The Pillars of Eternity

Boaz settled in his armchair. Dispensing with artificial displays, the ship fed his mind with an image of the Brilliancy Cluster through which he was now moving. A crimson circle pinpointed the star which it was expected would be host to the wandering planet.

Flecks of bright purple were a swarm of other ships migrating purposefully toward the same location. Some were far ahead of others – as soon as it was realized the broadcast from Brilliancy had to be genuine, they had started taking off from Sarsuce like fleas leaving a drowning dog. In the rush nobody had paused to dwell on who had sent the broadcast, or why.

‘After the gold,’ Boaz muttered to himself. ‘All after the gold.’ It was an old saying from a time when gold had been a valuable metal and men had stampeded for any chance of laying their hands on it.

He was going to be among the stragglers getting there. There were operators in the vicinity with very fast ships, and he had delayed some hours before taking off.

But Meirjain was a big planet, and he had the advantage that he did not want as much as they did. Boaz, in his gloomy way, was feeling fairly optimistic.

*

The ship woke him from his troubled sleep. A minor note of urgency pervaded the summons, and Boaz came instantly to a sitting position in the armchair that served him in place of a bed.

‘Look,’ said the ship.

Again a picture in his mind – or rather, a montage of pictures. A planet, its surface mottled purple, blue and mauve, fretted with a filigree of other colours – gold, silver, scarlet. It was warmed by a yellow sun with a hint of blue; a sun, he recognized, that offered the full spectrum of colors accessible to the human eye.

In diagrammatized form he saw what the naked eye would not see: scores of ships in orbit. Their outlines flickered in his vision. Many of them he could remember seeing on Wildhart ship ground.

‘Why haven’t they gone down?’ he asked.

‘They can’t,’ his ship told him.

‘Why not?’

‘I have called The Sedulous Seeker for you.’

The Sedulous Seeker, Radalce Obsoc’s yacht, was as fast as anything flying and would have been among the first vessels to arrive. Obsoc’s image rose before Boaz’s mind’s eye, a sumptuous lounge providing a background. Mace lolled on a couch, her eyes closed.

The collector’s bulging eyes glistened. ‘Good day, shipkeeper. You got here at last.’

‘What happened?’ Boaz asked. ‘Is no one down?’

‘No one has been able to get down.’ Obsoc’s mouth twitched. ‘Plenty have tried. The atmosphere is impossible to penetrate.’

Boaz was silent; he left it to his puzzled expression to ask the question.

‘My engineer tells me the planet is surrounded by a “reverse inertial field”,’ Obsoc supplied. ‘Though in my view he is simply covering up ignorance with clever words.’

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ Boaz said slowly.

‘For Meirjain to be inaccessible? Presumably it makes sense to whatever intelligence is manipulating us in this fashion. There is something down there, shipkeeper, and it is playing games with us.’

‘We can’t hang around here forever,’ Boaz said. ‘The cruiser will be on us in a few standard days.’

‘The cruiser may not necessarily have things all its own way. We have a regular orbital town here, Shipkeeper Boaz, and some firepower.’ Obsoc frowned. ‘The real problem is whether anything is going to come of this exercise. You may care to add your voice to an attempt to find a way out of the impasse. We are holding a meeting to see if there might be some way forward.’

‘Who will be at this meeting?’

‘Some of those who have tried to penetrate the barrier. Also some scientific minds who are among us.’ Obsoc paused. ‘Also it has not been possible to exclude some of the more forceful personalities present. I should warn you that they are people of the most dangerous sort. Tempers are frayed; there has already been fighting.’

‘And who is holding it?’

‘It will take place aboard my yacht. The quarters here are particularly commodious. Heave to in three standard hours if you are interested.’

‘All right,’ Boaz decided. ‘I’ll be there.’

The image disappeared from his projective imagination. ‘Instructions?’ the ship queried.

‘Continue orbit.’

Boaz looked again at the planet below. For some reason the events taking place did not arouse his curiosity. He merely found the mystery annoying.

With an aggrieved sigh, he went back to sleep.

The ships were beginning to gather when Boaz approached The Sedulous Seeker. A crowd of them, of all shapes and sizes, stretched about the sleek, elegant form of the yacht. He recognized Romrey’s natty Stardiver nestling close under the belly of the bigger spaceship, its access tube dangling. Romrey, it appeared, had already joined the party.

A voice sounded in his head, not Obsoc’s but a crewman’s or else a machine’s. ‘Citizen Obsoc welcomes you aboard, Shipkeeper Boaz.’