Starship Home (9 page)

The hut smelled of wood smoke and the burning fat of the lamp’s wick, of the herbs that hung from the roof, and of the old dog lying by the woman’s feet. The woman was ancient. The skin of her face was tanned and wrinkled into a mask, the color of a carved nut, with glittering agate eyes in it, and white hair so thin it scarcely covered the scalp.

The ancient woman, draped in skins and hand-loomed cloth, was listening to the child who sat cross-legged before her. Between the child and the open doorway which led onto the night-shrouded verandah, a red line crossed the room. Males did not cross this line into Our Mother’s presence.

‘A big castle, Our Mother, all shiny, made of iron. One moment it wasn’t there. Then…’ Maze clapped her hands. ‘There.’

‘Big.’ Our Mother’s voice scarcely issued from the sunken ‘O’ of her toothless mouth. ‘How big? Big as this hut?’

‘Bigger. Big as hundred huts. It wasn’t there. Then it was. Like that! From nowhere!’

‘Then what?’ The agate eyes looked grim.

‘A hole opened in its side. People came out.’

‘Slarn-demons?’ The old woman gestured at the wall of her hut. There on the bark wall, barely discernible by the flickering light of lamp and fire, were paintings. The paintings covered the walls. They showed stepped pyramids coming from the sky and landing. They showed armored creatures herding humans into the pyramids.

‘They weren’t like that. Not Slarn-demons, no. People. With no armor.’

‘I have seen a Slarn-demon without armor,’ the ancient woman said, ‘and touched it.’

Maze shuddered. The story of Our Mother seeing the naked Slarn-demon was legend. ‘And lived,’ Maze said, in the ritual response they all made when Our Mother told the story after funerals or on Lostpeople Eve.

‘Yes.’ Our Mother was staring into the fire, lost in memories, lost in thought. Then she looked up to the child Maze. ‘You’ve done well.’

‘Thank you Our Mother,’ said Maze.

‘Tomorrow, tell the people to beware. Slarn-demons are returned. No one outside the village is to know.’

‘Not the Don?’ Maze seemed amazed.

‘Not even the Don.’ And the old woman waved the child from her hut, and Maze rose to her feet and bowed low, and moved out. The ancient woman looked into the fire and saw the past. From an eye one would think too ancient for tears coursed a single drop of moisture. ‘Returned,’ she said to herself. ‘Returned.’

Outside, Maze crossed the verandah of Our Mother’s hut and trotted down the steps. Before her was the village square where markets and weddings and funerals and meetings were held. Beyond the square were the other huts and gardens, hidden from the air by the trees. All the huts were in darkness except for one.

This hut was hung with human skulls, and fetishes made of bones and sticks and feathers. Within some of the skulls, candles burned. Maze’s way home led her past this hut, but she felt no fear, for it was the hut of her Uncle Marlowe.

As she ran past the flickering light of the skulls at the doorposts, she chanced a look inside. There sat Uncle Marlowe, dressed in cloth trousers and jerkin with his lion skin slung about his shoulders, the lion’s head covering his head like a helmet. He was writing in one of his books but he must have heard the child pass, for he lifted his face to look out. His eyes were masked by the dark glass of his spektels. The dog teeth surrounding each eyehole glittered in the light of the skull lamp on his table. Behind one of the dark glass eyes, something glittered red. Maze knew what it was. She had seen it unmasked. It was Uncle Marlowe’s Demon Eye. That was what it was that showed red behind the black glass of the spektel. She ran on to the hut where she lived with her mother and father and brothers.

Our Mother had praised her this night and Maze had felt warm at the praise. When she was Our Mother herself, in her turn, she would use praise to make people feel warm. That way they would wish to please her, and more readily obey. The survival of the Clan could depend on such things.

The leopard looked at the starship. She and her cubs had already eaten well, but the strange smell which had come to her on the night breeze had drawn her here. The new thing in the forest smelled strange, and strangeness could mean danger for herself and her cubs. At first, the leopard did not go closer to the new thing. Hind-legged walkers had passed this way, had gone out, and come back. She had smelled the tracks of the hind-legged walkers as she had approached. Now she followed their trail to the edge of the new thing. Here they disappeared. She looked up. Perhaps they had gone up into the trees like the others sometimes did.

Then the leopard heard something move in the forest and went to investigate. The strange smelling new thing was, for the moment, forgotten.

On the bridge of the starship, Harold was wondering if he would ever get used to the khaki biscuits and blue gruel. Guinevere claimed they provided a perfectly balanced diet, but Harold believed that he would be better off if his diet was varied a little with hot dogs and pizzas and hamburgers. ‘We’ve got to organize food,’ he said to the others.

‘Eat it, Harold, ‘tis good for thee,’ Guinevere said.

Harold looked at Guinevere’s screen balefully and went on munching on the biscuit.

‘Clothes,’ said Meg. ‘I can’t go on wearing these clothes.’

‘The Slarn must wear clothes,’ Zoe said. ‘Guinevere, do the Slarn wear clothes under their lobster suits?’

A moment after she spoke, a small hatch opened in the wall behind them and four folded packs thudded out into a hopper. ‘I’m not going to wear insect clothes,’ Meg said, but went with the others to investigate. Zachary unfolded one of the packs, and shook it out. It was a pair of grey longjohns made from a fine woven material which had a slight sheen. He held the longjohns against himself. ‘Fetching, uh?’

‘And you and Harold are going to have to find somewhere else to sleep,’ Meg said. ‘I’m not going to go on sharing quarters.’

It was some time later when Zachary and Harold bedded down in the school bus. They had checked out the Slarn crew’s bunks but found they were just like the pods they had been put into when they were captured, and they both felt reluctant to climb into one again. Harold had then thought of the long seats facing each other in the rear of the school bus. Guinevere had guided them through the corridors up to the hold, this time switching off security beams as they went, explaining to them that she had not done so when they first got out of their pods because they had not been friends at that stage, and she had had no idea of what their intentions might be. Besides, she added, they were treating her like a machine at the time and so she had acted like one.

So there Harold and Zachary were in the school bus again. The first thing Zachary had done was to check that his guitar was intact, and the first thing Harold had done was to make sure his Encyclopaedia of Science was still there.

Once these essential facts had been established, they made themselves comfortable on the long seats at the back of the bus. ‘Don’t you think the women are being irrational about this?’ yawned Harold.

‘Slept in far worse places,’ said Zachary. He raised his voice. ‘You can turn the lights out now thanks, Guinevere.’

The lights went out, there was a moment’s pause, and then Harold’s voice said: ‘Leave maybe just one on?’ Somewhere in the hold a light came on, casting a dim radiance into the school bus. ‘I’ve always kind of slept with one light on, you know?’ Harold explained to Zachary.

‘Me too,’ said Zachary.

‘You too?’ Harold sounded amazed.

‘In case of Alien attacks during the night? That kind of thing?’ Zachary paused, and grinned. ‘I’m scared of the dark, but don’t tell the women, okay?’

‘Okay.’ Harold was not sure whether to believe him, but let it pass.

As the two males settled down, Zoe and Meg had finished showering, and were dressed in Slarn longjohns, standing in an ablutions room connected to the bridge, washing their clothes. Zoe was saying, ‘We’re going to have to introduce Harold and Zachary to this room.’

‘Thou lookest more decent now,’ Guinevere said.

‘Thank you,’ said Meg.

‘Now that thou hast scrubbed thy whore’s paint from thy face,’ added Guinevere in a perfectly friendly manner.

Meg stiffened with anger. ‘All women, in the time and place I come from, paint their faces. It is called make-up and is a normal part of living.’

‘tis paint,’ said Guinevere smugly, ‘and ‘tis a slut’s trick to ensnare poor foolish men. Do’st thou want deluded Zachary to think thee young?’

‘No I don’t! Yes I am young! Forget it!’ Meg said by way of explanation.

In the school bus, Zachary was almost asleep, but Harold was still wide awake, staring at the ceiling. ‘Zachary?’

‘Mmmm?’

‘I guess I’ll never see my Mum and Dad again.’

‘Guess not.’ Zachary would have liked to tell Harold a comforting lie, but for once he could not think of one. He rolled over on the bus seat and looked at Harold, lying across the aisle from him. ‘You’re … what? Thirteen, right? I was 14 when I saw mine last, I … most people leave home when they’re a bit older but… you’re going to be okay. Look at me. I turned out perfect.’ He paused. ‘We’re going to make it, kid. I mean we all made it 43 light years together. That’d be 88 if you counted there and back…’

‘Eighty six.’

‘Right. Eighty six. If we can do that we can do anything. We’re going to make it.’

‘Make it … to what?’

‘To whatever?’

‘I had it all mapped out. I always figured I’d do a PhD in Physics or Maths and then go into research.’

‘Uh huh. Well there’s, uh … there’s sure to be other things. I always thought I’d play pro football. Didn’t work out. There’s always other things. Hell, I … I can’t even be a bus driver any more.’

Harold nodded, wondering what other things there might be in store for him in a world like this. ‘It’s kind of primitive out there isn’t it?’

‘It is,’ said Zachary, ‘so maybe they need someone who can get computers working again. Maybe like a wizard or something.’

‘A wizard?’ Harold was both amused and interested. One of his favorite personas in role playing games was that of Wizard.

‘Why not?’ said Zachary. ‘Anything you don’t understand looks like magic. This ship looks like magic to me. Come to think of it, pocket calculators look like magic to me.’

‘Guess so.’ Harold closed his eyes for a bit to rest them. He drifted off to sleep for a moment. Then he said: ‘You mind if I have that light out? It’s in my eyes.’

‘Suppose I can take it if you can,’ Zachary said, then, ‘Ah … Guinevere?’ The light went out. ‘See what I mean?’ Zachary’s voice went on in the darkness. ‘Just like magic.’

As the males fell asleep, the women were rigging a washing line in the bridge, using some Slarn rope that Guinevere had found for them in a storeroom, securing it between two handholds. Once the line was rigged, they hung up their wet clothes, and went to their couches. The Wyzen sprang up to join Zoe on hers. As she scratched the Wyzen’s ears, she said: ‘I keep thinking about my family. Floating around in space somewhere. My little sister Helena, she’s only three years old…’

‘Better not to think about things like that.’

‘Can’t help it.’

‘Think about things we can do something about,’ said Meg. ‘We’ve got to deal with all this a day at a time, don’t you think?’

‘I suppose so,’ said Zoe. She was thinking of her little sister Helena, clutching her teddybear and waving her off to school. It was only a week ago. It seemed like a faded picture from another age.

On the other couch, Meg had turned her back to Zoe and was silently weeping, shedding tears of loneliness and fear.

Adults were vulnerable too, something Guinevere understood full well. Slowly she turned down the lights of the bridge, so the young woman would not see the older woman’s fear, and then, taking pity on her four lost companions, she began to tell them a tale of long ago, of two starships who loved each other so much that one braved the very doors of Death itself to return his sweetheart to the world of the living. “They were named Phoebe and Cassius …” she began.

The next morning over a nutritious breakfast of khaki ship’s biscuits and blue gruel, they drew straws to see who would go out exploring and who would stay home to mind the ship. Zachary cheated. In fairness, it must be said that although Zachary cheated often, he never cheated without a good, sometimes even a righteous reason.

In this case, his good reason was that Harold had woken up several times in the night with bad dreams which he could not remember on waking. Zachary decided, as he picked some dead grass stalks in the clearing outside the starship, that if the one short straw went to Harold, the kid might be able to get some sleep and rest his giant brain.

‘It’s not fair,’ said Harold, when he drew the short straw. ‘It’s the men who ought to go exploring.’

Zachary was not going to discuss it. ‘We drew straws, you drew the short one, you stay back and look after the ship.’

‘She doesn’t need looking after.’

‘The time for this discussion was before we drew the straws.’

‘I didn’t know then I was going to lose. The possibilities were one in four and it didn’t seem worth talking about. Now the possibilities are one in one and I want to discuss the principle!’

‘The principle is you lost,’ Zoe said. ‘Now stick with Guinevere, we’ll be back.’

She moved toward the forest, and Zachary and Meg followed as Harold disconsolately went back up the ramp into the ship. As the forest closed around them, Zoe said to Zachary: ‘You cheated him, Zachary. You palmed the straws. I saw you.’

‘If I’d had three short straws you’d have all got one. I’d be better doing this on my own.’ He paused. ‘He didn’t sleep too well.’

‘I keep forgetting he’s only 13,’ Zoe said. ‘He knows so much.’

‘You’re only 15 yourself.’

‘There’s a big difference. Fifteen’s grown up.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Will you two stop arguing?’ It was getting on Meg’s nerves. ‘Zachary … did what he thought was the right thing.’ Zachary smiled and nodded. ‘On the other hand,’ Meg added, ‘I’d be grateful if you’d cut out the pathetic macho “me Tarzan” routine. We’re all perfectly capable of going out and looking for food and water.’ Zachary lost his smile. There was no way he could win with this woman.

Back on the bridge of the starship, Harold was sitting on a couch, watching the screen. What he was watching was a replay Guinevere was giving him of the moment when they had drawn straws to see who would go exploring. ‘Show me again,’ he said. ‘closer this time.’ He watched the picture on the screen. Zachary was offering Meg a straw, Zoe a straw, and there were two left. Then there were no straws, and then there were two again. Harold watched his own hand pick one of the new straws. A short one. Then Zachary folded his hands together and then his right hand was holding up a long straw. There been a switch. Harold had been offered the choice of one of two short straws while Zachary had palmed two long ones.

Harold leant back in his couch, disgusted. ‘He cheated! He thought I’d be in the way! He not only calls me a kid, he thinks I am one!’ Suddenly the tiredness he had been feeling was driven out of him by anger. He rolled onto his feet, and ran for the open hatchway. ‘Don’t stop me, Guinevere, don’t dare try and stop me!’

Guinevere had no intention of stopping him. In her England, the England of the 16th century, people were adult at 13. Thirteen-year-old men went to war, 13-year-old women married. Nevertheless, ‘Wyzen? Follow!’ she said, and felt easier in her conscience when the Wyzen loped out in pursuit of Harold. He found that the Wyzen was following him when she caught him up on the ramp and nearly tripped him. ‘Go home!’ he said, but she continued to follow him. He stopped. ‘Go home!’ She looked down and half turned, but clearly had no intention of obeying. ‘Guinevere, call her!’ There was no answer. Guinevere was not cooperating. The Wyzen turned and walked slowly back toward the ramp. Harold ran into the forest. Joyfully, the Wyzen spun about and ran after him. There were many new and interesting smells in this forest and she intended to sample every one of them.