So for many minutes I stood there, gazing out upon that black map. I may even have entered that state of rapture that seized Wyeth and his crew; because the next thing I knew I was no longer alone.
A figure leaned against the window: a tall young man wearing the red-trimmed, cerulean leathers of an Aviator cadet. On his left hand winked a heavy gold ring, set with a single large blue stone. From where I stood, I could not make out the letters surrounding that stone, but I knew they were there. I raised my hand, my human hand, until light struck the ring it too bore, illuminating the thick gold letters that spelled NASNA. Slowly I clenched my fingers in the Aviator’s salute. The figure against the window did the same. His auburn hair spilled across his forehead and he smiled, his gray eyes flecked with green where the light touched them.
I lowered my hand. Still he said nothing. And then I recalled what I had read once, in his book in fact, the forbidden DeFries Incunabula: that the dead cannot speak unless they are first addressed by the living. I took a step toward him, half-expecting him to disappear into glints of starlight. He did not move.
“Aidan,” I said.
His smile grew even wider, showing predatory white teeth in his vulpine face. When he spoke, it was with that same voice I had been imagining for days now, its boyishness offset by mockery and a certain feminine cruelty.
“Sky Pilot! I’ve been waiting such a long time to see you again.”
I winced. “What are you doing here?” Although now that he had manifested himself, it was as though I had been expecting him. My sleeplessness, my steady diet of dreams, had prepared me for this. It was perhaps a miracle that they had not all come back to haunt me.
“Only this, the traditional employ of revenants. A warning.”
He leaned forward and stretched, a great cat wakened from its warm sleep, and for the first time I saw the marks around his neck, bright red and black, as though he had been burned. I glanced at the floor, half-expecting to see a rotted rope fallen there; but there was nothing.
“A warning?”
He nodded, smiling slyly, then ducked his head. Sudden seriousness creased his eyes. “You are in danger, Sky Pilot.”
I looked at him shrewdly. “And why should you warn me? And why should I heed you? A phantasm, a stray glimmer of starlight upon the viewing deck. Have you warned everyone who comes here to look upon the sky?”
Once more the figure grinned, tossing back his long hair, and straightened the crimson cuffs of his uniform jacket. I recalled how he had been buried in it, given full honors as a NASNA cadet even though he was a suicide. That was my doing. I had petitioned Manning Tabor, insisting that Aidan’s death had actually been the most noble course for him to take with his life, if the others would have led to madness and an eventual soiling of his Aviator’s rank.
“Of course not.” There was no rancor in his voice, only a sort of detached amusement. He began to walk toward me. A heavy earthen scent wafted through the room, a freezing wind. I felt cold, and sudden terror.
Because as a rasa, I should not be able to feel, or smell, anything. When the figure reached for my hand, I drew it back sharply. His eyes widened and sly laughter filled the chamber.
“Ah! I have waited a very long time for that—there is something the Rocket Man is afraid of!”
“Your purpose.” My voice sounded hollow, the voice of a replicant and not a man. “I must return to my quarters.”
He smoothed the front of his leathers and gazed smiling at the floor. “I told you, Sky Pilot. Nothing but your welfare. A warning for the Rocket Man.”
“Why do you bother with me? I had nothing to do with your death, revenant.”
He shrugged, drew his hand to his face. For the first time I noticed how pale he was, how the skin on his cheekbones seemed gray and slack. Perhaps such phantasms have a very short life before they begin to decay.
“I bear you no ill will,” he said. His tone was ragged and shrill. “Listen to me—
“You are on a fool’s errand, Margalis. Chasing after lesser demons when the devil Himself is preparing to devour you.”
He swept out his hand to indicate the swollen green tear shining in the window opposite. “Look at it well, Sky Pilot: you may not have another chance. There is a cataclysm in the stars that will engulf your entire world. But you can escape it. Flee now, take this elÿon, and you may travel fast enough and far enough to survive.”
I stared at him in disbelief, then laughed. “Don’t be absurd! We will dock at Quirinus within a day or two. If I don’t find what I seek there, I will return and look for it on Earth.”
“What you seek will find you, old friend.” He grinned with a skull’s cold grimace, and his words came out slurred, as though his tongue were exhausted by the effort of speaking. “You are going now to meet with your own destruction, Margalis. Your own and your world’s.”
“I am going as Imperator of the Ascendant forces, to investigate the mutiny of Quirinus and seek the nemosyne named Metatron.”
Aidan only laughed shrilly and said, “ ‘Oh, the fierce wretchedness that glory brings us!’ ”
Without warning he slumped over. His fingers splayed outward so that his ring struck the floor, and I heard a loud crack, as though the tile shattered beneath it. With an effort he pushed himself up on his hands. When he raised his face to gaze at me, the wound on his throat burned fiercely—truly burned, with small brilliant flames like an incandescent torque thrust about his neck.
“The damned ever seek redemption,” he whispered. “But listen to me, Margalis. I was human, once. And even the dead can weep, to see the world they loved in flames—”
His voice rose in a wail. “Much has happened while you slept, Margalis. And I have learned much, oh, too much! about those who dwell behind the veil between the worlds—
“I was wrong about them, Sky Pilot. The demons bring no gifts—they know nothing but death, and they would kill us, kill us all! There are records here in the ship’s library that will show you—look at them and learn, Margalis. Luther Burdock’s children have heard the voice of the Oracle. They will betray you—”
He opened his hand. Onto the floor dropped a small object, the kind of ’file disk that had been manufactured half a century ago, when I was a boy. It struck the tiles and for an instant spun before falling down flat.
“Behold Icarus,” he whispered.
As I watched, a small cone of pallid white light rose from the disk, and from this was projected a blurred object, like an eye or cloudy whirlpool. Within its haze the foggy eye seemed to move. Threads of gray and white flowed from it, and after a moment tiny gold letters appeared at the apex of the cone of light, letters far too small for me to read. From the flattened disk on the floor shrilled a voice like that of the smallest monad, so that I had to strain to hear it.
“… it is of the utmost importance that the JPL Project permits immediate release of warning transcripts and all information relating to this disastr —…”