We didn’t talk much. There wasn’t much to say, I suppose. When we did speak, it was always in a whisper, as though something besides ourselves might be listening. Carmody on the Tenandrome must have felt it too. During the rare occasions when we heard his voice, it was thin and subdued.
It’s been a good many years now since McIras and I took that figurative walk through the Corsarius. The chill that lay heavy in her atmosphere pervades my nights still. We were approaching the bridge, and I was about to become, for all my life after, a cautious man.
McIras looked around Christopher Sim’s bridge and sniffed. “Primitive stuff,” she said. But she gazed for a long moment at the captain’s chair, the seat from which Sim had directed the engagements that became the stuff of legend. Then, breaking away, she examined the consoles, saw what she wanted, and pressed a key on one of the panels. “One gee coming, Hugh.” But nothing happened. She tried again: this time something in the bulkheads whined, sputtered, and took hold. I felt blood, organs, hair, everything settle toward the deck. “I’ve turned the heat up too,” she announced.
“Saje,” I said, “I think it’s time to hear what Captain Sim has to say for himself.”
She nodded and broke the link to the Tenandrome. “Until we know what it’s about,” she explained, hovering over the command console.
She had to play with it a bit to find what she wanted. While she did, I diverted myself with an examination of a bridge designed by people who clearly possessed a deep and abiding love for the arc, the loop, and the parabola. The geometry was of the same order as the exterior of the ship: one would have been hard-pressed to find a straight line anywhere.
“Okay, Hugh, I’ve got it.” She straightened, with her fingers pressed against the grid. “The next voice you hear—”
—Was certainly not that of Christopher Sim. “Zero six fourteen twenty-two,” it said. “Abonai Four. Repairs categories one and two completed this date. Repairs category three as shown on inventory. Weapons systems fully restored. Corsarius returned to service.”
It was obviously a record made while the ship was in port, presumably by the supervisor of the work crew. I looked at McIras.
“That’s still standard practice,” she said. “The port always makes an entry on returning command of a vessel to its captain. He should be next.”
Christopher Sim had never made any speeches, had never spoken to parliaments, and had not lived long enough to make a farewell address. Unlike Tarien’s, his voice had never become familiar to the schoolchildren of the Confederacy. Nevertheless, I knew it at once.
“Zero six fourteen thirty seven,” it said in a rich baritone. “Corsarius received per work order two two three kappa. Transformers check out at nine six point three seven, which is not an acceptable level for combat. Command understands that the port facility is under pressure just now. Nevertheless, if Maintenance is unable to effect repairs, they should at least be aware of the deficiency. Corsarius is hereby returned to port. Christopher Sim, Commanding.”
Another round of entries announced reworking of transformers. This time, Sim accepted without comment. But even over the space of two centuries, one could read the satisfaction in his tone. The last word again.
“This would be just shortly before the crew mutinied,” I said, checking the dates.
“Yes, Hugh. The mutiny, the Seven, we’ve got everything.”
“Run the rest of it!” I said.
She tried. Her fingers danced across the console. She frowned. Growled at the system. “That seems to be the last entry. There is nothing after it.” She tried again. Shook her head.
“How can that be? Did somebody erase it?”
“This is a ship’s log, Hugh. It can’t be erased, can’t be doctored, can’t be changed in any way without leaving a trail. Well take it back and turn it over to Archives for verification. But I doubt there’s been any tampering. There’d be no point.”
That couldn’t be right. “Corsarius went into battle shortly after that. There must have been log entries.”
“Yeah. Regulations require it. I’m sure even back then. For whatever reason, Christopher Sim took a volunteer crew into the climactic battle of his life, and neglected to put one word about it in his log.”
“Maybe he was too busy.”
“Hugh, it could not have happened.”
Almost without thinking, she settled herself in the captain’s chair and punched fresh instructions into the computer. “Let’s see what we can get if we back up a bit.”
Christopher Sim’s voice returned. He didn’t possess the sheer oratorical power of his brother. But it was a good voice, possessing a vitality that made it hard to believe that its owner was long dead.
“—I have no doubt that the destruction of the two battle cruisers will focus enemy attention on the small naval bases at Dimonides II and at Chippewa. It can hardly do otherwise. Those sites will be perceived by the enemy as a bone in its throat, and will be attacked as soon as they can concentrate sufficient power. The Mutes will probably divert their main battle group to the task—.”
“I think this is earlier in the war,” I said.
“Yes. It’s good to know at least that he uses his log.”
Sim described the composition and strength of the force he expected, and launched into a detailed description of enemy psychology and their probable attack strategy. McIras commented that he seemed to have got most of it right. We listened for a while, to that and other encounters. The historic value of the log would be astronomical. But she must have decided we weren’t getting anywhere on the immediate problem. She got up and walked to the door. “I’ve still got things to look at, Hugh. You want to come along?”
“I’ll stay here,” I said. “I want to hear more of it.”
Maybe that was a mistake.
After she left, I sat in the half light listening to analyses of energy requirements and commentary on enemy technology and occasional crisp battle reports, emanating from forays by Sim’s units against enemy lines of communication. Gradually, I was drawn into the drama of that long-ago struggle, and I saw the monster Mute formations through the eyes of a commander who consistently succeeded in scattering, or at least diverting, them with a dozen light frigates. I began to realize that Sim’s great weapon was the intelligence-gathering capabilities of listening stations afloat along enemy lines, and somehow shrouded from their sensing devices. Mute commanders, it appeared, could not void themselves without Sim’s knowledge.
The individual accounts were riveting.
Off Sanusar, the Dellacondans, assisted by a handful of allied vessels, ambushed and destroyed two heavy cruisers at the cost of a frigate. Near the Spinners, in the center of Mute supply lines, Sim stormed and looted an enemy base after luring its defenders into a wild chase. But the humans could never stand and fight. Time and again, Sim was forced to withdraw because he lacked the sheer force to exploit opportunity. Gradually, I began to read, first in his tone, and then in his comments, a despair that grew in proportion with each success and each subsequent retreat. Dellaconda was lost early, and when the news came, Sim responded only by breathing his wife’s name.
One by one, the frontier worlds fell, and he railed against the shortsightedness of Rimway, of Toxicon, of Earth, who thought themselves safe by distance, who feared to rouse the wrath of the conquering horde, who perceived each other with a deeper-rooted jealousy and suspicion than they could bring to bear on the invader. And when his luck ran out at Grand Salinas, where he lost most of his squadron and a battle cruiser manned by volunteers from Toxicon, he commented that “we are losing our finest and bravest. And to what point?” The remark was followed by a long silence, and then he said the unthinkable: “If they will not come, then it is time to make our own peace!”
His mood grew darker as the long retreat continued. And when two more ships from his diminished squadron were lost at Como Des, his anger exploded. “There will be a Confederacy one day, Tarien,” he wearily told his
brother, “but they will not construct it on the bodies of my people!”
It was the same voice that had indicted the Spartans.
The Tenandrome was rife with rumor. Some suggested that Sim and his crew had been spirited away by the Mutes and that the Corsarius had been left as a manifestation of an inhuman sense of humor. Others wondered whether the vessel had not been two ships right from the beginning, a clever ploy to confuse the invaders and enhance the image of a supernatural defender.
If McIras had any theories, she was keeping them to herself.
As for me, I could not get out of my mind the image of Christopher Sim in despair. It had never occurred to me that he, of all people, could have doubted the eventual outcome. It was a foolish notion, and yet there it was. Sim was as human as the rest of us. And in that despair, in his concern for the lives of his comrades and the people whom he had tried to defend, I sensed an answer to the deserted vessel. But it was an answer I could not accept.
I began reading everything I could find about the Mutes, the war, the Corsarius, and, in particular, the Rigellian Action. In that final engagement, Sim was operating in close conjunction with the Kudasai, a battle cruiser which carried his brother. The Corsarius had gone in to finish off a mortally wounded carrier, had gotten too close, and been caught when it blew up. It was odd, the way it ended. Sim had always led the Dellacondans personally. At Rigel, however, he’d escorted Kudasai during the main assault, while his frigates drove a knife into the enemy flank.
Ironically, Kudasai carried the surviving brother to his death only a few weeks later, at Nimrod. But Tarien lived long enough to know that his diplomatic efforts had succeeded. Earth and Rimway had finally joined hands, had promised help, and Toxicon was expected momentarily to announce that she would support her old enemies.
I wondered what had happened to the seven crew members who had deserted the Corsarius on the eve of the Rigellian Action. But, with the exception of the navigator, Ludik Talino, none appeared again in the histories. No one knew whether they’d been punished, or even charged with their crime. They became almost immediately a popular target for vilification. Talino, the navigator, surfaced briefly on Rimway almost half a century after the war, just long enough to die, and to earn mention in the news reports. Curiously, he claimed to have fought at Rigel, though on a cruiser, rather than the Corsarius. No details were given, and the comment was attributed to delusions brought on by his sense of guilt.
I was especially interested in the tale of the Seven, the anonymous heroes recruited in the belly of Abonai on the fateful night before the Mute attack. How did it happen that no one knew who they were? Was it coincidence that what should have been the single best source of their names, the log of the Corsarius, was silent on the subject, and in fact, silent on the battle itself? I could not get Saje McIras’ remark out of my mind: It could not have happened!
No, it could not.
In the morning, I asked McIras what she intended to do.
“I’ve classified the report. Well leave the Corsarius where she is, and if higher authority wants to come out and have a look at her, they can. That’s it.” She rubbed her temples. “This is bad news for everybody.”
“It’s ancient history,” I said.
“However he died, Christopher Sim is the Confederacy. This place, this world, is a graveyard. It’s a graveyard with a secret of some sort, and I don’t want to get any closer to it.” Her eyes narrowed. “The sooner we’re out of here the better I’ll like it.”
I looked at her a long time. “A graveyard for what?” I asked.
We returned to carrying out our basic mission, but the shadow of the Corsarius continued to hang over us. During the days that followed, the conversation with McIras played itself over and over again in my head. Hell of a graveyard. The bodies were all missing, the names were missing, the log entries were missing. And the Corsarius, which should be missing, was orbiting this world like clockwork, every six hours and eleven minutes.
“They intended to come back,” I told McIras.
“But they didn’t,” she said. “Why not?”
During the entire course of Hellenic civilization, I know of no darker, nor more wanton crime, than the needless sacrifice of Leonidas and his band of heroes at Thermopylae. Better that Sparta should fall, than that such men be squandered.
“Yes,” I said, “where are the bodies?”
Through a shaft in the clouds, far below, the sea glittered.
I went down with Holtmeyer’s group, ostensibly to assist making some deductions about fossils; but as soon as we were on the ground I commandeered a flyer and loaded it with food and water. Probably, I should have taken McIras’ advice and concentrated on my own assignments. They were all a long time dead, and there was no point anymore. But the truth should have some value.
And there was Talino, the navigator, whose name was now synonymous with cowardice, who for a time had served his captain and his world well, but had died bitter, and apparently delusional on Rimway. Surely I owed him, and the others, something.
Holtmeyer’s people were still setting up their shelters when I rose slowly over the trees and turned west into the sun-washed sky. There were thousands of islands scattered across the oceans. It would not of course be possible to search them all. But someone had abandoned the Corsarius. Whether that someone wanted to torture Christopher Sim with its presence, or to leave it as a sign they would not forget him, they’d left it all the same, and I wondered whether they would not have placed him along its track, close beneath its orbit.
I fed the course data into the flyer’s computer banks, set speed just below sound, and leveled off at 3,000 meters. Then I informed the Tenandrome where I was, and sat back to listen to the wind. Below, the sea was smooth and transparent and very blue. White clouds drifted through the morning haze. It could easily have been a seascape on Rimway or Earth or Fishbowl.
It was, on balance, a lovely world.
I passed, with barely a second look, a group of sandy, treeless islands. Their shores, like all the shores on this planet, were devoid of the gulls that are inevitably found near water oceans on living worlds. (Birds had not evolved there and in Jesperson’s opinion never would.)
I slowed to inspect a silver archipelago in the north temperate zone, rocky clutches of forest protruding from the glassy surface, progressively smaller islands dribbling away to the northwest. But there were only granite and trees, and after awhile I flew on.
I crossed into the southern hemisphere in late afternoon and approached a Y-shaped volcanic island shortly before sunset. It was a lush, tropical place of purple-green ferns and enormous white flowering plants. Placid pools mirrored the sky, and springs tumbled down off the lone mountain. I settled onto the beach, climbed out, had my dinner, and watched Corsarius pass overhead, a dull white star in a darkening sky.
I checked in with Saje, told her I was looking for Christopher Sim, listened to her opinion that I’d lost my mind, and told her she’d enjoy the beachfront view at my present location. She doubted it, and added that Jesperson had made a discovery having to do with amphibians, and his people were excited. “Considering we have the Corsarius floating around up here,” she commented, “they excite pretty easily.”
The air was cool and fresh, and the rumble of the surf almost hypnotic. I fell asleep in the cockpit with the canopy off. It was a violation of safety procedures that would have incensed the Captain.
In the morning, I set out over a wide expanse of unbroken ocean. Gentle rain squalls drifted across its face and, deeper in southern seas, a heavy storm forced me to a higher altitude. By mid-day, the black skies lightened, and I descended through a drizzle filled with that world’s bulbous airborne plants, toward an ocean suddenly still. I ate lunch on a long narrow spit that probably went completely under at high tide. (There were two moons of substantial size and, when they lined up and pulled in the same direction, the tides were fierce.)
I was cramped after long hours in t
he flyer, and strolled casually along the beach, enjoying the sea and the solitude. Tiny soft-shelled segmented creatures washed ashore with each wave. Most burrowed into the sand, while others hurried across the spit and returned into the ocean on the other side. I watched, fascinated, and noticed that all the movement was in one direction. That seemed strange. Also, the phenomenon seemed to be accelerating. Crustaceans and other creatures less easily identifiable scrabbled and slithered out of the breakers in increasing numbers, crossed the strip, and disappeared into the waves.
I was puzzling over it when I observed a vegetable-brown stain in the water drifting in my direction. It was out just beyond the surf, drifting toward the outer breakers. As it came closer, the foam turned muddy and the waves became almost syrupy.
Two glistening black rocks rolled ashore. One paused as though suddenly aware of my presence. It fell open, and a cluster of living dark fronds slowly uncoiled in my direction. I backed away, out of reach. Unhurried, it returned to its shell, and both creatures crossed the strand and splashed into the ocean.
I started back toward the flyer at a quick, nervous pace, but a sudden high-pitched whistling brought me up short. I turned to see that a creature resembling a porpoise had thrown itself onto the beach a few meters in front of me. The surf rolled languidly past its flanks, boiled, and seemed to draw the animal back into itself. The porpoise turned dark intelligent eyes toward me, and I heard again that shrill whistle, and read the terror in it. It struggled with the muddy tide, and tried to get higher up the beach, as though it would have torn itself altogether from the embrace of the ocean. But it made little progress, and seemed to give up when a muddy wave broke over it.
Our eyes locked in mutual horror. A second viscous wave rose around it, and when it receded the animal was gone. Moments later I caught a glimpse of a dorsal, and of a weak struggle in the water. And then everything became placid.
Cryptic - The Best Short Fiction of Jack McDevitt Page 25