New Decameron Eighty-Seven: A.J. Hammer (Patreon)

An Exaltation 

by A.J. Hammer

Whenever a ship rose into the sky her heart rose with it. 

It wasn't, exactly, that she wished she were on it, leaving the planet – she'd done that, and now was content to stay with her tools and her husband and her child on this new green planet. What she wanted was to speak with the ships. She built them. All the famous ships of the last ten years had come out of her yard: the Iris in Flight, the Cormorant, the Lady of the White Court. But they would not speak to her. 

A long time ago she had been sixteen, in the desert of a distant planet. The dry wind blew sand into her face and over the spaceyard. The Exaltation was choosing its pilot. She waited in a long line of teenagers, bouncing on her toes eagerly. The line could not have moved more slowly. She could feel the ship's presence and hear its voice. It wouldn't – couldn't – speak to anyone but her. 

And then it was her turn. She went up the steps of the ship, gawking at the clean lines of the interior. They led her to the pilot's seat. She sat, placing her hands on the controls. And nothing happened. Hands lifted her as she sat numbly, unable to believe that the Exaltation didn't want her. 

On her way out, the next girl was already sitting down. Under her hands the gray steel of the control panel glowed blue. The Exaltation had made its choice.  

*

On a cold day Tadorn,twenty years older now, walked through the junkyard, trying to find the right ship for the Consul's commission. Ship-metal remembers. It was the first thing you learned when building ships: that metal that had once been worked and forged and given thought was easier to shape again. But none of the hulks she passed were right, not for a ship that had to be the best ever made. 

She suppressed her frustration with the Consul. He'd insisted on naming the ship before it was even built – the Complexities of Light. It was a good name, she couldn't argue. But everyone knew, didn't they, that you couldn't name a ship until it was built, until you had a feel for what it was going to be. Building a ship for a name was different. 

But that couldn't matter. Her path wound through the junkyard, around the ruin of a thousand dreams, and none of them were the right dream. 

Far away to her right something caught her eye, and she turned. No, she thought, and It couldn't be. Without increasing her pace she walked to the ship, to the curve of hull and the expanse of wing that were what she saw when she closed her eyes, even before she saw the curve of her husband's clavicle. The letters, in a script that seemed neither as classic nor as modern as it had years ago, were clear. 

Exaltation. 

She touched the hull, her fingers tracing the name engraved there. Suddenly she was sixteen again, letting the sand of Ortolan fall through her fingers and trying to make herself believe that it was real, that the Exaltation hadn't chosen her. 

*

The metal that had been the Exaltation fought her at every turn. In her drawing, the Complexities of Light curved with an elegant simplicity. The metal wanted to blossom and to form strange arabesques. Tadorn knew how to make a ship obey the pilot it chose, even if she could never be a ship’s choice, but the metal she was forcing to be the Complexities of Light wanted to obey neither her nor a future pilot. 

“I don’t see why not,” she said, as Garcet, her husband, lying next to her in their bed, ran his fingers lightly up her spine. “It should work. It shouldn’t fight like this.” 

“Hm,” he said. 

She rolled over, away from his hand, and turned to face him. “It’s just metal. Whatever it was, whatever’s in it, it’s just metal. You can’t let it win.” 

“You’re letting it win now.” 

“I’m not. I’m making it work. The Exaltation was beautiful. The Complexities of Light will be more beautiful.” 

“Tadorn,” he said, and placed his hand on her hip, “sleep. You can serve neither ship by fretting until midnight.” 

She curled tightly under the blanket and dreamt of ships rising and crossing in the air. 

The next morning brought no clarity. If the Consul hadn’t been breathing down her neck, she would have worked on another ship. The Complexities of Light was set to launch in two weeks. She had no time. 

But she went back to the junkyard anyway. Alouette, she decided, could use a new toy -- a little ship, one she could fly, but not too far. She’d seen the way Alouette’s eyes glowed when the big ships flew. Alouette would be a pilot. 

The ship she found was old -- the script of the name on the hull had been in fashion seventy years ago. The Querl. It was like a tired dog, glad to be chosen and petted, happy to rest its head on a friendly lap. 

Working with the Querl was easy. In a trance she melted the metal and put on the forming gloves to sculpt it with her hands. Eyes closed, she let it take the shape it wanted -- like an open canoe, the bow and stern curved like a smiling face. 

“What’s its name?” Alouette asked. She stroked the side of the ship gently, and the controls glowed a dim blue-green. 

Tadorn smiled. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?” 

Alouette closed her eyes and let her hand rest on the metal. “Um!” She bit her lip, focusing. “Heron’s Feather!” she shouted, and the controls glowed brighter. 

Tadorn turned away to hide the pricking of tears in her eyes. She tousled Alouette’s short dark hair. “I’ll get the tools to chisel the name,” she said, and paused. “Unless you want to help?” 

*

“Can I come with you?” Alouette asked. 

Tadorn put her glasses back on the table. “To the shipyard?” 

Alouette nodded. 

“I don’t see why not.” 

They walked -- it wasn’t far. The slight breeze lifted Alouette’s hair and buffeted Tadorn’s tanned face. 

“The Heron’s Feather is so friendly,” Alouette said excitedly. “It wants to go everywhere with me.” 

“It’s too big to fit into the house.”

“Mom,” Alouette said, with the exasperation that children have with adults, “You know what I mean. It’s happy all the time and it’s so easy to drive.” 

Tadorn smiled and let her talk about the ship. It hurt a little, of course. Not as much as it would hurt on the day she knew would come, when Alouette stood by the side of a big ship, waving to a crowd, before going up into the stars. She’d build that ship for her daughter, and watch both her children fly.

*

She closed her eyes and put her right hand on the metal that had been the Exaltation. A chisel dangled from her left, held in two fingers. Without conscious control, her hand drifted over the hull, caressing it. The places it was fighting her were obvious. There was a control node that didn’t want to change -- the wiring had been set up for a system that had been old when the Exaltation was new. And she could feel the reasons the metal wanted to bloom. She hated describing her process -- every single one of the times she’d been interviewed for the press had felt like pulling nails -- because she’d had to say “I just guide it,” and smile, and it was true, but it wasn’t. She guided it, and when it fought, it was usually telling her something, and “this one just wants to be a blossom” was true, it was, but it felt the same as saying nothing. 

The Exaltation didn’t want this shape. How could she make it want this shape? (“Am I saying ‘How can I make it want me?’” she thought.) 

She opened her eyes. Her hand still rested on the hull, as it would on the neck of a misbehaving dog. A ship leapt up from the landing pad in the distance. Her eyes followed it up into the clouds, and when it disappeared out of sight, she let her gaze lose focus. 

How can I make it take this shape? she thought. She realized her hand was stroking the hull, travelling up and down a miniscule valley in the smooth shipmetal. Her eyes focused. 

I can't. 

This was the Exaltation. This was the ship that told her that she wasn't meant to fly. But someone else was. A ship was made to carry a pilot. Alouette, maybe. She saw Alouette taking off in a ship made by someone whose pride blinded them to what the metal wanted -- the bloom of fuel, and the brighter, more terrible bloom of the explosion that would come. She couldn't allow the dream of Exaltation to make her forget the second thing you learned when building ships: If it fights, don't force it. 

She turned and went home. 

* 

The Heron's Feather met her at the gate, gliding along at waist height. Behind it Alouette jogged to keep up. 

"Mom!" 

The ship's nose bumped into Tadorn's hand. 

"Mom, I had such a great day. Dad helped me with the inside of the ship, and it's so pretty and comfortable. Do you want to see?" 

Tadorn smiled. "Of course." 

Alouette tapped the door twice. It opened, eager to show its new fittings off. 

"It's beautiful," Tadorn said, and smiled again, because she was happy that Alouette could fly, she really was. "How high can you go?" 

"Dad said I can't go higher than the roof." She stroked the cool metal of the ship. "But I know I could." 

"Show me." 

Alouette entered the cabin, pulling the door closed behind her. Her fingers moved over the controls, which lit with a blue-green glow. 

The Heron's Feather rose slightly, hesitating as it left the ground, the reverse of a feather's fall. Alouette was confident despite her inexperience, but she looked back and down at her mother. Tadorn dipped her chin and gave her a thumbs up. The pilot and her ship soared. 

As Tadorn watched, she felt Garcet come up behind her. He put his hand on the center of her back, just below the shoulder. 

"She'll be fine," she said – a hope and a prediction. 

"She is fine," Garcet said. "She will be great." 

*

There was a week left before the launch. Tadorn went out to the junkyard, because she had to. She wandered with her eyes half-closed and her mind unfocused. 

The ship she needed came to her. Turning a corner, she glanced off a tall wreck, and spun into another, a small ship, low to the ground, the plating on its hull half-shed. Her hand fell onto the name: Mist Rising Off Waters. 

"Are you…?" she asked aloud, and didn't need to finish. 

She had her assistants bring the Mist Rising Off Waters to her workshop. It was pathetically eager to shape itself to her will. She thought with amused annoyance of how hard the Exaltation had struggled against anything she wanted it to be as the Mist Rising Off Waters arced and spun itself out under her hands.  

It didn’t want the name. It struggled against the "Complexities." She'd never heard so much of a ship's voice as when the Mist Rising Off Waters told her that it wasn't complex, that it wanted one thing, and that was to fly. 

I know, she thought, and hoped the ship could hear her. I need you to try. 

The ship, balanced between Mist and Light, tried. She felt its eagerness, its puppyish desire to please. It tried to understand complexity: what drew a pilot up to the stars and then back to home, what forces drove the sun to rise and set. It couldn't. 

"Let's see," Tadorn said, and stopped. How do you explain ambiguity? "I have a daughter," she told the ship. "I love her more than anything. And… and I'm jealous of her." She closed her eyes and bit her lip before continuing. "I wanted to be a pilot ever since the first time I saw a ship take off. I never will be. But she will. She doesn't want to be. She doesn't need to want to be, in the way that a bird doesn't want to fly. I can't wait for her to have her first commission, to go up among the stars. It still hurts. But I'm glad." Tadorn tilted her face up so that the sun would hit her tears. "Do you understand now, ship?" 

*

The pilot of the Complexities of Light was barely more than a child. His suit was the same silver-gray as the ship’s hull. As he stood next to the stairs leading up to the control center, he was visible only by the darkness of his hair against the ship. He looked a little like Alouette, or like Alouette would in eight years.

Tadorn watched from the Consul’s box. She knew the ship was perfect. Her heart was still in her mouth. It was at every launch. The Consul was speaking. She had no idea what he was saying. 

He finished. The pilot waved his hand and smiled for the press, and walked up the stairs. The door closed after him. 

The Complexities of Light was not the Exaltation. It was not her favorite ship of those she’d built. It lacked the grace of the Lady of the White Court, or the energy of the Cormorant. But in every technical aspect, it was perfect, and it was hers – made by her hand and holding her spirit. It would go into the darkness of the void outside and then enter some other atmosphere beyond the bounds of the known universe. It would bear the songbird she’d taken as her maker’s symbol on its feet and leave it in prints on alien soil. Her heart was scattered over a thousand planets and in a hundred ships, not tied to a single one, the way a pilot’s was. 

The Consul lifted his hand and let it fall. 

The band’s music crescendoed, and when the flute hit its highest note, the feet of the Complexities of Light lifted off the ground. It floated like a dandelion seed, hovering for a second above the ground, and then took off. The air filled with iridescence as it rose, and the noise of the crowd and the band’s music were muffled slightly by its soft song. And then it was gone, up into the upper air. 

When it was gone, the band played Eystvar’s Recessional for the departure of the Consul, and, smiling, he left. The crowd dispersed. Tadorn waited until everyone was gone and the square was empty. She stood in the center of the sunburst mosaic and kicked her shoes off, letting her bare feet feel the warmth of the stone and the texture of the tiles. 

She turned her face up to the sun. Her knees buckled below her, and she knelt, touching her head to the ground, and wept. 

And then she felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up to see Garcet, her husband, and behind him, Alouette, their daughter. 

“Well, Tadorn?” he asked. “Are you ready to go home?” 

She ran her hand through her short hair and rubbed the tears from her eyes, then pushed herself to her feet. Behind Alouette the Heron’s Feather bobbed eagerly, the name slightly crooked on the hull, chiseled by childish hands.  

“Yes,” she said. “I am.”

**********************************************************************

"I loved those ships," he says.

"Mmm," Maya agrees, hesitantly.

"You didn't like it?" he looks at her, astonished. 

She looks down at the cat. "There wasn't any food."

"No, but there were living spaceships!"

"I don't know." 

"Is this like the milking machines?" he asks, gently.

She looks up, startled. "Yes, I suppose it is. It's -- are there really parents and children like that? Where the mother would make the ship for her and feel that way?"

"There really are," he says. "I've seen it."

"Then why doesn't everyone have that?" Maya asks.

"Even people who aren't lucky enough to have parents like that can be parents like that for their own children," he says. "It's possible to break the cycle."

"I never thought of that," Maya says. "...I wish I had a mother who loved me enough to make a little spaceship for me and one day a big spaceship."

"I wish you did too," he says. "But maybe one day you can do that for your kids."

Maya nods. "The sun's getting low," she says. "We should read one more and then go downstairs."

He picks up the next story. "Leah Cypress," he says. "Distant Like the Stars. Hope there's supper."

Maya takes it, and they read.