Richard Russo

by Ship of Fools

  As almost always happened in that room, I became disoriented once the canopy had fully retracted. I felt unmoored, adrift in a glass bubble.

  Nikos raised a hand and pointed out through the clear steelglass. “There,” he said.

  I followed the direction of his trembling finger, studied the unending night. Nearly lost in all the stars was a tiny smudge of bluish light against a small dark occlusion.

  “What is it?”

  Nikos handed one of the glasses to me, which I took. He filled it along with his own, then drank most of his down at once, eyes clamped tightly shut. He shuddered, then opened his eyes and stared at the bluish light.

  “An alien starship,” he said.

  Something’s been found, Pär’s note had said. Oh, yes, something had been found. I stared at the azure light, the dark area within and around it. An alien starship.

  “How do we know it’s alien?” I asked. “Are we communicating with them?”

  Nikos shook his head. “There’s no one there. It’s a dead ship. Abandoned or deserted, who knows?” He drank again, refilled his glass. “Maybe just empty and dead because everyone aboard has perished. We haven’t found any bodies yet.”

  “How do we know it’s alien?” I asked again.

  “Because there’s not a damn thing recognizably human on that ship, inside or out.”

  “So we’ve been inside.”

  “Yes. We’ve explored the smallest piece of the thing.” He turned to look at me. “That ship is huge, Bartolomeo. A lot bigger than the Argonos.”

  “How far are we from it?” It seemed so small.

  “About three thousand kilometers. I wasn’t going to bring the Argonos any closer until we had a better idea what it was. And now that we do, I still don’t want to.” He turned his attention back to the alien vessel. “We picked it up three months ago. Spent a week on our approach and deceleration, another week of observation—scanning, listening, probing. No response, so signs of life.”

  Nikos worked the console, and the monitor screen rose from the floor, three meters square and already coming to life. A black shape flickered into focus, somewhat ovoid, and so dark, its surface features were almost impossible to make out; it seemed to be covered with smaller half-ovoids, like bubbles. Bluish light beacons hovered above the surface of the vessel.

  “The lights belong to the ship, or are they ours?”

  “Ours,” Nikos answered. “Navigational guidance, they help provide orientation and perspective, as well as some illumination. The ship’s surface has almost no reflectivity. We don’t pick up anything from it. No lights, no heat radiation, no drive disturbances or engine exhaust, nothing. Dead ship. But deadly.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Nikos made a huffing sound. “Nine weeks ago, the first exploration team flew over in one of the maintenance modules and made contact. They spent three days just locating an entrance. It took two more teams and another day and a half to finally figure out how to work the air lock system. We call it an air lock, but there’s no atmosphere inside. Cold and black as space . . .” His voice and attention drifted. “Sent in a couple of remotes, but they aren’t sophisticated, and they’re not very dexterous. Couldn’t get any further than the air lock itself, couldn’t manipulate the doors. There was another day of discussion and argument on the Executive Council, which won’t surprise you, but we finally reached a consensus, and a team went in. A few hours later we had the first casualty.”

  I waited for him to continue, but he just stared at the image on the screen, eyes glazed.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  Nikos breathed in deeply and slowly let it out. “An accident. See for yourself.”

  More finger movements on the console, and the image on the monitor shifted, flickered, went through a series of changes before finally resolving into shaky video of a pressure-suited figure crisscrossed with light and shadow, drifting weightlessly near a curved, dark metal wall. The figure’s left hand reached out and took hold of a bar on the wall, anchoring itself; the right hand held a large hand torch whose beam swept unevenly across the wall.

  “That’s Santiago,” Nikos said. “On point. Every member of the team has a camera and light mounted on their helmet, so we have a pretty thorough record of everything that happens during each excursion. We try to have the video transmitted live back to the Argonos so we can follow along and communicate with them, but the transmissions break up fairly quickly, and the teams don’t get far inside before we lose them altogether. But everything is recorded, so we can always review it later.”

  He touched another control, and the team’s audio was added to the video images. I could hear someone laughing, then a woman’s voice.

  “Oh, man, Santiago, you’re a crude bastard.” Then more laughter, some of it stifled.

  “That was Winton,” Nikos explained. “That’s her video we’re watching now. It shows the best view of what happened.”

  For a time, we could hear only breathing. As Winton looked around, her camera revealed an enormous spherical room twenty-five or thirty meters in diameter. The walls were nearly featureless, broken only by regularly spaced bars that projected out half a meter—the bars served as handholds for the exploration team, but it seemed unlikely that that was their original purpose.

  A third suited figure drifted into view, then just as quickly drifted out of sight.

  “Marx,” Nikos said. “There were three in the first team.”

  I knew Marx well. He was a very serious and quiet man, did not dislike me, and we got along. He was married and had two children, and I remember hoping as I watched that he wasn’t the casualty.

  “Over here.” Santiago’s voice.

  Winton turned her head and Santiago came back into view. He was next to a large opening or doorway, a hand on one bar, a boot resting against another. His hand torch was aimed into the opening, the beam cutting its way into darkness.

  Winton pushed off the wall and floated toward him. “What have you got?” she asked.

  “Not much. A huge room of some kind.”

  She landed on the other side of the doorway as Santiago worked his way closer to the opening, shifting his grip from the bar to the frame. “I can barely make out the other end.”

  Winton turned to look at Marx, who was watching from several meters away, holding onto a bar, his legs drifting about.

  “Well, let’s check it out,” Santiago said.

  Winton turned back to him. With one hand on the door frame, he swung himself out into the opening and began floating through it into the next room. Winton’s helmet light and hand torch crossed him and cast irregular beams into the darkness.

  “What the . . . ?”

  He suddenly began moving more quickly, lost his grip on the door frame; then both hands reached out frantically as he picked up speed. But it was too late, the door frame was out of reach and Santiago plummeted into the room.

  “Oh, shit!”

  “Santiago!”

  Winton was at the opening now, but holding back. The beams from her helmet light and hand torch caught Santiago’s reeling figure falling rapidly, his own helmet light flashing about in all directions.

  No more words from Santiago, but now there was a drawn-out cry as he fell, his shrinking figure tumbling in and out of the light.

  The cry ceased with a terrible but brief explosion of a scream. Then nothing.

  “Santiago!”

  “Winton! What happened?” Marx’s voice, rising in pitch.

  “Santiago! Jesus, Santiago, answer me!”

  Winton had her hand torch aimed down at the far end of the room, and I could see her hand and the beam shaking. Santiago’s unmoving body was illuminated by the dim light, sprawled on a flat surface. His helmet light had apparently been knocked out by the impact, but his hand torch was still functional. It lay nearby, its light reflecting off the shiny top surface of his helmet.

  “SANTIAGO!”

  Then there were no sound
s except for rapid breathing from Winton and Marx. No one moved, no one said a word.

  The video froze for a moment; then the image flickered and the screen went dark.

  “You can watch the whole thing from Santiago’s camera if you like, but I recommend against it.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Up to that point, every room and passage was zero g. But that cabin has gravity,” Nikos said. “Unfortunately for Santiago, it was twice Earth-normal, and in the wrong direction.”

  Gravity in one room, none in the adjacent cabins and passages—which meant the aliens had been able to control gravity in a far more sophisticated way than we could. It was incredible. What else might be found in that extraordinary vessel?

  “And Santiago?”

  “Dead. There was no helmet or suit rupture, but he broke his neck.” Nikos paused, polishing off another drink. “His body was there for hours before we could get the people and equipment in to pull him out.”

  By that time, we had gone through more than half the bottle of whiskey, and I was feeling it; I’d had no alcohol in months, and wasn’t accustomed to it. More than anything, though, it made me tired. I wanted to forget about the alien ship, forget about Santiago, forget about Nikos and his betrayals. I wanted to go back to my own quarters and reacquaint myself with them, go to sleep in my own bed. As if sensing that, or recognizing his own drunkenness, Nikos capped the bottle and ordered coffee brought in.

  I was surprised to see Maximilian bring the coffee. We stared at each other, neither of us quite sure what to think. He set up a small table and tray with pot and cups, poured, then left. The coffee was strong but terribly bitter, and I had to dilute it with cream. I resisted the urge to complain that the coffee I’d had in prison was better than this.

  I drank one cup quickly, then poured another. Nikos was just sipping his, and I suspected he wanted to add whiskey to it, maintain his blood alcohol level.

  “What’s happened since?” I asked.

  “We’ve continued to explore the ship,” he said. “Much more carefully, of course. We make a little progress each time. Sometimes the access is hard to work out, and the absence of gravity makes things more difficult—it’s been all zero g since that one room. And now the teams take the time to inventory and record everything they see.”

  “Any more casualties?” I knew the answer had to be yes.

  Nikos nodded. “Four more dead, seven others with severe injuries. All accidents, each one unforeseen. Ruptured pressure suits, broken limbs, concussions. And stranger things. Barry Sorrel returned from an excursion inside, went to sleep for sixteen hours. Could hardly wake him. Physically, he checked out fine with the doctors. But he refuses to go back into the alien ship, and won’t say why. Actually, what he says is that he just doesn’t feel like it. And do you know Nazia Abouti?”

  I told him the name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t picture her.

  “She’s been inside the alien ship several times, and lately she’s been behaving strangely. A few days ago, her husband brought her in to see a physician. She didn’t want to be examined; she said she was feeling fine, but her husband insisted. Primary symptoms: sleeping more than usual, and periodically going into a kind of fugue state—she’ll be unresponsive for hours, but doesn’t remember anything when she comes out of it. In fact, she insists the fugue states aren’t occurring at all, that her husband is fabricating them. Another major symptom is what her husband describes as an overwhelming apathy.” He paused. “You understand why I’m worried?”

  “Let me guess,” I said. “The physician found nothing wrong with her, either.”

  “That’s right. Three different physicians have examined her, and they spent two days running tests. Nothing. But her husband insists she isn’t the same.”

  “You continued to send teams in,” I said.

  “Yes. Two weeks ago I temporarily suspended all exploration, but we’re going to start up again soon. What else are we going to do? An alien starship, Bartolomeo. As far as we know, this is the first and only time in human history that we have had any contact, any evidence of an intelligent alien civilization. We can’t just stop now, leave it all behind as if it didn’t exist.”

  That was Father Veronica’s argument for staying on Antioch, but I didn’t remind the captain of that. I was sure he would say, perhaps with some justification, that this was very different, and far more important.

  “I’m sure some people have argued we do just that,” I said. “That whatever might be discovered isn’t worth the loss of lives.”

  “Yes, some have.”

  “The bishop?”

  “No. Actually, the bishop has a different agenda.”

  “And what’s that?”

  Nikos smiled ruefully. “The same old agenda.” But he didn’t say any more, his gaze unfocused, as if lost in his thoughts. Or simply lost.

  “Why do you need me?” I asked.

  “I’m in trouble again, Bartolomeo.”

  “Because of the casualties.”

  “Yes. I am being blamed for them, like everything else.”

  There was something about the way he said that . . .

  “What else are you being blamed for?”

  “There’s more trouble with the downsiders. After we put down the mutiny, I expected the downsiders would become more docile, at least for a few years. Instead of fear, the quelling of the mutiny has stirred up only more resentment. We have rebellion, now. Nothing major, but dozens of small rebellions, subtle bits of sabotage, disgruntlement, resistance. They are making life on the ship difficult without going far enough to warrant arrests or reprisals or other punishments.” He gave a grudging smile. “We often can’t identify who is causing the difficulty, or what exactly has been done. Occasionally, I imagine, nothing at all has been done, and some piece of equipment breaks down simply because of age, as has always happened on this ship. Now, however, we question everything.”

  “You’ve engendered resentment in them, and they have in turn engendered paranoia in you.”

  “Yes, that is an apt assessment.”

  “What do you want from me, Nikos?”

  “The bishop wants to take over the exploration of the alien ship.”

  “Let him. Let him take all the risks.”

  Nikos shook his head. “I can’t, Bartolomeo. I can’t trust him, you know that.” He paused. “And he’s up to something. He thinks he’s been sly, that no one’s on to him, but . . . He’s made an excursion over to the alien ship on his own. I don’t know what he’s looking for, or what he has in mind, but I do not want to put him in charge. If I let him take over now, I might just as well hand the captaincy to him. Even if he failed, I would never become captain again. Never.”

  “What do you want?” I was exasperated. More than that, I was angry, although I wasn’t sure at what.

  Nikos finally looked directly at me. “I want you to take charge of the exploration of the alien ship. I want you to bring me success.”

  I felt I was being set up as scapegoat and distraction. If by some chance I could achieve success, all the better. If not, I gained time for the captain. I didn’t like it.

  “If I refuse?”

  “Your cell remains empty.”

  “You would imprison us all again?”

  Nikos cocked his head and stared at me, and his true state of mind showed itself—in the intensity of his eyes, the tightness of his lips as they formed a mirthless smile.

  “I would not hesitate,” he said.

  20

  I slept long and hard and without dreaming, or at least without any memory of dreams. When I woke, I thought I was still in my cell. The room was dark, and as I sat up I became confused, sensing something vaguely unfamiliar about my surroundings. I stumbled out of bed—its height was not the same as the bunk in my cell—and bumped into a wall where one shouldn’t have been. Yet some unconscious part of me apparently realized where I was, for my hand reached out involuntarily to the correct p
lace on the wall and brought up dim lights. I saw I was in my own quarters, and finally remembered my release.

  I sat in a chair, surveying my quarters, trying to decide what to do, what to think, struggling against the urge to return to bed and go back to sleep. My rooms were so quiet and lifeless, as if the inorganic matter which composed the furniture and all of my few possessions had dropped into an even lower level of existence while I was gone, and now needed to be resurrected to its former state. The same for me, I thought.

  I should have been elated to be free of my cell, but I was strangely depressed, and did not understand why. Everything was changed; perhaps that was it. The captain was still fighting with the bishop over the captaincy, but even that had changed, and my place within the struggles, my relationships to the key participants, were not the same. I saw everyone differently now, and I was sure their perceptions of me, too, had changed.

  And Nikos? We had been friends for years, since we were children, but that time was gone, and I began to fully understand that there was no regaining that friendship. Out of necessity we could work together, each of us distrusting the other, but there would never again be more, and that realization depressed me as well. An enormous sense of loss threatened to overwhelm me.

  I got up from the chair, showered and dressed, then tried to get something to eat. The room’s food system had been shut down while I was in prison, and no one had yet restored its function. I would have to go to one of the common halls.

  Fortunately it was between regular meal times—late morning—and there were few people in the common hall nearest my quarters. None of them knew how to react to my presence, though I detected less surprise than when Nikos and I had walked along the ship’s corridors to the command salon. Word of my release had obviously spread through the upper levels.

  I selected simple fare, not much different from what I had been served while imprisoned, and ate quickly. While in my cell, I would often imagine that upon my release I would gorge myself on the widest variety of rich food and drink. Now that I had the opportunity, I felt almost ill at the prospect; eating like that seemed so unnecessary, indulgent, almost immoral.