Ship of Fools (6 page)

T
HE
harvesters descended screaming from the sky. Three great shining metal leviathans dropping almost directly over the settlement, their descent gradually slowing even as the screaming sounds intensified.

The entire exploration party had come out to watch. Pre-dawn, we couldn’t yet see the sun from where we stood, but the harvesters were high enough for the sun’s rays to illuminate their scarred metal bellies, the rims of their enormous gaping maws.

The reprovisioning of the ship was about to begin. The ship’s recycling systems—of air, water, waste—were incredibly efficient, but the ship was not a completely closed system. No matter how efficient, there was always some leakage, loss, dissipation. . . . Fresh organic matter was needed.

For the next several days, the harvesters would ravage this part of the continent. With blazing, churning mouths they would consume all organic matter in their paths—animal and plant and anything in between. When their holds were full they would return to the main ship and unload, and all that organic material would then be broken down into basic constituents and detoxified, neutralized, then
revitalized and cycled back into the ship’s food and environmental systems.

This was long overdue. Too many years without this opportunity.

One of the harvesters broke away still howling, slowly banked around and headed east toward the shore, where it would begin harvesting from the sea. The other two continued their steady descent, drifting away now from the settlement. Copper and orange and magenta flowers of light floated around them, and it was impossible to know if that light came from the sun, the engines, or the burning furnaces within them.

The two finally dropped out of sight, but soon flames could be seen rising above the jungle in the distance, along with swirling towers of smoke. The sound changed, became a deeper, harsher roar tearing the dawn air. The harvesting had begun.

F
ATHER
Veronica and I, along with Marcus Krisk and Trude Stimpl—our two soldiers/escorts/pilots—boarded the flyer and took off, headed south and east. There were no windows in the flyer except for those in the pilots’ cabin, and our only view of the terrain came from a set of small video monitors, only half of which functioned—watching them was like trying to put together a child’s mosaic puzzle with some of the pieces missing. But I could make out thick forests below us, sectioned off by rivers carving their way through the dense vegetation. This was followed by vast marshland, then more forest. The woods rapidly transitioned to dense jungle, and a torrential rain began, obscuring visibility.

When we finally reached our destination—a grouping of perhaps thirty buildings in the middle of the jungle—we could find no place to land. Trees and vegetation surrounded the buildings, enclosing them, sometimes overgrowing them so that their roofs were only partially visible, and there were no nearby clearings. We circled the area, but the nearest clearing we could find was twenty kilometers away.

We flew back to the buildings, and after hovering over them for several minutes, Trude picked out what appeared to be the strongest flat roof (based on what, I had no idea), and made a slow, careful descent. As we touched down, the roof buckled, but held.

It was still raining hard. Cloaked in waterproof body coverings, the four of us left the flyer to begin exploring. I was stunned by the heat. Because of the rain, I had expected the air to be cool, but it was hotter and more stifling than anything I could remember experiencing. We had difficulty breathing. Marcus and Trude returned to the flyer for the breathers, but when Father Veronica declined to use one, I decided to do without as well.

We climbed down from the roof using a tangle of trees and lianas; once on the ground, progress became more difficult. Presumably there had once been pathways between the buildings, but if so they had long ago become overgrown, and passage was impossible. Marcus and Trude burned trails through the foliage with their stone burners, the same weapons that had been used to carve out the grave back at our original landing site. The air filled with smoke and the stench of burning, vaporizing plant matter; probably animal flesh as well, for we occasionally heard what sounded like screams.

By mutual consent, we examined the building we’d landed on first. We could not find a way in. It was rectangular, four meters high, about twenty meters in length, and fifteen in width, constructed of a black, plastic-like material; there were no doors or windows, no openings of any kind. There had been no openings on the roof, either. Marcus wanted to use the stone burners to melt our way inside, but Father Veronica and I argued successfully against it. With no way to know what was in those buildings, using the stone burners would be risky—a good way to get ourselves killed in an explosion of some sort. We moved on.

Each building was more of the same, or close enough. Burning our way from one structure to another was slow going, and then we found buildings with no access, or
buildings with doors that, when forced open, revealed empty, abandoned rooms.

Halfway through the afternoon, exhaustion growing, Father Veronica and I gave in and began using the breathers. Even with the aid of oxygen, the more we explored this place, the stranger we felt. None of it made sense. The empty buildings were
completely
empty except for thick, oozing mud, tangles of green and purple vines, clumps of rotting vegetation. The emptiness was unsettling. Although some of the buildings had doors, not a single one had any windows or outer openings for ventilation, despite what appeared to be ventilation screens inside some of the buildings.

I have no idea how many buildings we examined by the time the dim light began to fade even further. All of us were dazed, and we knew we had to quit soon.

Then we came across the strangest building of all. It was located in the center of the site, and its walls were all glass, or something
like
glass. The building was star-shaped, seven-pointed. Although darkness was falling, with our hand torches we could see inside. In the points: machinery and cables and padded benches; hanging baskets that seemed to be chairs of some kind; oblong metal containers, shiny reflections of liquid inside them; floor-to-ceiling tubes fluorescing in the light of our torches. In the central area: a broken ring of instrument panels and consoles; amazingly, there were lights glowing in some of the panels—green, amber, and one blinking crimson in the dark.

We found the doorway, then stood facing each other. “Tomorrow would be best,” I suggested. We were exhausted, and this would probably take some time. The others agreed. But as they turned away and started back, I thought I saw a silver, ghostlike form drift through the central section. I stood there a long time, studying the interior, but didn’t see anything more. I told myself it was exhaustion, but I didn’t quite believe it.

N
OTHING
felt right the next day, not from the moment we once again left the flyer. There was the steaming, oppressive heat, everything wet and dripping though it was no longer raining, and there were strange whimpering noises; a long, haunted caw; incredibly loud clicking sounds: the only signs of animal life in this jungle.

We were all wearing breathers, and we climbed down the vine-choked trees to reach ground level, then made our way slowly toward the star-shaped building near the center of this . . . what? Town? Settlement? Industrial complex? Memorial? We still didn’t know. Perhaps when we explored the building we would have a better idea.

When we reached the central building, we worked our way to the door we had identified the day before. It was mostly glass, like the walls. Marcus raised his stone burner, but I stopped him before he could fire the weapon.

“Wait,” I said, my hand on Marcus’s arm. I took hold of the metal door handle, pushed, then pushed harder, but nothing happened. Then I pulled instead, and the door swung easily open. After pausing for a few moments, I stepped inside.

Though stale, the air was cooler and lighter, and we no
longer needed the breathers. I led the way on a cursory inspection of the star sections. We felt obligated to do so, although all of us were anxious to move on to the central area and the still-functioning machinery. We briefly examined the furniture, the tables and desks, and the hanging, cushioned baskets that seemed like strange, hovering chairs; we stepped over massive cables, some of them no longer connected to anything at either end; we peered into half-filled metal vats, wondering at the composition of the liquid and its purpose; we noted shredded fabric hanging from the ceiling and dried tracks of color smeared on some of the glass walls.

Finally we came full circle back to the open door. Once again I took the lead, and we moved toward the central section. There was a broken ring of consoles ten meters across, seven equal sections divided by narrow, shallow steps leading down toward a central circular section slightly lower than ground level. Colored lights glowed and flickered on the consoles—tiny amber squares, rotating green spirals, an occasional blinking red circle. But there were no markings, no words or characters or numbers, no dials or toggles or buttons. What purpose could all this serve?

“Is it real?” I wondered aloud.

“What do you mean?” Marcus asked. He tapped at one of the consoles with his stone burner, producing a loud ringing. “We’re not imagining this.”

“He’s suggesting it might be a mock-up,” Father Veronica said; I nodded. “Empty metal casings with some lighted displays. Not connected to anything.”

“Why would anyone do that?”

I shrugged. I pointed at a metal handle attached to a circular cap on the floor, by the bottom step nearest me. “Looks like an air-lock handle,” I said. “And look.” There were six others, one at the bottom of each set of steps.

I walked awkwardly down the steps—they were unnaturally shallow and long, and my club foot was no help. I crouched beside the handle, gripped it, and twisted. It turned easily one quarter revolution, then would go no farther.

We waited, looking around, but nothing happened. “Let’s try all of them,” I said.

The others descended the steps and fanned out, each to a handle, I to a second. Four more handles turned one quarter revolution each. Still nothing; Trude and I moved to the last two. Looking at each other, we turned them almost in unison.

The floor opened up, dilating. Fortunately none of us had gone farther than the handles so no one dropped through the hole now forming in the center of the building.

No, not a hole exactly, for there was a spiral flight of stairs leading eight or nine meters down to a dimly lit floor.

Father Veronica was closest to the stairs, so she started down first, and we followed. Our steps echoed with a muffled quality which sounded unnatural. The air was musty, as if it had been trapped for decades.

We gathered at the bottom before the outline of a wide door in the wall. There was a simple, metal handle. Father Veronica gripped it, pulled upward, and pushed the door. There was resistance at first, then the door swung inward; at the same time there was a sound like a giant breathing in, and a breeze was drawn past us into whatever rooms lay beyond the door.

A loud and terrible racket erupted, clattering sounds like dozens of hollowed stone wind chimes, and lights were coming on, spitting and flashing into life, nearly blinding us. Then the stench hit us, working its way against the breeze still blowing inward, not quite overwhelming, but strong and invasive, sticky sweet and rotting and musty and acrid burning all at once, driving its way through our nostrils and into our brains.

We stood stunned and unmoving, and now, finally, we were starting to make out with blinking and stinging eyes what it was that filled the vast chamber beyond the wide, open doorway. . . .

Bones.

Hanging bones. Skeletons rattling and clattering in the air currents; tightly woven ropes knotted on large and vicious hooks embedded in the ceiling, then noosed around
the nearly fleshless necks of discolored skeletons with skulls grinning and staring at us from shadowed, empty sockets.

No one moved. No one said a word.

How many were there? How many hanging skeletons in this chamber that seemed to stretch on endlessly in all directions? Too many to distinguish, too many to count.

Only gradually did more details become apparent—not because they had been hidden, but because it was all too much to take in at once, and only bit by bit could it be processed; maybe not even then; perhaps there would never be enough time to assimilate everything we saw in this chamber. That, after all, might be best.

The skeletons were not completely stripped clean. On most there still remained dangling strips of leatherlike skin, translucent strings of sinew, the reflection of metallic wrist bands, stray tufts of hair caught in splintered bone.

Looking more closely now, I saw that some of the bones were broken, crushed, particularly the fingers and toes, digits missing or barely hanging on with bits of cartilage or ligament. But there were occasional signs of damage to the larger bones, too, and, more rarely, to a few of the skulls.

The air currents had died down, and the skeletons swung more slowly now; there was less clacking and clattering, quieter now, though just as disturbing. The left wall was fifteen meters and two dozen skeletons away, the right wall the same, but the far wall was beyond view—all we could see were more skeletons, stretching endlessly into the distance . . . literally hundreds, I guessed. Thousands? It was horribly possible.

Father Veronica was the first to move, the first to step farther into the chamber. The skeletons were not lined up in rows, and they were so close to one another that there was no way to move among them without grazing the bones. As Father Veronica worked her way toward the back, she set some of the skeletons swinging and clattering again. I followed, making my own path, making my own terrible music.

There were hundreds of bones scattered about the floor,
strips of decayed flesh, pools and smears of viscous fluid. Just as it was impossible to avoid brushing against the hanging skeletons, so was it impossible to avoid stepping on bone or in thick, sticky liquid as I moved through the room. I pushed through the skeletons in a daze, barely able to maintain my balance, my thoughts frozen in place, my body hardly able to function.

Ragged gouges across a kneecap, more gouges in a cheekbone. Scorch marks on some of the hands and feet, and I could only hope they were postmortem, but I suspected, given everything else I’d seen, that they were not. A caved-in skull; a large patch of dark leathery skin flapping at a clavicle; an entire chest of cracked and broken ribs.

Father Veronica had stopped, frozen in place. I made my way to her side, and my breath caught as I saw what she saw: the broken, cracked, damaged, tortured skeletons of children.

Whatever the reasons, this felt so much more terrible, making breath difficult to draw. I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t speak. Something should have been said, something should have been asked, but I couldn’t imagine what it would be.

After some time—I had no idea how long—Father Veronica and I pressed on, past the bones of the children.

Glimpses of the far wall could now be seen, which meant, at last, an end to this. If there could be an end. We pushed through the last of the hanging skeletons, desperate and faster now, although it meant violently rattling the bones.

But we were still not prepared for the final sight. We reached the end of the chamber, emerged from the hanging skeletons, and found ourselves staring in horror.

Impaled on hooks projecting from the back wall of the chamber were the ruined skeletons of twenty-five or thirty infants. Bloodstained hooks protruded from the infants’ chests and necks, through shattered ribs and throats. Crushed fingers and toes. Charred flesh and bone. Broken teeth and desiccated eye sockets and wisps of torn and delicate hair. Babies.

“No,” Father Veronica whispered. She began to weep, shaking her head slowly from side to side, the tears streaming down her cheeks. I could do nothing but stand motionless at her side, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to comfort either her or myself.