Ship of Ghosts

by David Bischoff

  “No,” returned Pilot, “although the alien vessel remains connected through the cargo bay. There are now also four connections to other sections of Moya, but they cause Moya no pain. In fact, some sort of neuro-chemical electrostimulus is making Moya feel better. She hasn’t felt this good in cycles. Nor have I, being intimately connected with her.”

  Rygel peeked through his fingers. “Well, well. You see, Zhaan. It was your hysteria that panicked us all.”

  Zhaan shook her head sadly. “Rygel, must you be so … so … Rygel?”

  “Oh dear,” said Rygel. “You’re starting to sound more like Aeryn again.”

  “Rygel, you would try even a stone’s patience.” She turned back to the control. “Pilot. So then, tell me that we’re all right!”

  “Yes,” replied Pilot, actually sounding rather bright and chipper. “There are a series of new connections between the alien ship and Moya, but they are painless to Moya, and there are no breaches to vacuum. There is a homogeneous transfer of genetic materials for adhesion purposes. But there is no what I would call destruction.”

  Zhaan nodded thoughtfully. “Can you contact whatever intelligence is doing this?”

  “Moya detects no intelligences in the person of the vessel. It seems totally autonomic,” replied Pilot.

  “But we’re still prisoners! Just like with the Peacekeepers!” whispered Zhaan. She rose to her feet and moved from console to console, checking the screens. All systems were holding steady, but she could not throw off a feeling of dread.

  “Well, all in all I prefer this to Peacekeepers, actually,” said Rygel, zooming up to hover above the consoles. “True, that last experience was troubling, but anything rather than being back under the Peacekeepers’ thumbs.”

  Zhaan shook her head. “For a supposedly canny ruler, Rygel, you can be magnificently thick-headed. The whole idea is to escape the Peacekeepers. We’ve managed to stay about one heartbeat away from them so far. So that leaves us about half a heartbeat away from them now. We’re losing our lead. And what if they find us when we’re in the grip of this alien vessel?”

  “Hmmm. Well, we shook them off pretty successfully last time, and they have no idea we’re here,” Rygel responded. “I personally am fearless, I can’t speak for others. Now if you’ll excuse me, I will go and collect my subjects. Actually, come to think of it, I shall call them ‘acolytes.’ Yes, acolytes of the Church of the Royal Sceptre.”

  “See if you can do something about contacting the others in the alien ship. If we could know what was going on there,” Zhaan continued, “maybe we could do something here.”

  “Yes. Perhaps with my electronics genius my subjects—acolytes, rather—can work something up,” replied Rygel. He settled himself more comfortably on his ThroneSled and floated serenely off.

  Taking a deep breath, Zhaan turned back to the controls. “Pilot. Is Moya maintaining equilibrium?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Good. Tell her to continue to attempt communication with this ship that has captured us.” Zhaan peered down at her control console. She squinted at the readings. Indicators seemed to be flopping about willy-nilly, just as confused as any of the crew, or indeed the ship itself.

  “I will, and then—” Pilot paused for a significant amount of time. “I … Oh dear … Spectronomic and gravitational changes are occurring. Radiation levels are increasing. Something is happening out there!”

  Zhaan turned and watched, mouth agape, as the entity that had captured them erupted before her eyes.

  * * *

  The Queen of All Souls sat in her chambers, head resting in coiled tentacles, binocular eyestalks staring out into the night.

  Things moved out there. Black things, coiling and darting. The stench was acrid, but she could not smell it. The wash of the night was sour and salty, but she could not taste it. The breezes were cold and clammy, but she could not feel them.

  Once she had felt, the Queen of All Souls. Once she had great passion. Lovers! Ah yes, and feasts! Wine and the choicest food and exotic sensations. Oh, but she longed for those days again …

  She sighed, and the sound of the sigh was like an angel’s wing flapping in a storm.

  A door opened behind her. Energy-candles fluttered in their sconces. An OverLord drifted in, his own tentacles curling and uncurling dreamily. His white hair drifted behind him like a frozen comet’s tail and his black robes flowed like gaseous streams from a dark star.

  “Your majesty,” said the OverLord, bowing. Outwardly he was calm, but the Queen of All Souls sensed trouble beneath his surface. OverLord Foxxnak Roo-kin, Minister of the FauxPlain, Tertiary Tier House Baron, was a strikingly tall creature, skeletal and slightly bent, like a winter tree gnarled by the winds. His eyes burned like ignited anthracite: fervid silver and magenta. Roo-kin was perhaps the most powerful of the Queen’s courtiers. He not only kept a bent finger on the pulse of news of the World, his powers of divination were extraordinary, his methods the result of a life-long dedication to the DataVols of knowledge, both scientific, mystic, and all the dark shadows in between.

  “Roo-kin, why do you disturb me?” the Queen asked.

  “Your majesty—Queen of All Souls and Mistress of the Revelation Cabal. O Empress of Night!” Roo-Kin’s eyes began to sparkle like dew in the moon as the stalks moved about, fairly trembling with excitement. “The MagicTechs have examined the stars with intense scrutiny.”

  “They do so enjoy their auguries. And so, what news of the future did they find?”

  “He comes, your majesty!”

  “Comes?” said the Queen of All Souls. “Who comes?” These damned courtiers. They were all melodrama and muffled meanings, full of decorative ways of saying things that lacked a great deal of substance. She well knew how to warp and weave words herself. This, after all, was part of the job of being queen. However, amongst her own people, she preferred coming straight to the point.

  “They last saw him in the area where the double sappouches meet the pancreatic—”

  “Spare me the details! Who’s coming?” The Queen’s voice was shrill and commanding, as befitted one who knew the secrets of the Books of Future Knowledge: the Book of Abeshill, the Book of Conoster and the Three Books of Pollup predictions. Threaded through these books was the prediction of an event that would change everything. An Arrival.

  With a gasp of awe, the OverLord Minister Foxxnak Roo-kin let out the words that they had all waited so long for.

  “The Promised One, your majesty,” said the Minister. “The Promised One is coming! He is being welcomed by the Dayfolk! And with his help they seek to destroy us.”

  CHAPTER 6

  Aeryn and D’Argo watched with horror as the last part of Crichton’s foot slipped into the mouth of the wall.

  Aeryn felt stunned. She could do absolutely nothing. The obscene tongue licked out, did a run around the lips, and then the lips smacked.

  The big warrior roared with frustration. D’Argo pushed a hand forward to jam it into the maw, but almost instantaneously the mouth became a control panel again.

  D’Argo yowled with pain as his hand rammed into the solid metal of the panel. He stepped back, snarling, and picked up his rifle, anger flaring in his eyes.

  “No!” said Aeryn. “You might hurt Crichton!”

  “It ate him! We can at least try to save him!”

  “No,” insisted Aeryn. “If it meant to kill Crichton, he’s already dead and we can do nothing. But if he’s not dead, you could kill him if you interfere before we know what’s going on.”

  D’Argo stepped back, shaking his head.

  Aeryn looked at him. The warrior looked as though he were on the point of tears. “D’Argo. We must compose ourselves!”

  The warrior bellowed. He stepped to the table, reached out an arm and swept it across the lower end. Dishes and goblets and mounds of food flew off and smashed against the wall.

  If the crew comes back now, they’ll really be upset, thought Aeryn, lookin
g at the mess on the floor and feeling sick to her stomach.

  Then her Peacekeeper instincts kicked in. If she lost control, gave way to fear or disgust, then how was she going to keep this berserker here from making things even worse?

  “Right!” she said, straightening herself and shaking her hair back with a determined look. “We must evaluate the situation.”

  “Evaluate the situation?” echoed D’Argo. “Our battle companion has been consumed by an enemy! We must act, and act decisively!”

  Aeryn studied the room, the candles still flickering, and the control panel on the far wall as solid as if it had always been there.

  “No,” she countered. “Nothing is really as it seems in here, is it? We can’t automatically jump to the conclusion that Crichton is dead. We must find out more about this ship.”

  “Find out more?” D’Argo roared. “I know what I need to know! He’s in the belly of the beast and I can’t imagine he’s coming back! I’m going to shoot that thing into pieces so small that it will regret—”

  Aeryn took her place in front of the control panel, her eyes flaming. “You’ll do no such thing, D’Argo. Blasting the control panel won’t bring Crichton back. If we want to find Crichton, or find out what happened to him, we need answers, not revenge.”

  D’Argo grunted, but the words had softened the warrior’s eyes. He nodded. “But let that devil-tongue touch me and I shall rip it out by the roots!”

  Aeryn holstered her pulse pistol and put her hands on her hips, thinking. “Clearly this ship has unusual powers. We’re not going to get out of this by shooting—we’re going to get out of it by thinking. So let’s think—and quickly.”

  D’Argo folded his arms and nodded, still keeping an apprehensive eye on the control panel.

  Aeryn began to pace. “This room. No sign of any crew. The food always hot.” She glanced over at a plate, its pile of food still steaming. “There’s something uncanny here.”

  D’Argo strode around the table, looking at the food balefully.

  Aeryn seized one of the candelabras and examined the candles. “And look at these. A form of wax, and yet the wax has not melted down at all since we’ve been here.”

  D’Argo nodded. “Illusions.”

  Aeryn stared around the room, at the panelling, the sconces, the long table and the chandeliers. “I think whoever controls this ship has been reading Crichton’s mind,” she said finally.

  “What?”

  “It’s all straight out of Crichton’s story about the mysterious Earth ship! The meal prepared, the crew gone—and the furniture and the food! Crichton seemed to recognize it! It was just as he imagined it! Can that be a coincidence?”

  D’Argo stroked one of his tentacles, considering. Then he turned to face the control panel. “But what about the mouth? Is that some kind of Earth mystery too?”

  Aeryn thought back. “Didn’t Crichton say he’d had a nightmare like that? What if he weren’t just saying that—what if he really had? What if they plucked it straight from his memory?”

  D’Argo thought for a moment, and shuddered. “A race that can read your memory.” He put his hands on the back of one of the chairs and stared down at the table. “OK,” he said. “It could be true. Suppose it is. I suggest—”

  That was when one of the plates of food began to talk to them.

  * * *

  Down and down.

  Down and down.

  It felt to Crichton, half-conscious, that he had been going downward so long that he was turning upward. Falling felt like that to astronauts. That’s what you were pretty much doing when you were hovering out in orbit … falling. Only you were falling for so long that there was no bottom to the fall.

  Although, come to think of it, he didn’t really feel as though he were weightless and unattached. It felt as though he were flowing down instead of falling down. As though he were going down some kind of chute in a dark game of chutes and ladders.

  Falling …

  The mouth …

  The obscene mouth and tongue pulling him in …

  Fear for his life, like some guinea pig being eaten by a python …

  Now, though, there wasn’t much fear. No, none of that at all. It was just flowing, falling …

  Something.

  Crichton struggled for awareness.

  One of the great enemies for astronauts, or pilots of any kind for that matter, was unconsciousness. If you are unaware of your surroundings in any way, you are in danger, for you are not flying your vessel properly. When at the controls, at all times you have to be alert and awake, or the next thing you might know, you could be unconscious for ever.

  Struggle.

  Wake up, dammit.

  Wake up, John.

  There was some sort of light above, muddled and grim and streaked with a sinister band of dark red, like an artery slashed open.

  But it was light, and light was awareness, and awareness was exactly what he sensed he needed.

  He reached out for the light, like Adam reaching for God’s finger in the famous Michelangelo painting.

  He reached and touched.

  And he landed.

  Crichton opened his eyes. Around him was a shadowy room, rounded like the sides of a spaceship. Somewhere water dripped. There was a smell of gaseous rot in the air. Some sort of lichen growing up bulkheads and supports.

  It felt like the guts of a dead tanker. Although it was large, it somehow felt claustrophobic.

  “Hello?” he said. “Hello?”

  Silence, and then a faint rustling.

  “Hello.” This time his call was quieter, more cautious.

  “He … llo,” came a voice like a tomb grating open.

  Three ghostly forms appeared.

  * * *

  On the reaches over the Chaque Vance River, at the site of ancient ruins, the Queen of All Souls had built a manse to her personal sensibilities: a weird structure of eccentric gables, balconies, cupolas, and skywalks together with three glass towers through which the blue moonlight shone.

  Now, bathed in secret energies and draped in the starriest of gowns, the Queen lounged and stared out at the filigreed rainbow of dawn.

  “Cugel!” she called to a dwarf. The little creature sat amongst a pile of thaumaturgical instruments, activans and artifacts. Beside him lay a pile of books. He was psionically juggling a number of librams, curiosa, talismen and amulets to amuse the Queen, using the powers of mind-magic alone.

  “Yes, Your Majesty!” Distracted, Cugel lost his connection to the physical elements, which tumbled onto the floor, scattering every which way.

  Cugel pulled himself together again, peering up at the Queen with small gleaming eyes, his nose twitching with polite vexation, his large ears flapping.

  “Sorry, Your Majesty.”

  The Queen laughed faintly. “You do amuse me so much when you do not mean to amuse me.”

  “As long as I achieve amusement, my lady.”

  “A worthy achievement, to inspire mirth in someone so insubstantial.” Her voice was a sigh of mist.

  Cugel lifted up a fist, caught the mist and made a moth out of it. The moth flapped back to the Queen and disappeared, melding into her body.

  “Energy is not insubstantial, Your Majesty. It is the raw stuff of the kinetic universe,” said Cugel.

  “It makes me insubstantial,” replied the Queen, “and without substance, and the decay that comes with it, I am immortal. I cannot fathom why anyone would choose differently.” She stretched out her insubstantial form, enjoying the last of the darkness.

  “It is indeed unfathomable, Your Majesty.”

  A light smile flickered over the Queen’s face. “Thank you, Cugel. But I have been thinking—these events. You heard the results of the auguries, did you not?”

  “Aye, my lady.”

  “Then you should know that we have indications that the Dayfolk have captured a ship of the stars.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  �
�Cugel, what do such small Nightfolk as yourself say about the Promised One? Recount the legend to me as you understand it.”

  “Of course, there are many variations on the Prophecy of the Promised One,” began Cugel, his small eyes bright. “The version of my clan has always been thought very reliable. I have it in a book, just here.”

  “Read it to me, then.”

  Utilizing his special forces of psycho-kinesis, the energy-creature lifted one of the volumes up into the air. It hung, then spun, then opened up to a particular point. Cugel’s transparent finger took on stronger force and with it he paged further through the thin vellum. With the book suspended before him, he took up buzz-lute and began to strum it as he read aloud.

  “For lo! All is off-kilter and the light knows not the dark, and the dark refuses the light. But there shall be One who shall bring both to the World.

  “And who is this being? He is no being of ours, and yet he is us. He is no being of space, and yet space is his home. He is not a creature of happiness, and yet happiness is in his heart.

  “And from a great distance he shall come, and he who attends to the words and needs of the Promised One shall find balance and harmony.

  “And home shall at last be found.

  “And lo, he shall have disciples who know him not—and they shall love him and yet hate him, and they shall speak harsh words though they are sweet of heart. And he shall show us a new way, and we will understand the deepest meaning of our voyage.”

  Cugel put down his lute. The Queen closed her eyes, and after a moment she spoke.

  “The Dayfolk. They have been looking out for the Promised One as eagerly as we have.”

  “That is why they have captured him, my lady.”

  She smiled. “They do our work for us. Will they be able to figure out what he can be used for?”

  Cugel shrugged in a coruscation of spectra. “I know not, Great Queen.”

  “This is not good.”

  “No, my Queen.”

  The Queen sighed, an evanescent whisper of breath as insubstantial as herself. “We survive,” she said, “and as long as we survive, we may yet conquer time and space.” She paused for a moment. “Sing on, O Bard of Night. Sing on, and I will consider the matter fully.”