There were dozens of different tracks, all tracing some arcane cursive, all leading inward from a distant perimeter to the focal point, the great columnar Voidheron. Passengers poured through entrances at the circumference and into this lobby, where power in turn poured off of us and into... what?
There is a haunting familiarity to all this, a moment of déjà vu. I resist the temptation to draw my path from memory. Even accidental runes can have power. If I manage to get it right, what will I prove? That I can cause my own head to explode?
My nose dribbles onto my upper lip, and I wipe it away again with my knuckle. A washroom would be nice right about now. I cast my eyes about for the familiar restroom icons and then stifle a laugh. It’s unlikely they’ll label anything in the Voidheron in that way.
There is movement at the inner edge of the lobby. A second set of doors has opened, and uniformed attendants are handing key cards to passengers. My berth, or room, or whatever, will have a washroom. I mill about in the queue, waiting my turn, as the people around me do the same. Unhooded, some begin to converse.
“I think it’s silly.” An older woman to my right is complaining to her husband, or perhaps the most patient stranger in the world. “A book, a paper book, can’t crash a spacecraft. Not unless you hit the pilot in the head with it.”
God dammit, ignorance is dangerous. Jude explained this bit to me once, I think. Somebody did, anyway. I don’t want my freedom cut short by a careless idiot who doesn’t understand the peril we face. I interrupt.
“The problem is the way the pages touch, ma’am.”
She turns to me, as does the man next to her, who appears visibly relieved.
“Of course the pages touch, young man. Without a binding they’d fall out of the book.”
“It’s not the binding. When the book is closed, all the letters on opposing pages touch. Those words and letters? Maybe they’re all English when the book is open, but when the book closes you get new shapes, new paths in the ink. Just like a Q is an O with a comma in it, the closed pages form hundreds of thousands of random characters.”
Her eyes widen in surprise.
“I’m serious. The hull is covered in runes, right? Well, the ship’s controls are runes, too. I don’t know how they work, but if you throw the wrong random symbol inside the ship, even in something flighty like paper and ink, the controls might stop working, and then where would we be?”
She scowls. “You really believe all that?” She puts her hand to her heart and lowers her voice. “I heard the symbols and the blinders are all rigmarole to distract us from a fancy, Chinese space-drive.”
I’ve heard this one. If only.
“Maybe so. But if they’re scamming us, they’ve got to sell it, right? So... no books.”
“Mister Simonson?” Our conversation has taken us to the head of the queue, and the attendant is offering me a key card. “This will lead you to your cabin. Congratulations, sir.” He smiles as I take the card.
Just like with the silk rope, I’m now being led by a thing in my left hand. A map on the card scrolls down as I walk forward, down a short corridor, up two flights of stairs, and then down a longer, curving corridor. All of the doors on my path have been identical. Blank. No writing anywhere.
A group of travelers ahead of me—a family, perhaps—arrives at their door, which opens with a wave of the card. I walk past their blank door as it shuts. I proceed three doors further, and then the map in my hand displays a filled, blinking circle. Usually these things are indicated with an X. Perhaps that simplest of symbols has too much power to be used, even ephemerally, in display paper. But this is my door, and with a wave of the card and a twist of the knob, I’m inside.
It’s just like a hotel room, if sparser: bed, chair, lamp. And a private washroom immediately to my right. First things first, then.
I check my face just to be sure Flagstaff wasn’t flipping me off. No nosebleed, though I am a little pale. I splash some water on my face, cool at first, and then warm, relaxing.
Fool. If I’d had any sort of a nosebleed somebody would certainly have said something on my way here. Blood isn’t just a disease vector. It’s the most dangerous paint in the world.
***
“Attention, passengers: This is Captain Adams. Voidheron will be departing momentarily.” More déjà vu. It’s a male voice, oddly familiar, with a distinguished, authoritarian edge that reminds me of movie trailers, politicians, and hospital orderlies. “Some passengers find departure disorienting. You may experience strong emotions. These sensations will pass and pose no serious danger, but for your comfort and convenience, please take a seat or lie down.”
Lying down sounds nice. I flop onto the bed and stare at the ceiling. No textures. I remember my childhood bedroom, and the pictures I could trace in the random stippling on the ceiling there. Voidheron’s designers have left nothing to chance. I’m not going to be able to draw a dinosaur, or a skull, or the continent of Africa above me. The ceiling is a featureless, warm cream matte with a very subtle gradient: pale in the middle of the room, darkening towards red in the corners.
Or maybe that’s just the lighting. The smooth surface casts no shadows, offers no clues about the strength of the light. Even an institutional ceiling, one of those suspensions of steel frames and acoustic tiles, would say more about the illumination than this does. It’s empty. It is emptiness itself.
And abruptly I am just as empty. My heart drops, and my stomach lurches. Everything I know is false. My life is a fiction. I am an insignificant mote on a wet rock tumbling through the vacuum of a great and terrible abyss. My whole existence is just the desperate, random flailing of an agglomeration of mindless cells, a chemical struggle against entropy, a gradual oxidation of my environment, an inexorable march into decay.
I think, therefore I know that I am nothing.
“Voidheron is away. Repeat, Voidheron is away. We apologize for any discomfort you’ve felt during departure.”
I am wracked with depression for three heartbeats more, and then the emptiness ebbs. Purpose flows back into me. I breathe, and the air tastes sweet and fresh. The only thing left of that bleak misery is the memory that I felt it. Oh, and the knowledge that something outside of my control can strip my soul naked and march it through a blizzard. I shiver.
What did the other passengers feel? Is that child from the boarding queue sobbing into his mother’s arms right now? Does she have comfort to offer, or is she cowering in a corner of their room, wondering whether Voidheron’s next transition will leave her suicidal?
I push myself off the bed and look around. The dresser is set into the wall. The chair and the bed present only plush, rounded edges. If our launch had made me crazy enough to attempt to injure myself I would have been hard-pressed to do it.
Besides, that moment of depression had me completely paralyzed. Everything seemed so futile. Taking my own life would have been just as pointless as anything else, and too difficult to trouble with. Had the depression continued indefinitely, however, I think I might have lain on the bed and starved.
Food would be nice right now. I pat my pocket, checking for my key card, and step into the hallway.
***
I’m waiting in line, holding a tray by my side. A hotel would call this a buffet. A hospital would call it a cafeteria. I suppose the military would call it a mess hall. The greeters at the door welcomed me to “The Galley,” but I always thought galleys were tight little kitchens, or maybe slave ships. I suppose if it’s a proper noun it can be anything.
It smells better than I imagine an ancient, slave-rowed galley would. Grilled vegetables, pasta salads, wild rice... dozens of aromas compete for my attention. I breathe deeply and wonder where the main courses are. Everything looks delicious, but at this moment I’m craving meat.
There isn’t any.
Oh, there are sliced slabs of something down at the end, but I know marbled tofu roast when I see it. The Chinese-style broccoli dish has walnuts and cashe
ws, not strips of beef.
There is a hand on my shoulder, and I realize I’ve stopped and am now holding up the line.
“Can I help you, sir?” It’s one of the greeters. She’s short and very prim.
“I was looking for the main course. Maybe some chicken?” I look down at her and hope as hard as I can for tender, grilled pork loin. She smiles but looks sad and apologetic.
“I’m sorry, Mister Simonson. We’re restricted to vegetarian fare while crossing. Consumption of animal flesh can interfere with the navigation.”
My heart begins to pound. I should know this already, shouldn’t I? I cleared security with the passport of a ship builder, and not just any dry-dock union hack, a runewright. Is my ignorance going to give me away?
“May I help you select something?” She smiles, and now it looks strained.
“Oh, um, sure. Whatever.”
I end up with a thick slice of tamago, the fluffy Japanese omelette typically served in tiny wedges on rice balls. This is bigger than that and is accompanied by some sweet, fruit chutney and a pasta salad. I guess eggs don’t count as animal flesh. I take a corner seat at an otherwise empty table for six and poke the tamago with my fork. What do the cooks do if one of the eggs is fertile? Do they X-ray or ultrasound them before bringing them aboard? I poke again, wondering what radiological indignities this sad excuse for an entree has been subjected to.
I spear a chunk and pop it into my mouth. Slightly sweet, with something aromatic going on. Rice vinegar and sake? Maybe this excuse isn’t quite so sad after all. God, but the Japanese know how to make an omelette. Sure, everybody knows you have to break a few eggs, but that certainly isn’t the end of it.
“May I join you?”
I look up. This man seems familiar. “Umm, sure. No problem.”
“Congratulations again, Mister Simonson,” he says as he sits, and then I remember him. This was the attendant who handed me my key card earlier.
“Thanks.” I spear another chunk of tamago and pop it into my mouth, an excuse not to say more. He knows my name. He knows I’m a lottery winner. Maybe he knows enough to trip me up in my words, to out me in my deceit, my identity swap with my brother.
“I’m sorry. I have you at a disadvantage.” He puts his hand to his breast, much more sanitary than a handshake at mealtime. “I’m Andrew.”
“Pleased to meet you. I’m Jude.” I’m lying, of course. I’m Wendell, but it wouldn’t do to say that. Not with the freedom of a new world just three days away. My fork worries another morsel from the mass on my plate. Larger than a morsel, really. Too bad egg is so soft. I would rather chew than say too much and blow my cover.
“What’s it like to finally be inside?”
Play along. I am a runewright, institutionalized for “exposure,” and saved by the miracles of modern psychiatry.
“It’s bigger than I expected.”
“Really? I would have thought it looked huge from the outside.”
“I spent all my time looking at small pieces of it, and I didn’t have any depth perception. Left eye was always covered.”
“Oh. I never thought of it that way.”
Probably because it’s a story I just now made up, Andrew. It feels true, though. As I imagine it, I can see glyphs and runes, the symbology of space travel, taking shape under my chisel as I chip away at the ancient, unrefined materials.
The last of my tamago is on the fork, and this time I nervously smear it through the chutney with a stroke, swirl, and twist. Into my mouth it goes. Interesting, but it was better by itself. You know what that chutney would be good on? Fish. Chicken. Pork tenderloin. I stare down at the oozing mound of fruit mince on my plate and wish that something could die so I’d have the right flavor combinations.
Combinations. What happens when you wrap dead pig in chopped autumn fruits and then run that through a living, human gut? Now march that shit factory around inside a building whose exterior throbs with power flowing across rune-etched granite, meteoric iron, and petrified redwood.
What if I bit my lip and swallowed fresh blood as I ate this delicious, imaginary pig steak?
What if I bent the tines of my fork just so? Blood, and flesh, and a stainless steel double-X, and you have to break a few goddamn eggs to make an omelette, but then Voidheron would really fucking fly, wouldn’t she?
I’m staring at my plate. The tamago is gone, and so is my appetite. The fruit-juice ooze from the chutney looks just like blood in this light, and that stroke, swirl, and twist created an interesting shape, like a J with a tilde growing out of the hook.
“Is there something in your eye, Mister Simonson?” I look up at Andrew and realize I’ve had my left eye shut tight.
Was I method acting, as I pretend to be the brother I left bound in a hospital bed? I scrape my fork across the not-a-letter absentmindedly drawn in fruit gore, obliterating it. I shiver and then blink and shake my head.
“Nervous tic, I guess.”
“I can imagine. We’re glad you’re healthy enough to join us on this trip.”
“Mmm. Thanks.”
“If you feel up to it, the XO, Commander Willis, would like to take you on a tour of the ship.”
“That would be great.” The words are out of my mouth before I realize that the XO is somebody who might have had contact with the teams that inscribed the hull of the ship. He might know my brother, which means my cover may be in trouble.
“Excellent. The stewards should have delivered everyone’s essentials bags by now. Stop by your room and grab your patch, and then follow your card.” Andrew stands and bows his head in my direction. “Good day to you, Mister Simonson.”
***
There is a small suitcase waiting for me on my bed, full of three days of clothing, toiletries, and no books. Also, no writing instruments, nothing sharp, nothing explosive, and a host of other “nothing” restrictions: some silly, some misleading, and some worrisome if you spend too much time thinking about them. Nothing made of quarried stone. No unrefined ores, natural crystals, or, God forbid, fossils.
I remember reading all the restrictions when I packed, but I can’t remember if I put any of my brother’s eye patches in the bag. Did I think I would need them? God help us all if it falls to me to perform ship repairs with a chisel. But did I imagine it would help my cover, help me play the part?
I concentrate, struggling to recall those hasty minutes spent packing, with so little time, such a small window of opportunity. But it was so intense, my heart pounding. How could I forget any of that? I clench my teeth in frustration. Do I open the bag in order to remember? That would be giving up. It would be cheating. I concentrate, and the concentrating hurts, like the beginning of a migraine pulsing behind my right eye, keeping time with my heart.
I grunt in frustration and unzip the bag so swiftly it sounds like it’s tearing.
“Jude Simonson,” comes a voice from directly in front of me. I shriek and jump back. “Per article eleven of the Uniform Abyssal Void Travel Act, this bag has been searched and carefully repacked by agents of the Transportation Safety Administration.”
A bright orange squawk card sits atop everything in my bag, and as my heart drums its way back down to something reasonable, the card prattles away, politely informing me that my privacy isn’t really mine, but that this is okay because we’re all safer this way, and if I don’t like it I should go fuck myself because that’ll be safer than fucking with the TSA.
I’m furious, because that voice very nearly scared the actual, literal piss right out of me.
I stare at my bag’s invader, this talking slice of polymer, and decide to laugh. Laughing feels good. Tucking a written note into my luggage to let me know my luggage has no writing in it would be such an abysmally stupid act that even the government couldn’t do it.
Or maybe only the government could do it. We think we’re so clever, deciphering the scraps of glyphic power found in ruins in Egypt, China, Guatemala, and a dozen more of the far-flung c
orners of human history, and then experimenting and expanding on the results and arriving at a method to rip holes in space and throw hotels between planets. Only a government could look at the Manhattan Project and decide that that its failure to exterminate us all proves we’re too lucky for accidental genocide.
I stop laughing. Next to the card, placed where it would be impossible to miss, is a shiny, gold runesmith’s eye patch.
Gold? My brother’s patches were all standard-issue brown, with a heavy, guaranteed-unbreakable strap. Who underwrote that guarantee, anyway? If it breaks, your head trip through Hell is on us! It was one of those strappy, brown patches that fell off my brother’s face and melted his brain. I have never seen this patch before in my life.
But I did grab my brother’s toilet kit, right? Maybe he had this new patch in there, buried under the soap and toothpaste. Or maybe... maybe the TSA knew I’d need the patch for my tour with the XO and placed this one where I could find it?
No, that’s ridiculous. It’s much more likely that the XO handed a fresh patch to the steward, who placed it in my bag where I wouldn’t miss it. Yeah, that’s got to be it: the stewards, service with a smile, and keys to everything. If I’m worried, I can ask the XO when I meet him. But I’m not worried, right?
I tuck the patch, still sealed in Mylar, into my pocket and leave the room.
My card leads me around the curve of the hallway. I pass a few other travelers and am glad for the excuse to stare down at the scrolling map in my hand, no eye contact necessary. I can look up when they’re past.
There’s sudden movement ahead. I look up, and I only catch the slightest glimpse of someone darting across the intersecting hall ahead of me. Probably a child playing hide-and-seek or tag. There are children on Voidheron, which means there are probably noisy games happening all over.
I stop in my tracks and stare at the empty, silent intersection before me.
Whoever shot across the hall made no noise.
Space Eldritch Page 32