The Cauldron by Jean Rabe & Gene Deweese

Author:Jean Rabe & Gene Deweese [Rabe, Jean & Deweese, Gene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781614753131
Amazon: 161475313X
Publisher: WordFire Press
Published: 2015-06-18T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

Melusine

She watched the shipkeeper pace at the edge of the navigator’s tank, his long tunic grazing the tops of his feet and making a ghosting sound.

The central core of the liaison pulsed as she edged her fingers in deeper and felt energy threads twist around her hands and creep up her wrists. She felt the liaison tremble, each reverberation a word coming from the navigator inside his tank.

The liaison—whether a construct or a living being, Melusine did not know—thrust an image into her mind, a continent of the blue-green world they orbited.

So much water, she thought, and not for the first time.

“Yes, the world is more water than land,” came the navigator’s reply.

Melusine did not like that all of her thoughts were so open when she was connected through the liaison. She was thankful that the shipkeeper continued to pace, electing not to join them through the liaison and to only listen to her spoken words.

“Despite all of the water, in my travels there I have not yet encountered it.” There was relief in her voice. “I’ve only touched the ground and their great buildings of steel and glass and—”

“Your progress?” the navigator prompted again.

She continued to watch the shipkeeper, studying him with the intensity of a lover, but not feeling quite that depth of emotion. Admiration, perhaps, idolization with a measure of the fondness that comes from working together. Her mood was always better in his presence, and she suspected she inadvertently shared her feelings about the shipkeeper to the navigator, though he respectfully made no mention of it.

“You thought you were close?” the navigator asked. “To our quarry?”

“I sensed a nearness, yes, navigator, to the Bright One. During my latest merging, I felt his strong presence.” She looked over her shoulder to the augmentor, with its coiling threads. She tingled at the thought of using it again. “But whether that sense was because the Bright One had visited the same place I stood, I couldn’t say.”

She also wanted to tell the navigator that they’d been through all of this earlier and that her answer wasn’t going to change. “I was close, but I wasn’t close enough.” And her borrowed host had been oblivious to what she’d been looking for; poking through the host’s mind had yielded nothing. The borrowed senses had recorded myriad images for her to dissect—and she had done just that after her return to the ship, coming up with no new information.

“I am ready to try again.” The augmentor’s threads writhed in anticipation.

The shipkeeper made a humming noise in the back of his throat and paused, looking down into the tank’s lone window. He touched a slender red-gray finger to the glass.

“You will get closer this time,” the shipkeeper said.

She nodded. “I feel certain of that. I get closer with each walk.” Walk was the term she used for her ventures into another’s body. Through the liaison she felt the navigator tremble.

The shipkeeper squared his shoulders and met her gaze, effectively pinning her in place.

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