by K. T. Hunter
Despite himself, he searched for those familiar faces that he knew were no longer there. Cervantes had always been there, close by, and Christophe could sense the hole that he left behind. His eyes then settled on a face that was new to the crowd.
Maggie, in an attempt to appear less menacing, had piled herself into the floor next to Gemma's seat on the front row. The young lady held the end of one of Maggie's limbs in one hand upon her lap as she sipped a steaming cup of tea. The knot in his middle relaxed as he rested his gaze on the two ladies. Several of Maggie's other limbs twitched the way they did when she had the itch to knit but couldn't get to her needles. Expressions in miniature crossed Gemma's face, from a half-smile to a rise of the eyebrows. Christophe fought to suppress a grin of his own as he recognized the hallmarks of an internal conversation with Maggie.
Suddenly he was very glad that Gemma was most definitely not his sister.
The remainder of the Cohort occupied the rest of the table, in a rare show of solidarity. Dr. Hansard sat with them in Pugh's place, as he was still resting in his cabin. The medical officer chewed the end of his unlit pipe with vigour as he kept an eye on everyone else. Father Alfieri was there as well, beaming at Maggie. His sermon on love was about to be put to the test.
There was a glaring no-man's-land of empty tables between the Cohort and the rest of the crew. The back walls were lined with people that had chosen to stand instead of sit near that particular table. Mutterings of "Martians" and "secrets" and "ghosts" slinked through their conversations like serpents in tall grass; murmurs with an edge of alarm had supplanted the old whispers about treasure.
Maggie's voice slipped into his head. "Are you certain they are ready for this? I am not sure I am."
"They are my crew, Maggie," he thought back at her. "I trust them. All will be well."
Christophe cleared his throat and waited for the silence, which took longer than usual to settle over the group. He nodded to the waiting Mr. Pritchard, who bellowed at them to come to attention.
The reaction was immediate, sharp, and crisp as the entire hall -- even the Cohort, which didn't have to -- stood at attention. Long discipline could still tamp down fear, even if only for a short time. He let them stand in silence for a moment, partly to gather his own strength and partly for them to get used to the idea of sharing space with Maggie.
At long last, when the shuffling and scraping and inevitable coughs had died out, leaving only silence behind, he said, "Be seated."
He took a deep breath and unfurled his thoughts before them. "The last few days have seasoned us a bit. We are becoming true spacefarers! There are always storms ahead when one sets sail. This was one of ours. The explorers of old often faced such terrors and lost crew on their way. We have not been spared that fate.
"Every crew, no matter the sea, suffers loss along the way. One hopes that at the very least, it will be a terror from without, and not one from within. We did not escape that fate, either. We have left our home behind us, but not ourselves. We packed our imperfections and carried them with us like luggage that refuses to remain behind. At the same time, we have also brought our courage, our fortitude, and our perseverance, as all of you demonstrated during these many anxious hours. I congratulate you. I thank you. Because you give me hope. Hope that another virtue -- curiosity -- will prevail as we face our next adventure on this odyssey. Some of you are already very familiar with a certain member of our crew. Others of you only met her the other day as she assisted our Mr. Pritchard on the Oberth deck. The rest of you only know her via rumour. And that we are about to remedy.
"It is my pleasure to introduce you to a very important member of the Scientific Cohort: Maggie. Many of you have already called her 'the ship's ghost'. Crew of the Fury, this is Maggie. Maggie, meet the crew."
He had hoped that she would say something, but she simply hunkered down next to Gemma, trying and failing to make herself smaller. He had never known her to be so shy, but then again this was her first time in such a crowd.
"What does it... eat?" asked one of Dr. Hansard's orderlies.
"She, not it. Like her progenitors, she subsists on blood." He had to shout over the worried murmurs that rolled through the crowd in a swift current. "But not human blood. Honestly, she doesn't like the taste. She lives off the animals on the stable deck. We store their blood for her during normal slaughter operations. They are not just our food supply. They are hers."
One of the wireless operators stood up. "But... wasn't she part of the Invasion? She seems... friendly enough, I s'pose... but ain't this fraternizin' with the enemy?"
"No. She is a loyal Terran, just like you, even if she is not human. Maggie did not take part in the Invasion. In fact, she was born just as the war ended. Her progenitor died in the process. She is as much an Orphan of the Invasion as many of you are. She has never harmed anyone."
"But what about Rathbone?" the operator asked.
"She was defending Miss Llewellyn at the time. If Rathbone had never attacked her, he would have been safe as houses. I am certain any of you would have done the same if you had been there. She will not harm you, but she will defend herself and anyone else in harm's way. She will defend this ship. Many of you bore witness to how she assisted Mr. Pritchard in finishing his work to bring the power back online.
"She has been an excellent friend to Dr. Pugh and myself these many years. My hope is that she will make many more friends among you. And, even if you choose not to associate with her outside of your duties -- as is your right -- I expect all of you to show her the same courtesy that you would show Dr. Pugh. Her name is Maggie, and you will refer to her as such. Not 'the Martian'. Not 'Tentacle-Head'. Not 'It'."
Frau Knopf stood and turned to the crowd with a stern face. "And if I hear of any one saying bad things about my Maggie, well, then, no bacon for you!"
Christophe swallowed a chuckle at the sudden sharp intakes of breath. Frau Knopf did not threaten. She never simply threatened. He could feel the crew wrestling with the promise of a baconless existence versus their fear of the unknown. Would the bacon win?
Mr. Pritchard stood up with a smile. "I've had the pleasure of meetin' Miss Maggie up close and personal. Does the lady have a surname, or is it just Maggie?"
"Just Maggie," Christophe replied, grateful for the levity in the man's manner. "We tried to call her Professor Maggie once upon a time, but she wasn't very keen."
"How does she communicate?" Mr. Holomek, one of the midshipmen, asked. "Does she speak the King's?"
"She can hear you if you speak normally. She understands German and a smattering of French as well. As for her speech... Maggie, say hello to the crew."
"Um... hello," said Maggie's nervous voice in his head.
A shiver ran through the crowd as they touched their ears and heads, and twitters of "did you hear that" floated towards the ceiling.
It always astounded Christophe that anyone would find this unusual. Her voice had always been with him, since before he knew what a voice was. Before he had understood her words, he had understood how she felt. She was comfort; she was home. It was difficult for him to comprehend how some people had never had such love. He had never been an Orphan. He had always had her.
He glanced at Gemma, and he felt sorrow for anyone who had not had that gentle benevolent presence since childhood. The tentacle intertwined with Gemma's tapered fingers made him happy. At least, Gemma was starting to feel such a steady presence now, even if it was Maggie's and not his.
"She does not have human vocal cords," he assured them. "Instead, she can speak directly into your mind. It may feel strange at first, but you will grow used to it."
Yeoman McLure jumped up onto her seat and added, "It's just like in them scientific romances, lads! We're living in one!"
One of the remaining engineer's mates got to his feet. "That's all well and good. So long as she keeps to her knittin' and we keep to ours, I reckon we'll get on just fine. I'm more concerned with Mr. Nesbitt and the ot
hers what Mr. Wallace killed."
"Yeah," shouted another one, "what about Wallace? He's more dangerous than she is. He's the one what killed somebody. We gonna space him?"
Christophe held his hands up in a reassuring gesture. "Our fallen comrades will be remembered in a memorial service tomorrow evening. Maggie will be present. She is free to attend any shipwide events she wishes, like the rest of us. As for Wallace, I think enough blood has been spilt on this voyage as it is. We will keep him under lock and key until we return to Earth. He will be tried by an appropriate court and jury, and they will determine his fate."
"But what if there ain't no court?" someone else asked. "We've had no communication with the Admiralty. What if the TIA ain't there when we get back? What do we do then? What do we do now? Should we even go to Mars?"
"All very good questions. It is true that the Admiralty is in an uncertain state. We have attempted to send messages to Admiral Thorvaldson and have yet to receive an answer. What news we have been able to get says that the very Treaty that created the TIA is in danger of being dissolved."
He allowed that to sink in, but before the full impact of it stole their attention, he continued. "For the moment, we have to answer for ourselves. No matter what is going on back home, no matter what individual factions may be at war, one thing has not changed: we still have a mission. We are too far away to make any difference back there, except for the fact that we can investigate this danger. So, we will do our job, with or without the Admiralty or the TIA or whomever replaces them. We are one crew. We are for Earth! Terra vigila!"
A tepid war cry rippled through the crowd and faded out.
"Listen to me," he continued. He didn't have them. Not yet. "We are drawn from many nations, many backgrounds, many religions, and races. Even different species!" He gestured at Maggie, who trilled back at him. "But we all have one thing in common: we all want to protect Earth! Are you with me?"
"Terra Vigila!" Louder this time.
"Will you stand with me?"
And they shouted back in throaty unison, so loud that the walls shook:
"Terra Vigila!"
~~~~
Gemma
"Blimey, this is taking a bleeding eternity," Caroline said.
Seated at the desk in Gemma's stateroom, she typed away on the portable card machine. She had propped Rathbone's The Riddle of the Sands -- nicked from the parlour, as Gemma had suspected -- upon the desk, on top of Gemma's copy of Lyell.
"It will be worth it in the end," Gemma said from her bed, where she nursed her bruises and nibbled on pastries from the tray brought to them by Frau Knopf.
Dr. Hansard had shooed them out of his office, for he wanted to neaten up the disaster that the gravity outage had made sick bay. Fortunately, most of the poisons and medicines had been locked down, or they would truly have had a mess on their hands.
Gemma glanced over the first decoded messages again. There were so many of them, both coming and going. Wallace had kept the wireless very busy, indeed. They had decoded the last message first, and Gemma read over it again with great satisfaction. The other ship, the Orestes, had encountered engine trouble not far into their own voyage. As of their last message, they were currently in orbit around the moon and were desperately trying to repair their radio wave generator.
"Poor blighters!" Caroline had said. "I'm sure they're just following orders. I hope they have their solar flare shielding in place."
The other captain, a certain Andrew Straker, had recommended that Wallace hold off on his actions until they signaled that they were able to continue. Judging from the timestamp, the message had arrived just as Wallace was picking up his axe.
The pity of it was, if he had only received the message earlier, Nesbitt and his men might still be alive. She wrestled with the thought. It had been his choice to kill them; he could not excuse himself with an accident of timing. Gemma still found it difficult to excuse herself for Mr. Chapman's death, self-defence notwithstanding, now that she knew who he was.
Wallace had told the truth. There were no messages after that one, and no way to determine where the other ship was now without contacting them directly. Christophe had taken the reprieve in stride. Having shared more than one round of lager with Straker at the Badger and Tentacle in the past, he'd said, he was not eager to meet him again without the beneficial company of a nearby keg.
Christophe's next orders were rather creative, even by Brightman's standards. He had asked Gemma to encode a message to Straker from Wallace saying that he had, indeed, delayed his action and asking that they reply as soon as they were able. He then asked Humboldt -- whom he had transferred to the Wireless section for the time being -- to devise a method to track their position using their wireless signal in case they ever answered.
In the meantime, Humboldt had surmised, they could at least guess the other ship's position using the difference between the send and receive timestamps of the messages, if they bothered to reply. Humboldt was happy to have a question to keep him busy whilst he recovered from his own injuries. Boredom terrified the man.
A rattling of her wardrobe caught her attention. Caroline jumped at the sudden noise.
"Oh, it's just Maggie," Gemma said as the door opened and revealed a waving tentacle. "So that's how you've been getting into my room all this time! Why aren't you using the hallway now?"
"Everyone may know about me, Gemma," came Maggie's mental reply, "but not everyone is quite as accustomed to my cheerful face as you are. I would prefer to ease them into it."
She rolled her bulk out of the cabinet and onto the floor.
"Oh, hallo, Maggie," Caroline said.
"Caroline," Maggie replied with a strong blink of her eyes, her version of a nod. "How goes the decoding, ladies?"
Gemma wondered what voice Caroline heard in her head when Maggie spoke. Was it Jennie's voice she heard, as Gemma did? Or was it a completely different voice? Caroline pushed back her chair and stood for a good stretch and yawn.
"I'm punching the cards to get the book itself into the A.E.," she said as she pointed to the text on the desk. "Then I'll write some code that'll take the message from their cards and just print out the plaintext for us. Having to include the metadata, the page numbers and such, is a bit of a bother. It's going to take a while to get it all in, but I'm hoping that once it is done, it'll be faster than decoding them by hand."
"A book cipher? Oh, I love those! Which book?"
Maggie picked up the volume with a delicate flourish and held it up to one eye. She curled the end of one limb beneath it and flipped through the pages at an astonishing rate with yet another. She chuckled as she went.
"How charming!" she said. "What a darling little spy story."
"You can read that fast?"
"Of course."
Gemma tapped her chin, pondering possibilities. "Maggie, do you remember everything you read?"
"You mean, do I store it in my redundant memory?"
"Yes. Could you, say, remember what is on a given page, given line, given position?"
"If I read it with that kind of recall in mind, yes. I don't record everything automatically. It has to be deliberate."
"I wonder if you might do another favour for me. Would you read it again, store it that way, then read this message?" She held up a still-encoded message. "Decode it?"
Maggie flipped back to the front of the book and read it again. She then plucked the paper from Gemma's hand with a free limb and held it up to her other eye.
"Oh, Wallace has been a busy fellow," she observed as the blue orb tracked back and forth across the page. "And a bit naughty, I must say."
"Can you write it down for us?" asked Gemma.
"Or just type it up on the reader here?" asked Caroline.
"Certainly."
"Lovely!" Caroline exclaimed. "That'll save me a lot of drudgery. You're even better than an engine, Maggie!"
That comment, like a dart, shot into Gemma's mind and lodged in her grey matte
r as soon as the Boolean uttered it. It echoed some other thoughts that Gemma had had over time. The ideas tumbled over and over in her head... engines and code, code and engines...
"Speaking of code," Maggie said, "I have something else for you. The answer to your question."
"Question?" asked Caroline. "What question?"
Gemma held her breath. Her torso screamed at her, but she held it anyway. She did not know what answer to hope for.
"Yes. She is."
Gemma blew out the held gasp of air. Tears spilled down her face, both in relief at finally knowing and in dread at having to share the news.
"I... I don't get it," Caroline said. "What's wrong, Gemma? What question?"
Gemma patted an empty spot on the bed. "Come, sit here. I have some news for you. About Jennie."
"Jennie?"
"Shouldn't we tell Elias first?" asked Maggie.
"No, no, I want to know now. Oh, don't tease me!"
"I will go to him, then, and tell him now," replied Maggie. She placed the books and papers back on the desk and opened the cabinet door once more. "I will return later to finish our work. This will be easier if it comes from me. In person. And if he's already lying down."
In the orrery, the planets were silent, frozen in place since Rathbone's attack. There had been no time since then for repairs. Nigel stood at the rail in his dungarees and stared at the miniature Fury stalled in mid-air. The actual ship had never stopped moving, but its tiny twin was immobile. Instead of a kinetic sculpture, the orrery was now a tableau, stuck for a moment in time, like a painting, frozen in a splash of emerald, azure, and shades of crimson.
Nigel cradled a gigantic wrench against him. He looked weary, like a farmer surveying ice-squashed fields that had been in full bloom the day before. He would not look at Gemma. Maggie, sensitive to his feelings, was absent, leaving the task of revelation to others. Gemma had thought it would be happy news for the Boolean, that his child had a grandfather, one with as generous a heart as Dr. Pugh's.