Charles was remorseless. ‘A little late for that, don’t you think?’
Marlowe looked up, his face bathed in tears. ‘I killed a starship?’
‘You helped.’
Marlowe put his feet on the ground and attempted to stand but, weak from his long days on the couch, he fell to the ground, and lay there, huddled in grief. ‘Holding out for some selfish dream of my own.’ He looked up at Charles. ‘You can make her alive again.’
‘I am not the good God, my friend.’
The full horror was sinking in. ‘My father loved the starships. The great warrior mystics of the Galaxy. The repositories of all knowledge. The minds who sailed in the river of Time itself. And I killed one.’
Charles was implacable. ‘I thought you might be interested to know that.’
‘I can’t live with what I’ve done,’ Marlowe said, simply, irrevocably.
‘But that, living with the results of what we have done, is precisely the human condition, is it not?’ Charles said, and having taken his revenge, disappeared, leaving Marlowe huddled on the floor.
On Guinevere’s bridge, they were assessing what to do next. In three days when the starship self-destructed the whole district would become a radioactive crater and anything and anyone within the blast zone would be dust and ashes. The obvious plan was to run, but as the Don put it, ‘It took the first two Dons thirty years to win this turf. And I’m to quit it in three days?’ Then his eyes went to Maze. Already he was seeing her as the future leader of the Forester People. The child, so old in many ways, looked deep into his eyes and answered not his words but his thoughts. ‘You ask in your head if the Forest People would run away with you? Answer is no. Our Mother’s very old, can’t travel. Our Mother can’t go, Clan can’t leave her, Clan can’t go.’
Zoe turned to the Don. ‘You can make them go,’ she said but the Don shook his head. ‘It’d take every man I’ve got and they still wouldn’t leave Our Mother behind.’
It was going nowhere, and then in the ensuing silence, Zachary clapped his hands. ‘Okay. It’s simple. We just stop the self-destruct countdown. We know the Slarn can do it, and they’re no brighter than us, so we can stop it.’
Harold cleared his throat. ‘Zachary, the Slarn are, in fact, brighter than you.’
‘Matter of opinion,’ Zachary said, and while Harold was wondering how to phrase his next statement, which was going to be along the lines of “It is not a matter of opinion, it’s a matter of fact,” Zachary went on, ‘Marine can help me.’
But Marine shook her head. ‘I’m not a technician, I’m a reconnaissance marine!’ she protested.
‘You know more about it than anyone else does,’ said Zachary. ‘And what’ve we got to lose?’
‘Except everything?’ said Meg.
‘Apart from that,’ Zachary replied, and he grinned. He wanted laughter from them and he got close. These people who thought they would never laugh again were smiling at the craziness of the idea. ‘First thing,’ Zachary continued, ‘is everyone gets out of here except me and Marine.’
Harold was outraged. ‘Are you kidding? I’m the only person around here who knows anything about computers!’
‘Shut up, Harold,’ Zachary reasoned, ‘just for once shut up? I may be dumber than you but I’m sixteen years older and a lot heavier and this is my one chance to play hero, so get out of my way!’ There was silence. ‘Marine’s got the knowhow, I can fix motor bikes, together we can do it.’
The Don spoke. ‘This is a really stupid idea, but on the other hand Zachary’s the luckiest man I’ve ever met, so maybe he can pull it off. Let’s leave him to it.’
‘You’re going to leave this to luck?’ Harold exclaimed to a world gone mad.
‘Sometimes luck’s the only thing you’ve got left,’ said the Don.
Outside the starship, they separated, Meg deciding to go back to their castle with the Troll party to help them make preparations for escape should Zachary’s plan not work, as in her heart she knew it would not, and Zoe and Harold heading for the village with Maze, in the faint hope of persuading the villagers to evacuate. This left Zachary and Marine facing the self-destruct clock. Marine opened the front panel, and found another panel behind it, and when she opened this one, they were faced with a crystal, pulsing light. It was very hard to know where to begin. Zachary was realizing that hero’s work was not always just a matter of waving a sword and yelling ‘Charge!’
The starship Charles de Josselin hung in space against the blackness and the blazing stars, and the image of Charles sat on the hull, the stars shining through his transparent lineaments. He was brooding, nursing his grief, staring down 23,000 miles to Earth, the planet which had been his birthplace, the planet which was now the final resting place of his beloved Guinevere. He was remembering old friends, fellow musketeers like the long-nosed Cyrano de Bergerac, and that dashing young idiot from Gascony, the boy d’Artagnan, the battles, the carousing, the clash of swords behind the Cathedral by the light of dawn. Most of all he was remembering Guinevere and, remembering her, the cyborg wept.
Marlowe lay on the acceleration couch in his cell, staring at the ceiling. The human eye, the metal eye, staring into the horror of what he had allowed to happen.
Zoe, Harold and Maze had reached the village, and Zoe was preparing herself to face her ancient younger sister. ‘I’ll see her alone,’ she told Harold and Maze, ‘and I know I can persuade her to come.’
Maze smiled that smile of hers, so mature, so young. ‘Our future’s here,’ she said, ‘I see it in my dreams, I see in my dreams myself grown old here.’
‘Those dreams were before everything changed,’ Zoe said, ‘and now the future can be changed.’
‘The future can be changed?’ said Maze, and laughed merrily. ‘You do say strange things sometimes.’
‘If I fail,’ Zoe said to Harold, ‘you must go to the castle and get away with Meg and the Trolls.’
‘We’ll both go,’ said Harold, but Zoe shook her head. ‘If the villagers decide to stay, I’m staying with them. ‘This is my place, they’re my kin and my Clan, it’s where I’ll be staying.’ And then she turned and walked alone into Our Mother’s house.
On the bridge of the starship, Zachary and Marine had managed to open up the area around the flashing crystal. They were sweating, on edge. Marine stepped back and looked at the device. ‘There’s a built-in safeguard against anyone tampering,’ she said, indicating part of the mechanism, ‘I think we could trigger it.’
‘You mean like a booby-trap?’
‘We call it a “fool slicer” but it means the same thing.’
‘So our choice is to go ahead and blow up now or wait around and blow up in three days?’
The lights suddenly flickered. ‘The power cells are going,’ Marine told Zachary, ‘with Guinevere dead they’re not being re-charged. Soon we won’t have enough light to work by.’
‘Okay,’ Zachary said, ‘here’s what we do. You go to the village and I go and tell the Slarn where the ship is. They’ll salvage her.’
‘And you’ll be a prisoner.’
‘So what?’ Zachary said, smiling his bright conman’s smile, ‘That just means I end up on a new planet somewhere, free travel, board and keep, who cares?’
‘I’ll come with you.’
‘No, you won’t. I’m just a gritzy primitive, don’t know any better. But by now they know you’ve joined our team. It’s not just that you were captured by us, you’ve changed sides, gone feral. What’s the outlook on that?’
‘Not good.’
‘So you go to the village, tell them my plan and I’ll see you all when I get back.’
‘You risk everything? For what?’
‘For the sake of risk. Risk is my second name. I don’t want to sound preachy but little Maze is right. The Forester People aren’t going anywhere. I do this, or in three days that kid’s going to be dying, and Zoe, and a whole lot of other people. Compared to that, me going to another plane
t is nothing. Anyway, I can out-think them.’
Zachary, his guitar slung over one shoulder, and accompanied by Marine, came out of the starship into the clearing. They hesitated, and then Marine impulsively took off her translator mask and kissed him, then looked embarrassed, fearing she might have breached some cultural taboo. She held the mask to her face and asked, ‘Do you do that on this planet?’
‘Well no,’ lied Zachary with the straightest of faces, ‘but maybe if you demonstrate it for me again?’ So she kissed him again, this time a little longer. ‘I think I’m getting the hang of this,’ he said, and she kissed him again, this time for a long time, and then broke loose and ran for the village. ‘That’s a wonderful custom you people have,’ Zachary called after her, ‘it could really take on!’ and then remembering what he had said he was going to do, he grimaced, and turned in the direction of the Slarn skimmer before he could change his mind.
Harold was sitting in the Forester village square when Marine arrived, and he rose to meet her. ‘Zoe’s in with Helena, she’s very sick. So did you get it defused? Did you stop the clock?’
‘There’s a … what Zachary called a booby-trap. We could have set it off. So Zachary’s gone to tell my shipmates where the starship is so they’ll come and salvage her.’
‘He’ll be captured!’ wailed Harold. ‘They know who he is, they know he’s an escapee!’
‘He says he’ll out-think them.’
‘To out-think someone you’ve got to be able to think in the first place and Zachary can’t think at all. He’s got the IQ of a soft toy. He couldn’t out-think a guppy. Do you understand me? He’s a moron.’ He cast a look at Helena’s house, and then said, ‘we can’t interrupt Zoe. Tell her when she gets out. I’m going after him,’ and he took off at a flat run, leaving Marine staring after him.
Zachary emerged from the forest and walked toward where the Slarn skimmer lay, encased in its protective forcefield. He was taking his time, for he knew that this was probably his last look at his home planet. The sky, the forest’s edge, the grass, the sound of birds. He hunkered down and took a handful of grass and pulled it up by the roots, and smelled the scent of wet earth, something to take with him to whatever planet he was destined to go to. And it was then that he heard a familiar voice calling, ‘Zachary! Wait for me!’ It was Harold, pounding up to him, stopping, putting his hands on his knees and catching his breath. ‘Glad I caught you.’
‘Glad one of us is glad.’
‘How do you think,’ said Harold, ‘that you’re going to get away.’
‘That’s my edge,’ said Zachary, ‘I’m going to try and deliver the message and then get away, but if I don’t, I don’t care.’
‘You obviously don’t understand the problem,’ said Harold severely.
‘And that’s my other edge. Always has been. I keep telling people. If you don’t understand the problems, you don’t freeze up and you’re already ahead of the game.’
‘I can’t let you do this alone.’
‘Why not? You’re the games player, the guy who kills people for their treasure, steals food, builds up hit points for his role-playing avatar, why stick your neck out?’
‘Because those are games and this is real life. I just have this primitive instinct over-riding my intelligence at the moment and I can’t do a thing about it.’ Zachary grinned and put a hand for Harold to shake, until Harold added, ‘And without me you’ll just mess it up.’
Zachary withdrew the hand. ‘That’s it, kid! Go home!’ He turned and walked toward the skimmer and Harold tagged along as they argued and bickered like an old married couple. ‘I’ve had it up to here with you Harold, I don’t need a kid tagging along!’
‘Stop calling me “kid”!’
‘You are a kid. Kid! Kid! Kid! Nayahh nyahh nyahh nyahh nyahh! Kid!’
‘That’s disgusting, Zachary, that’s the most disgusting exhibition from a so-called adult I’ve ever witnessed in my life.’
‘Well you wouldn’t want to go to another planet with it, would you, so just shove off.’
‘Maybe I will,’ and he turned on his heel and for a moment Zachary thought he had driven Harold out of danger, but then Harold turned back again, ‘I can’t,’ he said.
Zachary, suddenly tired of arguing, pivoted, and slammed a fist flush to Harold’s jaw, decking him, and then ran for the Skimmer. Harold sat up, blinking and watching as Zachary reached the forcefield, and three Slarn marines materialized, surrounding him, Slarnstaffs at the ready. Then Zachary lifted his hands in surrender and the marines escorted him inside.
78: THE BRAND OF SHAME
Zachary was talking fast, which was his normal pattern when faced with authority in any form. He had talked fast to his parents, to his teachers, his drill sergeants, to his superiors in all his jobs and to police officers in pursuit of their duties, and now he was talking fast to the Slarn marines. ‘Let me introduce myself,’ he said rapidly, ‘Zachary Owens, we may have met before, I can’t tell because that armor you good people wear makes you all look somewhat alike, but if you just check out the tattoo thingy on my forehead, I’m sure you’ll recognize me for who I am. Zachary Owens and I’m here to help. I can tell you right now where the starship Guinevere is so you can come over and stop her from self-destructing. As she is due to do in three days.’ They remained silent, and he thought it opportune at this time to get a few things sorted. ‘And if as a result of giving you this information, I get my choice of slave planets could I be put on the same one as a singer named Beyonce?’
Outside, beyond the forcefield, Harold nursed a sore jaw and watched the skimmer. The first thing that happened was that the shimmering forcefield suddenly shrank and ceased to exist. And then the skimmer, too, began to disappear, first transparent, then gone, leaving only a yellowed circle of grass where it once stood. For Harold, the hard part was just beginning: now he had to tell Zoe what had happened. Should be a snap, he thought.
‘Noooo!’ yelled Zoe, who had just been given an update from Marine. ‘You should’ve called me out, consulted me.’
‘Your sister was very ill, Harold was determined to try and stop Zachary …’
‘Whenever those two get together they do something stupid,’ Zoe said, and then stopped, because she had just seen a downcast Harold entering the village and walking toward them. ‘What’ve you done with Zachary,?’ she called, ‘you know he’s not safe to be left on his own!’
‘He was determined to tell them where Guinevere was so they’d stop the countdown to self-destruct. He got into their skimmer and then it disappeared.’
‘Things don’t just disappear.’
‘Slarn things seem to. Appear, disappear, they do it all the time.’
‘So now they’ve got Zachary and he’s telling them lies.’
‘How can you be so sure of that?’ asked Marine.
‘Because that’s all he ever does,’ sighed Zoe.
‘Funny you should say that,’ mused Marine, ‘when we interrogated him, the things he was saying were very confusing.’
On an interrogation couch in a cell on the starship Charles de Josselin, the green light revealing the Slarn slave tattoo on his forehead, Zachary was just getting started. ‘And after the space battle when I got out of the escape pod gizmo and found there was only just me aboard the Guinevere, I walked around till I got to the bridge and Guinevere taught me how to mend her enough to get home.’
The Slarn officer who was doing the interrogation was not at all sure that he believed any of this, but forged on. ‘Why did she take you back to Earth instead of rejoining the Fleet?’
‘I think she was homesick.’
‘What is “homesick”?’
‘The feeling humans get when they’re a long way from home and want to get back there.’
‘Away from your home ship,’ the officer said and nodded, ‘we call it “planet fever”.’
‘She could see bits of the future,’ Zachary said, ‘Maybe she knew her days were numbered
and wanted to die on her home planet.’
The officer looked at the Slarn Psi Corps marine operating the monitoring equipment, but she shook her head. ‘I can’t tell when he’s lying. The only time the equipment registered a lie was when he gave his real name.’
‘It’s a gift,’ Zachary admitted modestly.
‘So there were no others left on the starship? You had no companions?’
‘No.’
‘Even if you had, it wouldn’t matter now. Everyone in that area is scheduled to die anyway.’
Zachary stiffened against the forcefield bonds holding him to the interrogation couch. ‘What!?’
‘They’ve all seen too much, know too much about us. We’re concluding this part of our breeding program.’
‘You’re going to go down there and start killing people?’
‘We don’t have to. The Starship Guinevere is going to do it for us. We’re not going to stop her self-destructing. In a little while there’s going to be a big bang, and a lot of dust and flame, and a very large crater down there. And no more witnesses to say that the Slarn aren’t gods.’ He turned to one of the guards. ‘Put him in with the other one.’
As Zachary was thrust into the cell, he found out who “the other one” was. Marlowe sat looking at him. Zachary turned and started hammering on the hatch with his fists. ‘I want another cell! I don’t want to share with this traitor!’ There was no response, and Zachary had not expected one. He looked at Marlowe. ‘You know that Guinevere is dead?’
‘You couldn’t feel worse about that than I do,’ said the shaman.
‘You stole the Wyzen. She died without her Wyzen by her.’
Marlowe looked at him, his one real eye widened in grief. ‘Yes.’
‘You know they’re going to let her blow up? Take the whole district with her?’
Marlowe had not known and the revelation came as a blow. ‘What about the Forester People?’
‘They go too. You get to go home to your precious Slarn, and everyone else gets to die. Sounds like a good deal to me, how’s it sit with you?’
Starship Home Page 40
