Tin Woodman (11 page)

“The first thing you should have done,” Mora said pragmatically, “was to get another compartment, in the passenger section—”

“Got no money. Service took it all—”

“What?”

“Damage to the ship, Mora,” he explained, as if to a dense child. “Darsen billed me for it. Closed my account right out. All I have is what you see before you. Think there’s a good conduct medal in that suitcase there—” He stretched forward, reaching for one of the suitcases, and nearly fell on his face. Mora caught him and lifted him to his feet.

“Can you walk?” she asked, angry at Darsen—it would take a mind like his to conceive such a way of reneging on his promise. There wasn’t anything officially wrong with holding Ston responsible for damage he’d caused to the
Pegasus.
And the captain wouldn’t allow Ston to starve; Ston would simply be forced, after a few days, to let Darsen put him into a Henderson for the duration of the voyage, thus ridding the ship of at least one troublemaker.

Ston was capable of walking, but not in a particular direction. Placing one arm under his shoulders, letting him lean on her, Mora led him onto the lift platform. When they began to drop his face turned pale and Mora was afraid he would be sick.

“My things,” he mumbled. “Can’t leave them up there.”

“No one’s going to steal your luggage. I’ll go back for it later.” The lift halted on Mora’s deck, and she led Ston down the corridor to her quarters. When she let go of him to open the door, he staggered and fell against the bulkhead.

“I am wasted!” he announced almost gleefully, attempting without much success to stand up unassisted.

“Another of your old naval expressions? Here—your hand.” She pulled him up to his feet, directed him into her darkened quarters, letting him fall onto the bed. As she turned on the bedside light, he tried to raise himself on his elbows.

“I’ll sleep in a chair,” he said. “Can’t put you out of bed.”

“Don’t be silly. There’s room enough for me. You’ll feel lousy enough when you wake up.” She struggled to pull his vest off, noticing the darker, unworn patches of color where his insignia of rank had so recently been removed. After more struggling, she decided he’d have to sleep in the rest of his uniform.

“I’m not kidding about them not speaking to me, Addy—uh, Mora. Even my friends won’t. I’ve been ostra—osher—rejected.”

“They couldn’t have been very good friends.” With limited assistance from Ston, Mora managed to stretch him out in what looked like a comfortable position.

“Right. Trade ’em all for you any day.” His eyes closed.

“Thanks.” Staring down at him, a cold scream of fury rose in her mind. If he believed that, it was because he had to. She could feel how it hurt him to be an outcast.

Well, she had enough credits in her own account to provide for him. He wouldn’t wind up on sleeper deck—not while she could help him. And what could the captain do about it?

So much for Darsen’s dirty trick.

She looked down at Ston He lay motionless, breathing slowly, easily. Relaxed, his features were smooth in the dim wall light. The hair on his unlined, unshaved face was spare; too fine to be called stubble. So young . . .

In most ways, Div Harlthor had been older than Ston Maurtan. Div was like her; he’d learned the hard way how treacherous people could be toward the vulnerable.

Ston was just beginning to discover that.

He frowned in his sleep. She put a hand on his forehead. He was dreaming. The dream was a bad one. She could feel his disorientation, his fear, even with only the fraction of Talent that had returned.

She took her hand away. His dreams should be his own.

There was a tense, electric charge to the atmosphere on the bridge. Sitting stiffly at his command desk, Captain Edan Darsen knew that he was in the center of it.

All was silent save for the occasional whisper of activity among the crew and the ever-present quiet hum of the computers.

Any moment now, I’ll know, he thought, his eyes settled steadfastly upon the form of Lieutenant Tamner, leaning over the main terminal. Any second now the letter-perforated strip of plastic would click out of the mouth of that machine, tongue-like. That tape would either bear the vector co-ordinates of the Null-R jump that
Tin Woodman
had initiated and its destination, or the indication that no such information had been available in the mind of Mora Elbrun.

It would be a single point of time that would determine his destiny.

If there was no information to be had, pursuit of the alien was pointless. The
Pegasus
would continue on its appointed rounds, his life would settle back to its veritable jail sentence—and he would never be satisfied. Always, in the back of his mind, there would be, doubt . . .

But if the result of the mind-pick was positive, then this threat to normal humanity might be found and dealt with—and he could have what he wanted; his chase, his revenge, and his chance for redemption and glory.

A red light on the computer console blipped. The tape began to spew.

He realized that he was standing, expectantly.

Tamner looked up from the tape with a satisfied glint in his eyes. “It’s all here, Captain. More than we’d hoped for. Much more.”

A thrill of triumph raced through him. “Very well, Mr. Tamner, All is in readiness. There is no time to be wasted.” He could feel the strength grow in his voice. “Order more copies of the information immediately and supply the astrogator, the pilots, and other necessary crewmen with those co-ordinates, if you please.”

Obediently, Tamner spun on his heel to implement the orders. As he punched in directions on the computer’s keyboard, Darsen found himself drifting over toward the lieutenant—no, he would make Tamner lieutenant commander now. He lifted the tape up and looked down on the symbols in something like wonder.

“Null-R engines activated, Captain.”

He was back behind the command desk now, infused with purpose. The
Pegasus
was in position. All that remained was to order the jump.

“Commence interlocking procedure,” he said.

A quick flutter of the hand of the pertinent pilot. “Set cycles at previously specified codes.”

“Cycles set,” responded a pilot.

“Start phasing jump,” he commanded, unable to exclude a note of excitement from his voice. “Erect Null-R field.”

“Field erected; jump phasing.”

Streamers of light began to vortex toward the flat screen from star-salted space. They coiled about the entire field of view, and they were swallowed up in flashing, dancing colors.

“Jump phasing complete, Null-R jump in progress. Speed, Captain?”

“Just short of maximum,” he said.

“Yes, Captain.”

And the
Pegasus
became a little fish, flashing through the sea of infinity.

Extended into the mega-flow, Div felt a subtle change; a flux. “What causes this?” For some reason, it had echoes of importance.

The creature he was slowly sinking into responded after long moments of analysis in depths of thought Div could not yet pierce.
“The metal ship that found me now pursues. It is as we thought it would be—as, perhaps, we planned.”

Alarmed, Div drew back into his place of protection. “What? If Darsen is in command, they can only have malevolent intent. Are they capable of catching us—destroying us?”

“All is written in the mega-flow. You must learn to use that—or learn to comprehend it through the growing link between us.”

Div reached out again—and noticed another change in the flow. It seemed to emanate from them—and, simultaneously, to be coming from an outside source. He asked
Tin Woodman
the reason for this.

“There are others like us,”
it/he said.
“We have been signaling them since our penetration of what you call ‘Null-R space.’ They will meet us at the end of this segment of our journey, our pilgrimage as you might say. But you have not been opening up fully, my love. You are a lax student. Prepare yourself—I must show you. Try to surrender the shreds of the win you stubbornly cling to . . .”

And abruptly Div realized that non-relative space, felt
different
somehow from normal space. All phenomena seemed to radiate outward from a point infinitely far ahead which grew no closer as
Tin Woodrnan
moved. Div felt himself moving nonetheless; his consciousness was flung forward, existing in the ever-distant center of the Null-R vortex, even as it was cradled in the body of the ship-being. Somehow, he felt himself
here,
rushing to meet himself
there.

Radioactive particles poured over them like rain, like sleet stinging his face as he trudged along a noisy road, aware of others ahead.

“This is much like the place where Vul was lost,”
the ship-being said.
“Our protection failed somehow—rains like these poisoned him. The part of us which was him scattered away in ebbing sparks.”

Div could feel
Tin Woodman’s
mourning . . .

The engines surged higher and a blaze of warmth rippled through the hull; he seemed to grow. Fleeting memories of flight, of power pirouettes performed in timeless reaches, mocking the stars in their stately unquestioning dance, flashed through his mind and drove the sadness back.

“There will be rejoicing when we return,”
said the ship-being.
“No doubt we have been given up for lost, long since.”

“But the
Pegasus
—what will become of it?”

“Dear love,”
said the ship-being.
“How much indeed there is to, learn just about yourself if you do not know that. For, after all, it is you who are responsible for the Pegasus following. As for what will become of it—that is a decision that you have already made.”

TEN

Leana Coffer’s Journal

(Vocoder transcription authorized

by Leana Coffer. Original recording

voice-locked per program 774-D.)

I had a troubling experience just now. I must try to get it down fresh, to remember it all as best I can, because it’s forced me to a decision I may someday have great need to justify.

Last evening after my duty shift on the bridge, I lifted up to the deck three lounge for a drink. It’s a relaxing place, when my thoughts will let me relax at all. At a comer booth at the far end of the lounge, I saw Lieutenant Norlan sitting with a man who seemed familiar though I couldn’t place him. He was a Crysorian. When Norlan saw me, he motioned for me to join them and I did so because I was curious.

“Commander, this is Damilandor,” Norlan said as I sat down. “He’s spokesman for the Shector colonial expedition.” I remembered the man then. I hadn’t seen him since we’d picked up his expedition on Crysor many months ago.

“I’m pleased to meet you, Damilandor,” I said.

“Please—Damil,” he offered. “I am pleased also, and hopeful, to meet such an important person.”

The waiter rolled up and I punched for a scotch and soda. I think Norlan ordered beer. Damil was still working his way through a concoction I didn’t recognize—his fifth, in fact. If he was drunk I couldn’t tell it. His eyes were hidden behind dark, cover-all contact lenses. No doubt he wore them for protection from the bright, Earth-normal ship lights.

“Damil here is counseling mutiny,” Norlan said. He spoke flippantly, but I sensed tension in his voice—as if he were trying to gauge my reaction. Could I be trusted?

“He is joking,” Damil interrupted hastily. “I am merely asking his assistance in putting a grievance before your captain.”

“What sort of grievance?” I asked, pointedly ignoring Norlan’s introductory remark. It was best to remain aloof, prepared to jump in whatever direction seemed safest after hearing Damil out.

“You see, Captain Darsen has violated the contract my people have signed with your service. We were promised delivery to Shector, which lies along your planned route of travel. But your captain has now changed that plan, and we must object. This is made difficult, however, because under that contract all my people are in your sleeper deck. As spokesman, I alone have been allowed to remain awake—and I am alone among strangers. Who will support my protest?”

I tried to explain that civilian passage agreements are always subject to changes in a ship’s mission status. If Galactic Command had ordered us to pursue
Tin Woodman
, Darsen had no choice but to comply.

“You must both pardon me if I, not being part of your service, see the evidence differently,” Damil said. “It does not add up, the way you say.

“It has been announced that the
Pegasus
is traveling on this jump five hundred light-years toward the galactic center. When all of Triunion-controlled space is less than
half
that distance in diameter, would your Galactic Command approve such a mission? And this—flight plan, do you say?—this flight plan has just been decided, after your captain has picked the mind of your shiplady for information. Would your Galactic Command have approved this journey in advance, when you had no way of knowing where the
Tin Woodman
had gone? I do not think so.”

The remark about Mora particularly disturbed me. Norlan shook his head when I glared at him, indicating that he hadn’t told Damil about the mind-pick. Who had, then? Damil must have been talking to other officers as well. This was dangerous—he was too outspoken to be safe aboard the
Pegasus.

Damil plunged on, his voice rising, heedless of the lounge’s other occupants. “I think your captain has taken it upon himself to order this mission. This is unlawful, it is a violation of our contract, and you must help me to make him turn back!”

I stood abruptly, which startled Norlan—he must have thought that I intended to arrest them both on the spot. What I really wanted was to get us all out of that lounge, to a place where no one could overhear Damil. I suggested that we go to the observation deck. No one is ever up there.

We lifted up to the observation deck, which seemed a familiar place to Damilandor. He said that he came here often and was amazed that the crew didn’t seem to like the place.

“It’s the service—and the ship itself,” Norlan said. “So big we forget that it’s not a world. So fragile, I guess, that we’re afraid to think about what’s beyond it.”

Damil nodded. He seemed upset, confused that we had not answered his plea for help; but he continued talking about other subjects. He said that we seemed too attached to our machinery . . . that when we weren’t working we tried to do as people on our home world might at leisure but that we didn’t seem to get much pleasure from it. He thought that perhaps this was because we expected something more from the service.

About some things he was very wrongheaded, but mainly he was right.

I liked him, though some of what he said cut deep, and I cautioned him against speaking out too quickly in public while aboard the ship. He seemed to understand this.

“Finally leaving Crysor, bound for our new home, I suppose I forgot all my oId cautions. But until we reach Shector, the Triunion rules still apply—I thank you for reminding me.”

“Damil,” I said, “why did your group apply for colonization rights?”

“Because we are Christians,” he said.

That explained much. There’s no officially sanctioned persecution of religious minorities on Crysor, of course, any more than there is on Earth, But I know what kind of danger the governments on Crysor see in beliefs like Damil’s. They fear absorption by Earth’s culture. For posterity’s sake (and perhaps the record’s as well) I should outline how I understand this situation to be:

About one hundred years before the first contact between Earth and Crysor, several Crysorian scientists came independently to the conclusion that they were not indigenous as a species to their world. Evidence of archaeology, zoology, and biochemistry seemed to point to this fact. The doctrine which these researchers promulgated under the name of colonization remade Crysorian society and thought as greatly as did
our
acceptance of evolutionary doctrine—but in a different direction. For if the human race had been
planted
on Crysor, then surely the planting must have been purposeful. Surely the Crysorians were part of a plan, the intent of which no one could guess. Further, no single group could credibly claim revealed or exclusive knowledge of such an unhuman plan for the human race’s destiny—which did not mean that many had not tried.

Eventually, several of Crysor’s industrialized nations had built powerful transmitting stations which beamed messages out into space. They did so, confident in their belief that someone was watching, listening. They believed that they would find their creators at last.

Instead, they had found Earth.

Earth: a human population of billions, almost half of which was engaged in one interminable war or another; a small part of the race beginning to claw its way out into space. The Crysorians were a more temperate people than Terrans; Earth seemed a slightly mad planet to them. As the two worlds exchanged information, any doubt that the Terran human race was ancestral to the Crysorian breed was removed. Likewise any suggestion that the Terrans themselves had been responsible for the transplant was shown as ludicrous. The Crysorian gods remained unrevealed, their existence more certain than ever, their nature still unknown.

The Crysorians were willing to accept Terrans as distant blood kin and as equals—but only that.

So when native Crysorians, subscribing to an ancient Terran religion in an archaic form, insisted that a Terran peasant’s claim to intercession between humankind and the Creator extended to cover the Crysorians—well, the reaction of most Crysorians was hostile. It didn’t help that the Christians implied that Christ had appeared on Earth because that planet was the true home of humanity—and therefore exalted above all other worlds.

The idea was intolerable, and so bred intolerance. I’m sure that the Crysorian governments were as happy to see Damilandor’s people go as the Christians were happy to be leaving.

Damilandor never turned the conversation back again to his problem. He talked for a long time about his family, his people’s plans for Shector, and I could see how lonely he had been aboard the
Pegasus.

I was lonely, too. Damilandor saw too clearly the miserable reality of life aboard this ship, which I’d tried so long to deny. I’ve told myself that my resentment, my disenchantment with this place is due entirely to Darsen—but it isn’t. The service itself is a failure, and I’ve failed by giving in to it.

So that is what happened last evening, as well as I remember it. That’s what Damilandor said, and what I felt.

Just an hour ago, I learned that Darsen has arrested Damilandor, charging him with inciting to mutiny. Norlan told me this; he accused me of turning Damil in. I think I convinced Gary that he’s wrong—I hope so.
Have I been
that
aloof, or cold, or unfeeling?

Well . . . I did let them Dope Mora. I could have stopped that. God forgive me for that, for ever letting Darsen regain power on this ship. Because of that, Damil will never see Shector—I’m sure of it. How far does a person have to flee in this galaxy to be free?

The answer is to stop fleeing. Darsen was absolutely justified in arresting Damilandor—Damil is a greater threat to Darsen than either of them realizes. Because anyone who will think for himself, who will say what he thinks, is dangerous to Edan Darsen.

I won’t stand for Darsen’s abuses any longer. I’ll take this ship away from him.

There could be no doubt. Her Talent was returning.

In those long, slow days that followed the Null-R jump in pursuit of
Tin Woodman
it did not flow back suddenly, or with any marked effects—no sudden rush, no tumultuous wave of new sensations.

It came slowly, gently—like a lost cat returning to its master on silent, hesitant paws. And, curiously, she welcomed it. For all the pain it had bestowed upon her in the span of her life, she was used to it; it was a part of her total self, and though its absence was a relief from the constant pulsing of emotions from Normals, she realized that she had accustomed herself to that pain. Without the Talent, she seemed strangely out of contact with herself, as though she lacked some vital element of her nature.

For a time, this unusual man, this Ston Maurtan she had taken into her quarters, was an enigma to her. Had she her full faculties, perhaps the mysteries that permeated him, that looked bemusedly out of his brown, trusting eyes would be accessible to her understanding. Comprehension came gradually, like the full restoration of her Talent.

She grew to love him.

Mora presumed that Darsen knew she’d taken Ston under her wing. And there was no sign of the captain’s disapproval or approval of this arrangement. Perhaps it was all the same to him; Ston would be equally out of the way in a Henderson, or under Mora’s care. Maybe he was simply too preoccupied even to inquire as to the former ensign’s present moneyless status; certainly Mora saw no sign either of him or his detestable henchman, Tamner, in that quiet, tense time following the successful discovery of the direction and destination of the alien. The two seemed to Mora to fade into ominous shadows; invisible presences whose control was all pervasive—a new and palpable aspect of the
Pegasus’
atmosphere.

But even though there was no further harassment of civilian Ston Maurtan, the malediction Captain Darsen had visited upon the man was still having its effects, its implications sinking deeper into him every day.

As Mora had also been relieved of her duties (without, as far as she could see, detriment to the crew’s mental health), they were able to spend a good deal of time together. Only access to the control areas of the
Pegasus
was denied them; the rest of the ship was at their disposal. The extent and variety of this was not inconsiderable; the
Pegasus
was equipped with almost every legal diversion available to modern man. They spent this free time liberally sampling all the entertainments of this little, movable world. They strolled through the hydroponic gardens, breathing in the heavy, hot, flower-perfumed air. They frequented the Tri-Vid parlors, the feelies, the game rooms, the Null-G room, the skating rink, the concert hall.

It was all very peaceful and relaxing to Mora after the incidentfilled preceding days. Nevertheless, there was the nagging feeling at the back of her mind that all this was just a lull in the drama, the eye of the whirlwind, The end of the pursuit loomed in the future; Mora tried not to think about it. Certainly, she told herself, the chase was stupid, hopeless. Its fruitlessness would soon dawn upon Captain Darsen, and they would return. But another part of her was reserved for the constant fear that she had betrayed Div; that the
Pegasus
and its captain intended nothing good for
Tin Woodman
should they, by some freak circumstance, overtake it. But she kept all these fears and self-doubts safely imprisoned in a corner of her mind.

She immersed herself in the amusements available on the ship. She immersed herself in Ston.

It was strange.

Because most of her time was spent with him, her attention fixed upon his moods, his feelings, the gradual stepping-up of her Talent, the revelatory flashes of its increased power, occurred while focused on Ston. These surprised her, and she welcomed them for the understanding they gave of this man she cared for. But what astonished her most was that sometimes she felt these abrupt, unsettling dives into his emotions while he was nowhere near. As though she were gradually tuning into the unique personality frequency that was Ston Maurtan.

And as though he were tuning, somehow, into hers.

Certainly, Ston welcomed the deepening of their relationship. During their days together, she could see the signs on all levels: he was coming to depend on her. And because of her burgeoning Talent, she could perceive that this dependence was a tumbling into past days for Ston, a renewing of a past relationship, substituting Mora for his sister Adria. It pleased her to be helping him so; he was loose and free and trusting about her; it was very clear that he was loving her from the depths of his being. But at the same time was it the sort of love that she wanted from this man? And was it really for her, and not some resurrected spirit of this Adria Maurtan that Ston seemed to detect in her?