The Voyage of the Star Wolf (19 page)

“
Her
?” asked Armstrong. “Is she good-looking?”

“Good-looking? Molly Williger? Uh—” Cappy blinked at the question. His expression went very strange. “Oh, yeah. She's . . . unbelievable!”

Farther forward, Stolchak and Bach had to step aside to let pass several robots and crewmembers in fire-fighting gear; they were heading swiftly back toward the engine room.

Stolchak shook her head. “This is not my idea of a good time.”

The fire-team was followed by Korie and Leen. Korie was leading; Leen was shouting at his back. “I'm not doing
anything
until you take a look at it! I am not eating the paper on this one! You hear me?”

“Fluctuator sockets don't just diffuse for no reason at all!” Korie shouted back over his shoulder. “I told you I wanted all the assembly valves rebuilt!”

“Dammit—you put a scope on it and see for yourself!” Leen pushed past Stolchak, angrily shoved the equipment cart out of the way and hollered after Korie, “This is the best you can get out of a low-cycle installation. Seven-fifty, max!”

“Bullshit!” said Korie. He pushed Armstrong and Nakahari aside and strode into the engine room. “Those mods are rated to nine-fifty before they redline!”

“Only if confidence is nine or better! This ship is a six! Seven-fifty is your max!”

Leen followed Korie straight to the fluctuator socket. Thick smoke was still pouring out of it. Under the direction of the fire-team, the robots were spraying the whole thing with damping foam. Sparks were showering from the cylinder all along its length. The smell of ozone filled the air. Acrid steam roiled outward where the foam spray hit the conduction fields. Haddad was right in the thick of it, dancing and pointing. He had a sodden handkerchief over his nose and mouth. He was directing the fire-team as if he were their chief.

Korie said, “Shit,” and stepped over to a rugged-looking vertical console. He punched open a panel with his fist and pulled the large red lever inside it. Immediately the conduction fields in all three fluctuators collapsed—it was like being hit with a hammer of air; but the sparking stopped. The steam and the smoke began fading away. The whir of the ventilators increased and a noticeable breeze swept cold air into the engine room.

Korie turned sourly to the two crewmembers who had been fighting with the system and said dryly, “First, you flush the system . . .” He tapped out a program on the console. “Then you call up a total System Analysis Report and look for the anomaly.”

He scanned through the system schematic quickly, calling up display after display. All were green. He stopped scrolling through the schematic when he found a schematic with a section in flashing red. He slipped easily into teaching mode and pointed. “All right, what's that? Anybody?” He glanced around, read the nametag on Haddad's chest. “Haddad?” Abruptly he frowned. “How long have you been aboard? You're supposed to check in.”

“Uh”—Haddad glanced at his watch—“thirty seconds.”

“Right.” Korie pointed again. “What's that?”

“Assembly valve irregularity. Lack of synchronization probably.”

“Right.” Korie shot a triumphant look to Leen. To Haddad, he said, “Go ahead. Pull it. Let's have a look.”

Haddad dropped the duffel he was still carrying over his shoulder and went immediately to work. He put on a pair of thick gloves, opened a panel in the side of the fluctuator, reached in and unclipped the assembly valve. It was a set of shining interlocking cylinders and modules.

Korie took a fire extinguisher from one of the robots and sprayed the valve to cool it off. He handed back the extinguisher and took the assembly valve from Haddad, quickly unscrewed one end of it, opened it up and looked inside. He held it out for Leen to see—

Leen looked, but didn't comment.

Korie reached into the chamber and pulled out a burnt something. It looked like a carbonized rat, but without head or tail or even legs; just a clump of charred fur.

“Cute,” said Korie. “Very cute. You know what would have happened if we had tried to inject into hyperstate with this in the assembly valve?”

Leen didn't answer. He just lowered his eyes to the floor for a moment, then looked back up to Korie.

Korie nodded. “Right. Find out who did it. And transfer him dockside.”

“Not a good idea,” Leen said quietly. “The doctor has a whole cageful of those furballs in her lab. Everybody who wants off—” He didn't finish the thought.

Korie met his gaze straight on. “Anyone who would knowingly sabotage this ship's engines isn't
good
enough to be a member of this crew. I still have pride in this ship and I don't want anyone on the crew who can't share the feeling. Find the man who did this and get him off my ship.”

“Captain Lowell wouldn't have done that—” Leen started.

Korie cut him off. “Captain Lowell isn't in command anymore. I am.” Korie handed the assembly valve back to Leen. “Tear them all down. Rebuild them.”

“You're awfully sure of yourself,” Leen said resentfully. “I don't see the stripes on your sleeve yet. The scuttlebutt has it you're not getting them—”

“I don't need a captain's stripes to know what's wrong with these engines.” He added, “Chief—I worked my way through college on a liberty ship assembly line. I was engine calibration crew chief for a year and a half. I signed the hulls of a hundred and sixty-five of these ships. I
know
what they're capable of.” And then, in a gentler tone, “And I know what
you're
capable of.”

But Leen was too angry to be easily pacified. “Give it a rest.
You know better
. This is the garbage can. FleetComm dumps all their problems here; all their losers, loonies, and lost causes.” He added bitterly, “And maybe, if they're real real lucky, we'll all fall into a star.”

Korie was stung, but he was also deliberately patient. “Chief, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Neither does anybody else on this ship. I say so.”

“Bullshit! Is that more of your damn lies? We're the bad luck of the whole fleet. Ask anybody.
We're
the reason for the Marathon mauling.”

Korie shook his head. It wasn't worth arguing about anymore. He'd had this conversation too many times already. “Chief—” he said tiredly. “Clean this mess up. Start with your attitude. There are no losers on this ship.” He started for the exit.

Leen called after him. “We don't need an attitude check! We need an exorcist!”

Over his shoulder, Korie called back, “If that's what it takes—”

As it happened, Hodel was a licensed warlock.

His business card listed the areas of his expertise: thaumaturgy, light magic, violet sorcery, channeling, planar hexes, lethetic obsessions, despiritualized curses, demonic possessions, ontological constructions, personal spells, love philters, green magic (several shades), orthomatic snake oil (all flavors), and (of particular importance) . . . karmatic exorcisms.

Also, fresh strawberries.

When Korie asked him about snake oil, he replied simply, “How badly does your snake squeal?”

“Never mind.”

“I see. You wanted a serious answer?”

“If it's not too much trouble.”

“Actually,” said Hodel, “it is. You see, to explain magic is to destroy it. But”—He pulled up a chair—“Since you insist, here's what you need to know. Magic isn't about the physical universe. It's about the experiential universe. It's about your belief system. Magic works because you believe it works.” He pointed at the coffee mug on the table. “I can't cast a spell that will lift that cup up and move it over there. Magic doesn't work that way. But I can cast a spell that will cause that cup to be moved—someone will pick it up and move it. Coincidence? Not if you believe in magic. And even if you don't believe, the cup
still
got moved. And it doesn't matter what belief system you use to motivate the move or what gods or demons or other sources you ask to power the move; the simple act of casting the spell or working the ritual or saying the prayer shifts
your
relationship to the universe so that the result you want is more likely than it was before.”

Korie looked skeptical. “But who gets the credit for moving the cup?”

“Who cares?” Hodel asked. “Does it matter? The important thing is that you got the result you set out to get. That's the way magic works. So, to answer the question you didn't ask, but you're planning to,
yes
, I can cast a spell or lift a curse or perform an exorcism to rehabilitate the karma of this ship. However you phrase it, what you want is to make this crew believe in themselves again. So you have to do something
drastic to break the spell of bad feeling that's poisoning this crew and this ship.” Hodel glanced at Korie sharply. “And, if you don't mind my saying so, it wouldn't hurt to do something about the black cloud that's floating over your head too.”

“I might be a lost cause. Just concentrate on the rest of the ship.”

“Sorry, it's all or nothing. The cure has to be total.”

Korie studied Hodel for a long moment. “Mike, you surprise me sometimes. I don't know if you're serious or if you're pulling my leg.”

“You'll find out when you try to stand up. Do you want the two-dollar exorcism or the four-dollar exorcism?”

“What's the difference?”

“With the two-dollar job, I bathe in chaotic vapors and immolate myself in front of the whole crew. Then I chop myself up into little pieces and throw me into the lake. For four dollars I resurrect myself in a pillar of light and sing all six hundred choruses of
Lulu's Lament
while standing on my hands on the back of a naked unicorn and accompanying myself on the electric bagpipes.”

“This is more serious than that, Mike. What can I get for ten dollars?”

“Ten dollars? Gee, I've never had to do a ten-dollar exorcism. I'm not sure my heart can stand it. But for ten dollars, you get
The Secret Sorcery of the Grand Poobah of the Sevagram
. For the finale, I will wrassle the devil himself, two falls out of three, for custody of Hell. Then for my first encore, I drink a whole bottle of trans-Lunar brandy, make love to a feral Chtorran, and kill a Martian woman—I think. Or maybe it's the other way around.”

“Right.” Korie nodded. “I get the picture.”

“Trust me. I'm worth it.”

“I dunno. Ten dollars is a lot of money—”

“The ten-dollar exorcism comes with a guarantee . . .” Mike began.

“I know.” Korie grinned. It was an old joke. “If I'm not absolutely satisfied, I don't have to pay and you'll have me repossessed.”

“Close enough. If it doesn't work, we'll give you double your bullshit back.”

“Hey—” Korie held up his hands. “I can get double bullshit from the Admiralty for free—”

“Ahh, but not with
my
style.”

“Okay,” said Korie. “You're on.”

The important thing about an exorcism is to dress appropriately.

The crew had gathered in the shuttle bay, it being the only chamber
in the ship large enough to hold all of them at once. Most of them had no idea what to expect, only that Korie had scheduled a little party to celebrate the successful recalibration of the phase-injector assembly valve modules.

The lights dimmed and there was fanfare. Spotlights probed and searched and came to a final focus on the far end of the room. A puff of orange smoke exploded out of nowhere and Mikhail Hodel appeared in all his gaudy glory.

Mikhail Hodel was wearing a shimmering hula skirt, a glistening confection made of strands of shredded silvery sheet-polymer, extracted from a catabolic converter. The three-foot feathers on his headdress and staff were injection plumes that had been dyed in ultra-gee zylox and soaked in liquid nitrogen, then exposed to explosive decompression in the forward airlock. His scarlet warpaint was anti-deoxidant gel. The strings of beads and rattles that he wore around his neck and waist, upper arms and wrists, were constructed from interociter spares and pieces of optical conduit. The two glowing hemispheres that made up his steel brassiere were measuring cups from the ship's galley—which did not explain why they were not quite the same size. His codpiece was the bow tube-fitting of a proton torpedo. The entire outfit was lined with neon conduit, flashing diodes of all colors, several Christmas lights and electric ornaments, sparklers and flash-bombs. He moved in a cloud of smoke and fire and multicolored auras. He was an epiphany of fireworks, lasers, small explosions, whistles, air-bursts, and confetti. Tracks of red and purple light crawled up and down his legs and chest and back.