The Mammoth Book of SF Wars (30 page)

Inside, she was still the same fourteen-year-old daughter of a Bermondsey costermonger that she had been before the Spiritualist Church had selected her in the annual sweep. The sneers and gibes of the better-bred girls in the dormitory had cut deep and left permanent scars. She had been plucked out of one world and dropped into another, gilded like a fake antique in an auction. The most frightening thing of all was that she couldn’t go back to her old life if she failed in the new one. She now lacked the social and practical skills to survive in Bermondsey. Sarah was not even her real name. Her parents had christened her Daisy but ladies did not have flower names. The better London houses were full of maids with names like Daisy, Rose, or Violet “below stairs” but such names were never found “above”.

It took a moment to register that Captain Fitzwilliam was speaking.

“I was not sure that you would be joining us, Miss Brown. I was concerned that you might be indisposed.” He grinned at her slyly.

He knew she had been sick! How had he known? She glared at the steward who avoided making eye contact. The little rat had dobbed her in to the captain. She was so angry that she forgot her anxieties, which on reflection might have been Fitzwilliam’s intention all along. This one would merit watching carefully, as he might be a lot more subtle than he looked.

“Not at all, Captain,” she said with a smile. “I have been looking forward to dinner.”

“I’m impressed by your fortitude,” said Fitzwilliam. “Personally, I found getting underway so disturbing that I nearly lost my lunch. I haven’t experienced rolls like that since I rounded Cape Horn as a midshipman.”

The engineer adopted a defensive expression and talked for some time on the difficulties involved in balancing galvanic flow through the various cavorite panels that repelled the moon. Sarah knew the basic theory, of course, the polarity of cavorite could be excited using galvanism, but she was uninterested in the practical details. The Navy called the composite ceramic-metal alloy “cavorite” in honour of the inventor of the first aethership. Cavorite was also used to maintain normal body weight in the ship once it was clear of the pull of a heavenly body. This was essential as early explorations had revealed that people weakened quickly when weightless.

Sarah let the conversation drift over her and gave the excellent dinner her full attention. She had gone hungry far too often as a child, so the habit of wolfing down food when it was available was hard to eradicate. She forced herself to toy fashionably with a potato, as befitted a lady. A word caught her attention.

“Let’s hope we achieve metastasis more smoothly,” said Fitzwilliam.

“I’ve never experienced metastasis,” said Lieutenant Crowly, or maybe it was Smythe. “What’s it like?”

The first lieutenant, Brierly, crooked a forefinger at the young man, summoning him closer. “You want to know what metastasis feels like? Well, I’ll tell you. It’s as if someone forces his fist down your throat and pulls you inside out.”

Brierly snapped his hand at the young man’s face, causing him to recoil back in his seat so hard that he almost went over backwards. The older officers laughed at the younger man’s discomfort.

“Fortunately, the whole thing is over quickly,” said Fadden.

“As short-lived as a young man’s stamina,” said Major Riley, eliciting another round of guffaws.

“Gentlemen, lady present,” murmured Fitzwilliam. “Is metastasis equally fast and unpleasant for you, Miss Brown?”

“Pilots are rather busy at the time, finding our way and so on,” she replied, vaguely.

The Pilot’s Academy had firm views on what knowledge was suitable for general circulation and what was best restricted.

“But of course you have your spirit guide to help you,” Fitzwilliam said.

“Can you pilot without a spirit?” asked Brierly.

“In theory,” she replied. “But it is easier and safer if the pilot is in enthasis with a guide.”

“And who is your guide?” asked Fitzwilliam.

“Captain James Hind, the highwayman and cavalier, who was hanged for high treason in 1652. It is said he tried to assassinate Cromwell himself on the London road from Huntingdon. The Lord Protector had seven guards and Hind but one accomplice so the attempt failed. Captain Hind barely escaped; his friend was taken and executed on the spot.”

“Indeed!” Fitzwilliam raised an eyebrow. “Then we must drink a toast to the good Captain Hind, gentlemen, as we shall be entrusting ourselves to his care shortly.”

The men raised their glasses and gave a ragged chorus of “Captain Hind”. She raised her glass to her lips with them but did not drink. She had learned to pace herself very carefully with alcohol. The temptation to drown her social anxieties in the comfort blanket of intoxication was too strong.

“Do you think that the spirit guides really are the souls of dead people, Miss Brown, or something inhuman?” asked Lieutenant Crowly.

“The Spiritualist Church is certainly of the view that they are human. They believe that the soul passes through layers of heavenly spheres as it gains enlightenment, until it is holy enough to come back and guide the living,” she replied.

“I have often wondered why spirit guides devote so much time to our needs,” said Fitzwilliam. “What’s in it for them?”

This was delicate and she felt the glow of a blush heating her cheeks. The captain’s smile broadened. Bastard!

“Perhaps the Church is right and they help us because they are enlightened,” she said, trotting out the official explanation.

“Ah, altruism, that explains it,” said Fitzwilliam, with a cynical smile. “Nevertheless, it is interesting that pilots are drawn mostly from the ranks of young women.”

“That can partly be explained by tradition,” said Fadden, interrupting. “Von Reichenbach recruited girls from the poorer social classes to act as sensitives for his experiments into life energy and how to channel it for psychokinesis. I suspect that, initially, this was simply because they were cheaply hired and young women are malleable and suggestive.”

“I have never found young women to be particularly malleable or suggestive,” said Fitzwilliam, smiling at her.

She suspected that his boyish smile had made many young women very malleable to his suggestions indeed, perhaps too much so for their own good.

The engineer ploughed on pedantically, as if his captain had not spoken. “Of course, as the creators of new life, young women are particularly strong in universal life energy, what Von Reichenbach termed Odic Force.”

“The kirks in Scotland think that spirit guides are daemons from Hell,” said Crowly, stubbornly returning to his point.

“Oh, the Wee Free kirks. What would we do without them?” asked Fadden, sarcastically.

“Do you think you consort with daemons, Miss Brown? Are you dealing with Heaven or Hell?” asked Fitzwilliam.

“The Spiritualist Church would deny the existence of either,” Sarah replied.

“Have you ever tried to check the veracity of your Captain Hind?” Fitzwilliam asked.

“There definitely was a real person called James Hind,” said Sarah. “Sometimes what he tells me about his past agrees with the records and sometimes it is contradicted.” She shrugged.

“That could simply mean that the records are wrong.” Fitzwilliam laughed. “Who is naive enough to believe official documents?”

“Sometimes the contradictions are of a particular nature,” said Sarah.

“Such as?” Fitzwilliam asked. He sounded genuinely interested.

“Well, for example, my Captain Hind says that he was the son of a gentleman but the parish register records his father as a butcher.”

“Well, he wouldn’t be the first man to embellish the truth to a pretty girl,” said Fitzwilliam, with a smirk.

“According to last month’s
Times
, the Wee Free want the Spiritualist Church banned throughout the Empire and the Royal Naval Pilot’s Academy closed.” Crowly would not be deflected.

“That’s ridiculous. We would have problems reaching even Venus and Mars without pilots,” said Fitzwilliam.

“Many books of the Bible warn against spiritualism, especially Leviticus,” Crowly said.

“Oh, Leviticus,” said Fitzwilliam, sniffing. “If we took Leviticus literally, we would have to stone half the aristocracy.”

“This is all superstitious twaddle,” said Fadden. “There is a simple scientific explanation for metastasis. We flood the ship with Noetic radiation, which a pilot controls using her Odic Force and, hence, achieves psychokinesis.”

“But what about spirit guides and the visions experienced by pilots?” asked Crowly.

“If you are surprised that young women have hysterical visions when under stress then you know nothing about the fairer sex, my boy,” Fadden said. “The sooner science discovers how to control Noetic energies with machines then the sooner delightful young ladies, like Miss Brown here, can go back to fulfilling God’s plan for them by marrying and having babies.”

Fitzwilliam winked at Sarah. She could not decide which of the two men most deserved a slap.

Sarah adjusted the pilot’s leather seat on the bridge into a semireclining position, which supported her body comfortably from head to toe, and fiddled with the straps that held her down.

“When you are ready, Miss Brown,” said Fitzwilliam, clearly becoming impatient.

Sarah ignored him and gave everything one last check. Let the so-and-so wait – his mother had to. She also tried to ignore the revolver that she knew Brierly concealed behind his back. It was his duty to kill her if something went badly wrong. She closed her eyes.

“Captain Hind, are you there?” she asked.

Nothing happened so she repeated the phrase. A cold draught brushed her face. When she opened her eyes, Hind stood in front of her dressed in riding boots and a profusion of blue and red silk. He swept a feathered hat from his head and bowed in a single fluid motion. One of the petty officers on the bridge watched her, looking right through Hind. It had initially puzzled her that no one else could see her spirit guide. Now she just accepted the phenomenon. He appeared entirely corporal to her, not like a ghost at all.

“My dear Miss Brown, what a pleasure to be with you again,” Hind said.

She knew that everyone else on the bridge would hear his words come out of her mouth, albeit in a masculine voice, but to her it seemed that Hind himself spoke.

Fadden signalled to a petty officer who pushed a long lever over with both hands. The engineer peered at a gauge. “Noetic radiation levels building up nicely.”

Fitzwilliam gestured to her. “Very well, Pilot, you may …”

“I need your help, Captain,” she prayed.

“Of course, my dear,” Hind said, holding out his hand.

She reached upwards, touching him, and the world froze. She could see Fadden and Captain Fitzwilliam rigidly fixed in position and she knew that, if she turned around, she would find her body still reclining on the chair. She kept her eyes resolutely fixed on Captain Hind. Seeing yourself from outside was too much like dying.

She hung in cloud formations which dissolved in a haze of golden bubbles. They hosed up from somewhere below her, jostling and bursting on her. Little galvanic charges flashed from imploding bubbles, tickling where they encountered bare skin. She felt relaxed and contented, the anxieties that characterized her normal state draining from her. She could have stayed there forever, in blissful surrender, until the quiet peace of non-existence took her soul.

Mediums had been known to fall into comas. Some came round but many just slipped away into death.

A callused male hand slipped into hers and pulled gently. The spell broke and she dropped.

It was early morning on the moors so there was still a chill in the air despite the season. She stood in a valley carved out by a small stream that tumbled cheerfully down through the boulders and rocks strewn across the ground. Downstream, the valley opened into hedged fields and scattered clumps of trees. Smoke curled from a village sited where the stream combined with a larger cousin to form a modest river. Upstream, the valley narrowed as it climbed up to the moor.

“Come sit with me for a while, lass,” said Hind, who was perched on a protruding wedge of granite.

Sarah wore a flouncy dress that parodied the costume of a seventeenth-century barmaid – a dress that was too tight and far, far too low-cut at the front. She concentrated hard, saying the prayer of metamorphosis, and her clothes became a more modest lady’s split-skirt riding costume.

Hind grimaced. “I take it that you are in a hurry to start our journey. I was hoping—”

“It is my first independent posting,” Sarah said, interrupting. “I can’t concentrate on anything else until metastasis is complete.”

“Very well, lass, but you have been neglecting me,” said Hind, glumly, rising easily to his feet and brushing down his breeches. Hind was always most particular about his appearance.

“Yes, that’s true,” she said. “When this is out of the way, we will take a holiday together.”

“I know just the place,” Hind said, noticeably cheering up.

He walked to his black stallion, which grazed on some tough-looking grass nearby. She had not noticed the horse before but things did tend to arrive and disappear rather unexpectedly in the spirit world. Hind lifted his horse’s reins off the ground and hauled himself into the dual saddle. He reached down and pulled Sarah effortlessly up into the rear seat.

Hind clicked his tongue and the horse moved off, following an unmetalled road that wound along by the stream. As they climbed into the wilderness, the road became narrower and more uneven. He put his hand on her knee and Sarah slapped it off. Her mind returned to the dinner table conversation. Did she think that Hind was truly the spirit of a man or some sort of daemon? Sometimes, it was difficult to tell the difference. He was certainly male, whatever else he was.

Sarah perceived the spirit world as English countryside, particularly the high moors. Every pilot experienced something different: a mighty city, jungles, deserts, treasure islands or even more exotic locations.

Routes in the spirit world were created by the passage of travellers, who were not necessarily human. The better the road, the more travelled the route. After some miles, they rode on an ancient highway surfaced with cracked and weathered cobblestones. It crumbled away at the edge and disappeared in places, vegetation intruding everywhere.