by Eric Brown
It was surprisingly spacious within: a wide command deck looked out through a wraparound viewscreen. It would make a marvellous lounge, with views across the bay. Smaller rooms gave off the main corridor, along the length of the ship; these would make bedrooms and a bathroom. A spray of paint, a few furnishings, and it would provide a comfortable retreat from the cares of the world.
“I’ve never been able to trace the history of this ship,” Hawk was saying, “and believe me I’ve tried. I don’t know where it came from, which world of the Expansion, nor its Line.”
“But it is human-built?”
He smiled and said, “I can’t be certain even of that.”
The possibility that the crate might be of alien manufacture added to the allure. There were three known space-faring alien races, and they kept themselves pretty much to themselves. I had seen them only on holo-docs, and never in the flesh. The thought of living in an alien starship…
“Where did you get it?” I asked.
“Not from my usual sources,” he admitted. “Someone found it.”
“Found?”
He thumbed over his shoulder to indicate the jungle of the interior. “A farmer came across it ten years ago, a hundred kays north of the Column. He approached me and I took a look, found it overgrown with vines and moss and salvaged the thing.”
“And you don’t know anything about it?”
“Nothing. Its control system doesn’t make sense. Even its propulsion is odd.”
“How so?”
“It has a couple of atmosphere jets, but no planetary drive. Which might suggest that it wasn’t an interplanetary. But—” he laughed and shook his head “—it’s equipped with a subdermal re-entry skin.”
“So maybe it is alien?”
“Maybe,” he said.
I looked around inside a little more, then left the ship and made a slow circuit. I shielded my eyes from the swollen sun and stared up at the vessel’s arching lines.
“And it’s for sale?”
“I’ll tell you what… It’s taking up space, I can’t cannibalise it, and you obviously like the look of the thing. It’s yours for five thousand.” I was open-mouthed at his generosity. I had expected to spend at least twenty thousand on a villa, perhaps a little more for a starship that took my fancy.
We shook hands and sealed the deal.
He agreed to deliver it to my plot of land in the next few days, and gave me the addresses of contractors who would connect it to the water and electricity supplies. He even promised to give it a paint job—the colours of any line I chose.
I paid Hawk half of the five thousand up front; the other half would follow on delivery.
As we parted company beneath the metal-work archway of his premises, he told me that he’d meet me in Magenta at the weekend and introduce me to a few people who made the local watering hole, the Fighting Jackeral, their spiritual home.
As I climbed into the ground-effect vehicle, I took one last look back at the rearing shape of the mysterious starship. I had the feeling then—and this is not stated with the wisdom of hindsight—that a new phase in my life was under way.
TWO
I rented a small villa and filled the next few days with the minutiae of day to day living—the trivial, mindless pursuits that helped keep the nightmares at bay. I set up accounts at various Magenta stores, bought furnishings for my new home, and pottered along the foreshore admiring the alien wildlife, the oddly armoured crabs and darting sea birds. Once, I even caught sight of the Ashentay, Chalcedony’s nomadic natives. I was out walking at sunset when a group of slim bipeds, resembling Nordic Japanese, flitted quickly through the wooded headland beyond my villa, gone in an instant.
Thus I filled my days, but it was much harder to occupy my nights, the lonely, empty small hours when macabre visions woke me and continued as I lay awake.
As good as his word, Hawk delivered the ship on the back of a gargantuan low-loader and settled it into position on my plot. I’d arranged engineers to be on hand to connect energy and water, and four hours later it was sitting proudly on the headland, staring out across the bay.
Hawk had even sprayed it in the resplendent green and yellow livery of the Persephone Line.
We retired for lunch at the Fighting Jackeral, a single storey timber building on the sea front, consisting of one large lounge, a bar area and a long veranda where most of the customers gathered on the long, hot evenings of summer. I’d dropped in once or twice for a drink, but the locals, perhaps assuming I was either a tourist or a pilgrim, had been polite but reserved.
At the bar Hawk introduced me to a few friendly men and women who ran small businesses in the area, the manager of the nearby marina, a woman who skippered a tourist boat on excursions upriver to the Column. They were the affable, perhaps cliquish, barflies you find the Expansion over—conservative types drawn together by the common interest of making money.
As Hawk led me towards the veranda, clutching ice-cold beers, he whispered, “I prefer the artists and bohemians who make Magenta their home. A little more open-minded,” he added with a smile.
We ordered locally caught spearfish and salad and watched the silvery water of the bay lap the bright red sand that sloped from the Jackeral. The Ring of Tharssos, which at one time had been a dozen moons, but which millennia ago had collided and shattered into a million shards and fragments, arched overhead, colossal and breathtaking in the perfection of its parabola. I pinched myself. I was no longer on Earth, on the Vancouver sea front. I was twenty light years distant on an alien planet.
We kept the conversation superficial. I told Hawk nothing about the reasons I left Earth, and he said not a word about his past. The sealed augmentations that scarred his body spoke volumes, and I recalled his mention of not having flown since the Nevada run—his own annus horribilis—but respected his reticence enough not to pry. I told him of my work on Earth, stripped of anything personal.
We had finished our meals when Hawk leaned forward, staring along the beach. I saw a small, lone figure striding barefoot through the lapping waves, a blonde woman I judged to be in her thirties.
“Maddie,” Hawk said to me. “I must introduce you.”
He stood and called her name, waving. She looked up, as if from a reverie, then smiled and waved vaguely.
“Won’t you join us?” Hawk called.
She seemed to hesitate, then moved slowly from the sea and trod the sand towards the veranda steps. Over the weeks I came to know Maddie, I recognised this hesitation in her manner as something characteristic—the signifier of her unique condition. At the time I merely thought that she wanted to be left to herself.
She seemed to drift up the steps, smiling from Hawk to myself. She was thin, undernourished, the arrangement of her bones angular. She was attractive in a faded, beach-bum kind of way, the combination of too much sun and salt water. I saw that my estimation of her age had been a little kind: parenthetical wrinkles around her mouth suggested she was in her forties.
“Maddie, this is David Conway, just in from Earth. Conway, Maddie Chamberlain.”
I held out my hand, but Maddie smiled apologetically and whispered, “I don’t shake hands, Mr Conway.”
I smiled uneasily at her touch taboo, and Hawk covered the awkwardness by saying, “Conway’s just bought a ship from me,” and he pointed along the coast to the sleek shape of the starship silhouetted on the headland.
I told her that I preferred it to all the more traditional homes I’d been shown.
“How novel,” Maddie said, smiling with what seemed like genuine enthusiasm. “What a lovely idea.” She spoke with a gentle English accent. “Does it have a name?”
“I haven’t got that far yet.”
She stared at the ship. “Mmm, how about… the Mantis?” she suggested.
I looked along the foreshore at the starship and nodded. Silhouetted against the sky, it did have the aspect of a praying mantis. I nodded. “I like it,” I said. “The Mantis it is.
”
From a cheesecloth bag she produced a container fashioned from some kind of local coconut equivalent, and seconds later a waiter appeared with a beer and poured it, without being told, into the container.
She ordered a salad, and ate it with cutlery she took from her bag.
Only then did I notice her clothes. They were evidently home-made, and not very well at that. The seams were uneven, the stitching haphazard.
“Conway’s fled Earth for the quiet life,” Hawk said.
“So you’re not a pilgrim?” Maddie said. It was the question I was asked again and again during my first few weeks in the area.
I smiled and explained that I’d come to Magenta to retire, to relax in the sun; I allowed that I might one day take a look at the Column, but that I was no religious fanatic.
“Do you know something, Mr Conway? I’ve lived on Chalcedony almost ten years now and I’ve never seen the Column at close quarters.” And the sudden smile, on her normally wistful face, made her look years younger.
“Familiarity,” Hawk said, “breeds not contempt but apathy.”
Maddie said, “I understand worshipping a God, but I fail to see why anyone should worship a golden column merely because it’s vast and enigmatic.”
“Perhaps,” I ventured, “that’s exactly why they worship it—in some way it’s a physical representation of the God they can’t see. It’s mysterious, numinous.”
She hesitated, her head on one side, and thought about that. “I wonder why some people need the physical?” she said enigmatically, and then changed the subject. “What did you do on Earth, Mr Conway?”
“I was an engineer. I had my own small business in Vancouver. Orbital elevators, mainly.”
“Was business good?”
I couldn’t help myself. “Up and down,” I said. Maddie laughed; Hawk covered his eyes and shook his head.
Maddie said, pointing to my starship, “Will you repair it? Get it flying again?”
I shook my head. “We think the ship might be alien. I might be an engineer, but I don’t understand the first thing about extraterrestrial mechanics.”
She looked across at Hawk. “You could help him, couldn’t you? Get the thing up and flying again. You could even pilot the ship.”
Hawk looked suddenly uneasy, as if Maddie had touched on a sore point. “Like Conway says,” he said tersely, “it’s alien. They do things differently. We wouldn’t understand the first principles, even.”
Maddie returned to her salad and ate abstractedly. I stretched and said, to fill the sudden silence, “I think I’ll get to like the way of life in Magenta.”
“It’s quiet,” Maddie said, “which is what I like about the place. The outside world hasn’t really reached us yet. The Bay hasn’t been flooded by the crass commercialism of the rest of the Expansion.”
Hawk said, “We know some good people here, don’t we, Maddie? We’ll introduce you, Conway.”
Maddie smiled. “Talking of good people, Hawk, have you seen anything of Matt lately?”
Hawk shook his head. “He’s busy finishing his latest project. He’s racing against time—the private showing is a couple of days away, and he’s still not finished.”
“Matt’s our very own famous artist,” Maddie explained. “Not Matt Sommers, the crystal sculptor?”
Maddie beamed. “The very same. You know his work?”
“My wife ran a gallery in Vancouver. Just reproductions, but I admire his stuff.”
“Is she with you on Chalcedony?” Maddie asked.
I shook my head. “We’re no longer together,” I explained, and left it at that.
Maddie opened her mouth in a silent ‘ah’, and covered her gaffe by rummaging in her home-made bag and producing a card. She pushed it across the table, withdrawing her hand quickly to avoid making contact with me.
“I have a spare ticket for the private viewing on Tuesday. Matt’s a good friend. He won’t mind my inviting you.”
I pocketed the ticket and thanked her. “I’ll look forward to that. You’ll be there, Hawk?”
He smiled. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world—not that I know much about art, but I like watching Maddie going all gooey-eyed when she’s in Matt’s company.” He winked across at Maddie, who gave him the evil eye, and I assumed Hawk had got even by touching her sore point.
“Matt’s a dear,” Maddie said, “but he’s made it perfectly obvious that he feels nothing for me. Not—” she hurried on, “—that I would be in any position to do anything about it even if he did.” And she smiled sweetly at Hawk.
He said, “Matt once told me that he has no place in his life for romance.” He shook his head, as if in wonder. “Which, coming from an artist—someone who should be open to all and every experience—I find baffling.”
Maddie leaned forward and whispered, mock conspiratorially, “Matt has a dark secret in his past. Just like you, Hawk.” And she licked her finger tip and chalked up another hit in the air between them.
At that second, as if to save Hawk, his com rang. He spoke briefly to the caller, cut the connection and said, “That was someone at the yard. A rare customer. I’d better get back before he escapes. I’ll see you both at the viewing, if not before.”
He paid the bill for all of us, despite my protests, and hurried from the veranda.
Maddie sipped her beer and asked, “How long have you known Hawk?”
“I bought the ship from him a couple of days ago. I’ve only met him twice.”
She eyed me over the horizon of her mug. “And what do you think of him?”
I shrugged. “He seems very friendly.”
“It’s strange, but you can know someone for years, and yet not really know them.”
“You’ve known him that long?” I asked.
“I met him soon after I arrived on Chalcedony, ten years ago. But, as I said, I don’t really know him. He’s one of the most private people I’ve ever met, which is strange as he’s also one of the most outgoing people you’re ever likely to happen across.”
“Still waters…” I quipped. I hesitated, then said, “He did let slip something along the lines that he’s never flown since something that happened at Nevada. And have you noticed the jacks on his wrists?”
She nodded. “They’re hard to miss.”
“Neural interfaces,” I said, “for achieving integration with a shipboard matrix during hyper-light flight.”
“So?”
“So,” I said, “his were fused, which leads me to believe he had some kind of accident. If so, then the fact he survived is some kind of miracle. It must have been traumatising, to say the least.”
She nodded, as if she knew more about the accident, but was reluctant to tell me.
I finished my drink. “My first full day in Magenta Bay and I find myself surrounded by mysterious strangers.” I resisted the urge to stare at her home-made mug and cutlery as I said this, and excused myself. “My ship awaits, and I’ve a lot to sort out before sundown.”
“See you at the viewing,” Maddie said.
I left the veranda and walked to the starship by way of the beach, admiring its sleek lines against the afternoon sky. I contemplated the days ahead, the work I had to do aboard the Mantis to get it into shape… and I wondered if I would be spared the nightmares that had visited me every night since my arrival on the planet.
THREE
Two things of note occurred the following evening. I had my worst nightmare to date, and I saw something aboard the ship. I’d spent the day decorating the lounge, what in earlier times had been the ship’s control room. I’d installed a couple of sofas and chairs, a locally woven rug and a few wall hangings and pot plants—native things that intrigued me with their alienness. I had managed to soften the hard, functional lines of the control room, make it comfortable, liveable. Then I turned my attention to the kitchen adjacent to the lounge. This I equipped with a few quickly bought utensils, a small oven and a microwave, and hung a poster I’d seen in
a nearby store: it was a picture of the Column, a great golden bolt of ineffable light which rose, thick and mysterious, from the plain of the interior. In the bedroom, on the left flank of the ship with a view along the curve of the red sands, I positioned a bed and a small cabinet. I didn’t bother with decorations, as I wasn’t planning to spend that much time in there.
I made myself a meal around eight—I’d always enjoyed the process of cooking, finding something both creative and therapeutic about conjuring good food from raw ingredients. My wife Sally had hated anything to do with the kitchen, and I had taken pleasure in cooking for the three of us. Carrie, my daughter, had helped: an abiding memory is of our working side by side before the kitchen’s big picture window overlooking the straits.
I ate slowly in the lounge, with the viewscreens open to admit the cooling evening breeze, and drank a few local beers from the stock I’d laid in. I watched the ebb and flow of evening life; the locals promenading along the beach. I caught sight of Maddie, mooning along in the shallows, lost in a world of her own. She looked a small and lonely figure garbed incongruously in the ill-made clothing of her own design.
As I watched, a wave-hopper skipped into the bay and a tall, dark figure dismounted and strode up the beach towards the Fighting Jackeral. I recognised Matt Sommers from a holo-doc I’d seen about him on Earth, a big, composed African-American of few words. He had either failed to notice Maddie, or purposefully ignored her. She, however, had seen him, and hurried in his wake up the beach and onto the Jackeral’s veranda. I smiled to myself and wondered about her curious aversion to tactile contact with her fellow man.
As the sun set—Delta Pavonis is big, and Chalcedony orbits close to the swollen primary, making sunsets a blazing spectacle—I opened another beer and wondered what shape my days might take once I’d finished furnishing the ship. I would read, and take long walks, and drop into the Jackeral for an afternoon beer and a chat with whoever might be propping up the bar; I’d explore the northern continent, hire a crawler and take a look at the Falls area of the interior, the series of sinks on various levels perpetually filled by spectacular waterfalls. I might even, I thought, look out for a part-time job to fill the long hours. Another thing that made Chalcedony so different from Earth was the duration of its day: twenty-eight hours, divided at this latitude into eighteen hours of daylight and ten of night.
