Starship Home (39 page)

‘How do you think,’ said Harold, ‘that you’re going to get away.’

‘That’s my edge,’ said Zachary, ‘I’m going to try and deliver the message and then get away, but if I don’t, I don’t care.’

‘You obviously don’t understand the problem,’ said Harold severely.

‘And that’s my other edge. Always has been. I keep telling people. If you don’t understand the problems, you don’t freeze up and you’re already ahead of the game.’

‘I can’t let you do this alone.’

‘Why not? You’re the games player, the guy who kills people for their treasure, steals food, builds up hit points for his role-playing avatar, why stick your neck out?’

‘Because those are games and this is real life. I just have this primitive instinct over-riding my intelligence at the moment and I can’t do a thing about it.’ Zachary grinned and put a hand for Harold to shake, until Harold added, ‘And without me you’ll just mess it up.’

Zachary withdrew the hand. ‘That’s it, kid! Go home!’ He turned and walked toward the skimmer and Harold tagged along as they argued and bickered like an old married couple. ‘I’ve had it up to here with you Harold, I don’t need a kid tagging along!’

‘Stop calling me “kid”!’

‘You are a kid. Kid! Kid! Kid! Nayahh nyahh nyahh nyahh nyahh! Kid!’

‘That’s disgusting, Zachary, that’s the most disgusting exhibition from a so-called adult I’ve ever witnessed in my life.’

‘Well you wouldn’t want to go to another planet with it, would you, so just shove off.’

‘Maybe I will,’ and he turned on his heel and for a moment Zachary thought he had driven Harold out of danger, but then Harold turned back again, ‘I can’t,’ he said.

Zachary, suddenly tired of arguing, pivoted, and slammed a fist flush to Harold’s jaw, decking him, and then ran for the Skimmer. Harold sat up, blinking and watching as Zachary reached the forcefield, and three Slarn marines materialized, surrounding him, Slarnstaffs at the ready. Then Zachary lifted his hands in surrender and the marines escorted him inside.

Zachary was talking fast, which was his normal pattern when faced with authority in any form. He had talked fast to his parents, to his teachers, his drill sergeants, to his superiors in all his jobs and to police officers in pursuit of their duties, and now he was talking fast to the Slarn marines. ‘Let me introduce myself,’ he said rapidly, ‘Zachary Owens, we may have met before, I can’t tell because that armor you good people wear makes you all look somewhat alike, but if you just check out the tattoo thingy on my forehead, I’m sure you’ll recognize me for who I am. Zachary Owens and I’m here to help. I can tell you right now where the starship Guinevere is so you can come over and stop her from self-destructing. As she is due to do in three days.’ They remained silent, and he thought it opportune at this time to get a few things sorted. ‘And if as a result of giving you this information, I get my choice of slave planets could I be put on the same one as a singer named Beyonce?’

Outside, beyond the forcefield, Harold nursed a sore jaw and watched the skimmer. The first thing that happened was that the shimmering forcefield suddenly shrank and ceased to exist. And then the skimmer, too, began to disappear, first transparent, then gone, leaving only a yellowed circle of grass where it once stood. For Harold, the hard part was just beginning: now he had to tell Zoe what had happened.
Should be a snap,
he thought.

‘Noooo!’ yelled Zoe, who had just been given an update from Marine. ‘You should’ve called me out, consulted me.’

‘Your sister was very ill, Harold was determined to try and stop Zachary …’

‘Whenever those two get together they do something stupid,’ Zoe said, and then stopped, because she had just seen a downcast Harold entering the village and walking toward them. ‘What’ve you done with Zachary,?’ she called, ‘you know he’s not safe to be left on his own!’

‘He was determined to tell them where Guinevere was so they’d stop the countdown to self-destruct. He got into their skimmer and then it disappeared.’

‘Things don’t just disappear.’

‘Slarn things seem to. Appear, disappear, they do it all the time.’

‘So now they’ve got Zachary and he’s telling them lies.’

‘How can you be so sure of that?’ asked Marine.

‘Because that’s all he ever does,’ sighed Zoe.

‘Funny you should say that,’ mused Marine, ‘when we interrogated him, the things he was saying were very confusing.’

On an interrogation couch in a cell on the starship Charles de Josselin, the green light revealing the Slarn slave tattoo on his forehead, Zachary was just getting started. ‘And after the space battle when I got out of the escape pod gizmo and found there was only just me aboard the Guinevere, I walked around till I got to the bridge and Guinevere taught me how to mend her enough to get home.’

The Slarn officer who was doing the interrogation was not at all sure that he believed any of this, but forged on. ‘Why did she take you back to Earth instead of rejoining the Fleet?’

‘I think she was homesick.’

‘What is “homesick”?’

‘The feeling humans get when they’re a long way from home and want to get back there.’

‘Away from your home ship,’ the officer said and nodded, ‘we call it “planet fever”.’

‘She could see bits of the future,’ Zachary said, ‘Maybe she knew her days were numbered and wanted to die on her home planet.’

The officer looked at the Slarn Psi Corps marine operating the monitoring equipment, but she shook her head. ‘I can’t tell when he’s lying. The only time the equipment registered a lie was when he gave his real name.’

‘It’s a gift,’ Zachary admitted modestly.

‘So there were no others left on the starship? You had no companions?’

‘No.’

‘Even if you had, it wouldn’t matter now. Everyone in that area is scheduled to die anyway.’

Zachary stiffened against the forcefield bonds holding him to the interrogation couch. ‘What!?’

‘They’ve all seen too much, know too much about us. We’re concluding this part of our breeding program.’

‘You’re going to go down there and start killing people?’

‘We don’t have to. The Starship Guinevere is going to do it for us. We’re not going to stop her self-destructing. In a little while there’s going to be a big bang, and a lot of dust and flame, and a very large crater down there. And no more witnesses to say that the Slarn aren’t gods.’ He turned to one of the guards. ‘Put him in with the other one.’

As Zachary was thrust into the cell, he found out who “the other one” was. Marlowe sat looking at him. Zachary turned and started hammering on the hatch with his fists. ‘I want another cell! I don’t want to share with this traitor!’ There was no response, and Zachary had not expected one. He looked at Marlowe. ‘You know that Guinevere is dead?’

‘You couldn’t feel worse about that than I do,’ said the shaman.

‘You stole the Wyzen. She died without her Wyzen by her.’

Marlowe looked at him, his one real eye widened in grief. ‘Yes.’

‘You know they’re going to let her blow up? Take the whole district with her?’

Marlowe had not known and the revelation came as a blow. ‘What about the Forester People?’

‘They go too. You get to go home to your precious Slarn, and everyone else gets to die. Sounds like a good deal to me, how’s it sit with you?’

‘My mother’s in that village. I have half brothers and sisters there, nephews, nieces. Maze is my great-grand-niece …’

‘Yeah, nice kid, Maze. She’ll be going too. They’re all going to die so you can take a holiday in space. Cheap at the price, wouldn’t you say?’

Marlowe looks up at the smooth white ceiling and yells: ‘Starship! Starship!’ and a moment later Charles de Josselin manifested before them. ‘You’ve got to help my people,’ Marlowe said to him.

‘Why?’ Charles had been weeping, and the one bleak word was all that he would give to someone who was one of the sources of his pain.

‘Because they’re your people too. Human.’

‘Is it that I am human? That was too long ago. I forget what all that meant.’

‘Guinevere remembered.’

‘Ah, but Guinevere was a saint, and saints can do the impossible.’ He paused, and then went on. ‘Let me tell you something. The court martial on Guinevere has just returned its verdict. Guilty of desertion, guilty of mutiny. Now they know where she is, they’ll go down, take her log, mark her with the brand of shame, and let her self-destruct. That is what remembering did to the ship I loved.’

Even as he spoke, the kangaroos grazing in the clearing in front of the starship bounded away as two Slarn marines materialized near her hatchway. They looked around, then moved up the ramp and into the ship. When they reached the bridge it was by the light of their Slarnstaffs, for the energy cells powering the main lighting had finally given out and the only light source left was the faint pulsing glow of the crystal in the open self-destruct timer. One of them examined what Zachary and Marine had done to it while the other opened a compartment in the command console and removed a complex but seemingly lifeless crystal within it, this being the ship’s log. The marine who had been checking the self-destruct now walked to the rear bulkhead of the bridge and located the ship’s insignia. He adjusted his Slarnstaff to a cutting flame, and burned into the bulkhead below the insignia, an arrow facing to the right, and then, superimposed on it, an arrow facing to the left. It was the Slarn brand of shame, symbolizing a choice of conflicting directions, the crime of not being able to choose duty over rebellion. That task done, they dematerialized, taking the lifeless crystal with them, and now the bridge was dark, save for the pulsing of the self-destruct and the fading glow of the burning scar of shame inflicted on the bulkhead.

The two marines now re-materialized on the bridge of the starship Charles de Josselin, saluted a Slarn officer, and the one holding the crystal, Guinevere’s ship’s log, handed it over. The officer took it to the command console, opened a panel, and placed it within. The screen above it showed flickering images from Guinevere’s recent past as the log was read into Charles’s own data bank. ‘Wyzen?’ said a familiar voice, and indeed the Wyzen herself was lying disconsolate on the deck of the bridge, accompanied by Charles’s own maned male Wyzen companion. The Wyzen was watching the images flicker past, recognizing faces and places, missing her mistress, old feelings suddenly revived.

Meanwhile in Trollcastle, Meg stood by as the Don, still weak and reclining on a couch, was attempting to work out a safe route out of the district, using a map spread on the floor and using chess men for markers. Father John and Ulf, his most trusted advisers, stood alongside him and Rocky sat miserable and alone in a corner of the hall. ‘You have to let me help,’ said Meg, ‘we need to find a safe evacuation route in the next 24 hours. You’ve got all of your men out looking, and they still haven’t found a way through.’ She stabbed her finger at the map, pointing to chess knights representing Sullivans, and rooks representing other enemy forces. ‘News of your illness has leaked out to your enemies. You have Sullivans massing here, forward elements of the Vic Kingdom conducting aggressive patrolling here and here and you’re planning to fight your way out with women and children along.’

‘Woman?’ growled the Don, ‘don’t lecture me on my business.’

‘Let me help. There are horses in the stables …’

‘And no one to ride with you for protection.’

‘There’s Rocky.’

A silence and then Ulf said, ‘Send him, it’ll get him out of here.’

The Don glared at Ulf. ‘I don’t fear Rocky.’

‘If the boy has any honor he must try and kill you to avenge his father. Send him out with the Lady Henderson, he’s warrior enough to protect her.’

‘And if I let you go?’ the Don asked Meg, ‘how will this help?’

Ignorant of just how quickly events had overtaken her plans, she said, ‘I may be able to muster the others and get Slarnstaffs from the ship.’

The Don paused for a second and then nodded. ‘Go then,’ he said. She gestured to Rocky and a few minutes later they were riding out, leading spare horses.

In Our Mother’s house, Helena was sleeping and Zoe and Maze sat by her. Then the ancient woman’s eyes opened and she spoke. ‘Zoe?’

‘Helena? You’re awake?’

‘I’m dying soon,’ Helena said, ‘and Maze the anointed will follow me as Our Mother. She has gifts, giant gifts, but she’s so young. She needs an elder sister, the one that I lost.’

Zoe knew she had to explain, but gently, oh so gently. ‘No one will follow you at all unless the people move. There’ll be no Clan, unless we all get away from here in the next day or so. The starship’s set to explode, there’s no stopping it now, all the work we did was for nothing. We must all leave here and find a new home.’

‘Move? Into the territories of other tribes? That means danger, death.’

‘But there’s more danger here. Here, all will die. And the people will not leave you behind. Unless you come, the people will stay with you, and they and all your life’s work will die.’

Helena closed her eyes and the silence stretched, and then Helena opened her eyes again. ‘The Clan must live,’ she said, in a voice which was scarcely a whisper, ‘I’ll leave the village with you. Tell the people, tell the Don.’

Outside the hut the thud of hooves and the jingle of harness signalled the arrival of Meg and Rocky. Meg dismounted, and Marine, who had been sitting on the verandah of Helena’s house, went to meet her. ‘Where is everyone?’ Meg asked, and Marine explained that Zachary and she had not been able to stop Guinevere’s self-destruct and that Zachary had gone to the Slarn to tell them where the starship was. ‘True warrior,’ she added, ‘giving all.’

Meg fought down her wave of sadness at Zachary’s fate, while knowing that whatever happened he would make the best of things and probably come out on top. ‘And Zoe? Harold?’

‘Zoe’s inside with her sister, and Harold said he had something to do at the starship,’ she replied, as Zoe and Maze emerged from the house. Zoe spoke first. ‘You can tell the Don that the village people are coming. Helena’s agreed to leave.’

Meg nodded, relieved. ‘All we need now is a clear escape corridor. The other tribes have heard that the Don was wounded and are closing in for the kill. I’m off to the starship to try and find Slarnstaffs, are you coming?’

Zoe shook her head, ‘I’m needed here, but Marine?’

Marine looked at the horses and shuddered. ‘Do I have to sit on one of those things again?’

‘’fraid so,’ Meg grinned. ‘Rocky, do your thing.’ And Rocky, also grinning for the first time since the duel in the hall of Trollcastle, slid from his horse and helped Marine mount one of the spare horses, then Meg remounted, and they rode away.

As they neared the starship, Meg’s party heard the unexpected ringing sound of steel on steel, and as they cautiously entered the clearing they found Harold kneeling on the ground in front of a large stone boulder which he had rolled from the surrounding bush with the aid of some saplings whose broken remains now littered the ground around him. He was engaged in carving letters on the stone, and had already carved the name ‘Guinevere’. Chalked beneath it were the letters ‘RIP’, and he was just beginning on the ‘R’ as they arrived. Meg, Rocky and Marine dismounted, and Meg said ‘See if you can find some Slarnstaffs,’ and as Marine and Rocky hastened off into the darkness of the starship, she hunkered down alongside Harold and nodded at the carved stone. ‘That’s nice.’ He continued his work, and she waited, until finally her silence drew more words from him. ‘She’s dead and nobody cares,’ he said.

‘Harold, we all care.’

‘Yeah? You’re fixed up with the Don, Zoe’s with her sister, Zach didn’t think I was up to helping him …’

‘Look at me.’

He looked at her, dry-eyed and angry and then returned to his work. ‘We don’t know her second name, we don’t know what year she was born, we know nothing.’

‘And none of that makes her less of a wonderful person than the one we knew. But she’s dead, and now we’re trying to help the living, just as she would have. We have to evacuate this area, find a way past hostile tribes, and I thought you might want to help us in that.’