Trapped lop-6

by James Alan Gardner

  "They called him Priest," Myoko whispered. "He never gave any other name. Mind-Lord Priest. The saddest man I ever met."

  She lifted her head, accidentally caught my gaze, and immediately lowered her eyes again. "He was constantly talking about religion. All religions. New ones, old ones, bizarre ones. He wanted to believe in something, but he was too, oh, inhibited to make a leap of faith. The sort of man who reads books full of prayers but never says a single one; who could describe fifteen different meditation techniques, but had never sat down and closed his eyes. I think he was afraid of being disappointed. The saddest man I ever met."

  Myoko reached out as if intending to touch the helmet. A few centimeters short, she let her hand drop limply to the table. "He came to our school several times a year. Spent a day with each class: exactly from dawn to dawn. I don't know when he slept. Maybe he didn't need to. He'd just talk, let us ask questions. But he didn't give direct answers; more like sermons on whatever came to mind. We loved him deeply. I suppose we couldn't help that because of his power, but still…"

  "What was his power?" Gretchen asked.

  "You felt what he felt. Whatever made him angry made you furious; whatever made him happy filled you with joy. It seemed like you'd touched his soul and fully comprehended the wisdom of his opinions. Whatever he thought was right — whatever he considered necessary — you believed the same, as if everything in your life had led you to that conclusion." She shook her head. "As if you understood exactly who Priest was, and saw that he was holy."

  Myoko suddenly clenched her fist. "I've told myself it was all just fake. He was a Spark, right? You can never take Sparks at face value. Wouldn't a Spark Lord enjoy people thinking he was sweet and sad and poignant? He could wrap us around his fingers. But Priest never tried to exploit us… though, God knows, we were ripe for it. Young, idealistic, infatuated. Every last one of us would have walked through fire just to ease his terrible sorrow…"

  Her voice trailed off. The rest of us didn't speak. Finally, Impervia broke the silence: her words brisk, trying to dispel the deep melancholy that had gripped us. "I don't know why we're jumping to conclusions. Yes, this looks like a Spark helmet; yes, orange stands for Mind-Lords. But there can be more than one Mind-Lord at a time; why think this belonged to your Priest?"

  "It's his," Myoko said. "I can feel it."

  "No, you can't. You're not the sort of psychic who feels things."

  "With this I can." Myoko reached out again and this time touched the helmet with her fingertips. "That was Priest's power: making people feel. I can feel his essence, and I know something happened to him. Something deadly."

  "You're being ridiculous—" Impervia began, but Myoko cut her off.

  "It's his helmet! It couldn't just fall off. I've seen Priest's armor, and everything locked securely…"

  Myoko picked up the helmet as if she was going to show us whatever mechanisms kept it attached to the rest of the suit. But the moment she lifted it off the table, something fell from the helmet's neckhole, plopping softly onto the tabletop.

  Gooey white nuggets like curds of cottage cheese. Spilling from the Spark Lord's helmet.

  14: SHIPS THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT

  "Eww," Gretchen said. "What's that?"

  Nobody answered. Myoko set down the helmet, carefully covering the curds that had fallen onto the table. She stepped back quickly, bumping into the wall behind her.

  The rest of us did the same — even Gretchen, who hadn't heard the details of Rosalind's death. There was something about those moist white nuggets that made you shy away.

  "I think," Myoko said, "we should ask Zunctweed where he got the helmet."

  Nods all around. We tried not to leave the cabin in an undignified stampede.

  Up on deck, Oberon and Pelinor stood on either side of Zunctweed. The captain was still folded into a peeled-potato lump, headless, legless, armless. Impervia crouched beside the alien's origamied body and rapped on his bony hide. "Open up! Now!"

  A muffled voice answered, "Shan't."

  "Shall," Impervia told him. "Otherwise, we'll tie a rope around you and toss you into the lake. Tucked in like this, you'll sink like a stone… and the lake water here was ice a week ago. We'll leave you until you start drowning, then we'll drag you out. We'll keep doing that again and again, leaving you under a bit longer each time till you're ready to cooperate."

  Annah gazed admiringly at Impervia. "You have such a gift for teaching."

  Impervia almost broke into a smile… but her face went blank again quickly. Impervia hated to seem too human.

  We never got to see how Zunctweed responded to ice-water. Impervia trussed him up with a rope Pelinor found — I hoped the rope hadn't been attached to something important — and Myoko lifted the alien over the side by sheer force of will. We could have done the lifting by hand, but we thought Zunctweed would loosen up more if we went beyond the mundane: so Myoko put on an impressive show, furrowing her brow with fierce concentration, spreading her hair into a great intimidating sphere (hip-long tresses stretching to arm's length in all directions), then shakily levitating Zunctweed off the deck, banging him against the rail as he went over the edge, bumping him repeatedly against the hull on the way down… at which point he moaned, "I know it won't help if I beg for mercy; but consider how bad you might feel about this if someday you acquire a conscience."

  Myoko stopped his descent. Impervia called down to the hovering alien, "I have a conscience; what I don't have is information. Where did you get the orange helmet."

  "Is that all you want to know? And you couldn't ask before this? No, I don't suppose you could. It's more fun tormenting a slave than asking direct questions. What if I answered them willingly? Then you'd have no excuse for entertainment."

  Oberon, standing by the rail, gestured impatiently with his pincers. "Shut up and start talking."

  "You self-righteous claw-thing," Zunctweed muttered. "Go back to licking your mistress's boots."

  "Stop whining," Gretchen said. "Are you going to tell us what we want?"

  "Didn't I say I would?"

  "No."

  "Lift me up and I shall disclose the whole story."

  "We'll get better answers," Impervia said, "if you stay where you are. Provided" — she turned to Myoko—"you can hold him?"

  "For a little while," Myoko answered in a strained voice. "I'll manage if he speaks quickly." She winked at us all; we'd seen Myoko hold a human in the air for more than five minutes. But she let Zunctweed wobble a bit, just to center his thoughts on cooperation.

  "I said I'd tell!" he protested.

  And he did.

  Dainty Dinghy had spent the winter offshore: far out in the lake where the water didn't freeze. Zunctweed wasn't the only captain to anchor in that neighborhood — he was part of a small contingent, nine boats this year, that spent the cold months afloat rather than going into dry dock or risking the ice in the harbor. With the first snowfall, Dinghy and the other ships offloaded all but a skeleton crew, filled their larders with provisions to last till spring, and sailed out to meet each other at a spot reputed to be the best winter fishing ground on the lake. The boats were lashed together in a cozy floating village, then the crews passed the season amicably: fishing with hook and line, playing endless games of Deuces High, and getting sozzled on whatever rotgut they'd stowed in their holds.

  Thus the flotilla passed winter's short days and long nights: taking a holiday from smuggling rum and netting small-mouth bass. Gossip was shared over the card table, including critiques of the Ring of Knives — everyone loved to expound on Warwick Xavier's stupidity — but it was understood such opinions would never be repeated back home. The winter anchorage was a time apart… a season outside the real world, when you could tell your greatest secrets and know they would never come back to haunt you.

  There was one secret that never came out amidst all the drunken confessions. Most of the company believed Zunctweed and a bevy of NikNiks were the only aliens am
ong them; but Zunctweed knew differently. To Zunctweed's inhuman eyes, a captain named Josh Jode was clearly not native to Earth. Humans saw Jode as the perfect skipper: a grizzled veteran, sunburned so thoroughly from years on the lake that his skin was parched clay and his hair bleached to dirty white. But Zunctweed's alien retinas perceived far outside the spectrum visible to humans; he saw down into infrared and up to ultraviolet, at which frequencies Josh Jode bore no resemblance to Homo sapiens.

  Zunctweed had no words for the IR and UV colors that gleamed from Jode's flesh. He could only say Jode's skin must have evolved on a very different world than Earth: a world where a different atmosphere filtered different wavelengths from the light of a different sun. Zunctweed instantly recognized a fellow extraterrestrial… but he never revealed what he knew, to Jode or to anyone else.

  Zunctweed was an infuriating curmudgeon, but he wasn't stupid.

  So Jode never realized Zunctweed knew his secret — which is why Zunctweed was still among the living and why the winter anchorage passed uneventfully until five nights earlier.

  In the darkest hour before dawn — when the candles had guttered to blackness and the only lamp still burning was close to running dry… when even those who'd lost at cards were too tired to say, "One more hand, just one more"… when the men and women of the winter anchorage had returned to their own ships, and were standing on deck for one last sniff of the wind, telling themselves the thaw had finally come — the only warning was a flurry of turbulence at the center of the flotilla, a roiling and bubbling as if some trapped gas pocket on the lake-bottom had suddenly broken open. It lasted just long enough for heads to turn in its direction; then a figure in orange plastic burst from the surface, riding a plume of rocket smoke pouring from the soles of its boots.

  The armored figure shot upward, high over the gathered boats. In night's last blackness, the armor glowed: surrounded by a dim violet radiance, like the aura of a saint in a Renaissance fresco. That aura allowed watchers to follow the figure as it flew above each ship in turn — not that there were many watchers, for those with a sense of self-preservation fled below-decks as fast as they could. On the Dinghy every NikNik vanished, leaving Zunctweed alone on the forecastle; on other vessels, only those too drunk to be afraid remained gawking at the sky.

  Josh Jode was one of those who fled out of sight — not that it helped him. The armored figure flew over Jode's ship just as it had with the others… then it dropped down to land, thumping onto Jode's deck and dashing below to where Jode was hiding.

  Zunctweed couldn't say what happened in the following minute. Sounds from Jode's ship were muffled: voices speaking an unknown language… some scuffling, but not a major fight… a silence, then thuds, then more silence. All around the anchorage, those watching from their decks exchanged glances — asking each other what was going on. No one spoke; no one made any move to get involved. One drunken fisherman drew a flintlock pistol, then couldn't decide where to point it. The man kept swiveling his head, staring first at Jode's vessel, then abruptly looking back over his shoulder as if something might be sneaking up from behind. Drunk as he was, he might soon have shot himself by accident; but before that could happen, the Mind-Lord burst through the deck of Jode's ship.

  Deck planks are solid: thick lumber, nailed down securely and braced with cross-beams. Yet the Spark broke through like a cannonball, smashing up from the captain's cabin into the open, scattering hunks of wood and splinters into the rigging.

  He came out headfirst, and the impact should have killed him; armor or not, the jolt of having your cranium slammed through a wooden floor should snap your neck. But the armor was surrounded by that violet glow of unnatural fire. It had flared to blinding intensity as the Mind-Lord crashed into view — so fierce, Zunctweed thought it might have incinerated the wood in its path a millisecond before the Spark Lord hurtled upward. Like a battering ram of flame, it hit so hard and hot that it vaporized a section of decking before the armor actually made contact with the timbers.

  Whatever saved him, the Mind-Lord was still alive as he soared into black sky. He writhed like a snake with a nail through its belly, rocketing haphazardly as if his suit was out of control. Now and then, the boot-jets misfired, cutting out for a second of sputtering… and in those moments of silence, one could hear muted gagging inside the armor. The sounds of a man choking to death. Then the suit's engines would gust back to life, spewing steam into the cold night air and drowning out the strangled noises within.

  High overhead the Spark Lord flew, tracing a zigzag path. When his jets fizzled out, he would plunge toward the water; when they caught fire again, he would aim himself upward, as if height might offer salvation. No telling why he didn't head for shore… but he remained above the anchorage, glowing in the darkness, a bright purple star—

  —until he exploded.

  A sunburst of light and hot flame. Perhaps deliberate destruction; perhaps some disastrous malfunction, a tiny electrical discharge igniting the tanks that fueled the suit's rockets. Whatever the cause, it was ferocious: a ripping blast that boomed through the night, scattering orange armor in all directions. The man inside plummeted, hair on fire. A human match-stick, falling through blackness… until he smacked the surface of the water with an ear-cracking slap. The flames on his head were doused out. One nearby fisherman caught a glimpse of charred flesh and a face with its eyelids burned off; then the blackened remains sank into the lake's embrace.

  Bits of armor rained down on the ships. Zunctweed claimed he was almost brained by a falling glove — an orange plastic gauntlet that struck the Dinghy hard enough to chip the deck. The plank beneath the glove caught fire, smoke curling up between the fingers until Zunctweed grabbed a water bucket and dumped it over the blaze. (A hiss of steam. The smell of wet ash.)

  Zunctweed nudged the gauntlet with his foot. The motion dislodged a nodule of gooey white from the wrist of the glove — something that must have been clinging to the Spark Lord's hand when the armor exploded. Gingerly, Zunctweed picked up the glove and shook it; more curds plopped onto the deck. Zunctweed stared at them, then backed away. Later, he would order the NikNiks to swab the little white nuggets into the lake.

  But for now, he kept his distance and turned back to look at Jode's ship. Jode had come up on deck… if it really was Jode. To Zuncrweed's eyes, the creature returning from the captain's quarters was the same color Jode had been in the IR and UV parts of the spectrum. To everyone else, it must have looked different — a beast wearing Jode's clothing but no longer close to human.

  It was oozing and puffy, its skin resembling white sponge toffee covered in syrup. Milky fluid dripped on the deck and sloshed as the creature walked. Jode's head was a lump of wet bread dough, unmarked by hair or facial features. The hands showed no fingers now — just bulging stumps, as if all traces of human physiology had been kneaded into undifferentiated protoplasm. Slowly the creature moved to the railing; then it spoke in a gargling version of Jode's voice.

  "I should kill you all."

  The words carried eerily over the water; the only other noise came from waves lapping against boat hulls. "I should kill you all, but that goddamned Spark may have sent a mayday before he died. If reinforcements are coming, I can't waste time silencing you."

  The creature made a fierce cluttering sound. Jode's crew, a group of NikNiks purchased from Papa Kinnderboom when Jode first arrived in Dover, scurried up from below and began to weigh anchor. "Now pay attention," the monster called to the people on other boats. "Keep your fucking mouths shut, or I'll come back and kill you. Trust me on this. If you talk, you'll die. I can look like anyone — your mother, your wife, your very best friend — and you won't know it's me till your throat is slit. So not a word! To anyone!"

  The thing slapped its hand on the railing… a heavy wet sound. "Sooner or later, more Sparks will show up — asking what happened to their precious brother." Jode pointed to where the Mind-Lord's body had sunk. "Not a word, you hear me? Or you'll
regret it."

  Jode spat over the railing — a clot of maggoty white. Then the creature turned to his NikNiks and shouted more orders at them in their ratty tongue. Preparations for departure didn't take long; Jode must have kept the boat ready to leave at a moment's notice. Within minutes, the ship drew away from the anchorage, heading farther out into the lake… and in all that time, no one else uttered a word.

  Next dawn, the anchorage dispersed. Few people spoke to their neighbors; those who did, mumbled they were leaving because the thaw had finally come.

  Zunctweed traded away the gauntlet that had fallen onto his deck — the human glove didn't fit Zunctweed's alien hand. In exchange, he got the helmet. The woman who'd pulled the helmet out of her rigging was glad to get rid of it; she said it gave her the creeps because it always seemed to be watching her.

  Jode's ship ran aground on nearby Long Point two days later. No one was aboard. The bodies of three drowned NikNiks washed up on a little-used beach the following night. The rest hadn't yet been found.

  The Mind-Lord's body hadn't been found either. I doubted it would ever turn up. Fish must be ravenously hungry after a long cold winter.

  When Zunctweed had finished his tale, the rest of us said nothing for a long while. Finally, Myoko broke the silence. "Now we know why Dreamsinger came to Dover. Looking for her brother."

  Impervia sniffed disapprovingly. "If this Mind-Lord Priest disappeared five days ago, why did it take Spark Royal so long to investigate?"

  "Busy elsewhere," I said. "Nobody knows how many Lords there are at any one time, but it's probably less than a dozen… and they have to police the entire planet. A crisis or two, and there's no one left for other things. Besides, Sparks can take care of themselves; and they're given a lot of autonomy. The High Lord certainly doesn't organize a search party if one of the kids misses dinner."