She sighed, yielding to his voice, the hypnotic compulsion of the swirling colors. A woman in love. One in whom restraints had been shattered by the impact of raw emotion and violent action. Spurs which had driven her from her paranoid fears to gain a new understanding. To reveal an unexpected beauty.
Why had she mentioned Kalin?
No, not Kalin, the facsimile in the casket. Only he had melded the two into one, demonstrating his weakness, his need. Things the Cyclan had used with calculated intent.
Yet was scarlet hair so important? Translucent skin? Emerald eyes? Long ago the woman who had worn that shape had taught him that outer appearance held little value. That the inner self transcended the superficial gloss of outer beauty. Would the facsimile have stood beside him? Worked for him? Saved him as Kalin had done?
Dumarest knew the answer as he knew it was long past time to bury the ghost which had haunted him for so long. The woman who had been a companion he would never forget had worn a lovely shell. The product of her use of the affinity twin, the secret of which she had passed to him at the end. But no shell could ever restore the woman who had worn it. Nothing ever replace the dust she had become. The dead should be left to rest. Ghosts should not be mourned when the living had so much to give.
Dumarest looked at Nadine where she lay at his side. Death had come too close and he had turned to her driven by a basic need. She had responded, asking no questions, making no demands. Guessing his trauma. Sensing his pain at rejection. Knowing his need of reassurance, of relief. Calming him when, again in nightmare, he had drifted in the void, stomach knotted with helpless fear, living only because he had reacted without fear or hesitation.
Subconsciously taking a gamble in which a quick end was balanced against potential survival. A gamble he had won as he had won so many others. Yet the biggest was still to come.
He watched a swirl of scarlet seeing, not the flame of lustrous hair, but the color of a hated robe. Red, the hue of blood as brown was the color of soil. The Cyclan and the Church. Two great organizations which spanned the galaxy. Both wanting to change human nature, one by appealing to reason the other by appealing to belief. The head against the heart. Logic against emotion. Reason against faith. Two sides of a single coin, each offering their promise of paradise.
Both determined to deny the existence of Earth.
Why?
'Earl?' Nadine sat upright on the bunk, shimmering hues gracing the smooth contours of her naked flesh. 'Relax, darling. You need to be calm and rest.'
Good advice he couldn't take. He rose, too restless to linger at her side and she watched as he dressed, uneasily conscious of a subtle alteration in his stance and manner. The blotches on his face would fade, but it was if their creation had given birth to something she found almost frightening.
'Earl, is something wrong?'
'No.' He added, 'We'll be arriving soon. There are things I need to do.'
'Soon?' She thought he was confused. 'We won't arrive for days yet. Niall told me when I asked.'
'That was before he had the true coordinates. We'll arrive in a few hours. I didn't trust Chapman,' Dumarest explained. 'Events proved me right. He would have sold me out for the sake of salvage.'
'So you kept the true coordinates to yourself. How did Chapman take it?'
'He didn't like it.'
'He wouldn't. He is of the Kaldari,' she warned. 'He might want to take revenge. You hurt his pride.'
'To hell with his pride. He'll take us to Earth!'
Always on a raid there was doubt as to the outcome, but this time, if legend held truth, the rewards would be enormous. A heady thought and one Chapman relished as he sat in his chair and watched the glowing lights on his panels. For him the siren lure of space held small danger. Yet some journeys could last too long.
For Dumarest it had lasted most of his life. A long, frustrating search for a world most believed didn't exist. A journey which had taken him too often to the edge of death. One almost ended and he sat in the cabin, facing the screens, conscious of the tension riding within him.
Nadine sensed it as she sat beside him, near, but not touching. This was a time he needed to be alone.
'Getting close.' The navigator's voice betrayed his tension. 'Field ready to collapse. Ready? Now!'
The blue cocoon surrounding the vessel died. There was a brief flicker as the scanners replaced the computer analogues and relayed the direct image of what lay outside.
'No!' Nadine drew in her breath. 'It can't be!'
The screens showed nothing, but the vista of space.
'I knew it!' Chapman snarled his disgust. 'It was all a damned lie! Earth doesn't exist and this proves it. We've crossed half the galaxy to find it's only a myth. The salvage lost. The reward. Those abandoned on Fionnula. All for nothing. There's no Earth. No planet of treasure. We've been used. Taken for fools!'
Dumarest said, sharply, 'You can't lose what you never had so stop whining about the salvage. There's nothing out there because you didn't do your job.'
'What the hell are you talking about?'
'You were supposed to take us to the new coordinates I gave you. Obviously you haven't. Why? Taking your revenge because I didn't trust you?' His voice thickened with anger. 'If you want revenge you can have it – and so can I!'
'Earl! Don't!' Nadine added, quickly, 'There has to be a mistake of some kind.'
'The mistake was in believing a legend.' Chapman had calmed, recognizing the strength of Dumarest's anger. He gestured at the screens. 'There's the truth. Take a good look at it.' He added, bitterly, 'It's cost enough.'
In blood and pain and the threat of extinction. The loss of a fortune. In mockery, hatred, betrayal, and death which had come too close. Dumarest knew too well what the price had been.
Niall said, quietly, 'I know how you must be feeling, Earl. You're disappointed and think yourself cheated and it's never pleasant to be wrong. But don't blame the captain. He went where I told him and you supplied the coordinates. This is where they guided us.'
The golden figures of Earth – a lie?
It was something Dumarest didn't want to believe. He had searched too long to be able to calmly accept that it had all been for nothing. He knew Earth existed. He was positive the coordinates had been genuine. Why had they found nothing but empty space?
Nadine said, urgently, 'Believe them, Earl. It's exactly as they say.'
The truth as she read it. But there had to be something more. Dumarest recalled a clue won from the past.
'Look for patterns,' he ordered. 'Try to find constellations which fit designs.' He quoted the mnemonic. 'The Ram, the Bull, the Heavenly Twins, and next the Crab the Lion shines the Virgin and the Scales. The Scorpion, Archer, and Sea Goat, the man who holds the Watering Pot, the Fish with shining scales.'
Nadine didn't understand. 'Earl?'
'The signs of the Zodiac,' he explained. 'As seen from Earth the night sky held constellations set in a ring of designs. In order they are Ram, Bull, Twins, Crab, Lion, Virgin, Scales, Scorpion, Archer, Goat, Pot, Fish. Twelve of them. They should be unmistakable.'
Signposts in the sky standing like a ring of sentinels about Earth. Guardians now absent.
'Maybe they didn't look like what you say,' suggested Badwasi. Impatient to find the promised world he had joined the others. 'Can you remember them, Earl? You would have seen them when young. Animals, people, things. Stars shaped into images would be hard to forget?'
There had been no images. Dumarest thought back, remembering, seeing the sky as he had when a boy. An expanse of gleaming stars streaked by the ribbon of the galactic lens, dominated at times by the swollen orb of the moon. There had been no pictures of men and women, of artifacts and creatures suspended in the heavens.
'Try to remember,' urged Badwasi. 'If we can see them then this is where Earth used to be. If not then we are in the wrong place.'
'Used to be,' mused Niall. 'That's a possibility. Maybe it has moved. The galaxy is rotating,' explained the navigator. 'The drift isn't fast but it's there and has to be taken into account. How old were the coordinates you gave me? A thousand years? Five?'
'I don't know,' admitted Dumarest. 'But they had to be very old.'
'Which means we are at a point in space where Earth used to be a long time ago. A few thousand years isn't
