series 01 03 “THE GHOSTS OF MERCURY”

by By Mark Michalowski

  “Not so much a ‘chap’, Colonel—more of a, I don’t know, a living thing. It doesn’t seem to have a particular sex, as it were.”

  “What? Sounds damn rum to me. Why was I not told about this thing, then? I am still in charge of this station, if I recall correctly.”

  “My deepest apologies, Colonel,” said Nathanial. He’d assumed that Heath would have raced off to tell him, but clearly he hadn’t. “We only discovered it this evening.”

  Nathanial turned back to the ghost who still wore a thoughtful, almost puzzled, look on his face.

  “Very odd,” Shawbridge’s doppelgänger said. “I feel like I ought to know this fella, this Hermes, and yet I don’t. And yet…I do.” He shook his head. “Anyway, if he were that important I would have remembered him, wouldn’t I?”

  “Maybe,” Nathanial said. “But let’s talk about you—you’re much more interesting.”

  “Am I?” The ghost colonel looked dubious at the suggestion.

  “Oh my, yes! For one thing, you’re here. Right here. And for another, if we can work out quite what you are—no offence meant—then maybe we’ll be a step forward in understanding Hermes. Do you don’t have any memories from ‘before’?”

  “Lots of them. I was about to say ‘all of them’, because it would be ridiculous for a man to not have all his memories, wouldn’t it? How would he know otherwise. But that’s not what it’s like… It’s like they’re…” He broke off and waved his hands about vaguely. “Like they’re still being sketched in. Yes, that’s it, damn it!” He squeezed his fist up into a ball. “It’s like they’re being sketched in and I’m not allowed to look until they’re finished. Does that make any sense, Professor Stone?”

  “As much sense as anything we’ve seen or heard today, to be honest. So…if you are, indeed, a ghost of the real colonel, how can you exist when the real colonel is still very much alive?” Nathanial drummed his fingers on his bottom lip as he looked from one to the other. Even as they’d been talking, the ghost colonel had solidified. It was now almost impossible to tell one from the other. “Perhaps, by some inexplicable process, you’ve become detached in time. A sort of reverse echo if you like.”

  The ghost looked at its living counterpart. “You mean that the colonel there will die sometime soon and that I’m what will become of him, only from the future? I can’t begin to imagine how that works, Stone. Do you really think that such a thing is possible, then…?”

  “There’s another explanation, though,” Nathanial said, avoiding a direct answer to the question. “We never had the time to investigate it further, but Hermes talked about having made a ‘copy’ of Professor Fournier…”

  “A what?” exclaimed the real colonel. “A copy? Ghosts I can get to grips with, but…a copy?”

  “I know, I know—sounds like utter madness, doesn’t it? But nevertheless, Hermes talked about the professor in the present tense, saying that she talks to him. And then we had some bizarre discussion about the soul and the existence of God and we got somewhat side-tracked. But I’m wondering whether the colonel here isn’t something similar.”

  “I’m a copy? But if that’s the case, why am I like this? Why am I different to,” the ghost gestured at the real colonel, “to him?”

  Nathanial could only shrug. “Hermes said that Professor Fournier died in that rockfall, but also that she didn’t. We’ve all seen her body. But she appeared to Annabelle herself this morning.”

  “Did she?” exclaimed the colonel. “And no one thought fit to tell me about this, either?”

  Nathanial wasn’t about to be side-tracked. “Hermes said that it made a copy of her mind, her intelligence. Don’t ask me how, but let’s imagine that it was speaking the truth. Perhaps Hermes did the same to you, copying the colonel’s memories and personality. And you are the result.”

  The real colonel shrugged. “The more you say, Stone, the more insane you sound.”

  “Sorry, Colonel—but you think the idea of ghosts appearing before their bodies have died is less insane? It just strikes me as a little strange that your doppelganger, there, has no knowledge of Hermes. If it’s been speaking to the copy of the professor, why has it not been doing the same to you?”

  There was a sudden, sharp knock at the door. Nathanial looked from one colonel to the other. There was a moment of awkwardness before the ghost colonel suddenly caught on.

  “Oh, you think I should go?”

  “Probably wise,” said the Shawbridge with a curt nod. “Whoever it is, seeing two of us in here might be a bit much—for now at least.”

  The ghost nodded. “Fair enough. I’ll, um, see you chaps later then?”

  “I do hope so, Colonel,” said Nathanial.

  And then, without a sound, the ghost simply winked out of existence. There was another, firmer, knock.

  “Come in,” said Nathanial, and the door was opened by Iris McConnon, looking very pale and shaken.

  “Colonel,” she said. “Professor Stone. Sorry for the interruption, but something very strange is happening and I thought you ought to know.”

  “What is it, Iris?”

  “These ghosts, sir…”

  “What about them?”

  “You need to come and see. They’re everywhere.” Her eyes were wide and her face pale. “It’s like we’re being invaded.”

  Chapter Nine

  “In Which Nathanial Makes a Bad Situation Worse”

  1.

  For some reason, Annabelle had pictured Reverend Lyden, the station’s chaplain, as a small, unremarkable Englishman. The reality was, in fact, that he was a tall, rather angular Welshman, with a beautiful, sonorous voice. She could quite imagine him conducting services and commanding the attention of his flock.

  Despite the late hour, he was still awake, tending a display of Mercurian flowers in the chapel. They stood in the vestibule, fanning out from a simple, white china pot, all blues and greens, some of the leaves edged in red and bronze. Annabelle wasn’t quite sure that she liked them, but they certainly were dramatic.

  “Ah,” said Lyden warmly as she and Heath let themselves in. “You must be the colonel’s niece, mustn’t you? Lovely.”

  He shook her hand vigorously—and, to her surprise, did the same to Heath, who seemed a little taken aback by the chaplain’s familiarity.

  “Sorry about calling in so late,” Annabelle said.

  “Ah, don’t you be worrying about that.” Lyden beamed, showing them through to the kitchen of his own quarters, adjacent to the chapel. Whereas the rest of the station’s buildings seemed to have been furnished—and kept tidy—with military efficiency, it was clear that Lyden was neither a woman nor a soldier: unwashed teacups stood by the sink, drying clothes hung haphazardly from a rack on the ceiling, and piles of papers and prayer books stood in precarious piles. He hastily cleared space for them on his sofa. “Perhaps some tea, then?”

  “Actually, yes,” said Annabelle. “Tea would be lovely—as long as we’re not keeping you from your bed.”

  “Oh, Heavens no,” Lyden said. “Back home I was always a night owl, I was, and here—well, here it’s anyone’s guess what time it is, isn’t it?”

  “It does feel a little that way, yes,” Annabelle agreed. “I’m not sure I could cope with an extended stay. There’s something a bit…disorienting about it, isn’t there?”

  “There is indeed, Miss Somerset,” Lyden replied, fussing with teacups and filling the kettle. “It seems that we underestimate the value of having a proper night and day. I wonder what it would be like to be somewhere in permanent daylight.”

  “At least you could have curtains and blinds to shut it out at night,” Annabelle said.

  “Darkness is easier to create than light, isn’t it?” Lyden smiled. “And no, that’s not a religious statement.”

  “It would make a very apposite one,” said Annabelle, remembering why they were here. “The reason we’ve come to see you, Reverend, is…” She glanced at Heath who was sitting very
tensely, hands clasped in his lap. “Well, we’ve just had a very strange, and somewhat disturbing, encounter.”

  “Really? Oh splendid!” As the kettle started whistling, he brought over the tea tray and returned to fill the teapot. “Please, do tell me all about it.”

  “Where do I start? Well, this is probably going to sound like madness, but—”

  “We’ve seen the Devil,” Heath interjected.

  “I’m not sure I’d go that far,” Annabelle said, somewhat taken aback by Heath’s declaration. “It’s a long story…”

  As the chaplain returned with the teapot, she told him the whole tale, keeping an eye on Heath, who remained quiet. At the end, Lyden sat back in his chair and let out a long sigh. “Well now, that is a story. But then little surprises me nowadays, not with all this space travel and alien worlds. Seems like almost anything is possible, doesn’t it?”

  Heath lifted his head suddenly. “So you think it is the Devil then?”

  Lyden thought for a few moments. “I think, Paul, that the Devil comes in many forms—some of them recognisable, others not at all so.”

  “But the things he said about there not being any such thing as the soul, or God.”

  “Perhaps this creature, this Hermes, is simply one of the innocents that hasn’t been introduced to God’s love? Even back on Earth there are many people who are ignorant of Him—that’s what missionaries are for, after all. Perhaps, rather than condemn him, we should pity him, and seek to enlighten him.”

  That seemed quite reasonable to Annabelle—she hadn’t considered that before.

  “With all respect,” Heath said, “you didn’t hear him. He was arrogant, wasn’t he, miss? Full of himself and science and how God didn’t exist. And the stuff about making a copy of the professor…” He looked up at Lyden. “That’s God’s work, isn’t it? Making people.”

  “Yes,” Lyden said thoughtfully. “I have to admit, that part of the story worried me the most. You didn’t see this ‘copy’ then, did you?”

  “I think I may have done,” said Annabelle—and went on to tell him of her encounter with Professor Fournier’s ghost.

  “Ah,” said Lyden. “Yes. The ghosts.”

  “What’s your take on them, then?” asked Heath eagerly. “The ghosts. Are they real? You know I’ve seen one, don’t you? I’d have come to tell you about it if I hadn’t been laid up in the hospital.”

  Heath, Annabelle was increasingly realising, was searching for answers. From what he’d told her about his upbringing, the Church, Bible and God had always been there for him, providing him with a framework for his life. Perhaps that was why he’d joined the army—to be part of something bigger than himself, something that would give him direction?

  “To be quite honest, Paul, the ghosts are a mystery to me,” Lyden said. “It’s hard to say quite what they are. But Miss Somerset’s visitation by Professor Fournier’s does rather lend credence to the idea that, yes, they are ghosts.”

  “But what about the others?” Heath insisted, leaning forward even further. Annabelle saw Lyden flinch a little and started pouring the tea, hoping that it might calm Heath down a little. “What about mine? Even Miss Somerset here saw it, didn’t you?”

  “I have to confess I did, yes. Only briefly, but there was certainly something there.”

  “And everyone else as well,” Heath continued. “We can’t all be mad, can we?”

  “No one’s suggesting you’re mad,” Annabelle insisted. “I’m certainly not, and I’ve seen two of them.”

  Heath sat back and chewed at his lip, his eyes lowered again, as Annabelle handed him a cup. He declined it with a brief raise of his hand. “What if,” he said, suddenly animated again, “what if they’re devils as well, sent by Hermes to torment us, or trick us or something? That would make sense, wouldn’t it?”

  “It’s a possibility,” Lyden admitted, throwing a look at Annabelle. She could see that he too was finding Heath’s attitude a little intense. Disturbing, even. “But remember where we are, Paul—we’re on a strange world, millions of miles from home. This is a whole new era for humanity, and I’m sure that many of the things we’ve encountered since we left Earth could have been seen as, oh, miracles or angels—or, yes, devils. I don’t think we should be too quick to judge. Miss Somerset—what’s your opinion?”

  Annabelle was a little thrown. “Really, I don’t know. Yes, I’ve seen some strange sights, but ghosts?” She shook her head gently. “One thing I do know, though, is that the feeling I got from Hermes was not a good one. There was something arrogant and lofty about it. Something….”

  “Inhuman?” suggested Heath. “It was Hermes that the professor’s ghost was talking about, no doubt about that. And she warned you, didn’t she?”

  Annabelle took deep breath and nodded. “She did, yes. Inhuman.”

  2.

  Shawbridge and Nathanial followed Iris out into the gloom; in the distance, they could hear much muttering and a few astonished cries.

  “They’re everywhere,” Iris said as they reached the main square of Princess Christiana Station. Little huddles of people were standing around, pointing and crying. Some of them were shouting, their fists raised.

  And around each little group, there were ghosts.

  Some of them were as solid and concrete as Shawbridge’s own ghost had been earlier, but most of them were hazy phantoms, displaying the same flickering and shifting that had been reported in earlier sightings.

  “Right!” bellowed Shawbridge at the top of his voice. “There’s no need to panic.”

  A woman in a nurse’s uniform with a coat wrapped around her shoulders came running over. “Sir,” she said, her voice heavily accented. Nathanial caught sight of her name badge: Nurse Juanita Lopez. “I have seen one—and it was me!”

  Shawbridge threw a glance at Nathanial. “Is that so, Nurse? Well trust me, there’s no need to worry—”

  “But it was me!” she repeated, patting her chest. “I am going to die, aren’t ? I’m going to die!”

  Nathanial fought back the impulse to point out that everyone was going to die. “Listen to me, Juanita,” he said calmly, making sure that he had her attention. “These things—ghosts, whatever they are—they don’t mean anything.”

  “But it was me!” she repeated, clearly fixated on the idea of her own death. “How can that not mean anything?”

  “Professor Stone is right,” Shawbridge said. “You’re not the only one to see your own ghost.”

  “He’s right,” said a massively-built soldier who’d been standing nearby, his arm around a sobbing young woman. “There’s Joan’s.” He pointed to a translucent figure standing just a few yards away. Its face was hazy and unclear, but the resemblance to Joan was indisputable.

  “Does that mean we’re all going to die?” asked someone else.

  “We’re going to die, aren’t we?” another voice chimed in.

  A fresh round of wailing and muttering broke out.

  “This is madness,” muttered Shawbridge to Nathanial. “What do I tell them?”

  “The truth?” suggested Nathanial.

  “We don’t know the truth.”

  “Well, tell them that, then.”

  “And have them lose faith in me? What kind of commander would I be, then, admitting I don’t know?”

  “An honest one?”

  Shawbridge glared at Nathanial, and he wondered whether he’d gone too far. The colonel’s attitude to his own ghost had been more rational than Nathanial would have expected, but now, faced by the panic of the station personnel, was he losing control of his faculties?

  “And why haven’t we all seen them?” chirped up Iris. “Does that mean some of us aren’t going to die?”

  “No one,” said Nathanial calmly, “is going to die. Not before their natural time, anyway.”

  “And how would you know?” asked the soldier, pulling Joan closer. “With respect, sir, you’ve been here less than two days. Some of us have been her
e months, and I’m telling you, there’s something not right with this place.” He pointed at her ghost. “These things ain’t right, and you know it. If you know what they are, then tell us. If you don’t…”

  “Have some respect, Lister,” Shawbridge warned him, but his voice was thin and devoid of authority, like a teacher who’d finally lost control of a class of unruly boys. The soldier just glowered and, arm still around his wife, turned away.

  “Sir,” insisted Iris. “What do we do?”

  “Go back to your quarters, Iris.” He turned to address the crowd. “Everyone! Go back to your quarters. Whatever these things are, they can’t harm you.”

  “Says who?” shouted someone from the back of the crowd.

  “Stop that, man!” Shawbridge shouted. “You want to be up on a charge of mutiny, do you?”

  Nathanial realised he was holding his breath, and let it out in a long sigh. This was going from bad to worse. “Colonel Shawbridge is right,” he stepped in without thinking. “These ghosts can’t harm you—they have no physical substance. We don’t know exactly what they are yet, that’s true, but we can assure you that they mean no harm. Go back to bed, stay with friends or workmates—whatever makes you feel safe. But trust me, you’re in no danger.”

  A sullen muttering broke out and gradually, the crowd began to disperse. They were not happy, but they were going.

  “Thank you, Stone,” said Shawbridge under his breath—but the tone of his voice held no gratitude whatsoever. “Thank you very much for that.”

  And without another word, he stormed off.

  “What did I say?” Nathanial asked Iris before she rushed after Shawbridge.

  She turned and gave Nathanial a withering look. “Why did you come here?” she snapped. “Why did you come here?” Iris ran after the colonel, leaving Nathanial feeling more wretched and alone than he’d felt in a long time.

  Yes, he thought to himself miserably. Why did I come here?

  3.

  Nathanial knocked tentatively at Annabelle’s door, not at all sure that she’d welcome him after their earlier parting. There was no answer so he tried a little louder, but still nothing. He pressed his head against the wood of the door, and for a moment he felt like punching it. He’d come here as Annabelle’s friend, to see Annabelle’s uncle—and now he seemed to have alienated both of them, never mind the rest of the station’s personnel.