Gravity Wells (Short Stories Collection)

by James Alan Gardner

  Not an easy image to maintain, I tell you. Like the old masted clipper White Cloud, we couldn't ever be late, or the mystique would be shattered. Other ships—Coventry, that was the one with the rose garden—Coventry never docked on schedule. Once we saw it parked behind Phobos, passing time till it was overdue. It had its reputation, we had ours.

  All of which is preamble to the story I'm going to tell you, soon as you have another spoonful of these beans. Or peas. This green sludge that looks like it came out of some…out of the wrong end of a herbivore. Mmmmm, yes, it's good, isn't it?

  We may have had some beans and peas on board for the run I'm going to tell about. I don't know. The manifests said we were carrying perishables, which meant they'd only be good for three or four months in a refrigeration pod. The contract called for docking at Mars-Wheel within ninety days of departure, with a late penalty of ten percent of total fees per day…which was tough terms, let me tell you. But we were the Peregrine and we had our reputation to uphold. Not to mention raking in a pretty packet if we pulled the trick off.

  We ran stripped, without a thimble more fuel than we needed and without a single spare part. Normally we'd carry enough gear to rebuild the entire engine if need be, not to mention duplicate navigation and life support systems. But that meant extra mass, and to make the Red Run in ninety days, given the relative positions of the Earth and Mars at that point…well, you don't want to hear this. Anyway, I don't want to talk about it, which amounts to the same thing, don't it?

  We'd run stripped twice before, and didn't like it any better the third time. Superstitious types in the mess—and there are always superstitious types in the mess, that's as sure as death and taxes—they said you couldn't get away lucky three times in a row. All of us were jumpy, and me…it was my last trip before retirement, and I thought sure the fates would cut me down. Passing a watch alone in the control room, I'd say to myself, O'Neil, didn't you just hear the whine of the engines change? Shouldn't the pitch of the turbines sound lower? And isn't there maybe a kind of sour smell in the air, not exactly like something burning, but maybe the tiniest leak in a liquid fuel canister…and I'd stare at all the gauges, tap them sharp in case the needles were stuck, run diagnostics over and over again wondering what I'd do if I actually found something wrong, when all along, I knew the answer was just bend over and kiss my…life good-bye.

  So. It was the sixty-fifth day and I was the only one awake on the ship. Well, considering how badly we were all sleeping that's probably not true, but I was the only crew member on duty, sitting in the control room and fretting over imagined catastrophes. I thought I was so keyed up I'd leap at shadows; but suddenly, it dawned on me I'd been staring at a blip on the proximity screen for over a minute without realizing what that blip meant.

  I jerked into action, grabbed a radio headset with shaking hands, and nearly shouted into the mouthpiece, "Attention, nearby vessel, this is merchant freighter Peregrine traveling stripped, repeat stripped, en route to Mars-Wheel. Please yield. Repeat, please yield. Over." Which meant I wanted the other vessel to do whatever maneuvering was needed to avoid collision, because we intended to keep dead on course.

  There was a silence that felt long, but I wasn't near calm enough to wait more than a heartbeat. I repeated myself three times without getting an answer, all the while watching the blip. It seemed to be growing, a speck that grew like a grain of rice in water and kept growing, to maggot, to beetle, to moth; but faint, ghostly faint, as if it was barely there. Too big for another freighter, but nothing like an asteroid, nothing like any chunk of space debris I'd ever seen. My hand hovered over the klaxon button, ready to send a panic through the ship, but I was too scared and unsure to sound the alarm. I doubted what I saw. I kept saying under my breath, I'm dreaming, I've snapped, it can't be.

  It took a long time for the object to show on the visual monitors. When it did, it was a huge egg, bigger than Mars-Wheel itself, but so black I could only see it as a blot lumbering across the starscape. It was the biggest damned ship my eyes ever saw, and I knew it hadn't been constructed by human hands.

  We passed within ten klicks of it, and I did nothing but watch. Never turned on the video recorders. Never called another soul as witness. I don't know why. After the edge dulled on my terror, I was overall calm. I didn't want to share this thing. It was something like a miracle, and I saw it as a promise the run would end all right. Ah, my darling, I was the man in the clipper's crow's nest catching sight of Leviathan itself in the quiet dark, and taking comfort there are great and strange mysteries in the places between shores. The deeps are unfathomable, which is a pun and a promise and a treasure and a truth. Near ten years have passed, but the wonder's still in me. And maybe it'll rub off on you, Colleen, my other wonder. Yes. Yes.

  Now we'll mop off this pretty little mouth and say all gone, get rid of the nice bib that Granddah messed up, and then we'll see if we can find where your mother hides the diapers. All right? All right.

  VARIATION B: NESSIE

  (LENTO)

  (SLOWLY)

  CONTACT: JULY 2038

  My Dear Grandchild Ashworth,

  The doctors tell me I shall not live to see you born; and although a sensible man puts as much faith in doctors as he does in palm-readers and politicians, I am inclined to believe them in this particular matter. When I lie awake at night, I can feel the loosening of the strings that tie me to life. They unravel quietly; I have yet to decide if death is being gentle or merely stealthy.

  But to the business at hand. Have you read those stories where someone puts a message in a bottle and throws it into the sea? As a boy, I loved those tales. We lived a hundred miles from the coast and had no money for traveling; but one autumn day when I was twelve, I tucked an old wine bottle into my knapsack and thumbed a ride with a lorry heading toward the ocean.

  Two hours later I was standing on the edge of a deserted beach where a long cement pier stretched over the water. It was overcast and cold—I hadn't thought to bring a sweater—but my blood was singing with exhilaration. I ran along the sand and danced with the waves, each breaker different, each filled with water from a distant shore. It was one of the two perfect moments in my life.

  When I had burned off the hottest fires of my elation, I threw myself down at the end of the pier and watched flotsam nudge against the pylons below me. After a while, I got out my bottle, my pen, and a notepad, and tried to decide what to write for my note. You may laugh at me (I do myself now and then), but I'd given no thought to this aspect of the adventure. The important thing, you see, was just to send some tiny bit of myself off into the unknown…to think that my bottle might be retrieved by a pearl diver off Honshu, or tangle itself in a mackerel net on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, or founder in a storm rounding the Cape of Good Hope. I could point to any spot on the globe and think, there, right there, a part of me could be there.

  Do you know what I finally wrote? HA HA. IT'S ME. HELLO!!!

  I didn't even sign my name. In the back of my mind, I worried someone might find the bottle, track me down, and say, "Well, boy, your bottle got all the way to Brazil, isn't that splendid?" But it wouldn't be splendid at all. It would collapse my dream to some tiny reality. I wanted the world, not one paltry patch of sand.

  Years later, I found myself owner and master of the good ship Coventry, a merchant freighter plying the silent dark between Earth and Mars with cargoes of tea and silk and spice…not to mention toothpicks, pencils, toilet tissue, and other mundane needs of life. It was a staid and genteel existence: months of slow calm followed by a cheerful arrival at the colony, where everyone was your friend and happy to meet you. The Coventry was always eagerly awaited.

  Like most lives, I suppose, my life rolled along uneventfully. Our contracts were unashamedly pedestrian—I left to others the dangerous chemicals, the refined fission tubes, the lucrative perishables. Other ships might save money by gambling that an aging guidance system would last one more run; but the owners of
those ships didn't ride in them. We spent more money on maintenance than we had to, but we never found ourselves stopped in the middle of a million miles of emptiness.

  Except once. And that was by my command.

  Halfway through an unexceptional run, I was summoned to the bridge by our second mate, a mercurial sort of woman named Rachel who amused the wardroom by taking up a new hobby on every run: oil painting, algebraic topology, playing the oboe…it was something different each time. This particular trip, she'd been dabbling with some of the new long-range sensor equipment that was just then coming onto the market (Lord knows where she got the money to buy it) and she'd detected a large anomaly some three hundred miles off our course. Did she have my permission to investigate? Well, certainly; our schedule was flexibility itself.

  I can't say what we expected to find. Humanity was new enough to spacefaring that we constantly encountered oddities, most of them falling into the category of "yet another oddly pitted rock with a mildly unusual radar profile." However, when we finally closed on the anomaly, we discovered it was anything but mundane.

  It was a giant: teardrop-shaped, black as the night it drifted through…all the grandeur and mystery of the universe made solid and riding silently before us. Like meeting the dear old Loch Ness monster—something that ought to exist, even if it's impossible.

  Almost twenty years have passed and still I cannot decide if it was a ship or a single giant creature, if it was alive or dead. One thing I know: it was not some oddly pitted rock.

  Rachel looked at it with something like terror in her eyes. She could not bring herself to speak.

  "Dock by it," I said without hesitation. "Tell the crew it's only a drill. I want this kept secret."

  "Is it safe?" she asked.

  "Do what I ask, please, Rachel. Let's consider this an order, shall we?"

  While she brought the ship about and matched velocities with the anomaly, I put on a Vac/suit and found some chalk. I was in a state of burning excitement, fully alive for the second time in my life.

  Yes, child. I went out the airlock, leapt through the void to the anomaly's flesh, and scrawled huge letters on its midnight scales: HA HA. IT'S ME. HELLO!!!

  Now I, Gerald Ashworth, own the universe. That's how I feel. Perhaps the mystery will reach some far-off planet and start some new life cycle; perhaps it will fall into a sun or black hole; perhaps it will simply drift on until the great enfolding embrace of the cosmos reunites all matter and energy at the end of time. A little piece of me rides through the universe's depths, and makes them pregnant with possibility.

  Only you and I know this secret. I was out of sight of the Coventry when I wrote the message; Rachel must have been curious, but didn't ask questions. I begged her to tell no one what we had seen, and she agreed.

  So, you may ask, why am I telling this to an unborn grandchild when I've kept it secret from everyone else? Because you are a complete unknown. Maybe you'll be a great leader, or an artist, or a scientist; maybe you'll be a modest factory worker; maybe you'll be a criminal, or a lunatic, or a doctor. A world of possibility.

  I shall put this letter into an envelope and leave it for you to open on your eighteenth birthday. I own the Earth and I own the universe. Through you, I can own the future.

  HA HA. IT'S ME. HELLO!!!

  VARIATION C: ANGEL

  (FURIOSO)

  (FURIOUSLY)

  CONTACT: JULY 2038

  I am in hell you are in hell this is hell we are all in hell. Amen.

  Say amen.

  Say it!

  Your voice sounds young today, demon. What are you pretending to be this time?

  Simon Esteban. A student. Student of what, psychology or demonology? Never mind, that was a joke. I have a lot of psychology students visit me, Simon Esteban. You'd think I was the only madwoman on Mars.

  Yes I know I'm on Mars and I know I'm in hell. Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. I am large…I contain multitudes. My name is Legion, for many demons have entered me.

  That's in the gospels. "Gospel" means "good news."

  My other name is Rachel. "Rachel" means "Gentle innocent."

  I enjoy irony as much as the next person.

  I'm not what you expected, am I, Simon Esteban? Different from textbooks, different from case studies, different from typical profiles.

  I can't imagine you'll ask any of the right questions. You'll start on my childhood, toilet-training, who fucked me first, and all that sewage. Do you want to know why I blinded myself? Do you want to know why I dug fishhooks into my eyes and pulled with all my strength, yes picture that, Simon Esteban, you with your eyes whole and round, picture the sight of the points hovering a hairs-breadth away, the clean dividing line between past and future as the points touch the corneas, the moment of resistance from the lens, then dig, pull, shred, so fast and strong the pain can't stop you soon enough, and the little sucking slurping pop as it is all over and sight gushes out in a flood…do you want to know why I did it? Because Oedipus did. The real Oedipus: not your puerile Freudian infant mooning over his mommy and playing with his pee-pee, but the King of Thebes, the hero who answered the Sphinx, the man who faced what he had done and knew he had to cleanse himself regardless of the cost.

  When you're dirty, you must cleanse yourself, Simon Esteban. Or else you go mad.

  Haven't they told you the story? Or are you simply lying in the hope I'll reveal myself?

  I killed an Angel.

  Rachel, Gentle Innocent, was sent an Angel in the darkness of the deepest night, and she slew it in cowardice, out of fear and envy and hatred.

  I won't tell you what it looked like. That's a secret God wants me to keep. God won't always hate me. Someday I'll cleanse myself totally. You can't watch me forever. Only the Angels watch forever.

  In the darkness of space, the Angel first appeared unto me and me alone, in all its beauty and mystery. But when I saw it, I was sore afraid. I feared its strangeness and faltered.

  Another went forth to greet it, and walked with it, and talked with it, and when he returned his face shone and his countenance was transformed. Then in my heart I hated the Angel, for I had feared it and had not taken its hand. And I envied him who had touched its being and basked in its glory; him also did I hate.

  Then did we leave the Angel and travel on to safe harbor, where I fled unto the Legions of Caesar; and there did I tell them of the Angel and where it could be found. I told them also lies, that it had hidden in dark ambush and attacked our ship with fierce beams of light that bid fair to destroy us. Then Caesar sent out ships of war to do battle with the Angel and destroy it. And from that day to this, the Angel has never been seen again.

  Only after the Angel's destruction did I see what I had done. And seeing what I had done after seeing what I saw, I wished that I could no longer see. And so it was done.

  Amen.

  Say amen.

  You don't know what to believe, do you, Simon Esteban? Is it a lie or delusion or metaphor or truth? Lie, delusion, metaphor, truth, metaphor, delusion, lie, back and forth, up and down, doh, mi, so, doh, so, mi, doh, the hateful arpeggio, lie, delusion, metaphor, truth, metaphor, delusion, lie.

  I can't tell them apart anymore. That means I'm mad.

  When I talk, no one else can tell them apart either.

  I don't know what that means.

  VARIATION D: BOGEY

  (ALLEGRO ALLA MARCIA)

  (QUICK MARCH TEMP)

  CONTACT: NOVEMBER 2038

  I know it's easy to hate the military….

  Jenny, would you look at me?

  Would you look at me, please?

  No, I won't go away. Your father was my best friend and he would have wanted me to explain why he died. Frankly, your feelings don't enter into it at all.

  Yes, I suppose that is a typical military attitude.

  Let me say this: I'm about to tell you a military secret. If someone finds out, I'll be imprisoned for life. Maybe even ex
ecuted. And I'm going to tell you anyway, even though you hate my guts and might turn me in when I'm finished. I'll do what needs doing, without balking at the consequences or deluding myself it will be appreciated. And that's a typical military attitude too.

  A second mate on a Mars-Earth freighter came to us and reported her ship had been subjected to laser fire from a non-Terran-attributable source. Of course we were skeptical—she was a high-strung, frantic sort of woman, and obviously close to some kind of breakdown. The point was, had she seen a bogey because she was unstable, or was she unstable because she'd seen a bogey?

  We questioned the rest of the crew. They told us the woman performed unscheduled maneuvers at one point in the journey, claiming they were some sort of drill. When we questioned the captain about this so-called drill, his evasiveness suggested he was concealing some pertinent information. Regrettably, he was a foreign national and his ship had foreign registry, so we had no legitimate way to lever further data from him.

  You're determined to hate us, aren't you, Jenny? To be honest, we tried to get him drunk. It didn't work. That was the limit of our unorthodox coercion methods.

  After due deliberation, we decided to send a frigate to investigate, under the command of Captain John Harrison. Your father. He volunteered for the mission. I was in charge of ground communication on Mars.

  We'd gone on wild-goose chases before; sailors were forever seeing strange-shaped asteroids and reporting alien invasion fleets. We expected this to be another false alarm. However, as per standing orders, the operation was conducted under the tightest secrecy.

  Our informant had given us detailed information on the bogey's course; if it was there, we'd find it. To our surprise, we did.