Voyage Across the Stars (36 page)

“I don’t blame you,” said Marilee as she extended her arms. “Welcome home, Don.”

Where I Get My Ideas

If you decide to write about far-famed Achilles, make him active, hot-tempered, inexorable, and fierce; let him deny that laws were made for him, let him think his sword rules all.

—Horace,
The Art of Poetry
(lines 120–2)

My undergraduate double major was history and Latin, and I continued to take Latin courses while I was in law school in a laughable attempt to stay sane. Reading Latin centers me. (Note “laughable” in the previous sentence.)

A story doesn’t depend on the language in which it’s told, and a story that’s been around for several thousand years is likely to be a very good story. While rereading
The Odyssey
(in translation; Ben Jonson would be even more slighting about my Greek than he was about Shakespeare’s) I remarked to a friend that the story would make an excellent Western.

And as I said that, a light dawned:
The Odyssey
would make a heck of a space opera as well, though translating Homer’s story to an SF idiom would take some subtlety if I were to avoid being absurd. For example, I couldn’t just have my hero land on a planet of one-eyed giants who shut him and his crew in a cave. But what about an automated city that . . . ?

I did a precis of
The Odyssey
and plotted my story around that armature, focusing always on situations that would serve the same structural purposes that Homer had achieved in his medium. Then I wrote
Cross the Stars
.

By the way, the Cyclopes appear twice in
The Odyssey
: once in direct conflict with Odysseus (which everybody remembers) and once as the creatures whose savage attacks drove the Phaecians out of their original home. If you’ve just finished reading
Cross the Stars
, you may recall a passing reference to giant one-eyed mutants. The latter, like the local creature called the argus and other asides in my novel, is homage to the man/men/woman who wrote
The Odyssey
; and who is, for my money, the greatest literary genius of all time.

As I was writing
Cross the Stars
I commented to the same friend that while
The Odyssey
translated easily to other media,
The Iliad
(perhaps an even greater achievement) was too fixed in its own cultural idiom to be used the way I did the other. For a long time I believed that meant I couldn’t use
The Iliad
at all in my fiction.

One day I was rereading Horace’s
Ars Poetica
and came to the quotation I’ve translated as the epigraph to this essay. Homer is the only source for the character of Achilles (which Horace summarizes with his usual succinct brilliance), but the
character
can have a life outside the cultural confines of
The Iliad
. There are and always have been men (and here I mean “male human beings”) like Achilles; Alexander the Great made a conscious attempt to model his life on the character (and succeeded, in my opinion, only too well).

So I thought about the problem for a long while, then wrote
The Warrior
. I set the piece (a short novel) in the Hammer universe, as I had
Cross the Stars
before it, but
The Warrior
was straight military—as surely as
The Iliad
is. I used the milieu of modern warfare, of tanks rather than armored spearmen, and the background has no connection with the Siege of Troy.

But remember, Homer didn’t say he was writing about the Siege of Troy:
I sing the wrath of Achilles
. . . .

Not all of my plots come from classical (or even historical) sources, but most of them do. That’s not only because of my personal taste, but because I believe (with Shakespeare) that literature which survives the buffeting of time is worth a second or thirty-second look.

I opened with a quote from Horace. I’ll close with another one:
I have builded a monument more lasting than bronze
. . . . Horace did; and Homer did, and Apollonius did, and so many others did. I’m proud to be able occasionally to stand on their magnificent structures.

—Dave Drake
Chatham County, NC

To Clyde and Carlie Howard

Because they’re friends—

and in hope that it was worth the wait.

It’s amazing the number of people who helped me on this one. As I edited my manuscript, I kept noticing places where a friend had been of direct assistance (and there were others that I don’t recall, I’m sure).

Among the folks I owe on this one are Dan Breen, Sandra Miesel, John Rieber and Kent Williams, Mark Van Name, Allyn Vogel, Clyde and Carlie Howard, and my wife Jo. As I said, there were others as well.

I owe a particular debt to Tom Doherty. Not because he bought the book (which I appreciate, but somebody was going to buy it) but rather because he saved me from myself when the size of the project became clear to me.

It’s good to have friends.

As Ned Slade walked toward the dockyard building with the Headquarters—Pancahte Expedition sign on the door, a line of six human males and a squat, shaggy alien from Racontis jogged past.

“You wonder why I’m a private,”
the leader sang.

“And why I sleep in the ditch,”
sang-wheezed the remaining joggers in several keys. The Racontid had a clear, carrying voice which would better have suited an angel than a creature which could pull a strong man apart with its bare hands.

A metal saw shrilled within the starship in the adjacent frames, overwhelming the song. Ned’s mind supplied the words anyway:
“It’s not because I’m stupid, but I just don’t want to be rich
. . .”

The door was ajar. Ned knocked, but he couldn’t hear the rap of his own knuckles over the saw, so he let himself in.

“Shut the curst thing!” ordered the man at the electronic desk, cupping a palm over his telephone handset. He was paunchy and at least sixty standard years old. “I can’t hear myself think!”

As he spoke, the saw blade coasted back to silence. The fellow at the desk returned to his call. The rangy, somewhat younger man leaning against the office wall prevented Ned from swinging the door to. “Leave it, kid,” the man said. “I like the ventilation.”

Ned looked from one stranger to the other. Neither of them paid him any attention. “No,” the older man said into his handset, “I’m Adjutant Tadziki, but it will
not
help if you call back when Captain Doormann is here. She’s already made her decision on a supplier.”

Tadziki looked like a bureaucrat. The other fellow wore a stone-pattern camouflaged jumpsuit with Warson, T over the left breast pocket. Ned didn’t recognize the uniform, but Warson was as obviously a soldier as the men and the Racontid jogging around the starship outside were. Warson continued to gaze out the window, singing under his breath,
I
could’ve been a general and send out folks to die
. . .”

“No,” said the adjutant, “since she’ll be eating the rations herself, your offer of saving three-hundredths per kilo isn’t very important to her—and it
bloody
well isn’t important to me!”

“
But the sort of things a general does,”
Ned murmured, watching the soldier, “
they make me want to cry.”

Warson turned sharply. “You know the song?” he asked.

Tadziki slammed down the handset. “Fucking idiot!” he said.

“Yeah, but in an armored unit it’s
‘You ask why I’m a trooper,’
”
Ned said. “That’s the way I learned it.”

“Where?” Tadziki asked. “And for that matter, who the hell are you?”

“On Nieuw Friesland,” Ned said. “In the Frisian Defense Forces. I’m Reserve Ensign Slade, but I’m from Tethys originally.”

“Slade?” Warson said in amazement. “You’re
Don
Slade? Via, you can’t be!”

Ned’s lips tightened. “You’re thinking of my uncle,” he said stiffly. “I’m not Don Slade, no.”

The voices of the jogging troops became faintly louder. They were making circuits around the vessel under construction. Warson nodded disdainfully toward the window and said, “Herne Lordling’s got us doing an hour’s run each day to shape us up. They’re singing that to piss him off.”

“Lordling’s a general?” Ned asked.

“He was a colonel,” Warson said. “He’s a pissant, is what he really is. Sure you want to join a rinky-dink outfit being run by a pissant, kid?”

“Lordling isn’t running anything,” Tadziki said sharply. “Captain Doormann gave the order, and she gives all the orders.”

He suddenly smiled. “Via, Toll,” he added, patting his gut. “I’m twenty years older than you and I’d never run across a
room
before this stuff started. It’s still a good idea.”

“
I
could have been a colonel,”
the joggers chorused, “
but there it is again
. . .”

“I want to join the Pancahte Expedition, yeah,” Ned said, handing an identification chip across the desk to the adjutant. “Whoever’s running it.”

“We’re pretty full up,” Warson said without emotion. He could have been commenting on the color of the Telarian sky, pale white with faint gray streaks.

“
The plush seats colonels sit on, they tickle my sensitive skin
. . .”

“The captain makes all those decisions, Toll,” said the adjutant as he watched the data his desk summoned from Ned’s ID. “Especially those decisions.”

“I never met your uncle,” Toll Warson said, eyeing Ned with quiet speculation. His look was that of a man who had absolutely nothing to prove—but who would be willing to prove it any way, anytime, anywhere, if somebody pushed him a little too far.

Ned recognized the expression well. He’d seen it often enough in his uncle’s eyes.

The door to the inner room opened. A man in fluorescent, extremely expensive clothing looked out and said, “Did you say Lissea had . . . ?” He seemed to be about Ned’s age, twenty-four years standard. A quick glance around the outer office, empty save for the three men, ended his question.

Tadziki answered it anyway. “Sorry, Master Doormann,” he said. “I’m sure she’s coming, but I’m afraid she must still be in the armaments warehouse with Herne.”

The young man grimaced in embarrassment and disappeared behind the closed door again.

“Lucas Doormann,” Tadziki explained in a low voice. “He’s son of Doormann Trading’s president—that’s Karel Doormann—but he’s not a bad kid. He’s trying to help, anyway, when his father would sooner slit all our throats.”

“Didn’t have balls enough to volunteer to come along, though,” Warson said, again without emotional loading.

“Via, Toll, would you want him?” Tadziki demanded. “He
maybe
knows not to stand at the small end of a gun.”

Warson shrugged. “Different question,” he said.

The phone rang. Tadziki winced. “Toll,” he said, “how about you play adjutant for half an hour and I take Slade here over the
Swift?
Right?”

Warson’s smile was as blocky as ice crumpling across a river in spring. He reached for the handset. “You bet,” he said. “Does that mean I get all the rake-off from suppliers, too?”

Tadziki hooked a finger to lead Ned out of the office. “Try anything funny,” he growled, “and you’ll save the Pancahtans the trouble of shooting you.”

Warson laughed as he picked up the phone. Ned heard him say, “Pancahte Expedition, the Lord Almighty speaking.”

The adjutant paused outside the office and looked up at the vessel in the frames. She was small as starships went, but her forty meters of length made her look enormous by comparison with the fusion-powered tanks Ned had learned to operate and deploy on Friesland.

“What do you know about this operation, kid?” Tadziki asked.

“I know,” Ned said carefully, “that I prefer to be called Slade, or Ned, or dickhead . . . sir.”

Tadziki raised an eyebrow. “Touchy, are we?” he asked.

Ned smiled. “Nope. When I get to be somebody, maybe I’ll get touchy, too. But since it was you I was talking to, I thought I’d mention it.”

“Yeah, don’t say anything to Toll Warson that he’s likely to take wrong,” Tadziki agreed. “Do you know about him?”

Ned shook his head.

“Well, this is just a story,” Tadziki said. “A rumor. You know, stories get twisted a lot in the telling.”

“. . .
could’ve been an officer,”
sang the joggers as they rounded the nose of the vessel. They moved at a modest pace, but one that would carry them seven or eight kilometers in an hour if they kept it up. The Racontid ran splay-legged, like a wolverine on its hind legs.

“
But I was just too smart
. . .”

“Seems Toll and his brother Deke had a problem with a battalion commander on Stanway a few years back,” Tadziki said.

“
They stripped away my rank tabs
. . .”

“One night the CO pushed the switch to close up his command car—”

“When they saw me walk and fart!”

“—and the fusion bottle vented into the vehicle’s interior,” Tadziki said. He cleared his throat. “Toll and Deke turned out to have deserted a few hours before, hopping two separate freighters off-planet. Some people suggested there might have been a connection.”

He nodded to the boarding bridge to the hatch amidships. “Let’s go aboard.”

They walked in single file, the adjutant leading. Power cables and high-pressure lines snaked up the bridge and into the ship, narrowing the track.

“He looks like the kind who’d play hardball,” Ned said with deliberate calm, “Toll Warson does. But that’s what I’d expect from people who’d—respond to Lissea Doormann’s offer.”

Tadziki laughed harshly as he ducked to enter the vessel. He would have cleared the transom anyway, unlike Ned who was taller by fifteen centimeters. “You don’t know the half of it, Slade,” he said. “The battalion commander was their own brother. Half-brother.”

The inner face of the airlock projected a meter into the vessel. Tadziki gestured around the vessel’s main bay, crowded now by workmen in protective gear operating welders and less identifiable tools. “Welcome to the
Swift,
trooper,” the adjutant said. “If you decide to go through with your application, and if you’re picked, she’ll be your home for the next long while.”