The Galahad Legacy

by Dom Testa

  She heard the door open behind her, and someone greet Triana.

  “If you brought a whip, don’t bother,” Lita said, staring at the vidscreen. “We’re going as fast as we can.”

  She felt Triana’s hand on her arm, and one look into her friend’s face said it all. Something had happened.

  “Can you turn this over to someone and come talk with me?” Triana said.

  * * *

  “It’s not her,” Lita said, shaking her head.

  They were alone in the Conference Room, the closest place they could find privacy. Lita sat in the chair she usually occupied for Council meetings; Triana leaned against the table next to her.

  “I don’t think so, either,” Triana said. “Bon agrees. In fact, he just about lost it down in the Spider bay. I’ve seen him angry before, but nothing like this. Gap, on the other hand—and Mira for that matter—think it is her.”

  “Why? Because it looks like her?”

  “That, and because they think the Dollovit had their vultures recover Alexa’s body from space.”

  “Have you talked with Torrec?”

  “Not yet.”

  A surge of emotion swelled inside Lita, and she took a deep breath to fight back the sudden impulse to cry. She’d battled through so many crises with Alexa, had almost lost her once on the operating table, only to lose her to the clutches of a vulture in Sick House. And now this.

  It wasn’t fair.

  “Where is she … or, it?” Lita asked.

  “They’re on their way back to the ship right now. Docking in a couple of minutes.”

  Lita nodded, her fingers absently touching the dark stone that hung on a chain around her neck. Then she pushed back her chair and stood up.

  “Thanks for telling me,” she said.

  “Sure,” Triana said. “There’s no way I could drop it on you in the meeting. Same with Bon. I feel bad for him right now, but I’m glad he found out early.”

  Something Triana had said finally registered with Lita. “Wait. You said Bon was angry. Why angry?”

  “I don’t know, but I get the feeling he looks at it as a slap in the face from the jellyfish.”

  Lita continued to finger the necklace. “I don’t think it’s anything of the sort. He’s hurting, that’s all.”

  “I agree,” Triana said. “But he’s not really in the mood to discuss it. Maybe he’ll cool off a bit by the time we meet.” She leaned over and gave Lita a hug. “I’ve got to get back down to the bay. If I’m late for the meeting, please give Channy and Hannah a heads-up about what’s happening. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  * * *

  The artificial sunlight had long since faded to black, and the explosion of stars through the latticework of the domes cast its own shine upon the lush plant life. A smattering of crew talk could be heard, borne through the humid air that mixed a variety of scents: wet soil, fertilizer, crop growth, and human exertion.

  Bon ignored the sounds and the smells. All that mattered now was getting away from people, escaping to the only place that held any comfort for him. But he rushed past the turn to his usual hideaway; it had been their hideaway, and after what he’d heard and seen in the Spider bay, he couldn’t bring himself to stand in that space.

  He wondered if maybe he should just keep moving, keep running, perhaps exhaust himself until his mind automatically shut down. But after pushing through a thick growth of berries, he stopped and leaned against a light post.

  For a minute he was motionless, his head resting on his forearm against the post. It was useless to run; it would be a long time before his mind grew quiet.

  Alexa. Inside the croy.

  But it wasn’t her. He was sure it was a copy, a wicked abomination, produced by the Dollovit. He’d tried to convince Triana to stay away from the croy, to not accept whatever token they offered, and she’d ignored him. And now …

  And now they’d not only accepted it, they’d brought it aboard the ship.

  He would never be able to escape the specter of the last few weeks, to turn the page. The Cassini were cruel masters, in one sense, but their cruelty lay in their cold detachment. Bon was privy to select insights from them, but they would never cloak the hard truth in a delicate shell. For the privilege of truth, he’d pay in spirit.

  Bon turned around and leaned against the pole. Taking deep breaths, he glared up into the starlight, directing his anger backward through space, back to a frigid, orange moon that circled a ringed planet. He vowed that they would never collect such payment from him again.

  And he silently vowed to rid Galahad of the abomination that had stolen entry aboard an alien cocoon.

  * * *

  Just as Merit guessed, the Rec Room was deserted. With the fate of the ship in question—staring down the barrel of a gaping rip in space while the only tenuous defense against a cosmic storm of radiation quickly disintegrated—no one was in the mood for play. If not on duty, crew members were either secluded in their rooms or quietly communing in small groups in the Dining Hall or the Domes. The Rec Room gave Merit a place to sit alone and contemplate what needed to be done.

  The days of a large following, hanging on his every word, were gone, obliterated in a flash by the villainy of Gap Lee. In seconds Merit had been taken down before the entire crew, humiliated back into the shadows. But he didn’t belong there; his place was in front of the crew, leading them, just as they longed to be. Gap had stolen that from him; Gap had destroyed his life. Merit would never again have the opportunity to fulfill that destiny. At least not on this ship.

  But they wouldn’t be on this ship for long. At some point the weary young star travelers would set foot upon a new world, a world that offered new challenges, new hopes, and new futures.

  One of those futures could easily find Merit back where he belonged, in his role as leader.

  And Gap wouldn’t be there to stop him.

  13

  The usual banter that preceded a Council meeting was missing, and Triana wasn’t surprised. It was late, for one thing. They’d planned to begin at ten, but as she sat down in the Conference Room the clock on her workpad flicked over to 11:35.

  But it wasn’t simply the late hour weighing on the Council members. Tonight they would make the most important decision since the launch. The most important decision of their lives.

  And for a mission that had seen its share of extraordinary events, nothing could have prepared them for what they’d found inside the croy. That, more than anything, cast a heavy shadow over the crew, and it was about to set off fireworks in the Council meeting.

  “We have a lot to cover,” Triana said. “I want to talk about Alexa first, and then get to the decision we have to make about the Dollovit and the Channel.”

  She couldn’t recall Bon ever speaking first in a meeting, until now. His tone was laced with acid.

  “We can save some time. That is not Alexa.”

  Triana knew this was a minefield. She kept her voice calm. “I wondered the same thing. In fact, we probably all have, which is why I asked Lita to do a—”

  “I don’t care what Lita says,” Bon said. “It’s not Alexa.”

  “Let me jump in here,” Lita said. She faced Bon. “I ran a complete scan on the body brought up to Sick House, and it’s alive. It’s breathing, so there’s respiration. The pulse rate is very slow, but it’s there, and strong. There is automatic muscle contraction when tested, circulation is taking place, and even the body temperature is within a degree of what most scientists claim is normal.

  “I also examined tissues. Skin, blood, hair, even the retinal materials, all check out as normal, with one exception. Then I took it a step further, and pulled up Alexa’s records. I compared the tissues from this body with those we have on file, and they were almost identical. It’s exactly Alexa’s height, and within two pounds of her last recorded weight. If it opened its eyes and hopped off the table, I’d be tempted to say ‘Hello, Alexa.’”

  Gap tilted his hea
d. “You said one exception. What exception?”

  “The brain,” Lita said.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Channy asked.

  Lita let out a long breath. “It’s a vulture brain.”

  Channy and Hannah both instantly recoiled. Gap stared at Lita in disbelief.

  Bon jumped to his feet and leaned forward on the table. “This is what I’m talking about! This is not Alexa! We need to get it off the ship right now.”

  “Wait a second,” Triana said, trying to restore order. “One step at a time here. Bon—”

  “Either get it off the ship, or I will,” he said.

  “Settle down, Bon,” Gap said. “That’s not your decision to make alone.”

  Bon whirled on him, stabbing a finger toward Gap’s face. “You’re the last person who should be telling anyone around here to settle down. I’ve sat by and watched a lot of bad decisions made on this ship, but I won’t allow one this time.”

  Triana felt the meeting slipping out of control. She stood up to challenge Bon.

  “We will decide this as a Council,” she said, punctuating the last three words. “And that’s the end of this argument. If I have to post a security detail in Sick House, I will. But no one—no one—on this ship will take Council matters into their own hands.”

  Bon, still standing, glowered at Triana. “Oh, really? Like when you took it into your own hands to fly one of our escape craft into the wormhole? Like that?”

  Lita broke in. “May I please ask that everyone sit down? We’ll get nowhere with this arguing.” She looked back and forth between Triana and Bon. “Please?”

  Triana choked back a heated response to Bon and sat down. Bon soon did the same.

  “Let me finish my report, and then I suggest we ask Torrec about this,” Lita said. “As I was saying, the physical body itself is an almost perfect reproduction of the person we knew as Alexa, right down to the hair and skin cells. But the brain is similar to the one we discovered in the vulture that we studied. It controls motor functions and other basic physiological actions. But it’s not what you’d call an advanced thinking brain. It is, as far as I can tell, intended to keep the body alive.”

  “Interesting,” Roc offered through the speaker. “A functioning body with a limited brain. Sounds like Gap.”

  “Triana,” Lita said, “I’m not ready to offer an opinion on what the next step is, but I am saying that we should go slowly here. We’re suddenly in an area that is brand new for us—for our species, for that matter—and I think we need time to figure things out.”

  “I agree,” Triana said. She looked to her right and addressed Torrec, who had remained respectfully quiet during Bon’s outburst. “Torrec, would you please explain the body found on the croy?”

  The jellyfish slowly bobbed inside the tank, and his metallic voice drifted out of the speakers. “Yes, I can explain. What you refer to as vultures are important tools to our civilization. They are called Vo. The Vo that you held aboard your ship was one of a group programmed to acquire information. For the brief time that it remained isolated within a confined space in your clinic, it was unable to complete its assignment.

  “When your remote vehicle—your Spider—began what was perceived as an attack outside your vessel, the Vo in isolation took measures to remove itself from the containment device. It attached itself to the crew member you call Alexa, and fulfilled as much of its assignment as possible before the atmosphere of your ship rendered it incapacitated. It documented the majority of information needed to assimilate a copy of the human form, but did not have sufficient time to complete its mission.”

  There was silence in the room. Triana bit her lip, and did her best to digest what Torrec was telling them.

  “So,” she said, “if I understand you correctly, the … Vo had enough time to record all of Alexa’s physical information, but not enough time to map her … her brain.”

  “Correct. As with all intelligent species, the brain is a complex component that requires extensive study and extremely intricate mapping in order to produce an acceptable copy. Your ship lost the crew member named Alexa; we have the capacity to supply you with the closest approximation possible. We call such a reproduction a ventet.”

  Gap looked at Triana. “Remember what Torrec told you earlier? He said it was a missing part of our spacecraft. He said that this was a gift from the Dollovit.”

  Bon let out a disgusted snort. “A gift. Right.”

  Triana ignored this. Her thoughts were a tangled mess, trying to make sense of everything unfolding. If Torrec was to be believed, he and his kind were not openly hostile at all, but merely curious, voracious scientists. They had removed much of the moral—or even sentimental—association to life, and looked upon it from a practical standpoint. If one unit, such as Alexa, was damaged or missing, then you simply replaced it. And if you lacked the complete record, you improvised to get as close as possible.

  The “gift” of Alexa might horrify the crew of Galahad, but to Torrec it simply was a kind gesture from one species to another.

  Or was it something else? Was it something more sinister, disguised as a peace offering?

  She tapped a finger on the table and looked around at the Council members. Hannah raised her hand with a recommendation.

  “However we classify this ventet, it’s living tissue that is incapable of thought, at least the way we understand it. I suggest we keep it … well, comfortable, I guess … in Sick House until we solve the problem at hand.”

  “I agree,” Lita said. “It’s not going anywhere, and certainly not harming anything. We can always decide later.”

  Bon shook his head. “The fact that all of you are saying ‘it’ should tell you something.”

  “Channy?” Triana said. “You’re very quiet about this.”

  “I loved Alexa,” the Brit said. “On one hand I agree with Bon that this is not Alexa, and it makes me sad to see this … this copy of her. But I also don’t know what we can do about it. I mean … we can’t just … you know…” She shrugged. “I guess I agree with Hannah.”

  Triana looked at Gap. “What do you think?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “I don’t think we have a choice right now. We have to get the ship out of here, and soon. For now … yeah, Hannah’s right. Keep Alexa, or the ventet, or whatever you want to call it, in Sick House, and we’ll deal with it when we get to where we’re going.” He looked back at Triana. “Sorry I don’t have a better answer right now.”

  She waved that off. “None of us do. Okay, for now we’ll keep Alexa’s copy in the clinic. No visitors, though, agreed? I don’t want this to become a freak show with people parading in to see her.”

  There were nods around the table, except for Bon, who turned in his chair and stared away from the group.

  “Next,” Triana said, “we have to decide what we’re going to do about the radiation shield. We’ve agreed that staying the course is out of the question; Gap and Roc are convinced that we’re down to hours at the most. So that leaves two options: either take the ship through a Channel to our original target, Eos, or accept Torrec’s invitation to his home star system. I’d like to present the Council’s decision to the crew. In the end, they’ll have a say in this as well. Let’s start by going around the room. Gap?”

  “Eos. I’m grateful for the offer from Torrec, but I think we need to complete the mission as planned. I say Eos.”

  “Lita?”

  “I’ve struggled with how we handle our arrival at a new world. I’ve spent my whole life studying the great explorers on Earth, and how they treated the people they encountered. Even those with good intentions did a lot of damage, and caused a lot of hurt. I’m worried that it’s simply part of our makeup, that we don’t do well when we move into new territory.”

  She looked at Triana. “I worry about that. I’ve had time to think about what might be there when we arrive, and how we’d deal with it. I don’t know.”

  The Council remained qui
et, listening to the one member who often seemed to represent the soul of the crew.

  “If you’d asked me three months ago,” Lita said, “I probably would have said Eos. But I have too many doubts today. Although I will faithfully carry out my assignments if we choose to go there, and I will actively support this mission, for now I vote for Torrec’s home system.”

  Triana was surprised, but merely nodded. “Thank you, Lita. What do you say, Channy?”

  “I’m a fresh-air fiend. I know it could be harsh and brutal on Eos, but I want to get out of this ship and onto land.”

  Triana looked across the table. “I think we know where you stand, Bon, but would you like to add anything else?”

  He gave one quick shake of his head, still not making eye contact with the Council. “No. We go to Eos.”

  It was Hannah’s turn. She gave Lita a long, questioning look, then turned to Triana.

  “I’m with Lita. I vote for the Dollovit star system, but for a completely different reason. I don’t question how we would treat any indigenous life-forms that we might come across at Eos. I’d like to think that we’ve come a long way as a race, and that we would represent the people of Earth proudly.

  “No, for me it’s about the science. It’s about the opportunity to learn at the feet of the masters. Believe me, I desperately want to walk on dry land again, and breathe air that’s not recycled. And I’d also love the chance to study the remains of the civilization that took hold on Eos Four but somehow failed in the end. Why did they fail? Those are the questions that scientists love to answer.

  “But that’s nothing compared to what we can learn from an advanced civilization that hasn’t failed. The math, the science, even the social systems that they’ve adopted. These are the things that otherwise would probably take us thousands of years to learn if we started over on Eos.”

  Once again Triana was impressed with Hannah’s thoughtful answer. Regardless of how the Council Leader election might have turned out a few days earlier, Triana was thankful that Hannah’s mature and well-reasoned arguments were now part of the Council’s structure.