The Merchanters #03 - Finity's End by C. J. Cherryh

Author:C. J. Cherryh [Cherryh, C. J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fiction, General, Space Opera, High Tech, Family
ISBN: 9780446605601
Google: sD6pNgAACAAJ
Amazon: 0446605603
Publisher: Aspect
Published: 1998-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

"So have I," James Robert said.

For a moment he didn't believe it. And then did. This was James Robert who'd

been on Pell when the foremost of downers had been on the station.

"I've met Satin," James Robert said. "An extraordinary creature. She went all

the way to Mariner, and came back talking about war."

He was impressed. In spite of everything.

"Do you know," James Robert said, "they had no word for war until we told them?"

"She wasn't on this ship."

"On another merchanter ship. On a far more ordinary voyage. But even so she

found the outside too threatening. She said the heavens were too troubled for

hisa. She came back to her world, by what I understand, to sit by the Watchers

and add her strength to the Watchers' strength. To dream the future."

A chill went over his arms. "What do you know about it?"

"I met her. I talked with her."

He was vastly more impressed with this man than he'd planned to be. He'd tried

to act righteous and the man turned out to know things that made him look like

the rules-infracting fool he knew in his heart he'd been. A fool that deserved

booting from the program—as they'd done with him, so thoroughly that Quen

couldn't even use reinstatement as a bribe.

Quen knew. Quen had told James Robert. And James Robert hadn't met with him

until now, when he'd have thought the captain who sued for his return would have

been at the head of the list.

"What I know," the captain said, "is the old ones sit by the Watchers and

believe for the people. They expect things from the sky. Hell, we showed up.

Something else might happen. There even might be peace. If you want my opinion,

that's what she's looking for. That's why she went back."

"They say don't attribute anything to them. That we can't know what they're

looking for."

"Bullshit. I know what she's looking for. All of us who dealt with her know what

she's looking for. You don't look so blind, either."

His heart was beating very fast.

"And what's that?" he challenged the captain. "What do you know that they

don't?"

"The meaning of not-war. We taught her the word for war. They didn't have it.

But they don't have a word for peace either. And that's what she waits to see.

She's got to be really old by now, in downer terms."

Silver. Like an image. The captain made Satin so real in his mind it hurt.

"Yes," he said. "She is."

"You know what this ship is, Fletcher, besides a recurring inconvenience in your

life?"

"No." The captain preempted what he'd have said. Diverted talk to the ship.

Which he didn't want.

"This ship," the captain said, "your ship, Fletcher, the way it was your

mother's, is the oldest merchanter still working. It's the one that broke open

the rebellion against the Earth Company. It had been started before, but we made

it inevitable. Your predecessor helped make it happen."

"I know that." He didn't want a history lesson. He knew about this ship, God, he

knew about this ship. He'd learned about his almost-immediate ancestor. This

ship was armed, it went God knew where, it

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