The Reel Stuff

by Brian M. Thomsen

  The eye did not move. The other grisly bits were drifting on the air currents that flowed across the room, but the eye was still. Fixed on him. Staring.

  He cursed himself and concentrated on the laser, on his cutting. He had burned an almost straight line up the bulkhead for about a meter. He began another at right angles.

  The eye watched dispassionately. The xenobiologist suddenly found he could not stand it. One hand released its grip on the laser, reached out, caught the eye, flung it across the room. The action made him lose balance. He tumbled backward, the laser slipping from his grasp, his arms flapping like the wings on some absurd heavy bird. Finally he caught an edge of the table and stopped himself.

  The laser hung in the center of the room, still firing, turning slowly where it floated. That did not make sense. It should have ceased fire when he released it. A malfunction, he thought. Smoke rose from where the thin line of the laser traced a path across the carpet.

  With a shiver of fear, the xenobiologist realized that the laser was turning towards him.

  He raised himself, put both hands flat against the table, pushed off out of the way.

  The laser was turning more swiftly now.

  He slammed into a wall, grunted in pain, bounced off the floor, kicked. The laser was spinning quickly, chasing him. He soared, braced himself for a ricochet off the ceiling. The beam swung around, but not fast enough. He'd get it while it was still firing off in the other direction.

  He moved close, reached, and saw the eye.

  It hung just above the laser. Staring.

  The xenobiologist made a small whimpering sound low in his throat, and his hand hesitated— not long, but long enough— and the scarlet beam came up and around.

  Its touch was a light, hot caress across his neck.

  * * *

  It was more than an hour later before they missed him. Karoly d'Branin noticed his absence first, called for him over the comm net, and got no answer. He discussed it with the others.

  Royd Eris moved his sled back from the armor plate he had just mounted, and through his helmet Melantha Jhirl could see the lines around his mouth grow hard. His eyes were sharply alert.

  It was just then that the screaming began.

  A shrill bleat of pain and fear, followed by choked, anguished sobbing. They all heard it. It came over the comm net and filled their helmets.

  "It's him," a woman's voice said. The linguist.

  "He's hurt," her partner added. "He's crying for help. Can't you hear it?"

  "Where?" someone started.

  "The ship," the female linguist said. "He must have returned to the ship."

  Royd Eris said, "No. I warned—"

  "We're going to go check," the linguist said. Her partner cut free the hull fragment they had been towing, and it spun away, tumbling. Their sled angled down towards the Nightflyer.

  "Stop," Royd said. "I'll return to my chambers and check from there, if you wish. Stay outside until I give you clearance."

  "Go to hell," the linguist snapped at him over the open circuit.

  "Royd, my friend, what can you mean?" Karoly d'Branin said. His sled was in motion too, hastening after the linguists, but he had been further out and it was a long way back to the ship. "He is hurt, perhaps seriously. We must help."

  "No," Royd said. "Karoly, stop. If your colleague went back to the ship alone he is dead.

  "How do you know that?" the male linguist demanded. "Did you arrange it? Set traps?"

  "Listen to me," Royd continued. "You can't help him now. Only I could have helped him, and he did not listen to me. Trust me. Stop."

  In the distance, d'Branin's sled slowed. The linguists did not. "We've already listened to you too damn much, I'd say," the woman said. She almost had to shout to be heard above the sobs and whimpers, the agonized sounds that filled their universe. "Melantha," she said, "keep Eris right where he is. We'll go carefully, find out what is happening inside, but I don't want him getting back to his controls. Understood?"

  Melantha Jhirl hesitated. Sounds of terror and agony beat against her ears; it was hard to think.

  Royd swung his sled around to face her, and she could feel the weight of his stare. "Stop them," he said. "Melantha, Karoly, order it. They do not know what they are doing." His voice was edged with despair.

  In his face, Melantha found decision. "Go back inside quickly, Royd. Do what you can, I'm going to try to intercept them."

  He nodded to her across the gulf, but Melantha was already in motion. Her sled backed clear of the work area, congested with hull fragments and other debris, then accelerated briskly as she raced toward the rear of the Nightflyer.

  But even as she approached, she knew it was too late. The linguists were too close, and already moving much faster than she was.

  "Don't," she said, authority in her tone. "The ship isn't safe, damn it."

  "Bitch," was all the answer she got.

  Karoly's sled pursued vainly. "Friends, you must stop, please, I beg it of you, let us talk this out together."

  The unending whimpers were his only reply.

  "I am your superior," he said. "I order you to wait outside. Do you hear me? I order it, I invoke the authority of the Academy. Please, my friends, please listen to me."

  Melantha watched as the linguists vanished down the long tunnel of the driveroom.

  A moment later she halted her sled near the waiting black mouth, debating whether she should follow them into the Nightflyer. She might be able to catch them before the airlock opened.

  Royd's voice, hoarse counterpoint to the crying, answered her unvoiced question. "Stay, Melantha. Proceed no further."

  She looked behind her. Royd's sled was approaching.

  "What are you doing?" she demanded. "Royd, use your own lock. You have to get back inside!"

  "Melantha," he said calmly, "I cannot. The ship will not respond to me. The control lock will not dilate. I don't want you or Karoly inside the ship until I can return to my controls."

  Melantha Jhirl looked down the shadowed barrel of the driveroom, where the linguists had vanished.

  "What will—?"

  "Beg them to come back, Melantha. Plead with them. Perhaps there is still time, if they will listen to you."

  She tried. Karoly d'Branin tried too. The crying, the moaning, the twisted symphony went on and on. But they could not raise the two linguists at all.

  "They've cut out their comm," Melantha said furiously. "They don't want to listen to us. Or that… that sound."

  Royd's sled and Karoly d'Branin's reached her at the same time. "I do not understand," Karoly said. "What is happening?"

  "It is simple, Karoly," Royd replied. "I am being kept outside until— until Mother is done with them."

  * * *

  The linguists left their vacuum sled next to the one the xenobiologist had abandoned and cycled through the airlock in unseemly haste, with hardly a glance for the grim doorman.

  Inside they paused briefly to collapse their helmets. "I can still hear him," the man said.

  The woman nodded. "The sound is coming from the lounge. Hurry."

  They kicked and pulled their way down the corridor in less than a minute. The sounds grew steadily louder, nearer. "He's in there," the woman said when they reached the chamber door.

  "Yes," her partner said, "but is he alone? We need a weapon. What if… Royd had to be lying. There is someone else on board. We need to defend ourselves."

  The woman would not wait. "There are two of us," she said. "Come on!" With that she launched herself through the doorway and into the lounge.

  It was dark inside. What little light there was spilled through the door from the corridor. Her eyes took a long moment to adjust. "Where are you?" she cried in confusion. The lounge seemed empty, but maybe it was only the light.

  "Follow the sound," the man suggested. He stood in the door, glancing warily about for a minute, before he began to feel his way down a wall groping with his hands.


  The woman, impatient, propelled herself across the room, searching. She brushed against a wall in the kitchen area, and that made her think of weapons. She knew where the utensils were stored. "Here," she said, "here, I've got a knife, that should thrill you." She waved it, and brushed against a floating bubble of blood as big as her fist. It burst and reformed into a hundred small globules.

  "Oh, merciful God," the man said in a voice thick with fear.

  "What?" she demanded. "Did you find him? Is he—?"

  He was fumbling his way back towards the door, creeping along the wall the way he had come. "Get out of here," he warned. "Oh, hurry."

  "Why?" She trembled despite herself.

  "I found the source," he said. "The screams, the crying. Come on!"

  "Wha—"

  He whimpered, "It was the grill. Oh, don't you see? It's coming from the communicator!" He reached the door, and sighed audibly, and he did not wait for her. He bolted down the corridor and was gone.

  She braced herself and positioned herself in order to follow him.

  The sounds stopped. Just like that: turned off.

  She kicked, floated toward the door, knife in hand.

  Something dark crawled from beneath the dinner table and rose to block her path. She saw it clearly for a moment, outlined in the light from the corridor. The xenobiologist, still in his vacuum suit, but with his helmet pulled off. He had something in his hands that he raised to point at her. It was a laser, she saw, a simple cutting laser.

  She was moving straight toward him. She flailed and tried to stop herself, but she could not.

  When she got quite close, she saw that he had a second mouth below his chin, and it was grinning at her, and little droplets of blood flew from it, wetly, as he moved.

  * * *

  The man rushed down the corridor in a frenzy of fear, bruising himself as he smashed into walls. Panic and weightlessness made him clumsy. He kept glancing over his shoulder as he fled, hoping to see his lover coming after him, but terrified of what he might see in her stead.

  It took a long, long time for the airlock to open. As he waited, trembling, his pulse began to slow. He steadied himself with an effort. Once inside the chamber, with the inner door sealed between him and the lounge, he began to feel safe.

  Suddenly he could barely remember why he had been so terrified.

  And he was ashamed; he had run, abandoned her. And for what? What had frightened him so? An empty lounge? Noises from a communicator? Why, that only meant the xenobiologist was alive somewhere else in the ship, in pain, spilling his agony into a comm unit.

  Resolute, he reached out and killed the cycle on the airlock, then reversed it. The air that had been partially sucked out came gusting back into the chamber.

  The man shook his head ruefully. He'd hear no end of this, he knew. She would never let him forget it. But at least he would return, and apologize. That would count for something.

  As the inner door rolled back, he felt a brief flash of fear again, an instant of stark terror when he wondered what might have emerged from the lounge to wait for him in the corridors of the Nightflyer. He willed it away.

  When he stepped out, she was waiting for him.

  He could see neither anger nor disdain in her curiously calm features, but he pushed himself toward her and tried to frame a plea for forgiveness anyway. "I don't know why I—"

  With languid grace, her hand came out from behind her back. The knife was in it. That was when he finally noticed the hole burned in her suit, just between her breasts.

  * * *

  "Your mother?" Melantha Jhirl said incredulously as they hung helpless in the emptiness beyond the ship.

  "She can hear everything we say," Royd replied. "But at this point, it no longer makes any difference. Your friend must have done something very foolish, very threatening. Now she is determined to kill you all."

  "She, she, what do you mean?" D'Branin's voice was puzzled. "Royd, surely you do not tell us that your mother is still alive. You said she died even before you were born."

  "She did, Karoly," Royd said. "I did not lie to you."

  "No," Melantha said. "I didn't think so. But you did not tell us the whole truth either."

  Royd nodded. "Mother is dead, but her— ghost still lives, and animates my Nightflyer. My control is tenuous at best."

  "Royd," d'Branin said, "My volcryn are more real than any ghosts." His voice chided gently.

  "I don't believe in ghosts either," Melantha Jhirl said with a frown.

  "Call it what you will, then," Royd said. "My term is as good as any. The reality is unchanged. My mother, or some part of my mother, lives in the Nightflyer, and she is killing you all as she has killed others before."

  "Royd, you do not make sense," d'Branin said. "I—"

  "Karoly, let the captain explain."

  "Yes," Royd said. "The Nightflyer is very— very advanced, you know. Automated, self-repairing, large. It had to be, if Mother were to be freed from the necessity of crew. It was built on Newholme, you will recall. I have never been there, but I understand that Newholme's technology is quite sophisticated. Avalon could not duplicate this ship, I suspect. There are few worlds that could."

  "The point, Captain?"

  "The point— the point is the computers, Melantha. They had to be extraordinary. They are, believe me, they are. Crystal-matrix cores, lasergrid data retrieval, and other— other features."

  "Are you telling us that the Nightflyer. is an Artificial Intelligence?"

  "No," Royd said, "not as I understand it. But it is something close. Mother had a capacity for personality impress built in. She filled the central crystal with her own memories, desires, quirks, her loves and her— hates. That was why she trusted the computer with my education, you see? She knew it would raise me as she herself would, had she the patience. She programmed it in certain other ways as well."

  "And you cannot deprogram, my friend?" Karoly asked.

  Royd's voice was despairing. "I have tried, Karoly. But I am a weak hand at systems work, and the programs are very complicated, the machines very sophisticated. At least three times I have eradicated her, only to have her surface once again. She is a phantom program, and I cannot track her. She comes and goes as she will. A ghost, do you see? Her memories and her personality are so intertwined with the programs that run the Nightflyer that I cannot get rid of her without wiping the entire system. But that would leave me helpless. I could never reprogram, and with the computers down the entire ship would fail, drives, life support, everything. I would have to leave the Nightflyer, and that would kill me."

  "You should have told us, my friend," Karoly d'Branin said. "On Avalon, we have many cyberneticists, some very great minds. We might have aided you. We could have provided expert help."

  "Karoly, I have had expert help. Twice I have brought systems specialists on board. The first one told me what I have just told you; that it was impossible without wiping the programs completely. The second had trained on Newholme. She thought she could help me. Mother killed her."

  "You are still omitting something," Melantha Jhirl said. "I understand how your cybernetic ghost can open and close airlocks at will and arrange other accidents of that nature. But that first death, our telepath, how do you explain that?"

  "Ultimately I must bear the guilt," Royd replied. "My loneliness led me to a grievous error. I thought I could safeguard you, even with a telepath among you. I have carried other riders safely. I watch them constantly, warn them away from dangerous acts. If Mother attempts to interfere, I countermand her directly from the control room. That usually works. Not always. Usually, Before you she had killed only five times, and the first three died when I was quite young. That was how I learned about her. That party included a telepath too.

  "I should have known better, Karoly. My hunger for life has doomed you all to death. I overestimated my own abilities, and underestimated her fear of exposure. She strikes out when she is threatened, and telepaths are
always a threat. They sense her, you see. A malign, looming presence, they tell me, something cool and hostile and inhuman."

  "Yes," Karoly d'Branin said, "yes, that was what he said. An alien, he was certain of it."

  "No doubt she feels alien to a telepath used to the familiar contours of organic minds. Hers is not a human brain, after all. What it is I cannot say— a complex of crystalline memories, a hellish network of interlocking programs, a meld of circuitry and spirit. Yes, I can understand why she might feel alien."

  "You still haven't explained how a computer program could explode a man's skull," Melantha said patiently.

  "Have you ever held a whisper-jewel?" Royd Eris asked her.

  "Yes," she replied. She had even owned one once; a dark blue crystal, packed with the memories of a particularly satisfying bout of lovemaking. It had been esperetched on Avalon, her feelings impressed onto the jewel, and for more than a year she had only to touch it to grow randy. It had finally faded, though, and afterwards she had lost it.

  "Then you know that psionic power can be stored," Royd said. "The central core of my computer system is resonant crystal. I think Mother impressed it as she lay dying."

  "Only an esper can etch a whisper-jewel," Melantha said.

  "You never asked me the why of it, Karoly," Royd said. "Nor you, Melantha. You never asked why Mother hated people so. She was born gifted, you see. On Avalon, she might have been a class one, tested and trained and honored, her talent nurtured and rewarded. I think she might have been very famous. She might have been stronger than a class one, but perhaps it is only after death that she acquired such power, linked as she is to the Nightflyer.

  "The point is moot. She was not born on Avalon. On her birth world, her ability was seen as a curse, something alien and fearful. So they cured her of it. They used drugs and electroshock and hypnotraining that made her violently ill whenever she tried to use her talent. She never lost her power, of course, only the ability to use it effectively, to control it with her conscious mind. It remained part of her, suppressed, erratic, a source of shame and pain. And half a decade of institutional cure almost drove her insane. No wonder she hated people."

  "What was her talent? Telepathy?"