The Muffin Migration 3 page

Bastrop nodded thoughtfully. Even his enfeebled voice, when he replied, was one that could still command fleets and minions. “We’ve come to find the Chauna. We will search until we do so.”

Tyrone’s lips tightened. His response was devoid of insolence, but firm. “At the risk of voicing a cliché, sir, money can’t buy everything. It can’t buy you people.”

“No, but it can damn well rent them for me,” Bastrop declared with knowing confidence.

“It can’t buy you a myth.”

“That remains to be seen. You are dismissed, Mr. Tyrone.”

The Shipmaster nodded imperceptibly and bowed out. Wakoma and Surat were waiting for him on the bridge.

“What did he say?” Surat was small and dynamic, like a puppy perpetually kept on a too‑short leash. She was also the finest navigator Tyrone had ever worked with. “Did you make your point?” Her expression was no less eager than Wakoma’s.

“I made it.” The Shipmaster brushed past them. “And he ignored it. Stand by for downslip.” He settled into place in front of his bank of readouts.

Crestfallen but hardly surprised, the two seconds in command parted, each to their own station. Tyrone’s words meant that more weeks, maybe months, of pointless wandering lay before them. Like the rest of the crew, they were beyond homesick. If this kept up, the home portion of their condition would begin to slough away for real.

“Maybe he’ll die.” Wakoma struggled to concentrate on his work. Like everyone else on board the Seraphim, he was an exceedingly competent professional.

“Not likely.” The tech seated alongside him kept his voice down. “There’s enough advanced medical technology on this ship to allow an amoeba to operate a torkue projector. With the medics caressing his carcass twenty‑four seven, I’ll bet the old bastard’s got another twenty years in him before he slides into complete senility.”

The ship plunged out of OTL to emerge in the vicinity of Delta Avinis. It was the forty‑third multiple‑star system the Seraphim had visited since leaving home. According to the elaborate Cosocagglia mythology, the Chauna was only to be encountered in multiple‑star systems. Why this should be, no one knew–not even the Cosocagglia themselves. It did not matter, Tyrone grumbled silently as coordinates were checked and confirmed, because there was no such thing as a Chauna. They might as well be searching single‑star systems, or dark wanderers, or the ghostly gray silverstone spheres known as stuttering molters.

“Something beautiful.” That was how the Cosocagglia legends identified the Chauna. A stellar phenomenon that was supposedly unsurpassingly beautiful. That was about all the fable had to say about it, too. Tyrone had seen the translations, laboriously performed by the xenologists who worked with nonhuman species, like the Cosocagglia. Where the Chauna was concerned the Cosocagglia could supply reams of adjectives but nothing in the way of specifics. A Chauna was no more, no less, than a beautiful thing.

They had encountered the phenomenon but rarely; a millennia ago, when the Cosocagglia had been in their prime: a youthful, expansionist, vital race. To see a Chauna, it was said, was to be blessed forever with knowledge of what real beauty was. Any individuals so consecrated by the vision were held up to be the most fortunate of travelers. But for all its supposed wonder, there remained in the crumbled lore of the species not a single description of the Chauna itself.

How exceptional could it be, anyway? Tyrone mused. Even if it existed, it was hardly likely to be a previously unobserved phenomenon. In the course of the past thousand years humankind had identified an enormous range of stellar objects and events, from X‑ray bursters to miniature ambling pulsars to Möbius black holes. Some were so esoteric, the always busy astrophysicists had not found time to name them. Some were even beautiful, like the tornadic nebulae and the gamma‑ray ropes. But none, according to the Cosocagglia who had been shown imagings of them, were Chauna.

Delta Avinis was an impressive, but not unprecedented, double‑star system. There were half a dozen planets, all sere, all lifeless. Their orbits were erratic, their gravitational grip on continued existence uncertain.

As soon as he was confident that downslip had been finalized and that the system held no navigational surprises, Tyrone rose from his seat, formally relinquished control of the ship to Wakoma and Surat, and announced that he was going on sleeptime. Two months ago such announcements by the Shipmaster had been greeted with unified protest. Now people simply muttered to themselves in his absence. Everyone was too tired to remonstrate loudly. Resigned to a seemingly interminable fate, they had not yet decided what to do about it, or what to do next. That eventuality might manifest itself at the next star system, the Shipmaster knew, or the one after that. He would keep things going for as long as he could. It was part of his job.

Surat waited for several minutes until she was sure her superior was gone before rising from her position. “I’m going to talk to Gibeon Bastrop.”

One of those who served under her looked up in alarm. “Are you sure that’s wise, Anna?”

The navigator shrugged slim shoulders. “What can the Old Man do–fire me? I’m not refusing to perform my duties. Maybe later, but not yet. Not today.” Such a refusal, they both knew, could result in a hearing board denying recompense to the perpetrator. Angry and frustrated as they were, no one aboard the Seraphim wanted to sacrifice two years’ accumulated pay in order to make a point.

No one challenged Surat as she made her way through the ship toward the Old Man’s quarters. The Seraphim was a sizable vessel, with a crew of several hundred. Everyone was too busy or too apathetic to confront her. They knew they had arrived at yet another system. There was no sense of excitement, no joy of discovery. Next week, the procedure would be repeated. As it had been now for nearly twenty‑four months. As it might be for another twenty‑four. No one wanted to think about it.

Well, Anna Surat was thinking about it, and she intended to give full voice to her thoughts.

There were guards posted outside Bastrop’s quarters. They had been there since Tyrone had mobilized them four months ago, when the first serious rumblings of discontent had begun to make themselves known among the crew. Everyone was aware that if Gibeon Bastrop died, his crazed quest across the cosmos would die with him, and they could all go home. No one had tried to hurry the process along–yet. Surat knew that they were hoping time and accumulating infirmities would do for them what none of them could do for themselves.

She was admitted without having to wait. Depending on his mood and health, Gibeon Bastrop liked company. Long journeys in Void were lonely matters at best.

She found him seated before his dog. At the moment, the obedient sphere was taking dictation. Bastrop pivoted his motile to greet her. As he did so he essayed the shadow of a smile. Once, that expression had charmed millions. Now it was all the Old Man could do to induce the muscles in his face to comply with the simple physical demand.

“You’re looking well today, sir.” The polite mantra fooled neither of them.

Bastrop waved the dog away. It drifted off to sulk in a corner, powering down as it did so. “I’m always up for a visit from an attractive woman, Anna Surat. To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?”

When was the last time he had a woman? she found herself wondering perversely. Does he even remember what it was like? So old–he was so old! If not for the dozens of doctors and billions of credits at his beck and call, he would have been dead thirty or forty years ago. Instead, he had bought himself an extra lifetime. And for what? So he could spend it like this, visibly decomposing in an expensive hospice motile that every month had to take over more and more of his own failing bodily functions? She resolved never to allow herself to be placed in such a situation. Not that she really needed to worry about it. She was about a hundred billion short of qualifying for that level of care.

“Mr. Bastrop, I know that Shipmaster Tyrone has been to see you…”

At her opening words his expression fell. His voice dropped to a raspy whisper. “Oh. That again. I was hoping…” His words trailed away.

Hoping what? she wondered. That I was coming for the pleasure of your selfish, semi‑senile company? She forced herself to smile engagingly, wondering even as she did so if he was capable of responding to such gestures.

“You can’t subject us to this any longer, Mr. Bastrop. It isn’t reasonable. It isn’t fair.”

From the depths of memory the parchment‑like substance that formed his face twisted into a semblance of a grin. “The search for beauty is never reasonable or fair, my dear. Being beautiful yourself, you should know that.”

Damn him, she cursed silently. She had been determined that nothing the aged industrialist did was going to affect her. But even the shadow of that smile was capable of lighting something within her. It was no comfort to know that it had done likewise to thousands who had been subjected to it before her.

“You can’t distract me with words, sir.”

“Pity.” He turned slightly away from her. “There was a time when I could have done so with a simple phrase. Long ago, that was.”

Feeling sympathy in spite of herself, she advanced to rest a hand on his shoulder. Beneath the synsilk lay very little flesh and much narrow bone. The feel of it made her want to pull her hand away, but she did not.

“You are unloved here, sir. I realize you know that, and don’t care. I can’t change that. Not even you can change that.” Her words came a little faster. “But by turning for home now you can regain their respect! You can finish this in a way that will be remembered with pride instead of animosity.”

He turned back toward her. Not by pivoting the chair this time, but by making an actual uncommon physical effort to rotate the upper portion of his remaining body. “And what about you, Anna Surat? Do you hate me for what I’ve done?”

“No, Mr. Bastrop. I don’t hate you. I just want to go home. I have a husband, you know. At least, I hope I still have a husband.”

“You are a starship navigator. He knew what he was getting into when he married you. Everyone knows. I’ve been married myself, so even if you think otherwise, I do understand. Outlived most of them.” He shook his head slowly. “They were all comely, in their own way. But they were not the Chauna.”

Surat knew she was out of line in speaking this way to her admittedly generous if stubborn employer, but the time for overindulgence was past. “ Nothing is the Chauna, Mr. Bastrop! They say that you were once the smartest man in the galaxy. What happened to that person? Did he–?”

“Get senile?” Gibeon Bastrop chuckled. “I don’t think so–but then if I was, I wouldn’t know it, would I? I don’t think the pursuit of ultimate beauty stamps me as mad, Anna. I think it marks me as sane. Saner than most, I should say. Ultimately, what else is there but beauty? Beauty of discovery, beauty of thought, beauty of soul. It’s one thing I’ve never been able to buy, navigator. Now it is all I want. The last thing I want. No other human being has seen it. We will be the first.”

“Many myths are highly attractive, Mr. Bastrop. Seductive, even. But in the end they’re only myths. Isn’t the loveliness of legend enough? Can’t you leave it at that?”

“Maybe the Chauna is a world, Anna Surat. Have you thought of that?” Excitement danced in eyes that had been thrice replaced. “A world so wonderful even the Cosocagglia have no words for it. Can you imagine the reaction such a discovery would trigger? A world even more captivating than Earth, empty and waiting for us. Or maybe it’s a gas giant with multiple rings that glow like gold in the light of triple suns. But most likely it’s something we cannot imagine.”

“Neither can the Cosocagglia,” she responded, “because it doesn’t exist. Anything of absolute beauty has to be imaginary, or it ceases to be exceptional and becomes just one more item in the always expanding stellar pantheon.”

He started to reply, stopped, and began to wheeze softly. She ought to call somebody, she knew. She ought to summon help. Instead, loathing her deliberate inaction, she stood and watched, silent and hopeful. No such luck. The hospice motile did things with tubes and probes, and in less than a couple of minutes the Old Man was breathing normally again. Shallow, but normal.

“That was unpleasant.” His eyes met hers. “You really think I’m being unreasonable, Anna Surat? To want, after more than a century and a half, this one last thing? To view beauty that no one else has seen?”

Her attitude softened. He was working his wiles on her, she knew. A hundred years of practice gives a man certain skills. But she could only be manipulated to a limited degree.

“No, Mr. Bastrop. It’s not unreasonable to want such a thing. But it is unreasonable to want to see that which does not exist. If you would only–”

A voice entered the room via an unseen synthetic orifice. “Mr. Gibeon Bastrop. Mr. Gibeon Bastrop, sir!” She recognized Tyrone’s commanding tones. What was he doing awake? Sleeptime was precious to every crewmember, from the lowliest to the Shipmaster. What had wrenched him back to alertness? “Are you awake?”

She responded for him. “Yes, he’s awake.”

“Navigator Surat? What are you…? Never mind. Mr. Bastrop, I’m rotating the Seraphim on her axis. Look to your port and viewers.”

“Why?” The transformation that abruptly overcame the Old Man was astonishing to behold. Suddenly he looked barely a hundred. “What’s happening?”

“Something–we’re not sure, sir. An energetic trans‑mutation of a level–Berkowski and her people are working on an analysis, but the field changes and fluctuations are–”

The Shipmaster broke off. Perhaps he was too busy to continue. Or perhaps he was simply, like everyone else on board the Seraphim who was at that moment in a position to view the event, too overwhelmed to continue.

The enormous expanse of the two‑story‑high port polarized automatically as the twin suns of Delta Avinis revolved into view. Nearby, one of the dead planets that orbited the twin stars took a shadowed, heavily cratered bite out of Void. Anna wondered at the Shipmaster’s words until the second, lesser sun slowly hove into view. Then she pointed and her lips moved slowly.

“Oh! Look at it. Just look at it!”

Gibeon Bastrop had displaced the hoverchair forward until it could no longer advance. It was right up against the port, pressing against the thick transparency. Had Bastrop been able to continue, the navigator had no doubt he would have done so, right out into the vacuum of space itself.

“Look at what, Anna Surat? At that? At the Chauna?”

Something had materialized between the two suns. Hitherto invisible, the extraordinary ephemeral shape was rapidly becoming visible as it drew energy from the nearest star. One gigantic jet of roiling plasma after another burst from the surface of the smaller sun to be drawn across many AUs into the larger. Each jet was several hundred times the diameter of the Earth, infinitely longer, with an internal temperature rated in the thousands of degrees Celsius.

And each time a violent, spasming plasma jet erupted between the two stars, a portion of it illuminated the Chauna. The legend of the Cosocagglia was not a wandering planet, or a lost ship of profound dimensions, or a streak of natural phenomena as yet unidentified by science. It was at once something less, and much, much more.

“My God,” Anna Surat whispered in awe, “it’s alive!”

There were two wings, each ablaze with lambent energies of wavelengths as yet unidentified. They rippled and flamed across the firmament, faint but unmistakable, like bands of energized nebulae ripped loose from their primary cloud. Nearby stars were clearly visible through them, but they were substantial enough to hold color. With each massive emission from the smaller star, the Chauna partook a little of the enormous energies that were passing between the two suns. The central portion of the event–creature? spirit?–was sleek and slightly less pellucid than the wings. No other features were visible: no limbs, no face, no projections of any kind. No other features were necessary.

“It looks,” an awestruck Anna observed almost inaudibly, “like a butterfly. But what’s going on? What is it doing?” She had to strain to make out the Old Man’s reply.

“It’s feeding, Anna. Though it’s millions of kilometers across, it’s too fragile a structure to pull energy from a star itself. So it waits for one star to move near enough to another, for all that great deep gravity to do the job for it. When it senses what’s going to happen, it places itself between the two and filters what it needs from the fleeting eruptions of plasma, like a great whale feeding on plankton. Neutrinos, cosmic rays, charged particles–who knows what it ingests and what it ignores? How would you, how could you possibly study such an entity? We can only watch and marvel. In the process, it apparently acquires throughout the length and breadth of its otherwise imperceptible substance a little ancillary coloration.”

“A little!” The tenuous but vast extent of the Chauna was already greater than both suns. She continued to stare–what else could one do?–even as the Seraphim ’s instruments methodically registered the immense strength of the repeated solar outbursts while her screens fought to shield her frail, vulnerable, minuscule organic occupants from the effects of all that energy being blasted into space.

On other worlds, instruments would register the pulsar‑like outburst and place it in the accepted category of celestial disturbances. They would not note the presence of a third object drawing upon a tiny portion of the expelled energies. Though of unimaginable size, that object was far too ephemeral to be perceived by distant instruments.

The feeding of the Chauna was an infrequent event, or it would have been noticed before. The Cosocagglia had noticed it, in their thousands of years of space‑faring. Now it was, at last, the turn of humans to do so. The myth had been made real. And it was a discovery that could be shared and supported. The Seraphim ’s battery of recorders would see to that.

When those incredibly attenuated sun‑sized wings moved, there was a collective gasp among the crew of the witnessing vessel. Nothing like a Chauna had ever been seen before, and nothing like a Chauna in motion had ever been imagined. It was beyond imagining, past belief, a magnificent violation of established astrophysical doctrine. With that movement, no one questioned any longer if the phenomenon was alive. It was visible for another minute or two, a colossal undulation of energized color rippling against the starfield, a million billion times vaster than any aurora. Then it was gone, the life‑sustaining solar energy it had assimilated dispersed throughout its incomprehensibly vast incorporeality.

For a long time the navigator stood staring out the lofty port, aware she had been witness to one of the greatest sights–if not the greatest sight–the galaxy had yet placed before a captivated humankind. Then she was reminded that her hand was still resting on the sharp shoulder of the man who had made it possible for her to experience the inconceivable wonder. The man who had insisted it was real, that it existed, and that if they persisted long enough and looked hard enough, the tiny wandering creatures called humans might actually be able to descry such a marvel. Who had insisted despite the protests and disapproval of his fellows.

Suddenly she understood a little of what had made Gibeon Bastrop the singular individual he was. Suddenly she understood something of the source of his remarkable ability and drive and power. It made her wish she could have known the man, and not simply the pitifully weakened and aged husk that presently occupied the motile.

“You were right, Mr. Bastrop. You were right all along. You and the Cosocagglia. And everyone else was wrong. Mr. Bastrop?” Her hand slid gently along the bony shoulder until it made contact with the leathery neck. The head reacted by falling forward, stopping only when the strong chin made contact with the all‑but‑exposed sternum. The neck did not pulse against her hand. When she shifted it, no air moved from the open mouth against her palm. She drew her hand back slowly.

“You were right,” she repeated. “It was beautiful. As beautiful as you had hoped.

“And so were you.”

At Sea

The juxtaposition of entirely different story ideas is one of the joys of writing. This is especially true of science fiction and fantasy, wherein the writer has access to absolutely anything that can be conjured, no matter how seemingly unrelated. The only rule is that the final result has to make sense as a story. You can mix together all manner of ingredients, but the result has to be something palatable to the mind.

Grounding fantasy in the real world is always fun. You have the opportunity to upset all manner of perceptual applecarts. If your concept works well, you also enjoy the pleasure of surprising the reader. Sometimes the most disparate notions will come together to produce a viable tale. Once the story is plotted and the rough draft completed, the writer then has the fun of sprinkling it with details, like adding lace and sequins to a dress. The design of women’s earrings, for example, is not something I often find myself having to ponder when putting in those little touches that add verisimilitude to a fantasy. Nor are the minutiae of drug‑running, commercial fishing, and Scandinavian mythology.

Especially not in the same story…

“Hoy, Cruz–there are five horses on the stern!”

Sandino was a big man with a squinched puss and huge arms the color of aged bratwurst. Right now his expression was slowly subsiding into his face, like a backstreet into a Florida sinkhole, swallowing his features whole. It was left to his voice, which had the consistency of toxic cheese‑whip, to convey his confusion.

Although he was onboard a modern longline fishing boat, Cruz did not know much about fishing. This did not matter, because he did not care much about fishing. Boats, however, were something else. Boats could go where planes and cars could not. As far as fishing boats were concerned, the best thing about them was that they stank. The big swordfish boat reeked of blood, guts, fish oil, and sea bottom. This made it perfect for Cruz’s purpose. This was his ninth run on the Mary Anne, and there was no reason to believe it would be any less successful than the previous eight. No one suspected she carried any cargo beyond the limp mass of dead billfish in her hold. No one suspected that one particular dead swordfish contained twenty million dollars’ worth of pure top‑grade Bolivian cocaine that did not normally form part of a billfish’s diet. Compressed and packed into dozens of waterproof, odor‑proof, break‑proof packages, this highly inhalable product of the Andean hinterland fit neatly into the honored fish’s hollowed‑out body cavity.

Cruz did know enough to realize that the presence of five horses on the stern of the Mary Anne, 120 miles out from Providence, Rhode Island, was not in accord with normal commercial fishing procedure. Even if the horses had been dumped at sea, they could not have climbed aboard. Since he had not heard the metallic bang‑and‑rattle of the big winch that was used to haul in the longlines, they could not somehow have been lifted aboard.

It occurred to Cruz that Sandino might be enjoying a joke at his expense. A single hard stare was enough to put that possibility to rest. There was a lot of meat on Sandino, but not much of it was gray matter. Nor was it the sort of gag that Truque or Weatherford would concoct. Lowenstein–now, he was different. The computer and communications expert was clever. Cruz’s brows furrowed. Too clever to come up with a dumb line about horses on the stern.

“I don’t have time for stupid shit now, Sandino. We’ll be having to look out for Coast Guard soon.”

Cruz turned back to the thick port glass that looked out over the foredeck of the Mary Anne. Sullen and silent as they always were in the presence of their unwanted passengers, the crew of the fishing boat went about the business of securing their vessel for the night. They didn’t like Cruz and his unpleasant companions; did not like the way they comported themselves while onboard. Didn’t like the way they hectored and taunted Captain Red and his son David. Did not like the way they acted as if they owned the Mary Anne. Why the captain tolerated their presence on so many trips even his closest friends did not know. But when asked about it, Red just stared off into the distance and mumbled something about old obligations, and told the questioners to carry on. Because they loved Red, and because he always found swordfish and made them money, the crew ground their teeth and held their peace.

“Nice cloud cover,” Cruz declared conversationally to Gunnar “Red” Larson as he peered up at the night sky. “Fog would be better.”

“For you. Not for me.” Larson kept his gnarled fisherman’s hands on the ship’s wheel and his eyes straight ahead. He strove to focus only on his instruments: the radar, the GPS, the depth finder, and the weather scan. Most of the devices arrayed across the broad, glowing console he could ignore, knowing as he did the way back to the Mary Anne ’s home berth the way a puffin knows its flight path back to the North Sea cliffs of its birth. He hated the wiry, soft‑talking son‑of‑a‑bitch standing next to him. Hated the man’s face, his manner, his clothing, the smelly Indonesian clove cigarettes he chain‑smoked, and his friends. Most of all, he hated Cruz’s business.

No, he told himself as the ulcer‑sparked pain that would not go away spasmed his gut and made him wince imperceptibly. There was one more thing he hated: the old gambling debt that had put him in bondage to Cruz more than six years ago. The debt he could not seem to satisfy. The debt from which he had begun to fear he would never emerge.

Three years ago he had stumbled drunkenly out of Portuga’s Bar and Grill on Sixth Street, his arm around David’s shoulder, and on a quiet night in the middle of the river park, had broken down and confessed all to his only son. David, fine young college‑educated boy that he was, had listened in stony but sympathetic silence while he waited for his tough‑as‑hooks father to stop sobbing. Then he had proposed that Red immediately repeat the story to the police. The old man had violently demurred. He knew people like Cruz, he explained. Had known them most of his life. Lock up Cruz and his minions, and others of his filthy kind would take vengeance. Not out of any love for Cruz, who after all was a sly and successful competitor, but as a warning to others. To keep their mouths shut. To pay their debts.

Besides, old man Larson had mumbled, it was only one or two trips a year. Just one or two trips. Meet the courier boat in the open Atlantic, transfer the noisome illegal cargo, stuff it in a conscripted sacrificial swordfish, and it was done. No violence, no confrontations. At the wharf, that one fish would be purchased by a certain buyer from New York, and that was the end of it. Year after year. Soon the debt would be paid, he had assured a dubious David. Soon they would be free of Cruz and his grinning, scornful face. Soon, soon…

Was soon, Red Larson reflected as he stared resolutely out the port at his sulking crew and the gathering night, ever to come?

“Fog is better for you,” he repeated. “Not for me. I am responsible for the boat.”

Puffing on one of his sweet, execrable cigarettes, Cruz looked away and tittered. “‘Horses on the stern.’ You’d think Lowenstein, that squeaky little nerd asshole, could come up with something better.”

Unconsciously Larson looked away from the black water athwart the bow and over at his noxious passenger. “What the devil are you talking about?”

“I know what he is talking about. The brigand is insulting our mounts.”

Uttered in a most distinctively steely feminine voice, the observation was bizarre enough. Turning simultaneously there on the bridge of the Mary Anne, the sight that Cruz and his sulky captive captain beheld was stranger still. But not, a captivated Cruz reflected, in any way unpleasant. So taken was he by the unexpected vision that he barely gave a thought to the notion that it might somehow be connected to the putative presence of multiple horses on the stern.

Crowding onto the bridge were five of the most simply stunning, utterly gorgeous women Cruz or Larson or Nick Panopolous, who was standing with his mouth open at the far side of the chart table, had ever seen. All of them were blond. Startlingly blond, except for one scintillating redhead, and all had eyes of electric blue, save for two who flashed green, the redhead among them. Variously attired, none was dressed for open‑ocean deep‑sea fishing. Common to all of them, though visible more on some than on others, was scarlet underwear. One wore a severe off‑the‑shoulder black dress suitable for performance with a symphony orchestra. She was carrying a violin case. Despite this, her appearance was no more incongruous than that of her four companions. Lost in the rear of the crowd, though not unhappily so, was a visibly dazzled David Larson.