The woman was speaking, and her voice was music, silver, gold, yet warmer, and with a core of strength. “You have stolen from me. That does not trouble me.What troubles me is that you stole from me so that the poor would be forced to sell their souls to you.”
“We are but traders. No one is required to come to us.” The man on the right smiled politely, then added a gold coin to the pile closest to him.
“Any man or woman who has a child that is hungry or suffers and loves that child is required to come to you. Anyone with a soul that is worth your golds will come to you to spare another from suffering. Your words are meaningless. They are false.” She laughed.
I liked her, even though I hadn’t even seen her face.
“Why are you here?” asked the trader on the left, pointing to me.
“Because I am.” That was the only response that made sense.
The woman turned to me, and I understood who she was, if not precisely why I was with her and the two emissaries from the netherlands. I could also see why the old tales called her a saint with eyes of sapphire. Her eyes were deep, so deep I wanted to swim in them, and I had to swallow to recall I was in an interlude, a third interlude, and 50 percent of those were fatal.
“You? Are you one of them?” she asked.
“No,Countess . . . I am Captain Sean Shannon Henry.” I paused. “You are the Countess Kathleen O’Shea?”
“Kathryn would be more accurate . . .”
I murmured words. From where they came I could not have said.
“The countess had a soul as pure as unfallen snow and a mind that no evil could know . . .”
“I am not that good. And Gortforge is not so poor as this place here.”
“You are a saint,” I said.
“No. I care that people do not barter their souls to live—or to keep their children from suffering and hunger. That’s all.”
Had I done that? Bartered my soul for something? For what? Interludes have a meaning. That’s why they’re so deadly. If you don’t have interludes, the ship never leaves the departure system. If you have too many, it never arrives at its destination—or any destination any have yet discovered.
Her eyes softened. “Souls ride with you, don’t they?”
“In a way,” I admitted.
“We will add those he is trying to save to the price for yours,” offered the second trader, the one with the gold ring on his finger.
“No!” The words were out before I thought.
“You would doom them, then?” asked the first trader.
“No. I would doom your bargain.”
“You cannot,”Kathleen/Kathryn said. “I have made it, and I stand by it.”
“You’re a saint,” I said again.
“You had best find that out in the world that counts.” She vanished.
I felt my mouth open. That was the first time that had ever happened to me in an interlude.
“Your soul is not worth a thousandth part of hers,” announced one of the traders, “but we will carry you into the depths with us, until the soul of the countess is tendered to the one who paid for it.”
“A bargain under duress is not a valid sale,” I pointed out. “A soul must be tendered freely.”
“She tendered hers freely.”
“She did not. As she said, anyone with a soul of worth would tender it to prevent another’s suffering, and the One Who Is already has judged that you cannot have her soul.”
Both looked at me, and I felt as though I had been skewered by those black eyes.
“And what of your soul, Captain Sean Shannon Henry? Your soul has not been so judged.What is it worth to you?”
“Hers, and more . . .”What I meant was not what I said, because what I meant was that my soul had worth, but, as they had already judged, not nearly the worth of hers. Not yet, anyway.
Something happened, because, before I could say more, the men in black had vanished, and so had the Countess Kathleen . . . or Kathryn . . . O’Shea, and I was in the depths of the ocean, cold and black, water weighing in upon my lungs with such force that all the air I had breathed was forced out in an explosive gasp.
With that, brilliant blue swept across overspace, and black lightnings shattered the blueness.
Then, I was again flying free, banking ever so slightly to avoid the singularity below my left wing tip. Somewhere deep within my swan-form, every part of me ached as I scanned the darkness of overspace, glad that I had emerged from the interlude, but pushing away the questions as I searched for the beacon that was Alustre.
I discovered that we had almost oversoared it and swung into a downward spiral, ignoring the flutter of dislodged pinnae, as we dropped lower . . . and lower—until I could feel the power of the beacon vibrating my sinews/feathers.
Only then did I untwist the energies flowing through the translation generators. Instantly, the black swan was no more, and the Yeats and I were but pilot and ship.
I passed out briefly from the pain when we reemerged into underspace, normspace for those of us who live in it.
“Captain . . . Captain . . .” Alora’s voice finally got to me.
“I’m . . . here . . . Rough translation,” I pulsed, checking, then deploying the photon screens.
“Rough?” A sense of laughter, ragged laughter, came across. “The Yeats isn’t making any more translations without some serious work.”
I hadn’t made the evaluations, but the feelings from my body, and the fact that not all the farscreens and diagnostics were even working, suggested a certain truth to her words. Still, I’d untranslated closer than normal, and that was good, given our situation.
“AUGUSTA STATION, this is ISS W. B. Yeats, inbound from Silverston. Authentication follows.” I pulsed off the authentication, trying to ignore the aches that seemed to cover most of my clamshelled body, as well as the tightness in my chest, and the feeling that I was still drowning.
There wasn’t any immediate answer. There never is, not with the real-time, speed-of-light delay.My head continued to ache, and I had to boost the oxygen to my self-system as we headed down and in-system.
It was more than a few standard hours before the Yeats, with passengers and cargo intact, docked at Augusta Station, the trans-ship terminal for the planet Jael of the New Roman Republic. The pilot and ship were less intact than the passengers and cargo.
“Captain Henry, Augusta control here. External diagnostics indicate extensive maintenance required. Interrogative medical attention.”
I scanned the ship systems once again, although I knew control was right. The fusactors were both close to redline, and the translation generators were totally inoperative. Two of the farscreens were junk. As for me, my nanetics had told me more than once that I was bruised over 21.4 percent of my body, that I had more than a few sub dural hematomas, and that 20 percent of my lung function was impaired. But there hadn’t been anything I could have done until we were in-locked.
“Affirmative. Class three removal requested.” Class two would have meant half my body would have needed attention. Class one would have come from the ship systems or Alora, because Class one med alerts meant the pilot was dead or close to it.
As I waited for the med crew and shuttle, I downlinked to the Roman infosystems, running through the search functions as quickly as I could. Then, I went up a level, for the information on the other worlds of the New Roman Republic. There was no Gortforge on Jael, or on any of the other Roman worlds, nor anything resembling it in name. That didn’t matter. It existed somewhere—and so did the Countess Kathryn O’Shea. Of both I was certain.