‘But there’s some kind of future where you get fixed up enough to get back to Earth?’
‘Aye.’
‘Okay,’ he said, ‘let’s do it.’
The others stared at him. ‘Do what?’ asked Meg.
‘Fix her up. You heard the lady. There’s some kind of future down the line where she gets back to Earth, which means there’s some kind of future where she can get moving again, so let’s do it, let’s fix her up!’
Meg snapped. ‘You’d believe anything. You believe 16th century nuns get turned into starships, you believe people can see into the future, you believe you can just walk in and fix up a space ship like you’d mend a motor cycle!’
‘Motor cycles can be very hard to fix. You ever stripped the gears on a motor bike? You know what that involves?’
‘I give up.’
‘Well I don’t. We’re sitting here 43 or whatever light years from Earth and Harold seems to think that’s a very long way, all right? So the sooner we get started, the sooner we get home.’
Meg got off her couch and walked over to Zachary, furious with him. ‘You don’t know how it works. You’re talking learning a whole new technology to fix this whatever it is. Like a caveman trying to fix a BMW.’
‘It had to be BMW with you, didn’t it? I mean not a Ford, or a Chevvy or a Mazda. A BMW.’
‘A name, taken at random. What I’m saying is you don’t know the problems.’
‘Exactly. Not knowing the problems, that’s my edge. People who know the problems never start. We’ve got Guinevere to help us. She knows what makes the whole thing work. She knows what’s wrong, she knows how we can help fix it.’
Harold was looking at the main screen. It was where they had seen her face and it seemed natural to speak to it. ‘Is that right, Guinevere? You know how we can help mend you?’
‘Aye.’
‘And if we mend you, you’ll take us home?’
‘If I do so, I am outlawed.’
‘What are you supposed to do, just sit here and obey all the rules and regulations and die?’ Zachary’s loathing of authority echoed in his voice.
‘Transmit a message pod, and wait for rescue.’
Harold addressed the screen again. ‘We have to trade, Guinevere. If we help heal you, you have to get us home.’
‘No!’ Zoe rolled off the couch and onto her feet. ‘No, dammit, we don’t have to trade!’
Harold stared at her. ‘Zoe, I’ve played hundreds of hours of war games and strategy games and fantasy role playing games and believe me, at this point you have to trade.’
Zoe bunched her fists. ‘You want a punch in the face?’
‘That doesn’t answer the point I’m trying to make.’
‘It will in a minute if you don’t shut up, Harold.’ Zoe turned to face the others, her eyes bright with angry tears. ‘Guinevere is hurt, she is human, and therefore we try to help her. You got me? Because it’s the right thing to do and if we don’t do it, we’re less than human. And I don’t care if any of you want to help me or not, because I’m available, Guinevere, you understand?’
‘I thank thee, Zoe. I thank thee.’
There was a long silence.
‘Well I guess there’s nothing else to do to fill in the time,’ Zachary said.
‘Agreed. I’m in,’ said Meg.
‘You people don’t know the first thing about negotiation,’ said Harold, and paused. ‘But okay. I mean at least I’ll be learning how a starship works. I never got a chance to take apart anything this size before.’
The replay of the space battle faded from the screen and Guinevere appeared. ‘I shall take ye home. I would see my home world again, see grass, smell flowers, feel the air. There, Harold, thy bargain is complete. Help heal me, and indeed I’ll take thee home.’
Harold had gotten his own way. He could not understand why he felt so bad about it.
16: FIRST AID
It was a strange way of going about things. If each of them had had to predict how you went about mending a damaged starship, each would have seen the job in terms of welding metal and soldering electronic connections.
But it turned out to be much more like surgery than engineering.
Parts of the ship had been blasted away entirely, and were simply sealed off. As to the rest, there was damage to Guinevere which had to be repaired.
Within the walls of the starship was a densely packed crystalline substance which was an extension of Guinevere’s brain. Within the substance, she established what she called “lines of force” which amplified both her normal mental powers, and her special talents of prescience and telepathy.
‘A starship reaches forward to journey’s end,’ she told them, ‘and then Leaps her ship to that place through Time.’ It seemed that she did it at the level of instinct. She made the Leap in the way that a footballer might leap for a ball, or a dancer might leap into the arms of a partner. The footballer does not consciously compute the speed of the ball, the air resistance, the curve of the path it is travelling along, and then make a conscious calculation of how far and fast he must leap. Nor does the dancer when she leaps to her partner’s arms. The body of each “knows” where the ball or the partner is going to be. It is a combination of talent and practice. In the case of, say, a racing car driver or a musician using an electric guitar, it is talent and practice amplified by mechanical means.
And thus it was with Guinevere. Talent, practice, and the amplification of her talent by the entire structure of the starship was what allowed her to avoid the constraints of Einstein’s physics, and travel across the Galaxy without exceeding the speed of light.
‘Time’s a river through the dry land of space,’ she explained to Harold. ‘We leave dry land, and travel along the river, never touching land again till journey’s end.’
All four of them were scattered about the starship, repairing her. She had shown them where the Slarn weapons were kept, and had explained their use. The stubby flanged staffs were more than weapons, they were multi-purpose tools as well.
They could be used to provide light, weld metal, and move objects with a kind of tractor beam. The same tractor beam could be used like a vise to keep objects in place while working on them with another Slarnstaff, as the new crew of the Guinevere very quickly decided to call them as they used their Slarnstaffs to cut and weld together torn areas of the crystalline substance within Guinevere’s walls.
At first they were disconcerted to find that they were actually cutting and welding what amounted to parts of Guinevere’s brain and central nervous system, but she urged them on. ‘Cut and join, lest we all die,’ she said, and explained that, in a meditation state, her mind would feel the cutting and welding, but not interpret it as pain. She could place herself beyond pain for the time it would take.
They worked around the clock. The Slarn could come back at any time, and if they did, their work would be in vain. They lived on ship’s food, hard biscuits which were a green-brown color, and a sort of thick blue gruel which they squeezed from flexible bottles.
And the Wyzen “helped”. If the Wyzen had not been quite so lovable, her “help” would have driven them crazy. They would put down a tool, and look up a moment later to find it gone, being rolled along the floor and pounced on by the Wyzen, who was sure in what passed for her mind that her claim to the tool was as valid as their own.
Three days later, four exhausted people were together again on the bridge, chewing on khaki biscuits, sucking on bottles of blue gruel. Schematic diagrams of the internal workings of the starship were scrolling across the screens.
‘The rest of you need a shower,’ Meg said.
‘I think maybe all of us need a shower, Meg,’ Zachary said.
‘Eat up your nice yuk, Harold,’ Zoe said, and stroked the Wyzen under the chin. The Wyzen put her head back and purred.
‘I love this stuff,’ said Harold, finishing his blue gruel and tossing the empty bottle over his shoulder. ‘It’d make great hacking
food, you could program forever without having to stop for meals.’
Zoe made a face. ‘Boys’ll eat anything.’
‘Pick up the bottle,’ said Meg, and glared at Harold until he complied.
The diagrams kept scrolling through on the screens. Suddenly they stopped, vanished, and again the stars could be seen.
‘Well?’ Harold was back on his couch after picking up the bottle.
‘There are no gaps left in the Web of Force,’ Guinevere told them. ‘My body is whole again, but very weak withal.’
‘Can you do it, or not?’ Zachary asked her.
‘There are tales of ships who entered wounded on the river of Time and came not out again. Mayhap, this time, being weak…’
‘Please don’t scare us,’ Meg said. The known she could deal with. The unknown was a different matter.
‘Nay, Meg, good Brother Death is not to be feared.’
‘Not by machines.’
Suddenly the screens went dead and there was silence.
‘You there Guinevere?’ Harold asked.
The silence continued.
‘Guinevere, please?’ Zoe said.
‘Tell cranky Meg that I am Guinevere, maid, starship, human soul. No engine or machine.’
‘I, ah … I guess you wouldn’t like to try an apology on for size would you Miss High and Mighty Henderson?’ Zachary, like all of them, had not had enough sleep in the past three days and was feeling scratchy.
‘I’m sorry. If the rules of the game are that it’s human, then of course it’s human. I do beg its pardon.’
There was laughter on the bridge, silvery, rippling laughter. It was the starship. ‘I accept thy words. But not thy vinegar look. Staying we die. Going we may live. To your couches all. Let us try the River of Time, and see if we may win through.’
The damaged starship was moving against the stars.
Slowly at first, and then accelerating.
On the bridge, Guinevere’s voice began singing. ‘Art thou going to Scarborough Fair? Parsley sage rosemary and thyme…’
And Zachary’s voice came in. ‘Remember me to one who lives there…’ And between the lines, he said ‘See, kid? The song’s still around.’
There was laughter in Guinevere’s voice now, as they sang in harmony. ‘She was once a true love of mine.’
The ship was moving. The stars were streaming past her.
‘Tell her to make me a cambric shirt,
‘Parsley sage rosemary and thyme.
‘Without any seam or needlework,
‘She was once a true love of mine.
‘Tell her to wash it in yonder well,
‘Parsley sage rosemary and thyme.
‘Where never spring water nor rain ever fell.
‘She was once a true love of mine.’
All was blurring. Their voices seemed to stretch together.
‘Tell her to dry it on yonder thorn,
‘Parsley sage rosemary and thyme.
‘Where never was blossom since Adam was born
‘She was once a…’
There was pounding in their temples, a flash of light in their eyes, and their stomachs felt as if they were falling down an elevator shaft.
The alien constellations blazed out.
But there was no starship there.
Guinevere had moved with her crew into the River of Time, had vanished as if she had never been there at all.
17: LEAP INTO SILENCE
It seemed to last longer this time. It seemed to stretch forever. The pounding in their temples drowned out everything except a far sound which they each, finally, in the agony of the Leap, realized was the blending of their five voices screaming.
For the ship herself screamed. It had never been like this. In her strength she had leapt through space and time, light as swansdown, soared like a skylark, sung her way through the folds and interstices of Time, swum like a dolphin in its river and leapt clear into blazing starlight once more. This time was like walking on old slow feet across redhot coals.
She was with them, her people, with them on the screen, and the screen showed the agony that tore at her mind. She saw the faces of her people stretch and contort as they howled in agony and then…
They were out. It was finished.
They lay sobbing on their couches, their faces pale as morning ashes. They tried to find breath, and then gave up the attempt. They lay panting.
The Wyzen was concerned for them. The Wyzen was not touched by the Leap in the way humans were, perhaps because her brain was small, and specialized for empathy and for the sensory perceptions that her kind used in hunting for fruit in the forests of their native planet.
The Wyzen lived to eat and to empathize with the emotions of sentient beings. The Leap itself did not touch her, but the pain of the people on the starship did. Now she sat alongside Zoe, licking her face, trying to bring her back to full consciousness.
‘Thank you Wyzen, that’ll be fine now,’ Zoe moaned, gently pushing the Wyzen away.
The Wyzen hopped down and moved to Zachary and pushed her whiskery face lovingly into his. ‘This is no time to get amorous, Meg, the kids are watching,’ Zachary said.
‘You’ll keep,’ moaned Meg.
‘Never have I had such a crossing as that. Yon Leap hath damaged me full sore.’
Zachary had never felt this bad. There was one morning after a night in a pearling lugger between Australia and New Guinea, a night which had involved a near-lethal mixture of overproof rum and kava, but even that had not been this bad. ‘At least we’re not dead,’ he said. ‘Dead must feel a whole lot better than this.’
Then Harold sat up. ‘Hey, that wasn’t so bad,’ he said. ‘Bit of a headache, felt a little nauseous there for a while, but not bad. That flash of light, Guinevere, I’ve had that each time, is that standard for the experience?’
Zachary lifted his head from the couch and looked at Harold through eyes which felt the size and consistency of softly-poached eggs in which the yolks had broken. ‘Kill him, Guinevere. Hit him with a ray gun or something.’
Zoe was now standing and stretching. ‘Wow, that wasn’t too good for a while,’ she said, ‘and then, I don’t know, it was kind of fun.’
Meg remarked, in a subdued shriek, the sort of shriek with which a werewolf of gentle breeding might welcome the rising of the full moon, ‘Why are they not suffering! I want them to suffer!’
Zoe looked concerned. ‘Are you two still feeling a little off-color?’
‘Their flesh is younger,’ Guinevere explained to Meg. ‘More sound than yours.’
Meg fell back on her couch. ‘That’s all I needed to hear. When I die, put me out the airlock before I rot, okay?’ She turned over on her couch and buried her head her arms. The Wyzen, realizing that here was a sentient creature in need of comfort, trotted over to her and licked her ear, which was the only part of her face exposed. Meg jerked upright. ‘And get that filthy animal away from me!’
The Wyzen retreated from the sentient being who had so rapidly turned into a dangerous beast of prey. The way it was looking at her reminded her of the omnivorous Kreklins which hunted Wyzens in the forests of her native planet. She retreated behind Zoe, getting the nice feral human between her and the one who was like a Kreklin.
Harold was now at the central console, looking up at Guinevere on the main screen. ‘Where are we, Guinevere?’ Her face disappeared, and the screen revealed a view of the Earth from space.
‘Is that our Earth?’ asked Zoe.
‘Of course it’s our Earth, don’t you ever see the satellite pictures on television?’
‘So maybe there are look-alikes.’
‘Look-alikes with continents shaped like Africa?’ It was sometimes hard for Harold to credit the degrees of ignorance other people displayed. ‘Could you search the radio and television transmissions for me, Guinevere?’
Zachary crept over and collapsed on another couch near Harold’s. ‘What you doing, kid?’
/> ‘I want to find out what’s going on. Whether the Slarn raid was just local to South Australia.’
‘That was a pretty big fleet we saw up there when Guinevere was screening war movies.’
‘We just need to get as much information as we…’
‘Nothing is being broadcast,’ Guinevere said. ‘No transmissions.’
‘Maybe the Slarn just took all the satellites out. You remember? The morning of the attack? The weather and communications satellites were out?’ Harold said hopefully.
Zachary shook his head. ‘There’d still be radio. Guinevere, could we take a closer look?’ The Earth grew larger in the screen. ‘Closer.’
‘You won’t see much from space. The only human artifact that can be seen from space is the Great Wall of China.’
‘Wrong, Harold. We should be seeing contrails. Condensation trails from jet aircraft.’
‘I happen to know what contrails are.’
‘And we’re not seeing them. There are no planes flying.’
Harold now looked at Zachary with barely concealed surprise. ‘That was, uh … that was very intelligent of you, Zachary.’
‘Why thank you, Harold.’
‘I mean, nothing personal, but I just didn’t think a bus driver…’
Zachary looked hard at Harold and Harold shut up. He seemed to get that look a lot from adults and it always meant he was just about to get shouted at. He had learned a lot of very interesting words in this way.
‘Why don’t you dig yourself in a little deeper, Harold,’ Zoe said sweetly, but Zachary was now looking at the screen again. ‘Guinevere,’ he said, ‘how many people were the Slarn actually intending to take?’
‘All.’
‘All the people? All the people on Earth?’ Zachary could not remember how many people there were on Earth, but he seemed to remember a television documentary he had once switched away from to the football, and it had said about seven billion. ‘That’s a lot of people!’
‘The Slarn used every ship in the fleet.’
‘There’s no one down there? No one at all?’
‘Two in every hundred, left for to breed.’ Guinevere paused and added, ‘‘twas a slaving raid. Did’st thou not know this?’
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