Rhapsody in Black

by Brian Stableford

  And in her pretty belly, the Swan carried Johnny’s first baby. His engine. His drive-unit. Rothgar had taught him how to feed it and fondle it and clean it and attend faithfully to its every need and whim, but now it was all his. He and he alone was pacemaker to the heart of the most beautiful ship that ever flew. He couldn’t give it up. He wasn’t Rothgar, to absorb the whole experience in one trip and then need no more of it for it to be with him forever. Johnny was only a boy. No experience, no rank. Apart from the Hooded Swan, he was a nothing. Wild horses, as they say, couldn’t have dragged him away.

  Eve’s reasons were somewhat more subtle. Difficult to see and difficult to understand. There was something odd between Eve and her brother, despite the fact that she hadn’t seen him since she was a child. When I’d brought home news of her brother’s death, she’d transferred some part of that relationship to me. It was nothing so crude and vulgar as being in love with me. In a sense, it was as though I were Lapthorn’s ghost. I was nothing like Michael Lapthorn, of course—we could hardly have been more different. But she didn’t know that. To her, I was her brother’s hero, her brother’s partner- all that was left, in fact, of her brother. (In actual fact, she was much closer to being Lapthorn’s ghost than I was. The facial similarity was no more than one would usually expect between siblings, but I could sense in her a weird echo of Lapthorn’s hunger—his greed for experience and his insatiability.)

  And Eve had an extra reason, above and beyond wanting to stick close to me. She too was a pilot. She had her own hood and her own electroplates stowed somewhere aboard the ship. She had ridden the bird—in atmosphere only—on her initial test series. She was enough of a pilot to know that I was a damn sight better one, but she was also enough of a pilot to love this ship, forsaking all others. Steering a flying tin can was no way to live once you’d actually felt the Swan’s wings in your fingers, and her heart inside your body.

  So we were all stuck with the ship, for one reason or another. My reasons, of course, were simplest of all. Titus Charlot had legal title to a two-year lease on my soul. I was in no position to argue. Quite apart from that, the Hooded Swan was the best ship in existence. I was the best pilot. We deserved one another.

  The four of us who were the crew on the Swan were mismatched, though. We had started out on a note of falseness and mistrust, but eventually we were forced into coexistence and mutual tolerance, so that wasn’t the reason. I’m not quite sure what the real reason was. It could simply be that we were out of one another’s contexts—that our personal interactions weren’t aligned with our status aboard the ship. Nick delArco, for instance, was a nice guy, but he couldn’t command a rowing boat. He was too soft and he knew next to nothing about deep space. He was a counterfeit captain, strings pulled courtesy of Titus Charlot. I had no beef with him whatsoever as an acquaintance or as a shipbuilder, but as an immediate boss, in between me and Charlot, he was an unnecessary embarrassment.

  And so, for that matter, was Eve. I didn’t want an understudy aboard any ship of mine, especially not one who thought I was the shade of her long-lost brother.

  Johnny, I guess, would have been perfectly OK in any other crew. Nobody had anything against Johnny. But he tried too hard. He was always trying to push people the way he thought they ought to go. He reacted too hard. He admired delArco far too much, he was infatuated with Eve, and his picture of me was far too good to be true.

  The whole set-up was a mess.

  Charlot’s intellectual speciality was mixing, blending, sorting, separating and using. He was a perfect New Alexandrian. We were as much his toys as were his computer programmes and his beloved syntheses of alien intellects.

  My first thought, when we were ordered to Attalus, was that he had found some new toys to provide him with a temporary diversion. That impression seemed to be confirmed when the first thing he did, after landfall, was to search out the current head man among the exiles from God’s Nine Splinters.

  That man was Rion Mavra. Charlot introduced us to him, but didn’t explain what he wanted with Splinterdrift. At that point, he probably hadn’t explained to Mavra either. We also met several other examples of the Splinter culture at the same time, including Mavra’s wife, Cyclide, and his cousin, Cyolus Capra. There was no hint of any warmness in any of the greetings. You’d think that the exiles would be grateful for someone seeking them out and talking to them. After all, they’d been kicked off their home world onto an under-populated, rather unpleasant world which might tolerate them, but certainly wouldn’t make them welcome.

  But the exiles remained cold and distant, trying to demonstrate that they were a considerable way above such considerations as loneliness. They seemed pleased to be able to withdraw from our company as soon as the formalities were over, but Charlot made arrangements to talk to them all again in the near future.

  Then we went our way, to the hotel.

  ‘Well,’ said Charlot, as we walked through the fog-bound streets, ‘what do you think of them?’

  I think the remark was addressed to delArco, but Nick wasn’t paying attention, so it was me who answered. ‘What are we supposed to think? You haven’t told us what’s going on yet.’

  He laughed gently. We reached the door of the hotel, and went through into the warmth and light. I was in urgent need of the customary shower and change of clothes after three days in the cradle, but Charlot obviously wanted to talk to us before going to his arranged meeting with Mavra and his companions. He ushered us into the lounge, and we seated ourselves around a low table. Nick ordered us some drinks.

  ‘Rion Mavra comes from Rhapsody,’ said Charlot.

  ‘And that’s where we’re going?’ asked Nick.

  ‘That’s right.’ He turned to me. ‘Have you ever been to the Splinters?’

  ‘No,’ I replied. ‘By all accounts they aren’t worth a visit. Besides, the principle of Let Well Alone operates.’

  ‘The principle of Let Well Alone doesn’t operate,’ said Charlot. ‘It merely exists. A ridiculous institution.’

  ‘It’s worth taking notice of,’ I told him. ‘It isn’t applied without reason.’

  ‘It is applied purely and simply to help maintain the fiction that the Law of New Rome has some kind of universal validity and jurisdiction. Anywhere which refuses point-blank to pay even lip service to the Law is labelled “Let Well Alone”, on the grounds that any citizen of the galaxy is beyond the protection of the Law on such a world. But you, of all people, should know how little protection the Law offers to anyone on any world outside the core. The principle of Let Well Alone is a tourist guide, nothing more.’

  ‘Any world,’ I said, ‘which refuses to accept even the spirit of the Law of New Rome is ipso facto dangerous.’

  ‘The Splinters reject everything which is offered to them or asked of them, by the galaxy. They’re an isolationist group. But they’re a religious community. Certainly not lawless.’

  ‘It doesn’t necessarily follow,’ I persisted. Not that I really thought that Rhapsody was a hotbed of murder and rape, of course. I just didn’t particularly want to go there.

  Charlot knew I didn’t have any real quarrel, so he pressed on.

  ‘We will probably have passengers,’ he said, ‘and time is very much of the essence. We must make Rhapsody in the least possible time. Luckily, there is no other ship on Attalus capable of making the trip.’

  ‘There’s a fast yacht out on the tarpol,’ Johnny interrupted.

  ‘No good,’ I said. ‘Rhapsody’s in the hyoplasm of a blue giant. There’s not much distortion there, but the radiation and the gravity prevent p-shifters from operating. Only ramrods can reach the surface-lock.’

  ‘Surface-lock?’

  Charlot took over again. ‘Rhapsody has only an internal atmosphere. Its towns are built in several subterranean labyrinths. There is nothing on the surface at all. It would be as easy to live on Mercury.’ Johnny was Earthborn, so he understood the allusion.

  ‘As Grainger says,�
�� continued Charlot, ‘only ramrods are equipped to make landfall on Rhapsody. The solar hyoplasm has no effect upon the mass-relaxation drive, and they carry enough shielding to withstand the radiation. But ramrods are very slow, and there’s only one within twenty light-years of her.’

  ‘Where?’ I interposed, already having a sneaking suspicion.

  ‘By now,’ he said, ‘it’s probably on Rhapsody. That’s why time is of the essence. The ramrod probably took several days to make a landfall, but it had a considerable start. We must make the trip in a matter of hours.’

  ‘Can we?’ asked Nick.

  ‘Easy,’ I told him. ‘No distortion, no trouble. These close-orbit worlds always look difficult, but there’s no real trouble involved. Bright light and a big pull aren’t going to bother the Swan.’

  ‘We shall have no difficulty getting there,’ said Charlot, in a tone which suggested that he didn’t expect much difficulty once we were there, either.

  ‘What are we going there for?’ I asked tiredly.

  He settled himself in his chair, preparatory to delivering a lengthy discourse. I sighed. The answer was obviously going to be buried in a lecture. If, that is, he bothered with the answer at all.

  ‘God’s Nine Splinters,’ he said, ‘were colonised by a religious sect known as the Church of the Exclusive Reward. Their faith is fundamentally anti-Monadist, and during the Monadist resurgence some two centuries ago, they decided that the only way to their own unique salvation was via isolation from the morally polluted galaxy. Their faith stresses the necessity of hardship and struggle for existence, if the Exclusive Reward which they seek is to be attained. Hence they chose for their colonies the nine worlds which were associated with two unstable and unfriendly suns. Not one of those worlds is really fit for human habitation. And they’re about as isolated from the rest of the galaxy as it is possible to be without going out beyond the rim. The nine worlds are Ecstasy, Modesty, Rhapsody, Felicity, Fidelity, Sanctity, Harmony, Serenity and Vitality.

  ‘The worlds are isolated, even from each other. They have no more than half a dozen ships of their own, and indulge in only so much intercommunication as is necessary to the continued existence of the colonies. Only Serenity and Vitality can really be said to be self-supporting, but most of the others are nearly so, and the bulk of the traffic is triangular, between Sanctity, Ecstasy and Harmony. The precise balance of supply and demand within the Splinter Culture is quite irrelevant, and so are the sordid details of their particular dogmas. What is relevant is that rumours have reached me that the people of Rhapsody have discovered something on their world which I might want. It is no use whatsoever to Rhapsody, or to any of its neighbours. It is potentially capable of making the world—or certain people on the world—very rich, so my informant claims, but the world doesn’t know whether or not it wants to be rich. And the dogmas of the religion, of course, specifically forbid any of its adherents to be rich. All of which is causing a certain conflict between various members of the Church Hierarchy and their individual and collective greed.’

  ‘What have they found?’ asked Nick.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, sounding somewhat annoyed at the redundant interruption.

  ‘What could they have found?’ Nick followed up.

  ‘It’s difficult to say. Rhapsody, of course, exists by mining and by the conversion of heat energy into electrical power. The people are fed by organic conversion, but their efficiency is obviously limited. They have to be supplied occasionally with raw organics from the middle worlds of the system—that’s Vitality and Felicity. The mining, if undertaken properly, might be an economical proposition, but of course the people have no interest in interstellar commerce. They supply only their own needs. I assume that whatever has been found has been found in the mines. I maintain an open mind as to its possible nature. Speculation is quite useless.’

  ‘It sounds like a wild goose chase to me,’ I said.

  ‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘But New Alexandria has chased a good many wild geese in its time, and the few that we have caught have amply rewarded us for our trouble. It is precisely because we have always been willing to try what no one else thought to be worthwhile that we are now the most influential world in the galaxy. Knowledge which is worthless in small quantities becomes immensely valuable in complete form. None of our time has ever been truly wasted.’

  “That is a matter of opinion,’ I said.

  There were a thousand things he could have cited in order to support his argument. So many, in fact, that he didn’t even bother. He just ignored me.

  ‘Where does Mavra come in?’ asked Eve.

  ‘The political situation in the Splinters as a whole, and Rhapsody in particular, is in a state of perpetual confusion and flux. Today’s exiles are tomorrow’s heroes. Small heresies may so easily become divine revelations. In matters of belief, fashion is a powerful driving force. No religion is ever static, and when a faith is confronted with a problem like the one which has arisen on Rhapsody, viewpoints are subject to many forces which tend to move them about and spin them around. It seems to me that by taking Rhapsody’s exiles back home at this time, I may be able to inject several friends into important positions within the Church Hierarchy. This may be valuable.’

  ‘You expect competition, then?’ I asked. ‘This ramrod that you mentioned?’

  ‘The ramrod belongs to an organisation known as the Star Cross Combine. By no means as large or as influential as the Caradoc Company, who were so unfortunate and so troublesome in the matter of the Lost Star, but rich and ambitious nevertheless. I hardly think they will have taken precipitate action because of a rumour, but they might well have directed the captain of the ramrod to invest a few weeks or so in investigation. They might not, of course, and he might not be able to get there in time, even if they did. But that remains to be seen. A few hours invested in making friends can hardly do us any harm, whether Star Cross is involved or not’

  ‘Suppose somebody else has become interested in the rumour?’ asked Johnny.

  ‘They’ll be too late,’ Charlot predicted confidently. ‘Rumours reach New Alexandria very quickly. Star Cross’s advantage was purely positional. And in any case, no one else is likely to go so far out of their way hunting—as Grainger so aptly put it—wild geese.’

  He fell silent, and looked at us expectantly. There were no more questions. We seemed to be finished, for now.

  It seemed to be a moderately easy way to pass the time. A great deal easier than hunting up the Lost Star, anyhow. Law or no Law, what could possibly happen to me on Rhapsody? Not that it was my kind of world, of course. I have an irrational distaste for the faithful, no matter which particular breed they belong to. Naturally enough, the feeling tends to be mutual. Even the most easygoing of people tend to find me mildly offensive—to begin with, at least.

  I was suspicious of Charlot’s story, but not enough to worry me. I assumed as a matter of course that the old man knew more than he was telling us. But if I was to be tied to him for two years, I was rarely going to find circumstances where I could be one hundred percent sure of what was on his mind. The New Alexandrian mind is basically twisted, and Charlot had a few extra twists over and above the call of duty.

  All in all, I was pleasantly surprised that this operation seemed to offer little opportunity for disaster.

  ‘When do you want to lift?’ I asked him.

  ‘As soon as possible,’ he replied. ‘You can attend to your various needs while I talk to the people from Rhapsody. It will take them some time to collect together their belongings, but I think we should be ready to go by midnight.’

  ‘It couldn’t possibly wait till morning, I suppose?’

  ‘Midnight,’ he stated definitely.

  ‘We’ll be ready,’ promised Captain delArco.

  The party broke up. Charlot exited at a fast walk. His hurry was showing. I guess he had a lot of sweet-talking to do. The Rhapsody crowd wouldn’t make friends easily. Not even
in response to the carrot of a free ride home. But I had no doubt that Charlot could talk his way into their good books, given an hour or two in which to do it. By midnight, Rion Mavra would be his bosom buddy.

  ‘Not much of a job,’ commented Johnny, as we headed for hot water and soap. He seemed quite down in the mouth about the dullness of it all. Apparently the harrowing trip through the Halcyon Drift hadn’t cured him of his thirst for deep space adventure. He had real courage all right, but no sense of proportion.

  ‘It’ll be a cakewalk,’ I said unenthusiastically. ‘Relax and enjoy it. There’s plenty of time yet to go shooting monsters on alien worlds.’ That, I supposed, would be his idea of a good time. There’s no accounting for taste.

  At that time, I didn’t exactly visualise my taking an active part in the happenings on Rhapsody. I certainly didn’t see myself wandering around in the planet’s black depths, alone, shattered, frozen and pursued. I suppose it was Johnny’s sense of melodrama which involved me in the first place, but once I was loose, it was all my own work.

  And all my own fault.

  CHAPTER THREE

  I should have been dead tired, but I couldn’t go to sleep. It wasn’t simply a matter of not daring to go to sleep, even if I was sitting on a highway. I purely and simply couldn’t sleep.

  After a while, I began to find the darkness oppressive. I once lived, for a while, on a world which was not unlike Rhapsody. The main difference was that it could be reached, even by p-shifters, because it was that much farther away from its primary. (Even so, it was never easy sliding the old Fire-Eater in and along an eclipsed groove.) But the culture could hardly have been more dissimilar. The air was always hot and loaded with odours. The background smell of sweat and the conversion machines was always masked by heavy perfume. Here, on Rhapsody, there was nothing like that. Not that the air smelled bad—this was a much bigger warren, and there were fewer people here—but where there were odours, in the towns and the mine workings, they were politely ignored, as if they did not exist. And it was a matter of politeness—the odours were never so perpetual that they could be blotted out of one’s consciousness.