Wulfsyarn: A Mosaic (23 page)

There was a pause, a longer pause than Wilberfoss expected, before the
Nightingale
replied. “Yes, he’s a nasty piece of work. And so is the boy. I’ll be glad to get shot of both of them.”

If only Jon Wilberfoss has listened. If only Jon Wilberfoss had not been so tired. There were clues aplenty that all was not well. Surely you who are reading these words, you can see it and feel it—a great brain tainted!

While Jon Wilberfoss slept, the
Nightingale
angled out into deep space, away from the homeworld and moons of the Dysers. At about the time of dawn as it was reckoned on the ship, the symbol transformation generators began to warm to their task of twisting space in such a way that the
Nightingale
would emerge close to the homeworld of the Quelle.

All was ready on that world. A Hydron approaching its maturity had been located and was waiting, treading water in the dark green sea close to the landing station. Transfer from Sandy to the Hydron could be effected in minutes. A contact team was standing by.

The complex metaphor which the STGs began to assemble unavoidably contained elements which related to the Quelle, and as the space about the
Nightingale
became charged, so the Quelle stirred in Sandy, making the boy gasp and stutter. He came awake into a nightmare in which he believed he was a Quelle about to enter a host. He had turned to spittle and froth. But before he was extinguished he managed a scream which brought both Wilberfoss and Mohawk from their beds. That scream was also heard by the
Nightingale
and tore within it. Deep beneath the contact room, bio-crystalline fibers became incandescent and broke. Others blackened and melted.

The death of Sandy was recorded moments later at just about the time when the STGs meshed.

The meshing was never complete.

The
Nightingale
vanished from space close to the Dysers but it never arrived in space close to the Quelle homeworld.

I have thought about this moment often. It was a moment of breaking.

Once, on the docks close to the Pacifico Monastery on Juniper, I saw a rope snarl and scream before breaking. I saw smoke rise from the chafed and squeezed davits. I saw the stress in the fibers as the rope became thin. It roared as it severed. The jagged ends of the rope cracked in the air. What had been joined was now sundered and the ship lurched on the water and drifted.

For some reason I felt sad for the rope.

The
Nightingale
reappeared at a random point in space. It could have reappeared anywhere: in the heart of a sun, in the tail of a comet, in the fierce grip of a ravenous black hole. Luck was with the
Nightingale.
It popped back into our reality close to a giant world which circled an expanding sun.

The moment of re-entry matched the moment of death of the Quelle which had survived for a short time within the dead body of Sandy.

Where was the
Nightingale
? Even today we are not certain for when the ship lurched back into our spacetime all its systems were awry. They never recovered. When, months later, the
Nightingale
managed to flit to a System which had contact with the Gentle Order, that journey was hit and miss and though we know the sector from which they came, we cannot know their precise origin. I am sorry to be mysterious.

I am even more sorry to imply something mystical but I cannot avoid noting the parallels between what happened to Jon Wilberfoss and the trials of many classical heroes who faced destruction and despair in an unknown and secret place before achieving their final victory.

You who have followed this story so far may wonder how it is that I know so many details. As I said in the Preface, where I have lacked facts I have used conjecture, but I have been able to build my fancy upon two main documents. These are the log of the
Nightingale
(which is a dry, analytic commentary) and the notebooks of Wilberfoss which are colorful but lamentably brief. His journals have given me clues to his motives but they cease with the death of Sandy.

I have pieced together the next events from the
Nightingale’s
log until that fine instrument itself ceased to record.

Within moments of the
Nightingale
reappearing in our spacetime it was evident that the ship was in peril. Not only were the guidance computers behaving erratically so that the ship began to tumble but a fundamental error was made on arrival when the
Nightingale
attempted to occupy a patch of space at the same time as a small asteroid. The resulting explosion ripped through the wall of the ship destroying fuel and some of the cells in which life-forms were resting. The structural damage was so severe that whole sections of the ship had to be abandoned as the vacuum of space sucked the atmospheres from the ship.

While the infection of the bio-crystalline system resulting from the self-hatred of the Sandy/Quelle was extensive, it did not stop parts of the ship from functioning effectively. The body of a man dying of cancer may yet heal a cut on the finger. Following its most basic planning, the
Nightingale
closed down parts of its operation and sealed whole sections of the ship. These sectors were effectively abandoned. Decisions were made in accordance with long-established priorities as reports of the extent of the physical damage poured in.

Wilberfoss stared out into black space at the windows in astonishment, his mind unable to cope, as the stars wheeled by. Let it be clearly stated: no human could have coped with so sudden and so complex a disaster. Wilberfoss dragged himself away from the window and plunged through to the small contact room and threw himself onto his couch and opened his mind to the
Nightingale.
This was the wisest thing he could have done. He provided the courage and humanity the
Nightingale
needed at its moment of trial. With systems blackening and closing down, those parts of the
Nightingale's
biocrystalline brain that were not affected drew strength from Wilberfoss and reconstituted themselves. The limit of bio-crystalline capacity is not known. It is not as flexible or versatile as the human brain, but it is not bad. Functions were deployed as the
Nightingale
sought to save itself. Diseased sections were severed from their root crystals. New junctures grew and within minutes the ship was beginning to cope.

Rockets fired in a complex sequence and little by little the wild tumbling of the ship was countered until finally the
Nightingale
was turning about its own axis in a regular manner and a semblance of gravitational up/down was achieved.

Wilberfoss sat up from his couch. His head hurt as though struck by a flying brick. But in some ways he felt better. He did not know why but the
Nightingale
did. Gone was the screaming and agony of Sandy/Quelle. In its place was a great and healthful silence.

Gone too were the biorhythms of a large number of the species that the
Nightingale
carried. In self-protection the
Nightingale
closed itself from hearing the death gasps and roaring and rasping and weeping of those sections which were slowly leaking their atmospheres into space. It spared Wilberfoss that knowledge also, aware that it needed to protect him from grief and despair so that he could provide courage and strength.

I must record one tragedy which may upset you. Consoeur Mohovich whom we have come to know as Mohawk died during these minutes.

Upon becoming aware of the danger to the
Nightingale,
her imperative was to reach the DME section where she could be of most help. She descended from the control area via a vacuum chute and was at one of the portals leading into the DME sector when that portal was closed down. As she touched the security lock to gain entrance to the DME sector the lights died. She heard the emergency bolts slam home behind the ceramic skin of the DME. Moments later she found that the vacuum chute would no longer respond to her summons and I suppose she guessed the awful truth. Then, in the cooling darkness, she heard the whisper of the escaping atmosphere.

She could not have known that there was lingering sentience in the walls of the
Nightingale.
She could not have known that her words would be recorded as she made her last affirmation while the temperature dropped and the air vanished.

“7
affirm the oneness of Life.

Among my friends I number the stars,

Shining in darkness and the serene moon.

I praise the rising sun that gladdens me.

Everything holds to its goodness

The leaves that fall.
. .

The sap that rises . . .

The strong roots
. . .

Everything holds together: the fish, the birds

And the things,

And the things that crawl in the darkness like me.

I affirm . . .

.....................
Oh beloved, it is cold. ”

And while Mohawk died at a deserted gateway, the
Nightingale
set about restoring itself. Despite losses, the ship was secure, but it needed rest. That is how the
Nightingale
saw itself. The ship could not jump in space until it had made repairs. It could not diagnose its own sickness until it had spare bio-crystalline awareness and that could not arise until it could rest some of its systems.

In the sector of space where the
Nightingale
had arrived there was a single bright sun. Swinging in orbit around this was a single giant planet.

“We must land and take stock,” said the
Nightingale
to Wilberfoss in its calm unruffled voice.

“We must land,” said Wilberfoss. “For all our sakes.”

The
Nightingale
jockeyed close to the planet, avoiding a cluster of asteroids and a large moon which swung around the planet in a fierce orbit. The planet had seas of deep green. Gray land masses rose gradually from the seas in rounded hills like ripple marks left in the sand by a retreating tide. The
Nightingale
informed Wilberfoss that these low undulating land masses were covered with plant life. There was no evidence of animal life though it could be presumed.

The atmosphere was not breathable for humans but the planet was stable and would provide a satisfactory resting place for the
Nightingale.
A landing place was selected on a stony plateau some six hundred feet above sea level and fifteen miles in from the coast. The gravity was three times Earth normal, but the
Nightingale
could cope with that.

And undoubtedly it could have except that the guidance computer which took the ship down to the surface miscalculated slightly the new mass of the
Nightingale
and in effect reduced power to the anti-gravity units when the ship was still some feet above the ground. It recognized its error and compensated a fraction of a second later, but that was too late. Just as the speed of light is measurable, so it takes time for electrons to flow through bio-crystalline tendrils and for gravity units to grab.

The
Nightingale
lurched and struck the stone and scrub surface of the planet. It sustained structural damage and partly rolled before its gravity stabilizers locked and held it firm.

Among the parts damaged was the automatic log. Thus. . .

From now on we have no guides but the memory of Wilberfoss. This narrative must therefore change. Henceforth I will be providing a case history. For it is a truth that as Wilberfoss regained his health with Lily and myself in the Poverello Garden, so he revealed the deepest secrets of the final events on the
Nightingale.

Let me not mislead anyone, what follows is not a happy story. Before embarking on it we will enjoy ourselves with the story of Lily the autonurse.

INTERMISSION

Lily was built to be a nurse. But like me, she has undergone many transformations all of which, like experience for a human, have left her the same but different. Lily was built in the year of the Earth 2179. She was built for warfare and for a specific mission.

I here record a footnote for history.

In 2176 a spaceship called
Talon,
fitted with one of the newly developed particle engines, encountered a planet called Parade on which there was a life-form roughly similar in shape to the human but which was amphibious. Water pigs they were called by the first adventurers who landed on their world and they were eaten. We will call them Sorillos for that name approximates to the name they had for themselves and which meant “Ripple makers.”

The Sorillos were inventive. They had developed solar power engines which provided the power to control the movements of fish and larger creatures in the marshes. They were clever biological engineers and had created a form of semi-intelligent kelp which grew around the enclosures where they lived and protected them. Undoubtedly they had many other achievements for science has a broad base: the wheel implies the road and the road implies travel. The Sorillos were also warlike and scrapped among themselves.

When the first ship from Earth arrived, the Sorillos that the crew encountered welcomed them. They gave them captives to eat. In return they wanted weapons and the silly humans gave them weapons. They gave them a laser cannon which the Sorillos promptly turned on their nearest enemy which happened to be their nearest neighboring tribe. The
Talon
departed carrying artifacts, mainly of platinum and gold, and kelp seeds. (The kelp seeds proved to be the most valuable cargo since these seeds were later used in experiments which led to rapid advances in the science of bio-crystalline intelligence.) On the surface of the planet was left a team of human contact engineers.