Starship Home (37 page)

‘Charles de Josselin,’ said the musketeer and took off his plumed hat and executed a graceful bow. To Meg, Zoe and Marine he then said, ‘Pardon mesdemoiselles, I would kiss hands but in my present condition there seems to be little point.’

‘And you’re a starship,’ said Meg, now recovered from her surprise at Charles’s sudden manifestation.

‘But yes. I am Guinevere’s equal number in the Starship Charles de Josselin. That’s me,’ he added with a smile to Marine, ‘as my very charming marine here will confirm. I am pleased to see you alive, mademoiselle.’

‘So this is it?’ Harold asked. ‘We’re captured?’

‘You were just about to be,’ the musketeer answered, ‘until the young lady spoke of her friendship for the lady Guinevere. Because of that I am in no hurry to tell my crew where you are, and now you will join me on the bridge.’ And with that he de-manifested, leaving them staring at one another in some alarm.

On the bridge, Harold was telling Charles de Josselin about their battle to save Guinevere’s life. The musketeer listened gravely throughout. ‘And so we all pitched in and got her stuff. Copper, gold, tin, salt, iron. The Zyglan was hard but we found it in Slarn Base 35. And we were all set to get the calcium and water when everything happened at once.’

‘And why did you do all this for an alien ship which had taken you from your homes?’

‘Because we liked her. It made no sense, but she got us home. Sort of. And we’d come to like her.’

‘And now we love her,’ said Meg. ‘Is that so strange?’

‘Not at all,’ Charles replied. ‘Now listen to me. I want to save her life. If I tell my crew where she is …’

‘No!’ Guinevere’s voice was weak but firm, and they turned and saw her illness-ravaged face upon one of the screens. She was looking at Charles. ‘Charles? Do I dream?’

‘No, my love,’ he said, ‘I found you. The Galaxy is not so large that I should not find you.’

Her eyes move to the Don on his stretcher. ‘What ails the Don?’

‘A poisoned dagger,’ Meg said, her voice breaking with emotion, ‘we brought him here in the hope …’

‘Place him within the surgeon’s pod,’ said Guinevere, ‘do it now.’

‘No!’ intervened Charles. ‘I forbid this! You could die yourself. We can get you off planet, heal you …’

‘Nay, good Charles. I have come home. Live or die, I’ve come home and my lot is with these people. Place the Don within.’ And slowly the medipod slid open, and they placed the Don inside and just as slowly it slid shut again. ‘Now get me water,’ Guinevere continued, ‘milk and water.’

For a moment, no one moved, and then Charles turned and shouted. ‘You heard her! Milk and water!’

They moved out fast at his command, the Trolls pausing only to scoop up their sword belts from where the Looters had left them. Harold paused by the clock which was ticking away the minutes toward self destruct. ‘Six days!’ he exclaimed and with renewed energy he ran out of there. The bridge was now empty save for Charles’s transparent manifested image, and then a shaky manifestation of Guinevere appeared before him. For a few seconds, the manifestations blended, as if in a silent kiss, and then disappeared.

Outside, Ulf was taking charge. To Zoe, he said, ‘To the village. Tell them we need milk to save the Don’s life. They should help us because no milk will mean no Don will mean no village, no villagers, just ashes and a mass grave. Tell them Ulf says so and they know Ulf keeps his word.’ As Zoe ran off he turned to Rocky. ‘To the castle. I want every Troll warrior here carrying water, and I want them here ten minutes ago.’

Rocky was horrified at the message he was supposed to deliver. ‘But Trolls don’t carry water.’

‘Ulf is about to start carrying water for the first time in his life. Tell them that. But first tell them that anyone who finds that funny will have no ears to laugh with.’

No ears to laugh with,
thought Rocky as he ran off.

Ulf turned to the others. ‘Now we carry water.’ He looked at Zachary. ‘Will you find that funny?’ Zachary answered by putting his hands over his ears, and they set to.

In his cell on the starship Charles de Josselin, Marlowe lay on the interrogation couch, and the marine officer was talking to him. ‘We’ve sent for a Confederacy Senator. When he arrives, we’ll formally bestow citizenship of the Confederacy upon you. You’ll be coming home.’

‘Good,’ Marlowe said, poker-faced.

‘Now where’s the missing starship?’

‘I’ll tell you when I’m a citizen.’

The marine officer leaned in close to Marlowe. ‘I can tell from your old scars that you’ve had some pain in your life. I’m here to tell you that you don’t yet know what pain is.’ Marlowe did not answer, but took a deep breath, and then another. ‘There are two ways of doing this, Marlowe, the marine way and the hard way. If you choose the hard way I promise you that quite soon you’ll be crying for your mother and begging to die.’ Marlowe’s breathing was now slowing. ‘I’m going to have this information anyway, so you can either give it to me, or I’ll extract it.’

Marlowe spoke, and his voice was distant, fading, remote. ‘I can hear your words, I will feel the sensations, but I shall not feel them as pain. You will never have your information until I am guaranteed homecoming.’

The officer turned in a fury. ‘Starship! What’s this barbarian savage doing?’ He looked at the telltales on the interrogation couch. ‘Nothing on the telltales, so sensation registered, what’s the gritzy doing to himself!’

Charles de Josselin manifested. ‘Some of these people have a certain technique. Yogic trance, it is called. In the Anthropological survey cube you’ll find it under Level 73 of tower 86472.’

Marlowe smiled, and his voice was still far away. ‘My father wrote that cube,’ he said.

The officer ignored him and directed his question to Charles. ‘Can I interrogate?’

‘He will not find pain persuasive. He has some of the more interesting talents. He could have made a starship of the first order.’

The officer turned back to Marlowe. ‘All right. I’ll send for the Confederacy Senator.’

From far away, Marlowe’s voice said, ‘I thought you already had.’

Caught in his lie, the officer’s answer was a bare shrug. ‘It’ll take two days. And by the Eternal Abyss, when he arrives you had better start telling the truth.’

A pride of lions, lying lazily in the sunshine, casually watched as on the further side of the waterhole, Zachary, Meg, Harold, Marine, Father John, Ulf and the Troll warrior scooped up two buckets of water each and then headed back toward the starship.

In the forest village, cows and sheep and goats made protest in their different ways as Maze supervised forest people milking them. Already villagers led by Zoe were heading off toward the starship with brimming buckets of milk.

And on the bridge of the starship, the lights were dim. The telltale lights on the medipod flickered, and within the medipod the Don lay on the balance point between life and death, his face waxen, his breathing labored.

One screen showed Zoe leading the milk party from the village across the clearing and into the starship, and then she guided them through the ship’s corridors to the feeding chamber. She poured her buckets into the feeding pit, and the village people, awed by their strange surroundings, did likewise, and then it was back toward the hatchway, passing the water party on their way in. Buckets of water followed the buckets of milk into the feeding pit, and now the party of Troll warriors from Trollcastle were riding into the clearing, each with two buckets. They dismounted, waiting for orders and when Ulf re-emerged from the starship, he led them off toward the waterhole, freeing up Harold, Meg, Zachary and Marine to check on the Don’s condition. But when they entered the bridge, they found the situation changed: the screens were now either blank or had slowly pulsating color on them. Meg turned to Marine in fear. ‘Is the Don all right?’ she asked and Marine checked the telltales on the medipod and then nodded. ‘The medipod’s working off her autonomic system. The same system that keeps us breathing when we’re asleep.’

Then Guinevere cried out in panic, and the screens were suddenly filled with licking flames and nightmare images of demons and scenes of Hell from Books of Hours and then the face of the burning witch from her last dream was screaming silently, while all the while Guinevere was uttering a panic-stricken whimpering.

‘Guinevere!’ Zachary shouted, ‘wake up, it’s only a dream, wake up!’ and Guinevere woke, panting with panic, her breathing slowing as she recognized her surroundings.

‘Pardon, pardon,’ she gasped. ‘Forgive me, forgive me, for I dreamt, oh such a dream as might fright the angels!’

‘Is it the water?’ Harold asked.

‘It doth leach the poisons from my frail body,’ Guinevere replied, ‘but ‘tis needful, and good, so good.’

Harold moved to the self-destruct clock, checked it, closed his eyes and then checked it again. ‘She’s been using up energy like it’s going out of fashion,’ he exclaimed. ‘The countdown’s saying only four days left! It’s moved two days in just a few hours!’

‘More water,’ Guinevere moaned, ‘my only chance is more water.’

They hurried out of there.

And now it became a scene of urgent, frenzied activity as the bucket parties went to and fro between starship and waterhole and village, and Charles de Josselin manifested in the feeding chamber, watching, urging them on. ‘How is she?’ Meg asked him, ‘is she dying?’ ‘Just keep the water coming,’ Charles replied, and again Meg asked, in tones of anger this time, wanting the answer direct, ‘Is she dying!’ and Charles shrugged, and answered, ‘Even starships die,’ and on his face was written a terrible pain at the thought.

In the village, old Helena, ancient as a tree, sat on her chair of office on the verandah of her house, and watched the milking, and beckoned Maze and Zoe to her. ‘Tell me why we do this?’ she asked.

‘To save the Don,’ Maze answered. ‘If he dies the village dies with him.’ And then she paused, as if listening. ‘You say in your head that’s part of the answer only.’

Zoe broke in. ‘We do this because of Guinevere. Who was once a woman like us.’

Helena looked at her and then at Maze. ‘We three here, and the iron castle, all women?’

‘Yes,’ Zoe said, ‘she’s human, dying, and needs our help.’

‘Then continue,’ said Helena. ‘Get on with it.’

When Zoe and Maze reached the feeding chamber again with their band of foresters and their buckets of milk, and had poured them into the feeding pit, Charles de Josselin manifested. ‘Enough,’ he said, ‘she now has enough.’

Maze looked at him, and through him, hard. ‘You a picturemovie man? Like Giniveer?’

‘Yes, little one, like Giniveer,’ he replied with a courtly bow, looking at her with a keen interest which then turned to a mixture of alarm and admiration. ‘You are one of us, aren’t you?’

‘Get out of my head,’ she said, ‘or I get in yours!’

He laughed, and then looked serious. ‘The Slarn must not have you,’ he said, ‘or you will be a starship like me and Giniveer. Do you understand that? Don’t let them take you.’ And then suddenly his mind was elsewhere, and he said, ‘Quickly! To the bridge!’

When they got to the bridge, Charles was already there looking at the telltales on the medipod, and they saw that the main screens were full of slowly moving dark shapes, like unbreaking waves in a night sea. ‘The warrior in here,’ Charles said, indicating the Don in the medipod, ‘he must be moved.’ Meg stepped over to the medipod and stood before it, protectively. ‘He was poisoned,’ she said, ‘he’s ill.’

‘The poison has been removed from his blood,’ Charles said, ‘and if we take him out now he’ll be weak but can survive. But if he is in there when Guinevere dies, he will come out mad or dead.’

Unbidden, Marine moved to the control panel, pressed some buttons, and the medipod slid out and as it did so, the Don awakened. He took in his surroundings, and then as they helped him to an acceleration couch, he asked, ‘And my brother?’

‘Dead from the same poisoned blade he used on you,’ Meg replied.

‘My Don!’ came a voice from behind them, and they turned, and Ulf was there with Rocky and Father John. Ulf crossed swiftly to the Don, and fell to one knee and kissed his master’s hand. ‘Alive,’ he murmured, and then looked back at Rocky. ‘No thanks to this one’s father.’

‘Rocky’s been helping us!’ exclaimed Harold, but Ulf just gave a massive shrug, for he was a slow forgetter and an even slower forgiver.

Zoe was staring at the screens again with their dark roiling forms. ‘Please,’ she said to Charles, ‘what’s happening to Guinevere?’

‘I am controlling the basic functions of the ship now,’ Charles told her, ‘and there’s still life in her but for how long …?’

‘Do the Slarn know?’

Charles shook his head. ‘We ships have our secrets even from the Slarn.’

Zoe swallowed hard. ‘She’s dying now, isn’t she?’

Charles could give her nothing but the hard truth. ‘Yes. I’ve seen starships die in battle. I’ve never seen one die of love before. She could have signalled at any time, but that would’ve meant betraying her friends. She’s dying because she stayed loyal to all of you.’

They were silent, and then Zoe said, her voice breaking, ‘We tried. We tried so hard to save her. Isn’t there something more that we can do?’

‘No. And yet there is honor in what she has done. Great honor. So we must do what people do when great ones die. We must sit and wait.’

In the silence that followed, Maze entered the bridge. ‘I heard in your minds,’ she said, ‘that my friend Giniveer …’

Zoe, choking back a sob, simply nodded, and Maze moved to her and put an arm around her. And they stood close, very close in this darkest of moments.

Hours passed, and they sat and waited, Zoe holding Maze and comforting her, Zachary quietly playing his guitar, Meg sitting with the Don and holding his hands, Harold uncomfortable and wishing it were over, Father John in a meditation state, locked in deep contemplative prayer. Their voices were hushed when they spoke.

His curiosity getting the better of him, Harold broke the silence. ‘Are you running your own ship too?’ he asked. Charles nodded. ‘Guinevere couldn’t project her image and run the ship at the same time,’ Harold said, already referring to Guinevere in the past tense, as if she was already gone from them.

‘You never met her in her full strength and glory,’ Charles said, ‘she had a mind then like a Toledo blade, like sunlight, warm but sometimes blinding. When she disappeared, something went from the Fleet, something we’ve not regained. Most of the starships are warrior-mystics but Guinevere is other things beside. Warrior, mystic, woman, poet, lover.’ He paused. ‘She is just … Guinevere.’

Zoe was weeping and Meg’s shoulders were shaking, and the Don was holding her tight to him. Zachary was having trouble seeing the strings of his guitar. And then Guinevere’s sweet voice, weak and far away, invaded their minds. ‘Art weeping, cranky Meg?’ They turned, and found that the screens were brightening. The dark moving shapes were incorporating streaks of gold. And Guinevere was slowly awakening, calling them each by name, finally recognizing her old love Charles de Josselin among them. ‘Charles? Thou hast come to bid me farewell?’