Starship Home

by Morphett, Tony

  Outside, Ulf was taking charge. To Zoe, he said, ‘To the village. Tell them we need milk to save the Don’s life. They should help us because no milk will mean no Don will mean no village, no villagers, just ashes and a mass grave. Tell them Ulf says so and they know Ulf keeps his word.’ As Zoe ran off he turned to Rocky. ‘To the castle. I want every Troll warrior here carrying water, and I want them here ten minutes ago.’

  Rocky was horrified at the message he was supposed to deliver. ‘But Trolls don’t carry water.’

  ‘Ulf is about to start carrying water for the first time in his life. Tell them that. But first tell them that anyone who finds that funny will have no ears to laugh with.’

  No ears to laugh with, thought Rocky as he ran off.

  Ulf turned to the others. ‘Now we carry water.’ He looked at Zachary. ‘Will you find that funny?’ Zachary answered by putting his hands over his ears, and they set to.

  In his cell on the starship Charles de Josselin, Marlowe lay on the interrogation couch, and the marine officer was talking to him. ‘We’ve sent for a Confederacy Senator. When he arrives, we’ll formally bestow citizenship of the Confederacy upon you. You’ll be coming home.’

  ‘Good,’ Marlowe said, poker-faced.

  ‘Now where’s the missing starship?’

  ‘I’ll tell you when I’m a citizen.’

  The marine officer leaned in close to Marlowe. ‘I can tell from your old scars that you’ve had some pain in your life. I’m here to tell you that you don’t yet know what pain is.’ Marlowe did not answer, but took a deep breath, and then another. ‘There are two ways of doing this, Marlowe, the marine way and the hard way. If you choose the hard way I promise you that quite soon you’ll be crying for your mother and begging to die.’ Marlowe’s breathing was now slowing. ‘I’m going to have this information anyway, so you can either give it to me, or I’ll extract it.’

  Marlowe spoke, and his voice was distant, fading, remote. ‘I can hear your words, I will feel the sensations, but I shall not feel them as pain. You will never have your information until I am guaranteed homecoming.’

  The officer turned in a fury. ‘Starship! What’s this barbarian savage doing?’ He looked at the telltales on the interrogation couch. ‘Nothing on the telltales, so sensation registered, what’s the gritzy doing to himself!’

  Charles de Josselin manifested. ‘Some of these people have a certain technique. Yogic trance, it is called. In the Anthropological survey cube you’ll find it under Level 73 of tower 86472.’

  Marlowe smiled, and his voice was still far away. ‘My father wrote that cube,’ he said.

  The officer ignored him and directed his question to Charles. ‘Can I interrogate?’

  ‘He will not find pain persuasive. He has some of the more interesting talents. He could have made a starship of the first order.’

  The officer turned back to Marlowe. ‘All right. I’ll send for the Confederacy Senator.’

  From far away, Marlowe’s voice said, ‘I thought you already had.’

  Caught in his lie, the officer’s answer was a bare shrug. ‘It’ll take two days. And by the Eternal Abyss, when he arrives you had better start telling the truth.’

  A pride of lions, lying lazily in the sunshine, casually watched as on the further side of the waterhole, Zachary, Meg, Harold, Marine, Father John, Ulf and the Troll warrior scooped up two buckets of water each and then headed back toward the starship.

  In the forest village, cows and sheep and goats made protest in their different ways as Maze supervised forest people milking them. Already villagers led by Zoe were heading off toward the starship with brimming buckets of milk.

  And on the bridge of the starship, the lights were dim. The telltale lights on the medipod flickered, and within the medipod the Don lay on the balance point between life and death, his face waxen, his breathing labored.

  One screen showed Zoe leading the milk party from the village across the clearing and into the starship, and then she guided them through the ship’s corridors to the feeding chamber. She poured her buckets into the feeding pit, and the village people, awed by their strange surroundings, did likewise, and then it was back toward the hatchway, passing the water party on their way in. Buckets of water followed the buckets of milk into the feeding pit, and now the party of Troll warriors from Trollcastle were riding into the clearing, each with two buckets. They dismounted, waiting for orders and when Ulf re-emerged from the starship, he led them off toward the waterhole, freeing up Harold, Meg, Zachary and Marine to check on the Don’s condition. But when they entered the bridge, they found the situation changed: the screens were now either blank or had slowly pulsating color on them. Meg turned to Marine in fear. ‘Is the Don all right?’ she asked and Marine checked the telltales on the medipod and then nodded. ‘The medipod’s working off her autonomic system. The same system that keeps us breathing when we’re asleep.’

  Then Guinevere cried out in panic, and the screens were suddenly filled with licking flames and nightmare images of demons and scenes of Hell from Books of Hours and then the face of the burning witch from her last dream was screaming silently, while all the while Guinevere was uttering a panic-stricken whimpering.

  ‘Guinevere!’ Zachary shouted, ‘wake up, it’s only a dream, wake up!’ and Guinevere woke, panting with panic, her breathing slowing as she recognized her surroundings.

  ‘Pardon, pardon,’ she gasped. ‘Forgive me, forgive me, for I dreamt, oh such a dream as might fright the angels!’

  ‘Is it the water?’ Harold asked.

  ‘It doth leach the poisons from my frail body,’ Guinevere replied, ‘but ‘tis needful, and good, so good.’

  Harold moved to the self-destruct clock, checked it, closed his eyes and then checked it again. ‘She’s been using up energy like it’s going out of fashion,’ he exclaimed. ‘The countdown’s saying only four days left! It’s moved two days in just a few hours!’

  ‘More water,’ Guinevere moaned, ‘my only chance is more water.’

  They hurried out of there.

  And now it became a scene of urgent, frenzied activity as the bucket parties went to and fro between starship and waterhole and village, and Charles de Josselin manifested in the feeding chamber, watching, urging them on. ‘How is she?’ Meg asked him, ‘is she dying?’ ‘Just keep the water coming,’ Charles replied, and again Meg asked, in tones of anger this time, wanting the answer direct, ‘Is she dying!’ and Charles shrugged, and answered, ‘Even starships die,’ and on his face was written a terrible pain at the thought.

  In the village, old Helena, ancient as a tree, sat on her chair of office on the verandah of her house, and watched the milking, and beckoned Maze and Zoe to her. ‘Tell me why we do this?’ she asked.

  ‘To save the Don,’ Maze answered. ‘If he dies the village dies with him.’ And then she paused, as if listening. ‘You say in your head that’s part of the answer only.’

  Zoe broke in. ‘We do this because of Guinevere. Who was once a woman like us.’

  Helena looked at her and then at Maze. ‘We three here, and the iron castle, all women?’

  ‘Yes,’ Zoe said, ‘she’s human, dying, and needs our help.’

  ‘Then continue,’ said Helena. ‘Get on with it.’

  When Zoe and Maze reached the feeding chamber again with their band of foresters and their buckets of milk, and had poured them into the feeding pit, Charles de Josselin manifested. ‘Enough,’ he said, ‘she now has enough.’

  Maze looked at him, and through him, hard. ‘You a picturemovie man? Like Giniveer?’

  ‘Yes, little one, like Giniveer,’ he replied with a courtly bow, looking at her with a keen interest which then turned to a mixture of alarm and admiration. ‘You are one of us, aren’t you?’

  ‘Get out of my head,’ she said, ‘or I get in yours!’

  He laughed, and then looked serious. ‘The Slarn must not have you,’ he said, ‘or you will be a starship like me and Giniveer
. Do you understand that? Don’t let them take you.’ And then suddenly his mind was elsewhere, and he said, ‘Quickly! To the bridge!’

  When they got to the bridge, Charles was already there looking at the telltales on the medipod, and they saw that the main screens were full of slowly moving dark shapes, like unbreaking waves in a night sea. ‘The warrior in here,’ Charles said, indicating the Don in the medipod, ‘he must be moved.’ Meg stepped over to the medipod and stood before it, protectively. ‘He was poisoned,’ she said, ‘he’s ill.’

  ‘The poison has been removed from his blood,’ Charles said, ‘and if we take him out now he’ll be weak but can survive. But if he is in there when Guinevere dies, he will come out mad or dead.’

  Unbidden, Marine moved to the control panel, pressed some buttons, and the medipod slid out and as it did so, the Don awakened. He took in his surroundings, and then as they helped him to an acceleration couch, he asked, ‘And my brother?’

  ‘Dead from the same poisoned blade he used on you,’ Meg replied.

  ‘My Don!’ came a voice from behind them, and they turned, and Ulf was there with Rocky and Father John. Ulf crossed swiftly to the Don, and fell to one knee and kissed his master’s hand. ‘Alive,’ he murmured, and then looked back at Rocky. ‘No thanks to this one’s father.’

  ‘Rocky’s been helping us!’ exclaimed Harold, but Ulf just gave a massive shrug, for he was a slow forgetter and an even slower forgiver.

  Zoe was staring at the screens again with their dark roiling forms. ‘Please,’ she said to Charles, ‘what’s happening to Guinevere?’

  ‘I am controlling the basic functions of the ship now,’ Charles told her, ‘and there’s still life in her but for how long …?’

  ‘Do the Slarn know?’

  Charles shook his head. ‘We ships have our secrets even from the Slarn.’

  Zoe swallowed hard. ‘She’s dying now, isn’t she?’

  Charles could give her nothing but the hard truth. ‘Yes. I’ve seen starships die in battle. I’ve never seen one die of love before. She could have signalled at any time, but that would’ve meant betraying her friends. She’s dying because she stayed loyal to all of you.’

  They were silent, and then Zoe said, her voice breaking, ‘We tried. We tried so hard to save her. Isn’t there something more that we can do?’

  ‘No. And yet there is honor in what she has done. Great honor. So we must do what people do when great ones die. We must sit and wait.’

  In the silence that followed, Maze entered the bridge. ‘I heard in your minds,’ she said, ‘that my friend Giniveer …’

  Zoe, choking back a sob, simply nodded, and Maze moved to her and put an arm around her. And they stood close, very close in this darkest of moments.

  Hours passed, and they sat and waited, Zoe holding Maze and comforting her, Zachary quietly playing his guitar, Meg sitting with the Don and holding his hands, Harold uncomfortable and wishing it were over, Father John in a meditation state, locked in deep contemplative prayer. Their voices were hushed when they spoke.

  His curiosity getting the better of him, Harold broke the silence. ‘Are you running your own ship too?’ he asked. Charles nodded. ‘Guinevere couldn’t project her image and run the ship at the same time,’ Harold said, already referring to Guinevere in the past tense, as if she was already gone from them.

  ‘You never met her in her full strength and glory,’ Charles said, ‘she had a mind then like a Toledo blade, like sunlight, warm but sometimes blinding. When she disappeared, something went from the Fleet, something we’ve not regained. Most of the starships are warrior-mystics but Guinevere is other things beside. Warrior, mystic, woman, poet, lover.’ He paused. ‘She is just … Guinevere.’

  Zoe was weeping and Meg’s shoulders were shaking, and the Don was holding her tight to him. Zachary was having trouble seeing the strings of his guitar. And then Guinevere’s sweet voice, weak and far away, invaded their minds. ‘Art weeping, cranky Meg?’ They turned, and found that the screens were brightening. The dark moving shapes were incorporating streaks of gold. And Guinevere was slowly awakening, calling them each by name, finally recognizing her old love Charles de Josselin among them. ‘Charles? Thou hast come to bid me farewell?’

  ‘I have, my love,’ he said.

  ‘No!’ Zoe cried out in despair and anger. ‘Not farewell! You’re not going!’

  ‘Oh yes. Oh yes, I go before to meet old friends and family, old enemies forgiven, to meet all and have sweet discourse in the fair fields of Heaven. Now to matters practical. Is the Don’s priest here?’

  ‘Here,’ said Father John.

  ‘Then bless me father for I have sinned. It is many centuries since my last confession and I have done those things which I ought not to have done and not done those things which I ought to have done, and I seek forgiveness.’

  Father John moved to main control desk and laid his hands flat upon it in the only gesture he could make to a human soul without a body, and as the others moved in and laid their hands on his he spoke the ancient words of absolution. ‘Ego te absolvo ab omnibus peccatis et censuris in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti,’ he murmured and signed the control desk with the sign of the Cross. There was heartbreak on all their faces, as on the giant main screen, the shapes merged and divided and the moving dark shapes became the walls of a tunnel leading far off into light. At the end of the tunnel there were shapes of light and an indistinct calling of voices creating a strange melody, and then the screen exploded with golden light for a moment and suddenly went black.

  Zoe, weeping, said, ‘She’s gone? Is she gone?’

  ‘Yes, little one, she’s gone,’ said Charles, ‘and Heaven is the richer for it.’

  77: ZACHARY FINDS HIS INNER HERO

  They gathered in the clearing. Zoe and Harold, Meg and Zachary, Maze, Marine, the Don, Ulf and Rocky, the forester people and the Trolls and Charles de Josselin. Father John was there too in his role as priest, saying the ancient service for the dead. As he sprinkled the hull of the starship with holy water, he intoned the old Latin words: ‘Ego sum resurrectio et vita: qui credit in me, etiam si mortuus fuerit, vivet; et omnis, qui vivit, et credit in me, non morietur in aeternam. Kyrie, eleison. Christe, eleison. Kyrie, eleison,’ and then translated: ‘I am the resurrection and the life; whosoever believes in me, even if he dies shall live, and everyone who believes in me shall never die. Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy, Lord have mercy. Our Father, who art in Heaven,’ he continued in English, and as he did so, Zoe and Maze clung together, weeping. Meg stood with the Don, she tearful, he grim-faced. Zachary and Marine were side by side, Zachary pushing aside a tear, while Marine stood at attention, right fist on left breast in the Slarn salute. Harold and Rocky stood side by side, Harold pinched and white and Rocky refusing to shed a tear because Trolls don’t cry.

  Afterwards they gathered on the bridge. The screens were dead, the speakers were silent, and the people were as numb, as blank as the screens themselves. Zoe, Harold and Zachary were there, Meg and the Don standing together and slightly apart from the others, a sign of their growing closeness. Maze sat on an acceleration couch hugging her knees, and Charles de Josselin was also there, icy with grief.

  ‘Liked Giniveer,’ Maze finally said. ‘Miss her.’

  Zoe went to sit beside her. ‘Yes, Maze, we all miss her.’

  ‘Picturemovie lady. Could see through her,’ and here she looked darkly at Charles, ‘like that one.’

  Zoe put an arm around Maze and drew the child to her. Wanting to break down and howl like a hurt animal, she had instead been forced into the adult role of comforter.

  Charles spoke, and his tone was ice-cold. ‘It is necessary that I now return to my post.’

  Harold went immediately to the self-destruct clock. ‘The self-destruct is still running. It’s only three days now.’

  Charles shrugs. ‘The self-destruct is designed to prevent Slarn technology from falling into the hands of savages.
’

  ‘Savages like us?’ asked Zachary.

  ‘Precisely. Savages like you. The ship can no longer lift. The self-destruct will occur.’

  ‘Hang on there!’ Zachary exclaimed, ‘you’ve got to help us! The bomb’s still ticking, sixty miles of countryside is going to blow up taking maybe thousands of people with it!’

  Charles finally allowed his long pent-up anger to be released. ‘Help you? Guinevere helped you and died for it. You insects tempted a starship into mutiny and she’s dead. The ship I loved! Help you? Leave me to my grief and help yourselves!’

  And with that, his image vanished from the bridge, leaving them staring at the empty air where he had been.

  No sooner than he had disappeared from the starship bridge, Charles reappeared in the cell aboard his own starship where Marlowe still lay in a Yogic trance. ‘Marlowe!’ Charles said, ‘do you hear me?’

  Marlowe’s deep, resonant voice seemed to come from far away. ‘I hear you.’

  ‘I am here to tell you that because of your refusal to cooperate, the starship Guinevere is dead.’

  Marlowe shivered as the shock of the news spread through his system, and he blinked, he breathed, his mind rose from the depths of his trance and he was once again fully in the world. ‘Dead? How?’

  ‘Waste products, fatigue toxins, extraordinary output of energy, it was all too much. If you’d told us only a day ago where she was, she could’ve been saved. Live with that knowledge as I must myself. We all failed her.’

  Marlowe swung his legs off the couch, devastated. He sat, staring at the floor. Then suddenly he was sobbing, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking.