to get out of there, to complete the mission, to make her sacrifice worthwhile.
So I got.
Pael and I finished the job at the outer hull of the Ghost cruiser.
Stripping the hides turned out to be as easy as Jeru had described. Fitting together the Planck-zero sheets was simple too-you just line them up and seal them with a thumb. I got on with that, sewing the hides together into a sail, while Pael worked on a rigging of lengths of rope, all fixed to a deck panel from the wreck of the yacht. He was fast and efficient: Pael, after all, came from a world where everybody goes solar sailing on their vacations.
We worked steadily, for hours.
I ignored the varying aches and chafes, the increasing pain in my head and chest and stomach, the throbbing of a broken arm that hadn’t healed, the agony of cracked bones in my foot. And we didn’t talk about anything but the task in hand. Pael didn’t ask what had become of Jeru, not once; it was as if he had anticipated the commissary’s fate.
We were undisturbed by the Ghosts through all of this.
I tried not to think about whatever emotions churned within those silvered carapaces, what despairing debates might chatter on invisible wavelengths. I was, after all, trying to complete a mission. And I had been exhausted even before I got back to Pael. I just kept going, ignoring my fatigue, focusing on the task.
I was surprised to find it was done.
We had made a sail hundreds of meters across, stitched together from the invisibly thin immature Ghost hide. It was roughly circular, and it was connected by a dozen lengths of fine rope to struts on the panel we had wrenched out of the wreck. The sail lay across space, languid ripples crossing its glimmering surface.
Pael showed me how to work the thing. “Pull this rope, or this…” the great patchwork sail twitched in response to his commands. “I’ve set it so you shouldn’t have to try anything fancy, like tacking. The boat will just sail out, hopefully, to the cordon perimeter. If you need to lose the sail, just cut the ropes.”
I was taking in all this automatically. It made sense for both of us to know how to operate our little yacht.
But then I started to pick up the subtext of what he was saying.
Before I knew what he was doing he had shoved me onto the deck panel, and pushed it away from the Ghost ship. His strength was surprising.
I watched him recede. He clung wistfully to a bit of tangle. I couldn’t summon the strength to figure out a way to cross the widening gap. But my suit could read his, as clear as day.
“Where I grew up, the sky was full of sails…”
“Why, Academician?”
“You will go further and faster without my mass to haul. And besides-our lives are short enough; we should preserve the young. Don’t you think?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. Pael was much more valuable than I was; I was the one who should have been left behind. He had shamed himself.
Complex glyphs criss-crossed his suit. “Keep out of the direct sunlight. It is growing more intense, of course. That will help you…”
And then he ducked out of sight, back into the tangle. The Ghost ship was receding now, closing over into its vast egg shape, the detail of the tangle becoming lost to my blurred vision.
The sail above me slowly billowed, filling up with the light of the brightening sun. Pael had designed his improvised craft well; the rigging lines were all taut, and I could see no rips or creases in the silvery fabric.
I clung to my bit of decking and sought shade.
Twelve hours later, I reached an invisible radius where the tactical beacon in my pocket started to howl with a whine that filled my headset. My suit’s auxiliary systems cut in and I found myself breathing fresh air.
A little after that, a set of lights ducked out of the streaming lanes of the fleet, and plunged toward me, growing brighter. At last it resolved into a golden bullet shape adorned with a blue-green tetrahedron, the sigil of free humanity. It was a supply ship calledThe Dominance of Primates.
And a little afterthat, as a Ghost fleet fled their fortress, the star exploded.
As soon as I had completed my formal report to the ship’s commissary-and I was able to check out of theDominance’s sick bay-I asked to see the captain.
I walked up to the bridge. My story had got around, and the various med patches I sported added to my heroic mythos. So I had to run the gauntlet of the crew-“You’re supposed to be dead, I impounded your back pay and slept with your mother already”-and was greeted by what seems to be the universal gesture of recognition of one tar to another, the clenched fist pumping up and down around an imaginary penis.
But anything more respectful just wouldn’t feel normal.
The captain turned out to be a grizzled veteran type with a vast laser burn scar on one cheek. She reminded me of First Officer Till.
I told her I wanted to return to active duty as soon as my health allowed.
She looked me up and down. “Are you sure, tar? You have a lot of options. Young as you are, you’ve made your contribution to the Expansion. You can go home.”
“Sir, and do what?”
She shrugged. “Farm. Mine. Raise babies. Whatever earthworms do. Or you can join the Commission for Historical Truth.”
“Me, a commissary?”
“You’ve been there, tar. You’ve been in among the Ghosts, and come out again-with a bit of intelligence more important than anything the Commission has come up with in fifty years. Are yousure you want to face action again?”
I thought it over.
I remembered how Jeru and Pael had argued. It had been an unwelcome perspective, for me. I was in a war that had nothing to do with me, trapped by what Jeru had called the logic of history. But then, I bet that’s been true of most of humanity through our long and bloody history. All you can do is live your life, and grasp your moment in the light-and stand by your comrades.
A farmer-me? And I could never be smart enough for the Commission. No, I had no doubts.
“A brief life burns brightly, sir.”
Lethe, the captain looked like she had a lump in her throat. “Do I take that as a yes, tar?”
I stood straight, ignoring the twinges of my injuries. “Yes,sir! ”
Oracle - Greg Egan
