Ship of Ghosts

by David Bischoff

  “Look—” said Crichton, but the shimmer of the Queen had gone. He was alone in the mist-world once more.

  He gave a long sigh and put his head in his hands. The plain wooden chair he had conjured up for himself was hard, so he thought himself a stool upholstered in red and sat down on that.

  He and Zhaan had been occupied with each other, the Queen had said. “Useful” had been her word. What had been useful about their talking to each other? Even melding their minds had made no difference. Unless—unless that had distracted them from other efforts, efforts that might have prevailed.

  He remembered the cymbals, and how they had thrown the Queen off her stride for one glorious moment. If cymbals could be distracting, what was more than distracting? He thought back to home, and the music coming out of the West Springfield Vets’ Club Polka Nite. Now that had been a distraction. A thought occurred to him. He visualized the interior of the club carefully.

  In short order he had conjured up an accordion. He didn’t know how to play the accordion, but that was all to the good, because it would make a more obnoxious noise that way. He could bet that on the cultured and far-ranging homeworld of the Nokmadi they had nothing so noisy and blaring as accordions.

  He began to push the ends of the accordion together with all the force he could muster. The instrument wheezed like an asthmatic donkey. He pulled the ends out again, and the wheezing was louder. Then he began to play in earnest, disregarding rhythm and tune happily, and singing loudly. He relished being off-key. “Mama’s got a squeezebox!” he sang, making up the rest of the words as he went. “She keeps the Nokmadi in at night!”

  As he pulled at the accordion, he closed his eyes and concentrated, and he saw out through his physical eyes into the exterior world. Aeryn was speaking. “You have destroyed them?” she was saying, fire in her voice. His heart warmed to see her, angry and resolute.

  “Queenie’s got a squeezebox!” he sang raucously, squeezing the accordion so hard it sounded like a herd of sick donkeys.

  “See? They are dying,” his voice was saying in the external world. “And I—”

  He squeezed again, and the accordion brayed.

  “I—” his voice was saying. The Queen had lost her train of thought again! He had been able to distract her with the glorious cacophony of discordant Earth music.

  “I shall make sure the fleshly cores of the Dayfolk cannot be revived,” the Queen finally continued in his voice. He looked down; his mist-world hands were empty.

  He concentrated and looked out at the external world, and to his horror he saw his real hand bringing his pistol up to his own temple.

  He thought for all his life was worth. The cymbals had distracted the Queen for a moment, the accordion for a fraction longer. He needed something much more powerfully distracting, something that would drive her from his mind like a swarm of bees repelling a bear.

  And then he knew he had it.

  As he concentrated, a tartan bag appeared under his right arm, with another, smaller bag spilling down in front. His fingers were on the pipe, and he took in a deep breath of air, expanding his chest until his lungs were bursting.

  Blowing into the tube, he began to play the bagpipes.

  The noise was shrill, ear-splitting. He was badly out of tune, and he couldn’t seem to coordinate blowing into the pipe with squeezing the bag under his arm. The blaring that resulted was again like a donkey with a breathing problem, but this one was a cranky beast whose closest relative was a goose, with overtones of a circus full of calliopes and the faintest touch of kazoo.

  He took another deep breath and started in on “Country Roads.”

  * * *

  Aeryn and D’Argo watched in horror as the Crichton-figure held the pistol up to his temple. “No!” Aeryn shouted. D’Argo began to run, as if he were going to burst through the energy-barrier by sheer force, but when he got within a few paces, sheets of lightning crackled across the archway, snaking out as if to touch him. He stopped, an expression of utter fury on his face.

  The lightning died away, and once more they could see the Crichton-figure standing on the other side of the barrier, smiling as his finger tightened on the trigger.

  Then the Crichton-figure shook his head quickly, as if trying to rid himself of a noxious buzzing. He looked at the gun blankly. Then he gave a small shudder, as if a tiny animal with a lot of legs had just run quickly down his spine.

  “I have—destroyed—the Dayfolk—” said Crichton in a strained, high-pitched voice. “I will—destroy—you—All—I want—is to be—among—the stars—West Virginia—Mountain Mama—take me home—”

  Aeryn and D’Argo stared.

  Crichton opened his mouth wider. Suddenly a scream escaped him. It was not a human voice: it sounded as though it were ripped from the throat of death itself.

  He began to stagger, and his eyes became unfocused. The gun dropped to the ground with a thud. He shook his head again, and his whole body shuddered.

  Then he stood composed once more, looking at Aeryn and D’Argo.

  “Good,” said John Crichton. “She’s out of the way. Remind me never to buy K-Tel’s Best Loved Bagpipe Ballads, OK?”

  * * *

  “Crichton!” called Aeryn. “Is it you? Is she gone?”

  “Turn off the energy-barrier and let us through!” said D’Argo.

  “It’s me, and she’s gone,” said Crichton. He gave them a wink. “Want me to sing a particularly annoying John Denver tune to prove it to you?”

  “I believe it is indeed the real Crichton,” said D’Argo.

  Crichton turned to the crystalloid machine beside him and scanned it, looking for some way to turn off the energy-barrier. Much of the machine was blasted and blackened by the Queen’s attack, and he could see no controls.

  “Crichton!” warned Aeryn. “The fleshly cores of the Nokmadi—the Queen turned off the life-supports! You must turn them back on—quickly!”

  Crichton looked at the rows of small domes. Lights still gleamed faintly in them, but they were dwindling towards darkness even as he watched. He ran his hand over outcroppings and jagged slices of metal, pressing with his fingers.

  “Oh no you don’t!” said the Queen of All Souls.

  Crichton whirled around. Standing in front of the row of small domes was the glittering, transparent Queen.

  “You can eject me from your mind, John Crichton,” she said, “but you cannot kill me. I am immortal. I have waited a millennium of cycles for the Promised One to arrive and transport me through the foolish barrier that has kept me from determining the destiny of the Nokmadi. You shall not oppose me now.

  “Step back from the machine, O Promised One,” she continued, pointing a finger at him. From that finger came the crackling of lightning, slashing across the room towards Crichton. Instinctively he dived out of the way almost before the bolt had left her hand, scrambling behind one of the protrusions of the machine.

  “Flesh must die,” repeated the Queen. She moved to one of the domes, flipped open the crystal cover, and withdrew the contents. There was a pulsing nub no bigger than a thumb, a perfect tiny sphere of flesh, cradled in the hollow of a power gem.

  The power gem was the size of D’Argo’s fist, like a cradle of resplendent color. It sparkled from within, as if lightning storms of spectra animated each facet: brilliant white, scarlet, gold, indigo, emerald, spangled with silver-tinged colors.

  The Queen held the gem aloft in one hand and gestured at it with the other, sending bolts of energy into its core. The small globe of flesh was vaporized in a sizzle of black smoke.

  Then she opened her hand and let the gem fall to the floor. It shattered instantly into a thousand pieces. The glinting energies within it were scattered across the floor in shards and slivers of crystal. With it there came a moan, and for a fraction of a second a wisp appeared in the chamber, a wavering figure a touch away from nothingness, who shivered briefly and then was gathered into oblivion.

  Outside the ch
amber, a flash of sadness came over Aeryn.

  “I have the power of life and death over everyone on this ship,” said the Queen. “You are thinking I am cruel to let their fleshly bodies die. But what you don’t realize is that I am merciful to let them live at all. They shall be ghosts for ever under my rule.”

  Crichton peered out from behind the stony outcropping, estimating his chances. She was turning back towards the domes, walking down the rows, turning back the coverings, looking in, and replacing the covers again.

  “Let me see,” she said as if to herself. “Who else has particularly offended my royal presence? Who else deserves to die?”

  The light glowing from within the domes was almost gone, and Crichton knew that soon the fleshly globes would be dead for ever: soon the ghosts would be forever tethered to the gems that held their spirits and generated their translucent ghostly forms.

  He focused on a single dome in the centre, a dome that was slightly larger than the others, placed slightly higher in the wall of rock.

  The Queen had opened another dome and was looking down at the hapless gem within, smiling.

  Crichton made a dash. Before the Queen could turn, he had the central dome open and the gem exposed. As he had expected, this gem cradled no fleshly globe. It sparkled with a dark energy. He reached in to touch it.

  “No!” screeched the Queen. A look of the wildest panic on her face, she raised her hand to strike at him with all the powers her electrical nature could summon.

  But before she could loose her energies, he had the gem out of its socket.

  The Queen began to scream.

  It was like no other sound Crichton had ever heard. The agony of its expression pierced straight to the centre of his being. Even D’Argo winced at the power of it.

  Eyes wide, her body shaking, the Queen raised up her arms, as if those pitiful translucent limbs might shield her from the disruption of her gem.

  The Queen of All Souls began to dissolve.

  Crichton watched with horror as pieces of her semi-corporeal form dropped from her body. The rapidity of the shuddering increased, and the Queen began to melt and fray, like something blasted away by a driving, relentless sandstorm. Even though she was a ghost, it seemed as though this ghost was not just ectoplasm. There were layers. When the skin shredded off, there was an endoskeleton, with supporting electro-power circuitry. These were frizzling now with an emphatic dissipating rhythm, like a roaring fire, consuming.

  Still the scream …

  The outside of the ghost’s face peeled off, showing the ghost skull behind the ghost skin.

  Then suddenly the disintegration stopped.

  Slowly the ghost began to reassemble, shred by shred, until she was whole.

  Again she was a glittering, shimmering form—crouched upon the floor, weeping.

  CHAPTER 22

  Crichton ran the beam from his pulse pistol over the Orb of All and the Nokmadi circuitry, slicing away its outer shell, leaving it a mass of frizzling innards, fragmenting the already blackened panels into dozens of warped pieces on the floor. The energy-barrier vanished, and D’Argo and Aeryn ran into the chamber. D’Argo slapped Crichton on the back, and Aeryn lowered her eyes when she found herself face to face with the real Crichton once more.

  Crichton still had the Queen’s gem balanced in his left hand. He tilted it, and the Queen winked out, fading as rapidly as breath disappears from cold glass. When he tilted it in the other direction, she reappeared, now clambering to her feet, still weeping.

  “I appear to have you in the palm of my hand,” said Crichton.

  “I ask for mercy,” said the Queen, and she stretched her arms towards Crichton in an imploring gesture.

  “We’ll see what mercy you have allowed the Dayfolk,” said Crichton. “D’Argo, can you make sense of this machine?”

  D’Argo was studying the blackened ruins. “I suspect no one will be able to make sense of it now,” he said.

  Crichton faced the Queen again, tilting her gem ever so slightly. “Tell us how to revive the flesh of the Nokmadi,” he commanded.

  The Queen sank to her knees. “It cannot be done. The machine has been destroyed beyond our capacity to repair it.”

  “I think she is right,” said D’Argo, fingering a clutch of blackened wires.

  “There must be a way!” said Aeryn. She pulled at one of the twisted panels of the machine, which dropped to the ground and shattered into fragments.

  “We have—Wait! What new peril is this?” cried D’Argo.

  He was looking beyond the archway of the chamber, back into the bottom of the dark pit that was the Hole in the World. Staring at them from the darkness was an army of glowing eyes.

  * * *

  “A military commander always attends the scene of the victory,” said Rygel, floating next to the Orb of All on his ThroneSled and fingering the collar of his royal robe self-importantly. “The wisest commanders, such as myself, do not arrive until the foot-soldiers have ensured that it is a victory. Or in this case, I should say wheel-soldiers.”

  The army of DRDs clustered on the shattered Nokmadi computer like arg-ants on a fallen glikglik. Three dozen extensors were at work on the complex innards of the machine, and others were pushing panels upright, straightening wires and gathering debris into heaps.

  The first thing the DRDs had done, on marching like an army of unstoppable beetles into the chamber, was to restore power to the Nokmadi domes. The lights in those domes had faded until they were scarcely discernible, but within moments they had started to gather strength, and now the lights were glowing as brightly as ever. When Aeryn checked them, it appeared that only one Nokmadi had been lost—the single creature the Queen of All Souls had pulverized. The rest were safe, and the DRDs had already set the enfleshing process in motion. Soon the Nokmadi would be in their bodies again and the power gems could be shut down—all but the Queen’s gem, since she had elected to remain a ghost forever.

  Rygel had one hand on the furze attached to his ear, the other waving in beneficent greetings. He cocked his head as if listening intently to information no one else could hear. “My, my,” he muttered. “Well, yes, fix that too.”

  “Are the DRDs telling you something?” asked Aeryn.

  “Something about faster-than-light,” said Rygel. “Seems the drive was broken, so I told them to go ahead and fix it, while they’re doing the rest. That should take care of all the problems.”

  “With one exception,” said Crichton. He turned to the Queen of All Souls. Since Crichton had taken hold of the gem that kept her ghostly form stable, she had been slumped in the corner. Even her color had become a mournful smoky gray.

  Now she turned her face to the others, an expression of hope upon it. “Faster-than-light!” she said. “The Nokmadi can travel the universe once more!”

  Crichton nodded. “I guess so, as long as you can work out who wants to stay on board and who wants to go home. If you asked me, I’d propose some serious negotiation instead of all this warfare and taking over each other’s minds. You could start—”

  But the Queen had moved into the center of the chamber and was kneeling in a position of obeisance.

  “Forgive me! I was wrong!”

  “You were wrong?”

  “You are not the Promised One!”

  “Well, I did tell you that,” said Crichton. “Several times.”

  “No. It is that glorious creature who has restored power and life to the Nokmadi ship! It is he who is called Rygel!” Her ghostly eyes were aglow with religious fervour. “There is hope now, thanks to Rygel! I have met our Savior!”

  Rygel wrinkled his face and looked toward the floor with barely disguised gratification. “Yes, yes, people do tend to worship me,” he said. He looked almost bashful, if an expression of irrepressible self-satisfaction could be called bashful.

  “Rygel?” said Crichton. “Uhmm … look. I know Rygel, and I should warn you: this savior could have feet of clay.”

 
“I must approach the hem of his robes! When I am deemed worthy!” said the Queen.

  “Whatever,” said Crichton. “Listen, we’ve got a lot going on here. Why don’t you just sit down, take a load off?”

  “I am in great debt to you, Crichton—Acolyte of Rygel the Splendiferous.”

  Crichton rolled his eyes. “Does this mean you’ll agree to negotiate with the Dayfolk—this, plus the fact that I have your power gem in my hand?”

  The Queen bowed her head. “I will negotiate with the heretics.”

  “And you will free our ship?”

  “The blessed ship of Rygel the Incomparable shall go free. You have won, John Crichton.”

  “I think I’ll keep hold of your gem until then, just in case,” said Crichton.

  “Well, good, it’s all solved,” said Rygel, looking more than pleased with the proceedings. His ThroneSled gave a small celebratory dip.

  “It’s all solved on board this ship, perhaps,” said Aeryn.

  “You mean there are problems on Moya?” said Crichton. “How do you know?”

  “I don’t know,” said Aeryn. “Yet. All I know is that we’ve spent two solar days on this ship. And that’s two days more for the Peacekeepers to find us.”

  * * *

  “Captain! The gems. One of the power gems is moving!”

  The words of the sensor-tech pulled Captain Sha Sutt out of an intense puzzle-exercise she had been practising at her station. The compu-link dissolved at the touch of her forefinger and the reality of the DarkWind’s bridge took the place of the VirtReal corridors in which she had walked and thought and fought, keeping her wits and reflexes sharp. She’d been expecting this, hoping for this. They would have invaded the alien ship if necessary. How nice, though, that it seemed as though one of the power gems—those energy nodes that would bring her acclaim in the Peacekeeper High Command, and perhaps the deeper regard of Commander Crais—were being hauled out of their position deep within the alien ship. They could make a quick attack on the Leviathan, seize the gem, examine it and, if it were genuine, perhaps use some of its great powers to subdue the Nokmadi before they even realized what was happening to them.