Ship of Fools (26 page)

Nikos cut her off. “I’m on my way,” he repeated. “Ship damage?”

“None. And we’re still docked. Whatever happened didn’t damage the docking mechanism, didn’t damage a damn thing except our people. We’ll have to try something else later. . . . Okay, that’s it. We’re going out now.”

“I’ll be there as fast as I can.”

The sound cut out; Cardenas was gone.

“Okay,
Captain
.” It was Costino, leaning forward against the table. “Maybe now we’ll have to start thinking about other alternatives.”

“You start thinking, Costino. You come up with any ideas, you just let me know.” Nikos turned to me. “Bartolomeo. Make sure the old woman gets taken care of.”

I nodded and stood. Nikos stood as well, then said, “I declare this meeting adjourned.”

As we left the council chambers, Costino called after us.

“The bishop was right! We are all dead men!”

“M
AYBE
we shouldn’t jet her,” Taggart said, watching the old woman through the one-way glass.

The woman was on the floor of the room, apparently unconscious. A security squad, five-strong with a metal coffin, a wheeled cart, and a portable welder, waited in the corridor outside, all of them armed and armored and masked. The sedative was still pumping invisibly into the room; we weren’t taking any chances. What did it matter if we overdosed and killed her?

I couldn’t look away from the old woman, the alien. Unconscious, she was having difficulty maintaining human form. She shuddered occasionally, and with each shudder it seemed a wave of aborted form-changing rolled through her—her skin shivered and glistened, turning dark and rough; the contours of her limbs expanded briefly, taking on bulk; and her facial features came apart: the flesh flowed and darkened and threatened to take some new form. But before it did, before anything could establish itself, everything coalesced and she looked like an old woman again.

“Why not?” I asked Taggart.

“Maybe we could use her as a hostage. Negotiate with the aliens. We give her back, they let us go.”

“It’s a lousy idea,” I said. “Negotiate?” If Taggart couldn’t figure out for himself why it was such an idiotic idea, I didn’t feel like explaining. I was sick of explaining, especially since I seemed to be wrong as often as not.

We waited another half hour, then I opened the door to the corridor and signaled the squad leader. I’d better be right about the timing, I thought; this section of the med centers had been sealed off from the rest of the
Argonos
. If I was wrong and that thing wasn’t unconscious, or if it suddenly revived, we would be trapped here with it.

Taggart and I watched through the one-way glass as the mangled door was pushed open and the security squad entered the room, carrying the coffin. They moved quickly to the old woman, set the coffin beside her, and opened it. Four of them lifted her—one on each limb—and laid her inside. Another change-wave rolled through her, startling the squad and causing two of them to draw out stone burners; when the human form restabilized, they quickly closed the coffin lid and sealed it with the welder.

I turned to the security camera in the corner, nodded, and said, “We’re on our way.”

Taggart and I met the squad out in the corridor; I took the lead, Taggart the rear. I couldn’t help thinking that the squad wasn’t any larger than the one that had come to arrest me. We moved quickly along the corridor, doors opening before us and closing behind us—a moving secure-zone, the path cleared for us to the nearest ejection tube. I kept looking back, but the coffin didn’t change.
Don’t wake up,
I silently chanted to myself,
don’t wake up
 . . .

At every door I called in the “clear” signal after looking back at the squad. The door would open, we’d move through, Taggart would call in his signal, the door would close. A half hour that seemed much longer.

Finally at the hull, I keyed open the ejection tube. The squad inserted the coffin, and I keyed the panel closed. Now was when a few more words were usually spoken, a private eulogy for the closest friends and relatives of the newly dead. No words this time. I didn’t hesitate.

I activated the chamber, and we felt the faintest tremor
as the coffin was expelled. The viewing monitor came to life and we anxiously watched the gleaming silver vessel streak away from the
Argonos
, a tiny metal bullet hurled into the darkness of space.

The trajectory was away from both the
Argonos
and the alien vessel. I half expected some glowing energy beam to lance out from the other ship, capture the coffin, and draw it back into its interior. But nothing like that happened. The coffin continued to sail away from us unimpeded until, like every coffin ejected from the ship, it dwindled, dwindled, then finally disappeared altogether.

I
caught up with Nikos and Cardenas in the chaos of the med center crisis ward. All of those still living were being attended to, and the three of us went down a passage for some privacy and quiet.

Five crew members were dead now, and two others probably wouldn’t make it to the end of the day; the other four were stage five critical, and had a chance. The explosion, if that’s what it was, had ruptured suits and helmets and sent them all careening away from the ship; two of the dead had only recently been located.

“The old woman?” Nikos asked me.

“Gone.”

“At least that worked.”

“We’ve got to try something else to break free of that ship,” Cardenas said.

“Any ideas?”

She shrugged. “Send remotes to attach explosives. Damage to the
Argonos
is more than acceptable.” She paused. “My guess is that won’t work. Then maybe try firing explosives at the docking mechanism; that would cause us even more damage, but still acceptable. That may not work either. So then we set charges
inside
the
Argonos
. Blow off the forward sections of the ship.” She shook her head. “I don’t like that one bit, but we may have no choice. It should break us free, but it’ll cripple us somewhat, and by that time who knows what kind of response we’ll have
provoked.” She paused. “We have no good options that I can see. But I am more than open to suggestions.”

“What about attacking their ship?” Nikos asked.

“I don’t know. Riskier to the
Argonos
as a whole, I’d think. A full-out battle with that ship? Not good odds for us, but it may come to that. Or they may attack us first, so there wouldn’t be much of a decision. My own opinion, attacking their ship would only be a last resort.”

“Bartolomeo?”

“I can’t argue with anything Margita’s said.”

Nikos was working through the options, and Cardenas was waiting for orders. I was reflecting on all the mistakes I’d made, and wondering if there was any way I could make up for them; in despair, I knew there wasn’t.

“As far as I’m concerned,” Nikos said, “we are in a state of war. I’m not going to the Executive Council for approval of any of my decisions. Will that be a problem with the crew?”

Cardenas shook her head. “Not at all, Captain. The ship is yours.”

He nodded. “The remotes first.”

Cardenas nodded in return. “Right away, sir.” She turned and left the room.

Nikos looked at me with concern. “We’re in deep trouble, Bartolomeo.”

I
searched desperately for Father Veronica. Queries went out to everyone I knew, to every place I could think of. No one had seen her for days. Then I finally thought to try the place I should have remembered earlier, a place where no queries would reach—the Wasteland.

The Wasteland was hot and dry, as always. Sand the color of rust, boulders and stones bleached by an apparitional sun, and the palest blue- and rose-tinted sky; scraggly trees, stunted purple cacti, dense low bushes of thorns; a horizon that stretched into the rising waves of heat.

I closed the hatch over the metal stairs of one of the ground entrances, then turned a complete circle, my gaze
sweeping across the shimmering expanse. The sun was far along its downward arc on my right. I saw no movement, heard nothing but a faint hiss of sand as a faint breeze eddied past my feet.

“Father Veronica!” I called. No response. I turned and called again. “Father Veronica!” Then twice more with the same results.

I felt certain she was here. I picked out a cluster of rocks in the distance, flanked by spindly brush, and walked toward it.

The place was disconcertingly quiet, especially after all the chaos and noise of the previous hours. The heat seemed to bake all sound out of the air so that I barely heard my own footsteps in the coarse sand. Within minutes I was sweating and thirsty.

When I reached the cluster of rocks, there was no sign of Father Veronica. A pipe with a spigot emerged from the ground. I opened it and eventually cold water trickled forth. I drank deeply, splashed water across my face and neck, then closed the spigot. A six-legged lizard scuttled out from the shade and stopped at my feet. Its thin, forked tongue flicked out and lapped at the spilled moisture already drying in the heat, then it scuttled back out of sight.

The largest rock wasn’t more than two meters high, but it would offer a slightly better view. I climbed it and surveyed the surrounding desert. Far away were two groupings of rocks and cacti; a flash of white came from the larger grouping. I called out Father Veronica’s name again, but there was still no answer. I climbed down and headed for them.

It took me half an hour to reach the two groupings; they hadn’t seemed that far away. The larger consisted of several massive boulders interspersed with light purple spined cacti. Caught on the spines of a half-dead cactus was a scrap of white cloth; between two of the boulders was another water spigot, but nothing else.

“I’m here, Bartolomeo.”

Her voice came from the smaller cluster of rocks, which was only a few meters away. She rose to her feet from the
shelter of a large boulder, brushing sand and dust from her cassock. She looked tired and drawn, thinner somehow, but also very beautiful. My heart ached as I realized we had not spoken even once since the excursion outside the ship to view the illuminated stained glass.

I walked over to her. She’d made a small camp nestled in among the rocks—sleeping mat, canteen, and a large satchel presumably filled with food packets and personal items.

“Looking for me?” she said with a tired smile.

I nodded. “How long have you been here?”

“Six days.”

“Things have changed. A lot has happened just in the last fifteen or twenty hours. You should know what’s going on with the alien ship.”

“I already know,” she replied. “Bishop Soldano has kept me informed.”

“He came out here?”

“No. I’ve got a private com unit with me. With all that’s been happening, it would have been irresponsible to just disappear. I told Bishop Soldano I needed to get away, and told him to contact me if it became necessary.” She shrugged. “I’m preparing to return in a couple of hours. I’ll be needed.”

“I’ll stay and help,” I told her.

She shook her head. “The preparation is mental, Bartolomeo. I’m not ready to offer either counsel or comfort to anyone right now, and I’ll need to be.”

“Doubts again?”

“Always doubts. They change, but they’re always there.” She paused. “But so there is no misunderstanding, the doubts are personal . . . not spiritual.”

“What do you mean by personal doubts?”

“They’re personal.” She crossed her arms and held herself. The sun was setting, but it was not cooling off. “How bad is it, Bartolomeo?”

“I thought the bishop told you.”

“He’s not always reliable. He would exaggerate if he thought it would benefit him.”

I shook my head. “I don’t see how he could have exaggerated.”

She took a few steps to the side and sat on a low, flat stone, half in shadow, half in sunlight. I sat beside her, all in sun, and looked at my shadow stretched out for several meters across the sand. Exhaustion suddenly threatened to overwhelm me, aided by the heat. I had not slept since being awakened by Catherine, and the day had been long. My eyes wanted to close, my body wanted to lie down on the warm sand.

“Sometimes,” Father Veronica said, “when I come here and look out across the desert, I think that maybe this place actually
does
go on forever, that we’ve been told it doesn’t, told that it’s just a visual effect, because it would be too much for us to comprehend. Too much for our minds to accept.
I
could accept that, I think. I might even welcome it.” She turned to look at me. “What do you think our chances are of breaking away from their ship?”

“Not very good. We’re going to try several courses of action, each one more drastic than the one preceding. Maybe one of them will work. I would guess that none of them will. I have no particular evidence for that. Just a gut feeling.”

She nodded slowly. “What will happen then?”

“I don’t know. I think it’s likely that we will attack their ship, although since we’re docked to it the logistics will be difficult, and since we know nothing about it or its possible vulnerabilities, any plan of attack will be arbitrary. I don’t hold out much hope for that, either.”

“Attack before they attack us?”

“Probably. No one will want to wait.”

“But they haven’t taken any actual hostile actions yet, have they?”

“They won’t let us go. Some people would characterize that as hostile by itself. And when we sent a crew out to manually disengage, there was an explosion of some kind that killed five and badly injured the others. That’s hostile enough to me.”

Father Veronica wasn’t convinced, or was trying hard
not to be convinced. “Perhaps that was just an act of defense against what
they
interpreted as hostile action directed against them.”

“Did the bishop tell you what I found in their ship?”

She turned her head away and nodded.

“I think their intentions are clear,” I said.

“That must have been awful, Bartolomeo. Once was almost unbearable. I can’t imagine what twice must have been like.”

“A reminder that the first time was real,” I told her. “A reminder I didn’t want or need.”

We sat in silence, our shadows lengthening as the sun continued to descend at our backs. Faint stars appeared in the darkening sky.

“I’ve never been here at night,” I said.

“It’s peaceful. And awe-inspiring. It makes me feel quite small, which is sometimes a good thing.” She turned back to me. “If our attack on their ship fails, what will we do then?”

“Wait for them.”

“Will we be able to defend ourselves?”

I just shrugged. We were far too deep into unknowns and uncertainties. “Maybe it won’t come to that.”

She nodded. “It’s nice to think so.” She sighed heavily. “I need to be alone now, Bartolomeo.”

“All right.” I felt stupid and selfish for staying as long as I had. I stood, looked down at her for a few moments. My heart was aching again. I wanted to say something more, but I had no idea what it should be. I turned away from her and left.