Starship Home (5 page)

It was clearly a storeroom of some sort. It was a storeroom full of strange objects but a storeroom nevertheless. Metallic containers, boxes, crates, objects in nets, even some stacks of dull black bags, took up most of the space in the room. In a clear space in the middle of the storeroom, Zoe, Zachary and Meg stood, simultaneously lit and contained by a series of beams of brilliant light stretching from floor to ceiling and enclosing them like so many bars.

Harold was standing by the door, which had just thunked shut behind him. ‘What are you doing there,’ he said to them.

‘If he says we should’ve checked, I’m going to kill him,’ Meg said to the others.

‘You should’ve checked,’ said Harold.

‘I’m going to kill him!’ said Meg and moved one hand to emphasize the point. There was a sharp buzzing sound, and she let out a cry of pain, grabbing the hand she had moved. There was another sharp buzzing and another yell, and this time she stayed still.

High in the wall, a panel slid back and the Wyzen appeared, watching them, sucking blue liquid from a squeeze bottle.

‘I think you should stand still,’ said Harold.

‘Thank you Harold,’ Meg said with heavy irony, and then spoke to the ceiling as if this was where all of her problems were coming from. ‘Whoever’s doing this had better cut it out! I have friends, powerful friends, who’ll give me your hides to nail to my stable doors!’

Zachary looked at Zoe. ‘Does she really own a stable? I don’t own a stable…’

‘I think she really owns a stable.’

Harold said: ‘Ship, we seem to have a problem here. What’s the password?’

‘Who art thou?’

‘I’m a sentient being,’ said Harold.

Zoe couldn’t resist it. ‘That’s strictly a matter of opinion, Harold.’

‘Shut up, Zoe, I’m trying to make a logical point to the ship. Ship, this system’s for … what? Vermin control? Not for sentient beings. So if you just give me the password…’

‘Only the crew may know the password.’

‘Can you turn the system off?’

‘Yea.’

‘Will you turn the system off?’

‘Nay.’

‘Harold, I’m getting pins and needles in my feet here,’ Zoe said.

‘I’m thinking.’ He paused, then said: ‘Ship, can we trade? If I give you something will you turn the system off?’

‘What hast thou to trade?’

Harold patted his pockets. Instantly there was a buzzing sound, he yelped, and bars of bright light fenced him against the closed door. ‘Knowledge. I’ll trade knowledge.’

There was a pause, then the ship said: ‘When did Henry the Eighth, King in England, die?’

‘What?’ It was the last question Harold was expecting. ‘You sure that’s what you want to know?’

Meg sighed impatiently. ‘Tell it he died in 1547, Harold.’

Harold was nettled. He had studied a lot of history in order to get better at computer war games, and he happened to know that Henry VIII had died in 1547. ‘I already knew that!’

‘So tell it and let’s get out of here, shall we?’

‘1547.’

‘Who is King in England now?’

‘There’s a Queen. Elizabeth the 2
^nd
.’

‘A woman? King in England?’ The ship seemed amazed.

‘We were trading, remember?’ Harold reminded the ship.

The light bars vanished and Harold moved over to the others. A door opened at the far end of the storeroom and they walked toward it.

‘I knew that date, Miss Henderson. I really knew it.’

‘So you claim, Harold.’

‘I really knew it, I tell you!’

‘Okay, you knew it.’ And then she laughed a metallic little laugh, intended to infuriate.

The door led into another corridor like the first. Zachary was still puzzled. ‘Why would it want to know about Henry the Eighth, kid?’

‘Maybe it’s a history computer. You call me Harold, I call you…?’

‘Zachary.’ He looked at Meg. ‘You want Miss Henderson, or…?

‘Meg’ll do.’ She look fiercely at Zoe and Harold. ‘But no taking advantage! I’m still responsible to the Education Department for your safety and well-being!’

‘I don’t think there is an Education Department any more, Miss … Meg,’ said Zoe.

‘Maybe you’re right.’

It was then that a narrow beam of light struck the wall of the corridor just in front of them. Where it hit it made a hot spot and sizzled. Suddenly they were running. More beams of light were striking the walls around them.

‘Ship! Password!’ yelled Harold.

There was no answer, just a door opening alongside them. They crowded through the doorway into the dark, and found themselves tumbling down a ramp into what felt and smelled like a mixture of water and garbage.

‘What is this place!’

‘Turn on the lights!’

‘There are no lights in effluent and refuse tunnels,’ said the ship.

‘Effluent?’ said Meg.

‘Refuse?’ said Zoe.

‘We’re in a garbage chute?’ said Zachary.

‘Whoever that is, take your hands off me,’ said Meg.

‘I was just trying to help,’ said Zachary.

‘I don’t have to put up with this,’ said Meg, ‘I want to go home, I want to have a shower, I’m due at the hairdresser this afternoon…’

There was a rasping click, and light flared from Zachary’s cigarette lighter. The light revealed their surroundings. They were standing in a big tunnel. The hatch they came through was visible, and shut. It had alien writing on it. Liquid and exotic garbage filled to tunnel to the depth of their shins. Owing to the fact that they had fallen when they entered, liquid and exotic garbage was also covering them.

‘I hate this place,’ Meg said.

‘You’re right,’ said Zoe.

‘I think I’m going to throw up,’ Harold said.

‘You do and I’ll drop you in it,’ Meg answered with what Harold thought was a distinct lack of sympathy.

Harold swallowed hard, and addressed the ship. ‘Ship, we’d really like to get out of this effluent and refuse tunnel, okay? But not into the corridor where you were shooting at us. Right?’

‘’twas not I that shot but the thief traps.’

‘Automatic security system, uh? Okay.’

‘I want a shower,’ said Meg.

Zachary looked at his cigarette lighter. ‘This thing isn’t going to last forever, you know, so unless we want to be here in the dark with all the alligators…’

Meg almost levitated. ‘Alligators?’

‘Joke,’ said Zachary.

‘A stoneage standup comic. All I needed.’ She was feeling her scalp. ‘I bumped my head then.’

‘What did the King do with the monasteries?’ asked the ship.

‘What?’ Harold was beginning to think that the computer may have been damaged by all the explosions he had heard when he was in the pod.

‘Thou heard’st.’

‘He closed them down, sold them, gave them to his friends,’ Meg said.

‘Walk 30 paces,’ said the ship, ‘and a door shall be opened unto ye.’

They walked along the tunnel, sloshing through the foul-smelling garbage until they came to another hatchway. As they reached it, the hatch slid open. They climbed through it, and found themselves on the ship’s bridge.

The bridge of the ship, a big area, about the size and shape of a tennis court, was empty of life. They had entered it through a hatch in one of its longer walls, and as they came in were facing a wall with a series of big screens on it. Below the screens were consoles, recognizable as control stations. In front of the consoles were couches, some in an upright sitting position, some flat for maximum comfort during the Leap. To their right was a connecting area which they would later find contained emergency medical pods for battle first-aid, and to their left was a hatchway with one of the sliding doors to which they had become accustomed. They would find that this led out into the rest of the ship. Other hatches led off the area but these were shut. For a moment after they entered, they stood in silence, looking around.

Harold was the first to move, beginning to walk around the bridge, taking everything in with greedy eyes. This kind of thing had been part of his fantasy life for as long as he could remember. Here it was, the control room of a space ship.

‘It’s a control room,’ said Zachary, ‘like the bridge of a ship.’

‘Bridge of a space ship,’ echoed Harold.

Meg just stood frozen where she was as Zoe and Zachary moved toward the central screen. Zoe sat down, facing the screen, as if waiting for a movie to start.

‘Ship,’ said Harold, ‘why didn’t you bring us here before?’

‘Thou didst not ask to be brought hither.’

‘The people who made this ship … they came to Earth at least once before, didn’t they? In Henry the Eighth’s time?’

‘They came to Earth many a time and oft. The Slarn know Earth full well.’

‘There had to have been at least one earlier trip.’ Harold was pleased that his reasoning had been was correct, and wanted the others to know about it. ‘They programmed their computer in 16
^th
century English.’ He looked at the screens. ‘Show us what’s outside the ship.’

‘Thou must trade me.’

Meg had to know. She still wanted to believe they were on Earth, victims of a joke, victims of an experiment, of terrorists, of anything rather than what she now believed to be the truth. She rattled out, ‘Henry the Eighth was succeeded by his son Edward, who died and then there was Edward’s sister Mary, and then her sister Elizabeth the first.’

And all the screens suddenly blazed with stars. The stars, undistorted by an atmosphere, shone steadily into the bridge. Harold walked from screen to screen, looking at them. He was stunned by the implications of what he was seeing. The others had not seemed to realize it yet. Finally, he turned to them. ‘You see it, don’t you?’

‘Stars?’ Zachary said hopefully. He hated quizzes because he always failed at them.

‘That’s very quick, Zachary, very quick.’ Meg wished she had not said it, but who could resist?

‘You don’t see it.’ A warm surge of satisfaction swept through Harold. They did not see what he was seeing. He had topped the class again. ‘The constellations are different.’

Still, they looked at him, not understanding.

‘We’re not seeing the stars in the way we’d see them from Earth,’ he went on. ‘Or even light years from Earth. They’re in different patterns.’ He moved along the screens, pointing to them. ‘There’s no Southern Cross, or Scorpio, or Orion. They’re just not there.’

‘So what’s that mean?’ said Zoe, whose best subject was not science.

‘It means,’ said Harold, ‘that we’re a very long way from home.’

Meg knew what it meant. She was a brave woman in many ways, but her voice was cracking as she said: ‘It’s not true. It’s a test. Some crazy kind of test. We’re in some sort of building on Earth. They can put anything on a screen. Like one of those shows in Museums. They’re just … lights.’

Harold scarcely heard her. The objection was not worth answering. He was staring at the screens, knowing that what he saw was real. ‘Fascinating.’

Zoe moved to him. ‘You’re not fooling, are you? You mean it. We’re sort of somewhere out in space? Millions of miles out?’

‘Oh, much further than that, Zoe, much further. I mean, the Sun’s an average ninety three million miles out from Earth, and if we were only that far away the stars’d still look about the same. No, we’re … tens of light years away from Earth.’

‘Forty seven point seven two four three,’ the ship said, ‘light years away from the home planet.’

‘Okay, now I know you’re lying,’ said Meg. ‘Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. We can’t be as far away from Earth as you’re saying. Don’t you know anything about physics at all, Harold?’

‘I thought of that. I know about Einsteinian physics and the speed of light and all that…’

‘Boy, that’s a relief,’ Zachary said.

Harold knew it was sarcasm and chose to ignore it. His father was always taking cheap shots like that. ‘But maybe aliens with an alien technology could’ve solved that problem.’

‘Aliens?’ There was a sneer in Meg’s voice. ‘What aliens? There is not one skerrick of evidence that any other planet in the Universe is populated …”

And she stopped.

Another hatch had slid open. Through the hatchway came the Wyzen.

She was about the size of an 8-year-old human child, and walked upright. Her body was covered with fur marked in dot and dash patterns like the natural camouflage pattern on a tabby cat. The fur had a sheen to it, each hair tipped a silvery-green, and her coat flowed as she trotted into the bridge and leapt onto one of the couches.

She sat there, looking at them with her big lustrous eyes. ‘Wyzen?’ she said.

Meg stood watching the Wyzen. She had never seen a creature like this and she knew without telling that this creature did not come from Earth. The size of the eyes, the sheen of the coat, even the way the thing sat, all spoke of an origin somewhere away from the planet Earth.

The effort to say it was going to kill her. She could not bring herself to say it. Then she said it. ‘Okay Harold. Let’s accept just for one moment that there are in fact aliens.’ She paused. ‘We need to be very careful. This is what they must look like without their armor on.’

But Harold moved toward the Wyzen, holding his hands out so that she could see that they were empty. The Wyzen imitated the gesture. It looked like a greeting.

‘My name is Harold Lewin.’ He pointed to his own chest. ‘Har-old.’

‘Wy-zen,’ said the Wyzen.

‘Zachary,’ said Zachary.

‘Zoe.’

‘Meg.’

‘Wyzen,’ said the Wyzen to each of them in turn.

‘Well since we’re all introduced, maybe you can take us home now,’ said Zachary.

‘Don’t push it, Zachary, we’re dealing with an alien intelligence here.’ Harold knew this was an historic moment. They were meeting a sentient being from another planet.

The sentient being from another planet leapt off the couch and trotted over to him and rubbed herself against his legs as a cat might, sniffed him, moved to Meg, and repeated the routine, and then rubbed herself against Zachary and Zoe. Then she leapt back onto her couch, and began watching them again.

‘Clearly an alien recognition ritual,’ Harold said.

‘It’s a cat,’ smiled Zoe.

‘No,’ said Harold, ‘one of the crew. We have to achieve communication.’

‘A ship’s cat!’

Harold moved over to the Wyzen. ‘Do you speak English?’ he asked.

‘Nay good Harold,’ said the ship, ‘the lady Zoe hath the right of it, ‘tis but an animal, and “Wyzen” is all that she doth say.’

‘Told you so Harold! A cat!’

Harold hated to be proven wrong. He felt anger thick inside his throat, and he moved away and sat on the couch furthest from the others.

‘’tis very like unto a cat,’ said the ship. ‘It cometh from a far world, full of woods and streams, like some Arcadia and ‘tis my friend and faithful companion.’

The Wyzen was making a low satisfied growling in the back of her throat. It sounded like a loud purring noise.

‘I didn’t know computers had friends,’ Zoe said.

Harold was forgetting to sulk. He was too interested.

‘Each starship pilot hath a Wyzen for a friend. Do we not, Wyzen?’

They could hear the Wyzen’s purring increase in volume as the ship addressed it. There was obviously a very close bond between them. And then Zoe knew. She could not have said exactly how she knew, but she knew. ‘And you’re not a computer,’ she said. ‘Are you?’

‘Nay.’ The word sounded small, and somehow sad.

‘What are you then?’

‘I was once a young maiden, as thou art Zoe, and as the Lady Meg was long ago before she grew old.’

‘I am 24 years old,’ said Meg in a cold stiff voice, ‘and I consider that young. Very young in fact.”

The ship ignored that and went on. ‘I was born when Henry the Eighth of that name was King in England. I was 20 summers old and had made first vows in the order of St Claire when the Slarn came from the stars and took me. And now I am the soul, and the spirit and the mind of a starship.’

Zoe’s mind was full of an image from an old horror film, of a brain floating in a transparent bowl in a laboratory, and she felt sick. She could scarcely get the words out, because the concept was so horrible. ‘They took your … brain?’

‘I am all around you. I am the ship.’

‘But your body…?’

‘The ship is my body. I am the ship.’

Meg too was appalled. ‘So you’re not human any more?’

‘Oh yes, Lady Meg, as human as thou art. I feel, I weep, I rejoice, I love. I have a name.’

Zoe felt tears starting to her eyes. She wanted to reach out and hug the starship and tell her that everything would be all right. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Guinevere.’

‘”Guinevere”.’ Suddenly, Zoe had to know. ‘What did you look like? Before? You know, before the aliens, what do you call them, the Slarn? Before they…’

The main screen began to change. The stars were dissolving into a digital construct of a face. The face slowly emerged. It was the face of a 20 year old woman, dark-haired, pale skinned, strong boned, with eyes that seemed to see forever. There was strength there, and the inner beauty of one who is at peace with her God and her fellow creatures. Then the face smiled, and spoke. ‘I forgot,’ the face said. And it changed again, and a nun’s veil covered hair and forehead. ‘Such was I, before the Slarn took my body and made of me … this.’

They looked at the face for a long silent moment, and then Meg spoke. ‘Please Guinevere? Take us home?’

‘Do’st believe then, cranky Meg?’

‘Please take us home.’

‘I would. And gladly. But I am adrift, like a ship whose sails are gone. Unhealed, I cannot move. Cannot take us home.’

‘I’m sorry. You’re hurt.’ Zoe responded to her as she would respond to any hurt creature.

‘Sorry? Thou art sorry for me?’

‘Are you in pain? Can we help?’

Guinevere was caught between tears and gentle laughter. ‘Thou? Wouldst help me? Knowest thou not that I hold within me the wisdom of worlds, of empires, the power of every prince who ever ruled? And thou, little short-lived one, would’st help me?’

‘We’re all a long way from home,’ said Zoe. ‘Maybe if we help each other…’

And on the screen, the image of Guinevere wept, and when she spoke again, they could hear the tears in her voice. ‘I have not wept this hundred years, and now I do for a simple word of kindness. I do thank thee for it, Zoe. I do thank thee.’