by Toby Frost
‘It could be,’ Rhianna said. ‘Is there something you’d like to say about that? Something you’d like to get off your chest, to share with the rest of the group?’
‘It is brilliant.’
‘Okay, silly question… anyone else? Polly?’
‘Fine, thanks,’ Carveth said.
‘Mustn’t grumble,’ said Isambard Smith.
Carveth slapped her hands together. ‘Well, that’s that. We’re all great. Let’s get on with – oh, wait a moment. There is something I want to say.’
Rhianna nodded. ‘Okay. This is your space. Take your time.’
‘Are you an alien?’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Look,’ said Carveth, ‘I’ve been thinking, right? I’m a simulant, an android, and I’m not too bad at thinking. It’s something that’s been dawning on me for a while. I reckon there’s something really wrong with you and I think it’s time we knew the truth.’
Suddenly Rhianna looked afraid, frozen. Her face hardly moved as she spoke. ‘I don’t really see what you’re getting at.’
‘Well, I’ve made a list. Hold on.’ Carveth pulled a bit of paper from her back pocket and unfolded it. ‘Right. This is my list of all the weird things you’ve done. Ready?’
‘Ready, I guess,’ she replied.
‘One. When the void sharks attacked us the second time, they suddenly pulled away just before the captain went out to deal with them. You were meditating at the time.’
‘I don’t see—’
‘Nor did I, at the time. Now, onto the next. The fight with the Ghasts. When they tried to board us, you were next to me. One of them got close, and was about to attack me with its claws. Remember that?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Something happened then, something weird. I can hardly explain it: it was as though a ripple ran through the universe and sort of shifted everything around. Like a burp in the space-time continuum. Do you know anything about that?’
Rhianna shrugged. ‘Why should I?’ She sounded defensive, hurt.
‘You were there. You did it. You made it happen.’
‘Hey, I don’t have to take this! What is this, Fascist oppression hour? Why should I be called to account because of your negativity?’
‘Easy on her, Carveth,’ said Smith.
‘I am easy.’
‘This the galaxy probably knows,’ Suruk said.
‘Back off, frog. I just want to know the truth, on the off chance that Rhianna is a space monster in disguise. I think that’s pretty reasonable. Now, may I continue?’
‘I shall hear you out,’ Suruk replied. ‘Then possibly knock you out, but go on.’
‘Next, that whole knife-throwing thing. What’s all that about? I leave the ship for ten minutes, and I come back to find you’ve grown a force field. Not natural. And what’s more, either Suruk and Captain Smith are a pair of absolute chronic idiots or you’ve done something to their minds to make them think it’s all perfectly normal and above board. Eh?’
‘I didn’t do anything to their minds.’
‘Well, alright then. But you are immune to knives, and that ain’t right. And, the cap tells me that you stood in front of him in that gunfight down on Paradis and that Edenite officer bloke fired a whole magazine at you and none of the bullets hit. That’s not just weird: that’s Kate Bush territory. Explain that.’
The ship hummed around them. The three faces turned to her. Slowly, Rhianna opened her hands and shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘You don’t know?’
‘I really don’t. I mean, I’ve always believed in Karma. Does that help at all?’
‘You must have been doing some bloody good works in your past life to turn bulletproof,’ Carveth replied. Smith said quietly, ‘Rhianna, have you always been able to do this?’
‘Always?’
‘As in “all your life”,’ Carveth put in. ‘Look, I don’t know what you really are, but I’ve got a shortlist. And none of the options is looking good.’ She turned her piece of paper over and peered at writing on the back of it. ‘Here’s my shortlist. One, you’re an alien; two, an assassin reprogrammed by the government – it happens, I saw it on TV –
or, three, some sort of magic person with psychic powers.’
‘Oh, please,’ Rhianna exclaimed. ‘Enough persecution already, little miss witchfinder. Come on, do I look like an alien?’
‘You might be. An alien could look exactly like a person except for some extra stuff stuck on its head. The difference could be very small.’
‘Unlikely,’ Suruk said.
‘Rhianna,’ Smith said gently, ‘can you remember anything from your past that’s been like this? Have you always been able to do unusual things? Your parents, for example. How about them?’
‘Well, they were hippies. They fled the Republic of Eden just after the War of Disarmament. They ended up on New Fran, but first they went to Earth and followed the old 1960’s trail: Woodstock, Tangiers, Morocco, Brighton, Skegness – they didn’t really do maps.’
‘I see. What else did they do?’
‘Acid. And they looked into crystals and stuff. They were Vorl nuts.’
‘What, little round things?’ Carveth said, screwing up her face in puzzlement.
‘ Vorl nuts,’ Smith said. ‘Vorl is the name of an important alien race.’
‘No wonder I’ve never heard of them,’ Carveth said. She sighed. ‘I don’t see the connection. Who are these Vorl, anyway?’
‘The guardians of space,’ Rhianna said quietly. ‘The most advanced race our galaxy has ever seen. Creatures so attuned to the cosmos that they became one with it, free from the constraint of earthy bodies, free to live forever amongst the stars.’
Suruk had been listening with his head tilted to one side, quietly crunching. ‘I have heard of such things,’ he said. ‘The floaty woman speaks only half the truth. There are many legends spoken of the Vorl: we of the M’Lak believe that they once walked amongst us. To those who they called friends, they gave honour. But to those who they called enemies, who sought to bend their power to evil ends, they brought doom. It was said that they could throw down lightning from the sky itself, and melt the very flesh from a man’s bones as if it were wax. Of course, they said it about the M’Lak, not men as such, but the point remains.’
Smith shrugged. ‘It’s all nonsense, if you ask me. There’re two very good reasons why nobody’s found the Vorl: firstly, space is infinitely vast, providing a sentient being with limitless opportunities to hide, and secondly, they’re not real. I suggest we just get back to repairing the ship and forget all this made-up science-fiction stuff. The positronic versifier won’t transfibulate itself, after all.’
‘Perhaps my parents knew something about the Vorl,’
Rhianna said. ‘I guess that would explain why the Ghasts are after me.’
‘Perhaps the storkoid left them a little bundle under the cosmic gooseberry bush,’ Carveth said. ‘Perhaps you are a Vorl.’
‘Stop that,’ said Smith. ‘Look, Rhianna. What Carveth says is true: there’s no doubting that you have special abilities, which make you… special. That’s fine by me. It’s variety that makes the Empire great. That and dreadnoughts. And tea.
‘When I was at school, one of my best friends was unusual. He used to eat crayons, but we all thought he was smashing. He’d always have people round him, in spite of him being, um, special, especially if he was eating a crayon at the time. We’d all say, “Look, there goes Crayony Dave again”, and everyone would laugh, and so would he. Everyone was happy. So you see my point.’
Rhianna said: ‘You want me to eat crayons?’
‘Goodness no!’ Smith laughed. ‘It’s that you may be weird as hell, but you’re one of us, no matter what you are. In all honesty, even I don’t know what you are myself!’ He laughed again, in what seemed an oddly silent room. I hope to God you’re not psychic, he added to himself. That could be embarrassing. Especially what with you
being a very fine bit of filly indeed. God, the number of times I’ve thought about parping your boobs… If you’re listening, Rhianna, I didn’t say that. ‘And besides, the fact is that whatever your parents’ connection to the Vorl may be, it seems that someone out there thinks you’re worth capturing. Beer, anyone?’
He stood up and fetched new bottles. Smith lined them up and began to open the caps. ‘It doesn’t really matter, though, in the long run. The fact is, you’re a woman in need of help and you’re on my ship, and if anyone wants to kidnap you while you’re on board, they’ll have to fight their way past me first. I’m sure the crew agree. Right, crew? Crew?’
‘I agree,’ Suruk said.
Carveth ran a hand through her hair. ‘Looks like we’re all in this together,’ she said. ‘Just don’t fry anyone.’
‘It was melt,’ Rhianna said.
‘Ah, so you admit it!’
‘I’m only repeating what Suruk said.’
‘Well, alright. Now,’ said Carveth, ‘has anyone got anything else they’d like to raise, or can we move on to Item Two on the list – Scrabble? Nobody? Right then, let’s Scrab. Where are all the letters?’
‘Mint, anyone?’ said Suruk, holding out the bag.
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Carveth grimaced, mouthed some words and sighed. ‘Right then, Scrabble’s off. It’s chess or Mousetrap.’
‘Mousetrap,’ said Smith. ‘I wouldn’t play chess against a Morlock if I were you.’
‘Will he rip my arm out of its socket if he loses?’
‘I don’t know. He never loses. That’s why I wouldn’t play chess with him.’
‘Fair enough. Mousetrap it is. But don’t go crazy, now: we’ve got two days to kill.’
The next day, Carveth was on the bridge with the captain, reading. A light flashed under the main navigation dials and she turned around in her seat. ‘We’re coming into range of Deuteronomy’s main radar array,’ she announced. ‘I’ve plotted a course to take us into the landing zone with minimal engine activity. The computer’s logged to show us up as an unmanned automatic cargo lander.’
‘Righto.’
‘But we’ll have to go quietly. That means lights out and no whistling. We need to keep detectable noise to an absolute minimum.’
Smith frowned. ‘I don’t like it, Carveth, all this creeping around. It’s like we’re playing their game. We’re Imperial citizens, for heaven’s sake: we ought to be able to walk right up to them and say, “Listen here, Johnny Godpants, I happen to be civilised and I’m coming through”, not creeping around like a bunch of Wheezing Willies.’
‘Point taken. But until we get the supralux fixed we’re strictly in derring-don’t territory. We need this, Captain.’
‘I know. But it bothers me.’
‘Well, we need to do this quietly. Once we’re down on the planet we should be fine. But until we can make contact with Andy’s friends in the resistance, we have to go in with as little fuss as possible.’
‘What about the radio?’
‘I’m not sure. I thought we’d radio them once we’re in the atmosphere. It’ll give the police less chance to get the signal before we get the ship underground, and there should be plenty of background radio noise to confuse anyone.’
‘Good plan. But how do you mean, underground?’
‘Callistan is a wasteland. All indigenous life is extinct and there’s hardly any atmosphere at all. All there is above ground is bunkers. The wallies who run Callistan have wasted it.’
‘Wasted it?’
‘Environmental meltdown. Rhianna told me about it. It’s on the Friends of The Various Earths website, apparently.’
The radio crackled into life. A fanfare blasted out across the control room. Carveth fumbled for the switches. ‘It’s automated,’ she whispered. ‘We’re just picking it up.’
‘On the hour, every hour, hourly!’ the radio cried. ‘This is Eden Space News – True and Accurate! Today – British Foreign Secretary meets with bearded man. We ask: Is this evidence of Satanism? How could it not be?’
Smith stared at Carveth. ‘What’s this?’
‘Must be their version of the news,’ she replied.
‘Can’t be. Nobody shouts on the real news.’
The radio bellowed on. ‘The bearded “man” met with foreign secretary Lucy “Fur” Wilkins, ostensibly to discuss trade at a conference near the Baltic Sea. Baltic Sea – or Here-Sea? You decide. Damn right, it’s heresy! Good decision! For more stories on this story, stay tuned to me, Edward Cauldron, sending unbelievers straight to hell on the Edward Cauldron Truth Show! And now for a message from our new friends in the Ghast Empire.’
Smith reached up and flicked the radio off. ‘Foreign propaganda,’ he said. ‘A mere mouthpiece for the state.’
Carveth shrugged. ‘On the plus side, they are rerunning Space Confederates.’
The city of Deuteronomy was almost invisible from the air, as if it had escaped the Last Judgement by burrowing into the ground. On the surface, only squat bunkers broke the useless earth, linked by land-trains like fortresses on wheels. Beneath ground level, the citizens eked out their lives.
Satellites studded the sky: some relayed orders from the rulers of the Democratic Republic, on their more luxurious worlds, while others broadcast propaganda to any other chunk of space that would listen. Rival human empires switched off; aliens puzzled over the messages from the New Eden for a little while and switched off too. But most of the satellites were for gathering information, not for sending it out.
Carveth’s approach was clever, mainly because someone else had planned it. The John Pym drew closer in an arc, avoiding the long-range surveillance drones at the edge of Callistan’s orbit, slipping past the barrage of police stations that hovered over the main settlements. They were aiming not for any of Deuteronomy’s major spaceports, but for the shipworks on the edge of the city, the industrial area that the authorities treated with too much contempt to study closely. Here thousands of nobodies lived, welding and repairing ships in endless shifts, all of them too poor and badly-organised to be worth policing with anything more than the occasional riot squad. As a result, nobody bothered the John Pym. No-one cared that it was not an automated ship at all, or that its crew had spent the past day and a half failing to pay for the TV channels they had received. The only drone that checked them recorded nothing more than the fact that the vessel was unarmed. Their descent was quiet and untroubled, until at last a voice came across the radio and said, ‘Dude, this is Neil.’
All was dark and quiet in the John Pym. Carveth had fetched the covers from her bed, laid them across her lap and was now sleeping in the pilot’s chair, the door closed.
Suruk, a stranger to innuendo, had retired to his room to polish his favourite bone. Smith decided it would be a good moment to make friends with Rhianna.
Quite how was another matter. He could not ask Carveth for advice, as that would be embarrassing, and he could not ask Suruk, because he was asexual and would inevitably suggest ripping off Carveth’s head and presenting it to Rhianna, who was after all a vegetarian and would not be very impressed. It was difficult.
Rhianna made him feel crass and ignorant, in the way that the Hillaries back home did not. ‘What ho!’ a random Hillary would shout, slapping dirt off her jodhpurs, and Smith would only have to reply ‘Quite!’ or ‘Bloody good, that!’ to draw her attention from the Labradors to himself. Rhianna came from a more sophisticated world, where trading with aliens was not supposed to involve exchanging shiny bottle tops for priceless cultural artefacts and, despite coming from Australia, AC/DC did not qualify as World Music. After lengthy deliberation, he decided to cook some food for her.
They ate by the light of an emergency hand-warmer, the closest thing to a candle on board the darkened ship. ‘I really appreciate this,’ Rhianna said, before Smith brought the food to the table. She smelt strongly of Patchouli oil, which meant that she might not be able to taste what he had made so easily. T
hat could only be a good thing. ‘It’s very kind of you. What are these pink floating things?’
‘Ah,’ said Smith, ‘Special recipe. All completely without meat. You see, what you’ve got floating there is synthetic synthetic ham. We usually get given synthetic ham to eat, which contains ham extract and we spacefarers shortened to Sham. But this is synthetic Sham, which doesn’t even contain any synthetic ham and which the company used to call Sham Light but don’t any more because we shortened it to Shite. It’s not really shite, actually,’ he added, feeling that this explanation had ended on a weak note. ‘Well, it’s not got any meat in it, anyway.’
‘It looks very… cubic,’ Rhianna said. Smith put some of the stuff into bowls, reflecting on the rather runny sauce and the oddly furtive way that the pieces of Sham Light broke the surface before ducking out of sight again. He passed one of the bowls to Rhianna. She tried it. ‘Mmn!’
she said. ‘It tastes… cubic, too!’
Smith frowned. ‘I tell you what, let’s have some music, shall we?’
He crossed to the cassette player at the rear of the room, and selected one. ‘You might not have heard this before,’ he said, activating the machine. ‘It’s by Mozart, a historical British chap.’
‘Mozart, British? Wasn’t he from Vienna?’
Smith frowned. ‘I don’t think so. He was English, Mozart.’
Rhianna grinned. ‘You mean Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart?’
‘That’s the one. English to the core. Take “Piano Concerto 21”, for instance. Or “The Requiem”. He wouldn’t have given them English names if he wasn’t from England.’
Rhianna put her hand across her mouth and gave a small snorting laugh. ‘How about “Eine Kleine Nacht Musik”?’
‘Well, he had to give it a German title. It was written for a German, you see. For Elise.’
‘You really are quite a man,’ Rhianna said. ‘So much for the brown questions.’
‘I’m better on Elgar, to be honest.’
Smith sat back down and looked at the meal he had made. With the sophisticated music playing around the room, he felt as if he were being piped to the table by an honour guard in preparation for eating a bag of chips. His meal lay sadly on his plate. He put a dollop on his spoon and raised it lipward. It sat there insolently, like a small animal that had made a dirty, sit-down protest on his spoon. ‘Mm,’ he said, opening wide. ‘Looks nice – flughk!