Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (28 page)

Ad the other DME areas were dead. Their atmospheres had been sucked out into space along with their occupants. It was only the particle screens with their dimensional laminate which protected the entire DME sector from ruin. Deep in space when the tragedy first struck the particle screens faced and held at bay the vacuum of space. Now the particle screens were protecting the DME area from the raw atmosphere of the planet on which we had landed. But we were paying a price. The particle screens consumed considerable power from the
Nightingale
and limited the ship’s other functions.

The chambers belonging to the Close Metabolism Life-forms had fared better as regards overall physical damage but their systems were less secure. There were atmospheric leaks aplenty and I dispatched a team to try and locate and seal these.

However, while this news was bad, the worst news of all was that the dormitory areas where the crew who serviced the
Nightingale
had their lodgings and gymnasia, had been completely isolated. The dormitories were a vast complex of two- and three-room cells close to the STGs. Evidently when the
Nightingale
lurched back into normal spacetime the strain on the bio-crystalline linkages had been too great and they closed down. Now we could not contact these areas and we did not know whether they had been denied atmosphere and power or whether they still functioned but as autonomous units.

I singled out one of the strongest of our young men and sent him out. We did not have any spare gravity units and so this junior confrere donned a simple survival suit and went outside. He dragged himself laboriously, against the unrelenting lead of gravity, over to the dormitory section. He carried an override charge so that he could get in through the local air-lock should such be necessary, but he never needed to use it. There was a gaping hole in the wad of the
Nightingale.
Something must have happened at the moment of impact, a detonation of some kind, inside the wads, for bodies had been ejected from the dormitory and now lay exploded among the stiff gray shrubs at the base of the ship.

The junior confrere climbed into the dormitory area of the
Nightingale,
being very careful not to damage his survival suit on the sharp metal edges which rose up at him like knives. As he made his way through the ruined dormitory he described what he saw. He found himself in a chaotic world. So great was the tug of gravity that quilts which had tumbled from beds as the ship came down now looked as though they had been starched and ironed into place. In one place a folio of letters had fallen open and the pages held to the floor as though glued. In the gymnasium, the rings and ropes hung down from the ceiling stiffly, like poles. Where there were bodies, the hair was teased back from the scalp and the faces were collapsed.

The young confrere searched through every chamber and it became obvious that the catastrophe had not occurred instantaneously.

Some of the dead inmates were found struggling into their survival suits. But no one had survived. It was a graveyard.

I ordered him back. And he came slowly, like a crab, easing his way around the curves of the
Nightingale.

So there we were.

Despite the bad news there was a kind of optimism in the air. I think we truly believed that things could not get worse. We appreciated the safety of the moment. To welcome the teams back from the DME and CME sectors I ordered that a warm meal be prepared. This gave everyone something to do.

Privately I knew what I had to do. I needed to visit the bio-crystalline core of the ship and see how extensive the damage was to the bio-crystalline brain of the
Nightingale.
I encouraged celebration followed by rest and when I saw that others among the crew were dragging themselves to their various apartments, I made my farewells and donned a gravity suit and glided to my private rooms.

WULFNOTE

With those words this session ended and Wilberfoss woke up. He blinked and looked at me anxiously. “Did I tell you anything new?'' he asked.

“You did,” I replied.

“And when will I remember?” “Very soon.”

He remembered that same night.

The grip of winter tightened on the garden. The birds which needed the warmth of summer were long gone. The hardier ones who would stay with us during the cold months could be found singing and scrapping close to the berry trees.

In the mornings there was mist which lingered behind the garden walls. At midday the shadows were long and spindly and the sunlight revealed spider webs stretched between trees. Evenings came quickly with a shower of rain and after that a smell of leaf mold. The nights were cold and a fire was lit in Wilberfoss’s rooms.

Wilberfoss seemed to thrive on the winter.

One morning he was up early and I came upon him standing outside his rooms with a blanket over his shoulders and breathing white vapor into the air. He had also pressed his hand against the patterns of frost on his window pane and a print of his palm was beginning to dribble. I felt hope at this. He was showing an interest in the world outside himself.

But under the blanket he was naked. For a while nakedness and washing became an obsession with him. He seemed to believe that clothes were a filthy skin and sometimes he would wash himself until he was raw. I think he wore the blanket rather like a hair-shirt. The mortification of the flesh is an old theme especially with those who feel guilt. I have many references to it. I was amused in my dry way to observe that Lily was more concerned by his fervent ablutions than I was. She saw the sores, I saw the mind straining for cleanliness and for the one and only time I told her to be calm. By showing himself naked to the world he was trying to create a naked psyche.

Later that day it began to snow. The snow came in large, soft chunks where several flakes had clung together. Wilberfoss amazed me by saying that he could smell the snow coming. That was in the morning when the sky was still clear.

About midday the wind started from the south and quickly the sky darkened. I floated up into the trees above Wilberfoss’s cell and looked out over the walls of the garden. The sea was leaden below the dark, gathering clouds. In the monastery, bright lights were already twinkling in windows though it was scarcely into the afternoon. The first flakes of snow drifted down like ash. Then the fell became steady. The headland and the shuttle port disappeared.

I looked out across the garden and could see the white flakes vanish on the surface of the river where it wound slowly through the limestone caves. The snow settled on the rocks by the river and on the slopes of the hills and on the Pectanile, revealing the curves of that monument like the sleek gray shape of a dolphin. The snow tumbled through the bare trees and built on branches and clung to the dry bark. The temperature dropped steadily and as the snow covered the land the quality of sound changed. Every sound was softened, even the call of the Crowhawk which has a voice that has been likened to the crying of the damned in Dante’s Inferno.

When I looked down I saw Wilberfoss. Silly man was pulling off his clothes and throwing them down in the slush in front of his small home. Naked he spread his arms and turned in a circle stamping his feet so that every part of him was touched by the snow.

Lily arrived with a clatter and a roar. She scolded Wilberfoss and sent him inside waving her dexetels. He retreated before her like a reluctant child. I swooped down and gathered up his sodden, stiffening clothes and took them inside.

Wilberfoss was already in bed. He lay on his back and the covers were pressed tightly under his chin in a no-nonsense manner. Lily was over him, a thermometer held in one of her dexetels. There was a smell of broth cooking.

As I entered Wilberfoss sneezed heartily and I can record that this first day of snow gave Wilberfoss a mighty cold which kept him in bed for many days. For me this was a bonus. While Wilberfoss wheezed and snuffed and Lily fussed, I was able to talk to him. The cold took over his body and left his mind free.

The following story, fit in its way to be a winter’s tale told by a roaring fire while the cold dark wraps around the house like a scarf, was recounted to me by Wilberfoss as he lay on his back, immobilized by Lily and the sheets.

I murmured the hypnotic trigger and his eyes closed and his face became animated.

“Tell me about the
Nightingale
,” I said. “How did you live on the crippled ship? Did you visit the bio-crystalline core? Tell me.”

Wilberfoss’s Narrative

I slept well. Despite my worries I slept well. I think that when one sees the shape of the disaster that has befallen one, then relaxation can come. It is doubt that causes the sleepless, red-eyed night.

When I awoke I found that a plan had formed in my mind. The key to so many of our problems was in the malfunction of the bio-crystalline brain of the
Nightingale.
I knew how that brain had grown in part from my own consciousness and I decided to visit the seed chamber to see if I could put matters to rights or perhaps change things for the better.

The main seed chamber of the
Nightingale
was a circular room some considerable distance beneath my command chambers. It was an area which was difficult of access since no one had anticipated that anyone would ever need to visit the chamber while the
Nightingale
was in transit. But access was possible, of course.

I ate breakfast, pampering myself somewhat with fresh bread, boiled eggs and Talline broth such as Medoc once made for me. The ingredients were not in short supply in my quarters though I know that my bread had never known yeast, nor had my eggs ever known a chicken and my Talline broth came from a freeze-dried packet. For reasons best known to themselves, the planners of the
Nightingale
had made sure that the Captain had a decade’s supply of excellent food. I suspect that they considered that food equals morale. I also suspect that in giving me ten years’ supply they had calculated on providing me with a year of variety before repetition set in. I was grateful for this consideration. The broth in particular was excellent and I could taste the herbs and remembered the chant that Medoc sang: ‘ Ropeweed for courage, Starseye for sight, Meat for the hunter, Bring strength in the night.”

Rested and fed, I donned my survival suit. Then, with the anti-grav unit strapped to my back, I made my way through my apartment, my toes merely brushing the floor, as I pushed myself along. I went past the room where Sandy/Quelle had died. I was moving in the opposite direction to the ramp which led down to the staff canteen. This particular corridor ended in a small alcove which contained an entry to a transit shaft. There was a standard control panel and I tapped out the access code adding my own personal code and palm print. The answer flashed back that the transit system was not working. This was as I expected. I operated the override switch and a section of the floor slowly slid open. There was a rush of air and an alarm bell rang briefly until all pressures had balanced. I looked down into a black well. It seemed to suck at me. I knew that if I had fallen down that shaft without the anti-grav unit I would have been compacted to an eighth of my size at the bottom.

I switched on my suit lights and increased the anti-grav power so that I was floating and then I pushed myself out over the black hole. A slight adjustment of the power and I began to sink. I passed the rim. My lights lit up the depressed emergency handholds which were set into the wall of the transit chute and which rose past my eyes. There was just sufficient room for me to descend without bumping the walls. The presence of the gravity pack meant that I could not bend and look downward. I used my hands to direct me and pushed myself downward, feet first.

I did not know how far I needed to descend. I measured each rung as a foot and when my counting reached ninety-eight, my feet suddenly touched something. My reaction of surprise was such that I sent myself back up the chute by several feet. The next time I landed I was ready.

I was on the roof of one of the transit seats. It must have been parked here at the moment when the power failed. I turned around slowly, wondering if I would find myself trapped in the chute, but discovered that I was just under the roof of an oblong chamber which was filled with pipes and festoons of cable and conduit trunking. It was easy for me to step off the roof of the transit seat and sink slowly down to the ground.

The lights of my suit showed the room starkly. The walls and pipes were stenciled with technical graffiti which defined their function. Beside these were scrawled autographs and dates. Many different construction teams had worked here. The room was little more than a vast junction box where many parts of the
Nightingale
met.

One pipe was particularly important to me. It was about two feet in diameter and stretched the length of the chamber without any bends or curves. It was the color of old, rubbed ivory—this was the ceramic jacket you understand—and within I knew were the organic threads of the bio-crystalline brain. It had grown within this pipe, advancing as the
Nightingale
grew and adding more and more strands as the complexity of the ship increased.

I began to lope slowly beside this pipe, ducking occasionally to avoid cross pieces, until finally I came to the entrance to an air-lock. It had a notice printed in red on its surface.

“WARNING. Bio-crystalline Seed Chamber. Only authorized personnel are permitted to enter this air-lock. Unauthorized persons seeking to gain entry are advised that their action will place them in extreme danger.”

This was a standard announcement and the entire biocrystalline system was protected behind similar air-locks. What the notice meant was that any unauthorized attempt to enter would result in alarms and the sudden closing of doors and in some cases a beam of lethal radiation.

I of course should have been safe. My credentials were the best. I was part father of the bio-crystalline consciousness and could be admitted without fuss or question. Even so, given the strange state of the
Nightingale,
I doubted.