I sat listening, riveted. This was very much like my own feelings, but articulated in words I hadn’t been able to find. “I think I had the … same kind of…” I said, hesitating, feeling very odd about having something this intimate in common with the captain. And wondering if I, too, had the capacity to lose my mind in some violent spasm, as he had.
He said, “I felt them taunting me. Letting me know what they could do. Like a threat. Like patting the bulge in their jacket that you know conceals a holstered gun.”
I said nothing. Distracted, I blinked suddenly as the spyware announced it had figured out the entry keys without alerting his internal security systems, had got through the captain’s first layer of security, and was now negotiating the interface. My vision filled with a display of Rudyard’s headware file structure, interface ports, biostatic control displays, and further sealed barriers that would probably lead to the sensitive material, such as Eclipse’s self-destruct codes, perhaps his personal journal, ship’s logs, transaction keys, wallet, preferences files, and all the other detritus people wind up stashing in the bowels of their headware. Also, in all likelihood, the override controls for the captain’s own self-destruct triggers, a series of commands that would send a signal down his brainstem to shut down his autonomic nervous system in the event of capture by enemy forces.
It was huge in there, and messy — so unlike his office space. This would take time to study. Right now, I noticed, reading his biostat displays, he had his liver working at 130 percent of normal capacity; he wouldn’t be able to keep that up for long. Blood alcohol levels were falling towards nontoxic levels. There was also trace evidence of zing stimulation in the limbic system of his brain, with associated hormone breakdown products in his bloodstream.
The captain was muttering, “Look at the way the HSC remakes Earth in everything it does,” the captain was saying.
“Sir?” I asked, thinking we were still talking about the aliens.
He glanced at me. “Keep up, Dunne. I was talking about the way we humans stuck out here in space keep trying to rebuild our lost Earth, recapturing the glory of long-dead cultures.”
I thought I knew what he meant. Thinking fast, trying to ignore the arrays of files in front of my vision, I ventured: “You mean like that St Paul’s Cathedral, sir? And the queen?” And wondering when he had stopped talking about the aliens. I thought he’d been interested in that.
He nodded encouragingly like a tutor. “That kind of thing exactly. We’re busy building a new Earth, in virtuum, based entirely on our collective memories, as recorded in media. It’s in the way we live, the kinds of legal structures we set up, the way we talk. For God’s sake, son, we have morning bloody tea on this ship! Morning tea! An old Anglo custom. It’s like we’re all so mad with grief over Earth’s death that we can’t bury the corpse, and instead we prop her up in bed, and paint her cheeks, and pretend she’s just resting. We can’t let go of our long-dead past.”
He had a point, though I didn’t really know what it was. I still remembered my school years, and the elocution lessons, in which we all were taught how to speak properly, with the right sort of pseudo-British accent. Except that the only people in the whole Community who actually talked like that were constructs living in virtuum, like Queen Helen. The rest of us talk the way the people around us growing up talked; I had an accent identifiable to the Australian community of the Hastings region of Mars, with a regional Ganymede accent laid over it, and all of it shot through with inflections picked up from Community media throughout my life. The captain and Ferguson sounded different again; it was hard to place them.
The captain continued: “In the Asiatic Metasphere, on the other hand, they’re carving out an entirely new culture, merging influences from Earth-based cultures ranging from India to Japan and everything in between. Vastly different cultures, and all important — but terribly fractious. Now they’re building this overculture, something entirely new, adapted for life spread out over tens of cubic lightyears. The reports I read say the Metasphere is alive and vibrant and full of conflict and tension and exuberance. They look at us back here, worshipping the half-remembered ghosts of a non-existent past. We’re doomed, Mr. Dunne. I wouldn’t give us fifty years, not if we keep living the way we do.”
“On the other hand,” I said, wondering where he was going with all this talk, “they could tear themselves apart with their conflicts. All those different religions, the movement of quadrillions in currency, the struggles over land and sacred sites, old traditions versus new. They could wipe themselves out inside ten years. Maybe something entirely new and unforeseen will show up.”
“Or,” Rudyard said, a certain look of heat in his spaced-out eyes, “they could forge themselves in fire and emerge a major interstellar power and engulf us all.”
“You think war is inevitable, sir?”
He nodded, casually. It was starting to occur to me that he had thought about all this much more than I had, and that he might not be as crazy as I had thought, which was very worrying indeed. “Oh yes. Don’t you?”
I was getting increasingly uncomfortable here. It was good, in a way, to be able to speak so relatively freely with a senior officer like this, but I also knew it was highly unusual. It wasn’t right, at least given the way the Academy taught cadets how they should speak to senior staff. I think the captain saw something of himself in me — a worrying idea in itself — that he had not found in any of his other staff. And I kept thinking it had something to do with the aliens, and that strange night in the viewing gallery.
I took a breath and tried to carry on as smoothly as possible. “I’m not sure. I know the Asiatics are by far the dominant political and cultural grouping in human space. They have more ships, more worlds, more sheer population, than all the rest of us put together. But I’m more concerned, if I may speak freely, about this—”
The look he gave me was intimate. “The aliens?”
“Yes, sir. That ship gave me the willies, sir. It came from somewhere. Somebody sent it. And there was more than one kind of technology there, too. More than one culture was involved. I don’t know if those other guys are still out there, but I think we’re in for huge trouble. If you’ll excuse my saying so, sir.”
He sighed, put his hands over his face, rubbing at his eyes. “Ah yes. The aliens. I’ve had similar thoughts about that ship. Had Grantleigh and Blackmore in here, screaming at each other, each pushing some cockeyed theory or other, trying to tell me—” He made air-quote gestures. “—‘What It All Means’. I think they’re both full of crap.”
“Sir?”
“Look. Whatever the truth is, it’s not comprehensible by minds like ours. We can’t think outside the limits of our own perceptions and culture.
“Then, in that case,” I said, feeling chilled all over again, seeing where this could lead, “You didn’t necessarily know that those creatures, the ones you … were…” I couldn’t believe how close I had come to simply blurting out, “the ones you killed that night….”
He nodded, and for the first time he looked as confused and scared as I felt. “That’s right. That poking and prodding I felt in my mind that you felt in yours. I interpreted that as a threat. But who knows what it was? Might not even have been targeted at us at all. Might have been a kind of general noise the things make when they start waking up. Who knows? I don’t — and I have to know. It’s my job to look after this crew and this ship, and the information I need to make decisions not only isn’t known, it can never be known!”
“I see,” I said, watching him getting wound up.
“I … had to do it. They were a threat because … I just didn’t know what they were. Friend or enemy might not even be meaningful ontological concepts where they come from. War and peace might be unknown ideas. Probably the only thing we can count on them understanding,” Rudyard said, eyes wide, “is survival. I had t
o make sure we would survive, no matter what they did.” It was like he was trying to explain it to himself.
“Okay, sir. I can … see that.”
He blinked several times, his eyes still disturbing to look at. “I wish others were as understanding as yourself. You’ll do well, Dunne. Very well.”
I frowned here, feeling uncomfortable all over again, feeling like the plaything of senior officers, and wondering whom to believe. Did I have a future in the Service or not? The choices I had made up to this point were largely predicated on the belief that I had little to no future in the Service. If it turned out that actually I could do all right, though perhaps not brilliantly, if I could indeed rise to Section Head, perhaps….
The captain saw that something was wrong. “Mr. Dunne? Er, you suddenly look rather pale, son.”
I glanced at him, and wondered about him. Was he mad or was he all right but just understandably troubled? Had I made a gigantic mistake?
“Would you perhaps like some water?” The captain moved to get up.
I waved off his offer. “It’s all right, sir. I’m fine. It’s just Mr. Ferguson. He’s working me quite hard. Nothing to worry about. I’m fine.”
“Are you sure? You do look terribly pale, Dunne.”
I got a grip on myself. “It’s quite all right. Just need more sleep, I think.”
Rudyard settled back in his chair. “Ferguson does like to put the juniors through their paces, that’s for sure.” He chuckled about this, as if he thought what Ferguson did to junior officers in his care was somehow adorable.
“Anyway,” I said, “you were explaining about the aliens that night…?”
He looked pleased to return to the topic, the momentary crisis averted. “Yes. Right. Yes. Those damned aliens!”
“There is one thing, sir, about this whole matter, makes me very … I don’t know, it’s hard to say…”
He was looking at me, almost back to being the calm tutor figure. “Spit it out, son.”
“Something about our discovery of their ship. It … doesn’t feel right.”
I noticed a surge in his hormone levels, especially adrenaline. He stared at me, as if suddenly wary. “Explain.”
“It felt, to me anyway, like a setup, like we didn’t just accidentally find that ship.” This was something I’d hardly even dared think about, let alone mention out loud. But I remembered during the rendezvous with the alien vessel, listening to the arguments between Ferguson and the two scientists, Grantleigh and Blackmore, how it was like there was some unspoken subtext to their fighting that would explain the extreme hostility, that they seemed too angry for the apparent matters at hand.
Rudyard sat up slowly, watching me with eyes that now looked creepier than they ever had before. In many respects his face had a weary melancholy about it, like a sad dog needing a good feed, but suddenly he was watchful. His biostat displays showed increased memory core activity and rising neurotransmitter levels. He leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled before his face. He accessed mission files, my service record, logs, executive orders, and some other documentation I didn’t recognize. I wondered how long I could stay in his headware like this. Yet the longer I kept the link open, undetected, the cockier I felt. I was tempted to push for access into the extreme security regions of his headware files, but didn’t want to push it just yet.
He said, his voice candid, though quiet, “My orders to take Eclipse out to that part of space were perfectly legit in every respect. It was a purely routine mapping and science job. We just got… “His face clouded over. He flashed a rueful smile, “Lucky.”
He was starting to get flashes from deep memory. Associated chemicals were accumulating, neuronal traffic building. I saw his headware psychostatic controller module kick in automatically, trying to dampen the spikes and keep the event manageable, while still allowing the conscious mind to receive the information.
Then there was a small amount of peripheral sensorium bleed coming through, giving me sudden glimpses of dreamlike stuff: darkness, noises I couldn’t identify, hard to breathe. Things happening fast.
The captain was distracted, looking off into the corner, behind me. “I had to kill them,” he said. “It was them or me. I had to show them I was stronger, that I had what it took.” I thought he was talking about the aliens, and that we had covered this.
His memory flashes built in strength. I saw more and more headware control resources allocating themselves to blocking the flashes, damping the electrochemical storm piling up in there. Neurotransmitter activity was too high; memories were gushing forth into his conscious buffers, a burst dam releasing a white-water flood of past into present.
Rudyard sat back, staring past me, hands locked to his desktop, his face fish belly white. He was muttering something under his breath. His psychostats were dumping custom-fabbed drugs straight into his tissues. I couldn’t read these displays; this was specialized headtech I hadn’t seen before. The drugs helped and his memory activity started subsiding into tame flickers.
The sensorium bleed was still coming through. I could hear guys laughing and taunting. I recognized the tone, though not the voices. I felt a subchannel of fear come through, too — Rudyard’s remembrance of pure terror. He was sealed in a box of some kind; it smelled of something organic, maybe cardboard or possibly wood. There was another smell, too, one I didn’t recognize.
Interwoven through all this, I saw a naked woman on a bed, and I smelled her sweat, her fear, and fury. She was trying to fight me, screaming, gouging at me, shrieking abuse like I’ve never heard, even in the Service. I’m hitting her around the head to make her shut up and she’s bleeding at the mouth and nose, but I’m forcing her back, trying to get my free hand to choke her, I’ve never felt like this before, and I’m yelling at her to lie still you fucking whore! She’s looking down my body, and her hand’s pointing, and she’s yelling back at me, “Oh now you get it up! What a hero!”
As she says that I feel swamped with rage, humiliation, and a need to teach this bitch a lesson, and a terrible awareness that, deep inside, I do feel powerless, that it’s something to do with the bloody aliens, that I don’t know what I’m doing anymore, that I feel lost and helpless in the face of what these damned things represent, and I’m more frightened now than I’ve been since that night at the Academy, and…
…a wave of dizziness, sensory confusion, and…
I’m somewhere else in Rudyard’s head, sitting in the dark, and it’s hard to breathe, but he’s/I’m excited, ‘cause I’m going to show these bastards what I can do, that I’m good enough, and then the lid opens for a moment. I get a glimpse of guys, dim lights, and there’s the smells of beer, zing, and burning dope. I’m squinting in the light, and I’m yelling at the guys, “Let’s see whatcha got you bastards. You don’t scare me with this box shit.”
And then Rudyard was asking me, here and now, in his office, “Did you ever,” he asked me, “did you ever have a bunch of friends do something to you they thought was fun, only it was the most traumatic, terrifying experience you’ve ever had? Has that ever happened to you, Dunne?”
I blinked, clearing my head, getting back to being me, but thinking that I remembered aspects of that scene only too well. “You just described my whole four years at the Academy, sir.”
“Do you have a fear, Dunne? A phobia?”
“Um, sir?” I could think of a few, now that he mentioned it.
He locked his eyes on mine. “A phobia, a mortal fear. A thing that just paralyzes you, that you can’t overcome, that you know is irrational but you don’t know why, but you do know that if it happens to you, you’ll die of sheer, heart-stopping fright.”
I looked at him and felt things were getting out of hand. He had somehow stopped the replay of that scene from his past. “Why do you want to know, sir?” Surely he had access to my personnel
file, with the psych evaluations, and med reports. He would know all about me. For that matter, I could probably go and look myself up right now. He had all the crew files stored in his head.
“My thing,” he said, whispering, his memory and flight-or-fight centers suddenly spiking off the charts, “was bugs. Insects.”
That did it.
His systems had almost regained control of his psyche, bringing Rudyard back into psycholibrium. But as he began speaking about bugs, the controller display showed activity was rising and panic was accumulating like an electric charge waiting to strike.
And when he said “insects,” something broke loose in there and got into my ware’s feedback channel; it flowed into my own mind, and I was lost…
Fifteen
I was Rudyard.
I knew things about him nobody else knew, like how he bit his nails until he turned fifty. I knew he preferred to sit when he urinated. I knew he got his first command when, as a Level 2 SCO, everybody on his ship higher ranked than he came down with food-poisoning, leaving him the senior command officer on ISS Endeavour, which was then one of the most sought-after assignments. He only had it for two days, and the ship had nothing urgent to do, but it was still command experience, and that mattered.
He was a homosexual, but hadn’t admitted it to himself, and certainly not to the Service. He was sixty-two years old and never married. He had, however, been engaged three times, the last time just thirteen years previous, to an archaeologist named Clio Gesteland. She died in an accident. He had been relieved.
I also saw where Rudyard got his insect phobia.
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