Richard Russo

by Ship of Fools

  “I’m willing to take that chance, and I would wager that most of the council—”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Nikos broke in. “We’ve already tried it.”

  Faces turned quickly to him.

  “What do you mean?” Costino asked.

  “I decided not to wait. I have the authority. Margita and I carried out a full weapons attack on the alien ship.”

  Toller smiled wryly and nodded. “Successful, was it, Captain?”

  “Missiles and rockets and bomb clusters all detonated long before they reached the alien ship. Lasers and radiants and vibrationals were deflected or absorbed without effect. We launched three full strikes, and not one thing got through.”

  “All those explosions?” Tournier said in disbelief. “I didn’t hear or feel anything.”

  Costino sneered at him. “You understand the concept of a vacuum, Michel?”

  Tournier just looked confused, but no one was going to explain it to him.

  Nikos shrugged. “That is why I’m open to ideas. I don’t have any more myself. I am hoping someone will.”

  “Pray,” the bishop eventually said.

  No one else said anything. Nikos stood and paced deliberately back and forth at the head of the table.

  “I know it seems hopeless. It may be hopeless. But I will not give up. And you will not give up. We’ll reconvene every twelve hours to talk about possibilities and impossibilities, sooner if someone comes up with anything. In between, think. No idea is too strange or ridiculous. An unworkable idea may inspire in someone else an idea that will work.”

  He stopped pacing, swept his gaze slowly around the room, letting it rest briefly on each of us. “I am the captain of this ship, and I will not give up.” He paused. “Questions?” When no one spoke up, he said, “We’ll meet again in twelve hours. I expect everyone to be here.”

  49

  FOR the second time in less than a week, I was torn from a deep sleep, this time by a relentless pounding at the door. I lay in bed with my eyes closed, hoping the pounding would stop. It didn’t.

  I staggered in darkness from the back room, through the front, and opened the door. Fortunately it was still shipboard night and the corridor lights were dimmed, but I still had to blink against the light, trying to focus on the man who stood before me. He looked familiar. One of the church clerics, I thought.

  “I have a message from Father Veronica,” he said. He handed me a sealed tube.

  I stared stupidly at the metal tube, then looked up. “Why?” I asked. “Why didn’t she call?”

  “I don’t know. I was just asked to deliver it to you.” He paused, then bowed his head slightly and said, “Good night.” He turned and left.

  I closed the door and felt my way to my reading chair, dropped into it, and turned on the wall lamp, low illumination. In the dim light I cracked open the tube and withdrew a single sheet of vellum. Handwritten in violet ink, the strokes long and beautiful, was a brief message:

  Bartolomeo,

  Please, meet me as soon as possible in the cathedral. It is urgent.

  Veronica

  I was suspicious. Why would she send a messenger rather than call me? Then I remembered that I had programmed my system to deny all calls except from Nikos or Cardenas. Maybe she had tried. I was still suspicious, though I could not have articulated why.

  Suspicious or not, I could not ignore the message. I showered, dressed, and headed for the cathedral.

  I had expected the cathedral to still be filled with people who had come for comfort, who would be afraid to leave, as if sanctuary in the church would somehow protect them from whatever horrors awaited at the hands (or other appendages) of the alien creatures biding their time. But I passed dozens of people camped in the surrounding corridors, and the massive cathedral doors were closed, posted with a sign.

  CATHEDRAL CLOSED UNTIL 0600. MASS AT 0730, 1100, 1330, 1800.

  I tried opening the doors, desperate eyes watching me, but the doors would not move.

  “Help us,” an old man pleaded.

  I looked at him, not knowing what to say.

  “No one can help us now,” another man growled. “We’re doomed. We’re wasting our time out here.” He gestured at me with his bearded chin. “It’s people like him got us into this mess.”

  I remained silent, at a loss for a response.

  “Forget it, Strekoll,” said a woman seated at the younger man’s feet. She cradled a three-year-old girl sleeping open-mouthed, thin curls plastered to her forehead with sweat. “We have nothing better to do.”

  I walked away from them. The other two regular entrances would be locked as well, so I’d have to find another way in. Seventy-five meters from the cathedral doors I turned down a short dead-end corridor, stopped in front of a door leading into the maintenance passages, and keyed in my security code. The door slid open, and I stepped into the narrow, dimly lit passage, the door sliding shut automatically behind me.

  Pipe and cable networks lined the wall and ceiling, forcing me to bend over slightly as I walked through the patchwork of shadows and dusty shafts of light. At a fork I took the left turning, and some ways on reached a break on the left wall. I opened the door and stepped through it.

  I entered the cathedral through the side wall, near the large main doors and the rear pews. Candles provided the only illumination, and the cathedral was awash in flickering warm shadows and wavering pockets of orange light. I was nearly at the midpoint of the cathedral’s length. Just visible far to my left was the small stained-glass window of the galilee.

  To my right, of course, was the enormous stained-glass Crucifixion towering above the apse, looming over the entire cathedral. Yet it held no power now, the colors flat and lifeless, dull reflections of candlelight; I could barely make out the actual images that had blazed with such immeasurable force into the darkness of deep space not many days earlier.

  I remained just inside the cathedral, my back against the wall, listening and watching. I was still suspicious, especially since I saw no signs of Father Veronica. I saw no signs of anyone. Silence and candlelight; the air was warm and stuffy.

  I considered calling her name, but was reluctant to reveal my presence. The longer I stood there in the warm and heavy silence, the more frightened I became. Frightened of what? I didn’t know, which made it worse.

  The doors to the galilee, a small, private chapel, were usually closed. Today they stood open, so I decided to investigate. Keeping to the wall, I worked my way slowly and quietly along the length of the cathedral to the entrance of the galilee. I waited, listening intently, then stepped carefully through the doorway.

  There was no one inside. More candles in dark-red glass containers wavering gently; padded kneelers, an empty cistern. The stained-glass window was taller by half than I, yet seemed tiny compared to the Crucifixion window. It depicted Mary holding the dead Jesus in her lap, her eyes and face filled with grief—as moving in its own, intimate way as the Crucifixion window was on its more cosmic scale. I understood why someone would want to come here and pray.

  I left the galilee and started back toward the main cathedral, still keeping to the shadows along the wall. It was a long walk, and the tension was wearing on me. I even searched the darkness of the vaulting high above me, expecting something to come swooping down. By the time I returned to the maintenance door, I was sweating heavily and breathing hard, although I had hardly exerted myself.

  I continued a bit farther until I reached the back pews. Then, deciding I had to bring things to a head one way or another, I stepped away from the wall.

  “Father Veronica?” I called out quietly.

  I thought I heard a slight rustling, but it stopped immediately and I couldn’t be sure. I also began to feel a strange vibration in my chest and belly, a thrumming, queasy sensation.

  “Father Veronica?” I called again. Then, louder: “Father Veronica!”

  “I’m right here, Bartolomeo.”

  Her voice s
tartled me, kicking up my heartbeat and stopping my breath. Her head and body rose to a sitting position on one of the pews just seven or eight meters away.

  “I was sleeping,” she said. She brushed her hair away from her eyes.

  The fear and panic were replaced by an almost electric sense of relief spreading through me. It was a purging, or cleansing. I took a deep breath. She was here. She had sent the message to me.

  “Do you feel that?” she asked.

  I nodded. The thrumming was still there, deeper now and more persistent.

  Was it the aliens? Were they here? Were they finally attacking?

  The vibration strengthened, working its way down through my legs and up my neck.

  “What is it?” Father Veronica asked. She pulled herself up to her feet and, like me, looked around the cathedral. There was nothing to see.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But it can’t be good.”

  She turned back to me. “What are you doing here, Bartolomeo? The cathedral is supposed to be closed.”

  I stared at her, my fear returning. But before I could answer, the vibration stepped up again. The queasiness intensified, and I felt dizzy. I reached out to the back of the nearest pew for support, trying desperately to maintain my balance.

  The cathedral was spinning all around me. Suddenly everything turned, and the gravity in the cathedral rotated 90 degrees. The floor had become a wall, the Crucifixion window the ceiling, and the galilee, so far away, was now the floor.

  My feet dropped and pulled out from under me and I started to fall sideways. But I had one hand on the pew, and by instinct I managed to grab the pew with my other. A shower of candles and other objects fell and bounced past us, banging and shattering.

  Above me, Father Veronica cried out as she lost her balance and began to fall toward me. Her hands and feet scrambled for a secure hold on the pews, and for a moment I thought she was going to be safe. One hand gripped the back of a pew, the other swung about for something to hold onto, and one shoe seemed to find support on another pew. I hung from the back of the last pew, looking up and watching her, unable to help, unable to do a thing.

  Her foot slipped, and she was hanging by only one hand. And it was a hand of flesh and blood, not artificial like my own which tightly gripped the dark wood above me.

  “Bartolomeo,” she whispered.

  “Hold on,” I said, wondering what I could do, how I could reach her. “Just . . .”

  “I can’t . . .”

  Her fingers slipped from the wood, and she fell.

  She struck another pew no more then a meter away, then bounced away from it and plummeted past me.

  “VERONICA!”

  I craned my head around between my arms and watched her plunge the entire length of the cathedral, cassock whipping about her body, hands and arms outstretched, long seconds of free fall until at last she fell through the open doors of the galilee and crashed into the stained glass window.

  “VERONICA!” I cried out again. “VERONICA!”

  I knew she couldn’t hear me. I knew she couldn’t respond. There was no way anyone could survive such a fall. I stared down at her small, crumpled body, my heart exploding. “VERONICA!!”

  I looked away and stared at the floor in front of me. Tears tried to come, but I wouldn’t let them. I hung there, and for a brief moment thought about letting go, but that innate, stubborn human drive to live would not allow me to release my grip.

  I hung there a long time. If my hands and arms had been normal, I wouldn’t have lasted. But they weren’t normal, and although my shoulder began to ache, I had no real difficulty maintaining my grip on the pew. I had more trouble maintaining a grip on my emotions, which threatened to burst out of me in screams.

  Time? I lost all sense of it. Did I hang there for an hour? Or was it only one minute? I remember looking down at her once, but I couldn’t look again. If I didn’t see her body, maybe it hadn’t happened to her.

  I swung and hooked one leg up onto the pew, then pulled myself up into it, using it like a ledge. For extra support, I grabbed onto a kneeler with one hand.

  The vibration, now only a barely perceptible thrum, strengthened once again. I hung on tightly to the pew and kneeler, and the gravity rotated another 90 degrees. The cathedral ceiling was now the floor, the floor the ceiling; my legs swung out and I was hanging again.

  More breaking glass, sliding and cracking sounds. I twisted my head around to look down at the galilee. I couldn’t see her body any longer. Better that way, I thought.

  The gravity shifted ninety degrees once more. My legs swung out, slamming my body across the back of a pew, legs trying to drop now toward the Crucifixion stained glass. I kept my grip.

  I heard more sliding, looked up toward the galilee. Another shower of glass, bits of metal, stone, books with pages tearing and fluttering. No, I silently pleaded, please let the walls or something catch her, please, please don’t let her . . .

  The sliding continued, and Father Veronica’s body tumbled out of the galilee and plummeted again.

  I closed my eyes. I could not watch this, I would not watch it . . . but I felt the breeze as she hurtled past me, and heard the sickening crunch as she hit the Crucifixion stained glass.

  At least this time she wouldn’t have felt any pain, I thought. Even so, at that moment I came the closest to opening my hands, releasing my grip, and falling to her side. Instead, I pulled my legs up and over the pew and lay there, both arms wrapped around the padded kneeler, my eyes closed.

  Again I lost all sense of time. I hardly knew who or where I was. Veronica . . . Veronica . . . I pleaded desperately for this to be some drug-induced dream or hallucination, but I knew I would not be waking up from this nightmare.

  Everything inside me seemed to be coming apart. No matter how tightly I wrapped my arms around the kneeler, pressing myself against the cold floor, I thought that at any moment I was going to completely shatter, and the pieces of my body and spirit would rain down upon her.

  How could I stand this? I wondered. How does anyone stand it?

  Finally, after what seemed like days, the gravity shifted one final time, back to its original orientation, and the thrumming vibration disappeared completely. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. Barely aware of my own existence, I hung onto the kneeler without moving until six o’clock arrived and Father George opened the doors of the cathedral.

  50

  I found Bishop Soldano in his private offices above the cathedral. The doors were open and I passed through several rooms until I reached the last, which had a full-wall viewing port. He stood at the steelglass window, gazing up and out at the alien ship.

  “Come in, Bartolomeo.”

  I was already inside the room, but I was so sick at heart, and at the same time so enraged, that I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t move. I was shaking inside, and I wanted to launch myself at that huge figure and beat him to death. My artificial hands and arms, which just hours earlier had saved my life, could easily have ended his. A huge desk stood between us, and I gripped the dark wood to keep my hands and arms from shaking away from me.

  “It was you,” I finally managed to say.

  He did not turn to look at me, but he slowly nodded. “She wasn’t supposed to be there.” His voice was hoarse and cracked. “No one should have been there. Only you. Only . . . you.” I could see him swallow, his throat moving with difficulty. “Now I am truly damned.”

  “You expect me to feel pity for you?” I shouted at him. I was afraid of losing all control. “Because you killed her instead of me?”

  The bishop just shook his head. He finally turned to face me, and I nearly attacked him. I’m still not sure what stopped me. She did, probably. I imagined I heard her voice saying, No, Bartolomeo. Please. That’s not the answer. It won’t change anything. I didn’t care if it didn’t change anything. But I didn’t attack. Instead, I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to look at that inhuman monster.

  I stood ther
e with eyes closed, my hands on his desk, and listened to the rush of blood in my head. Suddenly I couldn’t believe I was there, that Father Veronica was dead, that the bishop had killed her and had just admitted it to me. Because I wasn’t sure I could stand it if it was true.

  I opened my eyes and looked at him.

  “It was from the alien ship,” I finally said. “That device you took from it.”

  He looked surprised. “How did you know about that?”

  “What the hell does it matter how I know?” I shouted at him.

  He sighed, staring at me. “I didn’t know what I was going to do with it,” he said, “but I thought it would be useful. I didn’t intend this. But then the idea came to me. An inspiration.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “I told you before. You are responsible for this. We are doomed. Those . . . creatures, those alien beings, whatever they are, eventually they are going to come after us. They are going to kill us, they are going to torture and slaughter us, and you are responsible.”

  Suddenly I was so exhausted I could hardly move. I didn’t even have the energy to hate anymore. I dropped into a chair, laid my head back, and closed my eyes again. The bishop began to murmur to himself. He stopped for a moment; when he resumed speaking his voice was louder and more distinct, and he seemed to be quoting.

  “But unto Leviathan thou gavest the seventh part, namely the moist; and hast kept him to be devoured of whom thou wilt, and when.”

  I opened my eyes and looked at him. He stood gazing with despair or fear or awe, or all three, at the dark and unmoving alien starship. He did not turn away from the ship, and he said no more.

  “Is that from the Bible?” I asked.

  He didn’t move or speak for several moments; then he turned to me and said, “Peripherally. It’s from 2 Esdras, which is part of the Apocrypha.”

  “Which is . . . ?”

  “A group of religious writings that are considered important, but not an official part of either the Old Testament or the New. The issues surrounding the Apocrypha—which writings are a part of it, and which aren’t, their relative importance, and so on—are complex, and were debated for centuries. Our own Church recognizes many books of the Apocrypha as deuterocanonical—they belong to a second level of the canon, although that is not to imply that they are of less importance than those books that are in the Old and New Testaments. Oddly enough, though, 2 Esdras is not one of them. In a way, it floats around in its own canonical Limbo.” He smiled to himself, shaking his head. “Sorry, I don’t intend to bore you. And it doesn’t really matter.” He sighed. “That verse has been going through my thoughts for days now.”