A Working of Stars Read Online Free PDF Page B

“Garden-of-Fair-Blossoms,” he said. “This is contract carrier Fire-on-the-Hilltops . Try to hold on—I’m coming as fast as I can.”
    He turned back to the navigation console. For once, the Fire’s ship-mind had behaved itself properly. The false-color display now included a flashing amber dot—the Garden’s reference coordinates. He contemplated the symbolic representation briefly, then checked the alphanumeric readout and tapped in his course-query. More numbers and letters came up in reply, and the false-color display shifted, then shifted again after a second query and a second response.
    After the third query, he said aloud, “I think you’ve got it this time, old girl.”
    The Fire’s ship-mind didn’t have an internal speaker. Instead, the alphanumeric display at the navigational console reset itself to zero, then said, THIS COURSE CONTRADICTS PREVIOUS EXPRESSED PREFERENCE FOR NORMAL SPACE RUNNING DURING ERAASI APPROACH.
    “That was then,” he said. “And this is now. I’m not going to drag my feet through normal space on my way to answer a distress call, and neither are you.”

2:
     
    ERAASI: HANILAT ENTIBOR: ROSSELIN COTTAGE
     
    R ain had fallen since before sunset on the grounds of the Hanilat Institute of Higher and Extended Schooling. No surprise there—the city was in the deep middle of the winter wet, and heavy, wind-driven rains came on schedule every afternoon.
    Today’s downpour had only intensified with the fall of night. Someone not familiar with the Institute’s paths and walkways might have gotten lost looking—as Kiefen Diasul was looking—for Quantret Hall. Quantret was built in the same old but not ancient style as most of the Institute’s other structures, and the buildings all had much the same size and outline in the wind-lashed dark. The sign near Quantret’s front entrance, set well back from the street and half-overgrown with night-blooming clingvine, was scarcely visible even in daylight.
    But Kief was no stranger to the Institute grounds. He had come to Hanilat as a young man scarcely out of his basic schooling, and had studied the stargazers’ disciplines at the Institute for more than a full hand of years; he had first trained as a Mage in the Institute’s own Circle. He remembered the fastest way across campus from the Ten Street transport stop to Quantret Hall: down the brick-paved Long Diagonal, around the side of the tall brick Thalassic Studies Building, then across Quantret’s back parking lot and down the three concrete steps to the little door that led directly to the sub-basement.
    The Circle had met in Quantret Lower Level B when Kief was a student, and according to his researches, it met there still. Esya syn-Faredol was the First now. She had been only an unranked Circle-Mage when he left. Well, so had he been, but he had gone to the Demaizen Circle after that, and she had not.
    The Institute’s Circle worked the eiran to promote safety and tranquility on campus, a low-key and not especially demanding task. Demaizen, on the other hand … Demaizen’s Mages had crossed the gap between the homeworlds and the rest of the galaxy, walking through the Void and marking a path for starship navigators to follow. That had taken a great working, paid for in blood and pain and lives. If the Circle here on campus had ever done such a working, neither tradition nor official record made any mention of the fact.
    There was a puddle of muddy water at the foot of the steps. Kief halted on the last step above the puddle, and set down his daypack on the wet concrete. Then he shed his long weather coat and draped it over the slick metal handrail. The Mage’s working robes that he’d been wearing underneath—and that had made his public transport ride a stuffy ordeal—tumbled free and fell loosely around him. He felt suddenly cooler, almost cold, and told himself that it was the result of taking off the sweltering coat.
    Kief bent and unfastened his daypack. Inside