Starship Home (6 page)

The starship hung disabled and abandoned in space, as, inside her, the screens on the bridge showed a replay of the battle in which she had been wounded. ‘Our ships made the leap from Earth orbit and emerged here,’ Guinevere explained as ships suddenly flickered into existence on the main screen. Zoe, Harold, Zachary and Meg sat on couches, watching, Zoe sharing her couch with the Wyzen. She had found that the Wyzen liked having the backs of her ears scratched, and as a result, her rumbling purr was now filling the bridge. ‘A pirate band lay in ambush for us, and shot at us with bombards of light and fire.’

They watched, as on the screen the space battle was joined. Lances of light struck out from ship to ship. Sometimes the beams were intercepted by other beams of light, sometimes they pierced through to their intended targets. ‘Some ships were mortal wounded, others made a second Leap. I, too, would have leapt again, had I not been so sorely wounded. And, gentles, here we be.’

‘What happened to everyone else on board?’ Harold asked, thinking about his parents.

Zoe was thinking the same way. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve got a list of names? There’s my father and mother, my brothers, my little sister Helena…’

Meg too was concerned. ‘Father was taking a horse to the vets in the city, do you think…?’

Zoe was looking at Zachary. He alone had stayed silent. Finally he shrugged, suddenly feeling and looking awkward. ‘I don’t have any family. I kinda mislaid them.’

A moment’s silence followed this admission, and then Zoe asked again. ‘Do you have names?’

‘Nay,’ said Guinevere. ‘There were no names. Our orders were simply to fill and lift.’

‘So what happened to everyone else on board? We saw a lot of people there in the hold, they got put into those pod things, what happened to them?’ Harold’s frustration at trying to take in too many facts at once was putting an angry edge on his voice.

‘They were thrown out in escape pods, and are awaiting rescue.’

‘So why are we still here on board?’ Harold asked. ‘Everyone else’s escape pod goes and ours stay? Why?’

‘I saw … two futures. We all, the four of you, the Wyzen and I, were back on Earth. One future held calamity, not just for us but for whole worlds, and the other future promised life.’

‘You can tell the future?’ Zachary was fascinated. ‘We could make a lot of money at the racetrack that way.’

‘Sometimes future happenings come to me as in a dream. ‘Twas why my mother gave me to the nuns.’

‘They made you a nun because you could see the future?’ Zoe was puzzled.

‘As a child I saw things which were yet to be. And babbled of them. Sometimes I knew the thoughts in people’s minds, and answered them. My mother feared that I should be burned as a witch, and took me to the nuns to hide. The Superior knew of the Talents, for she had them herself. And there within the convent’s walls I should have seen out all my days … had the Slarn not come.’

‘They came to the convent?’

‘A small raid, on a small village. They took us all. Some to farm on frontier worlds, some to serve as soldiers in their wars, I … to be a starship.’

‘Because you could sometimes see the future.’

‘’twas part of it.’

Zachary was trying to hang onto the central point. ‘So you can see some kind of future where we all get back to Earth?’

‘There are other futures I see besides. In one, we all die here.’

‘But there’s some kind of future where you get fixed up enough to get back to Earth?’

‘Aye.’

‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s do it.’

The others stared at him. ‘Do what?’ asked Meg.

‘Fix her up. You heard the lady. There’s some kind of future down the line where she gets back to Earth, which means there’s some kind of future where she can get moving again, so let’s do it, let’s fix her up!’

Meg snapped. ‘You’d believe anything. You believe 16
^th
century nuns get turned into starships, you believe people can see into the future, you believe you can just walk in and fix up a space ship like you’d mend a motor cycle!’

‘Motor cycles can be very hard to fix. You ever stripped the gears on a motor bike? You know what that involves?’

‘I give up.’

‘Well I don’t. We’re sitting here 43 or whatever light years from Earth and Harold seems to think that’s a very long way, all right? So the sooner we get started, the sooner we get home.’

Meg got off her couch and walked over to Zachary, furious with him. ‘You don’t know how it works. You’re talking learning a whole new technology to fix this whatever it is. Like a caveman trying to fix a BMW.’

‘It had to be BMW with you, didn’t it? I mean not a Ford, or a Chevvy or a Mazda. A BMW.’

‘A name, taken at random. What I’m saying is you don’t know the problems.’

‘Exactly. Not knowing the problems, that’s my edge. People who know the problems never start. We’ve got Guinevere to help us. She knows what makes the whole thing work. She knows what’s wrong, she knows how we can help fix it.’

Harold was looking at the main screen. It was where they had seen her face and it seemed natural to speak to it. ‘Is that right, Guinevere? You know how we can help mend you?’

‘Aye.’

‘And if we mend you, you’ll take us home?’

‘If I do so, I am outlawed.’

‘What are you supposed to do, just sit here and obey all the rules and regulations and die?’ Zachary’s loathing of authority echoed in his voice.

‘Transmit a message pod, and wait for rescue.’

Harold addressed the screen again. ‘We have to trade, Guinevere. If we help heal you, you have to get us home.’

‘No!’ Zoe rolled off the couch and onto her feet. ‘No, dammit, we don’t have to trade!’

Harold stared at her. ‘Zoe, I’ve played hundreds of hours of war games and strategy games and fantasy role playing games and believe me, at this point you have to trade.’

Zoe bunched her fists. ‘You want a punch in the face?’

‘That doesn’t answer the point I’m trying to make.’

‘It will in a minute if you don’t shut up, Harold.’ Zoe turned to face the others, her eyes bright with angry tears. ‘Guinevere is hurt, she is human, and therefore we try to help her. You got me? Because it’s the right thing to do and if we don’t do it, we’re less than human. And I don’t care if any of you want to help me or not, because I’m available, Guinevere, you understand?’

‘I thank thee, Zoe. I thank thee.’

There was a long silence.

‘Well I guess there’s nothing else to do to fill in the time,’ Zachary said.

‘Agreed. I’m in,’ said Meg.

‘You people don’t know the first thing about negotiation,’ said Harold, and paused. ‘But okay. I mean at least I’ll be learning how a starship works. I never got a chance to take apart anything this size before.’

The replay of the space battle faded from the screen and Guinevere appeared. ‘I shall take ye home. I would see my home world again, see grass, smell flowers, feel the air. There, Harold, thy bargain is complete. Help heal me, and indeed I’ll take thee home.’

Harold had gotten his own way. He could not understand why he felt so bad about it.

It was a strange way of going about things. If each of them had had to predict how you went about mending a damaged starship, each would have seen the job in terms of welding metal and soldering electronic connections.

But it turned out to be much more like surgery than engineering.

Parts of the ship had been blasted away entirely, and were simply sealed off. As to the rest, there was damage to Guinevere which had to be repaired.

Within the walls of the starship was a densely packed crystalline substance which was an extension of Guinevere’s brain. Within the substance, she established what she called “lines of force” which amplified both her normal mental powers, and her special talents of prescience and telepathy.

‘A starship reaches forward to journey’s end,’ she told them, ‘and then Leaps her ship to that place through Time.’ It seemed that she did it at the level of instinct. She made the Leap in the way that a footballer might leap for a ball, or a dancer might leap into the arms of a partner. The footballer does not consciously compute the speed of the ball, the air resistance, the curve of the path it is travelling along, and then make a conscious calculation of how far and fast he must leap. Nor does the dancer when she leaps to her partner’s arms. The body of each “knows” where the ball or the partner is going to be. It is a combination of talent and practice. In the case of, say, a racing car driver or a musician using an electric guitar, it is talent and practice amplified by mechanical means.

And thus it was with Guinevere. Talent, practice, and the amplification of her talent by the entire structure of the starship was what allowed her to avoid the constraints of Einstein’s physics, and travel across the Galaxy without exceeding the speed of light.

‘Time’s a river through the dry land of space,’ she explained to Harold. ‘We leave dry land, and travel along the river, never touching land again till journey’s end.’

All four of them were scattered about the starship, repairing her. She had shown them where the Slarn weapons were kept, and had explained their use. The stubby flanged staffs were more than weapons, they were multi-purpose tools as well.

They could be used to provide light, weld metal, and move objects with a kind of tractor beam. The same tractor beam could be used like a vise to keep objects in place while working on them with another Slarnstaff, as the new crew of the Guinevere very quickly decided to call them as they used their Slarnstaffs to cut and weld together torn areas of the crystalline substance within Guinevere’s walls.

At first they were disconcerted to find that they were actually cutting and welding what amounted to parts of Guinevere’s brain and central nervous system, but she urged them on. ‘Cut and join, lest we all die,’ she said, and explained that, in a meditation state, her mind would feel the cutting and welding, but not interpret it as pain. She could place herself beyond pain for the time it would take.

They worked around the clock. The Slarn could come back at any time, and if they did, their work would be in vain. They lived on ship’s food, hard biscuits which were a green-brown color, and a sort of thick blue gruel which they squeezed from flexible bottles.

And the Wyzen “helped”. If the Wyzen had not been quite so lovable, her “help” would have driven them crazy. They would put down a tool, and look up a moment later to find it gone, being rolled along the floor and pounced on by the Wyzen, who was sure in what passed for her mind that her claim to the tool was as valid as their own.

Three days later, four exhausted people were together again on the bridge, chewing on khaki biscuits, sucking on bottles of blue gruel. Schematic diagrams of the internal workings of the starship were scrolling across the screens.

‘The rest of you need a shower,’ Meg said.

‘I think maybe all of us need a shower, Meg,’ Zachary said.

‘Eat up your nice yuk, Harold,’ Zoe said, and stroked the Wyzen under the chin. The Wyzen put her head back and purred.

‘I love this stuff,’ said Harold, finishing his blue gruel and tossing the empty bottle over his shoulder. ‘It’d make great hacking food, you could program forever without having to stop for meals.’

Zoe made a face. ‘Boys’ll eat anything.’

‘Pick up the bottle,’ said Meg, and glared at Harold until he complied.

The diagrams kept scrolling through on the screens. Suddenly they stopped, vanished, and again the stars could be seen.

‘Well?’ Harold was back on his couch after picking up the bottle.

‘There are no gaps left in the Web of Force,’ Guinevere told them. ‘My body is whole again, but very weak withal.’

‘Can you do it, or not?’ Zachary asked her.

‘There are tales of ships who entered wounded on the river of Time and came not out again. Mayhap, this time, being weak…’

‘Please don’t scare us,’ Meg said. The known she could deal with. The unknown was a different matter.

‘Nay, Meg, good Brother Death is not to be feared.’

‘Not by machines.’

Suddenly the screens went dead and there was silence.

‘You there Guinevere?’ Harold asked.

The silence continued.

‘Guinevere, please?’ Zoe said.

‘Tell cranky Meg that I am Guinevere, maid, starship, human soul. No engine or machine.’

‘I, ah … I guess you wouldn’t like to try an apology on for size would you Miss High and Mighty Henderson?’ Zachary, like all of them, had not had enough sleep in the past three days and was feeling scratchy.

‘I’m sorry. If the rules of the game are that it’s human, then of course it’s human. I do beg its pardon.’

There was laughter on the bridge, silvery, rippling laughter. It was the starship. ‘I accept thy words. But not thy vinegar look. Staying we die. Going we may live. To your couches all. Let us try the River of Time, and see if we may win through.’

The damaged starship was moving against the stars.

Slowly at first, and then accelerating.

On the bridge, Guinevere’s voice began singing. ‘Art thou going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley sage rosemary and thyme…’

And Zachary’s voice came in. ‘Remember me to one who lives there…’ And between the lines, he said ‘See, kid? The song’s still around.’

There was laughter in Guinevere’s voice now, as they sang in harmony. ‘She was once a true love of mine.’

The ship was moving. The stars were streaming past her.

‘Tell her to make me a cambric shirt,

‘Parsley sage rosemary and thyme.

‘Without any seam or needlework,

‘She was once a true love of mine.

‘Tell her to wash it in yonder well,

‘Parsley sage rosemary and thyme.

‘Where never spring water nor rain ever fell.

‘She was once a true love of mine.’

All was blurring. Their voices seemed to stretch together.

‘Tell her to dry it on yonder thorn,

‘Parsley sage rosemary and thyme.

‘Where never was blossom since Adam was born

‘She was once a…’

There was pounding in their temples, a flash of light in their eyes, and their stomachs felt as if they were falling down an elevator shaft.

The alien constellations blazed out.

But there was no starship there.

Guinevere had moved with her crew into the River of Time, had vanished as if she had never been there at all.