by Eric Brown
Francesca had her dark side, though.
Six months after they became lovers, she slipped into a sullen, uncommunicative depression. Often he found her in tears, his entreaties ignored. He assumed that the chemical magic that had attracted her to him had soured, that their time together had run its course.
Then, one rest period, Cramer found her in a personal nacelle which obtruded through the skin of the ship and afforded a magnificent view of the blazing variable below. Francesca had sought privacy in which to brood. He lowered himself in beside her and waited.
After a period of silence, she asked in a whisper, ‘What do you believe, Hans?’
Cramer had never spoken to her about his beliefs, or lack of - perhaps fearing that his apathy might frighten her away. ‘I was once a nihilist,’ he said, ‘but now I believe in nothing.’
She slapped his face. ‘Be serious!’
He was serious. ‘Nothing,’ he said.
She was silent, a small frown of puzzlement denting her forehead. At last she murmured, ‘I need belief. I need to believe in something . . . something more than all this.’ She made a spread-fingered gesture to indicate everything, all existence. ‘Life is so meaningless, if this is all there is to it - life. There must be something more!’
He stroked a strand of hair from her Indian eyes.
She looked at him. ‘Don’t you fear death? Don’t you wake up panicking in the early hours, thinking, “One day I’ll be dead for all eternity”?’
He could not help but smile. ‘At one time I did,’ he said. ‘But no more.’ He told her that it was as if his subconscious had become inured to the fact of his mortality, was no longer daunted by the inevitability of his death.
Francesca was crying. ‘I hate being alive,’ she sobbed, ‘if all it will end in is death.’
Cramer held her, soothed her with comforting noises, secretly relieved that he knew the reason for her depression. He told himself that it was nothing more than a stage through which everyone must pass - but, perhaps, he should have seen in her terror the seeds of a consuming obsession.
Six months later Cramer was posted to another ship - there was nothing he could do to avoid the transfer - and he saw Francesca only once every three months or so, when their dirtside leaves coincided. He had feared that the separation might have worked to dampen Francesca’s ardour, but the reverse was true. Their hurried, stolen weeks together were the happiest times of their lives.
And then, three years after their first meeting, Francesca was promoted, transferred to a ship bound for the Rim, to study the effects of an imminent supernova on the world of Tartarus Major.
* * * *
Cramer was on Earth, on long-service leave from the Fleet and teaching part-time at the University of Rio. Francesca was due back in a week, when her boat would dock at the Santiago shipyards for refurbishment. Cramer had a trekking holiday planned in the Andes, followed by a fortnight in Acapulco, before they said goodbye again and her ship whisked her off to some far, unstable star.
He could recall precisely where he was, what he was doing - even trivial things like what he was wearing at the time, and what mood he was in - when he heard about the crash-landing: in a cafe on the Rio seafront, drinking coffee and reading El Globe, wearing the kaftan Francesca had brought back from the Emirate colony of Al Haq, and feeling contentment at the thought of her imminent return. The wall-screen was relaying news to the cafe’s oblivious, chattering clientele. He took notice only when it was announced that a Fleet observation vessel had crash-landed on Tartarus Major. ‘The Pride of Valencia was mapping Tartarus for stress patterns and went down two days ago,’ said the reporter. ‘Casualty figures are not yet known. Other news . . .’
Cramer returned to his apartment, shock lending him a strange sense of calm in which he felt removed from the reality of his surroundings. He contacted the Fleet headquarters in Geneva, but was told that no details of the incident would be forthcoming until accident investigators had reported from Tartarus Major. Unable to bear the wait, the feeling of redundancy, he knew that the only course of action was to make his own way to Tartarus. He booked passage on an independent ship leaving Earth the following day, and spent the duration of the voyage under blissful sedation.
He had no idea what to expect on landing, but it was not the decrepit, medieval city of Baudelaire. It seemed to him that he had stepped back in time. Not only was the architecture and atmosphere of the place archaic, but the bureaucracy and services were likewise mired in the past. The prevailing ethos of the government departments he petitioned seemed to be that the loss of any starship - and minor officials seemed unsure as to whether a starship had been lost on Tartarus Major - was not the responsibility of their department, and Cramer was advised to see so-and-so at such-and-such a bureau. Added to which confusion, the entire population of the planet seemed to be packed into the capital city, eager to catch a boat off-planet before the supernova blew. Eventually, and with scant regard for his feelings, he was advised to check at the city morgue. Beside himself, he battled through the bustling streets until he came upon the relevant building. The chambers and corridors of the morgue were packed with the stiffened, shrouded figures of the dead. Here, tearful and in obvious distress, he had his first stroke of luck. He happened upon a harassed Fleet official, checking charred remains against the crew-list of the Pride of Valencia.
Cramer explained his predicament, and the official took sympathy and went through the names of the dead for that of Francesca.
She was not, apparently, in the morgue. All the bodies had been recovered from the site of the crash. According to the official, Cramer was in luck: he was advised to try the infirmary, where the twelve surviving crew members were receiving treatment.
Given hope, he was filled with fear, now, at the thought of Francesca’s having survived - or rather he feared the state in which she might have survived. Would he find Francesca reduced to a brain-dead wreck, a hopelessly injured cripple? He considered only the worst-case scenario as he made his way to the infirmary. He explained his situation to a doctor who escorted him to the ward where the survivors lay. As the medic checked the records, Cramer strode down the line of beds - not rejuvenation pods, in this backward hole, but beds! - fearful lest he should come upon Francesca, yet petrified that he should not.
She was not on the ward.
The doctor joined Cramer, carrying the crew-list of the Pride of Valencia. There was one name outstanding, accounted for neither in the morgue nor in the hospital: Francesca Maria Rodriguez.
Cramer was in turmoil. ‘Then where the hell is she?’
The doctor placed a soothing hand on his shoulder. ‘Two of the injured were found in the jungle by an order of monks who took them in and treated their wounds. One male crew member died - the other, Rodriguez, is still undergoing treatment.’
‘Is she badly injured?’
‘I’m sorry. I have no records . . .’ He paused. ‘You might try the Church of the Ultimate Sacrifice, just along the street. They should be able to help you.’
Cramer thanked him and, filled with a mixture of despair and hope that left him mentally exhausted, he almost ran from the infirmary. He found the church without difficulty: in a street of mean timber buildings, it was the only stone-built edifice, a towering cathedral along classical lines.
He hurried inside. A cowled figure riding an invalid carriage barred his way. Desperately Cramer explained himself. The disabled cleric told him to wait, and propelled his carriage up the aisle. While he was gone, Cramer gazed about the sumptuous interior. He noticed the strange, scorpion-like statue above the altar, flanked by a human figure bound to a cross - its arms and legs removed so that it resembled the remains of some ancient statue. He could not help but wonder what perverted cult he had stumbled upon.
The monk returned and gestured that Cramer should follow him. He led the way to a small study behind the altar. ‘The Abbot,’ he murmured as Cramer passed inside.
Behind a
large desk was an imposing figure garbed in a black habit, his face concealed by a deep cowl.
Nervously, Cramer sat down. Prompted by the Abbot’s silence, he babbled his story.
Halfway through, he paused and peered into the shadow of the Abbot’s hood. The holy man seemed to have his eyes closed. Cramer noticed the dried, discoloured orbs tied to his right wrist, but failed to make the connection.
He continued with what the doctor had told him about Francesca. When he had finished, the Abbot remained silent for some time. He placed his fingertips together in a miniature facsimile of the spire that surmounted the cathedral. He seemed to be contemplating.
He said at last, his voice a rasp, ‘Are you a believer, Mr Cramer?’
‘In your religion?’ Cramer shifted uncomfortably.
‘In any.’
‘I ... I have my own beliefs.’
‘That sounds to me like another way of admitting you’re an atheist.’
‘Does it matter?’ he asked. He contained his anger. The Abbot was, after all, his only link with Francesca.
The holy man seemed to take an age before he next spoke. ‘I can help you, Mr Cramer. Francesca is in the jungle.’
‘How badly . . .’ he began, the words catching in his throat.
‘Do not worry yourself unduly. She will live.’
Cramer sat back in his seat, relief washing over him. He imagined Francesca recuperating in some remote jungle hospital.
‘When can I see her?’
‘Tomorrow I return to the jungle to resume my pilgrimage. If you wish, you may accompany me.’
Cramer thanked him, relieved that at last his search was almost over.
‘I leave at first light,’ said the Abbot. ‘You will meet me here.’ And he gestured - parting his spired hands - to indicate that the audience was over.
That night Cramer found expensive lodging in a crowded boarding house. In the morning the sun rose huge and brooding over the parched city, though the sky had been lit all night long with the primary’s technicolour fulminations. He had slept badly, apprehensive as to the state in which he might find Francesca. At dawn he returned to the cathedral and met the Abbot, and they hurried through narrow alleyways to a jetty and a barge painted in the sable and scarlet colours of the Church.
The crew of two natives cast off the moorings and the barge slipped sideways into mid-stream before the engines caught. Cramer sat on the foredeck, in the shade of a canvas awning, and shared a thick red wine with the Abbot. The holy man threw back his cowl, and Cramer could not help but stare. The Abbot’s ears and nose had been removed, leaving only dark holes and scabrous scar tissue. His eyelids, stitched shut over hollow sockets, were curiously flattened, like miniature drum-heads. He kept his eyeballs, dried and shrunken, on a thong of optic nerves around his wrist.
The barge proceeded upriver, against a tide of smaller craft streaming in the opposite direction. The Abbot cocked his head towards their puttering engines. ‘Some believed the things which were spoken,’ he quoted, ‘and some did not. Once, sir, all Tartarus believed. Now the faith is defended by a devout minority.’
Cramer murmured something non-committal in reply. He was not interested in the Abbot’s belief system and its macabre extremes. For fifteen years he had taught students the rudiments of the various major faiths. Now religion, every religion, sickened him. In his opinion, superstitious belief systems were just one more political tool that man used to subjugate, terrorise and enslave his fellow man.
He sat and drank and watched the passing landscape. At one point they idled by an ancient temple complex. Many of the buildings were in ruins; others, miraculously, considering their age, stood tall and proud. Towers and minarets of some effulgent stone like rose-coloured marble, they were sufficiently alien in design to inspire wonder. As the barge sailed slowly by, Cramer made out six statues — another example of the long, scorpion-like insects, tails hooked in readiness.
He finished his wine, excused himself and retreated to his cabin. He drew the shutters against the light and, despite the heat, enjoyed the sleep he had been denied the night before.
He awoke hours later, much refreshed, hardly able to believe after the trials of the past two days that Francesca would soon be in his arms. He climbed to the deck. The sun was directly overhead - he must have slept for five or six hours. The barge was pulling into a jetty. A tumble-down collection of timber buildings lined the riverbank. The Abbot appeared at Cramer’s side. ‘Chardon’s Landing,’ he said. ‘From here we walk. It is thirty kilometres to the plateau.’
With scarcely a delay they set off into the jungle, Cramer marvelling at the blind man’s sure tread as he navigated his way through the jungle. At first the trek was not arduous. The way had been cleared, and they followed a well-defined path through the undergrowth. Only later, as they put twenty kilometres behind them, and the path began to climb, did Cramer begin to feel the strain. They slowed, and halted often to swallow water from leather canteens.
They continued through the long, sultry hours of afternoon; at last, when Cramer thought he could continue no more, they came to a clearing. Before them, the plateau fell away in a sheer drop, affording an open panorama of tree-tops stretching all the way to the northern horizon beneath a violent, actinic sky.
Only then did Cramer notice the tent, to one side of the clearing.
He turned to the Abbot. ‘Where are we?’
The holy man gestured. ‘Francesca’s tent,’ was his only reply.
‘But this can’t be the mission . . .’ Cramer began.
He heard a sound from across the clearing, and turned quickly. He stared in dread as Francesca drew aside the tent flap and stepped out. His heart began a laboured pounding. She stood, tiny and trim in her radiation silvers. He searched her for any sign of injury - but she seemed whole and perfect, as he had dreamed of her all along. She stared at him, appearing uncertain at his presence. A smile came hesitantly to her lips.
He crossed the clearing and hugged her to his chest.
She pulled away, shaking her head. ‘I meant to contact you. It’s just . . .’ Cramer had expected tears; instead, she was almost matter-of-fact.
‘Francesca . . . What’s happening? The Abbot—’ He nodded towards the holy man, who was busying himself with a second tent across the clearing. ‘He said that you were injured, in hospital—’
She looked pained. ‘Come. We have a lot to talk about.’ She took his hand and drew him into the tent.
They sat facing each other. He scanned her for injuries, but saw no bandages, compresses, or scabs of synthetic flesh.
She read his gaze, and smiled. ‘Cuts and bruises, nothing serious.’
Cramer felt a constriction in his throat. ‘You were lucky.’
She lowered her head, looked at him through her lashes. ‘You don’t know how lucky,’ she murmured.
A silence developed, and he wished at that moment that silence was all that separated them; but they seemed divided by more than just the inability to communicate meaningfully.
Then he saw the book beside her inflatable pillow. Embossed in scarlet upon its black cover was the symbol of a scorpion beside a dismembered human figure.
‘Francesca . . .’ he pleaded. ‘What’s happening?’
She did not meet his gaze. ‘What do you mean?’
He indicated the holy book.
It was some time before she could bring herself to respond. At last she looked up, her eyes wide, staring, as if still in shock from the trauma of the crash-landing.
‘After the accident,’ she began, ‘I regained consciousness. I lay in the wreckage, surrounded by the others . . . my friends and colleagues. They were dead . . .’ She paused, gathered herself. ‘I couldn’t move. I saw a figure, the Abbot, and then other robed monks, moving among the crew, giving blessings, first-aid where they could. Eventually the Abbot found me. They loaded me onto a stretcher, knocked me out. The next thing I remember, I was in the mission hospital at Chardon’
s Landing,’
‘And the Abbot did all this without eyes—?’
‘He was sighted then,’ Francesca said. ‘Only later did he return to Baudelaire to petition for penance physicale.’ She paused, continued, ‘Before that, while I recuperated, he told me about his faith, his quest.’
Cramer echoed that last word, sickened by something in her tone.
‘The Abbot is searching for the lost temple of the Slarque,’ Francesca went on, ‘the race which lived on Tartarus before humankind. This temple is of special significance to his religion.’
