of the lounge and drew himself a beermalt. Then he sat on the opposite divan and tried to steady himself, to clear his mind. He toyed with a flo-globe, watching the colors flash mistily, randomly. They reminded him of the unharnessed Flux after the accident, after the deaths. Dropping the globe, he switched on the wall-generator and watched sparkle-patterns flash in ringlets around the room, the patterns, changing slowly: stoic . . . erotic . . . pastoral . . .
Slowly his thoughts dissipated, and he stared darkly at the wall, the beermalt growing warm in his hands.
* * *
The next session in the net began not much differently from the last. Cephean hummed away at the stern with his own thoughts, while Carlyle pleaded, pressured, cajoled—and
Sedora
sideslipped and trembled in the smooth-flowing Reld. They were sailing an image of streaming clouds.
Cephean, open up—listen—turn your thoughts out into the net.
The cynthian whistled an unintelligible reply; and the ship swayed in the clouds, thumping.
Follow! Dammit, Cephean!
F-hollow-hing.
Carlyle flew a practice turn. Then, as before, he had to strain, working against Cephean's mistakes to bring the ship back onto course. He flew straight, resting. Janofer came to him in his thoughts, quietly, unbidden. Her presence surprised him, but he said nothing and waited until she spoke.
Can you go it alone, Gev? You may have to try.
Don't ask me that, Janofer. Dear Janofer, sweet keelgirl, you know I can't go it alone. But you always ask.
A wrong fit in the net warps it like a gravity-abscess in a calm stream . . . dangerous. You are sometimes like that, Gev, for all that we love you . . . dangerous.
Do you think I don't know? All right, I'm a lousy rigger.
Janofer, face darkening:
That's not what I mean, Gev. You're a fine rigger. But—
Skan, appearing suddenly:
You're a lousy matcher, Gev, that's all. You'd be fine in a one-rigger . . . except you'd be lonely. Too bad you don't have a bit of Legroeder in you.
Skan. Always right but never tactful, damn you. Stay with me awhile, Jan, will you?
Sad, already distant gaze:
Can't, Gev—I can't. I'm gone now. Later, perhaps, if you really need me. Perhaps then, for a while.
And then she was gone, and so was Skan.
Perhaps then, but not now? Janofer: so kind, so courteous—you hurt me even when you're not here.
But the ship was drifting from its course now, and he reluctantly refocused his thoughts on flying.
Sedora
challenged his efforts to steer her true—and there was no assistance from Cephean. More strength was needed; he was taxing himself heavily as he flexed his ghost-neuron arms in the current. He cried out, demanding new strength from himself;
Sedora
answered slowly, but when he eased off for rest she immediately began to slip. He was losing control.
Then a curious thing happened. Legroeder appeared in his thoughts, wordlessly, and entered the net at the keel-station. Smiling enigmatically at Carlyle, the former crewmate lifted
Sedora
from the keel, helped steady her axis along the blue haze of the mainflow, and pointed her bow just tangent to the distant glitter of Cunnilus Banks. The maneuver went as smoothly, as easily as though
Sedora
were
Lady Brillig.
All right
, Carlyle thought.
Why not?
The strength of Legroeder, he knew perfectly well, was his own inner reserve focused through a wistful memory. But if he could fly through a memory, what harm?
Sedora
sailed sturdily under their coordinated control, and Carlyle almost forgot about Cephean, silent at the stern-station. Then a turbulent stretch loomed ahead, an orange tributary streaming in from the left, setting the blue haze of the mainflow swirling with dangerous eddies.
Legroeder?
Yes, still there.
Sedora
shivered into the turbulence, and with Legroeder's help he stretched out steely arms and labored like an oarsman to maintain control. But they needed more strength; they had to aim directly into the heart of the turbulence to complete the passage.
As quickly as the thought, Janofer and Skan reappeared—and all three backed him in the net as he hooked his nails into the fabric of space and wheeled
Sedora
to a new heading. Without fanfare Carlyle found himself a part of a perfect gestalt, and as one, the four riggers brought
Sedora
into a downwelling and leveled her off again in a smoother layer of current.
The fantasy was a white lie. Never in the past had he achieved gestalt with his three crewmate-friends. If he had, he would still be on
Lady Brillig.
But the image was perfect in his mind—it was the gestalt for which he had yearned—and
Sedora
flew now like an eagle. That image multiplied in scope, and they winged silently over sprawling tufted clouds which glittered whitely and handsomely beneath him. He forgot his terrible loneliness. Janofer's music breathed soothingly through the net, and Skan's com lay steady and sure over the gestalt. Even Legroeder, pretending to ignore them all, smiled with secret affection.
Time, in the gestalt, passed unnoticed.
But the image was as taxing as it was exhilarating. Carlyle, bearing the load of four riggers in one, became aware finally of the strain he was enduring—and by then it was too late. His strength turned to souring wine, his senses dimmed and flattened, and
Sedora
suddenly balked in his failing rein.
His friends' voices were faint now, their faces escaping his memory. The ship began to tumble. He wanted to sleep—no, to collapse.
How long have I been flying?
Caharleel!
A whisper out of nowhere.
Cephean! My god! Can you help? Can you hold the keel steady?
The fine spiderweb of the net was fraying, its grip in the clouds lost.
Hyiss.
Cephean's leverage from the stern increased dramatically. Carlyle felt relief. Then alarm. Could the cynthian handle the ship—now, of all times? (He sensed a blur of
annoyance,
and
bewilderment
at . . . what? . . . at the humans who had materialized to help run the ship, and then had vanished. And . . .
eagerness?
) Before he could understand, the sensations disappeared. The cynthian had sealed the lid on his feelings, and now he hissed as he wielded the ship over Carlyle's failing control.
Cephean took the ship deeper—diving steeply
down
into the Reld. The cloud-image vanished, and the ship was suddenly underwater, and sinking with terrifying speed.
This was all wrong . . .
Cephean! What are you doing?
Carlyle's heart leaped with fear. He tried desperately to oppose the cynthian; but Cephean refused to yield, and in the struggle for control the net strained and sparkled brightly, heatedly, and began to tear, to shred. The ship tumbled deeper, deeper—and suddenly broke down through the Reld and was beneath it, and the Current was only a shimmering ocean surface above them as they fell toward the abyss. Here in the depths, space was dark; it was the midnight of cruel dreams.
Sedora
was off her course and out of control, and what nightmare it was bound for Carlyle did not want to guess. If the cynthian aimed to destroy them, there was no surer way.
Fear turned into panic. Carlyle, like a stricken diver screaming for air, acted badly, instinctively. He triggered the maneuvering fusors to turn the ship upward. The fusors burst into life, and the ship began to groan—until finally it rose, roaring and shaking, on the torches, its wake casting a light into the darkness. Carlyle had forgotten to numb the sensory field astern, and the fire of the jets crawled upward along his spine, setting shots of agony alight in his soul. Cephean screamed soundlessly; in the stern-rig he was near the heart of the sun-fury, and beyond any help Carlyle could offer now. The cynthian's outcry flew in whispers:
Ru-hinned . . . ss-/-how . . . deh-mise!
The rest was lost—too fleeting—but Carlyle heard a distant cry as the cynthian sprang free of the net.