The novice, Itsu-Ta, stood in the darkness outside the little tower room, looking at the marvelously star-rich desert sky, admiring it. Itsu-Ta was Homo tyssiensis of course, and to his large T'swa eyes, night was somewhat less dark than it might have been to a man from, say, Iryala. He was from the Jubat Hills, from Tiiku-Moks, where the sky was to some extent obscured or closed in by trees, and not infrequently cloudy. The monastery of Dys Tolbash, on the other hand, was on a ridge crest, and he on a tower of the monastery, with the night sky a vast, bottomless, scintillant bowl.
It might almost have drawn him into it—his full attention or even his soul—but he was on the tower for a purpose, and not free just then for wandering in the spirit. So he satisfied himself with looking, and enjoying the gentle winter breeze on his nearly naked body. (The temperature had slipped to about 85°F.)
He stepped back into the tower room; there was no wall on the north side, where the sun struck briefly only in summer, near sunrise and sunset. Master Tso-Ban sat there with his legs folded, had sat for sixteen hours unmoving, scarcely breathing, his heartbeat only sufficient for the tonus necessary to an upright posture.
Yet his attention was fully occupied.
Itsu-Ta could have eavesdropped; he had the ability. Although he was only a novice, he had been born to Wisdom/Knowledge, had been nurtured in it, had drilled its techniques for most of his eighteen years. But to eavesdrop on a master uninvited would have been discourteous, and more, it might have distracted Tso-Ban. Itsu-Ta's function this night was simply to give Tso-Ban's passive body a little water from time to time, water spiked with fruit juice as sustenance.
Tso-Ban's spirit was in a ship in hyperspace, on its bridge, with Tarimenloku's watch navigator. (The commodore himself was sleeping.) It seemed that the Confederatswa were very interested in whether the ship might emerge in Confederation Space. Which had provided Tso-Ban with a very interesting challenge, and, incidentally, Tyss and the Order with useful Confederation gold dronas.
So from the monastery library, Master Tso-Ban had memorized, imprinted, the galactic coordinates of a number of reference points in Confederation Space. Then by long and patient monitoring of ship's data, and its subliminal analysis, he'd gradually managed to visualize as a chart the ship's—the computer's—galactic model, with its coordinates! He'd had no one to instruct him, even unwittingly: Tarimenloku and his officers operated by long-conditioned automaticities, and relied heavily on the ship's computer. Tso-Ban's feat had been one of the outstanding accomplishments of millennia of Dys Tolbash's monks.
Then, after fixing his purpose, he'd meditated long, until the two sets of coordinates finally had reconciled for him. The project had kept him thoroughly engrossed for a number of deks. Now, with the coordinate models reconciled, he was monitoring in order to get a fix on the ship's course in hyperspace, as related to the Confederation's galactic chart.
Because the night was cool, Itsu-Ta did not attempt to give Tso-Ban another sip just then. Instead he assumed his own lotus posture on a mat on the stone floor, and re-entered a sort of reverie, monitoring the condition of Tso-Ban's body.
Dawn was still an hour away when Tso-Ban roused, and with him Itsu-Ta. The master yawned, stretched hugely, took a swig from the water bottle, bowed slightly to Itsu-Ta who bowed back, then began to descend the steep outside stairs that zigzagged down the side of the tower.
Tso-Ban had completed the challenge. The course the Klestronu flotilla was on would not take them into Confederation Space or even very near it. And with that knowledge, his interest in the flotilla faded. He'd had enough for now of a ship in hyperspace. A ship that had been in hyperspace for months and promised to be there for another year or more, if it didn't emerge prematurely to destruction by Garthid weapons.
Perhaps he would return to his off-and-on interest in the sapient sauroid hunters on another world he'd encountered. There were humans there, too, unknown to the Confederatswa or the Karghanik Empire, and sapient ocean life forms as well, but the sauroids interested him most.