Richard Russo

by Ship of Fools

  The bishop, on the other hand, claimed the ship had always existed—a “Mystery” that was usually a large part of his conversion sermons, a large part of his basic theology. A large part of his nonsense.

  So we went on, searching for land, sailing from star to star through the unending universal night. Because of the vast distances involved, and the complexities and imprecision of the subspace jumps (which I do not pretend to understand), combined with the time spent under conventional propulsion, we had managed to visit only four stars in the last fourteen years. The first three, while orbited by planetary systems, offered up not a single world close to being habitable; certainly no signs of past human visits. The last star was a desolate solo without even a barren ball of rock in orbit. It was after the visit to the fourth star, as great a failure as was possible, that the captain’s power and influence began to seriously decline, and the calls for new leadership began in earnest.

  An astute and clever politician, Nikos had hung on to his position despite the pressures, but we both knew he could not last much longer. The ship’s original mission, whatever it was, had become irrelevant. What mattered now was the ship’s current mission, and its future leadership. Both were quite undecided.

  3

  THE Executive Council met in the dead of shipboard night. I was not an official member of the council, though I attended all council sessions, seated in a corner of the room; it was a perspective I actually preferred. Nikos sat at the head of the long, wooden table, and there were four seats on either side. His table keypad glowed faintly in front of him, but the wall screens were dark. To his left was Aiyana, his wife—a nonvoting member. To his right was the bishop.

  To Aiyana’s left was Rocco Costino, head of Maintenance; he was the bishop’s man, no matter what the circumstances. Beside him sat Susanna Hingen, the ship’s quartermaster, an organized but thoroughly unimaginative woman. Next came Margita Cardenas, the chief engineer—she was thoughtful and intelligent, and I had more respect for her than for anyone else on the council.

  On the opposite side of the table, to the bishop’s right, sat General Marshal Wainwright in full dress uniform emblazoned with medals and ribbons that were purely ceremonial—the man had never participated in an actual military action in his life. His eyes were slightly dilated, he licked his lips repeatedly, and his hands were afflicted with a discernible palsy; he was a Passion addict in the terminal stages. Next to the general was Michel Tournier, the appointed representative of the First Echelon, the ruling circle of the ship’s upper levels; he was a handsome but empty-headed man. Last was August Toller, the oldest man on the Argonos at nearly a hundred and forty standard years, and the ship’s official historian (though hardly anyone ever read his accounts); he walked with the aid of a wooden cane that he claimed had originally come from Earth.

  Maximilian, the chief steward, came in with a tray of coffee and tea and iced fruit nectars; he served the drinks, setting cups and glasses before each member of the council according to their usual requests. He left pots and pitchers in the middle of the table, and retreated.

  Nikos was about to speak when the bishop straightened, leaned forward, and said, “We will be making landfall soon, and I shall appoint the exploration team.”

  Nikos was so stunned he did not know how to respond. I was just as stunned, as was everyone else on the council. This was bad. The meeting had hardly begun, and already Nikos had lost control of it.

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Nikos finally managed to say.

  “We all know about the transmission,” the bishop said. “We know we’ve adjusted our course. We will be making landfall, and I just wanted to assume some of the burdens. You are a busy man, Captain. I want to help. It is quite simple.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Nikos said. “First, we don’t know what the environmental conditions will be like, and we won’t be making landfall on a world we can’t live on.”

  The bishop sighed. “My understanding is that initial readings are very favorable. Is my understanding inaccurate?”

  After a brief hesitation, Nikos replied. “No, your understanding is not inaccurate, but the data is very preliminary.” He paused, and I knew he was angry, wondering where the bishop was getting his information. “But even if environmental conditions are favorable, we have no idea what the social conditions are—who, if anyone, is living there, and what the situation is. We need to discuss the possibilities so we can be prepared for whatever we might find. Our last landfall, if we all remember, was a major disaster. I’m certain you remember, Bishop.”

  I could barely keep from smiling. That last landfall, nearly fifteen years ago, was the bishop’s disaster—he tried to convert people who did not want to be converted. We were driven away by angry mobs eager to rend us limb from limb. Several of us were killed before we made our escape. But the bishop waved his hand in a gesture of dismissal; he had never accepted, or admitted, that he was in any way responsible for what happened.

  “Nothing like that is likely to occur again. Those people were barbarians. I don’t think we need to worry about the ‘social’ circumstances. Certainly we will try to contact anyone who remains, and there will be specific plans, but those are logistical details which will be worked out over the coming days.” He paused, obviously for effect. “What we do not need at this point, after all these years of failure, is timidity. We need an assertive plan of action—an exploration team ready and waiting, and then landfall. I will take responsibility for it. It’s quite straightforward. If there is a problem, say so, and we can have a discussion and vote.”

  Time and tension stretched interminably. Nikos was livid, but he knew there wasn’t much he could say or do. Finally General Wainwright spoke.

  “Yes,” he said, his voice shaking almost as much as his hands. “That sounds like a perfectly reasonable approach. My soldiers will provide the necessary protection; yes, I will see that the arrangements are made. Yes, yes . . .” His voice trailed off as if he were speaking to himself, which he probably was.

  The bishop looked around the table, his gaze ending on me, in the corner of the room. “Any other comments? Objections?” No one replied. They all saw how it was going. Besides, it was what everyone expected would happen eventually, assuming there were no unexpected surprises, and no one saw any percentage in coming to Nikos’s defense. At least not yet. The bishop turned his attention to Nikos. “Captain?”

  Nikos shook his head. “No, I have nothing else to say for the moment.”

  “More at another time?” the bishop suggested.

  “Yes,” Nikos replied. “Another time. And much more.” But his words sounded hollow.

  “Good. One final thing,” the bishop said. “Two days from now is Holy Thursday. I am preparing a special sermon related to our forthcoming landfall. I expect you all to attend.” With that, Bishop Soldano rose to his feet and walked out, effectively ending the meeting on his own.

  The other council members remained seated, waiting for Nikos to formally close the meeting. Most would not look at him. Even Aiyana kept her gaze averted, and stared at the table. He closed the meeting, and we left.

  NIKOS, of course, was not happy with the way the council meeting went, and was especially unhappy with the way it ended.

  He and I and Aiyana went to his personal stateroom afterward, and when he asked Aiyana to leave, she glared at me with jealous hatred. She could not bear her regular exclusion from our private conferences, and I did not blame her—she had always wanted to consider herself an equal partner in everything, including the running of the Argonos. This had caused so much friction between Aiyana and Nikos that their marriage had become as shaky as his position on the ship.

  When she had gone, Nikos sat slumped on the wall couch and dimmed the stateroom lights. A dozen small orange globes near the ceiling provided the only illumination, casting moving shadows as they drifted randomly above us. I sat in the padded chair behind his desk.

  “Bishop Soldano
is preparing to move against you,” I said.

  “He has been for a while,” Nikos replied, as if that could minimize what was happening.

  “Yes, but now he can hardly restrain himself. He is no longer waiting for the opportunity, he is working to create the opportunity.”

  Nikos said nothing, just seemed to sink further into thought, or despair.

  For one of the few times I could recall, I had no idea what the captain was thinking. Was he completely aware of what was going on, planning strategy and tactics to deal with the situation? Or was he somehow oblivious to the real dangers? Or, even worse, was he aware but incapable of responding to the threats? Was I seeing the beginning of his end?

  Nikos did have strong tradition on his side, and the First Echelon would be extremely reluctant to break with that tradition, if only because doing so might threaten their own security. Though technically an elected position, in practice the captaincy was inherited, and had resided within the Costa-Malvini clan for several generations. Also, though it might not be true any longer, Nikos had been a good captain for many years, as had his father and his great-uncle before him.

  But the situation had deteriorated badly. Nikos was losing respect and authority, and tradition would not hold sway much longer. Nikos had no direct heir, his nephew was an idiot, and no one else within the clan displayed either the qualities or the desire to be captain, which meant the captaincy after Nikos would be open to outsiders for the first time in decades. The situation brought out ambition everywhere. Especially in the bishop.

  “The bishop wants to be captain,” I finally said.

  In response, Nikos chuckled.

  “I know that, Bartolomeo. At first, I thought he merely wanted to remove me and replace me with a figurehead that he could control. But no, you’re right, he wants to be captain himself.” He nodded. “The bishop is a fool.”

  That was the Captain Nikos Costa I had known all my life, and I felt a little better when I heard his words, his confidence.

  “I’m preparing for him,” Nikos said, looking at me with a sly grin.

  “How?” I asked.

  But Nikos shook his head. “My plans aren’t completely ready yet, Bartolomeo. The bishop will not move until after the landfall, when he will attempt to either take credit for any successes, or place blame for any failures. By then, I will be ready. I will let you know what I have in mind; you will give me your advice, and we will be ready for him.”

  I had worried about Nikos, but it was as if he needed to be faced with a real threat to stir him, to bring out his cunning and his political strengths. Now that I could see he was prepared, I felt confident again. I thought everything would be all right.

  4

  THERE was a dwarf who lived in the lower levels of the ship, and I visited him often. His name was Pär. He was less than a meter in height—ninety-two centimeters, to be precise—yet he was strong and powerful. Although he was relatively well-proportioned, his head was slightly too large for his body; his face was heavily wrinkled, and he had always looked like an old man, even when he was young.

  We distrusted one another, but this was tempered with mutual respect and admiration—he for my position of influence with the captain, and I for his intelligence and cunning.

  I went to see Pär before the bishop’s sermon. Dirt and grime and stink all increased the farther you descended through the ship. Poor maintenance and different lifestyles. The downsiders actually cooked most of their meals in their own cabins, adding huge quantities of spices and other enhancers to give flavor and texture to the processed food product which provided the bulk of their diet, and you could smell it; the air circulation systems functioned inefficiently down there. In many ways, the lower levels felt more real.

  Pär’s quarters consisted of two rooms filled with so much detritus I was always surprised it didn’t spill into the corridors whenever the door was opened. Stacks of shipping crates formed tables and counters which were covered by candles, music modules, hardcopy books and pamphlets, wood and stone carvings, drawing and painting supplies, strange bits of clothing and strings of beads, tiny glass figurines. The walls were almost completely concealed by pictures and drawings, photographs and framed strips of fabric. Some of this had been created by people aboard the ship, but much of it had been collected by earlier generations during landfalls on populated worlds.

  Pär served coffee when I arrived—the best coffee anywhere on the ship, and the only time I drank it black. Pär and two other downsiders cultivated a clandestine coffee plantation in one of the ag chambers, kept most of the beans for themselves, and bartered the rest. Another reason I visited frequently. He settled into the cushions of his small bed, and I sat on a thickly padded chair that folded out from the wall.

  A furry, elongated snout topped by two tiny black eyes poked out from the jumbled contents of one of the crates. It was Skate, one of a couple hundred stennets that now lived on the Argonos, making themselves pets of a sort, adopting people throughout the ship. Someone had brought two mated pairs aboard fourteen years ago, at our last landfall. They were long and thin, about half the size of cats, and were now more numerous.

  Skate sniffed once, opened her mouth to reveal small but extremely sharp teeth—she seemed to be smiling at me—then pulled back and disappeared.

  “She likes you,” Pär said. “Usually she won’t even make an appearance, but she always says hello when you come.”

  “I feel honored.” I drank some coffee and sank back in the chair.

  Pär sat up and looked intently at me. “There won’t be any survivors,” he said, referring to our new destination.

  I nodded. He was right. No one had said it aloud in the Executive Council session, but we all knew.

  “It doesn’t take brilliant analysis,” Pär went on. “A single, steady signal, no other electromagnetic emissions of any kind.” He shook his head, almost smiling. “There’s no one alive down there. Either they’ve all died, or there was never anyone there—maybe it’s some emitter left behind by a commercial exploration team that discovered nothing of value, or impossible conditions.” Then he shrugged as if the matter did not concern him much, but I knew him better than that. “What does Captain Nikos say?”

  Pär was the only one who called him that. To everyone else he was either Nikos, Captain Costa, or simply “the captain.”

  “Nothing much.” I was always reluctant to be too forthcoming with Pär. We traded information—the real key to our relationship—and I didn’t like to give away what might later turn out to be valuable. “He is unsure what effect our landfall will have on the ship’s dynamics.”

  “He is in trouble no matter what we find.” Pär said this with a nasty, almost gloating smile. “Abandoned colony, dead colony, even a surviving outpost or a full-fledged settlement with towns or cities spread out around the planet—though that, of course, is the least likely possibility. All of those would be bad, some worse than others. What your captain should hope for is that we find a planet completely uninhabitable for humans.”

  Pär was wrong about that. The captain’s position was so tenuous that he feared almost any change in the ship’s routine, even if it appeared aimless. The captain was wise to be afraid. But if something didn’t change soon, nothing would help him.

  “If the planet is habitable, however,” Pär resumed, “any number of possibilities present themselves.”

  “Like what?”

  “Colonization. For instance.”

  I just shook my head. Those in the upper levels, particularly in the First Echelon, had always resisted any moves in that direction, but I didn’t want to get into a discussion with him about it.

  “Why not?” Pär asked.

  “You know why not.”

  “That’s no answer. What are you people afraid of?”

  “Just drop it,” I told him.

  Pär stared at me with that ancient wrinkled face, his expression hard, and I was afraid he was going to push it. Then his fac
e sagged and he slowly shook his head.

  We talked some time longer, but about nothing else of import. I stayed long enough for another cup of coffee and a glass of his homemade distilled liquor. He called it whiskey, but it was far less successful than his coffee.

  As I was leaving, Pär said, “Things will be changing. Think about that. You and I can work together. We can be of use to one another.”

  I didn’t want to encourage him, however, so I left without giving him a response. I did not trust him. But then I did not trust anyone, not even the captain.

  BISHOP Soldano always managed to make major announcements on holy days. On that Holy Thursday, his voice booming from speakers mounted throughout the cathedral, he announced to an almost full congregation what most people already knew—that a signal had been detected. What was surprising, however, was that the bishop had given the planet a name.

  “If there are people on this planet who have already christened their world,” the bishop began, “then it shall be called by the name they have given it. If, however, they have not given it a name, or if there are no people there, it shall be called Antioch, after one of the great, early centers of Christian learning on Earth. It was in Antioch that many different peoples were brought the word of God. I will read from Acts:

  “Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to none except Jews. But there were some of them, men of Cyprus and Cyrene, who on coming to Antioch spoke to the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord waswith them, and a great number that believed turned to the Lord. News of this came to the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch. When he came and saw the grace of God, he was glad; and he exhorted them all to remain faithful to the Lord with steadfast purpose; for he was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith. And a large company was added to the Lord.”