Starship Home

by Morphett, Tony

  ‘My mother’s in that village. I have half brothers and sisters there, nephews, nieces. Maze is my great-grand-niece …’

  ‘Yeah, nice kid, Maze. She’ll be going too. They’re all going to die so you can take a holiday in space. Cheap at the price, wouldn’t you say?’

  Marlowe looks up at the smooth white ceiling and yells: ‘Starship! Starship!’ and a moment later Charles de Josselin manifested before them. ‘You’ve got to help my people,’ Marlowe said to him.

  ‘Why?’ Charles had been weeping, and the one bleak word was all that he would give to someone who was one of the sources of his pain.

  ‘Because they’re your people too. Human.’

  ‘Is it that I am human? That was too long ago. I forget what all that meant.’

  ‘Guinevere remembered.’

  ‘Ah, but Guinevere was a saint, and saints can do the impossible.’ He paused, and then went on. ‘Let me tell you something. The court martial on Guinevere has just returned its verdict. Guilty of desertion, guilty of mutiny. Now they know where she is, they’ll go down, take her log, mark her with the brand of shame, and let her self-destruct. That is what remembering did to the ship I loved.’

  Even as he spoke, the kangaroos grazing in the clearing in front of the starship bounded away as two Slarn marines materialized near her hatchway. They looked around, then moved up the ramp and into the ship. When they reached the bridge it was by the light of their Slarnstaffs, for the energy cells powering the main lighting had finally given out and the only light source left was the faint pulsing glow of the crystal in the open self-destruct timer. One of them examined what Zachary and Marine had done to it while the other opened a compartment in the command console and removed a complex but seemingly lifeless crystal within it, this being the ship’s log. The marine who had been checking the self-destruct now walked to the rear bulkhead of the bridge and located the ship’s insignia. He adjusted his Slarnstaff to a cutting flame, and burned into the bulkhead below the insignia, an arrow facing to the right, and then, superimposed on it, an arrow facing to the left. It was the Slarn brand of shame, symbolizing a choice of conflicting directions, the crime of not being able to choose duty over rebellion. That task done, they dematerialized, taking the lifeless crystal with them, and now the bridge was dark, save for the pulsing of the self-destruct and the fading glow of the burning scar of shame inflicted on the bulkhead.

  The two marines now re-materialized on the bridge of the starship Charles de Josselin, saluted a Slarn officer, and the one holding the crystal, Guinevere’s ship’s log, handed it over. The officer took it to the command console, opened a panel, and placed it within. The screen above it showed flickering images from Guinevere’s recent past as the log was read into Charles’s own data bank. ‘Wyzen?’ said a familiar voice, and indeed the Wyzen herself was lying disconsolate on the deck of the bridge, accompanied by Charles’s own maned male Wyzen companion. The Wyzen was watching the images flicker past, recognizing faces and places, missing her mistress, old feelings suddenly revived.

  Meanwhile in Trollcastle, Meg stood by as the Don, still weak and reclining on a couch, was attempting to work out a safe route out of the district, using a map spread on the floor and using chess men for markers. Father John and Ulf, his most trusted advisers, stood alongside him and Rocky sat miserable and alone in a corner of the hall. ‘You have to let me help,’ said Meg, ‘we need to find a safe evacuation route in the next 24 hours. You’ve got all of your men out looking, and they still haven’t found a way through.’ She stabbed her finger at the map, pointing to chess knights representing Sullivans, and rooks representing other enemy forces. ‘News of your illness has leaked out to your enemies. You have Sullivans massing here, forward elements of the Vic Kingdom conducting aggressive patrolling here and here and you’re planning to fight your way out with women and children along.’

  ‘Woman?’ growled the Don, ‘don’t lecture me on my business.’

  ‘Let me help. There are horses in the stables …’

  ‘And no one to ride with you for protection.’

  ‘There’s Rocky.’

  A silence and then Ulf said, ‘Send him, it’ll get him out of here.’

  The Don glared at Ulf. ‘I don’t fear Rocky.’

  ‘If the boy has any honor he must try and kill you to avenge his father. Send him out with the Lady Henderson, he’s warrior enough to protect her.’

  ‘And if I let you go?’ the Don asked Meg, ‘how will this help?’

  Ignorant of just how quickly events had overtaken her plans, she said, ‘I may be able to muster the others and get Slarnstaffs from the ship.’

  The Don paused for a second and then nodded. ‘Go then,’ he said. She gestured to Rocky and a few minutes later they were riding out, leading spare horses.

  In Our Mother’s house, Helena was sleeping and Zoe and Maze sat by her. Then the ancient woman’s eyes opened and she spoke. ‘Zoe?’

  ‘Helena? You’re awake?’

  ‘I’m dying soon,’ Helena said, ‘and Maze the anointed will follow me as Our Mother. She has gifts, giant gifts, but she’s so young. She needs an elder sister, the one that I lost.’

  Zoe knew she had to explain, but gently, oh so gently. ‘No one will follow you at all unless the people move. There’ll be no Clan, unless we all get away from here in the next day or so. The starship’s set to explode, there’s no stopping it now, all the work we did was for nothing. We must all leave here and find a new home.’

  ‘Move? Into the territories of other tribes? That means danger, death.’

  ‘But there’s more danger here. Here, all will die. And the people will not leave you behind. Unless you come, the people will stay with you, and they and all your life’s work will die.’

  Helena closed her eyes and the silence stretched, and then Helena opened her eyes again. ‘The Clan must live,’ she said, in a voice which was scarcely a whisper, ‘I’ll leave the village with you. Tell the people, tell the Don.’

  Outside the hut the thud of hooves and the jingle of harness signalled the arrival of Meg and Rocky. Meg dismounted, and Marine, who had been sitting on the verandah of Helena’s house, went to meet her. ‘Where is everyone?’ Meg asked, and Marine explained that Zachary and she had not been able to stop Guinevere’s self-destruct and that Zachary had gone to the Slarn to tell them where the starship was. ‘True warrior,’ she added, ‘giving all.’

  Meg fought down her wave of sadness at Zachary’s fate, while knowing that whatever happened he would make the best of things and probably come out on top. ‘And Zoe? Harold?’

  ‘Zoe’s inside with her sister, and Harold said he had something to do at the starship,’ she replied, as Zoe and Maze emerged from the house. Zoe spoke first. ‘You can tell the Don that the village people are coming. Helena’s agreed to leave.’

  Meg nodded, relieved. ‘All we need now is a clear escape corridor. The other tribes have heard that the Don was wounded and are closing in for the kill. I’m off to the starship to try and find Slarnstaffs, are you coming?’

  Zoe shook her head, ‘I’m needed here, but Marine?’

  Marine looked at the horses and shuddered. ‘Do I have to sit on one of those things again?’

  ‘’fraid so,’ Meg grinned. ‘Rocky, do your thing.’ And Rocky, also grinning for the first time since the duel in the hall of Trollcastle, slid from his horse and helped Marine mount one of the spare horses, then Meg remounted, and they rode away.

  As they neared the starship, Meg’s party heard the unexpected ringing sound of steel on steel, and as they cautiously entered the clearing they found Harold kneeling on the ground in front of a large stone boulder which he had rolled from the surrounding bush with the aid of some saplings whose broken remains now littered the ground around him. He was engaged in carving letters on the stone, and had already carved the name ‘Guinevere’. Chalked beneath it were the letters ‘RIP’, and he was just beginning on the ‘R’ as they arrived. Meg, Rock
y and Marine dismounted, and Meg said ‘See if you can find some Slarnstaffs,’ and as Marine and Rocky hastened off into the darkness of the starship, she hunkered down alongside Harold and nodded at the carved stone. ‘That’s nice.’ He continued his work, and she waited, until finally her silence drew more words from him. ‘She’s dead and nobody cares,’ he said.

  ‘Harold, we all care.’

  ‘Yeah? You’re fixed up with the Don, Zoe’s with her sister, Zach didn’t think I was up to helping him …’

  ‘Look at me.’

  He looked at her, dry-eyed and angry and then returned to his work. ‘We don’t know her second name, we don’t know what year she was born, we know nothing.’

  ‘And none of that makes her less of a wonderful person than the one we knew. But she’s dead, and now we’re trying to help the living, just as she would have. We have to evacuate this area, find a way past hostile tribes, and I thought you might want to help us in that.’

  He shook his head and kept chipping away. ‘Got to finish this.’

  ‘When she self-destructs, it’ll be destroyed.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. I still have to finish it.’

  Inside, the bridge was in darkness except for the self destruct but there was the sound of people moving, then Rocky’s voice, ‘How do you find your way through this place in the dark?’

  ‘Training,’ Marine’s voice said. ‘In battle, the lights can fail, so we train in the dark.’ Then there was a decisive click, a rattle, and a powerful beam struck out from the end of a Slarnstaff held by Marine. She switched on another and handed it to Rocky, who played the light around the bridge until it fell on the sign that the Slarn marine had cut in the rear bulkhead. ‘That wasn’t there before,’ he said, ‘what is it?’

  Marine moved to it, and ran her hand across it, staring at it in horror. ‘It’s what they’d tattoo on my face if I deserted and was recaptured. It’s the brand of shame. The Mark of the Great Abyss. They’re not going to take her off planet. Self destruct will proceed.’

  From a warrior culture himself, Rocky fully understood her feelings, and it was in silence that they gathered up the remaining Slarnstaffs and headed back toward the welcoming light of day.

  Minutes later, they were ready to depart, and Harold was still stubbornly chipping away at Guinevere’s tombstone. Meg knew there was little she could do to get him to leave his task, so she said, ‘The castle in 24 hours, Harold! We may not be able to come for you!’ while making a mental promise to come for him whatever the cost.

  79: TO OUT-THINK OR OUT-FEEL?

  In the cell on the Starship Charles de Josselin, Zachary and Marlowe sat, each on one of the two couches, watching each other like suspicious dogs. ‘We’re in this together,’ Marlowe began and Zachary shook his head. ‘You may be in this together,’ he said, ‘but I’m in it by myself.’ He looked around at the blank walls. ‘I can’t believe I trusted people in uniforms! Got to get out of here!’ But the walls looked blanker the more he gazed at them. ‘Hey Charles! Charles de Josselin!’ Charles manifested in one corner of the cell. Zachary gave him his best conman’s smile. ‘Good to see you. Listen, you wouldn’t like to do me a favor and beam me back to Earth, would you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And that would mean the same thing in English as it does in French?’

  Charles ignored that. ‘Your desire is that I should end the same way as Guinevere? Broken? Disgraced?’

  ‘So much for plan number one,’ said Zachary, ‘now for plan number two, hide in the laundry truck,’ and then added to Marlowe, ‘that was a joke.’

  ‘I’ve told you before. I don’t understand jokes,’ said Marlowe.

  Charles was watching them. Were these truly the idiots Guinevere died for?

  Meg and Rocky and Marine were riding along an open, lightly wooded valley, the Slarnstaffs divided between them, and Meg turned to Rocky and said, ‘It’s looking good, Rocky, this could be the way through we’ve been looking for.’ But Rocky and Marine, trained soldiers both, were looking from side to side, and starting to get decidedly twitchy. Then Rocky said, ‘Look up to the left. On the ridge.’ Meg looked, and what she saw was sunshine flashing off metal. The flashes were patterned; someone was signalling. ‘And to the right,’ said Marine, and when Meg looked to the ridge to the right of them, there it was again: a series of sunshine flashes off a metal surface. ‘Sullivans,’ said Rocky, and Marine said, ‘We do the same in space war. We leave the enemy a space to run through …’ Rocky nodded grimly, ‘and then shut the door on them. Right now, we’re riding into a trap and they don’t want us getting home to tell the tale!’

  And as they turned their horses and hastened back the way they came, groups of Sullivan horsemen were spurring down either slope, uttering yelps as they came. Marine, unused to riding a horse, was falling behind, and Meg and Rocky turned back to help her, but as they did so, Marine slipped from her saddle, took a Slarnstaff and stood, as if she were on a firing range and the Sullivans were moving targets and as she fired, the first wave of Sullivans began falling from their horses. Swiftly turning to the other flank, Marine began firing again, disrupting that wave, and then, helped by Rocky to remount, she and the other two rode back along the valley to safety.

  The Don was angry at their report. His eyes blazed as he leant on his couch and addressed them. ‘You put yourselves at risk, you put the Slarnstaffs at risk ,,,’

  ‘And found that the one clear way out is a Sullivan trap!’ Meg replied.

  Painfully, the Don hoisted himself to his feet. ‘I can’t lead my people from my bed,’ he said, ‘and with you, Lady Henderson, at risk, I can’t lead at all. Ulf? Take these two to the Women’s Room.’

  ‘Gladly,’ said Ulf with a gigantic grin, and picked up Meg and Marine, one under each arm, and took them struggling to the door leading to the Troll wives’ quarters. ‘You can’t do this!’ Meg cried, ‘women have rights, you can’t roll back the clock!’ and then Ulf carried her and Marine inside and the door closed again and her protests became muffled. A moment later Ulf came out again and joined the Don, Father John and Rocky at the map. Turning to the Don, Ulf said, about Rocky, ‘I want him away from you.’

  ‘Rocky?’ the Don said, ‘to the village, make sure the Forest People are ready to move out.’

  ‘Don, I swear I seek no revenge. You adopted me as your son, and you are my father, not Spider.’

  ‘I know that. But while you’re here Ulf’ll waste time nagging me about you. To the village. Go. Now!’

  Rocky whirled around and ran out.

  ‘Let me out!’ Meg’s muffled cries could still be heard from the screen looking into the hall from the Women’s Room.

  Inside the women’s quarters, veiled Troll women surrounded Marine, inspecting her. One of them turned to Meg. ‘Lady Henderson, is this a woman?’ while Marine was saying, ‘Are these veiled creatures women?’

  ‘Yes to both questions,’ Meg replied.

  ‘And these are the women we’re going to have to fight our way out with?’ Meg nodded and Marine shook her head pessimistically. ‘Those skirts are going to have to go for a start.’

  In the village, the Forester people were loading wagons and carts with provisions and tools: bags of seed, baskets of fruit and vegetables, small trees in earthenware pots, axes, spades, forks, looms, dye vats, all manner of things were being loaded. The vehicles ranged from animal-drawn drays to push-carts and wheelbarrows. Other villagers were bringing in grazing animals: cows, sheep, and goats. Everything needed to reconstruct their village in a new place was going. Near Helena’s house, two carpenters were busily making a carrying litter for Our Mother, and Zoe and Maze moved through it all, helping, encouraging, advising. Into this scene rode Rocky, still tight with anger, and he dismounted and strode to them.

  ‘The Don’s sent me to lend a hand,’ he said, ‘and ask when you’ll be ready to leave.’

  ‘Tomorrow early,’ Zoe said, and added, ‘but I thought you’d be riding patr
ol.’

  His anger burst its bonds. ‘They don’t trust me! Not the Don, he does, but Ulf and the others. The Don killed my … not my father, but the man who fathered me, and Ulf believes that by the Code I’m bound to seek revenge. But I’m not. The Don adopted me. He’s my true father and lord and I’ve given him my hand in loyalty. He’s my father, not the traitor!’

  Zoe put a hand on his arm. ‘It’s okay. We know you’re staunch for the Don.’

  ‘It’s not okay. It’ll never be okay until I prove it to the others.’

  ‘Meanwhile, help us out here,’ Zoe said, ‘we need every pair of hands we can get.’

  In the women’s quarters of Trollcastle, Marine was conducting a class in empty-handed fighting. Meg and the women and children were all lined up before her, and though the women were still veiled, their skirts had been cut short for ease of movement. Marine made a fist. ‘This is a fist,’ she said, ‘everyone make a fist.’ They did so. ‘Everyone make two fists. This is how we stand. Back straight, feet apart and flat on the floor, knees bent slightly as if we were riding one of those horrible horse animals your men get around on.’ They followed her example. ‘The parts of the body we use are the fist, the blade of the hand, elbow, knee, ball of foot, side of foot, heel.’

  ‘Teeth?’ said one of the women.

  ‘If you must,’ said Marine.

  ‘Nails?’ asked another woman.

  ‘Whatever works.’

  ‘Daggers?’ asked the first woman.

  Marine was puzzled. ‘Daggers?’

  ‘All Troll women carry daggers,’ came the reply and as one, every Troll woman lifted her skirt at one side, and strapped to every thigh was a scabbard with a dagger in it.

  Marine looked at Meg. ‘You didn’t tell me this?’

  ‘Because I didn’t know.’

  Marine snapped her fingers and put her hand out to the nearest Troll woman, and was handed her dagger. It was a thing of military precision and beauty. A double-sided blade tapering to a fine point, suitable for both cutting and stabbing, and weighted for throwing. ‘Nice,’ said Marine and handed it back to the woman hilt first. The woman took it, made a tiny cut on her hand and returned it to its scabbard. Marine was looking at her questioningly. ‘If drawn, the blade must drink blood,’ said the woman, ‘for that is the true nature of a blade.’