Though All the Mountains Lie Between
a story by
Jeffrey A. Carver
*****
First published in Science Fiction Times
and the anthology Dragons of Darkness, ed. by Orson Scott Card
"Though All the Mountains Lie Between"
Copyright (c) 1980 by Jeffrey A. Carver
A Starstream Publications Short Story
Discover other ebooks by Jeffrey A. Carver at
https://www.starrigger.net/ebooks.htm/
*****
Though All the Mountains Lie Between
. . . In those days before the founding of the Guild, riggers lived with constant insecurity. Shrewd masters controlled them—often with subtle means, but controlled them nevertheless; and riggers then rarely supported one another against abusive masters. But if they suffered in the normal world, they found freedom in the net, in the dream by which they steered their ships, which their masters could never hope to share. The lucky rigger found a way to carry that freedom out of the net, to the other side of life . . .
—Jona'Jon'
Gazing Into Yesteryear
for ages 7-11
The starship moved quietly through the Flux, though its motion was invisible from the bridge, where Jael stood facing Mogurn. Only instruments told her of the ship's motion; she would see it for herself, more clearly, when she entered the rigger-net. She waited anxiously.
Mogurn's eyes were dark and stern. With his hands folded across his heavy chest, he studied her with those eyes, kept her frozen. "All right, Jael," he said, releasing her from his gaze at last. He glanced one final time over the thicket of instrumentation in the nose of the bridge, and then he indicated the rigger-station with a tilt of his head. "Go ahead and take the net," he said. "Don't tire yourself. " With that he turned away, his robelike tunic spinning in folds, and he strode from the bridge. The door darkened to opacity behind him, leaving Jael alone in the ship's small control cell.
He doesn't trust me, she thought nervously, staring after Mogurn. Well, I don't care. She turned and made another brief inspection of the console, even though Mogurn had already done that with her, and then she climbed into the rigger-station, a couch recessed in a tight alcove on the starboard side of the bridge. She stretched out and relaxed gradually, staring at several mirrored monitors overhead as she tried to forget about Mogurn and think instead of the ship, of the Flux. She shut her eyes and let her neck settle against the neural contacts in the couch.
Her senses darkened and exploded outward into the rigger-net, outward from the ship, into the Flux. Into the streams of space. Jael opened her eyes to a vast and clear purplish sky; she floated like a seed high over a strangely glowing blue- and green-mottled landscape. The net glittered faintly around her, binding her to the invisible ghost of a spaceship which it was her duty to guide. She spread her arms, and in the net her arms billowed outward as great wings, filling with a rising updraft of wind. Jael (and the ship) rose, soaring.
The landscape beneath her was an odd matrix of color, reflecting her mood. It was her own image, painted by her mind on the flowing canvas of the Flux, on the currents which carried her and her ship through the curved passageways of space among the stars, bypassing the endless lightyears of normal space. The currents and tides of the Flux were objectively real, but it was her imagination, her thoughts and fantasies transmuted through the rigger-net, that detailed the realm through which she navigated.
Her feelings were quiet, now, and she flew silently through empty skies, daydreaming. She felt mildly depressed, neither happy nor actively unhappy, and she flew slowly, not even attempting to seek out faster wind currents. Hours went by, and she was content to float, to drift. Occasionally the landscape below shimmered and flared in response to tremors within her, aches which she kept unnamed. Certain longings she preferred not to allow expression; but whether she willed it or not, the landscape flared—now more and now less, sometimes with unfocused green fire and sapphire sparkles and sometimes with tiny billowing bloody plumes. The ache was always there within her and the landscape always responded to it.
She wished she could change the image somehow, drift away and leave the ache behind.
The com-signal chimed softly in her consciousness, and Mogurn's voice broke into her solitude. Jael, what's wrong? The feedback out here looks poor.
The landscape turned to brimstone and filled the sky with burning haze. She tried to control it, to cover her anger. Nothing's wrong, she answered. Everything's fine.
Are you sure? Mogurn's voice was low, disapproving. She envisioned him on the bridge, squinting anxiously, leering at her still form in the rigger-station. His voice was bodiless in the net, but physically he must be very near. She countered an urge to avoid him by retreating to the extremities of the net.
I'm fine, she said. The image was disintegrating, creating a potentially dangerous condition. She drew more energy into the net, trying to stabilize the image.
I'm depending on you, said Mogurn.
Jael didn't bother to answer. She thought hard a moment, searching her imagination, and then she focused on the angry horizon. The colors bled, and crimson sunset swelled over mountains to the northwest. Mountains . . .
The route through those mountains was actually the most direct to their destination, Lexis; but it was more dangerous, by all reports, than the skirting route Mogurn had ordered. Still, he had not absolutely forbidden her to fly in the mountains, and after all she was the rigger—she chose the images and the streams of the Flux to ride. Ultimately the choice was hers. The net sparkled as she grew excited—at the thought of danger, at the prospect of quickening the flight. She knew she shouldn't.
Abruptly she transformed herself into a mountain eagle, and she caught a new current and soared northwest, pulse racing, net glittering like diamonds in the Flux.
Sunset ahead. Twilight. Mountains jagged and black against a maroon sky, deepening into evening.
She scanned ahead with the edges of her mind. Would there be dragons? Riggers in the starports boasted of dueling with dragons along the Aeregian mountain routes. It seemed that there was a special quality of the Flux in this corridor which demanded mountain imagery and, sometimes, dragons. Many riggers believed the dragons to be living inhabitants of the Flux; others said they were just especially compelling images. Either way, it sounded dangerous; it sounded glorious.
A sense of quiet anticipation settled around her as she winged toward the mountains. She rather hoped that dragons might appear, to ease her loneliness.
The com-signal chimed again, chilling her pleasure. What now?
Isn't it time you came out? asked a bodiless Mogurn.
Is it? she replied, shivering in a sudden crosswind.
Six hours, Jael.
Six hours? she repeated, stalling.
What's wrong, Jael?
It may not be safe right now.
Not safe? Why not?
She spread her wings to catch a warm updraft. Because—and she hesitated, then said—there may be dragons.
His eyes squinted furiously, in her imagination. Dragons? Dragons? The mountain route?
Jael beat her wings furiously. Yes.
Find a stretch of safe passage. And then you come out and see me, Jael. His voice touched her like ice, and she stopped pumping. His anger made her tremble.
Yes, Mogurn, she answered, and the world grew cold with fear and loneliness. She did not want to face him, but she had no choice. Not if she wanted to receive the pallisp tonight.
Banking left, she flew parallel to the still-distant range, where she thought she could safely leave the net. But she stalled,
gliding, watching the ominous peaks to her right, wishing that the fear and the loneliness would somehow subside. Finally she reluctantly set the stabilizers, the starship's sea-anchor in the Flux; and she set the alarms. Her senses melted back into her body as she withdrew from the net, and she opened her eyes, blinking, and looked around the rigger-cell and the bridge. Gloomy. Lonely. Nothing but instruments to greet her. She preferred it that way.
She climbed uneasily from the pilot-station and stretched. Her stomach said hunger, and her limbs said weariness. But Mogurn had said come immediately. Sighing, she left the bridge and went to Mogurn's cabin door; the ship was only a small floater, and the compartments were tightly clustered, so it was a matter of a few steps. She pressed the signal fearfully. The door paled and she stepped inside.
Mogurn was seated facing her, smoking. When she entered, he rose and gestured for her to sit. She slid onto a narrow bench-seat; above and behind her an expensive crystal tapestry covered half of one wall. Mogurn exhaled sharp-scented smoke and frowned, studying the end of his long, tubular smoking pipe. "Jael, why did you disobey me?" he said.
Jael shivered, certain now that he would deny her the pallisp. "I meant no disobedience—" she stammered, which was at least half true. He'd not forbidden her to rig through the mountains; he had only made it clear that he disapproved of that route, that in fact perhaps he was afraid of the mountains, or of the dragons.
Mogurn stepped closer, hovering over her, alternately blocking and exposing the light panel behind him. Jael squinted nervously. "Did I not say that I preferred the longer route, Jael? Was there some special circumstance you haven't told me of, some need to take the more perilous course?"
Was that fear in his voice? No; he was the master. Jael bit her lip. "I—was having trouble—the other way. But this way—I think the stories are just stories. Dragons! They can't be real."
"What is 'real' to a rigger?" Mogurn asked sharply. "What is in the Flux, or what is in the mind? Either can destroy us."
Jael nodded mutely.
"And, drunken sods though most of those riggers may be, one should never laugh at a rigger legend, should one?'
Jael winced. "No."
"Now, are we still close enough to our original course to turn back?" He exhaled another cloud of smoke, which drifted past her face to be sucked into the ventilators. She opened her mouth to reply in the affirmative, but something stuck in her throat. She shook her head. "We can't avoid the mountains?" he growled, and she shook her head again. Mogurn stared at her, smoking. After a long moment, he turned away.
When he turned back, he held a small, gleaming cylinder with a dull grey sphere attached to one end. "All right, Jael. It is time for your pallisp," he said. His eyes showed no kindness, but his words nevertheless sent a thrill of relief down Jael's back. Unhappiness and loneliness welled up out of her soul in anticipation.
At Mogurn's gesture, she bent forward and pushed her hair up from the back of her neck. Mogurn stood close beside her and lowered the pallisp until the grey ball touched the base of her skull. She felt the touch, cool—and then a warmth seeped into her from the touch, a warmth which encircled the ugly, waiting feelings of alienation, of fear, of anger, and which closed around those feelings like flowing blood, heating and soothing and transforming the emotions, stripping and softening shells of defense and filling her with love, with companionship . . .
The wave turned cold. Jael swayed with dizziness as a tide of paranoia rushed over her. The pallisp was gone. She sat up, blinking wildly, struggling to hold back tears. As Mogurn spoke, she could hardly see him through blurred eyes. "That's all for tonight, Jael. You must understand what obedience means, even for a rigger." Jael trembled, desperate with pain and frustration. Finally she steadied herself. Mogurn said, nodding, "Now, Jael, help me with my augmentor—and then you may retire."
Though dying to scream, she obeyed. Mogurn reclined and she fitted the synaptic augmentor to his head and adjusted the controls; and when Mogurn was reduced to a silent figure fluttering his hands or pawing himself with a blind-eyed grin, Jael backed away and fled to her cabin. The pallisp—lord how she wanted it, needed it to take the lonely bitterness from her soul and turn it into something warm, and she would almost kill for it, but only Mogurn knew how to use it and so she needed Mogurn, too. She stalked the tiny deck space of her cabin, brooding, and then she tossed and writhed violently in the sleep-field, unable to rest. Unable to stop thinking.
Unable to stop remembering.
Remembering . . . Dap, and the night and the dreamlink. Dap had been gentle and yet willful, telling her of the intimacies to be shared by riggers with the help of the dreamlink machine. And she had been young then—she was young now—and she had been seduced by his earnestness, his offer of friendship. Even now she could see his eyes, dark and earnest under silver brows, as he told her, "We'll be looking right into one another, and our souls will link . . ."