Strider's Galaxy (30 page)

The first elevator they tried was as unresponsive as the ones Lan Yi had stabbed at earlier. He insisted that all three of them press the pad—Hilary first, Strauss-Giolitto second and himself, as a last hope, third. Nothing happened at all. At least it was a relief that he didn't find himself transported back to Strauss-Giolitto's cabin again. He wasn't certain he could have stood that.

"I don't like the light out here," said Strauss-Giolitto, looking backwards over her shoulder as if there might be somebody watching her. "It's all wrong."

"Everything's all wrong," said Lan Yi, giving the pad a final press with the heel of his hand, knowing that it was useless.

"Are we actually still
on
the
Santa Maria
?" said Strauss-Giolitto.

"Better hope so," was all Lan Yi could manage.

He wondered yet again if it were true.

"Let's try another elevator," he said.

The third elevator obeyed Hilary's summons, its door sliding open in front of them as if there were absolutely nothing the matter, its bright light inviting them to enter. Lan Yi couldn't help but feel that they were walking into the jaws of a monster, but he ushered the other two in in front of him anyway.

"We have some progress," he said. "Hilary, will you kindly press for the command deck?"

"Yeah. Great. Oh, hang about—which button's that? I've never been up there."

"It's the top button of the column," said Strauss-Giolitto. "If the elevator came when you asked it to, maybe it'll go where you tell it."

She leaned over and scooped him up as the elevator door whished closed. Lan Yi wondered what they would do if the elevator refused to budge and the door refused to open again, but he said nothing.

"Here," said Strauss-Giolitto to the child she was holding in her arms. "Just go ahead and press that one."

"OK."

The elevator began to move towards the nose of the ship. Strauss-Giolitto put Hilary back down on the floor. Lan Yi watched the display above the door nervously. Of course, the display didn't mean much to him any more, but he was nevertheless keen to see the numbers ticking over towards the top. At the same time he was apprehensive: if they found the command deck as deserted as the lowest level, what could they do? He'd done it before so he knew it was easy enough to operate a Pocket—just stick your head in and
think
about what you'd like to see—but he had no idea at all what he could do once he'd seen the display. Smile for the cameras, maybe. Strauss-Giolitto probably had even less of an idea than he did. Call the Helgiolath and ask them to talk him through it? Not much of an attraction the
Santa Maria
would be to the Helgiolath if they were going to have to spend days or weeks telling him how to pilot this strangely altered starship. Holmberg had told him the fleet they were joining was over seven and a half thousand strong. There'd be other things on the Helgiolath's minds: educating from scratch the crew of a single extra starship was not going to have a high priority.

"We're still going up," said Strauss-Giolitto glumly. The vivacity she'd shown for a short while had leached out of her. She was able, though, to look down at Hilary and return his confident grin.

"You bet your bottom dollar on it," said Lan Yi. "We are going to make it—I feel certain."

"What's a dollar?" said Hilary.

"Lan uses some expressions that're a bit unfamiliar to the rest of us," said Strauss-Giolitto. "Just kind of forget the words and listen to what he's saying. Most of the time—almost
all
of the time—it makes good sense."

"A dollar is an old unit of money," explained Lan Yi.

"What's money?"

"Something you can buy things with," said Strauss-Giolitto.

"What do you mean, 'buy'?"

"We are getting to the command deck," said Lan Yi. He wished he felt a bit more confident they would actually reach it. Every moment he expected to find himself back in Strauss-Giolitto's cabin.

"Where's everyone else?" said Strauss-Giolitto.

"How do you mean?"

"We should have been stopped a few times by other people wanting to get on."

"I think something very bad has happened. I do not wish to speculate further."

"Cheery?" said Strauss-Giolitto.

"We seem still to be alive."

"'Seem'?"

"That is as much as I can say. While you were unconscious there were some very strange things happening. There still are." The indicator was one level short of the command deck. He put his arm on Hilary's shoulder, ready to stop the child from dashing out on to the deck. Lan Yi wanted to take a careful look at what they were getting into before they got into it. "Have you tried to speak to the Images yet?"

"No." Strauss-Giolitto looked puzzled. "Where are they?"

"I do not know. That is one of the very many things that are concerning me."

The elevator reached the level of the command deck.

The door opened.

#

The thing looking at them was barely recognizable as Strider. Her cheeks had fallen in on themselves. The array of darkly yellow teeth that showed between the leathery lips was an image of death. The eyes looked as if they had seen too much time evolve in front of them. She was crouched in front of one of the Pockets, but looking back towards the door through which they had just entered. Her hair was grey. But her SSIA jumpsuit was the regulation blue, as if she had put it on just a few moments ago.

"Who are you?" the thing that was still just identifiable as Strider hissed.

"Lan Yi. Maria Strauss-Giolitto. A kid. Looks like we're your crew," said the tall woman.

Strider fell to all fours. She seemed to be growing older even as they watched. Lan Yi expected knuckle-bones to start showing through the flesh of her fingers.

"Everything's illusion," Strider said.

"A philosophically interesting point perhaps, but . . ." Lan Yi began.

"I'm not talking about eternity," said Strider. "I'm talking about now." She spat a decayed molar on to the floor in front of her, looked at it, picked it up, then put it back into her mouth and chewed it as if it were a toffee. "Don't believe everything you see. Don't believe
anything
you see."

Lan Yi took a couple of paces towards her.

"Don't come any closer." There was a lethal quality in her whisper that stopped him in his tracks. "I don't know who you are. You've told me names. I know the people whose names those are, but you don't look like them to me."

"You look like Leonie Strider to me," said Lan Yi, taking another pace forward.

"Bullshit to that," said Strider. "I no longer even look like Leonie Strider to
me
." She spat out another tooth, then picked it up and swallowed it as before. "What I see you as is walking mirrors, just reflections of real people. You could be anything." She pushed her hand back through her hair, and most of it came away between her fingers. "I don't know what the Helgiolath have done to us, but . . ."

"Were you in the place that was made up of mud?" said Strauss-Giolitto.

"Yes. I was there half a thousand years ago."

"And something stomped on your back."

"That was only a century later."

"Yeah," said Strauss-Giolitto. "I was there as well. Then I saw what the stars are
really
like—they're not just pretty bright lights in the sky at all, are they?"

"No. They hate us."

"That's taking it a bit far, Leonie."

"I don't know. I think they probably do. Mind you, my perceptions may have been altered rather radically. I've stood guard here on the command deck for a hundred and fifty years, as far as I can estimate, without having even enough time off to eat or have a crap. The hunger isn't hard to cope with any longer; the constipation is."

"You really
aren't
Strider, are you?" said Lan Yi. He pushed Hilary behind him.

"Of course I'm Strider."

Lan Yi looked up at the view-window. There was nothing out there. Even if they'd shifted into intergalactic space there should have been some glimmer of light, somewhere.

"Go back to the elevator," said Lan Yi softly to Strauss-Giolitto. "Take the kid with you."

"Don't talk shit," said Strauss-Giolitto. "I'm bigger and faster than you. And I'm more expendable. Remember, I was the one who got to go down to Spindrift."

"OK, we'll both stay. Hilary, go to the elevator and take yourself somewhere very distant."

"Aw, but . . ."

"Look," said Strauss-Giolitto tautly, "find yourself a black hole and fall into it. Don't pause at the event horizon."

"Yeah, but . . ." said Hilary.

"Just for fuck's sake fuck off, fucking quick," said Strauss-Giolitto.

"Oh, right, Maria. Why didn't you
explain
before?"

The two heard the noise of the elevator door behind them. Lan Yi reached out his right hand to touch the back of Strauss-Giolitto's left. For a split second he felt her reject the physical contact, but then she returned the gesture.

"Who or what are you?" he said to the thing that looked like an ancient Strider.

"I'm your captain."

"I do not believe you. Just now you were telling us that we should not believe anything at all that we see. Now you are asking us to take it on credit that you are Leonie Strider." He glanced sideways at Strauss-Giolitto; the woman was looking even paler than usual. "Perhaps Pinocchio could judge."

"The bot has long ago turned into a heap of rust."

The thing that might or might not be Strider was crawling towards them. The movement seemed infinitely painful. What Lan Yi wanted to do was to step forward and pick her up in his arms. At the same time he knew that this was the very last thing he should do.

"I do not think that is so," he said. "Please start telling us the truth again. You did earlier when you said that everything around us at the moment is made up of illusion, and that we should not believe anything we saw. Now you are lying to us. I would be very grateful if you could stop lying."

He touched the back of Strauss-Giolitto's hand again. Even the slight contact was enough to tell him how tensely held in place the woman's body was.

The light on the command deck began to dim. The dimming was so slow that Lan Yi hardly noticed it at first, and then he discovered that he was having to screw up his unscreened eye to see the face of the thing that he now knew was not Strider.

The thing's mouth opened, and teeth spilled from it, rattling on the command deck's floor. Behind those teeth appeared others that were much smaller but much more numerous and seemingly much sharper. The blue jumpsuit faded away from around the form of the creature, and Lan Yi wondered how he had ever been able to think of this as a human being, let alone the human being he knew as Strider. Six-legged and with what looked like feathers covering the parts of its body that the illusion of the jumpsuit had hidden, it was poised to spring at him.

Its mouth opened wider and wider—impossibly wider. There was very little he could see now but the interior of that mouth, which was darker even than the starless space he'd seen through the view-window. There was nightmare in the blackness of that maw, which had become as large as the command deck.

"Are you seeing what I'm seeing?" said Strauss-Giolitto.

"That is a difficult question to answer," said Lan Yi primly. "I very much hope that what you are seeing is less hideous than what I am seeing."

"Couldn't be."

The upper surface of the mouth had covered the view-window. The teeth of its lower jaw were slipping insidiously under their feet. They tried to move backwards, but the rear wall of the command deck stopped them.

The darkness inside the mouth of the Strider-thing was not absolute. There was a flipping black-yellow tongue several meters wide. Overhead, the teeth of the upper jaw were slowly lowering.

Lan Yi held his composure with great difficulty. His life had been a long one and it had been strewn with many griefs, most notably the way that Geena had so determinedly hurled herself out of it. He was not at all afraid of death, but he was certainly fearful of the pain that might attend his manner of dying. He wanted to bow down inside the mouth of the thing that had looked like Strider and beg for mercy, but he knew that he couldn't do that. He had to keep up the appearance of impassiveness for the sake of Strauss-Giolitto. Astonishingly, she was acting as calm as he was. Perhaps she was returning the compliment: keeping up appearances for
his
sake.

"Everything's illusion," Strauss-Giolitto said. "Just keep a hold of that. This isn't really happening."

"It feels as if it is."

She put her arm around his waist and hugged him to her. "Let's go for a walk down the Yellow Brick Road, shall we?"

"That?" he said, looking at the serpent-like tongue.

"We can't go back, so we might as well go forward. Just at the moment, it looks as if we have a choice of being eaten or allowing ourselves to be eaten. I'd prefer the latter. It has a bit more dignity. Besides, sooner or later we're going to wake up."

I woke her from a nightmare,
Lan Yi thought.
That's why she's so insouciant about all this. She thinks it's just another bad dream. It hasn't occurred to her that even illusions can kill you.

"Yes," he said. "Let's take that walk."

Darkness was falling as the huge mouth closed.

The most difficult part was climbing on to the tongue. Its tip was moving from side to side in unpredictable flickers of motion. Lan Yi tried to grab it to hold it still, but the oily flesh kept slipping out of his hands.

Strauss-Giolitto hit the tip of the tongue hard with the side of her hand. For a moment it stilled.

"Climb on," she said. "
Dive
on."

She threw herself on to the tongue, losing her balance before she could rise to her knees and, somewhat shakily, her feet. She looked the way that Lan Yi had looked the first time he had tried water-skiing, over seventy years ago. There was so little light left that he couldn't see her face. This was probably a good thing. About three minutes into his first attempt at water-skiing he had been prolifically seasick. He took her hand, and she dragged him up on to the greasy surface of the tongue. It had started moving from side to side once more. She tried to pull him erect alongside her, but instead fell almost on top of him.