uranian throne - episode twenty-four

underway

by
robert gibson

For the story so far, see:

volume I: the terran heir
1: Dynoom; 2: Hyala;
3: the nebulee; 4: Exception;
5: the lever of power;
6: the infrastructure throbs;
7: the claw extends;
8: the brain-mist writhes; 9: the last card;
10: the londoner; 11: the terran heir;
12: the city cracks; 13: the validator rips;
14: the heartland beckons; 15: zyperan

volume Ii: the golden cloak
16: confluence at ao; 17: the scared logician;
18: the rash down-payment;
19: the non-dummy run ; 20: the immigrants;
21: the cincture; 22: The golden cloak;
23: On the eve

[ + links to: Glossary - Index of proper names - Timeline - Maps - A Survey of Ooranye - Plan of Olhoav - guide to published stories ]

From the journal of ordinary skyman Mev Gen, 10,549,801 Ac:

The day of departure itself, I couldn't write a single line: the event was so much of a long-expected shock, with all the emotions wrung beforehand, so as to scupper any attempt at describing it in words. Now on the morrow it's different: a new day, on which we all must feel we're on the flight-path to success because no bad thing has happened, no penalty exacted despite our defiance of the taboo against sending a skyship fleet into Fyaym. Thus, today I'm bursting to write! The need to express the greatness of the occasion urges me to start a Journal. It's not a thing I'd normally do, nor anyone else whom I know. Yet if these walls were transparent I bet I'd catch my mates in the 45th zamur scribbling likewise. For here we all are, so far unscathed, defying the ban of the ages by sailing with a skyfleet into the unknown.
Maybe it was time that the old taboo got looked at afresh. Failure of an expedition such as ours is not pre-ordained by any means: our Sunnoad is no Fiarr Fosn 723. How thankful we all are, that instead of that headstrong legend of the Phosphorus Era we have our providential half-Terran leader, whose declared aim is not conquest but rescue! Whether we succeed or fail history will remember that far nobler objective, to the credit of Sunnoad Yadon 80438 and of us all.
I sit beside my window, a real window and not a mere telescreen, because luckily I've been allotted a cabin contiguous to the hull. Hence my stunning view of the infinite plain, over which we are sailing at half speed, a sedate fifty miles per hour, a modest but steady rate of progress that has been chosen (so zyr Paiit tells me) in order to reassure, or at any rate not to alarm or offend, the powers of Fyaym. Such is the decision of our wise and cautious Sunnoad - about whom I find it hard to write objectively, since I have pinned all my hopes on the promise of his leadership.
If forced to guess at one weakness in his character, it's that he's behaving as though he's the last to notice what has happened to that wife of his. That, anyhow, is what I have come to suspect, ever since I overheard him ask the Captain, "...let me know if you see her, will you?" Drark, poor man, could only reply, "Taquotal, 80438" - understandably unable, in his embarrassment, to question the aptness of the question, or to point out the futility of the Sunnoad's intermittent, pitiable peerings. But after all, no great man is without flaw, and besides, who am I to pretend sufficient knowledge of the circumstances? I ought rather to concentrate upon simple gratitude, which is the right response to that amazing good fortune, that has bestowed on us the one conceivable guide for our dark mission.
I was a member of the deputation this morning; I, Mev Gen, skyman twelve-oh-five, chosen by lot as one of twenty to be admitted with our petition to the control room.
We gathered at the mid-junction of the main corridor and then marched forward under the ceiling glow-strip, my nerves drawing tighter as we went. "Petition" is a Terran word. No equivalent exists in Nouuan, Jommdan or Lrissj, or even in any of the minor dialects of Ooranye, so far as I know. I don't suppose any of us felt completely confident. We kept on our course because by and large we trusted in what we were doing; never would there be a better time for it than now, while the steady mild throb of the engines and the soft pounding of moderate winds on the flagship's hull voiced a perfect outset for our voyage.
Just forward of the ovoid's centre, the walls drew apart to form the great cavern of the control room, with its great wall-board and pilot-board, and the running patterns on the banessyen. Aware that we had come at the agreed time, we stepped forward and stopped in a line, a flat line with nobody forward from the others. We each knew what to say; it was up to the Sunnoad to pick one of us.
He rose from his place at the crescent table and looked at us for a quarter of a minute, while I was careful not to stare straight back; my eyes roved to Captain Drark, to Advisor Raldl Otehr, to Corrector Oreneg Vadon, to other Cinctees and various great ones chosen especially for the drall.
My gaze perforce returned to Yadon when I saw his finger extend - I strove to look as impassive as any - then - he picked me! The one-in-twenty chance had happened to me. "Speak your piece, Mev Gen," he said, choosing, as he often does, to express himself in his colloquial English.
"Sir," I replied in that language, but then switched to Nouuan, "Sponndar 80438, we thought it would be a good idea - while things are going so well - to take a moment - to change the name of this skyship - not that there's anything wrong," I ploughed into the silence, "with Zaderal, only, we now have an opportunity which will never recur to sharpen our mission with a Terran adornment which may add force to our bid for victory, considering the wide-ranging character of our opponent."
"Tactfully put!" said the Sunnoad. "I'd go further and say, the creepy character of our opponent." His eyes danced, teasing. "Well now, Mev Gen, I approve the adornment of our flagship with a new name, in the Terran tongue."
"Aye-aye, sir," I said.
Yadon grinned. "And that will send a message ahead of us, eh? Whose idea was this?"
"Sponndar, it was just something that seemed to crystallize amongst our several views..." I felt my tongue about to trip over itself.
"I see. Well, whoever crystallized it first, doesn't matter." Yadon sat down again, his head cocked quizzically as though he might be inviting comment from the chair to his left, even though that chair happened to be empty.
A pause, and then he turned back to look at us. "Have you an actual name to suggest?"
"Sponndar, yes," I said; "the name we've hit upon is... the Mirific."
His swivelling gaze comprehended all his officers and advisers in the control room.
"I approve it," he said. "Let the change be registered on the hull and in our hearts. But also I would recommend a nickname, not Terran but thoroughly of this world, to apply to the ship's personnel. Every one of us, committed as we are feats of agile evasion which we must learn to perform in the face of the dangers ahead of us, shall henceforth be - The Skidders."
Now there was an 'uproar' of grins, if I may put it that way; we all, I guess, particularly loved the combination, "Mirific Skidders".
Captain Drark assured the assembly, "We'll rise to the occasion, 80438."
"We're bound to," said Yadon, "for we're all more than we think we are." He turned to us petitioners and thanked our own officer, zyr Paiit Simand, for having brought us. "Now back to work," he dismissed us, doubtless knowing perfectly well that our greatest wish at that moment was to retire with our winnings.

From the log kept by Sunnoad Nyav Yuhlm 80438, commonly called "Yadon", 10,549,801 Ac:

Every time I consider the question I get the same answer. The moment in which I, the Uranian I, took full control of my consciousness was that moment when Mev Gen suggested the new name of my flagship.
How ironic can you get! The instant I hear and perceive that that Terran name would be a good idea, my native self seizes the helm of my personality and shoves aside my Terran self.
It's perhaps because I instantly sensed a sufficiency: that the likes of Mev Gen will go no further. It makes me very proud of my people's instinctive awareness of how far to go and when to stop. Names, a tinge of style - a deft trace of Terran haunting - that will suffice for us to be ready when the time comes, to deal with the enemy with no more than a subtle homeopathic response to the importation of Terran ordure. No need to fight evil with evil. Or so I desperately hope.
Yes, the moderation and tact of Syoomeans at their best - Mev Gen's proposal epitomizes this quality - shows that we all know so well how to play it, it's no wonder my Terran alter ego is not needed any longer in command.
I continue to reflect on this wonder of how much is not said. What a stupendous Syoom-wide achievement, is the avoidance of gangrenous thoughts, even while under threat from the dark powers of Dempelath!
On one tacit level, we all know what is going on. We don't name the Snaddy Galomm out loud, but everyone who weighs the situation is aware that our adversary has opened some dire conduit between the Seventh Planet and the Third. Everyone has access to that degree of the truth, but nobody pukes it around in conversation.
I had to "get this off my chest" (Terran idiom still allowed) before I shut the clasp of this log.
Now to head back to my quarters and "turn in".

Yadon quietly departed his niche in the control room, through a door which led a short distance to the companionway that brought him up one level to his private suite.
When he reached it he prepared for bed, in the certainty that he would do better to rest than to play further guessing-games with destiny, in what was left of this 10,549,801st day of the Actinium Era.
Lemedet was not in the suite. She must still be occupied with her various shipboard duties, thought Yadon. Her absence was slightly disappointing, but he easily did the usual thing: that is, he reminded himself how lucky he was to have her in his life at all. Especially, insofar as her status as a Cinctee increased her opportunity to share his public as well as his private life; it all helped to stave off the loneliness he might otherwise feel, the special loneliness of being the Noad of Noads... Ah, stop all this waffle, Yadon told himself.
The door hissed open and she came in.
She smiled as she began to undress, remarking: "So, we're in the Mirific now."
"The change went down well," said Yadon.
"Chimes with your nature, 'Mr. Yeadon', dear," she said, impishly switching to English while folding her clothing. "Setting one to catch one, and all that." He was aware of his puzzled face and his comparative slowness of wit, the more so as she kindly went on to explain: "Terran influences, I mean. You versus Dempelath."
The banter gave him something of a chill, for no reason he could sense until he grabbed at the supposition that it was because these days he would rather downplay his submerged Terran side. Yes, true, that was it: the way he preferred, from now on, to fulfil his mission, was to do it with a consciousness that was thoroughly Uranian. But surely that wasn't any cause to be irritated with Lemedet for having spoken the plain truth -
Then it was happiness, the moment when his arms were firmed around the sleek loveliness of his woman - and then it was the next moment:
"Dear Nyav, you know, don't you, that I'm not really here."
His eyes had ceased to behold her, and he clasped emptiness, but worse than that, he suddenly knew the reality of it: real emptiness it was, an absence which had to be admitted as fact. No trick. Truth.
It confirmed those words just uttered in his mind, words which he could not endure.
His only recourse was to reject and retreat -

The ego-track of Neville Yeadon:

I'm back "in the saddle"; and so it had to be.
Groggy though I feel, I sort of understand. Some events are simply verboten for anyone in my super-dignified position: they must not happen, so when they do, pop! something gives way.
What "gave way" in this case was my native pilotage. It ceded the helm to the Terran "me". It's because I, the earthly Neville Yeadon, grew up with lower expectations, and therefore, at this juncture, inevitably landed the job of facing the un-faceable.
So settle yourself down in the back seat of our consciousness, O Uranian Me. Turn down the emotions to a calmer setting. You listening, down there? I don't need your crazy dodge of constructing illusions. Pointless to pretend that the lady's here when she isn't. You didn't do it very well, anyhow, did you? The effort collapsed at the last, with no advantage to show for it. I don't like the truth any more than you do, but I see no point in denying it, and what's more, it's best to admit that this sort of thing happens for a reason.
She's off with another man because I'm boring. That has to be it. The hideous reality.
It takes a Terran to recognize such a thing, because it's like something out of a run-of-the-mill Terran novel or a shoddy Terran life. And why, precisely, did it happen here?
Not to waste too many words on it, I picture what life must have been like for her, hitched to the wearer of the golden cloak, that is, to a stereotypical perfectionist super-hero bore.
Lemedet, understandably, prefers to go seek a proper man.
Oh well, it's some consolation that at least the Terran "I" has the courage to admit the worst...

From the diary of Raldl Otehr, 10,549,807 Ac, fifth hour of morningshine:

...Having been thus honoured by an informal and friendly chat with the Sunnoad himself, who seems to have picked me for this expedition precisely because I am in his view "a historian", I am just a bit vexed to find that I cannot remember at all coherently what he said in our interview a mere hour ago. Some historian!
And yet, I have a hunch that I would be disappointed if I understood our talk. I suppose this is because we all intuit that his incomprehensibility, his unpredictability, is what will make him our secret weapon. That's the importance of fate's decree that he is the one to lead us; he, whom the enemy will understand even less than we do, until it is too late for them.
All that said, I do remember a couple of phrases he used. They're both Terran in origin, I believe.
One is "crossing the line". It's what we're all going to do very shortly, in less than an hour. That's why I'm hurrying to write these impressions while they are fresh; all senior officers have been asked to attend the occasion in the control room.
The other phrase that has stayed in my mind is one I very much like: "at a loose end".
What a boon to have got this far, to be on the point of "crossing the line", and still to be "at a loose end" - to be about to nose into Starside before the pressure has even begun!

The ego-track of Neville Yeadon:

I gaze with quiet satisfaction upon the fine little crowd that assembles in Mirific's humming heart.
It is good that in a few minutes they will have something to see. Seven days of voyaging without any opposition or even any sign of what we must eventually face in our penetration of the Fyayman wilds, has created a curious restlessness, perhaps a nervous sense that it is all too good to be true.
"Sponndarou," I greet my officers, "we have notched seven days of successful voyage, and have reached this point unscathed. It ought to be permissible, in our line of business" (and I put a trace of grimth into that Terran phrase), "to count mere existence as a triumph. By that I mean it's a triumph of substance over absence, of Being over blank void. In that positive spirit we can wait and watch, and hope to collect some more unscathed moments - ready as we are for when the scathe begins - and right now we can ready ourselves to mark our imminent hemispheric transition, with a phrase used by the seafarers of Earth."
No need for more preamble. At my request they have foregathered here to be present at a unique morsel of history, and here they obediently are, eyes fixed on the screens, or to use a better word, the windows, for though this control room is placed in the heart of the skyship's ovoid bulk, its facilities allow us to see widely and perfectly out in eight directions, leaving no chance of ambush.
The rear view is the one which shows the sinking Sun a little to one side of the dot that is the Velek, the second skyship in our fleet.
It occurs to me, as my glance skids past the tiny solar dazzle, that my affection for its shine is greater now than when I saw it twenty times broader in the sky of Earth! I wonder, in what way do my officers and crew view the Sun? Brilliant it is, even here in the outer Solar System, but, a mere arc-minute-and-a-half across, it does not play much of a role in Uranian language and culture. Yet with the sight of it now about to disappear - a phenomenon never seen in that area of civilization around the sunward pole - some profound emotion must be produced.
The forward view, on the other hand, is mostly as bare as ever, though whenever intermittent ranges of hills show up in front of us, temporarily to draw the hem of infinity closer, one may get the irrational sense that the world's edge has leaped forward so as to threaten to tip us over its edge. Right now our eyes are attracted to that eerie hint, almost as much as to the departing Sun in the opposite direction. It's as though both views are connected. Sombre on both sides: the immiment darkening behind us and the threat of being tipped ahead of us. But, after all, we've now already been in Fyaym for days, and why should the trip get any more dangerous just when the Sun dips below the rear horizon?
Down it goes, the minuscule brightness disappearing, as our skyship continues its plunge towards Starside -
That woman flitting about the control room, what does she think she's doing?
Like a prancing reporter trying for the perfect angle for a photograph. I shoot her a glare of disapproval. She's standing beside Oreneg Vadon now. And she's shaking her head at me. I look away, not understanding.
The Sun is gone.
"Sponndarou," I say, shaking off the little disturbance, "we have crossed the line."
In the moments that follow I am more than ever inclined to trust my crew and risk their further support. My eyes rove the room, picking in turn on the faces around me to see how they react, and I clearly sense that my presentation has reassured them. More intensely I concentrate my gaze, detailing their features to exaggerate, like with a vertical stretch, their most minor variations and imperfections, so as to imagine them into a Terran crowd. Thus, for example, the gaunt Raldl Otehr almost smiles. The broader features of my Corrector, Oreneg Vadon, curve towards a grin. What would, on Earth, count as the seasoned watchfulness of a middle-aged female almost beautifies the sparkle in the gaze of Indan Orliss, my Head of Intelligence...

Notes taken by Indan Orliss, head of the Bostanga Fom:

...During our conference, one after the other our skyships traversed the boundary. Ship after ship in single file, without opposition from any Fyayman force or power, crossed from the Sunward to the other, largely unknown hemisphere of our planet. By the time the meeting in the control room was over the entire fleet had followed us into Starside.
It showed tact, that line-formation. How tactless it would have been to have advanced along a broad front! That would have given us the appearance of an invading force, like the doomed fleet led by Fiarr Fosn. Always that dread comparison comes to mind.
Who knows, we yet may, despite our precaution, awaken the hostility of this uncharted land, but we can at least protest that we have not approached Starside in any such manner as Fiarr Fosn did when he provoked the curtain of disaster to descend upon the Phosphorus Era.
Yes, we have paid our dues of respect to Fyaym. We recognize it as a depth of mystery which should only be penetrated (if at all) as discreetly as possible. So say all our instincts, including those of Sunnoad 80438 - thank the Skies. Whatever his Terran persona may think, his Uranian side must certainly understand that it's far from odd to personify Fyaym as some creature that might regrettably be 'roused'.
So far, Yadon has made the right decisions. And what else did we expect? Hard to say - and hard to write my doubts, even on this private page which no one but myself in our lifetimes will ever consult. I must, though, make the effort and take the risk of wondering -
Do we have any way around the dependence on one man?
This skyship is replete with sensors, all providing channels of information, data received from the unknown regions through which we are flying; but almost all those data are bound to be wasted. They'll never be followed up, even if we return safely to Syoom, because the deluge of meaningless items is too overwhelming, and (we suspect) quite insignificant compared with what may, if luck is with us, be revealed by the mind and policy of Yadon the Half-Terran.
He is the supreme Unknown.
I'm not the only one who thinks so. After the Crossing, and while we were still all gathered in the control room, perhaps expecting another short speech before dismissal to our various tasks, I sensed - it's my continual job to be thus aware - an almost-febrile tension amongst us all, at the sight of Yadon lifting a small, heavy case from under his chair's tray-table.
He placed it in front of him, and from its thud on the tray I judged its weight to be that of a full case of revedds, because, when close-packed, fuel-phials are startlingly heavy. And at first I thought maybe that's what it was.
Then he clicked it open and took out what was inside.
He remarked, "It's grown fatter since I last looked." He turned the pistol-shaped object this way and that and then glanced around to see how we were taking it. None of us said a word. "This," he explained, "is called the stupp. I stole it long ago, in a raid on the Husnuth - that's to say on what was, in those days anyhow, Dempelath's laboratories in Olhoav."
A few of us, including myself, recalled that we had been told about this, long ago. Now as I gazed at the fat pistol-shaped stupp I wondered if I ought to have kept track of it since that time... ought to have asked him... something...
Vague advice, easier to suggest than to carry out. Round any Sunnoad a barrier of uncertainty can make one hesitate to speak. Especially around this half-alien holder of the office, caution warns me often enough, keep your doubts to yourself; and yet, today, some of us did dare to speak out.
The scholarly Raldl Otehr, for instance. Doubtless true to his historic background in the "Mad City" of Oso, he essayed a probe:
"Can you tell us, 80438, just what makes the thing grow?"
Such a simple question, in such plain speech, I was surprised to hear it asked.
"Now think, Raldl," admonished Yadon with a taut smile. "Should we wish to know that?"
Raldl's face fell. "No." The way he said it, I realized that, after a momentary stumble, he'd remembered what our expedition is for.
Not to analyze, but to win, is why we're out here. A fight for the supreme values of our world is not the setting in which to look for analysis of means. Smell the enemy, dodge, fight and win: that is the Uranian way and it warms my heart to witness that our half-Terran Sunnoad knows it too.
A pity that the crestfallen Raldl must now be wishing he hadn't spoken...
I might have guessed, however, that the Sunnoad would not leave the matter to stand thus, and would give the fellow a boost by continuing: "Raldl on the other hand is right to give heed to the stupp's growth: only we need to view it from a different angle, that's to say, not the means by which it happens - any scion of a Ghepion has its own particular evolutionary excuses - but the purpose of it. Or rather, the use to which it can be put in our war against the tyrant who threatens the world."
Yadon then went on to tell us of that use.
Now, can I write, can I bear to write exactly what he said - can I even remember it properly? Only his final sentence can I recall word for word: "Of course, it's a weapon of last resort."
For the rest of it, I shan't trust my wavering thoughts to paper. Instead, let the reaction of Oreneg Vadon suffice to continue this account. I'll never forget the scene of the deadened moments that dragged after the Sunnoad had finished speaking; the eyes of the Corrector seemed to glow in his head, a sure sign that his mood threatened to become combustible. "The Advisor was right indeed," Oreneg finally broke the shocked silence, "to draw our attention to the swelling excrescence of the 'stupp'! Are you testing us, Sunnoad 80438? Or do you really wish us to flout the wisdom of the ages and fight evil with its own weapons? Allow me to use words we've learned from your Earthly lingo: pollution; fallout. How do we gain if we destroy Dempelath only to become like him? For that's the possibility you seem to admit might become actual. I don't understand how it could work; neither do you, it seems; but you admit it could happen that way! Push that button on the stupp, and we might all end up by wishing it had never been found in that raid of yours."
Yadon, so I thought at first, was shaking his head in denial, but then I guessed that he was being jerked between abortive trains of thought, desperately unsure how to respond. He glanced once or twice at Oreneg and muttered - I could read his lips - "Are you going to Correct me again?" That was a stunning idea for me, Indan Orliss, head of the Bostanga Fom, sworn protector of the Noad of Noads. A second Correction of a Sunnoad was not an event I had ever heard of; one single successful Correction was a perfect rounded rightness which redounded to the credit of both Sunnoad and Corrector, but a second one would be - what? No precedent exists.
Actually that suggests the answer: the thing that would happen would be what always happens to a Sunnoad whose story gets to be what it ought not to be. A quiet, unmentioned disappearance brings that story to its end.
At this point I knew that I could push the scales decisively against Yadon. I seriously considered doing so. I like Yadon a lot, I think he has genius for the role he has been given by fate, but it occurred to me just then that the time might have come to show that fate has had enough of him.
I got as far as framing some words of support for Oreneg Vadon; then, somewhere inside me, I heard, or thought I heard, a still small voice.
You must stay loyal to the Sunnoad for the duration of this voyage, it said. When he has performed his role, he may go, but not before. And don't worry, your world will see no more like him after he's gone. Yadon the half-Terran will be the only one of his kind. Meanwhile, endure him!
My chest felt tight, my mind was clamped. Never shall I be able to prove that the World-Spirit, Thremdu, had spoken to me, but that is what I think had happened just then.
Loyal, helpful and encouraging, I spoke out:
"This expedition is dependent on boldness from start to finish. We know we shall have to 'get away with' things, and if that includes daring to use the stupp, so be it."
Yadon shot me a glance of gratitude, and then replied to his Corrector almost gaily, "Pollution and fall-out are problems, to be sure, and some day I may tell you the Terran legend about Sauron and the Ring of Power, and how he was defeated by means of the destruction, not the use, of the Ring. You'll like that tale, I'm sure, and you may rest assured that if I take a different line, I won't do so blindly."
Corrector Oreneg could be seen visibly to relax at my words, and the mood of the meeting took its cue from this. I, too, breathed more easily, aware that my intervention had tipped the scale; I had helped the Sunnoad to surmount an awkward moment.
Yet despite such assurance I have not felt completely at ease with this nudge of support that I have given Yadon over the option to use the stupp.
Another deed I'm not sure about, is one I had previously performed at his behest prior to the meeting. It was an order which, to oblige him, I gave to my deputies before I set out for the control room, to ensure that by the time the other officers returned to their quarters they would be sure to see -
A tease? A joke?
An inoculation against the enemy's ego?

Corrector Oreneg Vadon did not keep a diary, nor any record of his innermost thoughts.
He lived from hour to hour in a state of pressurized awareness, better left un-worded because its description would be hard, futile and dangerous. Don't even think about writing it down, he advised himself; posterity must read his life from the far mightier record of saga inscribed in events; his deeds would speak for themvelves.
As for what others might be writing about him - He would not show much concern for that, either.
On the other hand he would not turn down an easy chance to learn...
Immediately after the "crossing the line" conference, in which he had dared to voice criticism of the Sunnoad's alarming willingness to use the weapon of the stupp, Oreneg guessed that, despite his failure to carry the point, his stance might have gained him some support in certain quarters. To go around canvassing opinions was unthinkable, but a "sample of one" might be worth taking. People were all social to some degree, which meant that inside each individual mind could be found 'seeping layers' of belief, attitudes linked by horizontal trickles with those of others... and Oreneg could use them to build up a picture.
That was not all. He also wished to gain a second opinion on the astonishing alteration which had been made to his cabin quarters, at the behest of Indan Orliss, while he had been at the conference.
Almost immediately came a stroke of luck: a transceiver call from Raldl Otehr, who (guessed Oreneg) wished to consult him on that very issue.
The Corrector's eyes glittered with amusement as he replied, in fashionable Terran idiom, "I'll be right over." Skies! he thought; looks like Raldl will be my sample; just about the last person I'd have guessed for the role...
Oreneg continued to reflect upon the scholarly Advisor from Oso while he strode through the corridor towards the latter's cabin. Everyone has ambition, so why, Oreneg asked himself, does Raldl seem to have none? It must be that the fellow's picture of things contains a blank area, a Raldl-shaped gap.
He reached the cabin, buzzed the door and was admitted. Raldl Otehr greeted him with a curt nod.
"Where is..." began Oreneg.
Raldl gestured with a look askance at the gleaming new fixture.
Oreneg gazed and mused, "This must have been planned well in advance."
"Of course," said Raldl edgily; "a skyship does not ordinarily carry a cargo of mirrors, for skies' sake!"
Oreneg moved closer to the object, and, reading the accompanying inscription, murmured out loud: "'For the Mirific command staff'."
"A heavy batch of them," continued Raldl, "must have been taken surreptitiously on board amongst other technical supplies."
"How it was done is not important," said Oreneg. "Why, is the question."
"Of course."
"And you want me to help you guess."
"Yes."
"And your reason for asking me," Oreneg went in, "me rather than Indan Orliss, Captain Drark or even the Sunnoad himself... or is that an unnecessary question...?"
Raldl winced. Staring at the floor he began a laboured, hesitant speech. "You, sponndar, once succeeded in correcting Yadon, successfully so, unless, Correction or no, he may have strayed since then, too far off course..."
"Ah, come on," Oreneg teased, "that's no way to talk about the best-loved Noad of Noads in living memory."
Raldl looked up. "Perhaps we must save him from himself."
"Now what kind of remark is that? Explain, sponndar."
"You saw, didn't you, Corrector? Don't say you didn't see. I could tell you were looking where he was looking, to the right of where you sat - that's to say, to that empty chair... as though he could see somebody whom the rest of us couldn't."
Oreneg's shrug was a study in casualness. "He's been like that for a while. What has that got to do with what we were discussing, namely, the incomprehensible new gift of the mirrors?"
"I was hoping you might tell me. That's why I called you," said Raldl. "But it seems that we both - you, titled Corrector, and I, Advisor - are merely stumbling in the dark."
"All right," conceded Corrector Oreneg Vadon, "I suppose we might as well both admit that Yadon the innovator is several steps ahead of us; that's why his cloak is the colour it is... and if that endangers the mission - as it may well do, for you don't get something for nothing, and his very virtues may make him vulnerable - well, we must simply co-operate as best we can with his destiny. I'm arguing with myself now, Raldl. Convincing myself, or trying to, that the rest of us are being... er... shall we say, collimated."
"What?"
"Aligned."
"How?"
"...And, by the Skies," Oreneg continued following his own train of thought, "come to think of it that's the answer to the mirrors' presence! Can you guess it now, Raldl?"
The Advisor felt uncomfortably dense. Mirror? Alignment? His memory flashed back to the happy day, back in Oso, when he wedded his spouse, Lyan Zett, in the ceremony that had been traditional for Uranian weddings since time immemorial: man and woman standing in front of a tall mirror, symbolizing the melded light of their lives. That was what "mirror" meant to him.
Then he applied the idea:
"You mean - we've been given notice that we command staff are all married to our mission? Could that be all it is?"
"'All'?" echoed Oreneg. "It may be quite enough, to be faithful to it unto death."

The ego-track of Neville Yeadon:

While watchfully on the stroll around the nerve-centre of Mirific, it is good to hear low-voiced exchanges of remarks, good to shuffle them like a hand of cards. The officers have evidently learned not to fall silent as I walk past. I only needed to ask them once, that they continue their conversations without regard to my wandering. So far as is possible, I feel it good to keep track of what they seem to be thinking.
Says one: "...Nothing much happened when the Sun disappeared..."
"Not on the physical side, no."
"...history full of scarcely-speakable events."
"...We seem to be doing well enough..."
"Happenings will happen."
"Just one more won't 'break the wave'."
I bring myself up short to view the banks of controls which wing in a double arc to right and left of the main viewscreen.
I believe I have learned to read all the winking lights almost as well as Captain Heth Drark can. Every sensor-reading appears innocuous. On the tilted display board of the banessyen, like a giant lectern depicting our situation in abstract symbolic terms, I note a creamy-white calm. A few innocuous minor flecks indicate a mere sprinkling of petty hazards; they won't touch us, safely aloft in our skyships.
Now a whim comes over me. I look down to the alcove over which the main screen curves. It contains that little space where are stashed the log and pilot board, and I decide to write something in that log, though usually it's the Captain's preserve. Just something like, "All seems well," and then the date and the ship's position.
I review my intended action... but before I have taken a step forward, I hear:
"Captain - a signal! From the rearguard."
I freeze, aware that it would be a mistake to move. What a mercy it is that I'd hesitated for a cautious moment. Right here where I stand is now the best spot for me to be, while Heth Drark establishes where the signal is from, and whether and how we ought to acknowledge.
A brisk exchange... Astonishment swells in me as I hear, from the Captain's replies, that the signal, relayed from ship to ship along the line to our forward-most position, did not originate from the rearguard but was relayed to it in turn from far further back: it came from Syoom. It could not have come directly: on this world no radio message can transmit further than about 110 miles through the empty air before it is received and passed on. It seems almost miraculous that we've been reached from home after having flown so far. I try to imagine the shaky alignment of transmitters, mounted on skimmer-platforms, that has accomplished this feat. Either an emergency has arisen, or somebody is showing off.
I guess the answer at the same moment that the Captain turns to me.
"Sponndar 80438, it is the Noad of Yr."
With a dazed vision of what has made this possible, I move forward, accelerating my steps so as to take the call before some accident frays or snaps the wavering filigree of link-ups which (if it were vertical) would be a pile about to topple. I take a deep breath and project a fashionably Terran turn of phrase into the transmitter:
"How are things at your end, Rael?"
The oldster's voice comes through, reedy but clear.
"Not in crisis, I am glad to say. Not more than usual."
"In which case you have made this rickety contact only to ask how I am doing?"
"That was the thought at the back of my mind, yes," the rascal says, matching idiom for idiom. "However," he continues composedly, "your tone suggests the news so far is good for your mission."
"I would say so, yes."
"You must be handling it well."
I say dryly, "All signs indicate so far that we shall return to Syoom in due course as victors. After which, you can show me how well you have 'handled' the trust I have placed in you."
I make sure to keep the volume turned high so that all my officers can glean for themselves the tonal sub-text in my conversation with Rael Odiram. What strange roles we end up playing, I and my unlikely protégé the sky-pirate chief of the aerial City of Mists. I still suppose that I did the right thing, leaving him behind in a kind of supervisory dominance over most of the civilized world, so that he and his flying fortress may do some good, or at least a different kind of evil from the spreading "spillth" of Olhoav.
To my relief he does not take offence at my cheekiness any more than I did of his. Resorting to native Uranian idiom, he quotes the proverb:
"The hosts of might-be crowd as thick as those of 'are'."
"But we can hope, eh?"
"Anything may happen to either of us, Sunnoad Yadon, except that we of Yr will never betray the World-Spirit."
"I thank you for those words and I believe them," I reply, warmly enough. "One thought, though, has occurred to me with regard to this improbable relay by which we are able to speak. It is a marvellous feat of organization but perhaps it had better not become even more marvellous."
"How do you mean?" he asks as I pause for effect; but I suspect he knows.
"For the same reason that this sky-fleet is not too big," I say, "we should also refrain from giving it too long a tail of radio platforms."
"You fear it may rouse..."
"You see the point I'm making, don't you, Rael."
"...rouse the temper of Fyaym."
"Enough for now," I say, satisfied that he has got the point, "and thank you for the call. We'll no doubt speak again when destiny decrees that it's time to relax and swap stories."
"Farewell till then, 80438." The voice wavers - already the sequence of relays is coming apart, torn by one or more of the countless possible mishaps in Fyaym. It's just as well, so my hunch tells me. The conversation has gone on long enough.
A blank hum sounds from the communicator. Finished.
I look around and chance upon the raised brows of Oreneg Vadon. "That," he says, "was the most flukey achievement of radio linkage I ever heard of, sponndar Sunnoad."
Indan Orliss has also moved close. She adds her view: "You were right, though," she murmurs, "to hint that it may have been pushing our luck."
"I think that we can give him credit," I say, "to have known that. I was nevertheless afraid he might blurt out something outrageous over the airwaves: such as to suggest that we go on to explore Arclour after beating Olhoav." I eye the Corrector. "Which is not our intention, and never shall be. The Starside pole is out of bounds. Our aims are firmly modest."
"The moment may come when we need to blurt that out," remarks the Corrector, "lest Fyaym think differently."

To tell my nerves that they had better not grate, I resume my strolls around the control-room cave, glancing at screen after screen, while listening to gauge the spirits of my crew. From what I catch of it, morale seems good. It may even have been somewhat boosted by that odd exchange between me and Rael Odiram. I infer this from the way the chatter is interlaced with jolly references to Rael's English.
"...The thought at the back of my mind..."
"His turns of phrase are really coming on."
"Who'd have believed the old pirate had it in him to be a scholar?"
"Perhaps he's taken lessons from the Wekkm."
"Or from any Ghepion. They seem to go for it..."
I don't share these light-hearted reactions, although I am glad of them. That brief relay-contact with the Noad of Yr was a sombre shock for me. Granted, it may well have been innocent in motive, but I nevertheless wish it had not happened; I fear the extra intrusion may incite the forces that lurk in the dark through which we are flying... forces which (history tells us) hate being disturbed. Our fleet is risky enough without being tailed by an extra formation. The "tail" must now be gone, yet I fear the damage may have been done.
Only if nothing much further happens this day, will I sign it off as a satisfactory date in the log.
Or maybe - an even more modest criterion - if we could simply be granted a few hours before the next incident, why, I'll be grateful for Rael's call, viewing it as having allowed me an affectionate farewell to an old-style villain while I face the deeper, more spiritual evil that the skyfleet is sailing towards.
The stress lines on Oreneg Vadon's face, that has just turned towards me, give me to understand that the few hours' grace will not be granted. He and I have a sudden presentiment in common.
A frightening word, spelt the same in all three Uranian languages, is aklarranat, "before".
Not, however, much like the English "before". Here on Ooranye it's not so much a preposition, more of a noun: "before-ness" - an urgent requirement to enjoy in full the moments you are in, before they make way for an event which you will not enjoy.
How, in the circumstance of such awareness, one could be expected to enjoy the given moments, is a good question - for a Terran. To obtain an answer I'd have to get it from my Uranian side.
Better not bother; time's running out.
Before (in the English sense) - before I know what I'm doing - I have given the order for the fleet to re-group. Questions flap at me from within: why give that order? Answer: because I have seen a bad light on the horizon. Why "bad", and how "regroup". Answers to be sought from instinct; I must therefore catch up with what my instincts have just commanded.
Captain Drark meanwhile asks no questions, thank goodness; he has seen the line of light ahead at the same time as I have, and with grim alacrity he co-operates in the disposition of the fleet.
The manoeuvre will take maybe a quarter of an hour. To give us that time before we meet the light, we must decelerate from our already modest fifty miles per hour.
In fact we're almost stopping, but not quite. I dare not actually halt the fleet. Not abruptly, and not yet. But it's hitting me now: who am I, Neville Yeadon, Londoner, wearing the mantle of leadership in a spot like this, what am I thinking of - help, Uranian me, the native side of me, for pity's sake take over!!

Nobody could have discerned by any outward sign that Nyav Yulhlm, Olhoavan, resumed at that moment his place "in the saddle".
The take-over was not one hundred per cent crisp and clear. The boundary between the two sides of the personality had become, during a large chunk of a lifetime, naturally blurred, trending towards a composite consciousness. Nevertheless it was still the case that areas of awareness were definable as being on one side of the boundary or the other, and that they were each dominant in their turn. Now the Olhoavan's turn had come, displacing the Londoner from control.
Turn and turn about - but though these changes had happened plenty of times before, on this occasion the newly submerged Terran voice was unusually sarcastic in his whisperings:
All right, so I lost my nerve for a moment, but you didn't wait, did you, Nyav? So eager are you to take the helm! Well, it's up to you now, you're responsible for the steering henceforth, and don't you dare be less than a super-hero - don't you dare let all these people down -

The ego-track of Neville Yeadon:

Back again after just a few seconds! It didn't 'take', so here I am once more, the Terran "me" thrown back onto the control seat! The caustic "super-hero" jibe, that's what did it. What a moment to open my ego's big mental mouth.
And now the impossible hero's task is mine. What's coming at us from the horizon must now be faced by me.
By me as I currently am. Can't risk another switch right in the face of the enemy. Can't stoop to that, because such cowardice, though tempting, could trigger a complete shut-down, a paralysis of decision. Zaggadrud! (Pipe down, Nyav down below. Mind your language! Or did the swear word come from me? Perhaps the Londoner is learning to cuss in Uranian.)
With a swift look askance at the giant tilted table of the banessyen I note that its shifting patterns of abstract situational symbols exhibit crisp new lines like ridgy spines in motion. It comes to me that these most recent patterns are none other than the pictured effects of my latest commands. They issued from my mouth with a snap of authority, for all the world as though I knew what I was doing. I ordered the ships behind Mirific to peel off to left and right so as to present, at long last, a broad front to that which is rising ahead. What temerity - and yet Captain Dark isn't trying to argue, nor is anyone else. They're all accepting the change of formation. This despite the fact that a "broad-front approach" contradicts the entire strategy of our penetration into Fyaym! Well, the single-file method may have been fine so long as we could hope to cross these lands without waking the powers therein - but it's pointless now that the awakening has occurred.
"Blow it up," I say, meaning the magnification, and the officer at the central forward viewscreen turns a dial whereupon the image lunges forward into close detail, focusing on a patch of the plain directly ahead and just a few miles off.
"Slow to zero," I murmur to another officer, and our forward motion finally peters out.
It has at last happened that we have stopped. I never thought we would do so out here, thousands of miles from our destination. The entire fleet hovers. I suppose all of us in Mirific, plus our comrades in the other skyships now level with ours, are concentrating our eyes and brains upon a magnified frontal section of plain.
Time for some consultation.
"Contradict me if you can, sponndarou," I remark in a voice heard by all, in order to coax any difference of opinion out into the open: "with regard to those thorns of light we see..."
They all peer. Bright spots indeed twinkle ahead. Fortunately they don't yet seem to be doing much except twinkle.
"...None of us surely believes that all we have to deal with here are fast-growing laser-tipped weeds. What's your belief, Raldl? Could what we see just be something related to the narps?"
The modest fellow looks nervous at the question, as if to say, Why ask me? But the best use of what may be a short breathing space is to get him to speak.
I prompt him, "You are the one who encountered Xolch at the reolues, and lived to tell the tale."
Raldl Otehr still looks uncomfortable but he finds words. "That was a while back, sponndar 80438," he says, obviously desirous of skating around the scarcely speakable events in the crisis of his life.
"Yes, around 6000 days ago," I counter. "So what? (to use an annoying Terran phrase). What is time to the Xolch?"
Even now he hesitates, and, though I'm impatient to make use of him, I sympathise with his reluctance to speak, for despite the tremendous prestige he has acquired, of one who has had victorious dealings with the Adversary, I can well understand why a sensitive person may dislike to be reminded of such contact at all. If this were a time to be squeamish, I'd respect his wish.
Raldl's reply however, when it comes, is calm and firm enough:
"I smell no presence of Xolchunnur," he avers.
"All right, we'll take that denial to be our working hypothesis," I say, as satisfied on that point as I can expect to be.
Then - struck by the most unwelcome thought yet - I muse aloud:
"...And yet we could ask ourselves anyway, what difference does it make?"
No sooner have I uttered those words than I wish I could unsay them. A stream of most unwelcome implications is pulling my thoughts whither I would rather they did not go.
After all, look at it this way: if it's possible to prefer that the enemy were Xolchunnur...
I feel in the atmosphere that quite a few of the officers present are disheartened by that same idea.
"Reduce magnification," I hastily command.
The detail shrinks, the field of view swells...
"Slowly... hold it there."
Without a doubt, the spiny lights, the claws of laser crackle, are not the worst of it. In fact they're the more bearable aspects of the scene. Their similarity to known weeds relates them most closely to wilderness normality. Mere froth on the billows of dismay.
"I'll answer my own question," I say with a dark certainty. "The absence of Xolch makes our position, if anything, worse. For if it is not the Adversary..."
"No!" shouts one officer. "Not Thremdu!" shouts another. Yes, just as I feared, the idea has been gathering in their minds, that it might be the World itself that opposes our mission.
I raise my voice to quell theirs. "I don't necessarily mean it is He who is against us, not yet anyway, but you must realize - " My turn to hesitate as much as poor Raldl. We've all been expecting something nasty-crazy to happen, but words fail me in the face of the event that becomes visible on the viewscreen.
A comparison with popcorn forces itself on me: I look at what ought to have been level plain and I see that the grains of gralm are indeed popping, billowing in inflated volumes, while an unwelcome interpretation on the screen of the banessyen starts to exhibit a design like a blade that slices back and forth, a strop, strop, to whet an ominous significance.
Must speak out! "You must realize," I rasp, "all of you, that it is now necessary to raise the stakes." I shoot a brief scowl at Oreneg Vadon to glare the hint, don't try to correct me again. "All of you know that I once crossed Fyaym alone, and now let me tell you the stark paradox that's revealed when I compare now with then. The loneliness of Fyaym presses in on me far more now than it did then! Get it? Now that I am accompanied by a fleet of forty skyships it seems more lonely out here! The lesson, in other words, is that the more we penetrate en masse into these hostile lands, the more they react with ill will to our incursion. I made it alone but we, by our numbers, raise opposition that threatens to freeze our spirits." Once more my gaze sweeps around to gauge the expressions of the officers around me. Urgent is my hope that they'll understand what I'm driving at, so that we can accept the way out of this without a lot of argument.
I lastly glance again at Oreneg. I wonder how soon he'll see my point, or if he already has. Ah, someone else has. Indan Orliss approaches me and lays a hand on my arm. With this almost motherly gesture she accompanies her expression of concern. "Sunnoad sponndar, you are about to do something rash. I sense it, and I fear it."
"Not to do it would be even more rash," the words issue glibly from my mouth.
Her half-nod of acceptance adds to my gratitude. It's lucky for me that this woman, rather than some less flexible guardian, heads the Bostanga Fom. What about the other conceivable interferer? My eyes travel to the stony face of Corrector Oreneg Vadon. Then the screen-view of the outside, the roiling pugnacity of what was the level plain and is now a heaving, bursting mess, gives me a certainty that Oreneg is going to let me do what I have to do. Of course he is - but perhaps he's going to say something for form's sake, because he will wish to gain credit as spokesman for all those who believe that the risk I'm about to take is too great. Not sure I'll allow him that prestige. I hasten to speak first.
"I'll want a skimmer at the forward lock," I say.
"Just one?" asks Indan. "You're going out without a guard? You think Fyaym will be kinder if you resume your status as a loner?"
"Correct; and besides, look at that," I gesture at the screen. "What use would a guard be? The ship's guns may cover me."
"'May'?" queries Captain Drark from the rangekeepers' board.
"What concerns me most," I say as I turn to go, "is to leave unencumbered by the impedimenta of rational planning."
Their faces - I perceive from a tail-end glimpse - look really satisfied with what I've said... confirming my opinion of this world's zany character... Or is "zany" unfair, and might it rather work the same way on every world, that when you have reached a crux like this, nothing remains but to 'double down'?

With merely average firmness I grip the steering lever, and the skimmer noses out of the skyship's lowest forward hatch.
I give myself up to the dimness, to the wind's drone, and to the restlessness that looms ahead. My mind is close to being clear. I have few data to sift, and my intellect is at a low ebb. Hardly any purpose remains in fidgeting with the notional pilot board in my head.
The looming obstruction that awaits my arrival, with its inexpressible suggestions of horror, tempts me further away from reason, with the hint that I could reject it all as a bad dream, or alternatively counteract with wish-fulfilling broadcasts of my own.
Would it not be typical of Fyaym if, through this temptation, I were to lose a fleet of forty skyships via a dream-delusion that I was permitted to respond to obstacles in any way I chose?
Fortunately, early experience has taught me to be as scared of dreams as I could ever be of reality. So that bolt-hole is closed - thank the Skies!
I'm at six yards' altitude, so far as I can tell. Or perhaps a bit higher, it's hard to be sure, because the surface of the plain has markedly altered already, even though I'm still only on the outskirts of the main disturbance. I know it can happen that unusual air-currents, when sharply defined, boost a skimmer's height. Ahead, the hilly heavings of popped gralm stretch right and left for miles. They seem to be hugest in front of me. It's as though I were facing a sine wave, the curvy-hat outline of some fluctuating dune. Actually it's a billow of roaring, wind-lifted grains with streaky runnels trickling tearfully down and across its face.
Can this monstrous shape be alive? Can it think? My own brain starts to awaken enough to wonder. Could it be, that we humans sometimes get too hung up on a dichotomy between what we call "consciousness" and the lack of it? Suppose a different distinction matters more: that between meaninglessness and terrible meaning? The kind of meaning you get in -
No, don't go edging that way. Avoid that topic of dream.
Leave it to It. If the idea is to teach me a lesson, It (or They) must meet me on mind-to-mind terms.
Inklings of the truth stream towards me, bearing me to the conclusion that whatever is rising to meet me will adapt its nature double-quick. It wants to speak to me. It will make sure it can.
That's because, It won't be satisfied merely to destroy my fleet. The idea will be to send back a discouraged remnant, babbling a spoken doom, and planting a memory that will deter any future attempt to send a fleet into Fyaym.
Deceleration. The glutinous moments drag, while It perfects Its spread-out stance. It is partially solidifying as it rears into a furlong-wide outline, a silhouette of a bat-winged cobra with the face of a helmeted human skull three yards high; the helmet is black niello, the bone skin-grey, and the eyes in their sockets glow with incandescent fury. On either side, the wings or walls or arms stretch ever further.
I can't afford to give myself time, either to analyse or to get scared out of my wits by the enveloping horror. What must be done, the instant I'm close enough, is for me to reach into my cloak and then, out with fist as fast as I can, to proffer the message-crystal from Dynoom.
Because it's all I can think of to do, I make the necessary assumption, that It will realize that It has nothing to lose by listening to that talisman of truth which I've carried on my person for thousands of days.
Time at last, now that I have closed to within arm-reach, to press the crystal against the looming forehead. Time to find out whether the message unnerves the Thing like it has unnerved all others whom it has ever touched.
Wonderfully, the eyes lose the whiteness of their glow. They roil with uncertain colours, their brilliance congeals - as if the impact were concussive - I gasp and gasp - must click back into the business of breathing -

Inside the cave of boards and screens that was the control-room of Mirific, no one spoke for a while. Silence had fallen except for the subdued ping of the unsupervised radar and the murmur of other sensors, mostly ignored. All human eyes were drawn to the forward screen. With its magnification adjusted to show the tiny figure of Sunnoad Yadon silhouetted against the enormous obstacle which he faced, that view absorbed the attention of every spectator.
Oreneg Vadon presently managed to tear his gaze away to spare one side-glance at the faces of the other crew. They looked as unhappy as he felt, and he quietly understood. A miasma of guilt hung almost heavy enough to sniff.
He tried to throw off the mood, muttering at last: "What else could we have done? What else, but let him go?"
"Ah, you too, Corrector," nodded Indan Orliss. "You're right, there was nothing else - but I dread the outcome - "
"Whaaa!" shouted several voices at that point. Seated at the radar, a young zyr named Isnald Falat cried out: "Gone haywire, Captain!"
The new event that they had to watch, was neither more nor less credible than what had developed minutes ago, or than anything else that had been related by legend in the fantastic wastes of Fyaym. The vast winged Shape, which an instant before had loomed in front of Yadon, suddenly had split down the middle.
Heth Drark made the split-second decision not to fire. "The Sunnoad seems unhurt; he has stepped back, that's all; we must wait and watch."
  Each half of the Shape was rapidly shape-shifting into a simpler, rectangular form, while at the same time sliding aside, pivoting. Increasingly it looked as though the aim had been to halve the mass into near-parallel walls...
"Resembles a hint," Oreneg Vadon felt inspired to say.
The remark strengthened his reputation before a couple of minutes had passed, for within that short time the pair of walls stood in their new, inviting position on the plain (a calmed plain now, the churning subsided) so that all could now see what had become of the erstwhile menacing barrier: it had altered into the formation of an arrowhead with the tip missing, a pointer with a gap, to tempt the fleet to advance through it.
Oreneg remarked, "Couldn't be more obvious. It's instructing us, 'Go ahead with your mission!'"
Captain Drark glared at the Corrector, but on consideration the message was indeed clear. "Very likely, but that's for our leader to decide. He is returning unscathed it seems, thank the Skies."
They all watched the screen image of Yadon's approaching figure.
Indan Orliss cried, "Look - he's tottering! Should we not go out to help him?"
"Let him come by his own strength," Oreneg gruffly recommended. "He'd prefer it that way."
"How do you know?" asked the Captain.
Oreneg shrugged. "At any rate, if I had achieved what he has, I'd wish for a breather."
No one had anything to add to this.
The minutes passed while anxious eyes watched the exhausted Sunnoad skim slowly, his body weaving from side to side as he endeavoured to steer his vessel back towards the skyship's forward entrance. They lost sight of him when he came close enough to be obscured by the hull. Those were anxious moments - but then the tell-tale on the board showed he was in, which prompted widespread exhalations of relief, and at last a door hissed open, re-admitting Yadon 80438 to his command centre.
Some whispers came in with him: apparently he had just shared his news with the low-rankers stationed in the forward connecting corridor. They, in turn, were already spreading his message, amounting to the belief: He has told the Power. It is letting us through.
The officers regarded Sunnoad Yadon with silent awe as, with no triumphant mien, he beckoned to Captain Heth Drark.
"The fleet must get back into single-file formation and advance through the lane, to continue towards Olhoav," declared 80438 in concentrated, emphatic monotone. "See to it, will you, Captain? No time to be lost."
"Yes, sponndar Sunnoad," said Drark, for the meaning of "the lane" was obvious enough, and it was not his place to determine whether or not the fleet was being invited into a trap; at a command from the Noad of Noads the Captain had no option but to turn to the task, and besides, it looked good to him.
Indan Orliss, though, could not forbear from comment about the Sunnoad's drained appearance. She whispered to Oreneg, "I have never seen him look so wan. Should we not help him to his cabin?"
The Corrector shook his head. "A better idea, I'd say, would be to put him in the alcove by Screen Eight, so he'd still be in the sight of all - we ought not to hide him - but within hearing of only one. That is, if you'll let me take charge of him."
Indan had to decide just then how to balance her duties. To protect the Sunnoad was her prime motive for every action; very well - but which aspect must she guard? His person, or his legend? She recognized the undertone of rivalry between Corrector and Corrected, she could sense it clearly, but this might be the wrong moment to take notice of it. Ship-board morale could plummet if Yadon were to retire, sick, to his cabin. Worse still would be the effect if he were to collapse in plain sight. Oreneg's suggestion was a middle course. It was to keep the Sunnoad on the scene but to one side, in supposed close conference with the Corrector, and yes, thought Indan, on balance this seemed preferable.
She watched Oreneg help Yadon into the alcove. She could still mostly read their lips as they spoke.
From his now peripheral post Yadon peered around at what he could still glean from the banks of displays. "Are we underway?" he muttered.
Oreneg spoke to reassure: "Yes, sponndar, your order has been obeyed. We are once more underway."
An echo trailed from Yadon's lips, that sounded like: "Everlastingly underway."
"Pardon?" said the Corrector.
Weary was the Sunnoad's smile. "When you get to wear this cloak, Oreneg, you'll get my meaning..."
"I don't quite follow," said Oreneg Vadon stiffly. "But don't bother to explain. Relax, recuperate, put the recent shocks out of your mind... and tell me," he inconsistently added, "how did you do it?"
Yadon shook his head. "What can I say?" His voice even thinner than before, he remarked: "I gave Zel-yon the message."
"Gave whom, what message?"
"Zel-yon," sighed the Sunnoad patiently, "was the Thing. The skull-faced barrier that rose to stop us. What I skimmed out to meet. I gave it the message-crystal from Dynoom. How can a skull look horror-stricken - ?" He broke off.
"Regardless," said Oreneg Vadon, suppressing an irrational shudder, "it would seem - thanks to your action - that this 'Zel-yon' is on our side. 'Zel-yon'," he repeated.
"The name shan't be heard again, I expect," mumbled Yadon, and in further weakened gasps continued, "Spike on a graph, no more. Personalised for that densified moment. Brother, what a planet."
"Aha," hazarded Oreneg, "Terran half uppermost, eh?"
Yadon made a vague gesture of admission.
"Yes," continued Oreneg, his guess confirmed, "I've watched you for a long time, and I can usually discern which part of you is piloting. Sometimes the Olhoavan, sometimes the Londoner, eh? And on this occasion..."
At which point, noting a clutching motion Yadon made with his right hand, Oreneg fell silent. Yadon was chuckling fiercely now, to himself rather than to the other man:
"Just about to grab a shirt-front; but I'm not on Earth now."
"Feeling annoyed?" asked the Corrector. "You need not be. Maybe I have patronised you before, sponndar 80438, but I've since learned better."
"Thank you," said the Sunnoad, "for that recantation."
"I'll make it a full one," the Corrector continued. "As follows. Your Terran side deserves the credit for getting us through. I'm fairly sure of this because I don't suppose any Uranian could have achieved an understanding with something as weird as Zel-yon, even for an instant... You know, I would willingly learn from you. Anything you can say, about how you brought yourself to the point - "
"All right. It is not my intention to be mysterious. You want to know, and I want you to know, how to face the unknown and win. For your record, then, here goes," said the Sunnoad. "Looking back to the moments immediately before the encounter, I knew I had to be at my best, and with that in mind, I knew that confidence was essential. That meant, reminding myself that I do sometimes get stuff right. I therefore allowed a few positive thoughts to group themselves around a recent memory of things which I rightly did not do. Rightful refrainings! Namely when the Noad of Yr made that contact by relay, I could have needled him, could have asked (for example) whether Yr had paid compensation yet for squashing the crenth crop on Addra, or asked if he'd yet found many branches of subversion in Syoom to lop off. I did not say any suchlike things, and therefore, if it all goes sour, it won't be through any fault of mine."
"Is that all?" asked Oreneg, amazed. "Skate over the crisis, just like that?"
"Why expect more," countered Yadon, "from a Terran strategic screwball?"
"Oh, but I can see it cost you much, much more," the Corrector corrected himself.
"You don't want to know much more, believe me," Yadon said.
"You tell me just enough to whet my appetite - "
"Rest assured, I don't wish to spoil your education!" countered Yadon. "What's not to know is as vital as what's to know, and I want my successor not to be spoiled - "
"Stop," growled Oreneg.
Yadon acquiesced.
Oreneg went on, quite out of humour:
"Do not refer to me as your 'successor', please."
"Come off it! Who else is there?"
"No, you 'come off it', 80438. I have confessed to you before, sponndar, this weakness of mine, that I am only interested in attaining the sunnoadex if I can win it in a proper contest via the thuzolyrs. I do not care to be bequeathed it. I refuse to be nominated as 80439."
"Gently, gently," reproved the Sunnoad. "Take care lest your voice carry, and please have faith in the wave that bears you through life. Sense the countless branchings, the capillaries, call them what you will, surely numbering as many routes to your goal as the number of contests in any thuzolyr election, the which is just one process, just one among countless paths to your 'win'."

The ego-track of Neville Yeadon:

He's gone quiet, the Corrector, with a sort of reserved look about him, as though he hadn't expected to be convinced and now realizes he must get used to it - which means, by gosh, that my words have prevailed! Which in turn goes to show how far I am from Earth: the planet where you can seldom convince anyone of anything important because Terran opinions are like indelible character traits, hardly ever altering in the light of debate.
And what, pray, brought on that grumpy reflection precisely now? Isn't this rather a moment for feeling pleased? Doesn't it count as something, to have secured the wholehearted support of Oreneg Vadon?
For I can tell I have secured it - he's the kind who, when won over, stays won.
So, yes, this really is something salvaged, a resource to add to whatever else is left to me. Oreneg will make no further trouble about the succession. That is a considerable gain for me.
My attention, though, is now claimed by something else - the bleakest of reminders that what is lost is lost, forever - for I've just spotted a slim cloaked figure loitering at the opposite periphery of this distended flight deck:
Lemedet, my spouse. A sight I could well do without. Trouble is, I can't stop peering whenever I get an eyeful of her. And as I watch, she starts to move as though triggered, pulled forward by my eyes on her. She is making her way across the "cave". She's aiming straight at this alcove. I definitely don't want this. What, after all, could I have to say to her? Nothing! Go away, Lemedet, or you'll cause Oreneg to interfere - for I sense he is about to meddle in my heartbreak and I don't have any idea how to forestall him from opening his mouth -
"Sunnoad Yadon," he sure enough says, "you have done me a great favour, and I have just seen how I may do you one in return."
"How so?" is my almost snappish reply.
He carries smoothly on:
"It has occurred to me that you, in your Earthmind state, do not know what your wife has become."
"Explain! No mystification, for Skies' sake!"
"Lemedet," nods the Corrector, "is now a vovai."
I hear myself exclaim, "You expect me to know what that means?" But then I sigh raggedly as I correct myself: "Yes, all right, I suppose part of me does know."
"Relax, Yadon, no need to rummage for it, let me save you some time with a prompt: a reminder that it can happen, though rarely, that a Uranian is reincarnated twice, thus living three lives."
As soon as I hear this, sure enough the native knowledge is dredged up to surface in my Terran consciousness.
"Oh yes," I say, "I remember that it can happen 'once in a blue moon', like a man may grow a third set of teeth..."
"I wouldn't know about Terran teeth," smiles Oreneg. "But here the occasional third life is signalled in advance. In such cases, after the second death a lingering after-image of the person concerned tarries for a while, seen by the deceased's nearest and dearest, and by no one else. That's why we can't see Lemedet, whereas you can. Though probably not for much longer."
I watch, sadly, the slow approach of the figure we're talking about, while Oreneg watches me. Gently he adds: "Ah, you get the picture now."
I do get it. "She's dead," I mumble. "Has been dead for this entire voyage." It has suddenly become so clear that I almost sing it out - "In that clash above Yr, while she and I rode the Forokkadand, in that duel we fought against Rael Odiram on the Voorspoot, the Lance of Yr, it was then that she died."
"She died," echoed the Corrector, "but not abruptly; in your Terran tongue you have a useful phrase, and I suggest you use it now: Lemedet the vovai is petering out."
Well, bluntly, I'm glad she's dead, or dead-ish, because it's an alternative to the unbearable belief-trap that I was in, the conviction that she, very much alive, had rejected me out of boredom. So that's my selfish load off my selfish mind. But of course I can't leave my emotions in this ignoble state. Puts me in too bad a light. Besides, something's about to happen - why else is her ghost, or whatever it is, headed straight at me? My instinct as a leader is to come to a decision, but I don't know enough. Don't understand enough to impose order on my ideas. So my thought-train undergoes one bracketed interruption after another. (The mood in this control room seems to be good; morale has surged around me, because the fleet is advancing through the gap that Zel-yon has opened for us.) Is this vovai a mere recording or after-image, or is she aware? And her direction aimed at me - is this a sign of solicitude? (That old woman Elder of Beown seemed to think that nothing would get done on this trip - skies, was she wrong!) Ridiculous that I was the last to know of Lemedet's death - but that is how it works, so I hear, in the case of a vovai. Anyway, why not just be grateful? The fate-wave has granted me, against all expectation, the privilege of keeping my recollection of her as a still-fitting, still-trusted, untarnished golden episode in my past, for she left me because she's dead, not because she got bored, and what a relief that is. Closer she comes. I see her more translucently than before. She walks through the display-boards and through the monitors who stand in attendance on them, and continues in a straight line this way, towards me. See here, Nev old bean, this is looking a wee bit direful. I can bear it just as long as the ghost doesn't speak, but I'm no Heathcliff to be desirous of a chat with my Cathy post-mortem. That, for me, is too great a category-wrench. So what do I do? Wait helplessly for the impact? I'm the opposite of Joseph Cotton in that Third Man film, where he waits longingly at the end for Alida Valli and she walks past him without speaking: here, I should prefer the girl to walk silently past.
She looms, and I must stay still. No one else can see her and it would look extremely odd to my people if I were to flinch at nothing, though to me she is about to occult all else. I squeeze my eyes shut. Yet she's still visible to me as an outline of expanding murk -

Aware that he had slumped in the alcove, Sunnoad Nyav Yuhlm 80438, alias Yadon, made an effort to sit up straight. He was relieved to note that he was, for the moment, alone in his immediate space: Oreneg Vadon the Corrector had moved a few yards off, conferring, in apparently relaxed manner, with Indan Orliss and Captain Drark. Well, thought the Sunnoad, let them fly the fleet while he sorted himself out. Finally. This, he told himself, must be the end of being knocked to and fro between the Terran and the Uranian poles of his consciousness. It was high time he ceased to allow shocks to cause these evasions. Surely, by now, it was reasonable to hope that he could face life with a more mature balance of qualities. Since he must live on Ooranye he ought to steer through life with a Uranian awareness in charge, though with the added advantage that he could call for advice from his Terran mentality at need. Now, how ought he to regard his latest experience?
In a sketchy sort of way, and to the degree which he might reasonably expect to grasp, he understood what had happened.
He saw no sign of the vovai, and he would never see her again. Though she had not in any normal sense spoken, she had bidden a definite though wordless farewell - with a gift in the 'shape' of a thought-form, a quite abstract, invisible idea.
The number three. Or perhaps, "You too three."
Now, what could that mean? To what might the '3' refer? Briefly he considered whether Lemedet had been trying to tell him that he, too, was in line to have three lives.
Straightaway he rejected that notion. Though he was a combination of Terran and Uranian, he had always been quite sure, whenever the topic occurred to him, that he'd be Terran in his postmortem destiny: that after one and one only mundane life, no particular evidence existed to deny that he'd face the unknown without having further to wait - the same privilege that all Earthborn humans had.
In which case, what about that you too three? What could it possibly mean? The farewell thought-shape had had a comforting flavour - but of what?
Yadon sighed. If only he'd found the qualities of Dittri and of Lemedet fused in his two wives! The cuddlesome depth of the one, and the sparkle of the other - in combination they might have inspired him to greater insight; the one lot of mysteries would have helped solve the other, perhaps even to fathom the prophecy of the three. Ah well... so it goes. If he must henceforth walk a lonely road, he of all people had no right to complain. Transfixed by destiny, and backed by the goodwill of the peoples of Syoom, the wearer of the golden cloak must not expect further helpings of fortune.

CONTINUED IN

Uranian Throne Episode 25:

The Decision