by Tim Wirkus
Back inside the stone chamber, she lit the holo-torch. The Apparatus, shrouded in canvas, remained just where they had left it. Illuminated from the ground by the even light of the torch, it cast a tall crisp shadow on the stone wall. Arms folded, Sertôrian reread the text of the plaque. Then she crouched down, grabbed a corner of the oily shroud, and pulled.
Beneath the sheet sat a compact tangle of wires, motors, hinges, circuit boards, spigots, and thin metal bars. A plastic band around the suitcase-sized bundle read, “Remove this band carefully and stand back: device will self-assemble.” Attached to the band with a bit of string was a handwritten note that said, “Do not remove the band while inside this chamber. Not enough room.”
Sertôrian realized she was holding her breath and exhaled. While the plaque had imbued the shrouded Apparatus with a mysterious grandeur, these bland instructions lent the squat cube all the mystique of a household appliance. Rather than disappoint, though, the machine’s mundane tangibility filled Sertôrian with a wonderful sense of accomplishment. Uncovering the Apparatus drove home the sensation that this was very real, that she may well have discovered the Bulgakov Apparatus, one of the most sought-after artifacts in human history.
Feeling an irresistible urge to bask in the long-unfamiliar glow of success, Sertôrian lay down on the cool ground and curled her body around the compacted machine. Draping her arm over the top of it, she held the device close, drawing comfort from this tangible manifestation of resolve, genius, and idealism. She closed her eyes, breathing in the smell of metal and clean plastic.
She didn’t know how long she’d been asleep when she heard footsteps entering the chamber. Still wrapped around the device, she opened her eyes to see Valenti and de Bronk standing in the open doorway, their faces troubled at the scene before them. Sertôrian scrambled to her feet, assuming what she hoped was a posture of easy authority but knowing that nothing could erase for Valenti and de Bronk the sight of their captain embracing a piece of machinery.
She had never presented her shipmates with such an unguarded view of herself, and the terrible novelty of doing so, along with the shame of being caught so blatantly disregarding their collective decision to leave the Apparatus alone for the night, set off in Sertôrian a bitter chain of defensive thinking. Wasn’t this their fault too? Shouldn’t they have agreed with her the evening before and examined the Apparatus together? She was the captain, after all, and if they didn’t respect her, then how could they ever hope to function as an effective unit? They were the ones who had made a mistake, weren’t they? Her exhaustion, which not so long ago had manifested as relief, now enveloped her in frightening uncertainty. Everything was suddenly all wrong, and her shame combusted into a jagged rage that she fought to contain.
“Hello, Captain,” Valenti said gently. “De Bronk woke up and saw you were gone. We wanted to make sure you were okay.”
“You mean you wanted to check up on me,” said Sertôrian, her rage further inflamed by Valenti’s careful tone. “And you knew right where to come.”
“No,” said Valenti. “That’s not it at all.”
“We were worried,” said de Bronk, looking from Sertôrian to the now unveiled machine at her feet.
“Suspicious, you mean,” said Sertôrian, the shame-fueled rage egging her on.
“No,” said de Bronk, looking back up at her, sounding hurt.
“Well, you’ve caught me red-handed.” She gestured at the uncovered device. “Is that what you want me to say?”
“No,” said de Bronk. “That’s not . . .” He broke off with a sigh, the holo-torch in his hand casting the wrinkles of his face in sharp relief.
“Tell me the two of you weren’t waiting for me to slip up,” said Sertôrian, suddenly unable to stop her most paranoid fears from slithering out of her mouth. “Just lying in wait for days. You wanted this to happen.”
“No,” said de Bronk, shoulders slumping, voice breaking.
“Captain, listen,” said Valenti, holding out a conciliatory hand and taking a step forward.
“No,” said Sertôrian. “Tell me, is this the first place you came when you saw that I’d gone?”
They didn’t answer.
“Is it?” said Sertôrian, looking directly at de Bronk.
“That’s not a fair question,” he said.
“Answer it anyway,” she said.
“Fine,” said de Bronk. “Yes. We talked it over and decided to look here first.”
Sertôrian took two long steps across the chamber and stood nose to nose with de Bronk, who hadn’t moved from his position in the open doorway.
“You and Valenti talked it over, huh?” said Sertôrian, poking him in the chest.
De Bronk grimaced.
Sertôrian said, “This seems to be a new habit with you two, plotting things behind my back.”
De Bronk shrugged.
“Maybe we talked some things over,” he said. “But it wasn’t like you’re saying.”
“Then what was it like?” said Sertôrian, practically shouting now. “Because it seems to me that there’s a whole ghostly decision-making process going on without me.”
“Captain,” said Valenti.
“I’m not talking to you,” said Sertôrian, holding de Bronk’s watery eyes in her gaze.
De Bronk looked away.
“What concerns me most,” said Sertôrian, “is that my crew is either too afraid or too conniving to apprise me of their sentiments.”
“Listen,” said Valenti, the light from her holo-torch flickering across her face. “It’s nothing systemic—just some informal conversations that happen here and there, catch as catch can. I have the same kinds of discussions with you.”
“Is that right?” said Sertôrian, stepping closer to the star-guard.
“Yes, it is,” said Valenti, standing firm. “Yesterday while de Bronk was resting, you and I talked about how we might secure long-range transport once we make it off-planet. And the day before that, while you and I inventoried supplies, we talked about stretching our rations with some edible plants I’d spotted. And a couple of days before that—”
Sertôrian waved a hand, cutting Valenti off.
“All right, Ava,” she said, her intensity waning. “You’ve made your point.”
Sertôrian turned her back to her shipmates and looked down at the squat device she’d risked so much to uncover. As she stood there, taking in the silence of the stony chamber, her rage imploded, leaving behind it a cold, sucking hole of shame. She hadn’t felt this embarrassed, this vulnerable and frustrated, since adolescence. How had she botched this encounter so horribly? How could she still salvage some functioning scraps of her crew’s respect?
She turned back around to see Valenti and de Bronk still standing at the entrance of the chamber, watching her with wide, nervous eyes.
“Listen,” said Sertôrian, with just a hint of apology in her voice. “You surprised me and I overreacted. Can we start over?”
De Bronk nodded and Valenti regarded her warily.
“Okay,” said Sertôrian. “All right. So. The reason I’m here is, I’ve been thinking things over and I’ve decided we need to take a thorough look at the Apparatus. We need to figure out what it’s supposed to do and how it does it.”
She stepped back and pointed down at the compact bundle of wire, plastic, and metal.
“Just consider the possibilities,” she said, “if this is the Bulgakov Apparatus. Just think about—”
“We’ve already talked through this, though,” said Valenti. “And I agree it’s an exciting idea, but—”
“Ava, let me finish,” said Sertôrian, the hot anger prickling back to life. “We’re going to examine the Apparatus because we can’t allow ourselves to be ruled by fear. That’s not how progress happens. That should be clear to you two, but if there’s—”
“If I can speak f
reely, Captain,” said Valenti, “nothing you’re saying is very clear to me. I agree that fear is a bad thing, but what you’re proposing sounds less like courage and more like recklessness. So before we do anything, I’d like some more details about how you intend to avoid a disaster here.”
Sertôrian didn’t respond immediately, instead maintaining steely eye contact with the junior officer. The encounter was unmistakably a lost cause and in her once again rage-blasted brain, Sertôrian could think of no recourse but scorched earth.
“Star-Guard Valenti,” she began softly, “we are going to unwrap this machine and see what it can do. And then we’re going to figure out how to get it off this planet without the Arch-Kaiser finding out. Do I make myself clear?”
Valenti shook her head. “Honestly, that doesn’t allay any of my concerns,” she said.
Sertôrian nodded, her fury building, and turned to de Bronk.
“Technician de Bronk,” said Sertôrian. “What are your thoughts on the situation?”
De Bronk squirmed, his pale eyes begging for an escape.
“Captain,” he began, and hesitated. “Captain, I have to say I agree with Star-Guard Valenti.”
Sertôrian breathed out a hot snort of air.
“I’d just like some rational justification for all this,” said Valenti, again reaching out with a conciliatory hand.
“All right,” said Sertôrian, turning back to Valenti, swatting away her hand.
Valenti stepped back as if she’d been shot.
“All right,” continued Sertôrian. “You want justification, Star-Guard? How’s this for justification? You’re going to examine this device because, in case you’ve forgotten, I’m the captain. My job is to tell you what to do, and your job is to do it—not to ask questions, not to come up with secret plans of your own, but to do what I say. Understood?”
Eyes wide, Valenti regarded her captain without a sound. De Bronk sighed, a defeated, wheezing rattle.
“I said do I make myself clear?” said Sertôrian.
“Yes, Captain,” said Valenti and de Bronk in unison.
“Good,” said Sertôrian. “Now we carry the Apparatus back to camp.”
SEVEN
The passage you’ve just read may be the most controversial moment in the entire Sertôrial biographic canon. For centuries, certain followers of Sertôrian have performed rhetorical acrobatics to discount this portrayal of Sertôrian’s behavior, insisting that not only this scene but the entire Rhadamanthus IX episode must be a scurrilous fabrication—character assassination of the lowest order. Nowhere else, they argue, is Sertôrian cast in such a thoroughly unflattering light; in her flustered confrontation with Valenti and de Bronk, she comes across not only as tyrannical but inept.
And while such leaderly ineptitude might be plausible—the argument goes—in an unseasoned commander, Sertôrian had led her crew through countless battles in the Great Aurigan War and numerous misadventures on the renegade planets of the Minoan System. Certainly she had dealt with internal dissent before this episode, and given the fierce loyalty of her crew up to this point, she had to have done so with great efficacy. It strains plausibility for many readers, then, that Sertôrian would blunder so spectacularly through this encounter with her shipmates, and worse, that she would attempt to compensate for that inefficacy with such a coercive abuse of power, pulling rank to silence the not-unreasonable qualms of Valenti and de Bronk. And in fact, the entire Rhadamanthus IX episode teems with similar, albeit lesser, missteps on Sertôrian’s part. Many claim, then, that this account is a dangerous piece of anti-Sertôrial invective, fabricated or embellished by those who would discredit her supernal teachings.
I disagree, largely because I’m wary of the urge to bleach any possible blemish from Sertôrian’s past. Of what use to us is a sibyl who made no mistakes? What could such a person possibly teach us? Tempting though it may be to construe Sertôrian as an ethereal innocent, all the better to explain her mystic profundity, such an approach creates a flimsy foundation on which to build one’s faith. To a large extent, my devotion to Sertôrian grows out of her very real fallibility. I don’t dispute, then, that her behavior in the stone chamber is out of character. Clearly it is. But does that necessarily mean it didn’t happen? Of course not. Though I generally hesitate to make universal claims about human behavior, I can comfortably say that it is not characterized by absolute consistency.
So. So what now? As I read over the preceding lines, I can’t help but suspect that I’m only restating arguments I’ve already made at greater length in Sertôrian the Woman. And beyond that, of what use—I can’t help but ask myself—is any of this scholarship in the face of impending death? In my previous book, I criticized those who co-opt and misconstrue Sertôrian to fill whatever spiritual or metaphysical gaps they find in their own ramshackle lives. Having examined my own life in light of recent developments, I can’t help but notice significant gaps of my own, gaps that the Sertôrian from Sertôrian the Woman does little to remediate. And if my exegesis of the Rhadamanthus IX narrative can’t even help me, then what good can it possibly do for anyone else? Since writing the previous paragraph, I’ve spent two full days composing and discarding half a dozen different conclusions for this chapter, each of which fails to solve the argument’s (and my own) problems. I am, I must confess, at a loss as to how we might proceed.
Yesterday in the library I was discussing these very problems with my friend Sister Beatriz as we each hunted down books for our respective projects. She and I took our vows within weeks of each other, and for decades now she has been my closest confidante and best critic. We’ve not spoken as much lately, though, as everyone in the convent has been so absorbed in completing as much work as possible before the Delegarchic troops arrive to carry out our death sentence. Sister Beatriz, however, has decided to take a break, as she explained to me yesterday. She studies vortemathics—is one of the foremost scholars in her field, in fact—and is currently working on a three-volume critique of quantified metaphysics.
“And it’s good, noble work,” she said about the project. “I truly believe that, but I also don’t want to spend my final hours calibrating lexiquations.”
“What would you do instead?” I asked, climbing one of the library’s many rolling ladders to reach an ancient atlas of the Minoan System.
“I’m planning a picnic,” she said, “for starters.”
This took me aback, as a picnic reeks of whimsicality and Sister Beatriz is anything but whimsical. I found the atlas I was looking for and pulled it from the shelf.
“A picnic?” I said, descending the ladder with the atlas under one arm. “Where would you have a picnic?”
“There’s that bay window up in the observatory that looks out on Persephone III,” said Sister Beatriz, paging halfheartedly through a philosophical survey of the Imperial Space Age. “I’ve always had a soft spot for that view. There’s no place nearby to sit, so I plan to spread a blanket and eat on the floor while I look out the window at the beautiful view.”
She hefted the book of philosophy up onto the shelf—the volume was almost as big as she was—and rolled her shoulders in relief, looking for a moment like a weary, middle-aged prizefighter.
“Hmm,” I said, laying down my atlas on one of the library’s study tables and consulting my list of books to retrieve. “That does sound pleasant.”
And it did sound pleasant, but I had so much work I still needed to do.
“Yes,” said Sister Beatriz, lifting another enormous book and examining its frontispiece. “You should come along.”
“I can’t,” I said. As I scanned the shelves of the history section, I explained the problems I’d been having with this chapter. I hoped that Sister Beatriz might help me, as she had on so many previous occasions, to find a way past this apparent dead end.
Rather than provide any useful advice, though, she set do
wn her book and said, “All the more reason to join me tomorrow.”
“But there’s no time,” I said. “I really must finish this monograph.”
I rolled a ladder into position and started up it in pursuit of a green-spined monograph on the ethics of leadership.
“You know, Úrsula,” said Sister Beatriz, pausing until I looked her in the eye. “If you’ve run out of things to say, perhaps you’ve already finished.”
This was not a sentiment I wanted to hear, and it irked me that Sister Beatriz could be so blasé about a problem that was causing me so much turmoil. In a bluster, I pulled the ethics book from the shelf and descended the ladder. The look of amusement on Beatriz’s face only made me angrier, so I gathered my other books from the study table and excused myself on the pretense that I needed to get back to work. I told Beatriz, with what I hoped was sufficient sarcasm, to enjoy her picnic.
“I will,” she said, unfazed. “Although I’d enjoy it more if you joined me.”
“I don’t think that will be possible,” I said, heading out the door.
“Well,” she said, “I’ll stop by your desk tomorrow on my way out to see if you’ve changed your mind. I think you might.”
“I wouldn’t plan on it,” I said, and took my leave.
Unfortunately, as is generally the case, Sister Beatriz was right and I have changed my mind. This monograph appears to have reached its logical end. Although much of the Rhadamanthus IX episode remains to be examined, I can muster no consequential scholarly or spiritual response. This morning, the narrative only summons a stream of memories from my own life, moments of shame and anger like the one Irena Sertôrian experienced in the stone chamber behind the waterfall. I think of opportunities squandered, damages inflicted, deep sentiments left unexpressed. And since such glum, self-focused thoughts have no place in the realm of scholarship, I can only thank you for your patience up to this point, apologize for any disappointment, and bring this monograph to an early close.
All that’s left for me is to join Sister Beatriz on her foolish picnic.