The Galahad Legacy

by Dom Testa

  “Sure they can,” Roy said. “But you’re assigning desire to a machine. Computers, despite their power, are still tools.”

  Triana had not been entirely convinced. She adored Roc, but at the same time she harbored a tiny question mark that centered around his capacity, more than his ability. At the end of one discussion with Roy, she’d left him with this thought:

  “What if they get to the point that they begin to wonder why they want to be our tools? What if they…” She paused, searching for the right phrase. “What if they get a better offer?”

  Now, almost two years later, she sat and stared at Roc’s glowing sensor. He had never intentionally sidestepped a question, unless it was to lob a sarcastic jab. But there was no trace of humor, nor sarcasm, in Roc’s terse reply to her question today.

  Is there something you specifically want to know?

  One section of her mind fired a flare, a warning that something wasn’t right here. Just who was Roc choosing to serve now? Had he investigated the Dollovit at his dizzying pace, and come to the conclusion that they, not frail humans, were a species he could truly work with? That he could truly learn from?

  Her mind raged. It was also possible that she’d completely misread the computer’s response. It was possible that her own stress levels were coming into play, that she was allowing the fear of their predicament to warp her judgment. Was she suddenly unable to trust anyone?

  Triana slowly sat back in her chair and rested one hand on her desk. “Yes, I can think of a specific question. What do they intend to do with us if we follow Torrec back to his home star system?”

  “I believe they plan to study you, and allow you to study them, along with the myriad of other species they’ve discovered across the vastness of space and the eons of time.”

  “And how do you feel about that?” Triana asked.

  Roc seemed to think about his answer. “There could be much to learn.”

  A safe answer. She decided to follow up with a pointed question: “Is it possible, Roc, that you’ve been somehow influenced—or maybe even changed—by Torrec? And would you even know?”

  Roc didn’t hesitate: “Yes, it’s possible. Just as it’s possible, Triana, that you have been changed during your time away. Would you know?”

  The earlier jolt of discomfort evaporated and was replaced with panic. It began as a trickle, but quickly grew into a storm. In an instant, Triana questioned her own identity. Roc was entirely correct.

  Was she the same Triana who had plunged through the jagged rip in space?

  10

  By late afternoon Galahad approached the croy. Although it lacked the blinding speed of the vultures, the croy still maneuvered swiftly across the gulf of space, putting itself in position should Triana decide to rendezvous.

  At the moment Triana was doing her best to blot out the disturbing image that Roc had suggested. Her plan to interrogate the computer, to probe into his motivation and loyalties, had backfired, causing her to suddenly question her own identity. She’d eventually prescribed work to distract her mind from what suddenly seemed like a self-destruct mission. She was grateful for the croy’s approach.

  Gap leaned over his workstation in the Control Room, punching in calculations and monitoring the croy’s progress. He ran a scan on the sixteen pod reproductions, but for now their status was secondary.

  Triana stood beside Gap, alternating her attention from the data on his screen to the image on the room’s immense vidscreen. Through extreme magnification she was able to spot the shimmering glow of the croy gliding on its intercept course. She felt her pulse quicken as the memory of her first encounter with a croy crossed her mind. The occupant had turned out to be Torrec, who floated in his own environmentally controlled tank in Sick House and who now followed the operation in progress.

  It still was hard to believe everything that had occurred in such a quick flash of time. Triana realized that the flood of bizarre experiences had numbed her, to the point where she had to step back to fully appreciate that an alien species’ ambassador was now on her ship, providing commentary and coaching on docking with an otherworldly device. But it was hard for Triana to focus on any suspicions she might have of Torrec now that she struggled to trust herself.

  Gap stood up and stretched his neck muscles, twisting his head from one side to the other. “Ugh,” he said. “Getting cramped bending over this thing.”

  He pointed to the latest figures on his screen. “It’s coming into our neighborhood pretty quickly now. I’d ask if we’re gonna pick it up, but I’m wondering how we’d do that. It’s not like a pod, which can just touch down in the Spider bay. How does a croy land? I mean … it’s like a blob.”

  Her first instinct was to consult Roc, but Triana stopped before uttering a word. The real expert on croys was just down the hall.

  “Torrec,” she said into the communication speaker at Gap’s workstation. “Since it’s obvious that this croy is targeting our ship, I need to ask if there’s another Dollovit inside.”

  The voice of the jellyfish came through the speaker with its odd, metallic tone. “No, that would be unnecessary. I am able to represent our kind without assistance.”

  Triana and Gap exchanged a surprised look. Both, it seemed, had expected the croy to contain another jellyfish.

  “Then what’s inside?” Triana asked.

  “We reproduced the pods, as you call them, in order to bolster the missing elements of your spacecraft. This croy holds something else entirely, but I am confident that you will find it helpful as well. It replaces another missing part of your spacecraft, and is a gift from the Dollovit to the people of Earth.”

  “A gift?” Gap said.

  “A missing part of the spacecraft?” Triana said, under her breath. “What else are we missing besides the Spiders?” She looked back at the large vidscreen. The croy throbbed as it moved, looking exactly the way Triana had first described it: like an amoeba.

  “Okay,” she said into the speaker. “Um … thank you.” She looked at Gap and shrugged, then addressed Torrec again. “How would you recommend that we accept this gift? Is the croy capable of supporting itself inside our ship?”

  “I recommend a transfer outside your ship,” Torrec said. “One of your Spiders would be best. The croy is capable of docking with this smaller craft, and the contents can be successfully conveyed through the Spider’s hatch. A suitable connection with the croy will create an airtight seal.”

  Gap nodded. “I can see that. They’re flexible and pliant. It would be like a blob of Silly Putty stuck against the outside of the hatch. Uh, no offense, Torrec.”

  “I am not familiar with the substance known as Silly Putty, but there is no offense,” the jellyfish said. “Such a transfer can take place in approximately two hours. I will be happy to coordinate the rendezvous with your computer.”

  Triana bit her lip. Torrec and Roc, working in symphony. For all she knew, they were already working more closely together than she might like. But for now she could think of no rational reason to object to their partnership.

  “Okay,” she said. “Gap, will you stay here and arrange everything? I’ll check back with you in about an hour.”

  “Sure thing,” he said. “Oh, and I’m officially volunteering to drive the Spider for the pickup.”

  Triana smiled at him. “I wouldn’t consider anyone else. You and Mira seemed to make a good team last time out. Give her a call and tell her to be ready to go.”

  * * *

  Lita finished cleaning the jagged cut on Mitchell O’Connor’s wrist and dabbed it with a mild disinfectant. He instinctively jerked his hand back when the sharp sting set in, then grinned and relaxed.

  “I thought doctors warned you when it was gonna hurt,” he said.

  “No, not always,” Lita said, studying the wound. “Sometimes the warning only makes you think it’s worse than it is. How in the world did you do this loading a cart in the Farms? I thought the loading was the easy part.”
>
  “It is unless you’re not paying attention to the shovel that’s lying in the cart.”

  Lita stretched a thin strip of gauze over the wrist and taped it down. “Beat it, O’Connor. And stop being so clumsy.”

  He hopped off the examining table and gave her a mock salute. “Aye aye, Cap’n. And now, with your leave, I’ll return to the salt mines.”

  Lita returned the salute with her own grin, then walked into the main office. Manu sat at his desk, tapping data entry on his keyboard. He looked up as she walked past.

  “I hear we’re about to take a wild ride.”

  “Yeah,” she said, sitting down at her own desk. “Like Alice, down the rabbit hole.”

  The thought had simply popped into her head as she said it, but now she considered how appropriate the comparison really was. Like the fictional blond girl, Galahad was about to experience the ultimate adventure, spinning into its own version of Wonderland. What awaited them on the other side?

  Before making her digital notes on Mitchell’s injury, she looked across at Manu’s desk. He’d gone back to work, his head down, his fingers flying across the keys. Lita stared at the amulet that hung on a frail chain from the edge of his monitor.

  He’d described it to Lita as a special charm from his grandfather, who was raised in Egypt and believed that the small stone carried mystical powers from the ancient pharaohs. Powers that could ward off evil.

  Lita struggled with the idea. The concept of a mere stone having the power to repel evil forces was not something that fit with her scientific beliefs. And yet it brought Manu—and his family—a measure of comfort. That in itself, she knew, was a power that humans might never fully be able to understand.

  It represented, in Lita’s mind, the balance of faith and fate. Faith in a symbol that ultimately contributed to fate; perhaps even manipulated that fate.

  She wondered why this distinction between faith and fate was so important to her recently. Why now? Why did she feel that she had to make sense of what could never be explained? What was driving this obsession?

  A combination of things, perhaps: her experiences, both good and bad, during her brief history as a medical provider; her fascination with Bon’s search for Alexa, and his bizarre connection with the Cassini; a childhood spent watching one parent’s devout religious faith as it mixed with the other parent’s steadfast belief in science; and—maybe the most likely—the thread of fear, mixed with curiosity, that the Galahad mission itself brought out of her. How much of that was reliant upon faith, and how much was already written?

  Her trance was broken by Manu. “I heard you sent Merit home. Was that because he was ready to go, or because you were tired of having him around?”

  Lita couldn’t help but laugh. “Manu, I’m a professional. I would never let my personal feelings about a patient affect my treatment. He was ready to be discharged.” Then she winked at him and added in a soft voice: “But yes, I was ready to cleanse the toxic air out of the Clinic, too.”

  Manu kept his head down, but Lita could see him smiling as he went about his work. She took one more quick glance at the amulet, then shifted her energies to the task at hand.

  * * *

  Gap heard the tone from his door. Opening it he looked into the smiling face of Channy, clutching a purring mass of orange and black fur over her shoulder.

  “Iris and I came to wish you luck,” she said, stepping into his room and dropping the cat to the floor. “I hear you’re going out to pick up a blob.”

  “Yeah, or whatever’s in the croy. Torrec called it a gift, something the ship is missing.”

  “What are we missing?”

  “Boy, I don’t know,” Gap said. “I’ve racked my brain, and all I can come up with is something that the Dollovit feel is missing from the Storage Sections.”

  Channy’s eyes grew wide. “You think they can tell what’s inside them?”

  “Who knows? I still don’t understand how the vultures are able to duplicate the things they touch, or how they scan the interior of a pod or our ship. But we’ll know in about an hour.”

  He knelt down and rubbed Iris’s belly as she twisted onto her back and stretched. Her tail flicked with delight and a touch of mischief.

  “I’m glad you stopped by,” Gap said. “I feel like I haven’t caught up with you in forever. What’s new in your world?”

  “Oh, let’s see. A few more people have signed up for dance class, we’re holding off work on the running track in the domes for now, and we’re about to drive the bus through a gaping hole in the universe. Other than that, not much.”

  Gap laughed. “Yeah, I guess if we’re gonna drive the bus through that hole you might as well wait on the running track, right?” He stood up and gave her a curious look. “This is completely out of left field, I know, but any news with Taresh? You guys seemed to be getting pretty close, and now…” He shrugged. “Just wondering.”

  Channy squirmed, uncomfortable with the lens being turned upon her love life. “We’ve decided to try just being friends. It’s better that way.”

  “Right,” Gap said with a nod of support, even though he wondered how well that arrangement would really work out. “Listen, when you see him tell him I said hi. Sorry, but I gotta run. Gotta meet Mira and get suited up.”

  “Good luck.” Channy scooped up Iris and draped her over one shoulder. “Don’t pick up any strangers out there, okay?”

  * * *

  The link once inflicted pain so intense that he literally fell to his knees, but now Bon stood in the private clearing in the dome, connected to the Cassini, and felt strong. An observer would have seen him trembling, but only slightly. They might have seen a thin band of perspiration near the hairline, and maybe have noticed that his teeth were clenched. Had he opened his eyes, they wouldn’t have missed the startling orange glow. It was, as Lita had once wryly observed, the indicator light that Bon was “switched on.”

  A breeze circulated the reconditioned air throughout the ship’s Farms and created a rustling sound in the crops that surrounded Bon, a pleasant background noise that he couldn’t hear. The light wind also stirred the shaggy mop of hair that hung along the side of his face and across his neck, but he couldn’t feel it. His attention was focused somewhere outside his body, outside the ship, on a location that he couldn’t begin to understand, or even to describe.

  But he’d learned to defy the power of the alien entity. He’d learned to deflect the overwhelming force of their staggering mental powers, as if he’d somehow trained himself to be mentally aerodynamic. The brunt of the Cassini’s will now slipped past as Bon learned to catch a ride on the streams that were relevant.

  His first attempts at contact had been with one purpose in mind: save the ship from destruction, and learn to maneuver through the treacherous minefield of the Kuiper Belt. But the more he aligned his brain with them, the more he realized that there was knowledge to be gained. From the beginning it had been in a code that he felt he’d never understand, a thought-language that he’d never grasp.

  Eventually there were snippets that, although still indecipherable, became familiar. He was learning. And with each step he was able to reach further into that language. By the time his brain was modified and the translator became unnecessary, he was learning exponentially.

  His focus shifted, from preserving the safety of the ship and crew, to understanding the secret powers that dwelled beneath the surface of the universe. The death of Alexa Wellington—so shocking, so tragic, so senseless—spurred Bon to confront the Cassini and their accumulated billion years of wisdom. Was this all there was? Even ignoring the random impact of an individual life, what did an intelligent species hope to gain from its millions of years of struggle, its fight to overcome the odds, its desperate crawl from the muck of creation to the magnificent leap to the stars? If death brought down a black curtain, why push on? Why?

  Bon’s father had been a fatalist. Whatever was going to happen, in his opinion, was always goi
ng to happen. He lived, he worked the soil, all as it was meant to be. He never considered asking a question that began with “What if?” He never wondered what waited around the corner; it would always be there, always had to be there, and no change could be engineered by man.

  This troubled Bon. He respected his father, even inherited his dogged determination and impatience with the irresponsible. But inside, he couldn’t accept his father’s view of the universe. He couldn’t accept that things were predestined and impervious to change. To do so meant that his life was meaningless, his work and his contributions merely actions written long ago by a cosmic playwright who cared nothing for the characters in his drama.

  And it meant that death was the final chapter. Bon rejected the idea; if life had to have more meaning, death must be just as significant. He was determined to find out what happened in life’s epilogue.

  The muscles in his forearms convulsed as he stood in the clearing and squeezed his hands into fists. There was something here, now.

  Alexa. The shrouded coffin covered with a handful of colorful blooms. The bay door opening, ejecting its human payload, closing. The infinite starscape swallowing the offering without acknowledgment.

  Bon’s eyes opened a fraction of an inch, then clamped shut again. There was something here. There was …

  He fell back a step, staggering, catching himself before losing his balance and falling to the ground. His eyes opened again, a fierce ice blue. His breath came in gulps, and his fingernails had carved angry half-moons into the palms of his hands. His mind furiously worked at the fragments picked up from the Cassini, processing, analyzing, ordering. If it meant what he thought it meant …

  Dirt flew from the heels of his feet as he raced out of the clearing and down the path. At a junction with the dome’s primary walkway he avoided colliding with workers reloading a cart that had spilled its contents, then made his way to the lift. In another minute he pushed his way past crew members gathered on Galahad’s lower level, the majority of whom were finishing a workout in the gym. The Spider bay control room was brightly lit, and he could see Triana’s dark hair through the glass.