“Whoa!” said Rygel, pulling back on his controls and backing up. “My goodness, I thought you were the princess of peace.”
“I believe it is Aeryn who’s supposed to keep the peace,” said Zhaan. “My race, like all races, has turbulent episodes in its past. Survival, unfortunately, seems to demand such things. Of course lately, now that I have met so many impolite creatures, I’m afraid I occasionally have aggressive feelings myself.”
“You accuse me of lack of etiquette?” exclaimed Rygel. “I am a walking encyclopedia of etiquette!”
“Which volume contains the rules for slapping meditating people?” enquired Zhaan politely.
“Actually there are some directives in the Mystic Manners section…” mused Rygel. “No! You confuse me. I had to slap you awake. You were going into some sort of seizure.”
“Seizure?” She looked down at herself: she looked normal, felt clear-headed, strong, centred.
“Yes. Normally you’re quite still when you meditate, Zhaan, but you were twitching and your eyes were rolling back and you were saying something about ‘the Orb of All.’”
“The ‘Orb of All?’” replied Zhaan. “What is this ‘Orb of All?’”
Rygel held his arms up in exasperation and looked to the cluster of DRDs who’d followed him to the bridge. “That’s what I want to know.” He sighed melodramatically. “Well, at least you’re not going to die. And at least I didn’t have to administer artificial respiratory resuscitation.” Rygel worked his mouth around with dramatic contempt. “Far too much like osculation. Liable to get blue all over me!”
“It might do you some good.” She leaned over and touched the high ridges of his brows, which were expressively tufted with fine sprouts of hair. Rygel’s eyes went wide and he tried to get away, but Zhaan had him. With just the right touch of her fingertip she stroked the ornery mound of trouble, indignity and pompousness, and kept on probing into the little fellow, hoping to touch some glow of warmth and sweetness. The amount she found was just enough, she reflected, to make him appealing—although sometimes it was a close call.
“Oooooh … ahhh … no … no … oh, that’s nice!” said Rygel, making contented noises. His rubbery face worked around with reluctant pleasure.
“I didn’t know your race osculated, Rygel,” said Zhaan softly, purring like a tiger considering a pounce. “That must be a dreadful sight. I hope you close the doors and clean up afterwards.”
Peevishness flared in the deposed ruler’s big eyes and he jerked his head away from her hand. “I am the ruler of billions who save the soil I pass over as a relic of my glorious—”
“Speaking of loyal subjects, Rygel, what have you done to the DRDs for them to seem so taken with you? Usually they seem quite happy to scurry around and monitor Moya’s interior condition. Have you been osculating with them?”
Rygel chortled. “Kissing them? Oh, heavens no!” He pulled out a contraption from his pocket, always a veritable bag of tricks. “I’ve just befriended them, that’s all, just been trying to communicate with them. Sometimes people don’t give little beings the reverence that’s due them.” He looked at her pointedly. “While the others are off playing brave explorers, I have been getting better acquainted with our small friends. You need all the friends you can get, especially if you might be losing three of them.”
Zhaan drew her head back in indignation. “Don’t say such a thing, Rygel. I believe John, Aeryn and D’Argo can handle themselves, and you have to give them credit for daring to go where others might not.”
“Fiddlestickoids! Stay with what’s right here, I say. And that’s exactly what I’m doing. Which is to say, learning the means of electrical vibrational ethernet pulse-feedback communication!”
“My goodness,” said Zhaan. “Do you mean comm units? So that’s how you’re communicating with them? But the important point is: what are the DRDs saying to you?”
“I’m not terribly sure, really. Although they seem to be quite responsive. Look here—” He pulled out a device that could be pasted over the ear like skin, connected to a matrix of wires. Zhaan could see them sparkling like nano-stars. “I found this in one of the workshops and started puttering with it. The DRDs responded immediately. They started to follow me and make encouraging noises.”
“Click, click … beep … click?” Zhaan bent her head in gentle enquiry. “That’s encouraging?”
“Yes. I believe that they have discerned me for the royalty I am. There might be some kind of biomagnetogenetic overlay tech here that is similar to what was used by technicians in one of the ancient civilizations on my world. A civilization that might have had early contact with Leviathans. And our rule is: never throw away a good piece of technology.”
“An early civilization?”
“Which one, of course, I haven’t a clue,” continued Rygel. He looked down with fondness at the DRDs. “But these creatures detect my sovereignty, surely. We just haven’t got our codes straight yet.” He harumphed thoughtfully and regarded the beetle-like things. “These fellows can do much more than repair things. I’m not yet sure what they’re capable of.” Rygel stuck his finger up. “But I shall find out. The first thing I shall teach them is to feed me!”
“I should think you do that well enough on your own. And Rygel, have you actually asked Pilot to check with Moya on this?”
“Peripherally,” said Rygel, sniffing. “She allows our work to proceed. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”
Abruptly the room shook. A thunderous boom echoed through the ship. Rygel stepped back and tripped over one of the DRDs, then fell onto his rump, his little feet kicking. The DRDs scurried around, bumping into each other and into the walls. Zhaan retained her balance only by grabbing hold of the nearest control grid. “Pilot,” she cried, “what is happening?”
The Pilot holograph flickered into view.
“Moya!” said Pilot. “Moya is in great pain!”
CHAPTER 5
“The Mary Celeste?” asked D’Argo, his voice rumbling deep within his massive chest. “Is this some Earth legend?”
They stood in the chamber, next to the dining table, its burden of food still steaming and fragrant. What Crichton found particularly unnerving about it all was that everything looked so Earth-like. The blue-and-white china, the candelabras with their curving brass branches, the pattern on the silver handles of the knives: it was all so familiar it was almost comforting—and alarming. Chandeliers hung from the ceiling, resplendent with teardrop crystals. The goblets were crystal as well, sparkling in the lambency from above. The silver shone bright, and the food—he could see the food was his favorite.
“Some sort of composite flesh-like substance,” said D’Argo, poking at a slab of food with his knife.
“Meatloaf,” said Crichton.
“And they had this meatloaf in the legend of the Mary Celeste?”
“Not that I know of,” said Crichton, smiling despite his growing feelings of apprehension. He could feel the nape of his neck tingling with a retro déja-vu frisson. “And it’s not a legend—it really happened.” As he talked, he began to walk around the room, scrutinizing every detail: the panelling, the table, the settings, the ceiling with its glittering chandeliers.
“When I was a kid,” said Crichton, leaning over to look under the table, “I was obsessed with the sea.” There was nothing under the table except the legs and seats of the chairs. He fingered the hem of the tablecloth. “I loved those stories of sailing into the unknown, and the most unknown mystery of them all was the fate of the Mary Celeste. She was an American brigantine of the nineteenth century—”
“A sentient ship, then,” said D’Argo.
“No, no, we just call ships ‘she’—well, for the heck of it, I guess. Anyway, she left port on the seventh of November, 1872. She was carrying a cargo of denatured alcohol. Did I say she was a middle-sized freighter with sailpower? The arrangement of the sails is complicated—”
“You were very interested in all the detai
ls of the Mary Celeste,” summarized Aeryn. Her finger was still on the trigger and her expression was grimmer than usual. “I think you’ve made that point.”
Crichton was running his hands over the curved back of one of the chairs. He tapped it. It felt real, sounded real.
“It’s a mystery in Earth history. Weeks after it left port, the Mary Celeste was discovered just as we’ve found this ship: completely deserted, with a table set, its crew and passengers mysteriously gone. There were many inquiries. No one has ever been able to figure out what happened. I spent hours working out different scenarios when I was a kid. Amazing how it all comes back to me as if it were yesterday. The past just swallows you up like that sometimes.”
D’Argo pulled out one of the chairs and began to examine the upholstered seat. It had a design of a spray of flowers on a green background. He ran a thick finger over the surface, then prodded it.
“It may be that none of the crew on that ship ever returned,” he said, “but somehow I doubt that we will be so lucky.”
Aeryn was still standing by the door, keeping watch on the passageway with her pulse pistol held in front of her. “So you were fascinated with the Mary Celeste,” she prompted.
“Totally,” said Crichton. He picked up a knife and hefted it: it was heavy, like silver, and gleaming. “I had a model of it, a perfect replica of the real thing. Well, maybe not perfect—the topsails were inaccurate. But then my aptitude for astrophysics went off the chart and suddenly I was a scientist. And since there weren’t too many mysteries left on the seas, it was time for the stars.”
D’Argo leaned over to smell the food. “We’ve been here quite a while,” he said, “but the food is still steaming. Don’t things cool down on this ship?”
Crichton picked up one of the empty side plates. It was white with a blue weeping willow tree in the centre. He turned it over. On the underside was an inscription in small faint blue letters. He raised his eyebrows.
“Hey, D’Argo,” he said. “Do Luxan plates have lettering on the bottom? Is that a common thing in this part of the universe?”
D’Argo took the plate from him, tilting it to the light to get a better view. “Luxans don’t have plates like this,” he said. He turned it over. “There’s a drawing of a growth on the front.”
“That’s a weeping willow.”
“A sentient growth. In an unhappy mood.”
“No, it’s—never mind. Do you recognize those letters?”
They scrutinized the lettering on the plate. It scarcely looked like lettering at all, more like the jumble of marks on the smallest row of the optician’s chart. His grandmother’s plates had had some kind of maker’s mark on the back—now what had it said? Who would have thought, the last time he had been helping wash dishes in his grandmother’s kitchen, that the next time he would be studying the backs of plates would be in the starry back elbow of beyond?
“Did your model of the Mary Celeste resemble this dining room at all?” asked Aeryn.
Crichton set the plate down. “It was just a tiny model; you couldn’t see the inside. I have to say that this is the way I imagined it. But of course, no one knows what the real dining room of the Mary Celeste looked like.”
“No photographs?”
“No, photography had hardly been invented.” At this Aeryn smiled with wry amusement. “Of course, people drew pictures, but they made up all the details, just as I did.” Crichton looked around the room with pleasure, despite his worries. He must have read half a dozen books about the Mary Celeste, back when he had first realized the world held such wonderful enigmas. He’d never thought he’d be in on something so similar himself. “You’ve got to admit it’s a heck of a mystery,” he said.
Aeryn gritted her teeth. “There are no mysteries. There are only questions that have not yet been answered.”
“And this place is full of them,” said D’Argo. He had traced his way most of the way around the room, examining the panelling from floor to ceiling. Crichton joined him, feeling the panel near the door. “The old mansions used to have—” he began. “Hey, here’s something.” His fingers had found a vertical seam. Working carefully, he was able to slip his fingernails in it. To his extreme surprise, the side of the wall gave way under only a little pressure. Crichton pulled on the panel. A door-sized piece of the wall moved back.
“What the heck?” he said.
The panel swung away from the wall, revealing a control array of the biomechanoid variety that composed Moya. Here were cantilevered levels of varicolored squibs and fleshy things that looked like mushrooms and ragged fungi. Embedded in the mesh were nodes and toggle, switches, while on one screen profoundly alien letters and schematics blinked and snapped with sparks all the shades of the spectrum. There was the odor of burnt oil here, in marked contrast to the savory scents from the food on the table.
“Controls?” Crichton wondered.
“Yes, but to what?” rejoined Aeryn.
“It looks a little like Moya’s controls, doesn’t it?” Crichton observed. “Can we operate these?”
D’Argo moved forward to study the panel more closely. “There are all manner of crossovers between the biological and the technical. I must say, this is a particularly odd one. It looks to have a full sensor array. Here, let’s all hold our hands spread over the top and let it have a good reading.”
They all held out their hands. The biomechanoid contraption wavered and blinked sharply, then started to expand and contract, expand and contract, as though it were breathing.
Suddenly eyes opened. Two large brown eyes with brown pupils and bloodshot whites.
“More sensory apparatus all the time, it would seem,” said Aeryn. “It is developing as we watch it. Or as it watches us.”
The eyes regarded each of them, one by one. When they fell upon Crichton, for a split second he felt as though they were peering way deep down into his soul, sifting and sieving and weighing the fragments of self and reality.
Then, below the staring eyes, a mouth opened up: thin white lips parting to reveal long fangs. It exuded a rancid smell of charnel. A puff of smoke and wisp of fire breathed up and a tongue began slowly lolling out. This time they all stepped well back, fingering their weapons.
Covered with barbed polyps, the tongue was red and dripping with fluid. It slowly undulated out. And out. And out. Two prehensile barbs reached toward them, probing. Then the tongue withdrew, slurped and slapped and made the motions of chewing.
Crichton, backed up against the wall, grimaced. “What is it?” he said. “I swear I had a nightmare like this once.”
“I may have nightmares like this for the rest of my life,” said Aeryn, her face a grimace of disgust. “D’Argo, do you know what this is? What does this disgusting thing want with us?”
D’Argo was standing at some distance from the face, regarding its staring eyes warily. “I have no experience of such a thing.”
The eyes closed.
Crichton stepped forward once more and addressed the peculiar alien face. “Hey!” he said. “What’s going on? Are you in command here? You’ve got our ship and we need it back!”
He took another cautious step forward and slipped in some of the mucus that had dripped from the flowing tongue. He felt his hands coming down on the polyps, into the skin—and slipping through.
He tried to pull back, but something gripped him forcefully from the other side. The lights went dim. Crichton found himself up against the panel—and then face to face with those large alien eyes again.
“Crichton!” cried Aeryn. Crichton could feel her grabbing him—but the force on the other side was grabbing him harder.
And it began to pull.
“Help!” he cried. “Something’s got me—it’s pulling—”
He saw the mouth open again, morphing larger and larger, wider and wider, pulling him free of Aeryn’s grip, then in and through and into gastric darkness.
* * *
Pilot’s voice was strained and had a
touch of panic.
“… great pain … great threat! Moya is being engulfed!”
Zhaan’s heart leaped to her throat. She looked at the screens with horror.
“Good Lord, this alien ship is an uncivilized thing!” said Rygel. He raised a hand and addressed the air in the direction of the alien ship. “Stop it! Stop it, I say!” he commanded, his voice quavering slightly.
The tractor beam was slowly phasing off, roiling around the large alien ship in wavelets of dying energy. Now, from the side of the vessel, holes had irised open and tentacle-like appendages had thrust out, wrapping around Moya like a giant squid seizing a submarine.
Moya started to shake.
“Moya is applying full-parameter integrity defenses, but synapses are shorting out!” Pilot’s voice, usually calm, betrayed his distress. “I feel the pain myself … it is horrible!”
“Pilot, is there a hull breach?” said Zhaan anxiously. Pilot was working the controls frantically, his yellow eyes wide with worry. Zhaan thumbed the comm unit. “John, Aeryn, D’Argo! Come in! Are you there? John! Do you read?” The comm unit gave forth only silence.
“I knew it!” said Rygel. “They’ve been squished to death by Things on the alien ship! And now we’re about to have a hull breach! Our air will escape! We’ll die!” He swivelled to the DRDs. “Vassals! Go forth! Do something!”
The DRDs turned, their eyestalks agitated. They circled around for a brief moment, then accelerated and swarmed away.
Zhaan felt the pain in Moya in a surge of empathy.
“Oh,” said Pilot, in a suddenly quiet voice. “Oh my. Yessssss…”
“What!” said Zhaan. “What’s going on?”
Rygel covered his head with his hands. “We’re gone. This is it. It’s your fault, Zhaan. You’ve failed us! Oh, come for me, noble ancestors. I shall take my throne in the afterlife. I—”
“Moya is much better,” said Pilot, back to his normal voice.
“Better?” said Zhaan, more than a bit taken aback. “There isn’t a hull breach, then? Moya’s not being squeezed any more?”
Ship of Ghosts Page 6
