Read Upon a Sea of Stars Online
Authors: A. Bertram Chandler
Upon a Sea of Stars (5 page)
Chapter 8
THE PREPARATIONS
for the seance took much longer than Grimes had anticipated. But it was obvious that Calhoun, religiously as well as professionally, was a perfectionist. The most time-consuming operation was the construction of a harmonium, during which the wardroom piano was cannibalized for its keyboard, this being cut down from seven and a half octaves to five. The engineer’s workshop was able to turn out the necessary bellows and treadles, and the brass vibrators or “reeds.” The ivory from the surplus keys was utilized in the manufacture of the various stops. Grimes, watching with interest the fabrication of the archaic instrument, listening wincingly to the caterwauling notes of its initial tests—”We must
get
the
wheezing
quality . . .” insisted Calhoun—was inclined to deplore the sacrifice of what had been a well-cared-for and versatile music maker, the life and soul of many a good party during previous expeditions in
Faraway Quest
. But the seance had been his idea initially, so he felt that he had no right to criticize.
Then the wardroom was stripped of its fittings. The comfortable, well padded chairs were removed and replaced by hard metal benches. The paneling was covered by dingy gray drapes—bedsheets that had been passed through a dye concocted from peculiar ingredients by Dr. Todhunter and Karen Schmidt. Dimmers were fitted to the light switches, and some of the fluorescent tubes were removed and replaced by bulbs giving a peculiarly dingy red illumination. And there were other accessories to be made: A tin speaking trumpet, and a tambourine, both of which were decorated with lines and blobs of luminous paint.
At last everything was ready.
Grimes sent for his First Lieutenant. “Commander Swinton,” he said, “we shall hold our seance at 2100 hours this evening, ship’s time. Please see to it that all departments are notified.”
“Ay, ay, sir.”
“And wipe that silly grin off your face!”
“Sorry, sir. But you must admit that after that toast, when we spliced the mainbrace, this is turning out to be a wilder ghost chase than any of us anticipated.”
“From Commander Calhoun’s viewpoint it’s somewhat less wild than it was, Swinton. As far as he’s concerned we’re dropping all the scientific flummery and returning to the primitive methods, the tried and trusted methods, of his religion. And all the evidence indicates that these methods do work after a fashion. They create the right atmosphere. They raise—
something
. From inside, a release of the wild talents possessed by those present at the seance? From Outside? From the next Time Track but three? I don’t know, Swinton. I don’t know—yet.”
“It will be an interesting experiment.”
“Yes. And I’m pleased that Mr. Mayhew has been persuaded to look at it in that light.”
“I suppose that he
has
got mediumistic talents, sir?”
“He must have, Swinton. What is a medium but a telepath?”
“Could be, sir. Could be. But . . .”
“Don’t say that Commander Calhoun has converted
you?
”
“He’s tried hard enough, sir. Oh, I’m willing to believe that his Church, in either the Primitive or the Reformed versions, has produced some interesting phenomena, but I’ve yet to be convinced that they’re supernatural, any more than the Rim Ghosts are. I can’t understand why the Rhine Institute hasn’t done more to investigate Spiritualism.”
“Because, my boy, it hasn’t been allowed to. It’s
scientific
. Every time that one of its investigators sniffs around a Spiritualist Church he’s given either the cold shoulder or the bum’s rush. You know the line of talk—‘There are some things that we aren’t
meant
to know. Faith is all-important; knowledge is a device of the Devil.’ And so on. And so on.”
“Then I’m surprised that Calhoun was among the volunteers for this expedition.”
“You shouldn’t be. Commander Calhoun has an axe to grind. He hopes that something will be discovered that will be useful to his Reformed Church. Exorcism by remote control, for example . . .”
“But that would be dragging in Science.”
“As a servant, not as a competitor.”
“I think I see . . .” The young man still looked dubious, however. “Will that be all, sir?”
“Yes, thank you, Commander Swinton. Oh, just one more thing. As soon as this . . . experiment is over, please get the wardroom looking like a wardroom, and not like a down-at-the-heels meeting house.”
“That, sir, will be a pleasure.”
Grimes dined in his own quarters that night—the wardroom, as it was at this time, was far too comfortless. Sonya Verrill kept him company. They enjoyed their meal together. Although it was simple it was well cooked and nicely served, and the wines from the Commodore’s private stock were an excellent accompaniment to the food. While they were eating they chatted about minor matters and listened to the background music softly tinkling from Grimes’ playmaster.
And then, after Grimes had produced two bulbs of vintage port and a box of fine cigars imported from Caribbea, they talked more seriously.
She said, “I hate to admit it, John, but I’m rather frightened.”
“You, of all people? Why, Sonya?”
“As long as this expedition was being run on scientific lines it was . . . How shall I put it? It was, in spite of my own private reasons for being here,
fun
. Something in it, as you said, of the old days of piracy—but only playing at pirates. A Carlotti beacon instead of a real gun or laser projector, and a sort of atmosphere about it all of, “Bang! You’re dead!” But now . . . As I told you, I’ve been on Dunglass. It’s a dreary world, with cities that are no more than straggling towns, streets and streets of mean little houses and Meeting Halls that are just sheds designed, one would think, with a deliberate avoidance of pleasing proportion. And the feeling all the time that one is being watched, disapprovingly, by the ghosts of all the countless millions who have gone before.
“I went to one or two of their services. Partly out of curiosity, and partly because it was my job, as an Intelligence Officer. Cold, cold halls—with a chill that didn’t seem to be natural—and dreary hymn singing by drab people, and dim lights, and a voice that seemed to come from nowhere giving advice about the most trivial matters—and some that weren’t so trivial. . . .
“Yes, I remember it well. There was this voice—a man’s voice, deep, although the medium was a skinny little woman. The man sitting next to me whispered that it was Red Eagle, a Spirit Guide. He went on to say that this Red Eagle was, or had been, a Red Indian, an American Indian. I wondered what Red Eagle was doing so many light years away from home, but it occurred to me that Time and Space, as we know them, probably mean nothing to spirits, so kept quiet. The voice said, ‘There is a stranger here tonight, a woman from beyond the sky.’ Well, most of those present must have known who I was. The voice went on, ‘I have a message for the stranger. I see a ship. I see a ship falling through the emptiness, far and far away . . .’ Once again, so what? I was a spacewoman and it was no secret. ‘Far away, far away, where the stars are few and dim, far and few . . . And I see the name of the ship, in gold letters on her prow . . . I can read the name . . .
Outsider
. . .’ And that meant nothing to me—
then.
‘I see the Captain, brave in his black and gold. You know him. You will know him again . . .’ And then there was a description of the Captain’s appearance, and I knew that it was Derek Calver. As you are aware, I first met Derek when he was Second Mate of the old
Lorn Lady
. There is another man. He is one of the officers, although he, too, has been a Captain. He is afraid, and he is disgraced, and he is locked in his cabin . . .’ And once again there was the description—even to the laser burn on the left buttock and the funny little mole just above the navel. It was Bill all right. Bill Maudsley. ‘He is sick, and he is afraid, and you are not with him, and he knows that he has lost you forever. There is a bottle, and he drinks from it, and the spilled fluid drifts around the air of the cabin in a mist, in a spray. He looks at the empty bottle and curses, then smashes it on the wall. The broken, splintered neck is still in his hand, and he brings the sharp, jagged end of it across his throat . . .’
“I just sat there, in a sick, numb silence. I wanted to ask questions, but I couldn’t in front of all those strangers. But there was nothing more. Nothing at all. Red Eagle had said his piece as far as I was concerned, and passed on all sorts of trivial messages to other members of the congregation. Bill Brown’s grandmother was concerned because he wasn’t wearing his long underwear, and Jimmy Smith’s Aunt Susan wanted to tell him that trade would pick up next year, and so on, and so on.
“After the . . . meeting? Service? After the service I stayed on to have a talk with the minister. He was very sympathetic, and arranged for me to have a private sitting with the medium. It wasn’t very satisfactory. Red Eagle seemed to be somewhat peeved at being called away from whatever it was that he was doing, and just told me that I should search long and far, and that I should and should not find that for which I was searching. “And what can be made of that? Shall I succeed in my search by becoming a ghost myself, before my time? I hope not. I’m too fond of life, John—life on this gross physical plane. I like good food and wine and tobacco and books and music and clothes and . . . and all the other things that make life, in spite of everything, so well worth living. There’s far too much vagueness about what comes after. Oh, there are the stock protestations—‘It is very beautiful here, and everybody is happy . . .’—but . . . It could be faulty transmission and reception, but I always get the impression that the After Life is lacking in character, and color and, but of course, the good, lusty pleasures of the flesh . . .
“Even so, I was shaken. Badly shaken.”
“It could be explained by telepathy, Sonya.”
“No, John, it couldn’t be. I was not thinking about Bill Maudsley at the time—not until that message came through, and even then I was thinking only about Derek Calver. I didn’t know that Bill had shipped as his Mate. And as for . . . And as for the shocking manner of his death, that I did
not
know about. I did not know about it officially for a matter of months, which was the time it took for the news to drift in from the Rim. But I checked up. I ran all available data through one of our Master Computers, and got one of our Specialist Navigators to run his own check, and there were no two ways about the answer. Bill must have taken his own life at the very time that I was sitting in that dreary Meeting Hall in Dovlesville, on Dunglass. . . .”
“It might be as well if you didn’t attend the seance, Sonya,” Grimes told her.
“And leave the show to you lousy secessionists?” she flared, with a flash of her old spirit. “No sir!”
Chapter 9
WHEN GRIMES
and Sonya Verrill went down to the wardroom they found that all was in readiness for the seance. The uncomfortable benches—it was fortunate, thought the Commodore, that the ship was falling free so that the only contact between buttocks and an unyielding surface was that produced by the gentle restriction of the seatbelts—had been arranged in rows, facing a platform on which were a table, three chairs and the harmonium. Calhoun, contriving to look like a nonconformist minister in spite of his uniform, occupied one of the chairs at the table. Mayhew, his usual dreaminess replaced by an air of acute embarrassment, sat in the other. Karen Schmidt was seated at the musical instrument.
As soon as the Commodore and Sonya had taken a bench in the front row the engineer, unbuckling his seat belt, got carefully to his feet. His voice, as he made the initial announcement, was more of a street corner bray than a pulpit bleat. “Brethren,” he said, “we are here as humble seekers, gathered in all humility, to beg that our loved ones on the Other Side will shed light on our darkness. We pray to Them for help—but we must, also, be prepared to help Them. We must cast out doubt, and replace it by childlike faith. We must
believe
.” He went on in a more normal voice, “This, I assure you, is essential. We must put ourselves in a receptive mood, throwing our minds and our hearts open to the benevolent powers on the other side of the veil . . .” Then, the engineer briefly ascendant over the lay preacher, “We must strive to create the right conditions insofar as we are able . . .”
Meanwhile, one of his juniors was making his way along the tiers of benches distributing mimeographed sheets. Grimes looked at his curiously. It was, he saw, a hymnal.
“Brethren!” cried Calhoun, “we will join in singing the first hymn.”
Karen Schmidt was having trouble with the harmonium—the operation of treadles in the absence of a gravitational field requires a certain degree of concentration. At last, however, she got the thing going and suddenly and shockingly the introductory chords blared out.
Then they were all singing to the wheezing, gasping accompaniment:
“Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom,
“Lead Thou me on . . .”
The hymn over, Calhoun prayed. Although himself an agnostic, Grimes was impressed by the sincerity of the man. He began to wish that he could believe in something.
There was another hymn, and then the lights were dimmed until only the dull-glowing red globes remained. The lines and blobs of luminous paint picking out the simple apparatus—the speaking trumpet and the tambourine—on the table gleamed eerily. Suddenly it was very quiet in the wardroom; the muted noises of machinery, the sobbing of pumps and whizzing of fans, the thin, high keening of the Mannschenn Drive, accentuated the silence rather than diminished it. It was very quiet—and very cold.
Physical or psychological?
Grimes asked himself as he shivered.
His eyes were becoming accustomed to the almost-darkness. He could see the dark forms of Calhoun and Mayhew, sitting motionless at the table, and Karen Schmidt hunched over the harmonium. He turned his head to look at Sonya. Her face was so pale as to seem almost luminous. He put out his hand to grasp hers, gave it a reassuring squeeze. She returned the pressure, and seemed reluctant to relinquish the physical contact.
Mayhew cleared his throat. He said matter-of-factly, “There’s something coming through. . . .”
“Yes?” whispered Calhoun.
“Yes?”
Mayhew chuckled. “It’s only a routine message, I’m afraid.
Flora Macdonald
. . .”
“But you must have heard of her,” insisted Calhoun in a low voice. “She lived in the eighteenth century, on Earth. She was a Jacobite heroine. . . .”
Mayhew chuckled again. “Not this
Flora Macdonald
. She’s a Waverley Royal Mail cargo liner, and she’s off Nova Caledon . . . All the same, this is remarkable range I’m getting, with no amplifier. It must be that the brains of all you people, in these somewhat peculiar circumstances, are supplying the necessary boost. . . .”
“Mr. Mayhew, you are ruining the atmosphere!”
“Commander Calhoun, I consented to take part in this experiment on the understanding that it was to be treated as an experiment.”
Something tinkled sharply.
At the table, forgetting this disagreement, Calhoun and Mayhew were staring at the tambourine. Grimes stared too, saw that something had broken its magnetic contact with the steel surface, that it had lifted and was drifting, swaying gently, carried by the air currents of the ventilation system.
But the exhaust ducts were in the bulkhead behind the platform, and the thing, bobbing and jingling, was making its slow, unsteady way towards the intake ports, on the other side of the wardroom.
Grimes was annoyed. This was no time for practical jokes. Telekinesis was an uncommon talent, for some reason not usually found among spacemen, but not so uncommon as all that. There was, the Commodore knew, one telekineticist in
Faraway Quest
’s crew—and he would be on the carpet very shortly.
But . . .
But he was the Third Mate, and he was on watch and, in any case, all the tests that he had undergone had proven his incapability of any but the most trivial telekinetic feats.
So this, after all, was no more than some freak of air circulation.
The harmonium wheezed discordantly.
Calhoun was on his feet, furious. “Can’t you people take things seriously? This is a religious service! Miss Schmidt, stop that vile noise at once! Stop it, I say! Lights, somebody! Lights!”
The incandescent tubes flared into harsh brilliance. The tambourine steadied and hung motionless, and then behaved in the normal manner of a small object floating loose in Free Fall, drifting very slowly with the air current towards the exhaust ducts. But at the harmonium Karen Schmidt still twitched and shuddered, her feet erratically pumping, her hands falling at random on the keyboard. Her eyes were glazed and her face vacant; her mouth was open and little globules of saliva, expelled by her sterntorous breathing, hung about her jerking head in a glistening cloud.
Grimes unsnapped his seat belt and got to his feet. “Dr. Todhunter! See to Miss Schmidt, will you?”
But all Calhoun’s anger had evaporated.
“No!” he shouted. “No! Be seated, everybody!”
“Like that woman,” Sonya Verrill was whispering tensely.
“Let me pass!” It was Todhunter, trying to make his way through the packed rows of benches. “Let me pass.”
And then Karen Schmidt spoke.
But it was not with her own voice. It was with the voice of a man—deep, resonant. At first the words seemed to be an unknown language—a strange but hauntingly familiar tongue. And then, with a subtle shift of stress and tempo, they were understandable.
“Falling . . . falling . . .
“Through the night and through the nothingness you seek and you fall . . .
“But I am the onlooker; I care not if you seek and find, if you seek and fail.
“I am the onlooker.”
Calhoun was taking charge. “Who are you?”
“I am the onlooker.”
“Have you a message?”
“I have no message.” There was laughter that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. “Why should I have a message?”
“But tell us. Shall we succeed?”
“Why should I tell you? Why should you succeed? What is success, and what is failure?”
“But there must be a message!” The initial awe in Calhoun’s voice was being replaced by exasperation. Grimes was reminded of those primitive peoples, sincere believers, who maltreat the images of their gods should those deities fail to deliver the goods.
Again the uncanny laughter. “Little man, what message do you want? Would you know the day and hour and manner of your death? Would you live the rest of your life in fear and trembling, striving to evade the unavoidable?” The hands of the medium swept over the keyboard, and the instrument responded—not discordantly, not wheezingly, but with the tones of a great organ. And the music was the opening bars of the “Dead March” in
Saul
. “Is this the message you crave?”
Sonya Verrill, standing stiff and straight, cried, “Is this all you have for us? Is that the limit of your powers—to tell us all what we know already, that some day we must die?”
For the last time there was the sound of laughter, and the voice said quietly, “Here is your message.” And then came the shrilling of the alarm bells, the repetition of the Morse symbol A, short long, short long, short long . . . Action Stations.