The Home of the Past - Part One

> "Did you create me to suffer? Did you create me to die? So long I've been a wanderer here, and so foul my curses fly. Oh God who created the mountains, God who created the seas, God who created the stars all around, what made you create me? Why create a creature like me?"

>

> -from "Birth's a Curse", pirate song

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"Hail," his mother said, gripping his upper arm. "Be careful out there."

"It's not like I haven't done this so many times before," Hail-and-Farewell grumbled. "I'll be fine. Will you be on time to pick me up?"

"We'll do our best," she said. "That's not up to me, though."

"You know I finish these way quicker than the time you think it takes, and then I'm sitting out in dead space for ages."

His mother smiled, revealing the deep set dimples in her perpetually flushed and full cheeks. "Most of your cousins would kill for a chance to go out alone."

"Yeah, and when they learn how to make stardrives, I'll be happy to let them have it," Hail said. "It's boring."

His cousin, God's-Grace, standing behind his mother, made a face and a jerking off motion with her hand. Hail shot her a glare that he hoped went unnoticed by his mother.

"It's not even fun to fly a shuttle when you feel like there's nothing to fly it towards," Hail said.

"We'll be back as soon as we're done with our delivery," his mother said. Behind her, Grace was miming her words. Hail wanted to kick her. "Well, let me say a prayer and give you a hug, and we'll see you in about a week."

Hail sighed, and let his mother put her hands on his shoulders. He was taller than she was, so when he bowed his head it rested rather on top of hers.

"Oh God, you are the keeper of all places, and the spaces in between. Our brother is going away. He may travel far. He may travel alone. If there is danger, hold him in Your hand. If there is fear, we beg You to send Your great comfort. He shall not be lost. Keep him in Your sight, as he keeps the stars in his. Let him always know that he is home in our hearts. Let him always know that we will rejoice at his return. Let him never despair. Let him never forget You. Just as You split the darkness from the light, so too You split travel from rest. You split the sorrow of parting from the wonder of coming home. You split us apart, just so that we may know each other in the end. Brother, keep us in your heart. We shall meet again, in our home or Yours."

Awkwardly, Hail stood still as his mother prayed over him, and then she patted his arm gently, releasing him from his obligation to stay put. He could feel her concern for him, though he knew it was unfounded (after all, he was very, very good at making stardrives at this point), and it was touching. He took that feeling and echoed it in his own heart. "You make me want to pray over you, ma," he said.

"Let's just get this on with," Grace said. She turned around and started pulling the machinery of the stardrive, a fairly heavy box crammed full of what Hail would need, into the elevator that would take them to the bays. "The faster we get you out of here, the faster we can make a delivery, and the faster we can all get paid." She said the word 'paid' with such a singsongy voice that Hail had to laugh.

"It's not the paying that's important," Hail said, following her into the cramped elevator. "It's the spending of the payment."

"Mind if I leave you here?" his mother asked. "I don't think I'll fit."

"Of course not," Hail said. He reached over and hugged his mother once again. "See you soon."

Grace closed the door of the elevator, and they travelled into the zero gravity section of their ship. Hail helped her drag along the stardrive components, chastising her when she was a little too rough with them. "It's delicate, you know."

"Yep," she huffed.

They made their way into one of the shuttle bays, and with some careful wrangling, got the equipment inside and strapped down. "You sure I can't come with you?" Grace asked as they went through the pre-flight checklist, making sure the shuttle was fine to go out.

"I feel like the only thing more miserable than being stuck in a shuttle by myself for a week is being stuck in a shuttle with you," Hail said. "It's really not that thrilling. And if I messed up, I'd feel guilt about it in God's house for the rest of eternity."

"I'd kick your ass," Grace said.

"I don't doubt it," Hail replied. "Anyway, your dad would kill me if I let you come."

She stared at the stardrive box. "But I want to know how you do it," she said. "I want to see what it's like." Her frustration and curiosity were genuine, and they bubbled up in Hail's chest. He had to stop the infectious feeling from coming out of his mouth, and so he did his best to keep his tone even and to not encourage her.

"You wouldn't be able to see anything. I sit really still with my eyes closed for a long time. Nothing even happens. Trust me. It's very, very boring."

"I'd say I'll believe it when I see it, but apparently..." she sighed.

"Yeah. You won't be seeing anything. You keep things running around here while I'm gone," Hail said.

"Oh, trust me, this will be the tightest run ship this side of the Empire by time you get back," Grace said with a grin.

"I'll hold you to that," Hail said with a laugh. "How's the shuttle looking?"

"All set," Grace said. "Honestly, what's scarier than you making stardrives is the fact that they let you fly the shuttle."

"You scrape it on the side of the bay ONE time," Hail said, catching the humor in her.

"Don't have too much fun out there," she said, and made a jerk off motion again. Hail slapped her hand.

"You're filthy, you know that?"

"Of course."

"Out, so I can get going," Hail said.

Grace gave him a cheeky grin and wave, and pushed off the side of the shuttle, sending her sailing towards the bay door. Hail watched her go, then clambered into the shuttle and closed the door. He did a final check for the security of the interior, then strapped himself into the pilot's seat and turned on the shuttle's engine and radio.

"This is Hail-and-Farewell on Shuttle Two, requesting depressurization and door access of Bay One," Hail said over the radio.

"Acknowledge, Shuttle Two," his cousin, Star-Carrier, said. "Depressurization and door access beginning in sixty seconds."

Hail leaned back in his seat, as much as he could in the gravity free environment, and watched the warning lights flash outside the shuttle's windows. The pressure gauge on his dashboard slowly began to drop, and then the door to the hard vacuum of space slid open in front of him.

"Shuttle Two, you are cleared for departure," Star said.

"Thanks," Hail said.

"Hail and farewell, cousin."

"Yeah, yeah," Hail muttered into the radio, then engaged the shuttle's engines and gently took off, swinging himself out into space. Now that he was flying the shuttle by himself on a regular basis (he really had been grounded for a time after scraping the side of the bay during a landing) he was much smoother and better at flying. He had a lot of practice. He brought the shuttle a decent distance away from the ship, then killed the engine. There was no real point in going anywhere further, as his family's ship was parked in the middle of absolutely nowhere. Dead space.

"I'm clear of the you," Hail said over the radio. "Have a nice trip," he said.

"Will do. Don't kill yourself out there," his cousin said.

Hail watched the ship out the window for a long few minutes, and then, without even a glimmer or a whisper, it was gone, jumped away on its route. Hail sighed, now deeply, deeply alone in the universe.

He didn't get started on making the stardrive right away. Grace was right-- he did enjoy the quiet, personal time, though not in the sense that she had so rudely implied. Instead, Hail took the opportunity to unstrap himself from his chair, tether himself into the back of the shuttle (so he wouldn't kick anything important while floating around) and take a long nap.

He woke up feeling groggy and disoriented-- it wasn't often that he slept in zero g, so it left him feeling slightly confused. The stardrive, which hadn't yet been activated, was quiescent behind him. Hail didn't want to work on it yet. It wasn't exactly a pleasant task, but it was one that had to be done. He made his way back to the front of the shuttle, used the computer to play some music, and wiggled in an ungainly dance as he rifled through the shuttle's food storage to find something to eat. He brought out a couple ration bars and a cold juice, which he drank all of, and then refilled the bottle with water from the hose in the bathroom. He ate the ration bars slowly, tapping out the rhythm of the music and humming along to try to fill the emptiness of the shuttle with something. All the sounds were weirdly muted-- it was a feature of shuttles that they tended to be rather anechoic, so his voice didn't even fill the space very well, and the creeping loneliness hit him faster than it usually did.

It was always so strange to be away from the omnipresent hum of the feeling of his family around him. He was intimately connected to the pulse of their lives, feeling their emotions as though they were his own. Now, by himself (aside from the deathly still stardrive behind him), Hail was alone with his own thoughts and feelings, a vaguely uncomfortable situation.

It really was just a matter of passing time. He didn't want to work on the stardrive any earlier than he needed to, in order to have it finished by time his family returned, but it was the one thing that gave him purpose to be out here. He considered it, thinking back on the other stardrives he had made before. This was a familiar pattern. There was no fear left in it, not really, just the knowledge of the steps he would have to take.

He double checked to make sure that the stardrive's machinery was hooked up to shuttle's power. It had a battery pack that would last it quite a while, but it was important that it not go without power for any length of time, even in its un-activated state. It was all hooked up. He wouldn't have missed something like that the first go around, when he and Grace were hauling the thing into the shuttle; he was just being paranoid. Perhaps the fear really was there, after all.

Hail found it difficult to interrogate his own emotions without the lens of other people to bounce off of, so he turned his attention away from that, and found a movie to watch. He drifted comfortably in the zero gravity, killing time until it was time to eat again, then killing time until it was time to sleep again. And again. And again.

He didn't ever quite grow used to the silence and loneliness, but it became part of the rhythm of his life. He remembered what it had been like those previous times, and he remembered what he had done to stave it off. He did those things, and he thought of new things to do, and he passed the time.

Eventually, enough time had passed that he really did need to start working on the stardrive. It would be pretty stupid if his family returned and the stardrive was unfinished. They'd be pissed at him, and while that would be a something rather than the nothingness that surrounded him, it would not be a particularly pleasant something. Hail ate again, and made sure that he was ready to work on the stardrive, as it would take a couple hours, at least.

He moved towards the back of the shuttle where it sat, just a jumble of wires and metal parts. He carefully unscrewed the plate that hid the interior workings, and stared at the clear glass bubble inside.

He had read enough to know, before he started making stardrives, that a person could tie power into an object, in a limited way, and have it go about a routine. There was a limit to the amount of power that an object could hold, and a limit to the complexity that could be written into the fabric of the universe, without something there to hold it all together. Ansibles were easy. They could be written to take advantage of the gravity well of a planet, and that gave them an anchor for their complexity without needing anything else. Stardrives, though. They were more.

When Hail had first realized he had the power, before he told anyone else, he made a pilgrimage to his own ship's stardrive, and learned how it was made. He didn't pull it apart-- no one would do that-- but he sat there, and he stared at it, and he reached out with the power, in those first, tentative steps towards mastering it, and he had felt the stardrive reach back.

It was alive, in the realest sense.

He didn't think that anyone aboard the ship even knew how the stardrive was made, or how it worked. No one could see the internal mechanism, and the whole thing was sealed so tightly, so cleverly hiding its internals from prying eyes. They couldn't hide it from a power user intent on discovering its secrets, though, and Hail made a mental map of every connection, learning how the system was built, and figuring the horrible truth of how he would be able to make one himself.

It was quite simple, really.

He had asked the doctor on board the old ship, "What would it take to grow organs?" and he had been laughed at and told that he shouldn't think about needing a kidney replacement so soon. But he hadn't been joking, and when he pressed, he found out that it was almost shockingly easy. They grew meat in vats, after all. He remembered, with some amusement, that first meeting he had requested with the captain, where he had divulged his power. He had seen the light shine in the captain's eyes, and he was glad in that moment that he had done his research on how he could make his own stardrive before even coming to the captain. The captain had asked what he needed, Hail told him, and it was immediately procured.

His mother hadn't wanted him to try, of course. There was a reason that, even though pirates probably had sensitive children at a higher rate than usual (by virtue of buying genetic material from the black market), no one ever heard of pirates making their own stardrives. Most of them died in the attempt, Hail had to think. It took a very specific type to succeed. And he was, perhaps, the best.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Hail turned the ventilation in the shuttle as low as it could go, not wanting any breezes or noises while he worked. He turned the heat up so that the air felt like nothingness against his skin. He stripped off his jumpsuit so that he wouldn't feel his clothes. He turned all the lights in the shuttle off, leaving only the faintest starglow to illuminate the interior of the shuttle. Drifting in that darkness and absolute silence, Hail stared at the clone of his own brain in the container in front of him.

It was alive, in a mechanical sense, but not in a real sense, not yet. Hail still needed to wake it up.

He took deep breaths, falling into a rhythm of his own devising, sinking down into the awareness that was the power. He imagined the lights of the stars slowly fading out, leaving him in a complete imagined darkness. Then he imagined losing the feeling of his own body, until he was nothing but a consciousness, floating alone in the darkness. It was calming, to be like this, and he stabilized there for an unknown amount of time, feeling like he was a being of pure energy, pure thought, in an endless void.

Then he reached out with the power, as gently and softly as he could, towards that other self. The one not yet awake.

Just a brain, with no connection to the outside world, having never had such a thing, it had no frame on which to hang thoughts, no thoughts to have. It had neither sight, nor sound, nor touch, nor smell, nor even the changing hunger and thirst of a body, so complete and still was its isolation. With nothing to react to, no neurons could fire, no connections could be formed, no thoughts could be had. Until.

Until Hail reached out with his power, and gently pressed on that dormant living thing. A contact. A sense of something.

He didn't have to wonder how it must feel to come into consciousness, because he could feel it intimately.

It was fear. So intense was the fear that the first time that Hail had done this, he had needed to evacuate his shuttle to calm down. He had needed to don a space suit and fly himself far enough away from the shuttle that he couldn't feel the animal terror coming from the mind inside. He had waited so far away until he had calmed himself enough to bear it, and then he had returned. There was one thing, he had thought, worse than feeling that terror himself-- and that was feeling the terror, but being trapped alone and bodiless, with no way of understanding it. That compassion for the other had allowed him to face it, and to calm it.

Now, Hail knew what to expect, and he let the fear wash over him, and through him, and pressed steadily on that other mind with his power, giving it something to hold on to. Simple things. He gave it the feeling of the breath going in and out of his lungs, a sensation that this brain had never had. But it calmed anyway, so deep was that instinct buried.

And slowly, he told it, through feeding it the minute sensations coming from his own body, what it meant to be alive.

There was always sadness in this process for Hail, because he understood that although he was giving this thing life, it would not ever again experience the feelings that he was giving it. He just knew he had to send it something, to write his own patterns across the web of its brain. His power could do that.

This was flesh from his flesh, blood from his blood, and now he gave it mind from his mind. Life from his life.

He pressed into it, so slowly, the memories and thoughts that made him who he was, as much as he could pull up from his own brain. He used a power structure, one he had thought so long and hard about, to copy the tangled web of neurons in his own head over to this one.

It hurt.

He could feel the pain and fear of the other as if it was his own, and, in a sense, it was. But he pressed on, and offered at the same time, always, a feeling of love and comfort.

"I am here for you," Hail said with his feelings. "I won't let you go, even if there is pain." He promised it, over and over, like a mother cradling their child through a nightmare.

And this went on and on until they were both fully formed, and Hail could imagine this one standing in front of him: not quite a self, not quite an other, not quite a child, not quite a twin. Not even quite human.

He touched his own cheek, and fed that sensation to the other-- the only way that it could feel. There were tears on his cheek, but the pain and fear had abated somewhat, now that the transfer of everything was done.

"Who are we?" the other one asked.

"Hail-and-Farewell," Hail said.

"And who are you?"

"Hail," he said.

"Then I must be Farewell."

Hail had had this conversation before, and the words and thoughts were like a well worn groove in their brains. They were playing a part, a part that Hail had played before with the other Farewells he had brought into being before. Though he knew how this should go, this was the beginning of the dangerous part.

"Is it my sadness or yours that I am feeling?" Farewell asked. "It's so strange, to be alive." In their shared mind space, he moved his phantom hand, flexing it in the darkness, and Hail copied the motion in his body like a mirror.

"Mine," Hail said.

"Why are you sad?" Farewell asked.

"Because of what I have done to you," Hail said. And this was the dangerous part. He hadn't yet given Farewell the knowledge of why he had been called into existence, and Farewell did not yet understand what would happen when Hail left their shared space. He didn't understand the loneliness, not yet.

"And what have you done to me?" Farewell asked. He reached out to touch Hail, in the mindspace, and Hail mirrored the action, but they passed through each other like ghosts.

"I made you, half formed," Hail said. "Because you have a terrible purpose."

Hail could feel Farewell thinking this over, combing through his new memories to find the next line to say, the next step in the dance. "And God imbued upon all those living a terrible purpose: to bind what is loosed and to loose what is bound, again and again," Farewell quoted. "Have you loosed me or have you bound me?" he asked.

Hail's heart twisted, and he could see the sadness mirrored in Farewell's expression. "Bound and loosed at once," Hail said.

"You loosed me from the darkness," Farewell said.

"But I bind you to it still," Hail replied.

"Show me," Farewell said. "It cannot be so terrible."

"I will not go far away," Hail said. "I won't go anywhere at all." But he slipped out of Farewell's mind and back into his own body, his own mind, in the normal physical darkness of the shuttle.

At first there was nothing, and he felt his own limbs and the silence of his mind, but then, from the stardrive, there came that terrible fear, that overwhelming horror, just as he knew would come. He waited. Farewell was alone in his own mind, with nothing else, no light, no darkness, no sound, no silence, no touch, no lack of touch-- a true nothingness. He waited until the terror subsided, until it was replaced with a deep sadness, and then he waited still longer, until he felt Farewell reaching out to him, using the power on his own for the first time. When he felt that, Hail reached back, and sent as much compassion down the connection as he could, then slipped into Farewell's mind once more.

"I was right there the whole time," Hail said. "I didn't go anywhere."

Farewell didn't say anything back, so complete was his unhappiness at the realization of the true situation he had been born into. Hail offered comfort, but there was only so much he could give. After all, he was a free man, and Farewell was trapped.

"You made me this way," Farewell said, finally. "Why?"

"Because you have a purpose," Hail said. "You were made for a reason, which is more than I can say of myself."

"Purpose," Farewell said, and there was bitterness in it.

So Hail explained to him how he had been created to power the stardrive of a ship, how that would be his body, his life.

"You say I will have a body. Eyes like a machine."

"Far greater than yourself," Hail said. "May I show you?"

"Yes." Farewell could hardly say anything else, because the alternative was to be trapped in nothingness.

"I am here," Hail said, and he slipped back into his own body, and activated the machinery that had been so cleverly built around the brain. He could feel Farewell's emotions, stirring deep, and when he slipped back into their shared space, he could witness Farewell learning to process the machine inputs. He felt an odd ghost of a feeling, where Farewell's neurons met the computer interface, giving him access to vast stores of data and computational power that Hail could never match in his own mind, giving him access to senses that Hail did not have-- infrared, radio, trickling in from the single connection to the shuttle's sensor array. "See the stars?" Hail asked.

"Yes. I do," Farewell said.

"You are complete, now," Hail said. "You are your own self."

"Was I not before?" Farewell asked. Hail could feel him combing through the sensor information, focusing his attention on one star, then the next, then the space between them.

"I don't know," Hail said. "But this is who you are."

"You made me to serve you," Farewell said. "And you hate it."

"Yes, I do."

"Then why did you do it?"

Hail knew he wasn't going to be able to provide a satisfactory answer, so he answered a different question. "I can't imagine what your life will be," Hail said. "You will grow into something so different than I am, and you will do things that I can't imagine. You'll be alone, in a way that I will never be alone. I... I feel like I brought a person into this world just to be alone, and that kills me, but..." And he stopped.

They considered each other mentally for a moment. They were still so similar, one being formed completely from the other, but already diverging. This was the critical moment, Hail knew.

"I could destroy us both," Farewell realized. "I could use this power you've given me. I could erase myself from existence."

"You could," Hail agreed.

"You think I won't?"

Hail was quiet for a moment, and then he put as much care as he could into his words. He was tender. "I think that you have that right," he said. "But you won't."

"Why not?"

"Because if I were you, I'd choose the path that lets me live. I think I'd try to find meaning in it. I think that having a purpose, being born for something, that's worth something, right?"

"How long?" Farewell asked. "How long will this last?"

"A lifetime," Hail said. "However long that is."

Farewell's power rolled underneath him, like the muscles of some great animal, and Hail reached out comfort.

"There are others like me?" Farewell asked.

"Many," Hail said.

"And what do they do?"

Hail thought about this for a minute, remembering what the old stardrive on his family's first ship had felt like. It had been dormant, barely a stir of a whisper within his emotional sense until he reached out to it. "Most of them sleep," he said. "They dream."

"Such a life," Farewell said.

Hail had a brief, amused thought. "It's probably less terrible than the lives that many have lived in the past."

"Perhaps," Farewell said, catching the amusement and sending it back. "There is some comfort in it."

"Are you sorry that I created you?" Hail asked.

"If you were in my place," Farewell said. "If I took everything away from you, and put you here..." He trailed off.

"I don't know," Hail said. "There's no way to know."

"And if I were in your place, would I keep placing this life onto others?" Farewell asked.

"I do it," Hail said. "And you know I know what that means. I believe it's worth it."

"You do."

"I do."

They contemplated each other.

"I don't want to be alone," Farewell finally said.

"We're all alone."

"Not in this way."

"You will have others with you," Hail said. "All the people in your ship."

"But they won't know me."

"You can know them. That must be enough. It has to be enough." Hail's voice broke.

"Will you be there?"

"Probably not," Hail said. "You'll be on your own ship. I'll return to mine."

"Will there be others like you?"

"Probably not."

"I don't know if I hate you or love you," Farewell said. "I didn't ask to exist."

"None of us did."

"Me least of all."

"Perhaps."

"I'll never go on a planet," Farewell said, rather regretfully.

"There's plenty of pirates who never go groundside," Hail said. "You're one of that esteemed number."

Some of the resignation had fallen out of Farewell's tone, as he assimilated all of the information that he had. "True."

Hail gave a mental smile. The danger had passed, for the most part. Farewell could still change his mind, but... Hail knew he wouldn't.

"You're my brother," Hail said.

"No, I'm something else. But there is a bond between us anyway."

"If there is anything I can do for you, tell me. I will try."

He could feel Farewell thinking about it. "I don't know," he finally said. "Maybe someday I will need something. Not now. Now I don't know what is going to happen."

"We'll wait for our family to come back, and then we'll go put you on the ship you're going to live on."

"Such soon parting."

"Things move fast," Hail said. "But I'm never... I'm never too far away."

"You say that now."

"And I say that you'll grow into your own person without me, and you will be all the better for it."

"Ah."

There was still love in between them, and that was enough for now.

"When is our family coming back?" Farewell asked.

"Soon," Hail said.

But they did not come soon.

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On the third day that his family was late, Hail began rationing his food. He could feel Farewell's digital eyes on him, feel Farewell's concern, and the fear bounced back and forth between them and magnified.

"They're coming back," he said, though he couldn't keep the note of pain out of his voice. "I know they will."

"You're not alone," Farewell said, but Hail couldn't help but ignore him. That wasn't the same.

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On the tenth day after his family was supposed to return, the food was gone.

"They're not coming back," Hail said.

"There's still time."

"I don't want to starve to death."

"I could destroy us both," Farewell offered.

The sad thing was that Hail thought about it.

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Hail had passed beyond hunger, into the state beyond that.

"They're not coming back," Farewell said, and Hail had to agree. "What do you want to do?"

It was unfair. Farewell, being disembodied, was powered by the engines of the shuttle. His enclosure provided all the nutrients and energy that he needed. He could think clearly while Hail could not.

"I don't want to die," Hail said.

"I don't want you to die either," Farewell said, and though he wasn't lying, Hail could tell that there was an ulterior motive there. After all, it would be beyond horrible for Farewell to be trapped on this shuttle alone, if Hail died.

"You know how to jump," Hail said.

"I do. Do you want me to destroy us?" He could jump them both, deleting them from existence without picking a new point to materialize in. That was the primary way that stardrives destroyed themselves.

"No," Hail said. "Jump us out of here."

"I don't have a starmap," Farewell said. "And the shuttle isn't built for jumping." Farewell wasn't wired up to the entire outside of the shuttle, didn't have sensors along its outermost length, didn't really even have a clue about what the body of the shuttle looked like from the outside. He risked losing parts of it if he jumped without that knowledge, and that was discounting the fact that he didn't have a starchart, which was the only way to navigate anywhere. They were truly in the middle of nowhere.

"It's the only thing I can think of to do," Hail said. "It's that or die. It's die here or die trying to get out of here," he said.

Farewell considered this. "You give me the coordinates."

Hail considered the vastness of stars outside the shuttle, tried to remember deep in his brain, tried to comb through the shuttle's navigation banks for any clue of which ones might lead them back to civilization. He couldn't think straight. His head swam when he moved, and in the lack of gravity he felt dizzy constantly, like he was always falling.

He hadn't let the sadness that his family was probably dead hit him yet-- it was covered up by the mounting terror at the prospect of dying in this place. That was probably for the best because it gave him a way forward. He never thought he would be so grateful to have another here. Farewell.

Hail picked a star at semi random.

"How far away is it?" Farewell asked.

"You guess that," Hail said. Their shuttle didn't have any sophisticated way of measuring that. Their sensors were so limited, their inspection of stars was primarily visible, and it didn't give them a lot to work off of.

"Okay," Farewell said. "You should put on a suit. Just in case I breach the hull."

"No point," Hail said. "Just jump us."

Hail did out rough calculations, putting in guesses where a starmap should provide real values, and fed that information to Farewell through the computer.

"Let's go," Farewell said, and then, for the first time, shared with Hail the high, keening joy of movement. It was almost enough to make him forget everything else.