Conscience had spent an hour trying to get into Deck 7. He’d tried bribery, giving direct orders, sneaking in. He’d even tried to find the armoury and batter his way in, but nothing worked. Every time he went up the stairs, there were Lucys stopping him and they had guard-dogs now too.
When he’d given up and returned to the bridge, he’d found panic. Limping onto the deck he’d been confronted by the crew in uproar over the sight on the view-screen. Instead of the image seen by Lucy’s eyes, the screen showed a vista of stars. Millions of glowing points of light like lost candles in the darkness were scattered across the screen.
Why is the screen showing stars? he asked the world in general. Miss Pride, any ideas?
The pointy eared Lucy raised one perfect eyebrow at her captain. “Logically, since this is a space ship, I conclude we are in space.”
We can’t be in space. We’re inside Lucy’s head. We are not in space. I need to talk to her. Miss Anticipation?
Anticipation had already pushed a button. A microphone popped out of the captain’s chair. It hovered, dangerously, at eye-level on a bent looking spring.
Thank you, Anticipation, he said, grabbing the microphone.
The clone nodded and smiled.
Lucy? Lucy, can you hear me? he said above the confused bridge’s racket.
There was no reply from Lucy.
Paper still clacked out of printers and clones gabbled in corners trying to decipher their meaning but, of the original Lucy, there was no sound.
Miss Pride, I can’t get through to her. What the flip is going on?
“It is possible, Captain, that we’ve been cut off.”
How? Why?
“How, I do not currently know. Why, would seem rather obvious—to isolate you and stop you helping her.”
Conscience didn’t like that idea at all. Lucy was probably in real danger; she could very well need his invaluable help, and something was preventing that from happening.
“However, there is another rather troubling question,” she continued. “If we were only in communication with Lucy and have been cut off from her, and the screen is showing stars, just where were we to start with? Where has this ship been all along if we were not inside Lucy’s brain?”
That, in the captain’s opinion, was a thought he could have done without.
We’ve got to get the screen and the microphone fixed, he said, more to himself than the crew.
“There’s something on the screen, sir,” chirped Anticipation.
Yes, I know: stars, he replied, with a dismissive wave.
“No, sir, there’s something else.” Anticipation pointed from her seat next to a clone named Remorse, who gently wept to herself. “There, in the corner. What do you make of it, sir?”
A small glowing dot had appeared among the stars, flashing from white to pale blue, to orange, to deep red, to yellow and back to white in sequence. It was tiny, hardly bigger than the stars around it. Conscience had difficulty picking it out from the myriad of other dots, but it was definitely there and definitely not like the other surrounding stars.
How did you see that, Anticipation? Actually, don’t answer that. You just guessed it would be there, right? Miss Pride, analysis of that object?
Pride stepped up to the view-screen and peered at the object like a heron searching above a pond. She turned, went back to her station and began to read some of the reams of paper read outs, which piled on her desk like snowdrifts.
“I don’t know what it is, sir,” she admitted, after a pause. “I’ve never seen anything like it and according to these read outs, that object is not there.”
It looks there to me, said Conscience, pointing at the screen.
The blob remained glowing in the corner. The size of a golf ball, it flickered like a rainbow cast into space. He could see it was not a regular shape but more of an amorphous blob—an anomaly.
Is that thing getting bigger? he asked.
“No, sir. It’s getting closer,” said Pride.
Closer? How big is it?
“I think it might be bigger than the ship.”
It can’t be bigger than the ship. The ship is just an interface with Lucy’s brain. How can something outside be bigger than it? Why is there an outside at all? Where is this ship?
“Sir? I’m so sorry, but there’s something coming through along with the visual transmission,” said Remorse.
What kind of something?
Remorse shook her head and then burst into floods of tears.
Pride prowled over to the console and pushed some buttons.
“There is a written transmission being interwoven with the visual data coming in from the sensors. I think the blob is trying to print something on the screen. Shall I let the transmission through?” asked Pride, raising one of her highly defined eyebrows.
Put it on the screen, he said, with a bit of trepidation.
Remorse sniffed. Tears rolled down her face leaving inky black mascara trails. “I’m sorry, sir. I’m so sorry. Why is it always my console that this happens at?”
The front view-screen snapped to pitch black, then a flashing cursor appeared. It moved across, leaving a track of letters behind it as a cancerous snail leaves an oozing slime trail.
CONSCIENCE, I AM COMING.
The letters burned across the screen like a fiery brand. They scorched themselves onto Conscience’s retinas as if he had stared into the sun.
Miss Pride, I order you to find out what is going on and who the flip is talking to me! he shouted at his first officer.
The viewer blacked out again then returned to the field of stars. The amorphous blob was still there. This time much larger. It was now the size of an ostrich egg. It pulsated, shimmered and steadily increased in size, glowing and growing as it sped through space. Its edges were not regular but jutted out in feelers or tentacles, which grabbed at the space around it. It was like a bacterium, a huge bacterium in space, a space germ and it was coming for him. There was only one option he could conceive—run away.
Get me engineering, he commanded, as Miss Anticipation finished typing in the sequence to open ship communications.
There was a loud whistle.
“Engineering here, Captain, Ingenuity speaking,” said the Scottish sounding Lucy.
Smarty, full reverse, now—get us out of here.
“Aye, sir,” said Ingenuity.
There was a soft lurch, and the ship began to retreat from its pursuer. On the screen, the blob slowed and then stopped its incessant growth as the ship accelerated away from it.
Well, I don’t know what it is, but at least we can out run it, said Conscience, a little relieved.
A GAME, IS IT? YOU WISH TO PLAY CAT AND MOUSE?
The words flashed on the viewer, like a mandate from God. Conscience felt very small. The screen returned to its field of stars. The blob stopped shrinking. It was the size of a billiard ball. It waxed and waned in colours like a suppurating boil, and then it began to grow again, catching up with the ship. The captain bellowed at the top of his voice.
Smarty, I need full reverse now!
“We’re already at full reverse,” came the highland reply from engineering.
More power, Miss Ingenuity, more power. We need to go faster!
“Aye, sir, I’ll give you all she’s got.”
The blob was still increasing in size, gaining.
YOU CAN RUN. BUT, NOT FAST ENOUGH.
Get that off the screen.
I AM COMING FOR YOU, CONSCIENCE.
I said, get that off the screen, he barked at Remorse.
“I’m trying, sir, but the transmission is too powerful. We let it in and now, I can’t get it out. It’s too tangled up with the sensor inputs,” said Remorse, the tears free flowing down her face. The mascara trails now were thick black highways.
Conscience could feel every moment—the tick of time, as he ran for his life aboard his metaphorical starship. He felt the drip of each grain of sand as it fell from the
future bowl of his hourglass to the past bowl. Conscience, the coward, confronted his own mortality. He didn’t want to be caught. His neat interface with Lucy had somehow become a trap, and the hunter was coming to collect the prey.
RUN RABBIT, RUN RABBIT, RUN, RUN, RUN, mocked the screen.
He collapsed onto his captain’s chair. His safe world was falling around him. He was a mouse caught between a cat’s paws. He was a rabbit caught in a snare. He was many things but all of them were pointless similes. Everything was going badly wrong, very quickly, which led him to the unpleasant conclusion that maybe he hadn’t created this world after all, but if he hadn’t, then who had?
CONSCIENCE?
Yes? he replied, his voice trembling with fear.
I AM GOING TO KILL YOU.
The statement stood simple and bold across the view-screen. This wasn’t just a trap; it was a gallows. The crew stared at the message then turned, as one, to face their captain. The fear was obvious on each identical face.
The screen turned back to stars. The blob now occupied over half of the viewer, its tentacles stretching out to catch the starship. Conscience sensed the terror level hit the roof as the crew saw the closeness of the thing. He looked down to see his hands shaking as if he were freezing to death.
I AM ALMOST HERE. SO CLOSE I CAN SMELL YOUR FEAR STINK.
Smarty! Conscience yelled to his engineering officer over the ships coms. Faster, Smarty, everything. Do you hear me? Give me everything!
“I can-ne give you no more, captain. There’s ne more to give. If we go any faster the ship’ll fly apart,” she said.
Then fly her apart, Miss Ingenuity! Fly her apart!
The crew was static on the bridge, and he read the fear and pity in their eyes as if it were his own eulogy.
Well, do something, he ordered his crew, in desperation.
“Shall we fire torpedoes?” asked a Lucy with a red bandana, a sweat stained vest and wild erratic eyes.
No, Miss Aggression, we’d have to slow down for that, and I don’t do violence. We might antagonise the thing further.
“Yes, sir,” said Aggression, then under her breath, “You big chicken. How are we going to annoy it any further? It already wants to kill you.”
He ignored the jibe. He would not be drawn into discussing the benefits of pacifism with a clone called Aggression.
Come on people, hustle. We need some ideas for how to deal with this thing.
“Blow it up!” Aggression yelled.
Another idea, a better one, please.
I THINK WE’VE HAD ENOUGH IDEAS FROM THE CREW.
There was a blinding flash as if a nuclear explosion had happened on the bridge, except it was cold—cold like a snow storm. Conscience blinked to refocus his eyes after the terrible bright light. Nothing seemed to have changed. The bridge was still there. His crew was all there. The blob was still there, so what had the flash done?
Miss Pride, what was that?
No answer came.
Miss Pride? Miss Pride? he repeated, worry stealing into his voice.
The Lucy clone remained unmoved. All the clones remained unmoved. As Conscience looked, he saw they weren’t even breathing. They were statues, frozen in the act of watching the screen.
His heart raced. What happened? Did the thing really have that much power? Could it have done this to his crew?
YES, CONSCIENCE, I DID THIS. AND NOW YOU ARE MINE. I AM VERY CLOSE.
He stared powerlessly around his bridge, searching in vain for an idea. Anything? Nothing? He could think of nothing at all? Just one simple idea was all he needed. Anything to give him hope. Something to stop the blob as it came ever closer. Still nothing came to mind. He pounded his impotent fist on the arm rest of his chair.
I AM AT YOUR DOOR.
The blob took up nearly the entire view-screen. Its flagella arms stretched out to embrace the starship’s hull. Conscience was trapped inside the ship with a crew of statues. He had a nasty feeling that this bacterium, or whatever it was, could open the starship like a tin can. He was utterly caught like a fish on a hook or a cat in a box. He was like Schrodinger’s cat, waiting for the box to be opened and fate to decide if he lived or died.
There was only one thing he could think to do. Run. But, run to where? He had to find somewhere to hide, and the Lucy clones would be of no help. They were all statues.
Wait a minute. They’re all statues. All of them, even the ones guarding Deck 7.
Deck 7 wasn’t on any of the schematics. If he’d had trouble seeing Deck 7, then maybe, just maybe, the bacterium would have trouble too. He could hide there, and he could explore it as well.
He knew in his bones that the answers to this whole situation, the riddle which Lucy couldn’t solve, who was Ravi, what was the nature of this reality, what the bacterium thing really was and where was this ship—would all be on Deck 7. It was a long shot, a fool’s last throw of the dice, a pacifist’s final hope.
He fell out of his swivel chair in the rush to get to the turbo lift. The whole ship lurched and shook as the bacterial flagella clasped the hulk. The bulkheads squealed, like garrotted pigs, as the thing squeezed the hull.
The ship pitched to one side, and Conscience bounced off the statuesque Miss Pride. He fell with a huff as three words, like the footsteps of doom, manifested on the screen.
I AM HERE.
Conscience sat upright on the deck as a strange, high-pitched, whirring sound came from a spot just in front of the view-screen. The air around that point sparkled, like a rainbow seen through a waterfall. Conscience couldn’t name all the colours shimmering in front of his eyes. He wasn’t even sure there were names for some of them. Then the light coalesced into the form of a man.
He picked himself up and ran through the maze of obelisk Lucy clones to the turbo lift. He pushed at the button in a frenzy and waited for the lift to arrive. The door bung-ssssshhhht-whiiiiped open and he leapt in, pressing himself to the lift’s rear, away from the shimmering form.
The thing finalised itself, and the man stepped through, as if from another room. He was tall, and dressed in the same yellow uniform as Conscience, but where Conscience’s was ill fitting and saggy, the stranger’s was sleek and stylish. He had a neat black goatee, a hawk nose and aggressive eyes. He sported the same Cuban heeled boots as Conscience but the stranger’s were spurred on the heels. The spurs jingled as he strode forward. At his hip was a holster, with an old Wild West style Colt Peacemaker slung in it. Conscience had no idea what to make of him. Was this the bacterium-thingy which had chased his ship?
The stranger smiled with all the style of a jaundice victim and winked.
“Hello, Conscience,” he said. “My name is Intuition and I am the new sheriff in town. This is my ship now.”
Conscience’s fingers flew to the buttons in the lift. He jabbed at them ineffectually as if repeated pushing would make the doors close faster.
Intuition drew the heavy Peacemaker, clearing the leather in one fluid motion. His left hand fanned down on the hammer, and the ancient gun barked twice. The first bullet spinged into the bulkhead by Conscience’s ear, the second was a fiery dart in his left shoulder. Pain lanced through him, cutting through his fear and reducing him to a ball on the floor. The doors hushed close, and the lift descended to Deck 6.
He lay on the floor, his right hand pressed hard on his left shoulder. Hot sticky blood flowed through his fingers. The pain rolled around him in waves with his heartbeat. He had never known anything could feel like this. The tiny bumps and bruises he had experienced left him unprepared for the total agony of injured flesh. His sinewy nerve fibres screamed at him as the burning hole in his shoulder throbbed and spat pain.
The bullet was lodged in there. He could feel it grinding against the bone, a little, lead chisel to gnaw at him, to splinter his bone and send shard fragments into his bloodstream. A wave of nausea overtook him and he dry-wretched onto the floor, spitting great gobs of mucus from the back of his throat. Swea
t beaded on his forehead and ran through his hair. He gritted his teeth and pushed himself up with only his legs, his back braced against the wall.
The lift halted and bung-ssssshhhht-whiiiiped open. Conscience stumbled out onto Deck 6. The stairs were not too far away down the gunmetal grey corridor, he remembered that. The ship swayed. It was going in and out of focus. The sweat ran freely from his forehead and dripped into his eyes. Conscience battled his way up the corridor, fighting off the urge to faint.
Lucy would not have fainted; that girl had guts, and that was what he needed now. She had faced the Ega and the thing in the woods, she had slapped a deity, she had carried on even when her throat had been cut. All Conscience had was a little bullet in his arm. That was all, just a little bullet. Lucy would not have given up and neither would he.
Conscience drew strength from the memory of Lucy’s iron will, and ploughed on along the corridor, bouncing off walls as he staggered forward. The staircase was not far away. Frozen clones, which guarded it: Shame, Despair and Neglect all stood as statues, with vicious guard-dogs by their sides. Miss Lust stood separately, her large spear planted firmly in the ground. At their feet was the gun, with which he had tried to force his way in the last time he’d been there. He bent down and picked it up. The gun might be useful. It might be his only chance of survival. He still hoped simply opening whatever was on Deck 7 would solve his problems, but if it didn’t, then he could very well be forced to kill this Intuition character.
He weighed the weapon in his hand. It felt wrong. It went against everything he believed in. He was a pacifist. He didn’t see why people needed to kill each other, and yet, here he was with a gun in his hand. He shook his head. No, he couldn’t keep it. That would be an empty gesture. Besides, Intuition would almost certainly shoot a person with a gun, but maybe he would take pity on an unarmed Conscience. He let the gun drop to the floor with a clang. That was a chance he would have to take. Conscience pushed forward through the clones as if they were walls in a maze and climbed the stairs to Deck 7. At the top of the stairs was a long, thin gantry way with red light shining through the holes in the grate-flooring. There were no side turnings of any kind, just a silver door at the far end.
Ravens and Writing Desks: A Metaphysical Fantasy Page 28
