Ship of Fools
Authors: Richard Russo
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
SHIP OF FOOLS
An
Ace
Book / published by arrangement with the author
All rights reserved.
Copyright ©
2001
by
Richard Paul Russo
This book may not be reproduced in whole or part, by mimeograph or any other means, without permission. Making or distributing electronic copies of this book constitutes copyright infringement and could subject the infringer to criminal and civil liability.
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The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Putnam Inc.,
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ISBN:
978-1-1012-0798-7
AN
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Electronic edition: February 2002
Acknowledgments
I can’t adequately thank my wife, Candace, who read the entire manuscript several times and made numerous suggestions and corrections, large and small, gently persisting even when I got defensive. This is a better book because of her.
I’d also like to thank Karen Fowler for her many invaluable suggestions on an early draft of this novel, and, once again, for her friendship and encouragement over the years.
My thanks, too, go to my editor, Susan Allison, who helped me bring this book into focus.
Finally, a belated thanks to my long-time friends Patricia Miranda and Paul Katz for their medical expertise and help with my previous book,
Carlucci’s Heart.
I inexcusably neglected to acknowledge their contributions then, but do so now with apologies. Thank you both.
For Candace
All my love
W
E
had not made landfall in more than fourteen years. One disastrous choice of a star after another. The captain viewed this string of failures as absurdly bad luck; the bishop, as divine intervention. Either way, I saw it as prelude to the captain’s downfall, which would almost certainly mean my own downfall as well.
When we detected a transmission from the world that would later be called Antioch, I sensed opportunity. But opportunity for whom? The captain, or his enemies? It was impossible to say. The captain’s position was tenuous at best, and everything was uncertain aboard the
Argonos.
I
was exploring one of the dark, abandoned vaults of disabled machinery deep in the core of the ship, studying a length of cable scorched and fused at one end, neatly severed at the other. Shiny blackened metal sparkled in the light of my hand torch. The air was warm and stuffy and smelled faintly of burnt plastic and old lubricants. There were dozens of such rooms on the
Argonos
, some quite small, others like this one—large vaulted chambers that had become dumping grounds for machinery that had
ceased to function and which could no longer be repaired or salvaged. I loved those rooms and spent hours in them, hoping to find some engine or device I could rebuild and bring back to life.
I swung the hand torch around, widened the beam, and aimed it upward. Great, massive chains hung from the ceiling far above, shiny silver-blue stars of reflection glittering down at me as if the metal were wet and dripping. Entwined in one of them was a longer section of cable much like the one I held in my hand; it, too, appeared to be severed, near the point where it emerged from the bottom link. I was mystified.
A winged creature flapped through the beam, an amorphous shadow that seemed to flicker in and out of existence as it flew. It swerved abruptly and dove. Eyes gleamed at me for a moment; then the creature canted away and out of the light with a hushed flutter of air.
A terrible grinding vibrated through the chamber and I instinctively snapped off the hand torch. The grinding slowly faded, but was followed by scraping noises and the clanging of metal against metal. I stood motionless, listening, waiting for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. Dull red glowed in the distance, a glow that seemed to gradually brighten.
The scraping and clanging ceased, replaced by a low, deep rumble. Then I heard a voice. Too faint, too distant to make out, yet familiar.
I wanted to get closer, but trying to move blindly through all that broken and rusted machinery would be dangerous as well as noisy. I adjusted the hand torch to its dimmest setting, aimed it down at the floor, and turned it back on. There was just enough light to see my footing; I decided the risk of detection was low, and moved forward.
Progress was slow: the way was rarely clear, I was trying to be quiet, and my club foot was a minor hindrance. As I got closer, I felt even warmer; sweat trickled down my sides, itching. Sometimes I heard the voice, sometimes more scraping or banging, sometimes grunting. The red glow
intensified as I neared it, and soon it was bright enough to light my way.
A horrendous metallic squealing tore at my eardrums and brought me to a halt. It ceased abruptly, and I was just about to take another step when I heard the voice again; this time I recognized it: Bishop Soldano. His deep, resonant baritone was unmistakable, though I still could not make out any words. Who was he talking to? Himself?
My exoskeleton vibrated twice in succession, and I silently cursed. It was a signal from the captain. I felt a nagging irritation, more at myself than at Nikos; the signaling system had been my idea, and this wasn’t the first time I’d regretted it. I ignored it and crept forward, pulled myself across a tangle of wire mesh between two huge rusting cylinders, then through a corroded structure of bent and twisted metal rods.
I was seven or eight meters above the floor of a large, hollowed-out bay. Below me were the bishop, three shirtless men, and two enormous pieces of machinery that dwarfed the men beside them. One machine was dark and lifeless, resting on a crude, wheeled platform. The other shook and rumbled and glowed a deep red from rings of crimson-tinted lights circling the upper cylindrical section; pipe and cable snaked up from the floor, feeding into the base, and heat radiated from it in waves. The three men strained at the platform, pushing it closer and struggling to align the massive couplings of the two machines.
The bishop watched, frowning and silent now. In the red glow, his large, shaved head glistened with beads of sweat. He was a big man, nearly two full meters in height and a hundred and twenty-five kilos or more in weight. He wore a plain black cassock and heavy black boots.
The wheeled platform stopped moving, less than a meter from the rumbling engine, and the three men fell back, exhausted. They were drenched in sweat and breathing heavily. The bishop stepped forward, and I thought he was going to shout at them, but he only nodded.
“Good,” he said. “Once more, men. Once more and we’ll be there.”
The three men looked up at him, then rose together and leaned into the platform, grunting and straining again. The platform barely moved, the wheels turning almost imperceptibly, scraping the floor; then it lurched forward, and the two machines united with a loud and satisfying crash.
The bishop smiled; when he did, the three men smiled with him, and the expression on their faces was one of admiration . . . and worship. The bishop stepped forward, attached cables and plugs, worked some levers and wheels; then the second machine came to life.
Everything about the machines changed now. The rumble quieted, overcome by a steady thrum, an electric vibration that seemed to penetrate muscle, even bone. The bishop’s smile broadened, and he gazed at the great engines as he might upon his congregation, his skin glowing and his eyes shining. He put his hand on the shoulder of the nearest man and nodded.
“Good work, men. Good work.”
The bishop watched for another minute or two, as if lost in a trance. Then he nodded to himself, still smiling, and shut down both machines, bringing silence and darkness to the chamber.
A few moments later a lantern came to life. Stark shadows fluttered all around them, and I pulled back farther within the metal cage.
“Let us go,” the bishop said. “A good day’s work, and we will have many more. Our day is coming.”
The man with the lantern led the way, the bishop followed, and the two other men came last, walking side by side. They walked up a wide, gently sloping ramp, then out through a large opening in the chamber walls and into a broad corridor. Long after I lost sight of them, I could see the gradually fading light moving up and down, side to side.
The bishop was building a machine. It was not the first, and probably not the last—if anything, the bishop was more fascinated with these old devices and engines than I was. I switched on the hand torch and cast its full beam on the lifeless metal below me. What was it? I had no idea, but
with the bishop involved I felt distinctly uncomfortable, even afraid.
The exoskeleton vibrated once again. I’d been able to ignore it all this time, but I couldn’t anymore. Whatever the captain wanted me for, it had to be important. I turned away from the bishop’s machine, and made my way back.
I
was the captain’s adviser. Bartolomeo Aguilera, counselor to Captain Nikos Costa; his unofficial lieutenant. There were others, of course, who offered their counsel, others in the official chain of command, but I was the one who really mattered. Many were hostile to me for this, many feared me, and a few, I believe, actually respected me. Most of them, as far as I knew, disliked me, sometimes even the captain.
But I was content with that. It suited me.
I am not an ugly man, but I am deformed. I was born with hands attached almost directly to my shoulders, on vestigial arms that are, even now, no more than a dozen centimeters in length, though my hands and fingers are almost normal in size and shape, and function quite well. Several vertebrae are missing, but the spinal cord itself is intact. I have a club foot.
Throughout my infancy and childhood I was fitted with a series of prosthetic arms and hands which I could manipulate from within by my own hands and fingers. I was also fitted with special spinal braces to support my body; synthetic vertebrae were devised to protect the spinal cord.
The limbs were made to look like real flesh, muscle, and
bone, but when I reached adulthood and full growth—slightly taller than average—and was ready for my permanent prosthetics, I chose to have them constructed of shining metal, plastic, and steelglass. I also had the spinal braces augmented with a metal, cage-like exoskeleton which I attach over my clothing each day after I have dressed. For the club foot I did nothing to compensate. My boot was constructed to fit the twisted shape of my foot.
With the augmentation of the exoskeleton, braces, club foot, and my shining arms, I limp swiftly and magnificently along wherever I go. I have never wished to hide my differences. I prefer to celebrate them.
S
EVERAL
hours after first receiving his signal, I entered the captain’s command salon, a steelglass bubble on the forward surface of the
Argonos
, protected from the ravages of space by deflectors and a retractable canopy of anodized metal. The canopy was open when I walked in, and the clear dome revealed thousands of stars shining with a hard and icy light. Surrounded by all those stars, I felt disoriented, afraid I would lose my balance if I moved too quickly.
Nikos sat slumped in the command chair in the center of the room. He was staring at a flat monitor screen mounted on a vertical support that rose from the floor. A steady pulsing light moved slowly and regularly across the screen. He turned and looked at me, but didn’t say a word.
Nikos was a strong, dark-haired man with a neatly trimmed beard and deep blue eyes. Gray had begun to appear in his hair despite the re-gen treatments, and more recently dark crescents had become permanent fixtures beneath those blue eyes. He was not sleeping well. He hadn’t admitted this to me, but I knew, just as I knew about the hours he spent alone in the Wasteland; the seven-year-old downsider daughter he had with a woman not his wife; and his clandestine meetings with Arne Gronvold, who had been banished to the lower levels nearly six years earlier. I was his shadow, though he was unaware of this.
I had known Nikos nearly all my life, and there was little I did not know about him. On the other hand, though Nikos had known me equally as long, there was much he did not know about me, much he did not understand, and this, I suspect, frightened him at times. He was wary of me and did not trust me completely. Yet I had never betrayed him in any way. I admired him more than he knew.
I felt he was holding back, as if reluctant to inform me of something important.
“What is it?” I finally asked.
“That,” he said, and pointed at the pulsing light. “It’s a transmission from the fourth planet.”
I felt an electric buzzing down my deformed spine. We were approaching a planetary system, and had been traveling under conventional propulsion for several months now. We were still weeks out from the star, the circling planets laid out like a disk in our path. After so many disappointments, everyone was afraid to hope we would find anything this time. A transmission? It had the potential to change
everything
on this ship.
I turned and watched the light on the monitor. “So there’s someone there.”
“Questionable. It isn’t much of a transmission. A steady, unvarying pulse, no change of wavelength, duration, or intensity. There’s no content. And nothing else has been picked up.”
“But someone
was
there,” I said. “At one time, someone must have been there. Maybe an entire colony.”
“Probably.”
“Then something will remain. There could even be people still alive down there, in trouble, waiting for help.”
Nikos gazed up and out at the stars surrounding us, and I realized he was wondering whether this would save him, or accelerate his demise.
“Does the bishop know?”
Nikos shook his head. “Not yet. But I’ll have to inform him soon. Today.”
“And what will the bishop do?” I asked.
Nikos just shrugged. He had been like this for too long
now—despondent, apathetic, almost lost, as if he had already given up hope of remaining captain of the
Argonos
. It was unlike him, and I had worried about it for some time.
“We need to be careful,” Nikos finally said. At last he turned from the stars and looked at me. “I have to call a session of the Executive Council. Make the arrangements.”
“Do I tell them about this?” I asked, nodding at the pulsing light.
“Yes. Most will find out before you talk to them anyway.” He gave me a halfhearted smile, but it quickly faded. “Make it for tomorrow night. I need time to think.”
Yes, I thought, we
all
needed time to think. But he had better not take too long. I nodded, and left.
T
IME.
There wasn’t much of it left to Nikos because the ship was in crisis—we had not made landfall in all these years, and we had no unified mission. We were traveling almost at random through the galaxy, had been for decades, if not centuries, and there was no consensus of purpose or goal. This had always been the case, at least during my lifetime, but we had never gone quite so many years without landfall of one kind or another. Uncertainty and a deep restlessness, which had spread throughout the ship in recent months, was now intensifying as we approached our newest destination.
Some had suggested we return to the place from which we began this voyage. But to which beginning? To the last place we actually set foot on dry land? Returning to that place was impossible. To the land we came from before that? Much the same story there. There had always been good reasons for leaving our landfalls and continuing on with our voyage.
Why not, then, return to our original home? The ship was our home. Nearly every one of us had been born aboard the
Argonos
, and most of us would die on the ship before our corpses were launched into the cold black reaches of space. No one knew where the ship was first built, or first launched, though there was plenty of speculation. Many
suggested Earth, the legendary birthplace of humankind. That, I believed, was the most likely. But returning to Earth was not an option, either. We had already tried that once, years before I was born. All they found was a toxic, irradiated world, in ruins and abandoned.
The bishop, on the other hand, claimed the ship had
always
existed—a “Mystery” that was usually a large part of his conversion sermons, a large part of his basic theology. A large part of his nonsense.
So we went on, searching for land, sailing from star to star through the unending universal night. Because of the vast distances involved, and the complexities and imprecision of the subspace jumps (which I do not pretend to understand), combined with the time spent under conventional propulsion, we had managed to visit only four stars in the last fourteen years. The first three, while orbited by planetary systems, offered up not a single world close to being habitable; certainly no signs of past human visits. The last star was a desolate solo without even a barren ball of rock in orbit. It was after the visit to the fourth star, as great a failure as was possible, that the captain’s power and influence began to seriously decline, and the calls for new leadership began in earnest.
An astute and clever politician, Nikos had hung on to his position despite the pressures, but we both knew he could not last much longer. The ship’s original mission, whatever it was, had become irrelevant. What mattered now was the ship’s current mission, and its future leadership. Both were quite undecided.