Mothership

by Bill Campbell

  Ivorene followed it. The disk’s thin edge flickered as images imposed themselves over it at a rate too fast for her to perceive. She strove impatiently to focus beyond their interference. Suddenly, her perspective shifted and she was beside the disk—no, above it. The spinning spread, then slowed and stopped.

  The disk’s three legs were now composed of art-nouveau curves of thin red plastic. Its eye was gone, and its center pierced by a tall, silver pole. Legs and pole sat at the center of a papery circle of black and red, surrounded by a large, intricately grooved platter of thicker plastic, shiny black alternating with a duller, deep, dark grey.

  She’d seen this sort of thing before. In an antique shop on Earth, during one of her expeditions to uncover portable cultural treasures. She’d decided against this particular one, then changed her mind in its favor, only to find it gone on her return to the shop.

  It was a record. On a record player. She raised her gaze to the stone face before her. Shell eyes squeezed half shut, a shell mouth pursed in an amused smile.

  “Laroye, ago Elegba!” Stay cool, trickster, the Yoruban greeting ran in translation. Coolness having a very high value in equatorial Africa. Ivorene launched into her prepared petition for Good Boy’s assistance in healing her godson Edde of his strange affliction. She stopped abruptly as the image before her faded and threatened to break apart. Hard to hold abstractions in her current state. She tightened down on her desire. Squeezed. The enormous face before her brightened, though it remained amorphous. Encouraged, she produced for him the lump of her longing. It shone like a milky diamond, lustrous yet clear, then flew off toward him of its own accord. On impact, her prayer spread in ripples that seemed to sharpen and set the stone face, rather than disturbing it.

  Shell eyes twinkled. The great head moved. A nod yes? Or instruction, a wish to be imitated? Ivorene looked down again, reading the label on the record. Atlantic. Chic. “Good Times.”

  So what did that mean? So Good Boy would help her if she played a record she knew she didn’t have?

  The spinning began again. Ivorene seemed now to stand on the record’s surface, swinging around the silver pole as a scratchy son rose from below. Beyond the pole, white walls with gigantic murals pursued a stately rotation. Mushroom-haired women with impossibly long legs raised shapely brown hands against invisible enemies. Bald, athletic young men in flowing furs saluted crowds of admiring children with casual waves of large, lethal-looking sidearms.

  Actually, there were a lot of weapons.

  “Boys will be boys,” a nasal voice advised her. “Better let them have their toys.”

  Well, there weren’t any firearms on Renaissance. Explosives seemed like a pretty bad idea in a contained and pressurized atmosphere. Maybe the miners …. No. “No, sorry.” She shook her head firmly. “No guns.”

  The world screeched backwards in its tracks, jerked violently forward with a wheezing shriek. Ivorene fell on her figurative ass as the process repeated itself. She clung to the record’s ridges, shooting back and forth around its axis without warning. An eery choir wailed in time to the wild stops and starts.

  The disturbance ended as suddenly as it had begun, and the world’s smooth spin resumed. A new number played, a steady march. “On guard! Defend yourself!” its singers admonished her.

  No doubt.

  A flash of brilliance at the pole’s tip drew her attention. It grew into a humming globe, an irregularly-rayed ball of slowly coruscating light. Flickering arms of color drew her closer—her prayer? So much bigger, now. So strong—it had to be more, more than she’d asked for. It had to be—

  She resisted. But the pole loomed larger and larger. If she touched it—if she grasped it firmly, with both hands, she could call down that ball of lightning on her head. She could know Good Boy in her heart, as her personal savior. She could cure the colony of its mysterious non-epidemic and get the respect she deserved, the respect she’d already more than earned. She could fill herself with the power, the glory—

  She could get herself possessed while she was alone, without anyone to help or protect her, or see to it that she ever came back to normal.

  On guard. Defend yourself.

  She made an effort. A step backward. It turned into a lunge forward. Off-balance, she caught herself on the silver pole and clung there as the light descended, swift and slow.

  “… There may be other controls and controllers, which, for convenience, I call supraself metaprograms. These are many or one depending on current states of consciousness in the single self-metaprogrammer. These may be personified as if entities ….”

  Kressi walked slowly home, leaning heavily on the handle of the flatbed. Maybe she should just lie right down on it. She could have pushed herself along the walls if they weren’t so far apart. She felt very, very tired. A shift and a half she’d worked. The infirmary was now completely out of pulp sheets, which was just as well. The plastic bed pads might be less comfortable, but they cleaned up efficiently.

  She hoped her mother wouldn’t be too mad. Ivorene hadn’t said not to work late, not exactly …. And Dr. Thompson wanted her back early, too.

  At the top of the ramp she hesitated. The yurt’s familiar hollow was filled with darkness. The only light filtered in behind her, shining up the ramp. Power out? She shifted cautiously to her left. No. Two red tell-tales glowed in her field of vision like the mismatched eyes of some squat monster: Ivorene’s isolation tank. Her mother had gone under. Alone. Guilt tweaked at her; she should have come home earlier.

  But Ivorene ought to have called her.

  The yurt’s polarized glass panels showed blankness. No stars. Not for the next few hours. Horus was setting now, triggering the glass’s reflective properties. Why was she standing there in the dark? “Light one. Light two,” she commanded.

  Her stomach grumbled at her loudly. Hungry and tired. Tired and hungry. And she had to talk to her mother about going back early.

  She shoved the cart into place next to the ramp and went to the tank to see how much longer Ivorene would be inside. The timer was counting up, not down. Ivorene had been due out of isolation half an hour ago.

  Anxiously, she activated the mike. “Ivorene, I’m home. Can you come out now? It’s Kressi,” she added. No telling what state her mother’s mind was in. How could Ivorene have missed the alarm?

  A long pause, then her mother’s voice came through the speaker, a bit odd. “Right.”

  “Okay.” Kressi eyed the tank suspiciously till Ivorene emerged dripping from its depths. “Rough session?” she asked her.

  Ivorene stared around the yurt absently. Kressi assumed she was looking for a towel and brought one over. “Mom?” Oops. Ivorene hated for Kressi to call her that. But she seemed not to notice the slip-up. Or the towel. Kressi laid it over Ivorene’s shoulders. “I’ll get you a robe.”

  When she turned back from the closet, Ivorene was walking around the yurt in great strides, toweling herself off vigorously. But shivering, Kressi saw as she draped her mother in soft red fabric. It must have been bad. Why hadn’t Ivorene waited?

  Why hadn’t she come home on time?

  She picked the damp towel up from the floor where Ivorene had dropped it. “Let me get your hair for you.” A loud, hoarse cackle made her start.

  “Ha! I have my hair already where it belongs, here upon my head!”

  “But—I—but it’s wet!” Kressi protested, confused.

  Her mother frowned. A drop of water slid down her forehead and trickled along one slanted brow. “You are correct. Remedy this.”

  She let Kressi lead her to her chair at the kitchen table and towel dry her short locks, then got up and strolled restlessly around the yurt’s perimeter. She picked up random objects and examined them, then lost interest. A loud crash sounded as Ivorene emptied a jar of trade beads onto the floor. After watching the tiny cylinders of colored glass roll away from her, she moved on, slipping and unconcernedly righting herself whenever she stepped on one.
<
br />   Kressi was pretty sure by this time that she understood what had happened.

  From her mother’s perspective, Ivorene had become possessed. From the perspective of everyone else on the planet, she was insane.

  Only temporarily, of course. All Kressi had to do was—

  Was remember her instructions. What to do if things went wrong. And believe they’d work.

  Her mother stood holding a cube of her ex-husband, Kressi’s father, the white man she’d left behind when she became a Neo-Negro. Her face wore a remote, detached expression.

  Kressi’s first memories were of quarantine. She’d never really known her father. She wondered if he’d have been able to help her, if he were here.

  Resolutely, she removed the cube from her mother’s hands, held both of them in her own, and stepped firmly on Ivorene’s right foot. Two sharp jerks down on both arms at once—like that—

  Laughing, the face in front of her split wide into a most un-Ivoreneish grin. “What, you want for me to leave already? Is your mother’s body, though, and she invited me to come, to solve your mystery. So I am going to stay!”

  “… one cannot know as a result of this kind of solitudinous experiment whether or not the phenomena are explicable only by non-biocomputer interventions or only by happenings within the computer itself, or both.”

  Light receded, poured out of her like water from a strainer, left her sitting in her own chair, dressed in her red robe. She knew how she’d gotten there, knew Kressi had come home and roused her from the tank. Nothing was lost. What happened while Good Boy rode her remained in her memory, only faded, thinned of all immediacy. And her body felt so heavy now that she had to lift it on her own. But she made her hand rise, reached out to touch her daughter’s cheek.

  “Don’t worry, Kressi. I’m still here. This is right, what Good Boy’s trying to do—”

  “Ivorene? You’re okay?” Tears filled her daughter’s eyes and voice.

  “Yes.” She wanted to sound surer. “Listen, I’m going to let him come back again, I just didn’t want—”

  “‘Him?’ Ivorene, why won’t you—Good Boy’s not real! Admit it!” Kressi stood and stormed away from the table so Ivorene had to turn to see her. Now the tears were of anger.

  “Define real,” Ivorene said, then sagged in her seat. She was too tired to argue. “No, never mind. Don’t. Whether Good Boy or Aunt Lona or any of them are ‘real’ doesn’t matter in the end. Just act like they are and everything will work out fine.”

  “But—”

  “For three days, that’s all. That’s how long I asked him to stay.” Stubborn silence. At the edge of Ivorene’s vision, whiteness flickered. With each pulse it grew, drawing in, a bright tunnel down which her daughter’s once-more-worried face receded. Saying words she couldn’t hear. Apologies? Ivorene overrode them with her own instructions: “Three days. Promise me that.”

  “… each computer has a certain level of ability in metaprogramming others-not-self.”

  Posted on Citynet 01.18.2065, 08:18:14

  FROM: goodboy@mckenna.home

  TO: ALL USERS:

  Subject: Be a Souldier in the Army of Uncle Jam!

  Body:

  PARTY UP!

  You are hereby notified that in accordance with the

  wishes of the Supreme Funkmeister,

  you are required to bring your Waggity Asses on over to

  McKenna’s Mothership

  for the

  CELEBRATION!

  of our Grand Ascension to the status of

  Chocolate City, Capitol of the Known Negro Universe, said

  CELEBRATION!

  to commence on the evening of 01.21.2065, promptly at

  21:00 hours.

  IT’S THE BOMB!!

  [link to mckennapage.home]

  Sent via Citynet 01.18.2065, 13:34:10

  FROM: pearl@yancey.home

  TO: ivorene@mckenna.home

  CC: CAPTAINGROUP, samthompson@infirmary.city

  Subject: Attached Posting

  Body:

  Allow me to bring the attached to your attention, Miz McKenna, as it may somehow have escaped your notice. It purports to issue from a “goodboy,” currently unlisted as a Citizen. But the voice ID closely parallels your own, and reveal commands show your login.

  Miz McKenna, aside from the highly questionable language of this “invitation,” the obvious irresponsibility of organizing a frivolous assembly now, at the height of an epidemic, leads me to conclude that the posting is a clever but childish hoax on the part of your normally quite level-headed daughter. Please take immediate steps to disavow it as such.

  Far be it from me to meddle in your personal affairs, Miz McKenna, but I’m sure you’ll agree that her understandable longing for popularity does not excuse Kressi’s participation in a prank of this magnitude.

  Sent via Citynet 01.18.2065, 18:42:33

  FROM: maryann@gonder.home

  TO: goodboy@mckenna.home

  Re: Be a Souldier in the Army of Uncle Jam!

  Body:

  Passela told me to tell you this is such a swollen idea! Or I guess I should say it’s The Bomb! Those fashions on your page were just wild, and I hope we can get our printers sufficiently togetha in time for the big partay!

  Now for the important news—I heard Fanfan ask his daddy if he could borrow his record player! And some of his old jams! I bet he has lots of the songs your page listed, because I was over at their place one time, and in one closet they had this whole big rack of those black plastic circles! So it’s only the guns you have to worry about getting.

  Are you sure your mother won’t mind?

  Sent via Citynet 01.19.2065, 00:16:29

  FROM: samthompson@infirmary.city

  TO: pearl@yancey.home

  CC: CAPTAINGROUP, ivorene@mckenna.home

  Re: Attached Posting

  Body:

  Are you purposely TRYING to set off a City-wide panic? Of all the officious, unscientific nonsense I’ve heard on this expedition, yours, Pearl, takes the pound cake! This is not, repeat NOT an epidemic.

  There is no, repeat NO single, underlying organism that I can discover at the root of this recent wave of disorders. On the other hand, whatever it is seems to be affecting just about everyone on Renaissance. To a greater or lesser extent.

  I’ve attached several tables I’ve been working on in my copious free time …. I don’t know what they mean yet, but there’s an unprecedented variation in the degree to which symptoms manifest, in the number of symptoms any case exhibits, and in the comparative seriousness of symptoms. Fear of insanity, salt cravings, heart palpitations, fevers, hernias, sore feet, sprained backs, tonsillitis—what have they got in common? Nothing. Except that they all cropped up as problems at about the same time. But not in the same household or among workers on the same shift at the same plant.

  So whatever this thing is, it’s not contagious. There’s no excuse for your killjoy attitude, Pearl. Let the kids have their party.

  Sent via Citynet 01.19.2065, 12:12:12

  FROM: ivorene@mckenna.home

  TO: pearl@yancey.home

  CC: CAPTAINGROUP, samthompson@infirmary.city

  RE: Attached Posting

  The invitation is entirely legitimate. Those who find the language in which it’s couched to be odd should refer to the available historical data on mid-Twentieth Century black musicians, specifically Sun Ra, Parliament, Funkadelic, and Earth, Wind & Fire. A notable space-travel mystique developed around their work, and it is to honor its creative impetus that I’ve arranged for y’all to party up! Everybody party up! Come fly with me! I am the Mothership Connection. You have overcome, for I am here!

  “At times the cross-model synesthetic projection may help … excitation coming in the objective hearing mechanisms can be converted to excite visual projection. The commonest excitation used here is music ….”

  A good long ride on this one. She a strong horse, Ivorene. I even let her get s
ome sleep, talk to her tickety-tap machine a little, calm her daughter down with some kinda explanations. No danger of losing my seat. She don’t buck, don’t rear. Three days.

  All the partay people comin now. I made many preparations. Poor nervous daughter Kressi done helped, shown me how ta cook the candy and color over them too bright lights. But the pole, I erect that sucker all myself.

  We sit in chairs by the door. “Raise up the blind,” I say. She a good, obedient girl. And wearin the blue I said, most pleasin to the ocean. Her mother and I both told her time and again, till I do my business I ain’t goin nowhere.

  Fillin up the ramp, the peoples who been waitin come in. They laugh, but not too loud yet. One brought me some a my music. Kressi gets up to make it play. I watch while more people arrive. Everybody stop an stare when they see my big ole pole. It stuck up in the middle a everthing, hard to miss.

  The expression on that there lady’s face make me wonder how she ever gonna reach escape velocity. Don’t she know this a partay?

  Apparently not. “I couldn’t believe you’d actually allow this to take place,” she tells me.

  I smile. “I allow all sort a things.” I offer her Kressi’s seat.

  “Well, no, I can’t really stay ….”

  “But how else you gonna know all the people wind up comin?”

  She give me a narrow-eyed look. “Ivorene? What’s gotten into you? Are you— you’re not—you haven’t been—”

  She think my horse drunk. “Siddown and fine out,” I say, and now she accept my invitation. I get her to take some candy, too. Lemondrop. Ain’t no need to shock her system with too much sweetness.

  All this time, guests keep arrivin. All dressed up, nice, bright colors, shiny fabrics, boots, big belts—not quite right, not exactly how they did it, back in the day, but—they lookin pretty good! I keep handin out the candy, hopin everyone get to enjoy themself.

  Grooves start jumpin. I can’t contain myself, never no good at that. Fore she know it, Miz Mealymouth holdin my candy bowl, and I am out on the dance floor actin like anybody’s fool. “Put a glide in your stride and a dip in your hip!” I sing over the music. Why they all just watchin me?