Worlds Apart 02 Edenworld

by James Wittenbach

  He smiled darkly. “The Loran Deene is said to cruise the Sapphire system unto this very day, looking for spacers to help fill her cargo hold. Her mission was to deliver 293 colonists and 14 crew to Sapphire, and she can not rest until she has done so.”

  Although the boy was trying to maintain a skeptical countenance, his eyes had grown somewhat wider. “So, this story is really true?”

  “I can’t say, but my story is true... I was a technician on the Madison Gilmore, which suffered a malfunction of its proximity warning system in interstellar space that I duly logged, although the malfunctions ceased after we entered the Republic system, and a full systems check found no anomalies. I served on that ship with men named Ozzie Aziz and Haphaestus

  ‘Griffy’ Hathaway, and shortly after reaching Republic, they died.”

  “They died?” Trajan said incredulously.

  “The two of them boarded a shuttle to meet the guild liner for the return trip to the Sapphire system. The shuttle disappeared without a trace.”

  “You’re lying.”

  Hunter shrugged. “I have no reason to lie to you. You can verify the story later.”

  “If I access the Ministry of Entertainment database and Cross-Reference Mining Guild Lore with colonial history and Loran Deene, I’d find the story you just told me.”

  “I can only assume the story is true because it happened to me. Never tried to look it up myself.”

  “How can a ship like that be lurking around the Sapphire system for thousands of years and no one’s ever spotted it?”

  John Hunter’s answering tone was incredulous. “A solar system is a huge place. Even a ship this large…” He spread his arms expansively to indicate Pegasus’s enormous size. “… is like a speck of dust.”

  “… but it would have run out of fuel at some point, it would have…”

  “Do you want to hear the rest of the story?”

  Trajan blinked at him. “There’s more?”

  “I was skeptical like you, and I did not take the story seriously. I casually mentioned the story to Hathaway the next time I had to relieve him. He responded by pinning me against a bulkhead and threatening to snap my neck if he ever heard me use the name of that curséd ship again.

  “When I saw Aziz again, I could read by the look on his face that he had set me up; the kind of asinine prank guildsmen carry out on each other to ease the boredom of a long journey. I told him I would let him have this one, but if there were another one, I would take him down and lay him flat.

  “Hathaway came to my bunk later, in the middle of his watch, and woke me from an unpleasant dream whose details I could never again recall. He apologized for his reaction, and explained the Mining Guild’s prohibition against speaking that name. According to legend, anyone who invokes the name ‘Loran Deene’ on a Guilder ship threatens to add its crew to her unholy cargo, or brings disaster on ship and crew alike. I apologized for my ignorance, and he told me of a complicated series of ritual gestures… spitting on the deck, sending a bottle of spirits through an airlock … designed to ward off the ghost ship. I assured him I would, although it seemed ridiculous to me and I had no intention of following through.

  “Sensing this, I think, he insisted I give him my word as bond, and in return, he would tell me the story of his first transit. His first crossing between the system was also as a cryo-technician, on an ore carrier. His companions were a crewman named Reese — a dark and unhappy man, lately beset by the latest in a series of failed romantic relationships — and a woman, whom they called Oak, short for Oakley, although whether this was her first or last name, he did not know. The ore-carrier also carried passengers, of a sort. In addition to the twenty seven regulars of the ship’s company were sixty guilders in stasis, assigned to the Medusa hydro-carbon extraction facility on Colossus IV.

  “Shortly after the ship passed out of the Sapphire Out-system, there was a malfunction in the stasis chambers. The eighty-seven crewmen died. Their deaths were sudden, but not absolutely sudden. There had been just ... just ... enough time to experience a last spasm of life, to realize their predicament, ... a nano-second of panic before death claimed them.

  “The course had been laid in by computer, and there could be no turning back. They sent out distress calls, but no one answered them. They were alone, for three-hundred days, with nothing but the corpses of eighty-eight men to keep them company.

  “I don’t think you can imagine what it was like for them, on that great coffin of a ship. You look around these UnderDecks, and you think how austere it is down here, but there aren’t puddles of coolant and lubricating fluid on the decks. No reeking stench of sulfur and ammonia. The bulkheads and supports aren’t stained, or warped. You don’t hear the constant pounding and hissing of equipment. It gets into your mind. Your brain hums like a gong all the time. It makes you a little insane, and you don’t realize how much it affected you until after you leave the ship and the ringing stops.

  “It was hard on them, especially Oak. Every time she went to the bridge she would have to pass the stasis chambers of the dead officers; the captain, the first officer, the chief navigator, the chief engineer, the watch officers, laying in their transparent sarcophogi. Nearly all of them had awakened just before they died. All but the captain wore some wide-eyed expression of horror. Some of them were open-mouthed, as though trying to scream from empty lungs. A few had managed to raise up their hands as though to claw their way out. It was a gallery of horrors they all had to pass through every day. The men just tried not to look, but Oak never made it past without being caught by some expression or gesture. Sometimes, she swore that a face had changed somehow from the previous day.

  “She told Hathaway that when she slept, which was often, she sometimes heard in her dreams a kind of scraping sound.” Quick as a cat, Hunter drew a knife and began scraping it back and forth on the deck. It made a rasping sound that caused the back of Trajan’s ears to itch. “She told him that, in that panic one experiences when awakening from a nightmare. She thought the dead crew were trying to claw their way out and come after her.”

  “Please stop doing that,” Trajan asked.

  Hunter grinned, gave the deck one last hard scrape, and replaced the knife in its sheath.

  “Days went by. Then weeks. Reese, who had always been melancholy, fell into an even deeper melancholia, and stopped speaking to either of the other two. He stood his watch alone and left as soon as she came on duty, or even before. On the rare occasions Oak and Hathaway saw Reese, it was in the horror gallery, staring at one or the other of the grotesques. When caught in this attitude, he would retreat to his quarters without a word.

  “Oak and Hathaway clung to each other for sanity; going through their routines, eating, sleeping, performing routine functions. It helped, for a time. They managed to forget for a few minutes, here and there, about the eighty-seven dead who rode with them. Reese remained sullen and uncommunicative. They made renewed attempts to draw him in, but he hardly said a word to either of them.

  “Reese had been handsome man once, with short blond curls like yours and a nice build, but, since the disaster, he had eaten little and slept less. He became gaunt and sickly, and his eyes became reddened, sunken and dark. He looked, Hathaway told me, like the figure of Death. He had taken to slipping quietly onto the command deck and lurking in the shadows until the one on duty, usually Oak, finally noticed him. It was hard on Oak because Reese had become such an apparition that when she would first catch sight of him, she thought her nightmare had returned, that one of the crew had scratched their way free from the stasis chamber and come to claim her.

  “Hathaway, too, was beginning to lose his sanity. At night, he too, began having the same dream as Oak. He heard the scraping sound, like nails against steel. Once, he awoke from that nightmare to the sound of a woman screaming.

  “He ran from his bunk to the cargo hold and saw Oak pounding against the front of one of the stasis chambers. She was slamming it with her fists
and screaming, ‘Why can’t you leave us alone? You’re dead! Why can’t you let us sleep? You’re dead! Why can’t you stay in your chamber? You’re dead! You’re dead! You’re dead!’

  “Hathaway tried to stop her, but she insisted on beating the front of the stasis chamber until she was exhausted and her hands had swollen until she could not use them any more. When she finally collapsed, he gathered her into his arms and took her to the ship’s infirmary. The two of them decided to seal off the two cargo bays where the stasis chambers had failed. It would mean a longer trip from one end of the ship to the other, but it was an inconvenience they were willing to tolerate.

  “They carried out their plan without consulting Reese. Whether he minded or not, they never found out. Oak came found him on her next duty shift impaled on the primary control column. He had removed the instrument cluster and, in the course of his watches on the bridge, filed it to a sharp point, scraping it over and over again in the night with a file, until it was hard as a needle. Then, he threw himself on it.

  “Reese’s file specified that he wanted to be interred into space. So, after the maintenance automechs removed his body from the control column, bundled it into an ejection pod, and fired it out through an aft airlock. Just as they did so, a proximity sensor activated, indicating the presence of another ship within communication range.

  “They ran to the command center and put out a frantic distress call. The other ship was too far away for visual contact, but it was on a direct intercept course with Reese’s coffin. They frantically searched for an Identification channel. The only active channel was a very old reserve channel, one not used since colonial times. On that, they heard only a howling burst of static, that might have been a whisper or a scream. Then, it fell silent.

  “They made the rest of the way to Medusa Station in relative peace. At first, the nightmares came back to them, except that in them it was Reese trying to claw his way free from the chamber. Those dreams went away eventually.

  “Oakley left the Guild after they made orbit. She never even went back to the Sapphire system. She journeyed to Colossus IV, and took a job in the agro-botany dome.

  “The next quarter, the Guild and the Republic Ministries of Space Transport, Safety and Health in Space, and about eleven others, held a board of inquiry into the incident. It wasn’t until her testimony that Griffy found out Oakley was, in fact, her family name. He found this out when the Sub-commissioner on trans-stellar occupational safety called to the stand ... Lauren Deane Oakley.”

  Pegasus – Executive Commander Lear’s Suite

  Executive Commander Lear rose quickly from the bed she shared with her husband and silently slipped out of their chambers.

  She carried inside a churning sense of grief and anxiety. She, of course, could not tell her lifemate the full scope of what bothered her, but they had been married too long for him not to empathically sense her concern over Trajan. Over dinner, he had spoken words of reassurance that had failed to reassure her, although she had acted like they had. She sat down at her ocular exercise terminal, and projected a series of characters against the wall. She stared at them, forcing them to resolve themselves for her reading. First came the character for family.

  Then came the character for journey.

  Then came the character for home.

  She hesitated. This was a standard ocular recovery character set. She should have attached no meaning to the series of characters, but it was hard not to ignore their significance. With a deep breath of resolve, she projected the fourth character.

  It was the character for water. It had no significance to her current crisis, except that water was the one consumable a child takes on his Passage. That was a stretch, she decided. Her eyes hurt, but she forced herself to continue. If she had been doing this weeks ago, she would still have had her command. She could have held a security drill, swept the UnderDecks. She could have ordered a massive systems check and sent squads of technicians and automechs through the UnderDecks.

  She focused hard, and the soft features of her face became a study in concentration. The fifth character went up. It was the character for “alone.”

  “How apt,” she said out loud.

  Chapter Fourteen

  As darkness fell, Magnus Morgan took out his recorder and made a journal entry. We have used the Shrieks to survey the subterranean fault line along almost its entire length. Although the feature is fault-like in appearance, it does not appear to be seismologically active, nor does it mark the boundary of any tectonic plate. The seam itself is almost perfectly straight, unlike anything found in nature.

  The planet as a whole does not seem to be geologically active. The crust is exceptional thick and stable, and almost uniformly composed of dense metals, with the aforementioned high concentrations of molybdenum, titanium, cobalt, coborundum and other less common elements.

  Our supposition remains that the planet was subject to terra-forming at an earlier stage of its history. Our knowledge of colonial terra-forming was obviously incomplete. We thought they could only transform the surface of a planet. This seam shows they could build a planet from the core outward and suggests that not only could they build a planet, but they also would have been able to do so in perhaps less than one century.

  Mission observations: The morale of the landing team remains high. All team members are working with admirable efficiency. The villagers of Blackwood have moved past the bean-crushing incident and become active and helpful in assisting us in achieving our mission. They have expressed tremendous curiosity about our technology ---ships, landing gear, instruments, and most especially, our power packs.

  A shadow fell across him, blockading what diminished light was still radiating from the sun. He looked up to see Doctor Cuthbertson standing over him.

  “How fares your mission?” Cuthbertson asked.

  “It fares well,” Morgan answered. “Your people have been very ... helpful to us.”

  Cuthbertson gestured in the direction of his village. “The people of Blackwood have prepared a meal for you and your ... ‘landing team?’ ... I believe that is the expression. Many of your friends are already there. I would ask you to join them.”

  Morgan closed his recorder and stood. “All right. That’s very hospitable of you.”

  “Come this way.” Morgan and the man walked down the hillock toward the village. Although it was growing dark outside, warm light spilled from the windows of each building. As they drew nearer, Morgan saw that the streets were bustling, now as in the light of day.

  “You keep busy,” Morgan observed.

  “We do work harder in the Unfinished Lands than elsewhere. The Unfinished Lands have no tolerance for idleness.”

  Morgan remembered looking at the ground below as the Aves had made its approach. The land had indeed had an unfinished look to it; irregular hills, broad sloppy waterways too shallow for navigation, sparse vegetation except around the widely scattered settlements; subjected to nearly constant wind from the harsh weather at the planet’s margins. “I can see why they are called the Unfinished Lands.”

  “According to our legends, this world was constructed by the Progenitors as a place of perfect contentment. They completed building the Inner Prefectures, and were working on the Middle Prefectures. They were planning on finishing the Outer Prefectures later. Then, they went away, before these lands were finished.” Morgan could not help but notice Cuthbertson was looking up toward the stars when he told this.

  “Interesting Legend,” Morgan said.

  “If you go to the Inner Prefectures, you may see some magnificent buildings, some beautiful gardens, but all these were put there by the Builders. Our surroundings may be more humble, but we have built everything ourselves. Ah, but now we are here,” Cuthbertson stopped in front of a large building. It was constructed of timber, thatch, and brick and looked little different from any other building in the village. Morgan somehow sensed it was newer. In fact, he could not shake a vague feeling that it h
ad not stood this morning.

  “We’ve prepared a lodging that we hope you would find comfortable,” the Headman said. He opened the door and gestured for Morgan to enter ahead of him. When Morgan had entered, his jaw dropped to his chest.

  The main hall was well over seven meters tall, and described a cavernous space with couches and what seemed to be a sumptuous banquet spread out on long tables. Aside from that, it was an extremely accurate reproduction of the interior of the Aves that had brought him. The couches were the same black and blue pattern with gray accents, and incorporated the head-rests and crash arms. The tables were inset with large thick sheets of black glass inlaid with colored glass in patterns that mimicked the system interfaces of the main cabin.

  “How ...?” Morgan stammered.

  “Magnus!” Kayliegh Driver called to him, crossing the floor holding a glass of some purplish liquid. “Isn’t it amazing?”

  “Amazing, right.”

  Cuthbertson spoke. “Our intention was to provide you with a comfortable environment based on your usual surroundings.”

  “How did you do it so quickly?” Morgan almost gushed.

  The Headman pursed his lips and drew his hands together prayerfully. “In the Unfinished Territories, we survive on our wits. We have learned to make things quickly, and adapt. Let me show you.”

  He led Morgan and Kayliegh to a window. Peering through it, they realized they could see the outside, brighter than day. These windows were how the room was being lit.