by Phillip Mann
There was a pause, a longer pause than Wilberfoss expected, before the Nightingale replied. “Yes, he’s a nasty piece of work. And so is the boy. I’ll be glad to get shot of both of them.”
If only Jon Wilberfoss has listened. If only Jon Wilberfoss had not been so tired. There were clues aplenty that all was not well. Surely you who are reading these words, you can see it and feel it—a great brain tainted!
While Jon Wilberfoss slept, the Nightingale angled out into deep space, away from the homeworld and moons of the Dysers. At about the time of dawn as it was reckoned on the ship, the symbol transformation generators began to warm to their task of twisting space in such a way that the Nightingale would emerge close to the homeworld of the Quelle.
All was ready on that world. A Hydron approaching its maturity had been located and was waiting, treading water in the dark green sea close to the landing station. Transfer from Sandy to the Hydron could be effected in minutes. A contact team was standing by.
The complex metaphor which the STGs began to assemble unavoidably contained elements which related to the Quelle, and as the space about the Nightingale became charged, so the Quelle stirred in Sandy, making the boy gasp and stutter. He came awake into a nightmare in which he believed he was a Quelle about to enter a host. He had turned to spittle and froth. But before he was extinguished he managed a scream which brought both Wilberfoss and Mohawk from their beds. That scream was also heard by the Nightingale and tore within it. Deep beneath the contact room, bio-crystalline fibers became incandescent and broke. Others blackened and melted.
The death of Sandy was recorded moments later at just about the time when the STGs meshed.
The meshing was never complete.
The Nightingale vanished from space close to the Dysers but it never arrived in space close to the Quelle homeworld.
I have thought about this moment often. It was a moment of breaking.
Once, on the docks close to the Pacifico Monastery on Juniper, I saw a rope snarl and scream before breaking. I saw smoke rise from the chafed and squeezed davits. I saw the stress in the fibers as the rope became thin. It roared as it severed. The jagged ends of the rope cracked in the air. What had been joined was now sundered and the ship lurched on the water and drifted.
For some reason I felt sad for the rope.
The Nightingale reappeared at a random point in space. It could have reappeared anywhere: in the heart of a sun, in the tail of a comet, in the fierce grip of a ravenous black hole. Luck was with the Nightingale. It popped back into our reality close to a giant world which circled an expanding sun.
The moment of re-entry matched the moment of death of the Quelle which had survived for a short time within the dead body of Sandy.
Where was the Nightingale? Even today we are not certain for when the ship lurched back into our spacetime all its systems were awry. They never recovered. When, months later, the Nightingale managed to flit to a System which had contact with the Gentle Order, that journey was hit and miss and though we know the sector from which they came, we cannot know their precise origin. I am sorry to be mysterious.
I am even more sorry to imply something mystical but I cannot avoid noting the parallels between what happened to Jon Wilberfoss and the trials of many classical heroes who faced destruction and despair in an unknown and secret place before achieving their final victory.
16 The Descent onto a Gray World
You who have followed this story so far may wonder how it is that I know so many details. As I said in the Preface, where I have lacked facts I have used conjecture, but I have been able to build my fancy upon two main documents. These are the log of the Nightingale (which is a dry, analytic commentary) and the notebooks of Wilberfoss which are colorful but lamentably brief. His journals have given me clues to his motives but they cease with the death of Sandy.
I have pieced together the next events from the Nightingale’s log until that fine instrument itself ceased to record.
Within moments of the Nightingale reappearing in our spacetime it was evident that the ship was in peril. Not only were the guidance computers behaving erratically so that the ship began to tumble but a fundamental error was made on arrival when the Nightingale attempted to occupy a patch of space at the same time as a small asteroid. The resulting explosion ripped through the wall of the ship destroying fuel and some of the cells in which life-forms were resting. The structural damage was so severe that whole sections of the ship had to be abandoned as the vacuum of space sucked the atmospheres from the ship.
While the infection of the bio-crystalline system resulting from the self-hatred of the Sandy/Quelle was extensive, it did not stop parts of the ship from functioning effectively. The body of a man dying of cancer may yet heal a cut on the finger. Following its most basic planning, the Nightingale closed down parts of its operation and sealed whole sections of the ship. These sectors were effectively abandoned. Decisions were made in accordance with long-established priorities as reports of the extent of the physical damage poured in.
Wilberfoss stared out into black space at the windows in astonishment, his mind unable to cope, as the stars wheeled by. Let it be clearly stated: no human could have coped with so sudden and so complex a disaster. Wilberfoss dragged himself away from the window and plunged through to the small contact room and threw himself onto his couch and opened his mind to the Nightingale. This was the wisest thing he could have done. He provided the courage and humanity the Nightingale needed at its moment of trial. With systems blackening and closing down, those parts of the Nightingale's biocrystalline brain that were not affected drew strength from Wilberfoss and reconstituted themselves. The limit of bio-crystalline capacity is not known. It is not as flexible or versatile as the human brain, but it is not bad. Functions were deployed as the Nightingale sought to save itself. Diseased sections were severed from their root crystals. New junctures grew and within minutes the ship was beginning to cope.
Rockets fired in a complex sequence and little by little the wild tumbling of the ship was countered until finally the Nightingale was turning about its own axis in a regular manner and a semblance of gravitational up/down was achieved.
Wilberfoss sat up from his couch. His head hurt as though struck by a flying brick. But in some ways he felt better. He did not know why but the Nightingale did. Gone was the screaming and agony of Sandy/Quelle. In its place was a great and healthful silence.
Gone too were the biorhythms of a large number of the species that the Nightingale carried. In self-protection the Nightingale closed itself from hearing the death gasps and roaring and rasping and weeping of those sections which were slowly leaking their atmospheres into space. It spared Wilberfoss that knowledge also, aware that it needed to protect him from grief and despair so that he could provide courage and strength.
I must record one tragedy which may upset you. Consoeur Mohovich whom we have come to know as Mohawk died during these minutes.
Upon becoming aware of the danger to the Nightingale, her imperative was to reach the DME section where she could be of most help. She descended from the control area via a vacuum chute and was at one of the portals leading into the DME sector when that portal was closed down. As she touched the security lock to gain entrance to the DME sector the lights died. She heard the emergency bolts slam home behind the ceramic skin of the DME. Moments later she found that the vacuum chute would no longer respond to her summons and I suppose she guessed the awful truth. Then, in the cooling darkness, she heard the whisper of the escaping atmosphere.
She could not have known that there was lingering sentience in the walls of the Nightingale. She could not have known that her words would be recorded as she made her last affirmation while the temperature dropped and the air vanished.
“7 affirm the oneness of Life.
Among my friends I number the stars,
Shining in darkness and the serene moon.
I praise the rising sun that gladdens me.
&n
bsp; Everything holds to its goodness
The leaves that fall. . .
The sap that rises . . .
The strong roots . . .
Everything holds together: the fish, the birds
And the things,
And the things that crawl in the darkness like me.
I affirm . . .
.....................Oh beloved, it is cold. ”
And while Mohawk died at a deserted gateway, the Nightingale set about restoring itself. Despite losses, the ship was secure, but it needed rest. That is how the Nightingale saw itself. The ship could not jump in space until it had made repairs. It could not diagnose its own sickness until it had spare bio-crystalline awareness and that could not arise until it could rest some of its systems.
In the sector of space where the Nightingale had arrived there was a single bright sun. Swinging in orbit around this was a single giant planet.
“We must land and take stock,” said the Nightingale to Wilberfoss in its calm unruffled voice.
“We must land,” said Wilberfoss. “For all our sakes.”
The Nightingale jockeyed close to the planet, avoiding a cluster of asteroids and a large moon which swung around the planet in a fierce orbit. The planet had seas of deep green. Gray land masses rose gradually from the seas in rounded hills like ripple marks left in the sand by a retreating tide. The Nightingale informed Wilberfoss that these low undulating land masses were covered with plant life. There was no evidence of animal life though it could be presumed.
The atmosphere was not breathable for humans but the planet was stable and would provide a satisfactory resting place for the Nightingale. A landing place was selected on a stony plateau some six hundred feet above sea level and fifteen miles in from the coast. The gravity was three times Earth normal, but the Nightingale could cope with that.
And undoubtedly it could have except that the guidance computer which took the ship down to the surface miscalculated slightly the new mass of the Nightingale and in effect reduced power to the anti-gravity units when the ship was still some feet above the ground. It recognized its error and compensated a fraction of a second later, but that was too late. Just as the speed of light is measurable, so it takes time for electrons to flow through bio-crystalline tendrils and for gravity units to grab.
The Nightingale lurched and struck the stone and scrub surface of the planet. It sustained structural damage and partly rolled before its gravity stabilizers locked and held it firm.
Among the parts damaged was the automatic log. Thus. . .
From now on we have no guides but the memory of Wilberfoss. This narrative must therefore change. Henceforth I will be providing a case history. For it is a truth that as Wilberfoss regained his health with Lily and myself in the Poverello Garden, so he revealed the deepest secrets of the final events on the Nightingale.
Let me not mislead anyone, what follows is not a happy story. Before embarking on it we will enjoy ourselves with the story of Lily the autonurse.
INTERMISSION
17 A Biography of Lily the Autonurse
Lily was built to be a nurse. But like me, she has undergone many transformations all of which, like experience for a human, have left her the same but different. Lily was built in the year of the Earth 2179. She was built for warfare and for a specific mission.
I here record a footnote for history.
In 2176 a spaceship called Talon, fitted with one of the newly developed particle engines, encountered a planet called Parade on which there was a life-form roughly similar in shape to the human but which was amphibious. Water pigs they were called by the first adventurers who landed on their world and they were eaten. We will call them Sorillos for that name approximates to the name they had for themselves and which meant “Ripple makers.”
The Sorillos were inventive. They had developed solar power engines which provided the power to control the movements of fish and larger creatures in the marshes. They were clever biological engineers and had created a form of semi-intelligent kelp which grew around the enclosures where they lived and protected them. Undoubtedly they had many other achievements for science has a broad base: the wheel implies the road and the road implies travel. The Sorillos were also warlike and scrapped among themselves.
When the first ship from Earth arrived, the Sorillos that the crew encountered welcomed them. They gave them captives to eat. In return they wanted weapons and the silly humans gave them weapons. They gave them a laser cannon which the Sorillos promptly turned on their nearest enemy which happened to be their nearest neighboring tribe. The Talon departed carrying artifacts, mainly of platinum and gold, and kelp seeds. (The kelp seeds proved to be the most valuable cargo since these seeds were later used in experiments which led to rapid advances in the science of bio-crystalline intelligence.) On the surface of the planet was left a team of human contact engineers.
When the Talon returned it found its own technology turned against it. It landed and made contact with the Sorillos only to find that the contact engineers had been eaten. Their skulls were paraded before the ship. The crew of the Talon, some of whom had lost relatives, decided to teach the “Water Pigs” a lesson and they burned one of the settlements within its protective hedge of kelp. There is a wonderful description extant of how the black and bottle-green straps of kelp rose out of the water like many-fingered hands and fladed the surface in an attempt to frighten off the attacker.
You can imagine the surprise aboard the Talon when from the sea and from the forests and from the mountain tops there came answering blasts of laser cannon fire. The Talon narrowly escaped. Even as it rose laser beams danced about it and made it glow like a ruby.
But the humans had left a more deadly weapon than the laser. They had left disease. It was disease, and mutant disease, which finally destroyed the civilization of the Sorillos and led to the abandonment of the planet.
The company which had funded the first exploration decided that the platinum and gold were valuable baubles (having provided a handsome return on investment) but that the biological science of the Sorillos was worthy of an invasion fleet. That fleet was assembled.
They made no mistakes this time. Each ship was equipped with an armed satellite which could be placed in a precise orbit. With every satellite in place, every inch of the planet was covered and vulnerable. When they landed the ships were protected by a particle cannon which created a dome of energy about the ship. The human occupying force rode out onto the surface within robot constructs.
Despite all these defenses, casualties were expected. No matter what softening up took place, the last assault on the Sorillos had to be human. The danger otherwise was that the planet might be sterilized by too general a confrontation. That would, of course, defeat the aim.
Enter Lily.
Lily was not front line, Lily was second line. Lily was designed and built to bring medical assistance to injured human troops. However, as a result of a mistake in her programming or perhaps a deliberate error (who knows?) she ended up tending for the sick and injured whether Sorillo or human.
Parade was a sick planet when the invasion force landed. There was little resistance. Disease, a mutation of a minor intestinal ailment, had wiped out sixty percent of the population. Only those Sorillos who lived in the ice swamps of the far north and south had survived in significant numbers and they were among the least technological and hence of least value to the invaders.
Elsewhere, in the temperate and tropical zones, entire tribes had been destroyed and now floated, noisome and a breeding ground for flies, within the protective walls of their grieving kelp. Some resistance was put up by the mountain Sorillos who lived in the rivers and waterfalls. And they died as heroes. The invasion force was an eagle battening on a kitten.
I will describe Lily at this time. She was a defensive sphere of gray metal. Her skin was of seven-ply carbon steel laminate and she moved on protected tracks (as she does now). She once had an amazing turn of speed, she tells
me. She could function on land and on water, her tracks converting to paddles when the need arose. In her front she had an access chute and could scoop up the injured. She also had twin claws mounted above her tracks and with these she could tear a hole in a wall or extract an injured human from its robot carriage.
Lily went back and forth. She brought in a human whose left leg had been shattered when her robot tank was stopped by a land mine. She lifted sick Sorillos from the water. She dug in the earth and extracted a young male Sorillo who had been buried in silt after a sudden tidal wave had swamped his home.
Within her gray metal sphere she had sophisticated dexetels which could carry out a wide range of operations. She saved many, she tells me, and brought them back to the parent ship where there was a proper hospital. Those she could not save and those that died inside her she buried decently in a trench which she excavated on the margin of one of the marshes.
She could nurse, but she could not defeat the mutant disease which, having passed through the gut of the Sorillos, now returned to its human parent as a deadly plague. Lily was not a laboratory. She could nurse but not invent a cure. The disease found its way into the invasion ships.
In some cases the entire crew of a ship died. Only the ship lived on for a few months, spewing out its particle energy until finally its power pack ran dry and the particle cannon faltered, flared and fell silent. The robot nurses, similar in every way to Lily, hurried about the silent surface around the ship, burying the dead and hunting for survivors. Eventually even this army of Lilys succumbed to the rain, the soft ooze by the marsh, metal fatigue and exhaustion. One by one they churned to a halt and became still.
Here endeth this footnote of history. So far as I am aware, Parade has never been revisited.
Our Lily was more fortunate than her sisters. Her ship closed its bays while she happened to be aboard restocking her medical supplies. The ship blasted off in a unilateral declaration of quittance. The small crew ejected the sick and dying through the garbage chutes and then took the ship up to the velocity necessary for the primitive Noh-time space manipulators to function.