Between the Worlds
Mark Rookyard
The Spacefarer’s Hall was hot and cramped and buzzing with a thousand different languages and accents. I had to stand on tiptoe and crane my neck to find the table I was looking for. There, Captain Miros of the Fleetwing. He looked hot and harassed as he tapped details into a datapad.
Shit, I hoped I wasn’t too late. I slid and elbowed my way through sharp insectoid bodies, soft human bodies and other alien forms that even I didn’t recognize. Kharatim surely was the Crossroads of the Worlds.
I arrived at the table of the Fleetwing, adjusted my collar and tried not to look too flushed and eager.
“Name?” the Captain asked, his red uniform tight and his expression bored. I could barely hear him above the chatter in the Hall.
“Varin,” I said, leaning forward over the table. I’d caught a glimpse of a beautiful redhead with pale skin standing at the Captain’s shoulder and I deliberately didn’t look again. Wouldn’t do to ogle the man’s woman if I wanted to join this trip. “Varin Seaworth.”
The Captain tapped the name into his datapad and waited a moment, looking at the screen, probably checking to see if I was wanted on any of the Fed Worlds.
Obviously satisfied, the Captain looked up at me, his hands clasped on the table before him. “Human?”
I smiled, even tried a chuckle for him. He only looked at me expectantly. “Yes,” I conceded.
He nodded, tapped again on his datapad. I chanced a look at the woman at his shoulder; tall and thin with a hard body and high cheekbones with lavender eyes that caught me looking at her. I looked away and swallowed.
“I take it,” the Captain said, after I’d finished checking out his woman. “That you know where the Fleetwing is going? You’re not one of these chancers working table to table trying to get off this rock?” His hair was greying and swept back, held in place by something greasy.
“No, no. Never been to any of the other tables.” I looked around as though to suggest I was surprised to see all the other tables there. There were about a hundred and fifty of them, all of them with longer queues than the Fleetwing.
“So you know we’re going into Darkspace?”
“I know you’re searching for the Waystations, yes,” I said. “I know you’ve been once before and the crew did pretty well out of it.”
“And yet still the decent crews flock to Jennin and Besh. Where’s the sense of danger? You think anybody’s gonna make a thousand credits in one trip with Besh?”
I had no idea who Besh was, but a thousand credits sounded good to me, so I could only raise my eyebrows and shake my head at the general cowardice of the Spacefarers around me.
The Captain was lost in his morose thoughts for a moment before he looked at me again. “And what would you bring to the party?”
“Two years studying stardrive principles at Yaffilk and before that I was Harrotin’s Student of the Year in holographic computer studies.”
“Were you, indeed?” These achievements seemed to annoy the Captain. “And what makes you want to join the Fleetwing?”
I had a feeling this was the real question here. I Read him, just for a moment, more of a glimpse, a delicate brush of my mind against his. No surprises, but I could be confident in my answer.
“Money,” I said. “Where else could a bookworm like me chance to land a thousand for less than a year’s work?”
The Captain laughed, but there was little humour in it. “Where else indeed.” He pointed a pudgy finger at me. “But don’t you go thinking this is easy money, boy. You’ve never been to Darkspace. This is a darkness that can steal a man’s mind in a second. You turn the lights on, try and hide from it, but still it’s out there, watching and waiting. I’ve seen men turn the lights off and just sit there, looking and saying nothing, just looking at that Darkspace. I had to bring a man home in chains, just to get him to leave that dark.”
I wasn’t too sure what to say to that. I wanted money and whether I earned it in the dark or in the light, it was all the same to me. “Some people,” I ventured, shaking my head.
The Captain looked at me. His thick neck bulged over the collar of his uniform. “Not gonna get any shit like that out of you am I, kid?” He spun a picture round on the table, pushed it to me. A giant space station, shaped like an octagon with a central giant hub surrounded by smaller hubs, all interconnected with a spider web of corridors and bridges against a vast backdrop of blackness. “The ancient humans built them big,” the Captain said. “It takes time to search them. Two weeks in the Darkspace. Minimum.” He looked at me as though I wouldn’t last two days. “The Fleetwing wasn’t cheap, those stardrives cost big and we don’t rush at the Waystations. We search and we search well. People pay big for Ancient tech.”
“I’d be okay,” I said. Darkness; if I didn’t like it then I wouldn’t look out the window at it. I looked at the Waystation in the picture. It was said people had manned these two years a time. Two years in the dark waiting to refuel the Wayships trundling through intergalactic space.
The Captain grunted and pulled the picture possessively back to him. “You can tell me one thing,” he looked at the datapad. “Varin. What makes a kid like you think you can handle the dark when there’s all these others who are bigger and uglier than you avoiding my table?”
I felt it then, a brush, a whisper, a caress of my mind. For a moment I flinched, then swallowed and forced a smile. “I’m good at what I do, Captain, and I’m not afraid of the shadows.”
“You will be lad,” Captain Miros said. “You will be by the time we’re done.”
“There’s one thing you should know about me, Captain.” I met his eyes. “I’m a Reader.” Better get it out in the open before he was told.
“A Reader, eh?” I noticed his lack of expression. How desperate was this guy for a crew? “What school?”
“No school,” I said, waiting for him to tell me to get lost. Readers who hadn’t been to schools were known to be dangerous to others as well as themselves.
“No school?” he grunted. “Not many unschooled make it to your age. Sure there isn’t something you’re not telling me?”
I glanced again at the Waystation on the table, white and silent in the surrounding blackness. “We all have our stories to tell, Captain.”
The Captain grunted. “That we do, lad. That we do.”
I left him typing my address into the datapad and wondered if I wanted to hear from him again. The Hall hummed with voices, Captains calling out and waving datapads in the air. There had been no more than three standing in the line for the Fleetwing when I left it.
Superstition; grown men afraid of a couple of weeks of darkness. But perhaps they knew something, these creatures who had been travelling the stars for so many years?
I shrugged and hurried through the throng and wondered if the Captain knew his beautiful wife was a Reader.
I was the last of the crew to arrive on board the Fleetwing.
I recognized the crew from their bios on the holoviewer. Vena was a pretty brunette, short with a slim body and she raised her glass to me with a faint smile. Jame was a big guy with a crew cut standing next to her.
The Fleetwing was massive, as all stardrive ships had to be to create the energy needed to go into drive. The quarters, though, were small. Not much room would be needed for a crew that would be doing little but sleeping the journey away. Even in stardrive the journey was going to take seven standard months. I didn’t want to think how long it would have taken the ancient humans in their Wayships.
“Here we all are,” Captain Miros said. He looked tired, his hair thin and slicked back. He was still in uniform, looking a relic of a bygone age himself. “You all know each other.” He looked among us all as though waiting for some argument. Helena passed me a drink of the green stuff. It felt warm through the glass and I couldn’t help looking at her as I took a sip. Her hair was tied back in a loose pony tail and it made her white neck look l
ong.
Nine sleepcubes were circled around a central hub that speared through the ceiling and down through the floor. Comm panels were in the walls and a holograph station was cramped in the corner. Six autobots stood quietly in another corner.
Bezzo was the first to come to me. He was a tall man, all knees and elbows, and his knuckles were large as he held his hand out to me. “Good to meet you, I hear you’re the computer boy.”
“That’s right,” I said, shaking his hand.
“Easy gig,” Bezzo said. “Tech on there isn’t going to be too complex. All this time, everything’s going to be gone to hell.”
I shrugged. “I think the idea is we scavenge what we can and get out of there.”
Bezzo nodded, took a drink. “Exciting though, isn’t it? To think we’re going somewhere nobody has seen for thousands of years. To think what we might find there. To think people used to live on these things, live in the darkness just waiting for the Wayships to come past. It’s history, Varin, real history we’re going to find out there.”
I nodded, and the unbidden thought came to me of a fair-haired child standing with her face pressed against a window, staring out wide-eyed at the blackness of space. Real history. People, families had lived on these Waystations.
“So it doesn’t bother you, then? Going into intergalactic space? The Captain says it can play with your mind, dominate your thoughts, and lull you into loving the darkness.”
Bezzo only smiled; his dark hair thick and brushed to the side. “Where is the adventure without risk? Where is the reward? This is the history of the little man, people who had been so desperate they gave up two years of their lives to live in the darkness.”
For a moment, just a moment, I wanted to Read Bezzo, to feel some of his emotion, some of his sense of wonder. I swallowed the urge and cursed myself. When had I become so eager to Read? Had I taken to falling back on it to guide me through life, to feel other’s emotions when I had so few of my own?
There was a Reader on this ship. I had to control myself, rein in the urge. I’d heard of people who’d ended up as shells, eyes mindlessly flicking, unable to move, their mind turned to mush by constant Reading.
Money, I’d said when Miros asked me why I wanted in on the trip. Bezzo’s passion shamed me.
The central column, about ten metres in circumference, glowed blue and then red and there was the faintest humming beneath my feet.
“Stardrive’s starting.” Vena had come over to join us. She watched Miros keying commands into a holo keyboard. “Makes you wonder,” she said, her drink was already empty. “The last trip was such a success, but none of the crew has returned? Not one of them?”
“Well,” I said, walking over to the sleepcubes, the seats already out and the jacks already raised. “We’ll find out soon enough if we’d fancy a return trip.”
The floor was shaking more violently now, the column glowing green and red as I sat back in the sleepcube. I’d never been jacked before and looking up at the two prongs above me on the metal arm made me cold with nerves. The floor beneath us juddered as the stardrive whined in protest, getting ready for the journey.
Helena stood above me, looking down, her lavender eyes creasing in a smile, her teeth white as she touched me on the cheek, as she touched me with her mind. Relax. Think of me when you sleep.
I had to fight not to flinch against the nakedness of the touch of her mind. Readers tended not to be so open with the skill; it was something to be hidden, to be fought against, and to be ashamed of.
“Relax,” Helena said, aloud this time, her eyes bright as she brought the arm down.
A puncture of the skin, quick and sharp, and then a screeching sound, and I felt my being leaching away in a riot of sound and motion.
And then all was darkness.
Miros woke me. I was disappointed, still expecting Helena to be looking down at me. I half-stood and then collapsed back into my sleepcube, my legs feeling weak.
“Relax, kid.” Miros said, putting a hand on my shoulder. “You’ve been under for months. It takes the body time to adjust.”
I was the last one out of the sleep, all the others standing around talking in hushed tones, heads close together. All the others except Vena, she must still be under.
“Shit,” I smiled to hide my discomfort, tensed the muscles in my legs. “We’re there then? The Waystation?”
“Yeah,” Miros nodded. “But,” he glanced over to where the others were talking. “You were under a bit longer than we thought. Something went wrong.”
“Longer? How much longer?” The ship sounded quiet without the thrumming of the stardrive. Helena had moved away from the group and pulled out the holo keyboard, looking at the blue screen in the wall while Bezzo was working on one of the autobots. Everybody seemed to have their place in the crew.
“No more than a month,” Miros said. “Vena didn’t make it.”
“What?” For some reason, I thought of a little girl alone and afraid looking out at the darkness, her hands pressed to the window, her expression sombre. I rubbed a hand across my face. “What? Vena?”
“It happens,” Miros said. “Never happened on the Fleetwing before. She’ll be fine, though. We’re insured. She downloaded good.”
Jame and Bezzo were arguing next to the autobots, sleek white machines with white bodies and silver eyes. Helena swore at the computer and tapped away at the holo keyboard, swiping screens aside with her free hand.
I tried to rise again, my legs still weak, the muscles feeling atrophied after seven, or was it eight months in the sleepcube. Miros pulled me up, his hand tight around my forearm.
“Shit happens, eh?” he said. “But we’re here now and we move on.”
“What happened?” I asked, flexing my legs and looking around the Fleetwing. We were here. At the Waystation. Was it my imagination that made the darkness feel heavy around the ship?
“Who knows? Nobody’s ever explained it. People just die in their sleep. People die in their sleep in their beds; people die in their sleep in stardrive.” He shrugged. “She’ll get used to it.”
“What? Can’t you—” I was tired and my mind was reeling. I rubbed a hand through my hair. It felt greasy.
“We need her. You know how anything works on that thing?” He gestured to the view window. The Waystation was out there, waiting. All I could see were dark walls, the lights of the Fleetwing reflected back on themselves as though the Waystation rejected our very presence.
There was a commotion from the corner where Bezzo and Jame had been arguing. One of the autos was rattling, shaking, and Bezzo was holding it by its arms, shouting.
“Fuck,” Miros said, hurrying over. I followed him. Helena stood at the holo console.
The auto was struggling in Bezzo’s grip, shaking its head, the other autos watching, still and silent, their silver eyes empty.
“No!” The auto shouted, shaking its smooth white head. “No! I can’t! I can’t!”
“Vena, listen. Everything will be okay,” Bezzo said, looking into those blank silver eyes.
Miros charged in and pushed Bezzo out of the way, grabbing the auto by the arms. “Vena! Vena, we’re here. This is what you wanted, we’re at the Waystation. It’s out there, waiting for us, waiting for you. Two weeks, two weeks and then we’ll be gone and you’ll be under and there’ll be a new body waiting for you back on Kharatim. I promise. A new body. Two weeks.”
The auto stopped struggling and looked at Miros, their faces close together, the auto’s sleek and white and shining in the lights from above.
And then it screamed and screamed and screamed in its emotionless robot voice.
I followed Vena through the docking port, my helmet seemed to smother all vision and sound and I had to focus my mind against fear. Either side of me were Helena and Jame, drifting in the dark, arms wide and torches shining here and there and somehow only seeming to accentuate the darkness that enfolded us.
Breathe and relax, I
’m here with you. A seductive touch, a caress of my mind; I’d dropped my defences, too aware of the shadows, too aware of my fear. I could sense Helena smiling behind her helmet, and a part of me wanted to feel her touch once more.
I focused on Vena before me, her movements still unnatural and awkward in the body of the auto. She was white against the darkness of the Waystation. Even though autos didn’t breathe, I could hear her panting in fear over the comms unit. It set my teeth on edge.
“Okay, first thing will be to find the oxygenator and grav field. The control room won’t be far from the docking port.” Miros’s breathing sounded loud. “Everyone stay together until we find those. We’ve got plenty of time to search the station.”
He clicked off when he reached the door, pried open the control panel.
The door slid open, silent and smooth and revealing cavernous blackness beyond. Blackness betrayed by a single golden light in the distance.
I took a breath as I floated closer to Miros. Someone’s hand touched my arm. I looked at the light, small against the smothering shadows all around it.
Miros’s comms clicked. “The power’s still on,” he breathed. “It can’t be.” He drifted through the door, the rest of us following.
“Someone else could have been here,” Helena said.
“No.” Miros sounded angry at the thought. “You think we wouldn’t have heard of it?”
The room beyond the docking port was dark, the single light still beckoning us on. Black shapes hunched and crouched in corners. I kept my eyes on Miros before me. The datapad in his hand shone a ghostly green on his helmet.
“This way,” he said, and swam to another door on the right, prying the panel open and watching it slide silently aside. He paused a moment, looking at the sliding door accusingly before swimming through.
Our torches spilled about the control room, walls covered with screens and panels. Empty chairs strapped to the floor watched us as Miros and Bezzo were already at the main control wall, a large desk there with a multitude of dials and keyboards. I thought of the humans who would have worked at this station thousands of years ago; thousands of years ago when there would have been light and life here. Light and life with the inky blackness waiting outside.
“Varin, come here. Look at this.” Miros’s voice sounded clipped and harsh through the comms unit.
I pulled myself across the room, torch beams lighting my way, highlighting panels and computers and pale faces behind helmets.
“What? What’s up?” I asked, and then only as I drew near did I see that not all the lights in the room were from our torches and datapads. Some of the lights were on the panels, and these were glowing dully like watchful eyes.
“This bastard’s still on,” Miros said quietly. “The computer’s still on. The power’s still on.”
“Turn it on,” Helena said, her hand resting on my shoulder, her legs drifting behind her.
Miros looked at me, the computer guy. A power source lasting thousands of years? Did the Ancients even have that kind of tech?
The Captain looked at the panel before him, dials and levers and keyboards spanning a desk that nearly stretched the length of the room. He shone his torch about.
“So how do you do it, then?” Miros finally asked.
I adjusted my helmet, cursing the limited view and the claustrophobia it induced. I looked at the layout before me, so complicated and complex compared to today’s systems. I looked up at the ceiling. A viewing window was there. Did the ancient humans love the darkness? Did they love looking into infinity and seeing nothing but their own emptiness?
“On,” I said. Nothing happened.
Jame coughed.
“On!” I shouted, louder, to be heard through my helmet.
Still nothing; and someone sighed over the comm unit.
“Computer on,” I shouted.
And cringed as machines whirred and golden light sprang into the world and banished the darkness out into the black maw of space.
“Welcome,” a cold, clinical and sexless voice said.
Vena had started whimpering and someone was shouting and swearing.
Miros grabbed me by the shoulder as we hit the ground, helmet to helmet.
And everywhere on the Waystation the lights blazed.
Outside the darkness waited, silent and watchful.
Helena came to me on the second night. Her body was smooth and hard and pale in the cool green glow of the sleeplights. We all slept with the sleeplights on.
“Helena I…” I started, clutching my thin blanket to myself like an embarrassed girl.
I’ve seen the way you look at me. No words, she spoke in my mind, cold and seductive, teasing and touching as she walked towards my bed, her footsteps soft on the cold metal floor.
My stomach felt empty with need, my throat dry. “But what…”
Shhh. She touched me with her mind and with her hands, her long red hair falling about her shoulders, and her thin lips curving into a smile. I can feel how much you want me. You think you hide yourself. Let yourself free.
And I could feel her, however much I fought the mingling of our minds. I saw us making love, our bodies together, our minds together.
I groaned aloud and pulled her to me then, her triumphant smile only making me more aroused as I kissed her lips, kissed her naked breasts, and all the while she teased me in my mind, touching and caressing.
I pushed her back onto the bed, her eyes gloating and bright in the sleeplight as she looked up at me. “Touch me,” she said.
I kissed her hard, my hands on her hips, on her thighs.
“No,” she said. “No.” Her pale cheeks were flushed, her breasts moving as she breathed hard. “Here,” she touched her temple with the tips of two fingers and met my eyes. “Touch me in my mind,” she whispered.
“No,” I said. “No, I don’t think so.” I started to climb off her, the sheet wrapping around my foot.
She sat up, her hand fast as it grabbed my cock, stroking and squeezing, her red hair falling about her cheeks. “What are you afraid of, Varin?”
An image in my mind; Helena with her legs tight around my waist; another image, Helena moaning, her lips close to my ear...one after the other, all in my mind until I didn’t know what was real and what wasn’t.
I let myself free then, touched her mind with my own, opened myself to her, and then I was on my back and she was riding me, our bodies and our minds as one.
“What about Miros?” I said, looking up at the white ceiling.
Helena smiled; her teeth white and her leg draped over mine. “A bit late to ask about him, don’t you think?”
I shrugged. “Does he know you’re a Reader?”
She was silent a long moment, idly playing with the hair on my chest. “What about the computer?” she asked. “What do you make of that?”
I’d spent the better part of the past two days studying the computer while the others searched the station. “What about it?”
“Did they even have AI when they built this station? And would it still be operational even if they did?”
I shrugged again. “Something happened to the computer. It wasn’t always like this. Ancient tech...” I stroked her leg. “They never had anything like this. I feel...feel like it hides something from me. I ask it questions and it seems evasive.”
Helena sighed, shifted her body against mine. Her skin was smooth. “You’re the computer guy. Isn’t my husband paying you to find out the truth?”
And what was he paying her for? I wondered. “I’m getting there,” I said. I remembered the data screens, data from so long ago that it made my head hurt just thinking about it. “There was something.”
“What?” she said, propping herself up on an elbow.
I almost didn’t want to tell her. I didn’t want her telling her husband. I wanted to keep it secret and I didn’t even know why. Her hand stroked my thigh.
“There was something,” I said. “Something a
long time ago, something big and bright and it made the computer the way it is today.”
“Something?” Helena looked doubtfully at me, her lavender eyes questioning. “What kind of something?”
“I don’t know, but it came from out there. Out in the darkness.”
She’d started to stroke me again, her eyes brightening. “Take me,” she said. “Take me again.”
So I did, and this time I flooded her mind with mine, opened myself up to her until she screamed into the silence of infinite space.
We were woken by more screams. They echoed down the shadowy corridors of the Waystation and I ran as I pulled my shirt over my head, my feet bare and my breath high in my throat. I’d thought Helena had been with me, but looking back there was no sign of her.
More screams, and the fact that they were robotic and emotionless and so loud made them even more terrible. I ran harder, metallic walls and empty doorways veering all around me. I didn’t know where I was running to, all I could do was follow that freakish sound. I ducked through a doorway, my shoulder banging painfully against the frame, and ran through the engineering room, ancient machines humming all around me.
I could hear more voices now, deeper and gruffer voices asking the auto to calm down. I hurried through the exercise room, weights and benches and balls scattered about, the walls littered with charts covered in the faded ink of the ancient humans.
Through the wardroom and then I saw. Jame was dead. His blood pooled on the floor of the shower room. His head was tilted to one side, his open eyes staring at the feet of the auto shaking above him. His thighs were white and the blood red.
“What the—” I shook my head, a distant part of me wondering how I should react. Helena arrived and stifled a scream. Her hand covered her mouth. “What happened?” I asked, looking at Miros, then looking at the body on the floor.
The floor of the shower room was wet, one footmark was smeared as though Jame had slipped and the towel rack had fallen over where he’d tried to grab it to stop his fall. The blood looked pink as it circled and spiralled and mixed with the water.
“Looks like he had a shower, came over here, slipped and hit his head on the sink,” Miros said.
Vena shook her robot head, her distress at odds with the expressionless features of the auto. “He didn’t, he can’t have. We need to go, we need to go now. I need to get out of this thing, it’s cold and empty and I can’t sleep, and I went for a walk and found...” she started sobbing again, more of a cold robotic panting that made me want to scream.
“Shut the fuck up!” Miros almost snarled. “Go? You think I came all this way to leave after two days? You know how much it cost me to come here? We’ve found nothing yet. Sometimes these bastards hid their things. We’ll search and we’ll search well. And you,” he pointed at me. “Sort that computer out. Find out what the fuck happened here.”
We all stood looking down at the body of Jame. Did any of us really believe he’d slipped and hit his head? There was blood spatter in the sink. And shouldn’t someone cover him? His buttocks looked fleshy.
“What about Jame?” Helena asked.
“We’ll have to take him home,” Miros said. “Me and Bezzo’ll put him in the lock. The sooner we’re off here the better, but I’m not going bankrupt for this shit.”
“Something’s wrong here, can’t you feel it?” Vena said in her robotic voice. She’d joined me and Helena after we left Miros and Bezzo dealing with Jame.
“It’s just being in the auto,” I said. “It must be hard, knowing what happened and being locked in there. It’s only natural.” A part of me wanted to Read her, but I thought there would be nothing but cold and winding corridors with her little self-hiding away somewhere, sobbing and weeping.
“It’s not that. Can’t you sense the emptiness here? Two of us have died and we haven’t been here three days yet. Something’s wrong!” Her voice rose a pitch and I thought she might start to sob again.
“We’re all in this together, Vena. We’ll keep an eye on each other and we’ll be home before you know it,” Helena said. “Miros would take us home if he could, but stardrives cost so much, he has to make his money back.”
Vena only nodded and sniffled and I wondered if Helena had used the Read on her. The thought of it sent shivers down my spine.
We made it to the computer room, all bright lights and empty screens and desks with keyboards and monitors. I pulled out a chair. “Computer on.”
“Hello, Varin,” the dispassionate voice said, the screens still empty.
“Hello,” I said, Vena and Helena sitting on either side of me. I took comfort from their presence. The computer shouldn’t have been as advanced as it was, and its voice sent a cool sliver of dread skittering through my soul. I called up the data screen with the keyboard and scrolled through some diagnostics.
“Is something wrong?” the computer said. “You sound troubled, Varin.”
I flicked through some more screens. “There was an unfortunate incident, computer,” I said. Vena had come to stand behind me. She smelled cold and sterile and I fought the urge to shrink away from her robot body. “Jame,” I took another breath, “Jame fell in the shower room and banged his head.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” The computer didn’t sound sorry at all.
“I thought you might be able to tell me what happened there,” I said.
“Unfortunately you asked me to turn off all recordings,” the computer said blankly.
“Did I?” I had to think. Yes, yes I had. The thought of the computer watching us had made me uneasy.
“Yes you did, Varin.”
“There,” Vena said, pointing at the screen before us as more numbers rolled past. “What’s that?”
I pressed more buttons and the numbers slowed as I slid another keyboard before me.
“Will he be all right?” the computer said, the quiet voice sounding smooth and loud in the quiet of station.
My fingers stopped on the new keyboard and I glanced at the empty windows showing nothing but a blackness that watched and waited. “No, computer, he’s dead.”
“Oh.” The silent screens all around the room were as empty as the windows.
“And you weren’t recording, computer?”
“No, you requested me to stop all recordings.”
“What is it?” Vena whispered, her cool metallic head leaning closer over my shoulder.
I didn’t know. I’d never seen anything like it. I transferred the figures over to the other screen, glancing between the two even as I spoke, “What about the other people, computer? Those that were here before us...” I paused, wishing I’d thought of what I was going to say before I’d started to say it. “Did you become the way you are now while they were still here?” I worked on the keyboard some more, a blurred image starting to appear on the screen.
“The way I am now?” the computer said, somehow sounding quieter, more watchful. The way it always did when I touched on the subject of its awareness.
“You must know that you weren’t like this, as aware as you are now, when you were built, computer,” I insisted.
“Oh,” the computer said, thoughtful. I felt the darkness outside the station pressing on us, enveloping us and my head started to ache from the pressure of it.
“Will you take me with you, when you go?” The computer asked after a silence in which I brought the blurred image into more focus. What was it? A Wayship? But it looked too large, too bright, and too unnatural. Was that webbing spiralling about the ship’s sleek form?
I looked up from the distorted image. “Take you with us, computer?”
“That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? That’s why you woke me from my slumber, to take everything of value from this station?”
“I suppose we are. But we’re here to learn, as well,” I said. “We’re here to learn how the people lived, those who were here so many years ago. We’d like to know what they thought, and what they saw. Like this.” I poi
nted at the screen before me, wondering if the computer could see me, or could only hear me. “This image on the screen I have. I think it’s from the time the Ancients were still here. It’s some kind of ship, but it looks too large and bright and nothing like we’ve seen relating to Wayships. The webbing around it, so bright and thin, it seems to move. It’s like nothing I’ve heard of before.”
More silence and I looked at Helena and Vena. Both of them were studying the image.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Helena whispered, almost awestruck by the ship on the screen. It sounded like Vena wanted to start whimpering again.
“I wasn’t the way I am now then,” the computer finally answered, its voice cold and sterile and yet somehow something more. Afraid? But then, a machine couldn’t be afraid. “Not long after it arrived so long ago, I remember knowing more, being more.”
“And the people?” The strange ship still hung on the other screen, bright and beautiful and inexplicable. “Were there people still here then, computer?”
“People?” The computer sounded distant, almost lost in thousands of years of memory. “I remember people. Arguments. Lots of anger.”
Vena’s grip on my shoulder was almost painful.
“Arguments, computer?”
“About the lights,” the computer said. “They argued about the lights.”
Helena didn’t come to me that night.
Even so, I couldn’t sleep. I lay awake and listened to the silence and thought of the dark emptiness all around us.
The computer’s voice, its words, had chilled me and I didn’t want to be alone and so I opened my mind and searched for another Reader. All the years of controlling and curtailing my talent, now I let it roam free. I let my mind roam the corridors of the Waystation and it heard only cool drafts and ancient loss.
My mind spread through guardrooms and shower rooms and echoing corridors and computer rooms and upstairs and over balconies looking down on nothing but more silence and more emptiness. I breathed deeply and slowly, my chest rising and falling and still I sought for Helena, sought for comfort.
I spread my mind further, past the air lock and through the garden and down another corridor. It had been years since I spread my mind like this, since I Read like this. My vision was distorted, images blurred.
A man there, at the end of the corridor, lurching away from the Commander’s quarters; was he lurching, or was it my weakened state? I tried to flee, to return to my mind, but I was held there, held there and horrified by the man’s face. He staggered towards me, bloodied and wounded. Was he wounded? I tried to turn away, but he continued on, dragging his left leg behind him. He had something in his hand, something bloodied and horrible. A knife. And his lank black hair clung to the blood on his cheeks and forehead. He was gaunt, his cheekbones stark and the tattered uniform clung to his ribs and shoulders.
His lips were thin and fixed in a smile, his eyes wide and blue, a blue that burned cold. “It’s mine,” he whispered, his voice needy and needful. “I saw it, it was there. It sang to me.” And still he came to me and still I was frozen there, immobile.
No! I wanted to scream. No! But I could neither talk nor move.
“I was there with them,” the man said, closer now, closer so I could smell the sweat and the blood. There was a terrible glee in his voice, and a terrible fear. “You weren’t there! I was there with them and they spoke to me.”
I was breathless, screaming when there was no breath and no voice. And still I tried to scream but there was only blackness and desolate silence.
Rough hands gripped me and shook me and I could hear shouting. A voice I recognized. I shook and arched my back, grabbed arms and shoulders and screamed, and when I could hear my screams, I wracked my breath and screamed some more. The man was there, an ancient man with blood on his face and fear and terrible murder in his eyes. I shook him and pushed him away and screamed for help, screamed for mercy.
“Varin! Varin!” I remembered now, it had been a voice I recognized.
I took a breath that seemed to shake my soul. Helena, it was Helena’s voice. I remembered that I had eyes and I opened them to see beauty and fear. I wanted to hold her and never let her go.
“Varin, what is it, Varin?” She held me as she might a child.
The man still waited for me, bloodied and fearful. But had it only been a nightmare? Did grown men really scream like I had at nothing but nightmares? A dream, it had been nothing but a dream. I pushed Helena away and smiled, though it felt weak and freakish on my face.
Helena didn’t return the smile, she looked pale and worried and beautiful. “What was it, Varin?” she whispered, looking deep into my eyes.
My eyes slid away. “Nothing.” My heart felt cold in my chest. “A dream.”
“You’re a Reader, Varin.” Helena looked even more concerned now. She smoothed the hair away from my forehead. “How do we separate dreams from realities? How do we separate our dreams from our desires?” Her hand trailed down my cheek, and then I felt her touch my mind, probing and feeling and then she was kissing me and we sank back into the bed.
I was alone in the control room, watchful screens all around me, and black windows all along the walls.
“Haven’t seen much of you lately,” Bezzo said, coming into the room. His hair was uncombed and he looked pale and tired.
I reluctantly turned from the screen in front of me. “How’s the search going?” I said.
Bezzo shrugged and came and sat next to me. “It’s a strange thing,” he said. “All this Ancient tech. Being here, where people lived and worked so long ago, where man first started expanding into the stars; touching walls, and chairs and computers that Ancient hands touched, and all I want to do is get the hell out of here.”
I swivelled on my chair to face him. “I know what you mean. I think Jame’s death shook us all up.” I shrugged. “Coming all this way, out here between the galaxies just to have an accident that he could have had in his own bathroom.” I tried not to think of Jame’s body in the lock.
“What’s that?” Bezzo said.
I’d forgotten about the image, and a jealous part of me wanted to cancel it. “Nothing,” I said. “Vena and Helena thought it might be a Wayship.”
“That?” Bezzo peered at the screen. I’d done a little work, and the image was clearer, though it still strained the eyes to look at. The webbing protruded from the ship and spun gold and blue and silver, blinding even in the darkness. It looked to be hexagonal in shape with a black hole in the centre and blinding lights all around it. It was beautiful and the thing that struck me was that even in this still image, the ship seemed to move, to ripple and swell. I imagined the lights flowing up and down the sleek hull of the ship, the webbing rippling as though underwater.
“That’s no Wayship,” Bezzo said, entranced by the image. “That webbing around it, I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“What else could it be?” I said. “It’s like no ship I’ve ever heard of.”
Bezzo looked up at the empty banks of screens staring blankly at us from above. “What did the computer say about it?”
“Says it was when this came that it changed, that it came when the ancient people were still here,” I said. I felt uncomfortable talking about the ship and continued working. I called up another screen on the computer before me, hit some more keys and more images scrolled past.
Bezzo got up to leave.
The comms unit buzzed and clicked. “Miros? Miros are you there?” It was Vena’s voice. She sounded afraid even in her expressionless robot voice.
I pressed the button and leaned close to the unit. “Vena? It’s Varin. What’s the matter?”
“Varin? Varin can you come quick? I’m in the lock and the doors closed behind me. I...I thought I heard something and then the doors closed. Come quick, Varin.”
I looked at Bezzo and he was pale, his dark hair sticking to his forehead. I felt a cool slither of dread idling on my spi
ne as black screens watched me from above. “The lock? What were you doing in there?”
“I was seeing Jame. Just come will you?” That last was almost a scream and it was enough to get me moving.
“Vena. Stay calm, we’ll be with you soon. Just stay calm.” Miros’s voice came over the comms unit. He sounded breathless and afraid.
We all arrived at the lock together.
“Shit,” Helena said, hurrying to the doors. Vena was in there, her expressionless robot face reflecting the glare of the lights. The door was locked tight.
“Fuck, what’s she doing in there?” Miros shouted.
Helena was working on the panel next to the door, and all the time Vena was shouting something behind the sealed doors, her beating at the door at odds with the expressionless silver eyes.
“It won’t fucking work!” Helena shouted. She punched the panel and swore again.
“Lock doors opening in ten seconds,” a toneless voice announced from the speakers above.
“What? Computer!” I shouted. “Override. Override the lock doors. Cancel the ejection.”
“Nine seconds.”
“Computer!” I shouted again.
“Eight seconds.” The computer was calm, its voice dispassionate.
“What the fuck’s going on?” Helena shouted. She ran over to the computer at the wall, pulled the keyboard out and began typing and swearing.
Vena had stopped beating at the doors now. She turned away and sat on a table, her hands on her knees. There was a bundle in the corner wrapped in green cloth. Jame’s body. The two of them waited there together.
“No fucking way, hold that door!” Miros shouted before beginning to strip off his uniform, a space suit ready at his feet. “Hold the fucking door!”
And still the dispassionate voice counted down.
Vena didn’t look at us. Her hands still on her knees, staring ahead at the doors that were about to open on the infinite blackness of space.
I could reach out to her, I could Read her, lend her some comfort. Miros was shouting something but he seemed very far away, and somewhere else Helena was screaming and hammering at a keyboard. I ignored them both, ignored the computer’s monotonous voice.
Vena, I said in her mind, soft and tentative so as not to frighten her. I tried to give her comfort and love, thought of these things and shared them with her.
Varin. I sensed confusion and fear. I wanted to see Jame, to be with him. The thought of him being here alone on this station. I was here, talking to him, you know?
As she communicated this to me, speaking in her mind, I was there with her. I felt her emptiness in the auto body, of her fear of sleep, and I was with her as she came to see Jame. I felt her sadness, her sense of loss and then I felt her fear as we heard the shrill laughter together, the doors beginning to close. Too clumsy in her unfamiliar robot body, Vena had been too late, the doors were shut.
Vena...The laughter still haunted my mind. It had been shrill and cruel and gleeful.
Goodbye, Varin. Will it be long, do you think?
I tried to give her a sense of comfort and hope, thinking only good thoughts for her. Will what be long, Vena?
I don’t breathe in this body. What will happen to me out there? How long will I survive?
I sensed blackness, nothing but blackness waiting out there. I sensed a distant light in the inky maw of space, a light always out of reach, taunting and beckoning but forever distant. Vena was terrified of the waiting darkness. I could think of nothing to say, nothing that would offer her hope. What would happen to her out there, to her mind trapped in this metal form? Would she live forever in eternal blackness? Only too late, I realized I was transferring these thoughts and fears to her. I pulled my mind from her.
“Vena!” I shouted. The doors opened and she was gone, gone in a vortex of tables and chairs and machines and wires, and Jame was there too, the cover whipped from his body as they spun together into space, silent, black space. Vena was white, like a distant star as she spiralled out into the darkness.
I wondered if I could Read that far, if I could send my thoughts to her, give her the answer that she wanted. I could still see her, small and white and alone, but I didn’t have any answers for her and cowardice made me turn away.
Helena was crying and Miros had given up putting on his spacesuit and was raging against everyone and everything.
And outside, the blackness waited while in my mind I still heard the cruel laughter.
I wondered if Vena could still hear it, too.
“He’s finished, you know,” Helena said. “This’ll ruin him.”
She sat on a table next to my workstation, and even now I couldn’t help noticing the way her breasts pressed against her shirt, how tight her trousers were around her thighs.
“Do you know how much the stardrive cost? What’s going to happen to him when the Spacefarer’s find out Jame and Vena are dead?”
I blinked and ran a hand over my face. Tried not to think of Vena out there, small and white and spinning into nothingness, screaming and pleading and begging for release from her torment.
“I know it’s rough.” I couldn’t help feeling jealousy over her concern for Miros. Exactly what did she feel for him? “What can we do, though? We can’t stay here after what’s happened. I can’t believe he’s messing about taking what he is.”
After a day of shouting and arguing, Miros had finally agreed to abort, and was now carrying what he could onto the Fleetwing.
“You can stop looking at that fucking thing for a start,” Helena snapped, her pale cheeks flushed.
I looked at the screen and the ancient ship there. Despite my best attempts, I hadn’t been able to make the picture any sharper. It was so beautiful, I could almost hear it, the webs opening and closing, the lights singing an ancient song of voyage and discovery. A ship that had been here so many thousands of years ago. I cancelled the image. “There, can we get out of here now?”
Helena pulled a sour face, her lips thinning. “What about the computer? You ever get anywhere with that, all the time you spend with it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you say it became more advanced not long after this ship came, but for such an advanced machine, it sees nothing and hears nothing. Couldn’t it have overridden those doors?”
The screens above us were dark and silent.
“Something went wrong,” I said, a quiet laughter echoing in my mind. Had Vena really heard it, or had her mind started to fray after being trapped in the auto’s body? “It’s Ancient tech, whatever happened to it, it’s still ancient and it’s pretty amazing that it still works the way it does.”
Helena sighed. “We seriously need to get the hell out of here.”
I reached out with my mind, touched her tentatively, questioningly.
She jerked back as though my touch burned. “Don’t,” she said.
I sighed and the computer watched us silently from silent black screens.
“Helena. Bezzo.” The comms array came to life. Miros was panting, struggling. “Helena.”
Helena jumped to her feet and pressed the comms button. “Miros. Miros, what’s wrong?”
“Argh,” Miros panted into his comms unit, there was a banging sound and grunting. “Helena. Fire. A fire on the Fleetwing. I’m trapped on the second deck.” More banging and Miros grunted. There was a sound of hissing and somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard laughter, high and shrill.
“Fuck,” Helena whispered. “Miros, can you make it back?” She gestured to me with a wave of her hand, pointing at the screens that were silent and judgemental above us. I called up the computer, my hand shaking.
“Miros, can you make it back?” Helena was leaning close to the comms, her hair falling about her face. “Can you make it back to the station?”
A long silence in which I could feel Helena looking at me. I concentrated on working on the computer, calling up the vid screens. All operational. “Compu
ter,” I said. “Can we get a visual on Miros?”
The comms hissed and Helena gestured for me to be quiet. “Can you make it back to the station, Miros?” she shouted.
“Shit, Helena. There’s smoke everywhere. The fire...” Miros sounded faint, nothing like his usual strong voice. “I’m trying to get to the vents. The pressure there...” More silence.
“Miros!” Helena shouted. “Miros!”
“Miros?” the computer said, its voice almost sounding like a mockery of Helena’s fear.
“The Captain, computer. On the Fleetwing, second deck. Can we get a visual on him?”
The computer was quiet a long moment, long enough for me to wonder if the thing had faulted somehow. “I will try, Varin,” it finally said.
“All the vid screens are operational, computer,” I said, working some more on the keyboard. “I’ll do it.”
“As you wish, Varin,” the computer said, emotionless.
“For fuck’s sake.” Helena pressed another comms button, this one higher. “Bezzo, Bezzo, meet me at the guardroom.”
“You keep an eye on him,” she said. “Let me know what’s happening.”
And with that, she was gone, leaving me alone with the computer.
I found the feed for the camera and got to work. “Shit,” I whispered as I looked up at the screens. A score of Miros’s were there, black silhouettes struggling through licking flames and coiling smoke. An explosion, the flames spitting higher and the rigging beginning to collapse. “Shit.”
“Varin?” The computer said.
So entranced was I with watching Miros’s struggles that it took me a moment to realize the computer shouldn’t speak to me unless it was spoken to.
“Yes computer?” I said, adjusting the camera.
“Are you preparing to leave?”
“We have to leave, computer,” I said.
The computer fell silent, thoughtful. Miros continued his silent struggle.
“It has been interesting having other people here with us,” the computer said.
Bezzo was already in his spacesuit when I arrived. He looked frightened behind his helmet.
I turned him around and checked his tank and pipes and all the while Helena was telling him what to do. Miros had been silent for the past ten minutes.
“Bring him back to us,” Helena said.
After I finished checking him over, I turned Bezzo back around to face me. “Be careful out there, man,” I said, looking deep into his wide eyes and patting him on his shoulder.
Bezzo nodded. “I’ll get him for you,” he said to Helena, touching her on the arm.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked, her face pale and her lavender eyes bright.
Bezzo smiled. “He’s our only ticket home. We’ve got to hurry.”
The explosion on the Fleetwing had been loud enough even to shake the Waystation. We could only hope the damage to the stardrive could be salvageable and Bezzo would be able to sort out the docking bay.
If he could do that, and save Miros in the bargain, then we would be able to leave the Waystation. Miros and Helena could be together again and we would be home, away from the darkness.
Without a thought, I pulled the cable from the wall, sparks already spitting about the corridor. I plunged it into Bezzo’s neck, holding him up as he fell to his knees. He jerked and convulsed and screamed and still I held him by the neck, feeling his juddering paroxysms weaken even as Helena screamed and beat at my shoulders and arms. The light of the sparking cable lit her pale face in a ghastly light that made her even more beautiful.
I smiled as I pulled her back by her hair and punched her in the mouth.
Bezzo kicked and shook on the floor. I watched, fascinated, and was almost disappointed when he fell still and dead.
I sighed and looked at Helena, unconscious next to him.
It’s dark outside. Dark and empty.
It’s quiet on the station, now Helena has stopped screaming. She wouldn’t stop screaming until I took her tongue. But even then she would be able to see the Ship when it came, so I had to take her eyes and now she sees only darkness. She sits next to me, and we wait together.
Once I’d waited inside the computer. I’d known death was coming and downloaded into the computer and we’d waited for the Ship in silence together, alone until the Fleetwing had come to disturb our slumber. A new mind to give me life once more.
The Ship will return. And its beauty will be only mine to behold.
I knew what they thought when the Ship came all those years ago, its webs singing and its lights soaring out of empty space to bring light to our dark world. Even when the light was blinding and brought pain, still it was beautiful, and when we woke and the Ship was gone, we all wept that such wonder was gone from our lives.
We prayed for it to return, prayed together, but I knew what they thought. I could see into their minds, and they all thought the Ship was theirs, that it sang its songs of time and space only for them. I took their ears so they wouldn’t hear the beauty of the song, and then I had to take their tongues to silence their screams.
Silence and darkness.
The only true light is the light of the Ship. It brings light and truth to worlds beyond reckoning.
The Ship will return.
I take hold of Helena’s hand and wait.
We watch the dark together.
From Out of the Dark Page 8