Ship of Fools (10 page)

“Oh, shit!”

“Santiago!”

Winton was at the opening now, but holding back. The beams from her helmet light and hand torch caught Santiago’s reeling figure falling rapidly, his own helmet light flashing about in all directions.

No more words from Santiago, but now there was a drawn-out cry as he fell, his shrinking figure tumbling in and out of the light.

The cry ceased with a terrible but brief explosion of a scream. Then nothing.

“Santiago!”

“Winton! What happened?”
Marx’s voice, rising in pitch.

“Santiago! Jesus, Santiago, answer me!”

Winton had her hand torch aimed down at the far end of the room, and I could see her hand and the beam shaking. Santiago’s unmoving body was illuminated by the dim light, sprawled on a flat surface. His helmet light had apparently been knocked out by the impact, but his hand torch was still functional. It lay nearby, its light reflecting off the shiny top surface of his helmet.

“SANTIAGO!”

Then there were no sounds except for rapid breathing from Winton and Marx. No one moved, no one said a word.

The video froze for a moment; then the image flickered and the screen went dark.

“You can watch the whole thing from Santiago’s camera if you like, but I recommend against it.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“Up to that point, every room and passage was zero g. But that cabin has gravity,” Nikos said. “Unfortunately for Santiago, it was twice Earth-normal, and in the wrong direction.”

Gravity in one room, none in the adjacent cabins and passages—which meant the aliens had been able to control gravity in a far more sophisticated way than we could. It was incredible. What else might be found in that extraordinary vessel?

“And Santiago?”

“Dead. There was no helmet or suit rupture, but he broke
his neck.” Nikos paused, polishing off another drink. “His body was there for hours before we could get the people and equipment in to pull him out.”

By that time, we had gone through more than half the bottle of whiskey, and I was feeling it; I’d had no alcohol in months, and wasn’t accustomed to it. More than anything, though, it made me tired. I wanted to forget about the alien ship, forget about Santiago, forget about Nikos and his betrayals. I wanted to go back to my own quarters and reacquaint myself with them, go to sleep in my own bed. As if sensing that, or recognizing his own drunkenness, Nikos capped the bottle and ordered coffee brought in.

I was surprised to see Maximilian bring the coffee. We stared at each other, neither of us quite sure what to think. He set up a small table and tray with pot and cups, poured, then left. The coffee was strong but terribly bitter, and I had to dilute it with cream. I resisted the urge to complain that the coffee I’d had in prison was better than this.

I drank one cup quickly, then poured another. Nikos was just sipping his, and I suspected he wanted to add whiskey to it, maintain his blood alcohol level.

“What’s happened since?” I asked.

“We’ve continued to explore the ship,” he said. “Much more carefully, of course. We make a little progress each time. Sometimes the access is hard to work out, and the absence of gravity makes things more difficult—it’s been all zero g since that one room. And now the teams take the time to inventory and record everything they see.”

“Any more casualties?” I knew the answer had to be yes.

Nikos nodded. “Four more dead, seven others with severe injuries. All accidents, each one unforeseen. Ruptured pressure suits, broken limbs, concussions. And stranger things. Barry Sorrel returned from an excursion inside, went to sleep for sixteen hours. Could hardly wake him. Physically, he checked out fine with the doctors. But he refuses to go back into the alien ship, and won’t say why. Actually, what he says is that he just doesn’t feel like it. And do you know Nazia Abouti?”

I told him the name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t picture her.

“She’s been inside the alien ship several times, and lately
she’s
been behaving strangely. A few days ago, her husband brought her in to see a physician. She didn’t want to be examined; she said she was feeling fine, but her husband insisted. Primary symptoms: sleeping more than usual, and periodically going into a kind of fugue state—she’ll be unresponsive for hours, but doesn’t remember anything when she comes out of it. In fact, she insists the fugue states aren’t occurring at all, that her husband is fabricating them. Another major symptom is what her husband describes as an overwhelming apathy.” He paused. “You understand why I’m worried?”

“Let me guess,” I said. “The physician found nothing wrong with her, either.”

“That’s right. Three different physicians have examined her, and they spent two days running tests. Nothing. But her husband insists she isn’t the same.”

“You continued to send teams in,” I said.

“Yes. Two weeks ago I temporarily suspended all exploration, but we’re going to start up again soon. What else are we going to do? An
alien
starship, Bartolomeo. As far as we know, this is the first and only time in human history that we have had any contact, any evidence of an intelligent alien civilization. We can’t just stop now, leave it all behind as if it didn’t exist.”

That was Father Veronica’s argument for staying on Antioch, but I didn’t remind the captain of that. I was sure he would say, perhaps with some justification, that this was very different, and far more important.

“I’m sure some people have argued we do just that,” I said. “That whatever might be discovered isn’t worth the loss of lives.”

“Yes, some have.”

“The bishop?”

“No. Actually, the bishop has a different agenda.”

“And what’s that?”

Nikos smiled ruefully. “The same old agenda.” But he
didn’t say any more, his gaze unfocused, as if lost in his thoughts. Or simply lost.

“Why do you need me?” I asked.

“I’m in trouble again, Bartolomeo.”

“Because of the casualties.”

“Yes. I am being blamed for them, like everything else.”

There was something about the way he said that . . .

“What else are you being blamed for?”

“There’s more trouble with the downsiders. After we put down the mutiny, I expected the downsiders would become more docile, at least for a few years. Instead of fear, the quelling of the mutiny has stirred up only more resentment. We have rebellion, now. Nothing major, but dozens of small rebellions, subtle bits of sabotage, disgruntlement, resistance. They are making life on the ship difficult without going far enough to warrant arrests or reprisals or other punishments.” He gave a grudging smile. “We often can’t identify who is causing the difficulty, or what exactly has been done. Occasionally, I imagine, nothing at all has been done, and some piece of equipment breaks down simply because of age, as has always happened on this ship. Now, however, we question everything.”

“You’ve engendered resentment in them, and they have in turn engendered paranoia in you.”

“Yes, that is an apt assessment.”

“What do you want from me, Nikos?”

“The bishop wants to take over the exploration of the alien ship.”

“Let him. Let him take all the risks.”

Nikos shook his head. “I can’t, Bartolomeo. I can’t trust him, you know that.” He paused. “And he’s up to something. He thinks he’s been sly, that no one’s on to him, but . . . He’s made an excursion over to the alien ship on his own. I don’t know what he’s looking for, or what he has in mind, but I do
not
want to put him in charge. If I let him take over now, I might just as well hand the captaincy to him. Even if he failed, I would never become captain again. Never.”

“What do you
want
?” I was exasperated. More than that, I was angry, although I wasn’t sure at what.

Nikos finally looked directly at me. “I want
you
to take charge of the exploration of the alien ship. I want you to bring me success.”

I felt I was being set up as scapegoat and distraction. If by some chance I
could
achieve success, all the better. If not, I gained time for the captain. I didn’t like it.

“If I refuse?”

“Your cell remains empty.”

“You would imprison us all again?”

Nikos cocked his head and stared at me, and his true state of mind showed itself—in the intensity of his eyes, the tightness of his lips as they formed a mirthless smile.

“I would not hesitate,” he said.

I
slept long and hard and without dreaming, or at least without any memory of dreams. When I woke, I thought I was still in my cell. The room was dark, and as I sat up I became confused, sensing something vaguely unfamiliar about my surroundings. I stumbled out of bed—its height was not the same as the bunk in my cell—and bumped into a wall where one shouldn’t have been. Yet some unconscious part of me apparently realized where I was, for my hand reached out involuntarily to the correct place on the wall and brought up dim lights. I saw I was in my own quarters, and finally remembered my release.

I sat in a chair, surveying my quarters, trying to decide what to do, what to think, struggling against the urge to return to bed and go back to sleep. My rooms were so quiet and lifeless, as if the inorganic matter which composed the furniture and all of my few possessions had dropped into an even lower level of existence while I was gone, and now needed to be resurrected to its former state. The same for me, I thought.

I should have been elated to be free of my cell, but I was strangely depressed, and did not understand why. Everything was changed; perhaps that was it. The captain was
still fighting with the bishop over the captaincy, but even that had changed, and my place within the struggles, my relationships to the key participants, were not the same. I saw everyone differently now, and I was sure their perceptions of me, too, had changed.

And Nikos? We had been friends for years, since we were children, but that time was gone, and I began to fully understand that there was no regaining that friendship. Out of necessity we could work together, each of us distrusting the other, but there would never again be more, and that realization depressed me as well. An enormous sense of loss threatened to overwhelm me.

I got up from the chair, showered and dressed, then tried to get something to eat. The room’s food system had been shut down while I was in prison, and no one had yet restored its function. I would have to go to one of the common halls.

Fortunately it was between regular meal times—late morning—and there were few people in the common hall nearest my quarters. None of them knew how to react to my presence, though I detected less surprise than when Nikos and I had walked along the ship’s corridors to the command salon. Word of my release had obviously spread through the upper levels.

I selected simple fare, not much different from what I had been served while imprisoned, and ate quickly. While in my cell, I would often imagine that upon my release I would gorge myself on the widest variety of rich food and drink. Now that I had the opportunity, I felt almost ill at the prospect; eating like that seemed so unnecessary, indulgent, almost immoral.

Nikos was expecting me early that morning. I had agreed to take over the alien ship’s exploration, and he wanted me to help select the new exploration teams and begin as soon as possible, but I needed to see Father Veronica first.

I went to the cathedral, but she wasn’t there. Only Father George was.

I found him at the far end of the cathedral, kneeling at one of the side altars, his head bowed in prayer. The candles
flickered, and their dim light fluttered gently about his head. I sat quietly in a pew some distance away and waited for him to finish.

Father George was an old man, stooped and frail. He rose awkwardly to his feet and lit several more of the candles; then he turned to me, and I realized he had heard me come in. He smiled and walked toward me.

“Hello, Bartolomeo.”

“Hello, Father.”

“Prison does not appear to have harmed you much.”

“Mostly my ego,” I said.

Father George chuckled. “Then perhaps you have even benefited from your incarceration.” He tugged at his long white hair with bony fingers, as if his thoughts and vision were in another world, which they probably were.

“In some ways,” I agreed.

“What can I do for you, my son?”

“I’m looking for Father Veronica.”

He nodded to himself as if that was exactly what he had expected. “She’s not here. She hasn’t been here for several days.”

“Where is she?”

“I don’t know. Nobody knows.” He hesitated, studying me. “But when she does return, I will tell her you came to see her.”

“Thank you, Father.”

He looked as if he wanted to say something else, but changed his mind. Instead he just nodded.

I had started down the aisle when he called to me. I turned back to him, and he was standing straighter than I had seen him in years, and his expression was grave.

“What is it, Father?”

“Be careful, Bartolomeo.”

“Of what?”

“Everything.” He paused, then repeated himself. “Everything. But especially of the alien ship.” He shook his head. “It is an evil thing, and it should be left alone. Perhaps it even comes from the Fallen One.”

“Satan?”

“Why not? Is that any more incredible than the notion that the ship is an artifact of an alien civilization?”

I wanted to tell him that I didn’t believe in Satan, or the Fallen One, or whatever he might want to call it, but I didn’t see the purpose. It would be an attack on his faith, and he probably knew how I felt, anyway.

“I’ll be careful,” I told him. “Thanks.” I turned to leave, and saw Nikos waiting for me near the cathedral’s main doors.

“We might have a problem,” he said when I reached him.

He was sweating and smelled faintly of alcohol; I wondered if he had developed a drinking problem while I was imprisoned. If so, I was in more trouble than I had thought.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The bishop has called an emergency session of the Executive Council.”

“The reason?”

Nikos gave me a rueful smile. “You, of course.”