“You’ll see reason,” it said.
The air outside was cold and thin. Novik and Saga put on their face masks; Aavit and the captain went as they were. The captain’s shroud fluttered in an icy breeze that brought waves of fine dust.
There was a squat office building among the wrecks. Its door slid open as they approached. Inside was a small room cluttered with obscure machinery. The air was warmer in here. Another door stood open at the end of the room, and the captain strode toward it. When Saga and Novik made to follow, Aavit held a hand up.
“Wait here,” it said, its voice barely audible in the thin atmosphere.
The other door closed behind them.
Saga looked at Novik, who looked back at her. He nodded. They turned as one and ran back toward Skidbladnir.
Saga looked over her shoulder as they ran. Halfway to the ship, she could see the captain emerge from the office, a mass of tattered fabric that undulated over the ground, more quickly than it should. Saga ran as fast as she could.
She had barely made it inside the doors when Novik closed them with a resounding boom and turned the great wheel that locked them. They waited for what seemed like an eternity as the air lock cycled. Something hit the doors with a thud, again and again, and made them shudder. As the air lock finally opened, Novik tore his mask off. His face was pale and sweaty underneath.
“They’ll find something to break the doors down,” he said. “We have to move quickly.”
Saga followed him up the spiral stairs, through the passages, to the engine room. As she stood with her hands on her knees, panting, Novik pushed himself into Skidbladnir’s mass face-first. It enveloped him with a sigh. The departure siren sounded.
Saga had never experienced a passage without being strapped down. The floor suddenly tilted, and sent her reeling into the wall. It was sticky and warm to the touch. Saga’s ears popped. The floor tilted the other way. She went flying headfirst into the other wall and hit her nose on something hard. Then the floor righted itself. Skidbladnir was through to the void between the worlds.
Saga gingerly felt her nose. It was bleeding, but didn’t seem broken. Novik stepped back from the wall. He looked at Saga over his shoulder.
“You’ll have to do captain’s job now,” he said.
“What?” Saga asked.
“That’s how it works. You read the map to me while I steer her.”
“What do I do?”
“You go up to the captain’s cabin. There’s a map. There’s a city on the map. It’s on the lower levels. It’s abandoned. Tall spires. You’ll see it.”
* * *
Saga went up to the captain’s cabin. The door was open. The space inside was filled by an enormous construction. Orbs of different sizes hung from the ceiling, sat on the ground, were mounted on sticks. Some of the orbs had little satellites. Some of them were striped, some marbled, some dark. In the space between them hung swirls of light that didn’t seem attached to anything. Close to the center, a rectangular object was suspended in the air. It looked like a tiny model of Skidbladnir.
There was a crackle. From a speaker near the ceiling, Novik’s voice said, “Step into the map. Touch the spheres. You’ll see.”
Saga carefully stepped inside. The swirls gave off small shocks as she grazed them, and though they seemed gossamer, they didn’t budge. She put her hand on one of the spheres, and her vision filled with the image of islands on green water. A red sun looked down on pale trees. She touched another, one that hung from the ceiling, and saw a bustling night-time town, shapes moving between houses, two moons shining in the sky. She touched sphere after sphere: vast desert landscapes, cities, forests, villages. The lower levels, Novik had said. Saga crouched down and felt the miniature worlds that littered the floor like marbles. Near the far corner, a dark sphere was a little larger than the others. As she touched it, there was an image of a city at dawn. It was still, silent. Tall white spires stretched toward the horizon. There were no lights, no movement. Some of the spires were broken.
“I think I found it,” she said aloud.
“Good,” Novik said through the speaker. “Now draw a path.”
Saga stood up, ducking the electrified swirls. She made her way into the center of the room where Skidbladnir hung suspended on seemingly nothing at all.
“How?” she asked.
“Just draw it,” Novik replied.
Saga touched Skidbladnir. It gave off a tiny chime. She traced her finger in the air. Her finger left a bright trail. She made her way across the room, carefully avoiding the glowing swirls, until she reached the sphere on the floor. As she touched the sphere, another chime sounded. The trail her finger had left seemed to solidify.
“Good,” said Novik in the speaker. “Setting the course.”
* * *
Saga wandered through the empty ship. There was no telling how long the journey would take, but on the map it was from the center of the room to the very edge, so perhaps that meant a long wait. She had gone back to the engine room, but the door was shut now. Whatever Novik did inside, while interfacing with Skidbladnir, he wanted to do undisturbed.
The main doors in the lobby had buckled inward, but not broken. The captain had used considerable force to try to get back in. The passenger rooms were empty. In the lounge, the pool table’s balls had gone over the edge and lay scattered on the floor. There was food in the mess hall; Saga made herself a meal of bread and cheese from the cabinet for human food. Then she went up to her quarters to wait.
Season 2 finale: All We Ever Wanted Was Everything.
The station is closing due to budget reasons; Earth has cut off funding because station management refuses to go along with their alien-unfriendly policies. No other race offers to pick up the bill, since they have started up stations of their own. In a bittersweet montage, the captain walks through the station and reminisces on past events. The episode ends with the captain leaving on a shuttle. An era is over. The alien navigator puts a claw on the captain’s shoulder: a new station is opening, and the captain is welcome to join. But it’ll never be an earthlike place. It’ll never be quite like home.
* * *
Skidbladnir arrived in a plaza at the city’s heart. The air was breathable and warm. Tall spires rose up into the sky. The ground beneath them was cracked open by vegetation. Novik got out first. He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the plaza. He nodded to himself.
“This will do,” he said. “This will do.”
“What happens now?” Saga asked.
“We stand back and wait,” Novik replied. “Skidbladnir knows what to do.” He motioned for Saga to follow him.
They sat down at the edge of the plaza, well away from Skidbladnir. Saga put her bags down; she hadn’t brought much, just her clothes, some food, and her favorite episodes of Andromeda Station. Perhaps she would find a new tape player somewhere.
They waited for a long time. Novik didn’t say much; he sat with his legs crossed in front of him, gazing up at the spires.
* * *
At dusk, Skidbladnir’s walls cracked open. Saga understood why Novik had positioned them so far away from the building; great lumps of concrete and steel fell down and shook the ground as the building shrugged and shuddered. The tendrils that waved from the building’s cracked roof stiffened and trembled. They seemed to lengthen. Walls fell down, steel windows sloughed off, as Skidbladnir slowly extricated herself from her shell. She crawled out from the top, taking great lumps of concrete with her. Saga had expected her to land on the ground with an almighty thud. But she made no noise at all.
Free of her house, Skidbladnir was a terror and wonder to behold. Her body was long and curled; her multitude of eyes gleamed in the starlight. Her tendrils waved in the warm air as if testing it. Some of the tendrils looked shrunken and unusable. Saga also saw that patches of Skidbladnir’s body weren’t as smooth as the rest of her; they were dried and crusted. Here and there, fluid oozed from long scratches in her skin.
> Next to Saga, Novik made a muffled noise. He was crying.
“Go, my love,” he whispered. “Find yourself a new home.”
Skidbladnir’s tendrils felt the buildings around the plaza. Finally, they wrapped themselves around the tallest building, a gleaming thing with a spiraled roof, and Skidbladnir pulled herself up the wall. Glass tumbled to the ground as Skidbladnir’s tendrils shot through windows to pull herself up. She tore through the roof with a thunderous noise. There was a moment when she supported her whole body on her tendrils, suspended in the air; she almost toppled over the side. Then, with what sounded like a sigh, she lowered herself into the building. Saga heard the noise of collapsing concrete as Skidbladnir’s body worked to make room for itself. Eventually, the noise subsided. Skidbladnir’s arms hung down the building’s side like a crawling plant.
“What now?” Saga said.
She looked sideways at Novik. He smiled at her.
“Now she’s free,” he said. “Free to go wherever she pleases.”
“And what about us?” Saga asked. “Where do we go?”
“With her, of course,” Novik replied.
“There’s no map,” Saga said. “Nothing to navigate by. And the machinery? Your engine room?”
“That was only ever needed to make her go where we wanted her to,” Novik said. “She doesn’t need that now.”
“Wait,” Saga said. “What about me? What if I want to go home?”
Novik raised an eyebrow. “Home?”
A chill ran down Saga’s back. “Yes, home.”
Novik shrugged. “Perhaps she’ll stop by there. There’s no telling what she’ll do. Come on.”
He got up and started walking toward Skidbladnir and her new shell. Saga remained on the ground. Her body felt numb. Novik went up to the building’s front door, which slid open, and he disappeared inside.
Season 1, episode 5: Adrift.
The captain’s wife dies. She goes into space on a private shuttle to consign the body to space. While in space, the shuttle malfunctions. The captain finds herself adrift between the stars. The oxygen starts to run out. As the captain draws what she thinks are her last breaths, she records one final message to her colleagues. Forgive me for what I did and didn’t do, she says. I did what I thought was best.
* * *
Life on the new Skidbladnir was erratic. Novik spent most of his time interfaced, gazing into one of Skidbladnir’s great eyes in a hall at the heart of the building. Saga spent much of her time exploring. This had been someone’s home once, an apartment building of sorts. There were no doors or windows, only mazelike curved hallways that with regular intervals expanded into rooms. Some of them were empty, others furnished with oddly shaped tables, chairs and beds. Some wall-to-wall cabinets held knickknacks and scrolls written in a flowing, spiraled script. There were no means to cook food in any way Saga could recognize. She made a nest in one of the smaller rooms close to where Novik worked with Skidbladnir. The walls gave off a soft glow that dimmed from time to time; Saga fell into the habit of sleeping whenever that happened. Drifting off into sleep, she sometimes thought she could hear voices speaking in some vowel-rich tongue, but they faded as she listened for them.
Skidbladnir did seem concerned for Saga and Novik. She stopped at the edge of towns every now and then, where Saga could breathe and was able to trade oddities she found in the building that was now her new home for some food and tools. But mostly they were adrift between worlds. It seemed that Skidbladnir found her greatest joy in coasting the invisible eddies and waves of the void. Every time they stopped somewhere, Saga considered getting off to try her luck. There might be another ship that could take her home. But these places were too strange, too far-flung. It was as if Skidbladnir was avoiding civilization. Perhaps she sensed that Aavit and the old captain might be after them. That thought gnawed at Saga every time they stopped somewhere. But there was such a multitude of worlds out there, and no one ever seemed to recognize them.
She tore the Andromeda Station tapes apart and hung them like garlands over the walls, traced her finger along them, mumbled the episodes to herself, until Skidbladnir shuddered and she took cover for the next passage.
Each time Skidbladnir pushed through to another world, it was more and more violent.
“Is she going to hold?” Saga asked Novik on one of the rare occasions he came out from his engine room to eat.
Novik was quiet for a long moment. “For a time,” he said.
“What are you going to do when she dies?” Saga asked.
“We’ll go together, me and her,” he replied.
* * *
One day, improbably, Skidbladnir arrived outside a place Saga recognized. A town, not her hometown, but not so far away from it.
Novik was nowhere to be seen. He was sleeping or interfaced with the ship. Saga walked downstairs, and the front door slid open for her. Outside, a crowd had gathered. An official-looking man walked up to Saga as she came outside.
“What’s this ship?” he said. “It’s not on our schedule. Are you the captain?”
“This is Skidbladnir,” Saga said. “She’s not on anyone’s schedule. We don’t have a captain.”
“Well,” the official said. “What’s your business?”
“Just travel,” Saga said.
She looked back at Skidbladnir. This was her chance to get off, to go home. Novik would barely notice. She could return to her life. And do what, exactly? The gathered crowd was composed of humans, their faces dull, their eyes shallow.
“Do you have a permit?” the official asked.
“Probably not,” Saga said.
“I’ll have to seize this ship,” the official said. “Bring out whoever is in charge.”
Saga gestured at Skidbladnir’s walls. “She is.”
“This is unheard of,” the official said. He turned away and spoke into a comm radio.
Saga looked at the little town, the empty-faced crowd, the gray official.
“Okay. I am the captain,” she said. “And we’re leaving.”
She turned and walked back to Skidbladnir. The door slid open to admit her. The hallway inside thrummed with life. She put a hand on the wall.
“Let’s go,” she said. “Wherever you want.”
Pilot episode: One Small Step.
The new captain of Andromeda Station arrives. Everything is new and strange; the captain only has experience of Earth politics and is baffled by the various customs and rituals practiced by the other aliens on the station. A friendly janitor who happens to be cleaning the captain’s cabin offers to give her a tour of all the levels. The janitor, it turns out, has been on the station for most of his life and knows all of the station’s quirks. She’s confusing as hell at first, he says. But once you know how to speak to her, she will take good care of you.
* * *
Saga took the tapes down and rolled them up. It was time to be the captain of her own ship, now. A ship that went where it wanted to, but a ship nonetheless. She could set up proper trade. She could learn new languages. She could fix things. She was good at fixing things.
One day Skidbladnir would fail. But until then, Saga would swim through the void with her.
THE END
About the Author
Karin Tidbeck lives in Malmö, Sweden, and writes in Swedish and English. Her stories have appeared in Weird Tales, Shimmer, Unstuck Annual and the anthologies Odd? and Steampunk Revolution. Her short story collection Jagannath was published in English in November 2012. She recently received the Crawford award for 2013. You can sign up for email updates here.
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nbsp; Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Karin Tidbeck
Art copyright © 2018 by Victor Mosquera
The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir Page 2
