In the Shadow of Lazarus

by J. J. Keller

  His mother wanted a meeting on the bridge for some reason, but it wasn’t until later. He should use this time productively, not succumb to this torpor. He would read up on stars, or on the Teachings, as his mother had suggested.

  He lay back on his bed and folded his hands behind his head, forcing himself to concentrate. He found the entry in the Nimrod’s computer on B-type suns, but he could not keep focus on any of it. The recollection of Hectar and Aspera kept forcing itself to the front of his mind, and when he tried to read what was written, he saw letters, words, but no sense would they form. The ship kept making strange rumbles, and the walls of his cabin trembled.

  He abandoned the entry on stars and found the files for the volumes of the Teachings of the Pagan Atheist. He started on the Book of Psi, but found himself faced with the same problem. As soon as he began reading a sentence, his concentration would tail off and his mind would turn to other things. He could not stop thinking about Hectar’s hand, sliding down Aspera’s body. Reigo wanted that to be his hand. He wanted someone like Aspera in his quarters, and he wanted to drown his senses in the smell and touch of the body of another.

  Reigo rolled onto his side and punched the mattress. The Pagan Atheist said the mind must be clear for the mind to know reason, and his mind was clouded. He undid his trousers and set about relieving himself in the usual manner. When he’d finished, he washed himself in the toilet cubicle in his room and returned to his bed.

  Yet still his thoughts remained turbid. The release of orgasm had not surrendered his mind to peace and clarity, and as he tried once more to peruse the books he found them dull and devoid of meaning, and an unfulfilled restlessness possessed him.

  Reigo sat up and forced himself to focus. Rather than starting at Psi and trying to read everything, it would be easier for him to try to skim through every book and get a general overview.

  It seemed Tiorné was right. The Book of Delta was just a string of numbers he could make no sense of. The Book of Zeta merely seemed to reiterate everything the Pagan Atheist said, and most of the others seemed to be historical accounts of the time, or commentaries and theories on the Meritocracy and general narratives that had lost their relevance over four thousand years.

  He rose and left his quarters, deliberately going up to the bridge via a route that avoided the airlock where he’d seen Hectar and Aspera. Ceril passed him in the corridor on the way to the bridge. He hesitated, eyeing Reigo with a wavering gaze as though sizing up an unlikely opponent. The man brushed past him without a word.

  Tiorné stood by the bridge table. “Hello, Reigo, have you been reading?” A heated smell of male sweat hung about her, mingled with the sour tang of a sensation enhancing drug: probably conurin heavily seasoned with endorphin mimics, and in her eyes Reigo saw the embers of some lusty conflagration, still aglow. Here was some weird concurrence: Hectar and Aspera, and Tiorné and Ceril.

  It wasn’t the first time Tiorné had asked a subtler fare of one of the Nimrod’s passengers. Indeed, often the transient intelligentsia drew her eye. She seemed to relish the closeness of a man of education, enjoying the spontaneity of someone who could challenge her mental par.

  Now his mother’s drug-hazed euphoria angered Reigo. There had always been these lovers. But his own conception had been with a man of the strongest Blood, whom he had never met, selected to preserve the lineage. Tiorné had to have such absolute control of his life she had only allowed his procreation in cold-blooded choice, and not from the random passion a real, living man could give her. That she was so immersed in her cold logic and disliking of her bloodline’s contamination she would deny him even the flesh and blood of a true father, it surfaced in his consciousness with an intense and lucid meaning it had never held before, and for an instant it made him hate her.

  He said nothing, and sat on one of the bridge chairs. This was not Steel and Flame. Tiorné was Reigo’s mother. And she was Tiorné of the Nimrod, a just and fair merchant captain, a man to be respected, not thought of with the detestation he had just then afforded her. He would not be without her. Everything he had he owed to her.

  Hectar and Aspera entered next. Hectar’s hair was still disheveled, his tunic askew. He had a glass of phytoculture water in one hand.

  Again Reigo noticed how dark the bridge seemed, yet he could not see how the lighting was any different than it had ever been. He tried to recall if he had ever felt this way about the ambience in the ship before, but he couldn’t remember. The only memory to enter his mind was the conversation with the leper earlier.

  “Mother,” he said, “have you ever heard someone say, ‘Come into the light,’ before?”

  Tiorné raised an eyebrow at Reigo.

  Behind her, Aspera was frowning. “I think it’s meant to be a metaphor. I think light’s supposed to mean knowledge.”

  “Enlightenment, no doubt,” said Tiorné. “Why do you ask?”

  Reigo shrugged. “Something Naral said. I wondered if there was anything in it.”

  “One cannot be given knowledge. It has to be earned.”

  “The light the Pagan Atheist teaches about, that is something different, I think, to what Naral speaks of.”

  Tiorné said, “Enlightenment is knowledge and Equilibrium. No other tenet is of comparable value.”

  Reigo collapsed his shoulders and exhaled. “Did you ever hear the term Lazarus?”

  Tiorné’s expression became blank as she conferred with the ship. “There is a reference to that word in the Nimrod’s databank. It is some kind of ancient myth about a man who died and decomposed in the ground, and yet was resuscitated. Supposedly it happened more than six thousand years ago, when it’s documented that men had no such technology for resuscitation even of the recently deceased.”

  “What does it mean? Is that a metaphor for something also?”

  Hectar stepped forward and interrupted. “Probably it means nothing. Ancient people had no proper science, so they were superstitious and obsessed by ideas of things like the dead coming to life. Zombies, they called these living dead.”

  Then Ceril arrived, Ogonaovan following close behind, smirking as his chair trundled onto the bridge.

  “Where is that man who joined the ship at Phlygema?” Tiorné asked.

  “Naral?” said Ceril. “Did anyone tell him about the meeting?”

  “No matter,” said Tiorné. “I need to inform everyone that in order to bring the course into line with the gravity well of the gas giant, where the facility we will need to use to repair the tachyon array that we were unable to repair in situ is located, I am braking the ship close to the inertia dampers’ stress capacity. You may have noticed some strange noises and sensations in the ship.”

  As if on cue, a tremor and a deep metallic groan ran over the bridge. The surface of the green water in Hectar’s glass trembled and he peered down at it, twisting his mouth and cocking an eyebrow.

  Tiorné continued. “These phenomena will become more frequent and more intense until we ease off braking in the run-in toward the planet.”

  The thunder in the floor rose to an alarming level, pulsing up through Reigo’s feet and the seat. The glass Hectar held began to emit a thin whining sound, as though a wet finger was running round and around its rim. The surface of the liquid trembled so much it looked as though it was boiling.

  “Hectar, don’t stand there,” said Tiorné sharply.

  “Eh?” said Hectar, and the glass in his hand shattered, splattering water, and he dropped what remained of it with a squawk.

  “The ship is reverberating because of standing waves caused by the inertia dampers. You are standing at such a point of intersection where constructive interference occurs, and the effects there are going to be much worse. Now stand somewhere else.”

  “What?” Hectar’s expression fell, and he put both hands to his abdomen. “Oh.” He shoved past Ceril and ran into the corridor, bent over.

  Ogonaovan roared with laughter.

  “Wait.” Reigo hel
d up his hand. “Those worms we have in the cargo. Aren’t they in glass bottles?”

  Tiorné looked at the fragments of glass on the bridge floor, then back at Reigo. “Are the bottles cheap borosilicate like that, or graded vitreous alloy?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Ogonaovan, please go down to the cargo levels and check there are no points of constructive interference near the cargo. Report at once if there’s any damage.”

  Ogonaovan saluted ridiculously and turned in a tight circle before speeding off down the main corridor.

  “If all goes well, we will make parking orbit with the gas giant in twelve hours,” Tiorné said. “Expect a rough ride until then.”

  Aspera went to look for Hectar, Ceril returned to his lab, and Reigo decided he would look for Ogonaovan and talk to him.

  He found the mechanic in the observation deck. The light of Phlygema, now more distant, flooded the great dome of reinforced vitreous alloy at the rear of the Nimrod’s habitable section. Ogonaovan sat in his mobility chair on the upper level gantry. He had disrobed apart from a pair of camouflage-print trousers belted around his muscular, hairy torso, the legs tied in his characteristic knot.

  “What are you doing?” Reigo asked as he climbed the gantry.

  “You think this ship’s too dark?”

  Reigo frowned. “Yes. But not in here.”

  Ogonaovan pointed out a spot on the floor below the gantry, where a floor tile had been taken up and wiring protruded. “The photomitigator shield is set up wrong. I fixed it.”

  “Did you tell Tiorné you were going to do that?”

  Ogonaovan shrugged. “Needed recalibrating.”

  “What’s that you have?” Reigo noticed glass bottles heaped in Ogonaovan’s lap--the worms. “Those are my mother’s cargo! What are you doing with them?”

  The mechanic unscrewed the cap from one of the bottles and tipped the worm into his hand. He held it up between thumb and forefinger, tilted back his head, and in a slow, exaggerated fashion, put it in his mouth.

  “Ogonaovan!”

  “Why should we be deprived of what castellans eat? Hah! I’ll tell Tiorné constructive interference broke the bottles and I threw them away!”

  “You’re going to tell her those bottles, on your knee, intact, broke?”

  “Here, try one.” Ogonaovan unscrewed another bottle and shook out the worm.

  Reigo took it. The larva felt leathery between his fingertips, its movements sluggish. This was a delicacy?

  “Castellans eat these?”

  “Damn sight better than levigated esculents!”

  Why not? Why shouldn’t he, and Ogonaovan, dine like castellans? For all men are equal. So the Pagan Atheist said. He looked at it, took a deep breath and raised it to his mouth. Biting it in half turned out to be a bad idea. It was full of pulpy orange slime that ran over his fingers and down his wrist. He hurriedly licked it off, half expecting his mother to charge onto the bridge and catch him orange-handed. Ogonaovan was right. The larva had a rich, piquant flavor, nothing like the blandness of food made from homogenized plants grown on sewage.

  “We’re going to be in trouble if she finds out,” he said as Ogonaovan handed him another worm.

  “What’s life without a few risks?” Ogonaovan held out his hands, palms up, in remonstration. The man’s pupils were dilated, despite the intense light. His dark skin looked irritated.

  The metal and wires reinforcing the structure of the dome glistened in the light like silver-purple veins. Beside Phlygema’s effulgence few stars could be seen. That light, it made him wince, and it burned dark shapes into his retinae, but yet it somehow compelled him to look, to stare into the face of the fusion furnace that powered the universe. The world was bright and vibrant with these spectacles to behold and these delectable flavors to taste.

  A strange sensation overcame Reigo. Wonder, awe. He held up his hands to the sun, and saw light illuminate his skin, leaving bones and tendons dark. Ogonaovan spun his mobility chair around. “This ship’s full of miserable bastards! Nobody dances on this ship!”

  “Well, you can’t,” Reigo retorted. “You don’t have any feet.”

  Ogonaovan unexpectedly roared with laughter and walloped Reigo on the back. Reigo found himself undoing his tunic to let the light touch his skin. Ogonaovan was on the edge of the gantry, grinning maniacally at Reigo. He leaned forward so the chair pivoted upon its axles and fell off. The chair flipped clean over and landed on the level below with a jerk of its suspension. Reigo laughed.

  From below the gantry came a thin, reedy sound, then Ogonaovan’s voice: “Reigo, get down here!” Reigo turned back and dashed down the stairs, refastening his tunic as he did. A morran lay collapsed on the floor by Ogonaovan’s chair. “It’s Na’Athril, Reigo.”

  The creature’s whole body oozed with the blisters of sunburn. The dark smock-like garment the morrans usually wore was missing. When Reigo tried to raise Na’Athril’s head, its skin was sticky and febrile. Blue-tinged fluid ran from the ears and nostrils, and the eyes were just a mess of destroyed tissue.

  “What the fuck, Na’Athril...”

  A sharp voice made them jump. “What is the meaning of this?”

  Reigo looked up into his mother’s blazing eyes. Her hand was on the grip of her neutron pistol. Behind her, Hectar’s face bore the triumphant, spiteful mask of the informer.

  “Na’Athril’s sick.” Reigo pointed. “It looks like--”

  Tiorné looked at the morran’s blistered skin and unseeing eyes. She bent one knee, and put the nozzle of her weapon between Na’Athril’s eyes.

  “Mother, no!” Reigo cried.

  A flash of light threw the head back on its slender neck, and Na’Athril lay motionless, blue blood oozing thickly from the front of its cranium.

  Tiorné’s eyes lit upon the point in the floor of the observatory where a panel had been taken up and wiring trailed out. The interface bolt on her forehead flickered red. A maintenance robot swept out of the starboard corridor and rectified the alterations. Tiorné closed her eyes, and the colorless center of her interface bolt took on a turbid, opalescent glow as she conferred with her ship. The photochemicals in the dome at once activated and the light of Phlygema faded.

  Reigo knelt beside Na’Athril, reaching out to its blistered neck. “No,” he repeated, although it could not be undone. “Mother, it was only a young morran!” His face felt hot, like pepper had spilled on his skin.

  “It wouldn’t have lived with its injuries. The young deserve mercy, as do the old!”

  Hectar shouted, “You shouldn’t be touching it! Those things have cuprates in their blood. It’s poisonous if you swallow it!”

  Ogonaovan snorted. “Fuck off, Hectar, it’s not like Reigo’s going to eat the morran.”

  “Ogonaovan,” said Tiorné. “When we get to Carck-Northfenvier, I will be putting out an advertisement for a new mechanic.”

  Ogonaovan turned his head and stared at her. “What?”

  “I’m relieving you of your post. I want you off the ship as soon as we reach Carck-Northfenvier. You eat my cargo, you disregard rules, and you intrude upon my control. I will have no more of it!”

  A triumphant smile broke upon Hectar’s face. He raised his hand and opened his mouth to speak.

  “The same goes for you, Hectar. I shall be advertising for a new auditor. Ceril and Aspera can do as they will when we arrive at the circumfercirc.”

  “What?” Hectar shrieked. “I have only done my job, all the time I have been in your employ! I have strived to do it well, and I have never neglected my contract!”

  Tiorné advanced on him abruptly. “Close thy mouth, halfBlood! This ship gives me senses beyond what thou knows’t, and I see what goes on aboard this ship, I have no need for thee to provide commentary. I do not hold it as thy fault, both of ye, for it’s thy nature to be this way, and it was folly of mine to assume it mattered not.”

  Hectar stared at Tiorné, his mouth hanging open.
His forehead crumpled into a frown.

  Tiorné stepped away to stand facing the window. “For too long have I striven under this false banner, this carapace of tolerance. I see now that magnanimity serves no one’s interests. I see now that my self-serving desire to be seen as a just captain has polluted the thoughts of my own son.” Tiorné put her hands over her face and threw them down with a strident exhalation. She closed her eyes, raising her face to the stars beyond. “Perhaps I have been naïve too.”

  Reigo went to her. “Mother, this is not you!”

  Tiorné faced him and threw back her head in a sudden, humorless laugh that faded from her mouth almost as soon as it was begun. “Oh, it is me, Reigo. Perhaps it is a depth of me I’ve never wished to reveal to anyone before, but it is me, truer than ever before. My eyes have been opened.”

  A chill sensation crawled from the backs of Reigo’s knees, up his spine, and over his scalp. Something Naral had said about eyes being opened...

  “Something here is wrong. Mother, there is something evil here among us.”

  His mother shook her head. “There is no evil in the universe, Reigo, as there is no good. There are only shades of gray.”

  “Something is affecting us!” Reigo pointed at Na’Athril’s corpse. “Morrans do not die of light sickness. Morrans hate light! For Na’Athril to go into light that burned its skin and stay there until it was mortally wounded, that would be like a man walking into a furnace and allowing fire to consume flesh. It is madness. It is not normal behavior. You have been having sex with Ceril--”

  “There is nothing reprehensible about that!” Tiorné interrupted. “Ceril and I are both men of the Blood.”

  “Forget the Blood, it’s irrelevant.” Reigo turned to Aspera. “And you, you had sex with Hectar. I saw you doing it.”

  Hectar’s face went red and Aspera turned away, concealing her expression.

  “Ogonaovan, you’ve no doubt done...whatever it is you do.”

  Ogonaovan laughed. “Nothing new there, then.”