by John Grant
"Geena?" he said to the vacant elevator.
There was no response, just the emotionless whiteness of the lighting.
Suddenly Lan Yi became aware of how utterly lonely he was. A few meters away from the wall of this elevator was the hull of the ship, and beyond that there was vacuum that stretched out for ever. Somewhere in that vacuum, almost as isolated as he was, a small planet swam through its orbit around a small yellow star. He perceived the distance between them not just in terms of parsecs but in terms of years. He knew, too, that there were years and parsecs between himself and Geena. But, at the same time, she had been with him only a few hours ago.
He couldn't stay here for ever. Others would be wanting to use the elevator. Perhaps already there was a posse of techbots on its way to try to find out what had gone wrong with the mechanism. He had to press the release button soon. But he also had to say at least one last goodbye to Geena.
"Speak to me!" he begged, falling to his knees.
The lighting hummed faintly.
#
"Let's get this boat on the move, then," said Strider to Ten Per Cent Extra Free.
Within the moment, it was as if all the surfaces of the command deck fell in towards each other in successive waves of colored, feathery flakes. She put up her arms instinctively to protect her face. Between the bright blue elbows of her jumpsuit she saw the tapestry of Polyaggle stitching itself back into existence. For an instant there was the sensation that iridescent wings filled all of the air; then the Spindrifter was standing in the center of the command deck as if she had never been away. Her wings collapsed easily in to her sides.
"Nineteen point eight one three seven six recurring of your Main Computer is now functional," said the Spindrifter, "and that portion is sufficient to locate for you the wormhole that brought you here."
"You mean we can get home?" said Strider.
"There is a chance. A good chance."
Strider thought hard. "Could you quantify your use of the word 'good'?" she said at last.
"Travelling by wormhole is always a risky business because there is never a one hundred per cent certainty where or when you will arrive," said Polyaggle as if speaking to a slightly backward child, "but I and the Main Computer estimate that your chances of reaching the Solar System again by this means are in excess of ninety-nine per cent."
"That sounds pretty good to me," said Strider. She sat down slowly. "When can we go?"
"There is one very grave problem."
"Oh yeah?"
"You are well over a billion parsecs from your home. Establishing timescales over that sort of distance is very difficult." Polyaggle paused. "But as far as I can work it out, you seem to be several million years in your own future. The worlds you go back to may not be the ones you left."
Strider shook her head wearily. "I'm not sure I understand you."
"If we successfully located this end of the wormhole, and travelled back through it, it is almost certain that you would discover your culture evolved several million years beyond the point where you left it. Your star would still be alive, of course. It is more questionable whether your culture would be."
"The human species might be already dead," said Pinocchio.
"It might indeed," replied Polyaggle. "The ancient species in The Wondervale count their ages in billions of years, rather than millions, but our experience has been that the successor species last less long than that. Most destroy themselves within a millennium of achieving interstellar capability."
"So there's no real way home?" said Strider.
"It depends what you think of as home."
"We have a tachyonic drive," said Pinocchio. "Surely that could take us back."
Polyaggle said nothing, and Strider immediately realized why. In order to get from place to place using the tachyonic drive you had to know where you were going. String on to that the fact that, apart from Polyaggle herself, the only ones aboard the Santa Maria who could operate the tachyonic drive were the Images, who presumably did not want to leave The Wondervale, and the problem became almost insuperable.
Besides, did Strider herself want to leave The Wondervale? Not long ago she had seen an entire species wiped out by the Autarchy. She didn't really understand the motivations that drove Polyaggle, and reckoned she would have had as much difficulty comprehending the imperatives of the Spindrifters as a whole—the Spindrifters had been alien and alien and alien—but the species had not set out to exterminate others. The Autarchy, by contrast, was only too happy to do so. There was a war between wrong and right to be fought within The Wondervale. The Santa Maria might be able to make only a very small contribution to the winning of that war, but it was a contribution nevertheless. Contrast that against the opportunity of going home . . . no, it wouldn't be going home, because home was not just a place but a time, and the time had seemingly slipped away.
Strider decided what she herself wanted to do: stay in The Wondervale and help the rebels. But it wasn't a decision she could take on her own—she had over forty people under her command, and a majority of them might want to make the break for Mars. She couldn't decide about their lives without asking them first.
"Can you make contact with Holmberg?" she said to Pinocchio.
"I've already done so. He's on his way to the command deck. He will be with us shortly."
"Shift us to join the Helgiolath fleet," Strider said to the Images.
IS THIS WISE? said Ten Per Cent Extra Free.
"I don't care if Holmberg wants to take the Santa Maria out from under me and try to get it home," she said. "I want to see this Autarchy driven from the face of The Wondervale." She looked at Polyaggle. "Even if I'm the only human taking part, I want to help avenge the death of the Spindrifters. This is a gamble I choose to take."
#
Holmberg looked up through the view-window and felt himself to be a very small fish in a very large shoal. The star they were orbiting illuminated only a minor portion of the Helgiolath fleet, but even so there seemed to be an infinitude of spaceships out there. He knew there were only a few hundred that he could see; Strider had told him that in total there were nearly eight thousand.
#
"Most of the personnel want to try to get home," he said a few hours later.
"And they want to take the Santa Maria with them?" said Strider.
"Is there any other way?"
"Not that I can think of."
"I want to stay here," said Strider. "I think there are a few accounts that have to be settled."
"I agree with you. I myself voted to stay in The Wondervale."
She looked at him in amazement. "I never thought of you as a natural-born revolutionary."
"I've represented the personnel as well as I could. That doesn't mean I don't have opinions of my own. Perhaps we could help these people."
"Who else wants to stay here?"
"Very few."
"Any names?"
"You. Me. Lan Yi, for reasons I can't quite understand, although he explained them to me in detail—the chance of carrying out a scientific investigation of the physiological construction of the Spindrifter appears to be a large part of it. Umbel Nelson. Maloron Leander. Maria Strauss-Giolitto, somewhat to my surprise. That's about the strength of your support, Captain Strider. Oh, yes, and the bot."
"That's a very big 'Oh, yes'," said Strider absently. "He'll probably be more use to the Helgiolath than the rest of us put together." She ran the fingers of one hand back through her hair. "What do you think we should do?"
She found it odd talking with Holmberg this way. Ever since the Santa Maria had left Phobos the man had been her bane, except for that one moment when he had declared himself—improbably—to be her ally, and she had believed him. Now they were reclining naked in the bath in her cabin. His pink stomach protruded above the surface of the water. It was as good a place as any to discuss this. In a vague way she would have preferred him to have had an erection—as a sign of respect, as it were.
"You say that Polyaggle has reconstituted much of the Main Computer—enough that the Santa Maria might be able to find its way home," he said.
"That's what she tells me. The Images agree."
"I think we ought to let the Santa Maria go home," said Holmberg. "O'Sondheim could take over as captain, surely?"
"You mean I should desert my ship?"
Holmberg splashed his chest with water, then reached for the soap. "One alternative is that you desert all the sentient species of The Wondervale. Another is that you get yourself and the ship back home but leave me and Nelson and the rest behind."
"How safe do you think the Santa Maria would be?" she said. She pulled a knee up to her face for inspection. Dammit, somewhere along the line she'd picked up a bruise. She wondered when that had happened. "I have a responsibility to my personnel, after all. A very heavy responsibility."
"Can I be blunt?"
"You're normally more than that."
Holmberg laughed. "I'm not really qualified to judge, but I think the Santa Maria has every bit as good a chance of making it home safely under O'Sondheim's captaincy as it would have under yours."
She'd been long enough in the bath. The skin of her fingers was beginning to crinkle as the water cooled. She stood up, making waves that smacked Holmberg under the chin. Again she found herself slightly annoyed that her nakedness was having no effect on him. On the other hand, she suddenly reflected, his nakedness was having no particular effect on her. Even so, her confidence could have done with a dose of atavism right now.
"Oh, yeah," said Holmberg, washing an armpit. "I forgot to mention. There's a kid—a little boy—who wants to stay here as well."
Toweling herself, she stared at him. "We can't take a kid along. What about his mother?"
"She's dead. When you put five gees on the craft she was standing by her bunk. She fell and broke her neck on the edge of it. The medbots couldn't get there in time to help her."
Oh great, thought Strider, something else to be guilty about. I've created an orphan. No matter how much she tried to rub herself dry, the area between her shoulderblades still stayed wet. She seemed to be on the verge of throwing away the chance of ever seeing Mars again. If what Holmberg had said was true, only a few of them would be joining the Helgiolath. Half a dozen human beings and a humanoid bot living in a community of beings that looked bad enough to make you want to turn away. Umbel alone knew how they smelt.
"I'd like to fight in this war," she said, working the corner of the towel into her left ear. "The funny thing is, I'd sort of assumed that you'd try to stop me."
Holmberg seemed to have found something fascinating in his navel. He was picking at it with a fingernail. "Why should you think that?"
"Well, you've been a bit of a difficult sod."
"So have you." Whatever it was that he'd been trying to scoop out now seemed at last to have come adrift. "This is the biggest adventure of my life. I don't want to go home now with my tail between my legs."
Strider climbed into her jumpsuit. Her back still felt wet. "You're not the man I thought you were, Marcial."
"I know. I've spent several years living with your opinion of me, and it hasn't been the best of times." He looked up at her with steady eyes. "Ever since this mission started it's been my duty to represent the personnel whose opinions you've far too often ignored, Leonie. I've told you before, but you didn't properly listen. Now it's time I started to take a few decisions on my own behalf."
She watched his bloated body as he sank himself further into the bathwater. "You've been shamming."
"Shamming about what?"
"About how things should be run aboard this ship."
"To tell you the truth," said Holmberg, "I think most of the people on the Santa Maria should have been left back at home. Have you got any nail-scissors?"
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I want to cut my toenails."
"No—I mean why do you say most of the personnel should have been left behind?"
"Because they're useless. If I'd been setting up this expedition for the SSIA I'd have made the crew no more than a dozen strong, and more likely half that."
"Hardly enough to colonize a planet," she said.
"My opinion, for what it's worth," said Holmberg with exaggerated gravity, "is that the first colony on any planet is doomed, no matter how many people are involved. There are going to be diseases—remember that killer diseases used to wipe out people by the hundreds of thousands? There are going to be creatures that want to eat us—not so much the big ones, which we can always laz if we're fast enough to see them coming, but the little ones, which we don't notice until it's too late."
"So why," said Strider, pausing by the door, "did you come along?"
"Because I wanted to." He smiled at her. "The stars are the final frontier, aren't they?"
His smile faded.
"Look, Leonie, I don't care what the rest of you decide to do. I want to join the Helgiolath. I want to help this poor bloody galaxy get itself out of the mess it's got into. Like Lan Yi, I want to see what happens when Polyaggle gives birth to her new brood. I want to be there when the Autarchy commander who decided to destroy Spindrift is suddenly faced by a fleet a million strong."
"Yeah, that's what I want to do as well. But . . ."
"But what? Let the Santa Maria go, Leonie, if that's what you really want to do. You've faced far more than you were ever expected to."
She ran a finger down the side of her nose. "So just the bunch of us stay here, huh? I dunno—just thinking about it makes me feel like I'm betraying the people under my command."
"I don't think that's the way they'd see it." Holmberg drew in his breath. "When it comes down to it, Leonie, the blunt truth is that most of the people on board don't give a damn who's running the command deck so long as they're doing it efficiently and, above all, unobtrusively."
Strider shrugged. "I'm going to make my mind up later." Once more she started to leave, then turned back. "How come you're so keen for glory yourself, Marcial? You've never struck me as being that type."
"I'm the last of a family of Reals. When I was fifteen we lived in Baghdad, where virtually everyone else was an Artif—hell, Leonie, we were unusual in being a family at all. One day my father got a bit stoned on ziprite and started telling all the people in the café he was in that Artiffing was immoral—that there was very good reason why we were all given just a single life. In the end they dragged him out into the street and drove a truck backwards and forwards over him."
"I'm sorry. I didn't know that."
"Then they came to our house and found my mother and my sister and did the same to them." Holmberg began to climb out of the bath. "It's OK to talk about it now. It was a long time ago, and most of the pain has gone. I was lucky—I was on the other side of town trying to make it with a girl whose name I can't now remember but who seemed very important at the time. What I can remember is getting home and discovering I didn't have a family any more. Toss over a towel, will you? Thanks. Polyaggle lost far more than a family on Spindrift. She doesn't seem to feel it the way you and I would, but I want to help right the wrong on her behalf, if I can. And there's not very much the good old human species—present company excepted, of course—has left to offer me. Any more explanations wanted?"
Despite his denial, she sensed that all this was a painful area for him. "No. Thanks for—well, for opening yourself to me this way."
"Even if I find I'm the only human being left in The Wondervale, I want to be here." He grinned at her. "I'm perfectly accustomed to loneliness."
#
Looking at the Helgiolath was never going to be easy, Strider thought for what seemed like the thousandth time. The faces of Kortland—assuming they were actually faces—were in the communications Pocket now. Strider steeled herself not to turn her gaze off to the side.
"We've discovered how we might be able to get this ship home," she said, "but a few of us have decided w
e want to stay here in The Wondervale and help you people as best we can. Will you allow us to do that?"
Kortland didn't answer immediately. "I think it may be possible," he said after a while. "There are difficulties."
"Such as?"
"The air we breathe has less oxygen than you are accustomed to. If any of you want to live aboard one of our vessels, either you'll have to bring your own environment or you'll require surgical modification."
Strider gulped. The thought of remaining suited up for the rest of her life was an unpleasant one. The thought of "surgical modification" was not particularly attractive either. She didn't like the idea of Helgiolath surgeons poking around in her entrails.
"The modification would be neither painful nor gross," Kortland was saying. "It is a very common procedure. I have myself undergone it several times when it has been necessary to meet other species face to face."
"What sort of modification are we talking about?" No way was Strider going to spend her remaining days looking like a Helgiolath.
"Your lungs would require alteration. The bacterial infrastructure of your body would need to be changed. The outer surfaces of your eyes would be toughened. There would need to be some minor brain surgery to alter a few of your sensory impressions, notably your sense of smell—and there'd almost certainly be a few trivial changes to your own bodily chemistry as well. Species of utterly different forms, as yours is to ours, normally stink intolerably to each other."
Yeah. Strider could imagine that Kortland and his kind would stink. It hadn't occurred to her that the same might be true the other way round.
"This doesn't sound like minor surgery to me," she said.
"The practices are well established," said Kortland. Ten Per Cent Extra Free was introducing a touch of weariness to the alien's voice. "We have machines that routinely perform such tasks."
"I need to think about this. I need to talk it all over with the few of us who want to join you."
"Please don't be too long." She could sense that Kortland was becoming utterly exasperated with her. "Your assistance is not very important to us. In fact, to be frank—to use your word again—your presence among us would be more of a nuisance than a help. But we're prepared to put up with that if we can have your Images and the Spindrifter as well."