Hell Ship

by Philip Palmer

  “Is there any other kind?” Sai-ias asked; and I marvelled once more at the oddness of her mind.

  “Innate knowledge, that turns out to be utterly false?” I pointed out gently.

  The Quipus took my point. But Lirilla, Fray, Doro and Sai-ias still had no notion what I was driving at.

  “Another question: Why have slaves?” I continued.

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” said Fray, irascibly.

  “If they were really all powerful,” I argued, “the Ka’un wouldn’t need you to fight their godsforsaken battles. They have technology. They have weapons. But they are few. Remember that. And they are cowering from us now, afraid.”

  They pondered my words, and saw the sense. Then I waited a few moments more.

  “There is something else,” said Sai-ias, astutely, “that you want to explain to us. Isn’t there?”

  I smiled. “Let me show you, instead.”

  They journeyed with me to the mountains; and from there I led them into a cavern in the rock. The cavern was wide, but even so Sai-ias had to compress her body five-fold to get through. Quipu followed, agile on his five legs, Fray lumbered after him; Lirilla flew ahead; while I leaped confidently from rock to rock.

  And there we found an underground waterfall, spilling out of the mountain.

  “This is the source,” I said, “of the well of the water of life.” And I took a knife and gouged a line in my arm. Blood flowed; then I dipped the arm in the water. When I removed it, the cut was healed instantly, without so much as a delay of a few seconds.

  Then I reached into the water and pulled out a large sack. I opened the sack.

  Inside the sack was one of the brains of Djamrock, sundered into many parts, but still pulsing as it had when it was alive.

  “What is this?” Sai-ias asked, shocked.

  “I retrieved it,” I said, “from-I do not care to elaborate-from the leavings of Cuzco that were-voided-after he killed Djamrock, and before he was banished. This is the brain of Djamrock, or parts of it.” I prodded the flesh of the brain segments with a finger; it throbbed. “The cells are alive, though Djamrock’s mind is dead. But the flesh, you see, doesn’t rot.”

  “What have you done?” said Sai-ias, in appalled tones.

  “I am performing an experiment,” I told her sharply. “Into the nature of our captivity.”

  The dead shards of brain pulsed, eerily; the mood of my listeners had turned dark and sombre. But I ignored the bleak mood and continued.

  “Facts and myths,” I said. “Let us consider them in turn.

  “The first myth: we on the ship cannot die. Not true; Djamrock was killed and now he is dead; these are merely cell samples. You believe his consciousness lives on in his sundered body? I ask you, what evidence do you have for that? It is just a belief, a superstition. Let us discount it.

  “The second myth; the air translates. Who told you that? No one. How do you know it then? Because some things are just known, like… geometry? That’s one possibility, but it makes little sense.

  “So think about this,” I said, softly, letting my words enter their minds like a whisper on the breeze. “What if the thought were planted in your head. Like a whisper, on the breeze. A thought that says: ‘The air you breathe can translate your every word.’ Easily done.”

  “A thought, in the head? It’s impossible,” said Quipu.

  “In my civilisation,” I said, “we have a thing called a pakla, inserted into the brains of each of us. It allows us to communicate at a distance. And we can use the pakla to translate. You program it with data about the languages involved, and it turns alien speech automatically into words I understand. I have used it often thus.”

  “Pakla?” asked Quipu One.

  “That’s our name for what you call a smallworlds mechanoid mind, and some of the creatures on this ship call-well, whatever. It’s convergent evolution at work; many species have achieved the same technological breakthroughs.”

  “Not mine,” Sai-ias said. “We have no use for mechanical brains.”

  “Nor ours,” said Quipu One. “We remember every fact we encounter; numbers are like music to us; we could not create a machine cleverer than I.”

  “Or I,” added Quipu Two, competitively.

  “Watch this,” I said, and I teased apart the shards of Djamrock’s brain with a knife until a small crystal was visible. I gouged the crystal out and showed them. “This is how they control us. Paklas in the brain. They translate for us, they spy on us. As we already discussed, very small paklas in our blood stream rejuvenate us, by manipulating our hormones to regenerate dead cells that wouldn’t usually regenerate. The water of the well of life is rich in these miniscule-paklas, that’s how it is able to heal us. ‘Despair’ is, I suspect, a chemical reaction in the tissues of the body induced by an imbalance in the hormones in the brain, synthesising minerals dissolved in our blood from these lurking paklas. Flesh becomes stone; though it’s not really stone, it’s a crystalline form of carbon.

  “Despair in short is a way of keeping us docile; if we aren’t happy, our bodies are turned to stone. Enjoy your lot-or die! Evil, but effective; and the technology is not so very hard.”

  “The Ka’un have powers beyond our imagining,” Sai-ias informed me, anxiously.

  “That’s only because you’re so fucking dumb, Sai-ias! My civilisation’s science is considerably more advanced than yours,” I said, scornfully. “Give me a lab and equipment, I could replicate all these effects.”

  “You can control minds?” said Sai-ias.

  “We have done so. Not any more, we fought a war over it with the Southern Tribes. Not all our wars are futile,” I added, tauntingly.

  After the encounter with Djamrock’s brain, and my final explanations of how the Ka’un control us, we returned to the grasslands. The planning stage was over. The war was about to begin.

  And each of the creatures on our world had a part to play in my complex and audacious battleplan.

  The aerials patrolled the sky; they could warn us at once if the Ka’un made any attempt to open the firmament and attack us from above.

  Sai-ias had spent three days motionless in the waters near the Tower, studying the movements of the Metal Giant. And, as I predicted, she saw it vanish-proving that it was a projection turned off by a simple switch. And she also saw a two-legged creature emerge from the earth, and wander around for a while. This was a Ka’un, I was sure of it. The Tower wasn’t their home, but it was their way in and out of the interior world.

  And so it was the Tower we would attack. Sai-ias and the sea-creatures would carry land-warriors under the gap in the force protector shield. And when an army was gathered inside, we would break open the entrance way to the Ka’un’s section of the ship and flood into the exterior world, where dwelled the Ka’un.

  At the same time, using the Temple building as our scaffold, we would attempt to breach the very sky, using the strength of the giant sentients like Fray and Ioday and Miaris to rip apart the metal hull. Serpentines would be hauled up and would squeeze through the gap created; and they would advance mercilessly upon our enemies who resided, so I believed, on the other side of the sky.

  There were however several terrible obstacles in our way; I carefully marked them off in my mind.

  Firstly, the Ka’un could shut off our air. If we suffocated, how could we fight?

  The answer was simple; for I knew that Sai-ias could survive for very long periods without air.

  So, once we broke through into the outer hull, via the Tower gateway, we would all charge inside and fight desperately and savagely; while Sai-ias would take the rear.

  Then, once the air was cut off, we would all die-the giant sentients, the aerials, the arboreals, the serpentines, all of us; but before we died, we would wreak as much damage as we could.

  And then Sai-ias would follow behind; and she and she alone would finish the war, clambering over our corpses to do so. We all knew her phenomenal fighting p
ower; she was the only weapon we truly needed.

  And our own deaths were, we all felt, a small price to pay for victory.

  A second problem remained however; for we knew that the Ka’un could control us through the paklas in our brain. They could turn a switch and send us into dreamless sleep; and then all of us, including Sai-ias, would be wretchedly and easily defeated.

  I wrestled hard with this problem; and in the days after showing Djamrock’s brain to the others, I consulted with Quipu ceaselessly in the hope he might find a subtle scientific solution. Yet he had none; so I chose to embark upon my wildest gamble yet.

  And now my course was clear. First I had to free my people from the mind-control of the Ka’un, by the most brutal means possible.

  And then I had to lead them to victory; and their inevitable doom.

  I kneeled in the clearing with Fray and Quipu and Sai-ias, while our whole army encircled us. Quipu held the knife in his delicate hands. And he pressed it to my forehead. And he dug the knife in, until it penetrated the bone.

  Then he carved a circle of blood around my skull. And pressed harder, until knife dug into bone, all the way around my forehead.

  Quipu then carefully lifted the skull cap away from my head, until the brain beneath was bared.

  “What can you see?” I asked.

  “Brain,” said Quipu One snappily. “Precious little of it, it’s a miracle you can-”

  “Look for the crystal!” I said angrily. I felt naked and vulnerable with my brain bare to the world; and only the paklas in my bloodstream were saving me from shock, trauma, and sudden death.

  “I see it,” said Quipu Two.

  “Then take it out,” I said.

  Quipu’s sharp blade gouged deep into the tissues of my brain and I recoiled in horror; surely this was the worst thing that had ever happened to me!

  But I endured it; and a few moments later I was looking at the bloody crystal in Quipu’s hand.

  “Water,” I said.

  Sai-ias sprinkled the healing water from the well of life over my exposed brain.

  Quipu spoke; but I could not understand his words.

  The others joined in; it was a babble of discordant sounds.

  My pakla could no longer translate! And the theory was proved.

  Then Quipu slipped the skull back into place. Sai-ias splashed more water on the join, and wrapped a bandage around my head. I felt somewhat dizzy; but I was confident none of them knew my species well enough to read the panic in my eyes.

  I spoke: “Can you understand me?”

  Another babble of sound. They could understand me, but I could not understand them.

  And so it began; the cutting of brains.

  Within hours the clearing was a pool of blood. The brain-tainted crystals were piled high. And as each of my fellow slaves lost their crystal, they lost the ability to understand each other. The clearing became a babble of competing noises, with no meanings.

  Then Sai-ias extruded her brain out of her skull carapace for the operation to be performed. I held the knife.

  Sai-ias

  I was among the last to have my brain cut open; I was dreading it terribly.

  But before the blade touched my extruded brain, Sharrock paused and dropped the knife to his side. For the sky had darkened; and we turned and looked, and saw two huge creatures came beating a path out of the blue sky.

  Cuzco.

  And Djamrock.

  Both back from the dead.

  I howled, in horror and dismay, and my brain shrank back into my skull, still uncut.

  Sharrock backed away, still holding the knife. And Cuzco swooped down towards us low and fast, and his neck and skull orifices blazed fire; and Sharrock’s body was engulfed in flames. I tried to spit web on my burning friend, to put out the fire; but my mouth was dry. I could not spit.

  But Sharrock rolled wildly on the grass; and Fray pissed upon him; and his charred body stood and he was ready for combat once again.

  And all around me, the fighting commenced.

  Imagine a battle like nothing you can imagine.

  Thousands of us fought against two; but Cuzco and Djamrock were the mightiest of giants, and could fly. The aerials were helpless against them; the grazers were burned casually as they fled; the giant sentients like Fray were powerless to fight, for Djamrock and Cuzco could plunge down and rip pieces out of their hide before they could bite or butt. The larger aerials fared better; but they were puny by comparison to these, the greatest of the giant sentients possessed of the power of flight.

  Quipu’s body was ripped from top to toe within the first few minutes of this ghastly massacre, though his wounds were not fatal. Lirilla loyally attacked and died an early death. Sharrock fought bravely with sword and fists though his skin was burned and charred; but his power was nothing against these two brutes.

  Miaris, a giant sentient almost as large as Djamrock, stood on his hind legs, and hurled powerful blows at the two flying monsters. His fists were like cliffs; his skin was as tough as granite; his jaws could chew through metal. But Djamrock dropped upon him from above, and gouged open his skull, and ripped apart his body; and spat acid upon him. And Miaris roared, and fell.

  The battle raged; the arboreals fought and died, as did the aerials, as did the giant sentients. No one could withstand this double assault by the flying giants of our world; and the grass was red with blood and gore now, and screams became a wearily familiar background noise.

  So the battle fell to me; I alone could fight against such huge flying beasts; and I had, after all, bested Cuzco once before.

  And ever since I have wondered: could I have defeated them? Was it in my power to best two of the greatest monsters on board the ship?

  I will never know; for throughout the whole conflict, I could not move. I stood, betrayingly, like a statue, observing helplessly as the battle played out. Sharrock screamed at me to help; but I could not.

  I was, I realised, under the control of the Ka’un; there was a pakla still inside me. I fought its power; I wrestled for freedom. I poured every particle of my soul into this one desperate goal: to move, and fight, and kill.

  And eventually I succeeded! I was able to stir my paralysed limbs; and I moved; and I seized Sharrock in my long tentacle; and I squeezed him to death.

  And then I fell asleep; a deep dreamless sleep.

  And when I woke, the corpses were all gone. The grasses grew high, with no trace of the blood that had stained them, or the body parts that had been so carelessly strewn. The piles of paklas had vanished; there was nothing at all to indicate a terrible battle had taken place at this spot.

  Some months had passed, I deduced; and the world had returned to normal; and was populated once more by my comrades. Fray, Lirilla, Miaris, I saw them all, going about their business, and they saw me. They were all magically restored to life, with no trace of their appalling and fatal injuries.

  Whilst Cuzco and Djamrock patrolled the skies above, proud and arrogant and unassailable.

  I realised then which was the most appalling of the powers of the Ka’un; it was their gift of resurrection. They had brought Cuzco and Djamrock back to life; and they had done the same for the rest of those slain in that brave, yet futile battle.

  And so we would never again dare defy them. For they were-surely they were?-gods.

  “We cannot speak of it,” said Quipu.

  Quipu like me was one of the few actual survivors of that day; he had been badly hurt, and still required the healing powers of the water of the well of life to mend his scarred body and the partially damaged brain of Quipu Five; but the Quipus had not been “resurrected.”

  “It was a horror beyond-well, it was the worst of all horrors,” said Quipu Two.

  “I fell asleep,” said Quipu Three, “and then-”

  “Cuzco lives!” said Quipu Four.

  Quipu Five grunted; incoherent yet still following the discussion.

  “Not Cuzco,” I said. “Not the Cu
zco I knew.”

  For a few days ago I had touched Cuzco with my tentacle tip and begged for his pity. And he had looked at me with total scorn.

  And at that moment, I realised he had no recollection of our intimate experience on the mountain top. We had loved each other then; but this Cuzco had never loved me.

  He was a replica from a previous time; a past Cuzco, reincarnate.

  Fray too had no recollection of the attack upon the Ka’un, or of our previous lives together; and nor did Lirilla. Fray was a stranger to me now; Lirilla knew me not. I found that, strangely, hardest of all to bear.

  So the handful of us who had survived the war with the Ka’un were forced to nurse our secret to ourselves. The story of a mutiny that had failed; a rebellion that had been thwarted before it had even begun.

  Sharrock groaned.

  They had pinned him to a metal spike with cross-bars, his arms outstretched; a form of torture I had never encountered before. And they had flogged him, mercilessly. The rain drizzled upon the raw flesh of his wounds, which scarred him from face to thighs. I sprayed healing moisture on him with my tentacle tips, but it did not help.

  I spoke to him but he did not respond. His eyes stared into the distance, never blinking. He was, I suspected, quite mad.

  I stayed with him for four days and nights, talking constantly, explaining to him my new view of things: “They are gods, Sharrock, we cannot defeat them.”

  And then I realised he was awake and he was staring right at me with blank blue eyes and for a brief moment, his sanity returned: “Never give up,” he whispered.

  “We are defeated!” I protested. But he could not comprehend my words.

  Then he began to choke. I yearned to help him, but did not know how to. Finally however the choking stopped; and he opened his mouth.

  And balanced on his tongue was a red jewel. I reached in with my tentacle and took it out.

  It was the jewel he had stolen for Malisha.

  “For me?” I asked.

  He grunted, and tried to smile. “A gift. Of love. From me to you,” he eventually rasped.

  And then he fainted once more. And blood trickled down his body and further soaked the blood-drenched grass; but he did not die.