by Mel Keegan
“Just one more thing.” Vidal leaned closer, over the table. “You know we’re working on the pilot trainer, the transspace simulator.”
“I saw the preliminary reports.” Shapiro took another glass of wine. “Problems, Michael?”
“Yes and no.” Vidal looked along at Grant. “We need a second cryogen tank, to be modified for the purpose. If you saw our data, you’re fully aware how this simulator depends on being flown from complete sensory-deprivation, virtual reality rigs. By far the best solution is to cannibalize a couple of cryotanks … we have one. We need two.”
Shapiro’s brows rose. “And the problem is –?”
“The problem is,” Bill Grant said sharply, “I don’t have another one to spare. Very soon we could need every tank we can get our hands on.”
“He makes a good point,” Vidal sighed, “but … priorities, Bill. We believe the pilot training program is critical, and we don’t have a lot of time to spare.” He was looking at Shapiro as he spoke. “One more human survivor could be measured against the security of a whole world. And I know where Bill’s coming from. What if the one life was mine, or yours, or Jon’s.” Vidal’s eyes flicked aside to Kim, and back to Shapiro. “It’s a nasty call to make … but I’d make it. We need another tank, or the transspace simulator isn’t going to fly properly. And – without saying a word against Lai’a,” he added with a glance at Mark Sherratt, “we need backup pilots.”
The golden-maned head nodded assent of Vidal’s argument, and Travers waited. In fact, Shapiro did not hesitate. “You have your tank,” he said at once. “Doctor Grant, I appreciate your position, and it’ll be a matter of record that you released the tank under protest. Rest assured, if a life is lost due to the deficiency, the responsibility will land on my desk, not yours.”
“All right.” Grant’s face was a study in neutrality; even his voice was without inflection. “I’ll break a tank out of storage tonight. You’ll have it by morning.”
“Thanks, Bill.” Vidal hesitated. “And don’t imagine I disagree with the instincts of a doctor. It’s just a question of priorities.”
“I know.” Grant drained a schooner glass in one pull. “Well, if you know any soldiers’ gods, light a candle. We can get lucky again, right?”
“I believe we can.” Shapiro’s mouth compressed. “I think this concludes business. Anyone else?” But the table was quiet and at last he graced the assembly with an almost paternal smile. “Then, I’d be glad to call this briefing closed and take dessert.”
A shiver passed through Travers’s nervous system, head to foot, as memory replayed Shapiro’s bald words over and over. We’re 22 days from launch … 22 days. Elarne waited for them. They would launch into the roiling, seething maw of a Hellgate storm, the very monster he had spent years trying to avoid; and at the other side of the transspace ocean –
Zunshu.
Marin had spoken to him for the third time before the words made it through to the part of his mind where thought had rekindled after moments of utter blankness. “Neil, you all right? Neil?”
He shook himself as if he had just walked out of a lake of tepid, viscous glue which plugged his ears and sealed shut his eyes. The room was too bright; he could actually hear the beat of his own heart as he took a long deep breath and focused on Marin’s voice. “I’m okay,” he lied.
“You’re not,” Marin said, as quietly as he had spoken before. “Bill’s going to be calling it ‘Elarne syndrome,’ or ‘transspacephobia.’ He could write his dissertation on it.”
The humor was tenuous but Travers appreciated it. “I guess it just smacked me in the face … it got very real, if it makes any sense. Before, the whole Lai’a expedition’s been like…”
“Like an abstract concept,” Marin agreed. “Out there like a storm over the horizon that might never come this way. Now we’re on countdown to a rendezvous with a Class 6 or 7 event, and we’re gone.” He gestured at the rest of the company. “I think it hit everyone else at this table the same way. You didn’t see it run through Harrison?”
“I did.” Travers sat back and deliberately shepherded his thoughts to order, and his composure. “Christ, what are we doing?”
“What the Resalq did, about a thousand years ago,” Marin said philosophically, “but with better reason. They went out to explore Elarne for its own sake, pure research. We have bigger fish to fry.”
“Zunshu.” Travers looked up as Perlman called his name with a wave. The group representing Bravo Company was leaving, and he heard the mention of a folgen deck and a bottle of cognac. He returned Perlman’s wave with a forced smile that felt stiff, wooden, to his own facial muscles.
“You two colonels want to join the game?” Judith Fargo offered. “Ten bucks a point and a grand prize – a fifth of Marcel Gilbert, best cognac out of Velcastra in the last century.”
“Thanks, but we’ve a party to go to,” Marin told her. “We might join you later, if the game’s still on.”
“It might be,” Fargo judged. “Jim won’t be playing. Our resident card sharp has to be on the Wastrel, him and Tully need to image some machine parts and get ’em fabricated.” She sketched a salute with only a shred of similarity to anything military, and drifted away with Perlman and Fujioka.
“A party?” Shapiro echoed. “I didn’t get an invitation.”
Vidal gave a hoarse chuckle. “Wasn’t sure you’d want one. It’s the Return from the Dead party. Me, Jo, Ernst, being alive and all. Fancy dress is optional, but I might go as a zombie. God knows, I don’t need a costume.”
“You’re very harsh with yourself,” Shapiro said quietly.
“Realistic,” Vidal argued as he pushed back his chair. “In fact, we better go get set up for this thing. Guys?” He looked down at Queneau and Rabelais.
Rabelais was the first one on his feet. Of the three, he had come through the ordeal the best, because the bigger, stronger pair had protected him, the only way they could. If there was rest, warmth and food, he got it, because he was ten years older, with frail, unengineered human genes, and he had broken bones. And, Travers thought, he was Rabelais. The legend. Little wonder he felt beholden, and that Vidal and Queneau were closer to him than his own family had ever been.
The legend spread his arms expansively and looked around the table. “Party in my quarters, half an hour. Come as you are, dress if you like. Jo and I just got the clean bill of health from the redoubtable Doctor Grant, so we’re buying.”
“I knew,” Grant muttered in an audible grumble, “I’d regret saying you guys were good to go. You’re still underweight and way under par. If you reckon you can booze the night through, you’ve got a bloody nasty surprise coming – and I’ll see you back in the Infirmary tomorrow!”
“Hey, Doc, relax.” Rabelais gave Grant a rueful look. “We’re not totally wuzhi, or do I mean woozy?”
“Both,” Queneau decided. “Either.”
“Whatever.” Rabelais made dismissive gestures. “Half an hour, my quarters. If I don’t see you guys there, I’ll catch you tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” Shapiro reminded, “we’re en route to Omaru.”
“The Wastrel,” Rabelais with the same expansive spirit. “We live there, eh, Jo? Might even continue to live there after the war, if Rick’ll have us aboard.”
Marin sounded surprised. “You don’t want to go back to Velcastra?”
The question seemed to perplex Rabelais, and it was Rusch who said, “It’s been two centuries. Velcastra isn’t the same place. The family he knew are either deceased or so geriatric, they’re older than Charles and spending their twilight months in institutions. There’s no way back, is there, Ernst?”
The bonhomie swiftly settled into introspection. “No. I can’t make sense of Patrick and Mei Ying. Charles is getting close to the end of his life … then there’s Elaine, who’s left, and the daughter who was killed. Mick and you, Lex, are right here beside me. The rest are strangers. It’s just their arrogance to trace thei
r ancestry back to the lunatic who went out charting the space around Hellgate. Me? I was doing a job, and I thought I’d be home in a year and a half with the ship and the drones intact and a nice, fat paycheck waiting for me. All this legend stuff happened later, while I was drifting around a stable zone of transspace that I pretty soon learned to call hell. You think there was something heroic about it?” He barked a self-mocking laugh devoid of any humor. “I’d have done anything, paid anything, to get out of there.”
“And here you are.” Alexis looked up at him with a curious frown. “Don’t knock it, Ernst.”
“I never do.” He seemed to shrug away the introversion. “And I am smart enough to know when to drink to my own health in some very good booze, even if I did come back as the family ghost. And Mick’s right – if we’re having a party, we better go get set up.”
The trio strolled out in the wake of Bravo, and Travers pushed his own chair back from the table. “I’ll feel almost like an intruder. It’s a very private club they’re running.”
“Not for much longer,” Marin said thoughtfully. “Right now they’re the only transspacers in existence. Twenty-two days changes everything.” He shivered visibly and stood, following Travers. “You ought to be there,” he added, to Grant.
“Oh, I bloody intend to be,” the Lushi said, the Australian thickening in his voice, “if only to put the brakes on them when they forget. You have no idea what booze will do to them.”
“Yes,” Marin whispered, “I have.”
Grant considered him bleakly. “Yeah. I, uh, ran your records. Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Marin clasped the medic’s shoulder in passing. “And credit those three with a grain of sense. If they were completely wuzhi they wouldn’t even be here.” On the way out of the conference lounge, he turned back to Mark. “Will you be there?”
“I’ll pass through, if I can get away,” Mark promised. “I’ve a lot to do, since we got the deep scans of the abomination.” His face was like dark amber. “Our ancestors called them the djeronzjim mat’che.” He glanced down at Curtis. “You know the term? It hasn’t been heard for centuries. In the end few people would even speak it aloud, since it sounded like a curse.”
“Not the term itself,” Marin said slowly, “but I can translate the parts of it. Djer, meaning go away, or go into. Onzjim, infinity, or perhaps forever if a better choice of word, given the context. Che is malice, and mat … would that be from matub, some kind of spirit, or sprite, from the old mythology?”
The lion-maned head nodded. “Kes Matub was the goblin in the story of Jagreth, the champion whose quest took him into improbable realms in search of his true love. The old, old story. Kes was beyond wicked. He was pure evil, and he became the archetype of the goblin in our mythology. So mat’che carries the weight of double meaning. Djeronzjim – gone forever. In the old Resalq the word means extinct. Hence, the wreaker of extinction: Djeronzjim mat’che.”
Again Travers felt a shiver, as if a hand had touched him across countless centuries. He watched Shapiro, Jon Kim and Dario making their way out and took a step closer to Mark, dropping his voice. “Have you talked to Vidal?”
“About suppressing the memories which are punishing him?” Mark was watching Vaurien, Jazinsky and Rusch, who had returned to the ’chef for the coffee that was Shapiro’s one real indulgence. He had shipped a crate of it, the last time the Mercury departed Borushek. “We’ve spoken about it, but there hasn’t been the opportunity to actually do it. I’ve been on the Carellan, and Mick has been tied to the Wastrel, and will continue to be. Doctor Grant won’t let him stray far from the Infirmary yet, and then – you know about his project?”
The work that kept him, Rabelais and Queneau in their private hangar, confounding them until at last they recruited Alexis Rusch, who would bring the skills of a physicist to the project. “They’re building a flight simulator.” Travers heard the odd, hushed tone in his own voice.
“A transspace simulator,” Marin added. “The object is to train more transspace pilots. Myself and Neil. Perlman and Fargo. Pilots fly transspace in pairs, apparently. An individual can’t do it alone.”
“Yes.” Mark rubbed his palms together, brooding on the project. “There’s little I can do to assist, short of tweak their numbers, which Colonel Rusch can do just as well. Understand, my people left this technology behind when I was so young, I honestly have no memory.” He smiled faintly. “Just because I’m Resalq, and ‘as old as God,’ as Michael remarked recently, doesn’t mean I can fly transspace! Far from it. I’d have to go through the simulation training, the same as yourselves. And I,” he said bleakly, “don’t have the time. Twenty-two days. You heard Harrison. And I imagine the last week will be an insane scramble.” He dropped a hand on each of their shoulders. “Speaking of which, Leon and Tor have been calling me for the last fifteen minutes. Dario’s already gone.” He gestured at his combug. “I’ll be in the lab here on the Mercury, if you need me – and I’ll try to be at this party of theirs, sometime during the evening.”
“All right.” Marin clasped his hand. “We shove off for Omaru soon. If we don’t see you before we go … take care of yourself, Mark.”
The Resalq touched Marin’s hair with curious tenderness. “I always do. And as for you, keep one eye on Michael, if you can. He’s not nearly as strong as he thinks he is.”
“We will,” Travers promised. “Later, Mark.”
And then it was just Travers and Marin, standing in the middle of the conference lounge while the servitor drones began to clear the debris of dinner and take stock of the depleted autochefs. Vaurien, Jazinsky and Rusch were in the corner by the viewports, looking out at the terrible, beautiful vista of the Drift and talking in murmurs.
The view drew Travers’s eyes, and the Intrepid had never seemed so close, to tangible, as if he and Marin might walk off the Mercury and back aboard the super-carrier in the late days of the madness. He had to forcibly remind himself that Lai’a had monitored the whole briefing, and if it had had anything to contribute, its voice would have issued over the comm. The Intrepid was less a memory than a nightmare, and like Vidal, Travers could not seem to set the acid-bitter images into a dark corner of his mind, lock a door on them and forget them. Mark Sherratt might show them both how.
“We ought to show up with something,” Marin was saying as he led the way out of the lounge.
“What, party gifts?” Travers forced his mind back to reality. “What did you have in mind?”
“I’ve no idea,” Marin admitted. “It doesn’t want to be booze – Mick can’t drink it, and the other two shouldn’t. I’ve no idea what Queneau likes to read or watch, much less wear … I don’t think I’ve ever seen her out of some kind of uniform. And as for Rabelais, he’s about two centuries out of touch, so to him everything looks and sounds weird.”
“They won’t be looking for gifts,” Travers guessed.
“Still, a few minutes in Supply might be well spent.” Marin was already moving.
Supply aboard the Wastrel was a compartment the size of a small hold, where oddments salvaged from the Drift over the space of a decade would be found beside the drums of raw materials fed to the autochefs and assorted crates of stuff loaded into the smaller fabricating systems. Years ago, inventory would have varied from month to month, but since the tug had been on Shapiro’s contract the content of the rail-mounted shelves rarely changed. Marin consulted the register and was scrolling through scores of pages on a flatscreen by the door to the deep, dim cavern, but Travers had known this vault since his ‘virgin furlough.’
The remote for the shelves was right by the flatscreen, and while Marin was still wading through inventory, he got the three-meter units rolling. They rumbled slowly, pushed by big servos and riding polished steel rails. He had half an idea of what he was looking for, and as Marin abandoned the register he strolled down the track. A glowbot dropped down from the ceiling, riding at shoulder height to light the meter-wide gap between the
shelves, and Travers began to rummage.
Much of the stock was tagged CV Astrid Mukherjee, with a date just less than seven years before the Wastrel took Shapiro’s contract. Even now much about this ship could astonish Marin, and he murmured in surprise.
“I remember the wreck – it headlined on CNS. Freespacers?”
“The Bronowski Reef,” Travers corrected. “She was loaded with luxury goods from the Middle Heavens, headed for Omaru and Borushek, part of a trade deal. The AI pilot scrammed in the fallout from a Hellgate event and she drove right up on the reef, tore her bows off. The drive shut down, the AI never rebooted, and she just sat there, dark, dormant, for years. By the time she was found, the insurance investigation was done. Willhausen-Gough Securities had already paid out, top dollar, on the claim. Nobody wanted to know about assigning salvage rights and reopening the documentation.”
“Richard found her?” Marin was looking through clothing, jewelry, shoes, gadgets, datacubes loaded with classical literature, music, cinema.
“And he made all the usual discreet inquiries with the owner, back on Lithgow … ‘We found your ship, she’s a ruin but the cargo’s perfectly salvageable, what do you want to do?’ And the owner said, ‘Lose it, quick, before WGS reopens the files and it starts to get ugly.’” Travers gestured at the scores of shelves. “This stuff turns out to be useful from time to time. You’d be surprised what you can trade in Freespace.”
“After Halfway, I wouldn’t,” Marin retorted.
For Vidal, a tunic of some synthetic fabric that looked and felt like a cross between silk and skin, with a chameleon characteristic making it change color when the light and temperature shifted. For Queneau, a handful of cubes loaded with the complete works of an old peligro band she liked, whose music sounded to Travers like two overworked Arago engines struggling with different loads. For Rabelais, a small blue bottle of a cologne called Elegante Pecado, which had become priceless in recent years since the Pakrani manufacturer closed.