A Stark And Wormy Knight (24 page)

When I left with the empty wine glasses he was drinking his coffee and staring up at the ceiling as if he was thinking about something real. The music had started again, Don Giovanni and his doomed pursuit of pleasure. Oh, well, better than the caterwauling modern stuff, I guess.

Honest, I’ve got nothing against art. I hope I’ve made that clear. I just don’t like moping. Waste of everyone’s time. “Life’s a banquet,” as good old Rosalind Russell said in one of those ancient films I like, “and most poor suckers are starving to death.”

* * *

The thing that finally made it all happen was Doc Swainsea’s report. I don’t know what happened between her and Balcescu, but after the night I saw her she pretty much disappeared from social life on the ship, spending something like twenty hours a day in her lab. I know, because who do you think brought her meals to her, cleared away the old trays, and tried to get her to sleep and take a sonic occasionally?

Anyway, it happened during one of the meetings where I was off duty and my roomie Ping was serving at the bridge conference table — he gave me the lowdown the next morning. Doc Swainsea was just finishing up her final report. The energies she’d been able to analyze in the destruction of the Malkinate ship and the Hub lighter were like nothing else she’d seen, she told the captain and the others. The wreckage was like nothing else she’d seen, either. The projection mechanism had to be like nothing she’d seen. And she’d been in touch with a xenobiologist on one of the other trapped ships and he agreed that the projected apparition looked like nothing he’d seen, either. If it was an image of a real life form, it was one we hadn’t come into contact with yet.

“Extragalactic, most likely,” was Balcescu’s one contribution, Ping said. Nobody argued, but nobody seemed very happy about it, either. Then the odd part happened.

Doc Swainsea closed with one last point. She said that in analyzing the projection she’d discovered a regular pulse of complex sound buried deep in the roaring, blaring audio, at a level too low for humans to hear without speeding it up. It didn’t sound anything like the speech Balcescu had translated – in fact, she wasn’t sure at all that it
was
speech, although it seemed too regular and orderly to be an accident. She said she didn’t know what that signified, either – she just thought she should mention it. Pim said she looked exhausted and sad.

And just at this point Balcescu got up and walked out.

When Pim told me I couldn’t help wondering what was going on. Was it something to do with that evening the two doctors had spent together, the one I’d walked in on? It had just looked like a less-than-satisfactory date to me, but maybe my lagging biochemistry had betrayed me – maybe there had been something more complicated going on. Pim said Doc Swainsea had looked surprised too when Balcescu left so abruptly, surprised and maybe a little hurt, but she didn’t make a big deal of it. That upset me. I really liked Doc Swainsea, although the difference in our ranks meant I didn’t get to talk to her much.

I didn’t have much time to think about Stefan Balcescu, though. That morning as I came on duty, right after I talked to Ping, we heard that five Malkinate cruisers had attacked the jellyfish ship. The black starfield around Rainwater Hub looked like a Landing Night celebration back home – fireworks everywhere. But silent, of course. Completely silent. The X-Malkins were obliterated in a matter of minutes.

* * *

Things got a little crazy after that. Some of the passengers who were supposed to be in deep sleep staged a sort of mini-mutiny. We didn’t do much to ‘em once we put an end to their uprising – just put ‘em back in cryo where they were supposed to be in the first place. One of the passenger cabin CS4s turned out to be the sympathizer who’d let them out, and he wound up in cryo himself, except in the brig. Captain Watanabe knew she had a lot of unhappy, worried shipmen on her hands but she also wanted to make sure she did the right thing. The problem was, at that moment nobody believed anything good could happen from staying near Rainwater Hub: everybody figured if we were going to take years getting home, we might as well get started. But the captain and some of the other Confederation officers hadn’t given up yet — and strangely enough, the one who had convinced them to hang on was Stefan Balcescu.

I only found out what was happening when I got called to the bridge one evening almost a week later. It was about day twenty of the crisis. Captain Watanabe was in the conference room with Lt. Chinh-Herrera, Dr. Swainsea, First Lieutenant Davits who headed up the ship’s marines, and several men and women from Engineering whose names I didn’t know – they’ve kind of got their own world down there.

I asked the captain what I could bring her.

“Just sit down, Jatt,” she told me. “Shipman Ping’s handling your duties. You’re here as an observer.”

“Observer?” I had no idea what she was talking about. “Begging your pardon, Captain, but Observing what?” It was a mark of how sure she was of her command that I could ask my commanding officer a question that easily. A lot of ‘em want you to treat anything they say like it’s written on a stone tablet.

“This,” she said, and one of the engineers turned on the com screens.

The first thing I saw was a group of perhaps a half-dozen red circles moving across a star field, heading toward the immensity of the alien jellyfish ship. It took me a few more seconds until I figured out that the red circles were only on our screen, that they were markers outlining the position of several small Confederation ships which would otherwise have been almost too dark to see. The weird thing, though, was that I could see as I focused on their silhouettes when they crossed in front of the alien vessel that they weren’t Confederation cruisers or jumbos or even attack ships, but…

“Lifeboats,” said the captain as if she’d heard my thought. “One from each of the Confederation ships.”

“I’m sorry, Captain Watanabe, I’m still not getting any of this…” I looked around to see if anyone else was as puzzled as I was, but they were all watching the screens intently. I noticed that Balcescu, who lately had been at all these sort of meetings, was conspicuously absent. Had he given up? Or just pissed everyone off so much that they hadn’t invited him for this…whatever it was?

“Bear with us, Shipman Jatt,” the captain said. “You’re here by special request, but we’re in the middle of an actual mission here and we don’t have time to…” Her attention was distracted by a murmur from the first lieutenant.

“They’re not going for it,” he said.

“Maybe they’re just not in a hurry,” said Doc Swainsea. “Their approach is slow. Give it time…”

Even as she said it, one of the lifeboats suddenly flew apart. The others scattered away from their stricken comrade in all directions, but slowly – too slowly. The small ships dodged and dived, but within only a few minutes every one of them had been reduced to shattered flotsam. I blinked hard as my eyes filled with tears.

“There he is!” said Captain Watanabe. “See, Jatt?” When she turned to me she saw my face. “No, look, he got through!”

“He? What are you talking about? They’re all dead!” It was all I could do to keep from sobbing out loud at the waste, the murderous stupidity of it all.

“No! No, Jatt, the lifeboats were unmanned. They were cover, that’s all.” She pointed to the screen again, at what I had taken for another small, rounded chunk of debris. “See, that’s him! He’s almost reached them!”

“He doesn’t know, Captain,” said Chinh-Herrera suddenly. “Balcescu didn’t tell him.”

“For Christ’s sake, who is this
he
you keep talking about…?” Then suddenly it hit me. “Wait a minute…Balcescu? Are you telling me that’s Balcescu out there? What’s he doing? What’s going on?” I was almost crying again, and if you don’t think that’s embarrassing for a guy my age no matter
how
tall he is, you’re a damn idiot.

“He’s in one of our exterior repair pods,” said Chinh-Herrrera, pointing to the tiny, avocado-shaped object floating across the starfield toward the jellyfish, which loomed above it now like a frozen tidal wave. “The engineers modified it. Wait’ll you see what it can do.”

“If the ship lets it get close enough,” said Doc Swainsea. I noticed for the first time that her eyes were red, too.

I still didn’t really understand, but I sat in silence now with everyone else, holding my breath as I watched the tiny object float closer to the monstrous ship. At last it touched and stuck. Everyone cheered, even me, although I still wasn’t quite sure why. Slowly, the rounded shape of the repair pod flattened against the side of the jellyfish ship until had turned itself into a wide, shallow dome like a black blister.

“It’s slicing its way through,” said Chinh-Herrera. “Monofilament cutter.”

“Put on the helmet feed,” said the captain.

A moment later another picture jumped onto the screen – a close-up view of something falling away – a section of the alien ship’s skin that had been cut away now falling into the ship, I realized. The hole it left pulsed with blueish light.

“How’s the pod holding up?” the captain called to the engineers.

“The blister beams have gone rigid – no loss of pressure. We’re solid, ma’am!”

A moment later we could see feet in an excursion suit fill the screen as Balcescu looked down while he stepped through the hole cut in the alien hull. It seemed crazy – the aliens must know he was there. How many seconds could he have until they were on him? And what the hell was he supposed to do in that little time – plant a bomb? Why would they send Balcescu to do that instead of one of the marines?

But all I asked was, “Why isn’t he talking to us?”

“Radio silence,” Chinh-Herrera whispered. “To make sure we give him as long as possible before he’s detected.”

“He likes it better that way, anyway,” said Doc Swainsea.

As Balcescu moved inside it was as though he had been swallowed into some giant living thing – the blue-lit corridor was mostly smooth except for low bumps in strange formations, and as shiny-wet as internal organs. I half expected him to be swept up like a corpuscle in a blood stream, but instead he turned into the main passage, which seemed to be about half a hundred feet tall and nearly that wide, and began to move down it. He was walking, I realized, which meant that the ship had to have some kind of artificial gravity.

“What’s he looking for?” I whispered, but nobody answered me.

Suddenly a trio of inhuman shapes emerged from a side-corridor into the main passageway. I heard several of the observers swear bitterly – I must confess Captain Watanabe was one of them – as the horrors turned toward Balcescu. I couldn’t make a sound, I was so frightened. They were at least twice human height, rippling like ash in a fire, but undeniably real, even seen only on com screen. Whatever complicated arrangement was at the bottom of their bodies didn’t touch the floor, but they did not give the impression of being light or airy or ghostly. And their faces – if those were their faces…! Well, I’ll just say I think I know now what was under the Commendatore’s mask.

Balcescu stopped and stood waiting for them. We could tell he’d stopped because the walls around him stopped moving. I guess he thought there was no point in running away, although if it had been me I sure as hell would have given it a try. The entire bridge was silent. You know that expressions about hearing a pin drop? If someone had dropped one just then we all would have jumped right out of our skins.

The terrible things approached Balcescu until they were right in front of him – and then they glided right past him.

“What the hell…?” I said, louder than I meant to, but nobody seemed to care. They were too busy cheering. For a second I thought they’d lost their minds. “Has he got some kind of cloaking device…? I asked.

Balcescu had turned around for some reason and was following the floating aliens. To my horror, he actually hurried after them until he caught them, then reached out and shoved the nearest one in the back. The creature stumbled slightly, or at least bobbed off balance, but then righted itself and went on as if it hadn’t noticed anything unusual. Neither of them even looked back.

I felt like crying again, even as everyone else was celebrating. I just didn’t get it. I almost thought I’d lost my mind.

“I hope you all saw that,” Balcescu said. I realized it was the first time I’d heard his voice in days. Who would have guessed I’d be hearing it over a comlink from the alien ship? “I humbly submit that I have won the argument.”

“You sure did, you arrogant sonuvabitch!” shouted Chinh-Herrera, but I think the comlink was only working one way.

“What happened?” I asked Doc Swainsea. She seemed more restrained than the others, as if she didn’t quite believe this was the victory everyone else seemed to think it was.

“They’re not real,” she said. “He was right, Rahul.” The doctor is the only person who calls me by my true name.

“Not real? But they blew up our ships! And just now…he pushed one of them!”

“Oh, they’re real enough – they have weight and mass. But they’re constructs. They’re not real people, any more than a child’s toy soldiers are real.” She frowned. She looked very tired, like it was taking all her energy just to keep talking to me. “No, that’s a bad analogy. They’re not that kind of toys, they’re puppets. This was all a show.”

“A show? They killed people! Hundreds of shipmen! What kind of show is that?”