I can feel him move away as I reach my hand up once more and touch my eyelids. The gunk is gone. I pull my eyelids open and look to see a blur of shades and colors. They resolve into the brutal visage of Reaper. "Rise and shine, it’s maintenance time. Unass the box so I can change the filters."
I look over at Estone Falna, still motionless in its sealed pod. I have seen an abundance of death during my years, and Falna looks dead. I cough, clear my throat. "Why is Falna so still?" I whisper. I look and mine is the only pod open. I look at the human named after death. "All of them?"
Reaper grins and says, "It’s either a mass murder, one hell of an equipment failure, or we do the pod maintenance in rotation and this time it’s your turn." He makes a fist and gestures with his thumb. "C’mon, outta the box. Wash up, eat, get in some exercise, and take your suspension meds."
Every muscle protests as I pull myself into a sitting position. Reaper is checking the health monitors and he points me toward the shower booth where I wash myself down in the tepid water. Once I am dry, Reaper supplies me with a towel, a fresh vapor suit, and slippers. "It’s going to be a couple of hours before you go back in the box. Get some exercise and a bite to eat and do whatever you want."
"Reaper, would you mind if I ask a question?"
The big man shrugs. "You can always ask."
Taking that as assent, I look into his eyes, seeing there not the mind of a brute, but intelligence. I avert my glance and ask, "When you were in the Tsien Denvedah, what was your occupation?"
The man’s eyebrows jump up, then he grins. "Ilcheve. You know, a kind of cop―police officer." He shrugs again and screws his face up. "Not exactly. Look, the shadow jetahs in the squirrel palace would idee a black hat. Sometimes a sleeper, op, brass, a glad hander, or maybe an enemy ilcheve. Then they’d pull my trigger and shoot me after the mark. I’d have to sniff him out and pull his plug, most times in hot zones. Sometimes the shadow masters wouldn’t know the target and I’d have do a holiday and find out who the bad daddy is. After I fingered the perp, the regreta Jetah would give him the thumbs down and I’d do him with prejudice to the max."
I stare at Reaper for awhile and then say, "Your superiors would send you after someone they wanted killed and you would kill it."
"Yeah." The big man nods. "That’s what I said." He holds up a hand. "Gotta go back to work. Don’t forget your exercise and meds."
After the bland food and a run on the musclemill, I begin feeling Drac again. I watch Falna in its pod for a few minutes, letting my fantasies shadow my realities. Reaper tells me that everything is on automatic so I can go up to the cockpit and look at the stars if I want. Just don’t touch anything.
I sit in one of the acceleration couches watching the slightly distorted images of the stars pass by. As I lose myself in their hypnotic dance, the themes, lessons, and images from The Talman momentarily touch my awareness, presenting themselves like gems of unknown properties to he contemplated, observed, tested, and placed aside until more is learned.
My mind has been packed with words, phrases, chapters, ideas, and stories. I thought that once I had the words of The Talman in my mind, I would have its knowledge and wisdom there as well. All I have, though, are the words. Some of those words drift into my awareness: "Words are maps to existence. Once you travel a piece of reality it is possible to know the meaning of its words. If all you have before you are words, all you can consider are meaningless marks and sounds."
I smile as I acknowledge my first application of The Talman's words to my life. Knowing that I do not know is knowledge, says Faldaam in the Koda Siovida.
To see stars and the worlds that orbit them gives a strange perspective. How many hundreds or thousands of wars, crimes, atrocities, disasters, and horrors does the Aeolus pass by each moment? If Amadeen is among those worlds I can say no more than I can to those others passing around me now. It is so unimportant, so insignificant. Come, rise to where I am. See the stars and the worlds pass and know that you are occupied with trifles.
Yet we are to walk one of those worlds orbiting one of those stars and see if our trifle of a war on Amadeen can be influenced by another trifle on the Planet Timan. I remember all too clearly that in the mud and blood of Amadeen there are no trifles.
It is so hard to know what is important. Is there anything important in itself without regard to some thoughtful pair of eyes and a mind? At times there seems so much to learn that the task of learning it seems impossible.
I hear a click, a series of audio oscillations, and another click. I turn to my left and see Eli Moss in the pilot’s couch, his face illuminated by the white, orange and blue instrument lights. Seemingly satisfied as to whatever he was checking, he quickly scans the instruments then settles back to watch the stars, his face grim and bitter. I do not intrude, for I know his expression. I have worn a similar one. I get up to leave the cockpit and Moss says, "Do you have any questions I can answer?"
I pause and think for a moment. I only have one. "The ship you own, captain, the Edmund Fitzgerald. Why did you name your ship after an old wrecked ore freighter?"
Moss is silent, balancing his aversion at sharing himself with his desire for conversation. "It’s not named for the ship. It’s named for an old Gordon Lightfoot song, which was named for the ship. Do you know it?"
"No."
I see the reflection of the panel lights in his eyes as he recites: "'Does ,anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?" He leans back on his couch. "Have you learned anything from The Talman?"
For no reason I can think of, I feel that I am under attack―that my choice of suspension learning materials is under attack. "A few things," I answer. "I have yet to absorb what I have completed."
He holds a hand out toward the stars. "What is the point of it, Yazi Ro? What is the purpose of it all?"
"The universe?" Moss nods in response as he lowers his hand. I can remember nothing that was in The Talman, and have no answers of my own. In response I ask, "Does it have to have a purpose?"
The captain examines me with his liquid brown eyes. He breaks eye contact, faces the stars, and leans his head against the couch’s backrest. "I suppose not. It would make it easier, though."
"Easier?"
"Easier to tell if I am aiding that purpose or attempting to defeat it."
There is a strange supply of questions and answers within me. "Which would you prefer, Captain Moss?"
The dark man grunts out a laugh and swings his feet to the deck, his back toward me. "Answering that I would prefer to defeat it would sound bitter, wouldn’t it?"
"Yes," I answer. "Although one person’s bitterness is another’s realistic appraisal."
Moss ignores my tired joke. "There are worse things than sounding bitter," he says.
I sit on the edge of the acceleration couch and watch as our pilot rubs the back of his neck, rolls his head around to stretch the muscles, and twists his torso to look out of the front port at the stars. Perhaps some think of Eli Moss as a man with a bad attitude, I see a tower of pain that makes the human my sibling. It is easier to recognize such from my own heights. "As I understand The Talman, captain, each of us is free to choose its own purpose, yet there is a larger purpose, as well,"
Moss swings around until he is facing me. "And what if this larger purpose crushes my individual purpose out of existence?" Without waiting for an answer he turns his head until he is facing away from me. "I had a friend, Yazi Ro, who was sent to his death to accomplish nothing."