Richard Russo

by Ship of Fools

  “You see the alien ship as Leviathan?”

  The bishop nodded. “The moist referenced the oceans of Earth, or at least that was the original interpretation. But the world view, or universe view, was much more limited then. Imagine deep space as the moist. The oceans of the universe.” He paused. “I can imagine the second part of the verse as perhaps once mistranscribed, or misunderstood—maybe even out of fear. Change it ever so slightly, just a couple of words, and it becomes something very different.” He closed his eyes, and quoted the changed verse. “But unto Leviathan thou gavest the seventh part, namely the moist; and hast kept him to devour whom thou wilt, and when.” He paused again. “Now we have something that appears to describe our alien ship quite well.”

  I sat up, but remained in the chair. Exhaustion still overwhelmed me.

  “That implies responsibility on God’s part,” I said. “That God for some reason now wants Leviathan to devour us. Or is it supposed to be just a metaphor?”

  “No,” the bishop said, his voice quiet but firm. “No metaphor. God is responsible. You are responsible, I am responsible, we are all responsible, and He is a jealous and angry God.”

  “But you don’t believe in God.”

  “Maybe I do, now. And wish I didn’t.” He sounded lost and confused. “What if I’ve been wrong all these years? If I have been, then after this life I am truly damned.”

  I felt no sympathy for him whatsoever. “You’re worthless.”

  “What do you want from me, Bartolomeo? You want to kill me? Here I am.” He held out his arms, as though welcoming me. “I won’t resist, I won’t fight you. Kill me, Bartolomeo.”

  I just slowly shook my head.

  “What do you want, Bartolomeo? What do you want from me?”

  I had no answer for him. I didn’t know what I wanted.

  “You want confession? I’ve already confessed. You want me put away in a cell like the one you were locked up in all those months? Call the security forces, call your friend Captain Nikos Costa.

  “You want justice?” He laughed. “No, you know better than to expect that, don’t you?

  “Or do you want contrition? I can’t give you that, Bartolomeo. I feel remorse, but not for trying to kill you. Only for killing her by mistake. I should feel remorse for trying to kill you, but I don’t. And if I am to have any chance at redemption, I will need to repent, to—”

  “Redemption!” I shouted, rising up out of the chair. I was shaking again. “You’re beyond redemption, you monstrous bastard!”

  “No,” he said quietly. “No one is beyond redemption.”

  “You are, Bishop,” I said, pointing at him. “And deep down, in your cold and loveless heart, you know that.”

  “I am not loveless. I loved her, Bartolomeo.” He looked at me. “No, not like that,” he said. “Not the way you did. I loved her for her righteousness, for the faith she had that I lost so long ago.”

  “And you killed her.”

  He buried his face in his hands, and began to weep.

  I could take no more. If I wasn’t going to kill him, I would have to leave. Now I am truly damned, he had said. I finally walked away, hoping with all of my broken and darkened heart that, about this, the bishop was right.

  51

  I returned to the chamber of abandoned machines. Darkness and deep shadows and the smell of old lubricants—just what I needed. Although I hadn’t taken even a sip of alcohol, I felt almost drunk, or otherwise drugged. With my hand torch on its dimmest, widest setting, I stumbled along among the useless machinery, trying to think of anything but Father Veronica. The deeper I went into the chamber, the harder it was to keep away the image of her broken body, the warmth of her smile, the memory of honey and cinnamon.

  I climbed across a tangle of metal pipes and sat on a pile of cabled wire, gazing down into the open bay at the bishop’s lifeless machine. Damn him and his machines. I switched off the hand torch and sat motionless in the dark. Don’t think about her, I told myself. Don’t think about her. So I concentrated on the alien ship, envisioned it suspended in the depths of space, surrounded by black night and silver stars, and tried to imagine a means of escape.

  TWO or three hours later, Pär and Nikos found me there. I heard them calling my name, and I thought about doing what Francis had done that time—scramble deep into the ruined machinery where they would never find me—but I didn’t have the heart or energy for it. What was the point? I sat and waited for them, watching the thin beams of light arcing back and forth, up and down, listening to them calling my name over and over. Maybe they would just give up.

  Half an hour later they came around a wrecked cylinder and one of their torch beams sliced across my face and they came to a stop.

  “Damn!” Pär said. “Scared me.” He laughed nervously. “Why didn’t you answer, Bartolomeo?”

  Nikos just looked at me, waiting for a response.

  “I didn’t feel like it,” I said.

  “We’ve been searching for you for hours,” Nikos said. “I tried signaling you, but Pär said you had the system disabled. He suggested we look for you here.”

  Pär shrugged. “I know your secrets, Bartolomeo. Some of them, anyway.”

  “Why are you looking for me? I just want to be left alone.”

  “The bishop told me what happened,” Nikos said. “He seemed to expect me to order his imprisonment, and was surprised when I didn’t. I thought that if you hadn’t come to me demanding he be imprisoned, then you didn’t want that. I figure you probably don’t care any longer what happens to him. He’s in his own private Hell, and you’re content with that.”

  I managed half a laugh. “You’re so damn sure about what I’m thinking and feeling.”

  “No,” Nikos said. “Just a guess.”

  Neither of them said anything for a long time. Their hand torches were aimed at the floor, and their faces were barely distinguishable in the dim light.

  “I know you’re hurting,” Nikos said, “but we’ve got a ship with several thousand people who are still alive, and we have got to figure out a way to save them.”

  “Are you both insane?” I asked. “Why would you want my advice? My suggestions? Every decision I’ve made seems to have been the wrong one. I chose to join with Pär and the downsiders in the failed insurrection, and spent seven months in a cell. You put me in charge of the alien ship exploration team, and we end up with a shape-changing alien creature on board the Argonos, people dead and gone mad, Casterman’s suicide. Finally, when almost everyone is ready to abandon that damned ship, I convince you all to dock with it and take it with us. Now we’re probably all going to die. One bad decision after another, and you want my advice?”

  Pär grinned.

  “What’s so funny?”

  “You are, Bartolomeo.”

  “Everything you’ve said is true,” Nikos added, “but it’s not that simple. Your choices, your decisions, were not necessarily the wrong choices. Sometimes, they were the right choices, the moral choices. They just didn’t work out.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “I’m not just saying this to make you feel better,” Nikos offered, “but docking with their ship probably didn’t make any difference in the long run.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Did Margita tell you how we would drift closer to the alien ship every few days?”

  “Yes.” It didn’t matter now if he knew.

  “I’d bet they were just feeling things out. They have technology we can hardly imagine, and I would guess that they could have sucked us right into their ship any time they wanted, and we wouldn’t have been able to do a damn thing about it. I also believe that if we’d tried to leave them behind the way the bishop wanted, they would not have let us go. They would have drawn us in, or come after us, and we’d be right where we are now, more or less.”

  “So I just made it easier for them.”

  “We made it easier for them, yes.” Nikos paused. �
�We need your help, Bartolomeo.”

  “What about the rest of the Executive Council? I thought you were going to meet every twelve hours and exchange ideas.”

  “Come on, Bartolomeo, we both know how useful that’s going to be. With the possible exception of Margita or Geller, no one’s going to come up with a damn thing, and you know it. And they don’t need some misguided brainstorming session to think; if either of them comes up with something, they’ll let us know.” He paused. “We need your help.”

  “What? The three of us are going to brainstorm? You and I and Pär, sitting in the darkness surrounded by derelict machinery, we’re going to come up with a way to save everyone?”

  “Maybe. This is as good a place as any.”

  I looked from one to another. Finally, I gestured for them to sit and said, “All right. Stay a while.” I managed a brief, mirthless laugh. “What the hell. You want an idea? I already have an idea. I’ve been sitting here in the dark, surrounded by ruins, and an idea has occurred to me, an idea I don’t trust because I don’t trust anything I think anymore. So I’ll tell you my idea, and you two can tell me whether I’m as crazy as everyone else.”

  They sat, and Nikos said, “Tell us, Bartolomeo.”

  I breathed deeply. “We go back to Antioch.”

  Neither of them said anything for a long time. They stared at me, they looked at each other, and they stared at me some more. “I don’t understand,” Nikos finally said. “How?”

  “We take the shuttles.”

  That gave them something to think about for a minute. “There aren’t enough to take everyone,” Pär said.

  I nodded. “I know. That’s only the first of a whole lot of problems with this idea.”

  “What are some of the others?”

  “The logistics alone are a serious problem. Fuel and food and water . . . How long do you think it would take for a shuttle to get back to Antioch?”

  Nikos sighed. “I don’t know, but a long time. Weeks, or months. Yeah, fuel’s a problem. Initial acceleration . . . deceleration . . . descent and landing . . .” His eyes were unfocused as he was thinking. “The less used for acceleration, the longer the trip . . . the more mass in people and food and cargo, the more fuel we’d need. . . .” His voice trailed off. “Yeah. But we can work all that out. We’ll know how many can go on the shuttles.”

  “And how many have to stay,” I said.

  “Yes, and how many have to stay.”

  “And that’s another problem,” I started, “how . . .”

  “. . . to decide who goes,” Nikos finished. “I know. But, like the logistics, it’s something that can be done. Even if we can only save a thousand, or several hundred, that’s better than nothing.”

  “The harvesters,” Pär said.

  We both looked at him.

  “We’ve got three harvesters,” he continued, “and their holds are huge. They’d carry a lot of people and food and equipment.”

  The harvesters. I shuddered inwardly, thinking about them. Once again I saw them rising before me during the failed insurrection, like fire monsters, nuclear versions of the bishop’s Leviathan.

  “There’s a big problem with the harvesters,” Nikos said. “Actually with the shuttles, too. And why not? There’s a big problem with every aspect of this idea.”

  “What problem?” Pär asked.

  “Gravity,” Nikos answered. “The harvesters and shuttles don’t have any. I don’t care how much room you’ve got, you can’t pack hundreds or thousands of people in zero-g holds for weeks and months on end.”

  “Constant acceleration of half a g or so,” Pär said.

  “And then constant deceleration?” Nikos said. “Way too much fuel needed for that. If we could convert the ship drives and install them, maybe, but that’s just impossible. With conventional fuel . . .”

  I started laughing.

  “What?”

  “It’s grotesque,” I said, “but the bishop’s got part of the answer. The gravity device he used to kill Father Veronica. He can make it work. We install it on one of the harvesters, rotate people in and out so no one has to do the whole trip stored like cargo in zero g. Put people in two of them, one with gravity, and use the third harvester for cargo, food, and equipment, anything that can be tied down.”

  “Okay, that’s just my point,” Nikos said. “Any of these problems can be worked out.”

  “Of course,” Pär added, “even with the harvesters and all the shuttles, it may still not be enough space to take everyone.”

  “I know, damn it,” Nikos snapped. “We’ll deal with that when we have to. We’ll deal with every problem. At least this is a way out.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “There’s one thing we should do before we bother trying to resolve all the logistical problems.”

  “What’s that?” Nikos asked.

  Par was nodding. “Yes,” he said. “We need to find out what the alien ship will do when a shuttle or harvester leaves the Argonos.”

  I looked at him. “You willing to make a test run with me?”

  Pär nodded. “Let’s do it now,” he said.

  WE went out in one of the harvesters. I wanted to take one of the shuttles, but Pär argued that a harvester, being so much larger, would be a better test; I couldn’t argue. The pilot’s cabin was a half-bubble of steelglass atop the forward end of the harvester. We sat behind the pilots, watching the expanse of stars in front of us and the receding ships behind us. Monitors placed throughout the cabin gave us a variety of views.

  We had launched from the Argonos at low speed, accelerated slowly for ten minutes, then cut the engines, traveling in silence except for the pilots’ periodic exchanges. We were moving at a constant velocity away from the two locked ships, which grew smaller and smaller on the monitors. All four of us waited for something from the alien ship—a missile launch, an energy beam, magnetic disruption pulses, some other unknown and unknowable weapon or force that would destroy us, disable us, or pull us back into the Argonos or the alien ship.

  A half hour passed without incident. Forty-five minutes. An hour. The ships had disappeared from view, then even from the monitors, although instruments still registered their presence.

  “How far do we go?” one of the pilots asked.

  I looked at Pär. “Another hour?” I suggested.

  “At least. We have to be sure. Or as sure as we can be.”

  When we were two hours out we tried another fifteen-minute acceleration, boosting our velocity. Then we continued for another hour. Nothing.

  Finally we were satisfied, and I think surprised. We told the pilots to turn around and take us back.

  “Take it slow going back, too,” Pär said. “We don’t need to go roaring in, calling even more attention to ourselves.” Then he turned to me. “Think it’ll be this easy?”

  “It didn’t feel that easy,” I said. “The truth is, even if we manage to get away from the ships, the journey back to Antioch in these things is going to be miserable.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. You know what won’t be easy? Going to the Planning Committee with this. And we have to have their support, we have to have them all with us. Without them, we won’t be able to retrofit and ready the shuttles and harvesters, get several thousand people prepared to go, all of that. Everything that will have to be done efficiently and quickly. They’ve got to be with us.”

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What’s the problem? There’s no other choice. This is our only chance. Why would it be difficult to convince them?”

  “Because many of them have already given up all hope. They’re so far gone, it will be tough to bring them back. A tiny shred of hope isn’t going to do it. We’ll have to convince them that there’s a good chance of success.”

  What Pär said made sense. “You’re right. So let’s hope no one brings up this other minor matter.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Assuming we get away from the ships, what’s to prevent the aliens fr
om following us back to Antioch?”

  “Well, let’s hope no one mentions it.” Pär laughed. “Besides, I don’t know why you worry about that. Forget this test. You know what the chances are they’ll actually let us all get away in the first place?”

  “Then why are you going along with this?”

  “You said it. This is the only option we’ve got. And if by some miracle we can get to Antioch, at least we’ll have a chance. We stay on the Argonos, we have none.” He nodded once. “None.”

  No one said anything more the rest of the way in.

  52

  THE Planning Committee was something to see: despair, emotional paralysis, dishevelment. Dementia and absentia—I counted five empty seats. But all the Executive Council members were there, even the bishop. He sat listlessly in his chair, eyes unfocused. I could barely look at him without screaming. I wondered how many people in the room knew what he had done.

  Nikos and Cardenas had met for several hours with Costino, Rita Hollings, and two or three others to discuss details and logistics—how long the trip would be, the fuel needs, how many people could go with each of the shuttles, how many in the harvesters, what it would take to equip and retrofit the vehicles, and on and on. They didn’t need to have every specific answer, but Nikos wanted to be prepared with estimates for the Planning Committee.

  Nikos finally called the meeting to order.