The Shadow of the Ship, page 12
Rheinallt hesitated, shook his head. “I confess that I’ve been thinking of its mobility as almost a miraculous phenomenon. Although of course it wasn’t.”
“Define ‘miraculous.’”
“Scary, dangerous, and unfathomable with present data. Like its sudden appearance from the window.”
Arahant twitched the tailtip a few times in tiny arcs. “I see. Well, not having felt the baneful sonic influence as strongly as you have. I’ve been paying more attention to its physical aspects. Mind you, I don’t know just what manner of thing it is. I do think it definitely is material, and capable of movement using those darling fibers to push and pull when necessary. Or maybe exclusively.”
“It couldn’t move in vacuum without something to cling to? That could be a help. Confidence, Arahant.”
“Caution, my dear Hendrik Eiverdein Rheinallt.”
“It was confidence that got us off the rain planet, out of the first stage of our exile after being marooned by those low-lifes and abandoned to die.”
“To this Trails culture where we’re still in exile.”
Rheinallt nudged the lamp to make the green leaves flicker. “At least we’re making progress.”
“Yes, but the direction is questionable. I only mean to suggest that if we’re near another turning point in our fortunes, let’s not blow it.”
“I’m with you there.” Rheinallt slapped the table lightly. “And now, if you’ll kindly vacate the premises, I’d like to be alone with Whitnadys.”
“Whitnadys isn’t here yet.”
“I’d like some time alone with myself first.”
“Good idea,” Arahant said. “You could use a bath.”
“It’s been a long day for some of us. Take your nose with you when you go.”
Arahant clapped the end of his tail over his nose like an ostrich plume. “Ah, one more item, Hendrik, if you please. When did you notice I was here in the room with you?”
“You were puffing on my ankles.”
The aircat scowled comically. “You knew I was under the armchair?”
“No; I suppose you dove there when the Detenebrator showed up. Still, that can’t be right. You must have already been there, snoozing or something.”
“Hendrik, I—”
“You could have slipped me a warning.”
Arahant maintained his scowl. “I did. The reason I was under the armchair was that you were acting unpredictably. You were in here an hour, I estimate, before the Detenebrator pushed the door open and wandered around the wall to behind the curtain.”
“Huh?”
“When you walked in that door you were in a virtual trance. I started off chatting with you, and you scarcely were able to respond. When you did begin talking, your sentences were sort of coherent but the conversation wasn’t. I suspect the Detenebrator might have told you more if you hadn’t been so under the weather.”
“Lord! It seemed like I heard the Detenebrator—well, essentially the same minute I came in. I remember its advent was pretty strange emotionally. How long was I like that?”
Arahant considered. “Maybe half a clockhour like talking to an idiot. Then the Detenebrator came in, started talking, and shocked you out of it. Did the surgeon try a practice lobotomy on you?”
“Was I really that bad?” What could have happened?
“Definitely. I told you fourteen choice anecdotes about my sisters, and you didn’t complain once.” Arahant blinked slowly.
“Amazing.” Rheinallt thought in silence for several minutes. He reconstructed his day, came finally down to the conversation with Susannilar. She really had witched him! But how? And was it deliberate?
“It was Susannilar,” he said, and relayed as much of her tale of childhood as he could remember. And he found he remembered vast gobs of it, in vivid detail, as if she had carried him back psychically to glimpse her childhood.
“She has a strong mind, that one,” Arahant said when Rheinallt finally wound down. “Best you keep clear of her for a while. When we undertook the bloodsweater discipline, we gained awesome powers of self-healing, but your mind needs to be working clearly. Else the next time you do one of those electrical tricks that only you can do, you’ll kill yourself.”
Rheinallt held his hand under his chin and a single hair from his beard fell onto his palm. Taking the hair between thumb and forefinger, he held it upright on the line of sight between himself and Arahant, and with the slightest, most controlled trickle of electricity flowing from fingertip, he split the hair from base to top. When the split hair had ceased smoking he tossed it on the rug.
With a small bow, Arahant said, “My apologies. Even weirded half out of your mind, you’ve got such strength that I can only admire, not emulate.”
“Let me know when you want lessons.”
“Ho, ho. Choosing to master the processes of one’s blood is risky enough.”
“But you did that long ago,” Rheinallt said with a chafing tone. “Look at the benefits: gaining power over the cellular triggers of disease containment, controlled growth, refreshment and regeneration. As you well know, sickness, indigestion, poison, and wounds are all conditions diminishing in harmfulness as skill increases. Being able to spit blood, piss blood, and sweat blood are corollary features: any of these would indicate grave, possibly fatal organic malfunctions in a mammal of less mind-body integration, or less control.”
“Quite true,” Arahant agreed. “Next you’ll tell me that neither of us has abilities outside the range of any self-aware mammal. Bioelectricity is an entirely different skill.”
“Sure. You’ve managed not to poison yourself, so far. What makes you think you’d necessarily electrocute yourself?”
“The friends of our youth who did electrocute themselves.”
More soberly, Rheinallt said, “I was very lucky.”
“That’s why I say you should be careful of encounters that fog your clarity.”
“No. I appreciate your warning, but it’s even more important now that I figure out who and what Susannilar is. She’s got something unique. She even told me she could get into the Ship if no one else could.”
Squinting at his tailtip, Arahant asked, “Do you believe that?”
“I’m not sure. Not yet.”
The aircat sniffed disdainfully. “Maybe she plans to hypnotize everyone into thinking that she’s gone in and that it’s full of boogie-woogies.”
“That’s bogeymen.”
“Whatever.”
“Thus reserving the Ship all for herself? A number of the expeditionaries may have that in mind, but they won’t get away with it. The rest are too watchful.”
“Well, stay watchful yourself.” Arahant nodded abruptly, and with a low purring chuckle of dubious import, opened the door and left.
What a series of ordeals, Rheinallt thought. He was glad Arahant had hung around to help jolly him back to a relaxed state of mind.
Later, sponged and refreshed, Rheinallt considered that the Detenebrator, almost as much as the Ship itself, had been for him like an unseen companion this last year. A mystery customized for him, the knowledge of the thing was borne along in his mind like that Ship, or the image of a ship. He did not relish the comparison. One monkey on one’s mental back at a time ought to be enough.
Susannilar? He would need to deal with her again later, definitely. She was a powerful force on this expedition—another sleeper who turned out to be a porcupine when you stumbled over it. But useful and valuable if her talents could be channeled helpfully.
Later, but not tonight, he would ask Whitnadys for help with Susannilar. She would have some ideas. It was hard to believe that Susannilar’s girlish recital had affected his mind, but he couldn’t doubt Arahant’s testimony; he had known him too long not to trust the aircat perfectly. Next time he talked with that budding hypnotist, he might take an escort, though.
This second encounter with the Detenebrator was another factor in this caravan-equation that held too many unknowns already. The Detenebrator was dangerous, and did it! Capriciousness intensify the risk, or ameliorate it? The memory of the hotly twisted eyes of his two friends, of the cooling skin of the one corpse that remained on the sled—
Arahant was right, of course: caution was required here. Was his Special Caravan marked for the same fate as the sled? And its passengers? How tough were the rest of them? For that matter, how tough was he if the Detenebrator’s sonic powers had escalated as much as its ability to communicate, and the entity’s aims had not softened?
Meditating, relaxing, he continued gently pushing the clotted extraordinary sensations from the forefront of his mind, shelving the worries.
Despite a leader’s worry and a survivor’s recall, he still retained a capacity for wonder. Of what nature was the Detenebrator? Was it really proper to consider it an alien, a creature? From whence, and why?
Rheinallt had heard persistent rumors that out beyond the last starveling planet on the far end of the Green Trail toward Galactic South, the trail did not merely vanish into illimitable distance but rather was actively barred against the caravans. If there was a trail nation beyond End-of-Green, possibly it was alien, and no guessing its size. Sometimes even he, the much-traveled, forgot for a while that planets accessible on the trails known to humans were infinitesimal against the size of the rest of the galaxy. The word “accessible” had a sharp-edged handle.
But the Detenebrator? It seemed unique. He felt a wrongness in trying to assign the being to some particular galactic location. Even a home unknown, no matter how distant and rumor-shrouded, seemed too prosaic. The Detenebrator was above geography, or beyond it.
There was a knock and Whitnadys slipped into the room, happy feminine contrast with what had gone before. Good that she had not arrived earlier.
She propped her ankus in the corner, gave out an exaggerated sigh. “I’m glad I don’t work as long hours as the squeakers,” she said. Seeing his expression, she demanded, “What’s with you?”
“The Detenebrator was here. Arahant and I met it once before, on our little four-squeaker sled foray. I told you about that.”
“I remember,” she said soberly. “Two guys died. Bad news, huh?”
“One more imponderable, anyway.”
“Sounds like disaster in a small package. Luckily, I was home on Blueholm finishing the pregnancy when you ran into that. Our baby came just at the right time, since I couldn’t deliver him by proxy like I’ve been mothering him by proxy all these weeks. No way I was going to miss your Special Caravan, no matter what oddities we turn up.”
She laughed, a soprano ripple, and batted at him playfully. “Hey, no need to be so gloomy. So it’s a strange trip. We expected that. Maybe all the imponderables will gang up on each other and leave us be. Knock each other out. Or if not, we’ll just throw them overboard.”
Rheinallt grinned faintly. “But suppose we are among the imponderables?”
She laughed again, eyes bright, and he drew her to him for a long hug.
“We could decree a new fashion in earplugs,” Whitnadys said after a few minutes.
“Screening would be nice,” he told her seriously. “The Detenebrator’s generated voice was powerful last year, and now he’s got it under fine control. What addled brains last year might be able to structurally warp them this time around.”
“Can you counter it with your—what do you call them—electric waves?”
“Perhaps. My heightened bioelectricity might just make me more vulnerable than most.”
She shook her head emphatically, hair a honeyed swirl. “No. You did fine at Whitecloud. If the necessity arises, you’ll do fine again.”
They talked desultorily for a while, letting the problems of their day seep out of them and away. After a while he rose, carefully shut off the lamps one by one, and with a heavy tug on a pullcord, swept back the curtains from the thickly glassed window. Into the room, faintly reflected from the ceiling, crept the elfin blue glow of the trail beneath the plodding caravan. “Feeling better?” Whitnadys asked, warm and sympathetic. “Much.”
She stood too, and they came together in front of the window, feeling the strong reality of bodily contact and the contrast with the unreality of the meadow. Or rather, with the deadline of real things, the bottom, that absolute zero of existence which they dared and defied.
“Oh, your touch is so good,” she whispered as they slowly undressed each other.
They both knew what she meant by those words, spoken on a soft carpet with the black dead meadow outside: That in this expression of each other through touch, through feeling, was not only the standard idea of affection and lovemaking but a basic, primevally human defiance of the meadow and its neutrally empty nothingness. And this idea itself was not only a thought but a feeling.
Later, among minor caresses, Whitnadys propped herself on one elbow and said, “I hate to change the subject, Hendrikal, but I forgot to mention it earlier; I heard a story today that Trigotha was assassinated. That it wasn’t just an accident on his way back from finding the Ship.”
He smiled lazily at her. “No trouble to change it back again,” and he ran a fingertip along her arm, enjoying the soft warmth.
“Your electrotoned muscles are too much for me! But is that true, have you heard that story?”
“Well, I was told by someone that he was killed by a fanatic of some sort. Whether the assassin just found the news intolerable, or also thought he could squelch it by killing Trigotha, I don’t know. I understand the assassin didn’t survive Trigotha by long enough to explain.”
“We are all so full of fear,” she mused.
“Ah, then let’s return to the main subject,” he said, laughing, and took his turn to tease her, tickling her until she laughed too.
“When did you find time to learn so much?” she asked.
“A long life among the fleshpots,” he answered sleepily.
After a moment she asked, “How long?” Deliberately casual.
He yawned. “Talk about it later?”
“Well, all right.”
They kissed gently.
All that was human here was theirs. There was nothing alive outside, and nothing that ever had been alive. Inside was Whitnadys, the friend and lady lately so special to him, and her touch, her contact and communication and sharing. The caravan, their minuscule glowworm crammed with humanity, seemed so tiny and alone. He repressed a shiver, not wanting her to feel that now, but he suspected she already had felt such a shiver more than once. He would not have liked to make this trip without her humorous competence and loving support. He kissed her again, softly, as she slept.
So empty all around.
Still there was the Ship, somewhere ahead. That sustained him, and could perhaps if all else failed out here. As when a wounded soldier left for dead wakes from thirst on the now deserted battlefield, sees the glowing radiance of a campfire far away in the darkness where some friend of light rests upon the meadow.
The trodden ways were so few and so difficult of passage, the conveyances so limited. Trigotha had made the great discovery: a towering, legendary event of this age and this culture. The only starship yet known to these fifty-four worlds of the accessible galaxy. The new medium of interpersonal contact. The friend not merely by presence, but by existence.
9. A Cry of Crimson
The next day dragged on with a miscellany of slow pastimes—until the caravan topped a small rise in the gravitic pseudosurface.
“The Ship!” someone cried, and quickly the caravan’s cars from head to tail were ablaze with lights, filled with wild hopeful words, strained peerings engendering hot speculations in heads that had thought themselves all speculated out. This was the call, finally puncturing the long clockdays of the caravan.
“We’ve found it!”
A drop of blood with a flame behind it, the Ship glinted on the horizon of the meadow.
“At last!”
“Will the trail pass near it?” a voice asked from the milling crowd.
“We’ll see pretty soon, for sure,” someone stated with anonymous confidence.
“About time.”
“Damn right.”
All jostled for good positions at the view windows, or for positions in the lounge car close enough to the bar to order a celebratory drink. Sets of binoculars passed from hand to hand, wide eyes widened by the huge meadow-lenses.
“Hey! How about a name?”
“Yeah!” Various throats took up the cry. “What’ll we call it?”
“Can’t go on calling it ‘the Ship’ no more.”
“Didn’t Trigotha give it a name?”
“Naw.”
“Any ideas?”
Finally one of the two men who perpetually sweltered in red fur coats clambered up to stand on a chair and roared out, “Falling Angel!” and stepped down again to stand with his look-alike partner.
“What’d he say?” came voices amid the babble.
The excitement reached everyone, even those who Rheinallt felt sure were along mainly to shine up their credentials for the lecture circuit back home.
“What?”
“Stop hogging those lenses.”
“Fallen Angel.”
“No, no. Falling Angel”
“That’s right.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Falling Angel it is, then.”
“A toast!”
“Good.”
Step by step the Special Caravan drew nearer to the Ship. Now that the Ship was visible, a reddish blob in the distance, many of the passengers found to their surprise that they scarcely had believed in its reality; that they had come all this long way mentally holding their breaths.
The relief was immense. A pressure that had been suppressed from consciousness was lifted, and the whole complement aboard acted more than a little hyperventilated. Rheinallt was tempted to reduce the oxygen ratio in the supplier system. “I had no idea it would be so big!”
“Hand back those glasses. You look like a big-eyed bug.”
Soon now they would get down to the real business. The sophisticated languor of never-say-quit was replaced by the scurrying bumptiousness of gosh-wow-we-made-it. Everywhere plans were being reviewed and equipment lists checked.
