The Cauldron (22 page)

Chapter 36

Shipkeeper

The navigator worked to get the shipkeeper’s attention, a flashing panel above his tank urging a connection with the liaison.

The shipkeeper ignored it.

Sitting in his command chair, his long fingers played over the few visible controls. In the belly of the living ship a small crew maintained the organ-engine and fueled the weapons’ systems that he had just fired on the Alzur ship. He kept his crew mostly oblivious to what transpired on the bridge; they were subordinates and did not need to be privy to his ultimate plans.

“But they did not provoke us, the Alzurites,” the navigator had said when they’d shared a link minutes ago. “We cannot fire on the Alzur ship without cause. We are at peace.”

“Peace? They are the enemy. Their very presence was provocation,” the shipkeeper had returned. “We should have reduced them to nothingness the moment we noticed them in this system. I was a fool to let them live this long and to observe the peace treaty. There could be no peace with an Alzur ship so close.”

The shipkeeper broke his connection with the navigator then, easing back from the tank and looking to Melusine, lost in her merging with the woman called Jerrah. “There is no peace within me.”

The Alzur ship tried to communicate after the first strike hit them below the bridge section, then they tried to retaliate after the second hit. The third one broke the ship in half, and the fourth and fifth strikes destroyed the two lifepods that had been jettisoned.

The shipkeeper knew the navigator would demand answers for the weapons’ barrage, and he wasn’t in the mood to discuss the matter. Anger played at the edges of his mind … over his failure to dispatch Delphoros, and worse over the method he had tried to employ. Simple! How could he have considered something so simple as slaying Delphoros with a knife? What had he been thinking? He had thought to get close using the Jerrah woman, but all he had managed was to drive Delphoros away. And chased away himself by a human in a car? It was humiliating.

“Are the weapons ready?” he asked as he thumbed a control.

A low, sustained hum indicated they were not yet fully recharged.

His fingers thrummed against the console.

Behind him a diffused light flashed above the navigator’s tank.

“No. I will not talk to you. Not now.” The shipkeeper rose and circled his chair, his steps in time with the flashing light. Good that the navigator was so controlled, he thought. Floating in his nutrient tank, legs useless, muscles wasted, the navigator could do nothing physically to stop the shipkeeper’s actions, nor could he verbalize any complaints unless they were connected via the liaison.

Sworn to serve, the navigator could only obey the shipkeeper’s directions and pull the ship through
otherspace
. He had done just that, moments ago, used
otherspace
to get close to the Alzur ship. The shipkeeper had not told him why—that it was to provide a better position to fire on the Alzur. Instead the shipkeeper had implied it was so he could open communications with the other ship.

The shipkeeper had become expert at lying. And the navigator need only follow orders.

The light continued to blink.

The shipkeeper, like a scattering of other Elthorans, knew the secret; the tanks were not necessary to sustain the navigators. They served only as prisons. Navigators were so priceless a commodity that they had to be closely controlled. They could not be allowed any independence. The tanks and the alterations to their bodies were only a means to enslave them. The Elthoran population—and those few individuals with the gift to navigate
otherspace
—had been fed a lie: that the surgeries were necessary to
otherspace
navigation. The fluid the navigators were entombed in was so effective because of Elthorans’ instinctive terror of water. Their bodies had a much higher specific gravity than water and would not allow them to swim. Too, the nutrients were laced with an artificial virus that made the navigators extremely suggestible, their minds malleable. There was no fear the navigators would rebel—physically or mentally.

The navigators were slaves.

And this navigator served the shipkeeper. His personal slave.

“Not now,” the shipkeeper said. “I will not talk to you right now.”

The shipkeeper had directed the navigator to take the ship through
otherspace
to get closer to the planet below. The shipkeeper could navigate on his own here; only in
otherspace
did he lack the ability to maneuver the living ship.

The navigator could do nothing to stop him from killing Delphoros.

Melusine was another matter, however. Younger, she might be stronger than the shipkeeper … was probably stronger. She could physically prevent him from carrying out his plans to eliminate Delphoros. She would try to coax Delphoros onboard so that he could be brought back to Elthor.

But Delphoros was too powerful to be allowed to live.

And Melusine was too strong. She might try to thwart him. Would try.

She was willful, the shipkeeper knew. It was one of the traits he had once admired in her. Willful, independent, not malleable like the navigator, who from his tank continued to signal that he wanted to talk to the shipkeeper.

“Not now. Not now.”

The shipkeeper thought about the planet below; its swirling mass of blue-green loomed large in his viewer. The shipkeeper shuddered at the thought of all the hated water. An image of the lake tossed by the thunderstorm leaped into his mind and he clamped his jaw painfully tight. That Delphoros had stood in the lake was more evidence of the man’s power, more proof that his life must be snuffed out … like the lives on the Alzur ship had been. Delphoros had overcome his fear of water and defied the shipkeeper by walking deeper into the lake. The shipkeeper pictured the waves lapping around Delphoros’ chest.

He would slay Delphoros and order his navigator to return them to Elthor and gain new orders for another mission. Or, better, the shipkeeper would create his own mission. The only working shipkeeper, he was the one with power; he should decide what explorations to make.

Coming to this planet to gain Delphoros was a wasted mission. The only good that would come of it would be in destroying the man, ridding the galaxy of the powerful being who had found a way to leave his navigation tank.

The navigator’s light blinked irritatingly faster.

“Not now. Not now, I said.”

Was the Jerrah woman that Melusine inhabited near the reviled lake? Had Delphoros forced her to the lakeshore as he had forced the shipkeeper riding inside Jerrah’s mind?

Had the shipkeeper badly injured Delphoros? He’d felt the knife sink into to the man’s flesh, felt the warm blood covering his fingers, heard the man’s sweet moan of pain.

He wanted to ask Melusine … she must know by now. How much blood was there? Was Delphoros incapacitated? Thereby easier for him to kill? Did she—

“—know? Does she know?” The shipkeeper’s brow furrowed with concern. “Does Melusine know?” Could she have learned from Delphoros or that fat bald man who had arrived in the truck that himself-Jerrah had tried to kill Delphoros? Could Melusine possibly know that the shipkeeper was behind it?

And if she did not yet know, would she learn of it?

He glided toward her station, noting she was still engrossed in her link.

“Do you know?” he whispered. The words sounded loud in the control room.

The navigator’s light continued to blink.

“You are strong, beautiful Melusine,” the navigator said. “And like Delphoros, you must—” He grabbed her throat and squeezed.

Her knees buckled and she dropped to the floor. He followed her down, increasing the pressure. Her mind was elsewhere; she was both helpless to stop him and ignorant to the danger. She put up no fight; she couldn’t—the intelligent essence of her was far below the ship, riding in the Jerrah woman. She was a mindless thing of flesh. He could hear her breath; it was ragged, and she involuntarily gasped.

He tightened his grip, surprised at the strength he’d managed to summon. The augmentor released its tendrils, perhaps not wanting to share her fate. Little rose-hued specks shown on Melusine’s scalp where she had been attached to the device.

Her limbs twitched, and for a moment the shipkeeper worried she’d somehow restored her senses and her mind had returned to her body. But after a few moments he realized the movement was merely muscle spasms.

“You were in my way,” he told her corpse, still squeezing even though she’d stopped breathing. The shipkeeper held his grip on her throat. His fingers had gone numb, and he could barely feel them. Still he kept them tight and put all of his weight into it.

He was the powerful strong one now.

A musical hum interrupted him, and he slowly withdrew from her body. He stared at it, her left leg at an odd angle, mouth opened, head lolled to the side and drool spilling. She looked only slightly less beautiful in death.

How long before she would begin to stink?

The hum persisted.

The navigator’s light continued to blink.

“Not now. Not now.”

The shipkeeper returned to his console and thumbed a control. “The weapons are recharged? Good.”

He could control everything he needed from where this ship now hovered. Only in
otherspace
did he have to rely on the navigator. Here, he was the powerful one. The circulation returning to his hands, he worked the scant controls and aimed at the weapons at the resort.

The lodge, the cabin in which Delphoros had stayed, the vehicles nearby. He would destroy all of them … and with them, Delphoros.

“Now,” he said.

***

Chapter 37

Carl Johnson

“Wake up, Carl! Wake up!”

Like Shelly had yelled “wake up” when she’d aimed her car at the semi. It was the same staccato feel to the words, though the voice was deeper.

“Wake up, Carl!”

Carl’s eyelids were stuck closed by matter, and he reached a finger up to pick out the crust. He groggily opened his eyes.

“Charlie?”

It was Charlie, but not acting like the Charlie Marshall he’d met at the diner and apparently had known from decades past. The man moved a bit jerkily and his speech pattern had changed. The voice was the same, but—

“The ambulance is on the way,” Ellen said. She paced in a tight circle behind Charlie, wringing her hands in the hem of her overlarge T-shirt. “It’ll take several minutes though, they said. The hospital is on the far side of town, the other side, and us so far out. And this storm … But I’m sure—”

“Who the hell are you?” Carl grabbed the front of Charlie’s shirt and pulled himself up into a sitting position. His back and chest throbbed from where Jerrah had stabbed him.

“Ch-ch-charlie,” he stammered. “Charlie. You know me. Charlie Marshall. You came to my diner and—”

Carl stabbed a finger at Charlie’s forehead. “You’re not Charlie. Who are you?”

A bead of sweat appeared on Charlie’s nose.

“You definitely aren’t Charlie. Are you the ‘it’ that’s been riding around inside Jerrah’s head? Found another body to bounce into?” The moment he asked that, he knew it was wrong. The ‘it’ that had been in Jerrah’s head had tried to kill him, and Charlie stopped that with his arrival. Charlie had saved him. But at the same time, this didn’t “feel” like Charlie. The man didn’t feel right, didn’t sit right with him. Maybe there was another ‘it’ in Charlie—and that entity had saved him. A preposterous notion, Carl thought. But it was a notion that “felt” right.

Charlie closed his eyes. “Listen, Carl.”

Ellen had stopped pacing and came closer. She had her head canted to the side, and Carl guessed she was listening for the ambulance.

“Who are you?” Carl was insistent. “You look like Charlie, but I know better. Just who in—” Despite how silly his accusation seemed, he pressed on. “Just who in the blazes are you?”

Charlie’s expression melted from concern to consternation. “If you have not woken up, really woken up, it does not matter who I am. Does it?”

“Shelly.” Carl hadn’t meant to say the name aloud. The voice—masculine—but there was something about it. Carl pushed himself to his feet. Ellen made a move to protest, but he waived her off. “That’s it, isn’t it?” Carl said. “You’re Shelly, not Charlie Marshall. Telling me to wake up, whatever the hell that means. Wake up, Carl! Wake up! Like in the car after the theater. Like—”

“I had not meant for Shelly to die,” Charlie said.

The words slammed into Carl and he nearly lost his balance.

“Go on,” Carl hissed.

“I only borrowed her to get close to you.”

“You killed Shelly.” Carl watched Ellen’s face whiten and her mouth drop open.

“Shelly had to be sacrificed in an attempt to—”

Flecks formed at the corners of Carl’s mouth. He wanted to grab Charlie by the throat … but he didn’t want to hurt Charlie’s body. It took all of his willpower not to deck the man. He clenched his fists, his nails driving into his palms. The competing pain helped him focus. “How long were you Shelly … in Shelly’s head? And just who—”

“Weeks,” Charlie said.

Ellen looked between the two, clearly realizing they were talking about something that bordered on the supernatural, and yet talking as if it were a commonplace thing. Her mouth worked, but she didn’t say anything.

“Only a few weeks. The feelings you had for Shelly were for the real Shelly. I could tell that she really cared for you. I picked that out of her—”

“Who are you?” Carl raised his voice.

“I am from Alzur.” Charlie obviously was waiting for some sort of reaction from Carl. “But that doesn’t mean anything to you, does it? That’s because you have not fully woken up. You still do not truly realize who you are.”

“Or what I am,” Carl said flatly.

“I have been trying, though, to wake you up.” Charlie continued. “First as Shelly, then as a robber in your hotel room.”

Carl’s eyes went wide.

“Then I tried to run you down on the street outside of the—”

Carl’s chest felt like an elephant had stepped on it. “You were trying to kill me! Three separate times you tried to—”

“No no no.” Charlie spit the words out like bullets. “I just wanted to wake you up. Scare you so you would jump—”

“—into otherspace.”

“And realize who you are, and what you are capable of. That you are not human and not meant to be here. You are meant for the stars. You are meant to navigate—”

“—through
otherspace
,” Carl finished. “I remember navigating. And I think I remember Elthor.”

“Yes. Exactly. But you are no good to me, to my people, until you fully understand.” Charlie took a step back, bumping into a mutely-staring Ellen. “Wake up, Carl. Wake up and come to Alzur with me. We need you. Alzur will worship you. Wake up and I will summon my ship. It hovers nearby, and … my ship! No, my ship, my ship, it cannot be—”

Jerrah staggered into the room, knocking over a lamp and bumping into a potted plant. She scuffed through the dirt. A look of horror was on her usually implacable face, indicating she’d overheard Charlie. “No! Delphoros, no! You cannot go with the enemy! That man is the enemy. You are Elthoran, Delphoros. Do not go to Alzur!”

“The ambulance? I think I hear it.” Ellen’s voice was barely above a whisper, but it got everyone’s attention. “The ambulance is coming. It must be. Please, dear God, let it be coming.”

Jerrah swung away from the others, as if she was listening, too. “I do not hear anything.” But she closed her eyes, tight enough that wrinkles appeared at the edges.

Carl saw a new kind of fear dawning on Jerrah’s face. Emotions fought inside his head—anger over Shelly’s “murder” at the hands of an alien … an unnamed alien who had now borrowed Charlie Marshall’s body and whose presence he was accepting; curiosity that he was somehow at the center of this galactic scavenger hunt; fear for Ellen’s safety, and perhaps for his own. But above all of that he felt a rage he was certain he’d never allowed himself before.

“I cannot reach them, the others on my ship,” Jerrah said, the words obviously intended for herself rather than Carl.

“Who?” This came from Ellen. “
Who
can’t you reach? Jerrah? Jerrah! What is happening?” Softer: “Or maybe you’re not Jerrah. Maybe the ‘it’ that you and Carl talked about has come back. You’re not Jerrah and Charlie’s not Charlie. And if I was insane, that might explain all of this away. But I’m not insane, am I? This is real and Charlie is an alien … or rather what’s in his head is an alien. And you’re an alien, too, aren’t you, Jerrah? And Carl? You’re my John. Dear, God, I wish I was mad, wholly insane. Jerrah!”

Jerrah opened her mouth, but no sound emerged for several tortured seconds. She shook her head and seemed near to tears.

“Alzur needs you, Delphoros,” Charlie said. “You are a prize beyond any price. Come with me. In all of the universe, we have only one navigator remaining. We must have you.”

“Stolen from us!” Jerrah shouted. “Your one navigator was stolen from one of our ships. And now … my ship … I cannot reach them.” She glared at Charlie. “What have you done to them?”

“My ship,” Charlie said. “I cannot reach them either.”

“The ambulance—” Ellen tentatively reached out a hand and touched Carl’s sleeve.

“How can we not touch our ships. How can—” Charlie started.

“Shut up. All of you!” Carl grabbed the sides of his head. “Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. I need to think.” He looked inward, his thoughts and memories warring. He tried to picture space and ships and—

“I … I can’t return to my body,” Jerrah continued. “That’s never happened before.”

“I can’t return to mine,” Charlie admitted.

“The ambulance—”

“I hear it, Ellen. It’ll be here soon.” Carl stared at Jerrah, wanting a better explanation. “So if you’re not the ‘it’ that made Jerrah try to kill me, you’re someone else …
something
else … riding around inside of her head. You’re another damn alien. You’re—”

“—possessed,” Ellen finished. “Maybe she’s possessed. Maybe Charlie’s—”

“But by who?” Carl raised a finger and touched Jerrah’s chin, tipping her head up to meet his stare. “Who are you? What sort of alien—”

“My name is Melusine.” Then the rest of her tale tumbled out in rapid fire … receiving the distress signal, being dispatched to this planet, searching and searching to find him from among all the people on the planet, waiting for him to use
otherspace
so the search could be narrowed, desperately needing him to come home. “But something is wrong,” she said. “The shipkeeper was in this body—”

“—Jerrah’s.”

“Yes. Was in Jerrah. I can tell that, like his mind left behind a residue, a signature.”

“Breadcrumbs,” Carl said.

The ambulance wail grew louder.

“And, yes, he tried to kill you, he was the one … though in a barbaric and simple way that made no sense.” She stepped back from Carl and dropped her gaze as if to study the tips of her shoes. “But maybe it did make sense. Maybe he wasn’t trying to kill you. Maybe he just wanted to scare you … into realizing who you really are. But I will talk to him.”

“How?” Carl asked. “You said you can’t contact your ship. And how just does that work, anyway, the whole bopping into someone else’s head? Can you just hop into mine and—”

Through the window, they saw the faint glow of a flashing red light.

“No. Your mind is too powerful. It’s why I had to find people who knew you or who had been in contact with you. Find a way to get closer and closer. Try to—”

“—wake me up—”

“—and get you willingly to come home.”

“And just how were you going to do that?”

She looked at the tips of her shoes again. “The shipkeeper was going to bring the ship down, someplace remote, and—”

“—and you were just going to escort me on it?”

Jerrah nodded.

“This head-bopping,” Carl prompted.

“Yes,” Ellen cut in. “I want to hear this. How does it work? How are you controlling Jerrah? Is she—”

Thunder boomed and branches clacked against a window. The siren stopped, but the red light continued to flash. A car door opened, then a second one.

“Jerrah’s still here. Just buried a little deep.” Jerrah let out an exasperated sigh and told them about the machine and its tendrils. “I extend a little of my mind through it and into Jerrah. I feel what she feels and sees and … it’s like I’m her.”

“And she’s sitting in the backseat,” Ellen said. Her eyes were angry, too. “So let her go. You’ve no right to—”

“That’s just it!” Jerrah stamped her foot and looked up from Ellen to Carl. “I tried to tell you. I can’t return to my body. I can’t go back. And so I can’t tell those on my ship that you do know that you’re not human, that you’ll go with us.”

There was a pounding knock on the downstairs door.

“I didn’t say I’d go with you,” Carl returned.

“Then come with me. To Alzur,” Charlie said. “You will be revered and—”

“Shut the hell up,” Carl said.

“You have to come with me,” Jerrah continued. “You’ve no choice, really. The shipkeeper will not give you a choice. Now that you know who you are …
what
you are … and how very much you’re needed, you have to come with me.”

“To where?” Ellen said softly. “To your ship? Where is it?” She looked up and closed her eyes.

“I don’t know where it is,” Jerrah said. “I can’t—”

“—reconnect with your body and contact the shipkeeper,” Carl finished. “Try again.”

Jerrah’s lips parted, but no sound emerged for several moments. “I can’t,” she said finally. “I can’t go back. Something is horribly wrong.”

The pounding was louder, more insistent. A man hollered: “Paramedics!”

Carl laughed. It was a belly laugh, and it immediately brought to his mind an image of Petey in his full makeup and garish clothes. It was that kind of a clown-like laugh, but it was born of frustration and disbelief.

There was a cracking sound, a paramedic trying to force the door open. Thunder boomed again. The phone rang.

“Wrong? You think something is wrong? Something’s been wrong since—” Carl left the thought go unspoken.

Carl saw a lightning-bolt shaped flame in his mind’s eye and he fell toward Jerrah and Ellen, arms reaching out and hands desperately clamping on their arms, tightening with bruising strength. Ellen struggled to break free, but he pulled her roughly toward himself, keeping a grip on Jerrah, and suddenly—

—they were floating in icy grayness.

Everywhere was a chilling, all-enveloping fog.

Otherspace.

Jerrah—or the entity inside Jerrah—screamed, the sound coming out distorted and unearthly. She started thrashing, but Carl would not let go. Ellen quivered against him as forms moved in the grayness around them. Carl shifted to avoid the shapes’ touch.

Dreamlike, by an instinct he hadn’t realized he possessed, he willed himself to float in a direction, still avoiding the shapes. It was like swimming, but there was no resistance to his fluttering feet. Jerrah stopped struggling and stared wide-eyed, saying something that came out as an unintelligible whisper. The grayness shifted, becoming lighter, taking on a form he couldn’t quite place. Then it disappeared, replaced by utter darkness.

Carl felt like he was hurtling through a void, colder than he’d felt before. His speed slowed and he relaxed his grip on the women. Painfully, they emerged from the fog and hit the ground.

“Charlie,” Carl gasped. He hadn’t been able to grab Charlie. He could take only two, and in the split second he could act, he’d reached for Jerrah and Ellen.

The eerie sound that had been coming from Jerrah became a scream once again—and then moaned into silence.

About a hundred yards from where they lay near the darkened lakeshore, under the limbs of heavy trees that looked sinister in the darkness, flames erupted into the stormy sky—where the lodge and Ellen’s house had been a heartbeat ago. Rain battered their bruised and shaken bodies, plastering their clothes and hair and making it difficult to catch all the details.