Tin Woodman (6 page)

Karen reaches under the seat and pulls out a flask. She unseals it, takes a drink. She makes a face and hands the container to Mora, who swallows a gulp of the stuff with effort. “Worst whiskey in the world,” she comments. “Has to be.”

“Yeah,” Karen agrees, steering the skimmer suddenly into a. great leftward arc, heading off toward the frozen lake. “Rig’s stuff. He’s really not very good at it, yet. Keeps trying.”

“I think he’s carrying self-sufficiency too far,’” Mora says. “Better just to go into town.”

“I think Rig would have a seizure if he had to deal with a Normal,” Karen says, laughing. “I really do.” The thought strikes both of them as tremendously funny and Mora doesn’t stop laughing until Karen nearly runs the skimmer into the roof of a cabin near the lake. “Geez, Better take her up a hundred meters or so,” Karen says.

“Better not get any drunker,” Mora says. “You’ll kill us both.”

“Sometimes I don’t believe you’re real, Mora. How did you get to be such a worry-wart in fifteen years?”

“I’ve had a lot to worry about.” Suddenly, Mora feels the need to communicate the calm, the joy that she has experienced here so far away from Normals . . .

A roar splits the air, shaking the skimmer. Karen leans forward, intent on her manipulation of the craft’s controls. Mora looks up. There, above, is the red glow of a shuttle craft, speeding across the sky. The thunder dies away.

“Damn thing,” Karen says, finally regaining control of the skimmer and looking up with Mora. “We caught its shock wave.”

“It’s a cargo shuttle,” Mora comments. “Only things big enough to generate a shock wave like that. Probably resupplying the Orion, which is in Earth orbit right now, expecting a—”

Karen interrupts. “You certainly know enough about those things.”

“My father was a shuttle pilot. I don’t really remember him, of course, but I got interested when I was at school . . .” She lets the sentence trail off, falling into thought. “You know, the Philadelphia Starport is just a few kilometers away. The rest of the world is just beyond those mountains—it seems so far away . . .”

“This is the world,” Karen insists. “What’s out there . . . well, the Normals made it. Let them live in it.”

A sudden fear grips her. A fleeting foreshadow of loss . . . ? “And if they decide they don’t like us here, grouped like we are?”

Karen doesn’t answer. Mora looks out at the horizon. Darkness is falling so suddenly . . . it isn’t really that late, and yet it is becoming harder and harder to make out anything. “I won’t let them blank me. I want to live,” Mora says suddenly, not understanding why. She turns to Karen.

Karen is gone. The skimmer is gone.

“It’s finally taking effect, Doctor.”

Finally . . . finally . . . finally . . . final . . . fin . . .

Darkness comes. It congeals into a light-veined gel which seems to suck her down, smothering her. With a vivid flash, she remembers everything. But the darkness relentlessly drags her down toward a yawning chasm. “Damn you all!” she screams with her mind. “I want to live!”

It is a revelation.

But the darkness is deaf as death itself.

Ston didn’t think it was too serious an injury. But his left hand hurt, and by the time he reached MedSec it was swollen.

He and Bif Hersil, another newly commissioned ensign in the engineering section, had been doing some maintenance work. They’d been lifting a heavy piece of metal shielding into an airlock, preparing to go EVA and repair a portion of the outer hull which had sustained minor meteorite damage.

“Pretty brainy work, this,” Hersil had griped amiably, his teeth clenched with the effort of hoisting the plate. “For this I learned hyperspacial field mechanics?”

Ston had been holding the metal plate by its other end. “A haIIowed tradition—hard work, the initiation of the green officers.” But unlike most “traditions” of the Triunion Space Service, this one ostensibly had a purpose. The greatest danger aboard a starship as huge as this was that the crew would start thinking of it as a self-sustaining world. Let them do a little machine-work, reasoned the brass: maintain the hull, clean the air-filtration and waste-circulation units; then they won’t forget so easily where they are.

“You got a good grip?” Bif had nodded. “Let’s move it, then.”

As Ston had begun to back into the airlock, however, he was distracted. For just a moment he thought—he was
sure
—that someone had called out to him. Not Bif—no, it had sounded like . . . it had sounded like Adria, his sister.

Which was impossible, because Adria was dead.

In that disoriented moment the metal plate had slipped through the fingers of his right hand, falling hard against the frame of the airlock door and pinching his left hand beneath it for just a moment before crashing to the floor.

So now Ston was sitting slouched in a MedSec waiting room chair, in full pressure suit minus gloves. The duty nurse looked up from paperwork, squinting hawkish young features at him when a small plastic mound on his desk blinked pink. “Ah—someone will be with you in a minute. Don’t let them amputate. We’ve only got right hands in stock for grafting purposes.” Ston knew him casually.
Ven
, something or other. Ven showed perfect white teeth in a smile.

Everybody in the service seems to have teeth like that, thought Ston. Well, dental implants were a part of the Service Health Coverage Plan. Ston still had his originals, but he was seriously considering new ones. Maybe it was good for them all to have perfect teeth and broad shoulders here on the good ship
Pegasus.
They were all heroes, weren’t they? On Earth, Crysor, and Deva, anyway.

Pain, Ston decided, was making him unaccustornedly cynical. Yet it was true: explorers of new lands, discoverers of new riches, bringers of knowledge, the human beings who crewed the starships were indeed heroes on the home worlds. The starships themselves, creations of the vast pooled technologies of three worlds, had become uncomfortably like objects of worship themselves.

So what did that make him? he wondered. A high priest of the Order of the Cog? Lugging steel plating around, yet.

“You all right?” Ven asked.

Ston realized he’d been ignoring the nurse. “My hand just hurts,” he mumbled. “If you don’t hurry this process up, I’m going to bleed on your desk.”

“Hey—don’t blame me,” Ven protested. “I’m just—” A door at the end of the waiting room slid open and a middle-aged, dark-haired man in a MedSec uniform entered. He stopped at the duty nurse’s desk to have a word with him. Ston couldn’t hear most of what he said, but he picked up the name “Mora Elbrun.”

The temptation to walk over and join the conversation was strong, but Ston resisted it. He knew about as much concerning Captain Darsen’s injury two days ago as most of the crew, which was very little. Those members of the bridge crew who had witnessed it had been ordered to keep tight teeth on the subject. It had been rumored that
Tin Woodman
had somehow caused the incident before it vanished. And that Mora Elbrun had been involved. Ston remembered talking to her, less than an hour before she’d . . . done whatever she’d done. Try as he might, he couldn’t imagine how she—

“You waiting to see a doctor, son?” The man at Ven’s desk had turned toward him, was addressing him.

“Yes, sir.” Ston rose and moved to him, extending his bandaged hand. “Bit of an accident.”

“Let me see that.” The man carefully unwound the rag which Ston had wrapped around his left hand. “I’m chief surgeon. Dr. Kervatz. Don’t believe I’ve met you.”

“Ensign Ston Maurtan, sir,” he responded, watching apprehensively as Kervatz took the hand by its fingers. Experimentally, the doctor grasped the thumb with his other hand, moved it, just a bit. Pain shot through Ston’s hand; he couldn’t help the ragged intake of breath, the low moan.

“Hurt?” Kervatz inquired, half-smiling.

“I guess you could say that, sir,” he replied, testily.

“It should. You’ve had an accident. We fragile machines can’t afford being careless. Pain is our body’s warning system—and if s a kind of penance too, I think.”

“Sort of a cruel way of seeing it, sir,” Ston interrupted, his hand still throbbing. Realizing he was out of line, he tried to backpedal—“I mean—”

“No, no,” Kervatz said, nodding absently, preoccupied with something else entirely it seemed. “It certainly doesn’t behoove me, that particular philosophy . . . Well, in any case, young man, my expert guess is that you’ve fractured your phalanx.”

“Sir?”

“Most likely a hairline fracture in one of the bones of your thumb. Nothing serious, but smarts like the devil, I dare say. Go down to 4-B, have a nurse scanner it to confirm my hypothesis. She’ll set it, if that’s what you need. And have yourself relieved from active duty for forty-eight hours. My orders.”

“Thank you, sir.” He flashed a sincere smile. Forty-eight hours was generous. Backing away, a bit overwhelmed by being attended to by the chief surgeon himself, he didn’t notice the young MedSec doctor coming through the door. There was a glancing collision; Ston turned to apologize, but the man didn’t seem to care at all, his attention directed entirely on Kervatz.

“Elbrun is in 4-A,” the young doctor said, “resting well. She’s strong. We’ll be able to proceed with the second injection on schedule.”

Ston stopped, listened. They didn’t even seem to notice his presence.

Kervatz frowned. “You seem pretty eager, Scandon. You’ll be pleased to know that I’ve turned the matter over to you.”

“Me, sir?”

“That’s right. You need the experience. Not that anything’s involved. The first injection did most of the preliminary damage, although it won’t take if she doesn’t get another in twenty-four hours. You’ll notice that she’ll begin to show normal responses to her surroundings before that time, though most likely they’ll be feeble. Like you said, she’s strong. She’ll fight. I’ll double-check you from time to time, of course.”

Ston noted the pleasure Scandon was taking in all this. It made him feel ill. Before they noticed he was listening, he turned into the corridor, walked a few steps until he heard the door slide shut behind him. He stopped and tried to collect his thoughts.

Injections? Mora Elbrun was a Talent—like Adria. And she’d done something . . . harmed Darsen? If so, she’d be Doped—Adria had told him all about that. There were very strict regulations about Talents.

He had to find out.

A nurse breezed out from a room a few doors down, strode efficiently ahead of him, not looking back. The door to that room had been left open. Ston stepped inside. There was a woman in the room, lying on a form-couch. Mora Elbrun.

Standing beside her, Ston touched her forehead lightly with his good hand. She seemed to be sleeping. Her hair was gone. “Mora? Mora, it’s Ston Maurtan,” His hand moved to her bare shoulder, shook it. Her eyelids slowly lifted. The pupils were dilated, making her coral eyes larger than ever. She opened her mouth, but didn’t speak. No, not asleep. Drugged. There was a cast to her eyes, as if she was light-years away . . . it was like peering into two bottomless, empty wells.

“Mora,” Ston whispered, an insane idea dawning on him. “Mora, did you call me?” No response. There was nothing he could do right now, he realized.

Approaching footsteps echoed down the outside corridor. He dashed back out, just before the nurse he’d seen depart before turned the corner, carrying a tray of medical supplies. Ston let her walk down to him. “I’m lost,” he said, averting his face sheepishly. “Could you tell me where 4-B is?”

“Go back to the main corridor and make a right,” the woman answered brusquely, stepping past him, and into Mora’s room. She closed the door behind her. Ston noted the usual simple electronic lock of the sort crew quarters were outfitted with.

That was good.

“I may be crazy, Mora Elbrun,” he mumbled to himself, walking toward the MedSec room to be mended. “But I can’t let them do this to you.”

SIX

Leana Coffer’s Journal

(Vocoder transcription authorized

by Leana Coffer. Original recording

voice-locked per program 774-D.)

Acting captain—Ha! What a joke. One of the first things that Darsen did upon reassuming command was to order his flunky, Jin Tamner, to prepare and have sent by Norlan a formal report of what transpired during the attempt at contact with
Tin Woodman.
It “superseded” the report I prepared; mine wasn’t even transmitted.

Dr. Kervatz sent me a report on the first of Mora’s treatments. She’s going under fast. Maybe two more treatments, and they’ll make an ideal citizen of her. Of course, someone will have to feed her; she won’t be able to do those things any more.

To think that at one time I was idealistic about the service, back at the academy. Such a feeling of commitment—I worked so hard for my commission. I remember feeling that I’d blown it, the time that I got into a political demonstration and got arrested by the MP’s . . . then when the commission came through anyway, how overjoyed I was.

So here I am at thirty-six, believing in nothing, looking off into some terrible future which I feel Darsen is planning. If I had something to believe in, I’d give my life to it. I don’t even believe in myself.

I envy Mora. What motivated her to sacrifice herself for a stranger? Because he was a Talent? That alone seems an unlikely explanation. If only I could talk to her, find out.

And what of Div? He gave himself as well, in a way. What has happened to him and the alien that swallowed him up? I’ll never know, I guess—and yet there’s nothing in the universe I’d rather know, if that experience on the bridge was a taste of it . . .

Far away, the memory replayed itself for the being who had been called Div Harlthor. Again he saw it all, and it took on new meaning, scintillating light into new crevices of revelation:

The swim through space, sensing the void-spider behind him, weaving its invisible web of deadly intent down toward him. Hurry, must hurry, or all is lost. And always there is a beacon-like transmission, pulling him, tugging him to what must be where Tin Woodman wanted him . . . The soft impact with the hull, the feeling of it tingling through the palms of his pressure suit gloves. And yet, no access door! Panic. And, simultaneously, a soothing feeling of well-being. All is well, it says, and it is not from within him. Suddenly, the parting of the hull. Quickly, he slips in. Into the darkness. He turns and the opening slowly seals away the stars and the fruitlessly clutching spider ship of Edan Darsen. The darkness is total, and yet not at all frightening. A comfortable, life-giving darkness. He becomes aware of a hissing sound—air? Yes, this must be some sort of airlock. The hissing stops, and the lip of darkness parts into the interior of the ship. He steps out into it and into awe.

Trusting, he removes his pressure suit. He is standing in a long, winding corridor of some resilient pink substance. Its texture is smooth; warm to the touch. Like a womb, he thinks. A mad, Freudian fantasy. He shakes the idea off. The air is sweet and moist and warm.

Out of the depths of the dimly luminescent passage ahead of him the mind of the ship-being reaches out . . .

•••
FOLLOW
•••

Alien thoughts lead him through the labyrinth, slowly, toward the creature’s center. It seems as though he travels far through this round tunnel, so suffused with rose light. Off every twist, every surface, the ship’s consciousness reverberates one great empty emotion, echoing until the air seems to roar with it.

•••
ALONENESS
•••

•••
DRIFTING WITIIOUT PURPOSE AMONG THE STARS •••

•••
THE BURNING FIRES TOUCHING VUL •••

•••
DEATH ••• PAIN •••

•••
HOLLOW LONELINESS
•••

Something builds within him. Somehow, he senses movement of the ship . . . he feels contact with this ship-being more and more . . . flooding in . . . lovely, beautiful . . .

He staggers, falls into spongy tissue with exquisite pleasure . . . and abruptly is aware that he is more than iust himself—his senses extend much further. He reaches out to a tender spark in the void before him . . . and finds that it is Mora Elbrun . . . in an instant, he sees what she has done for him, and knows why . . . for a moment, he stands on the bridge of the starship
Pegasus
, looking and feeling all of it through Mora’ s senses.

It is all right,
he finds himself telling her.
See through me as well. See what is happening to me.
And he could feel her experience his change as well, as her being briefly once more merged with his as it had in her cabin—and he showed her the things he was experiencing . . .

Then the abrupt breakage of contact—the slithery slide into a different dimension of space—the fear.
. .
and the comfort.

••• ALL IS WELL •••

••• I HAVE POWER ONCE MORE •••

••• WE ARE LEAVING QUICKLY •••

He starts to question this but realizes that there will be plenty of time for questions. So much to learn. He rises back to his feet and proceeds into the heart of the ship-being.

It was part of his Learning and Acclimatization, this constant reanalysis of the content and substances of the first meeting. It is the Rosetta stone of meaning for his new comprehension.

••• TAKE IT BACK TO THE ENTRY INTO THE CORRIDOR
•••

said the ship-being.

••• WHAT IS A “WOMB”? •••

Ston Maurtan was proud of his service record.

After a top ten percent showing in his academy class on Crysor, his Voyage Training accomplishments had been so exemplary, he received his commission and ship assignment after merely eight months aboard the
Valkyrie.
While on this training cruiser, he’d been granted a week’s leave of absence so that he might attend the funeral of his sister, Adria, on Earth. His return was two hours beyond the time designated on his ship’s LOA document. This had been the only infraction of regulations logged against him since he’d stuffed his DI’s boots with mashed potatoes in his first year at the academy.

The only other infraction he’d been caught at, anyway,

An intercom just above blared, startling him: “Attention. All officers on Bridge Crew ‘A’ will please report to briefing lounge 3-G immediately . . . Attention. All officers on Bridge Crew—”

Damn. What was wrong with his nerves? He’d always imagined that in stress situations he’d be cool, but now he found himself battling a surprising amount of simple, uncomplicated fear. He tuned out the sudden intrusion of noise upon his concentrated effort to beat back that fear.
Control yourself, man,
he told himself. For in the last twelve hours Ensign Ston Maurtan had committed two court-martial offenses. At the moment he was contemplating the third. Self-control was everything, now.

Uncertainty, not guilt, caused his blood to race, his hands to tremble slightly at unexpected sounds. Quite suddenly, he felt cut off from the others aboard the
Pegasus.
He had no allies in this, no friends in whom he might confide these necessary things he’d done to save Mora.

Court-martial offenses. The past hours raced over and over in his head:

Following Dr. Kervatz’s orders, he had gone directly from treatment in MedSec to the Engineering Office to report the necessary forty-eight-hour absence from duty his injury had caused. Lingering there, he visited the electronics shop, where he illicitly pocketed certain items of hardware, failing to have their nature recorded or their price debited to his ship’s account. Back in his quarters, he waited for his roommate’s necessary duty-shift departure, then constructed a simple device capable of blocking electronic signals to magnetic locks.

After locating Mora’s quarters in the ship’s directory, he used his new lock pick to enter the compartment. There he found her MedSec uniform. It fit him poorly—blouse too narrow across shoulders and chest; pants too long in leg; baggy about the rear section. But it was identical to all the other MedSec uniforms, and would have to serve as the needed camouflage to mask his intended activities.

A brisk walk and lift-chute jump later, he was striding outside the MedSec offices. There was no one in sight. His luck was holding up. He selected the correct door, clamped his device to the wall, tapped its button. The door whispered open obediently and Ston walked through, mindful of the directory schematic he’d memorized. He was in the post-operative recovery cell, which adjoined Mora’s recuperation chamber, connected by another door. He applied his lock pick to that door.

The chamber that was revealed to him by the door’s opening was dim, lit solely by a small lamp near the medical form-couch upon which Mora lay unconscious. She was not alone. A nurse was leaning over her.

“What are you doing here?” Ston challenged immediately, blurting the first thing that flashed into his mind. He shifted the lock-pick mechanism to his injured left hand.

“Huh?” The man straightened up hesitantly, turned around. A big man, he almost eclipsed the lamplight. “Why, uh, Vandez put this on my rounds. I’m to administer—”

Drawing in a breath, Ston stepped forward, delivered a hard blow to the nurse’s chin with his good hand. The fist shut the nurse up, but hardly fazed him more than that. Ston desperately rabbit-punched him again, gave him a few clumsy karate chops, which managed to bring him to his knees. He kneed him in the jaw, brought the lock pick down on the back of his head as a last resort. The plastic case smashed, scattering the jerry-rigged circuitry components on the floor.

The nurse grunted and banged onto the floor, unconscious.

Fiery pain coursed up Ston’s left arm from the blow’s impact. He clenched his teeth, choked back a scream.

Once more in control, he paced over to the form-couch’s control panel. “Mora—can you hear me?” he whispered harshly. When there was no response, he activated the couch’s motor. Its low hum seemed to his jangled nerves a huge roar. Mora stirred, her head lolling from side to side on the pillow. But she didn’t speak. Her eyes, half-opened, seemed unable to focus. He knew she couldn’t understand him, but he spoke nevertheless: “It’s going to be all right.”

As he looked down on her, for a moment he seemed to be gazing at Adria.

Shrugging off the illusion, he found the lever that disengaged the couch from its wall-and-motor attachment. The bed rolled away slightly on its four wheels. He pushed it past the snoring man on the floor into the post-op room. After poking his head out the main door, he steered the bed into the still-empty corridor, wheeled it toward the lift chute.

He’d just arrived when a lift platform sighed down. On it was a tall man wearing the maroon and gold of command crew. Ston didn’t know him; he checked the ID badge over the left breast pocket. Lieutenant Norlan. Ston gulped silently, flashed a small smile, praying the expression would hold Norlan’s gaze so that the man wouldn’t pay undue attention to the medical couch’s passenger.

Norlan returned the smile. “Going up?”

“Down.” Ston shook his head. “I mean, I’ll wait for the next lift.” Norlan nodded absently, punched a control. The lift rose.

Ston felt perspiration bead on his brow, dampen his palms.

When the lift returned empty, he guided the couch into it, dialed out the special sleeper deck code on the controls. The lift eased down, not helping the queasiness he felt in his abdomen. To take his mind off his fear and sickness, he considered the sleeper deck.

The environmental systems of the
Pegasus
were capable of sustaining approximately a thousand persons, although the ship’s crew numbered half that many. But a starship cruiser of this sort performed many functions. Right now, aboard the
Pegasus,
close to a hundred civilian scientists engaged in deep-space research. Then there were the crews of ten small stellar exploration spacecraft the
Pegasus
was ferrying to a number of distant star systems. Four hundred and twenty-one military individuals and technicians bound for existing colonies near the edge of Triunion space were on board, as well as colonists being transported to newly chartered settlements along the
Pegasus’
intended route.

To accomplish the hauling of these people, an entire section of the
Pegasus
was outfitted with two thousand Henderson capsules—black, sarcophagus-like cryogenic units, each able to hold one person in suspended animation for years. All of the
Pegasus’
human supercargo, including the nine hundred and eighty-four prospective colonists bound for two new worlds, were presently sealed in the starship’s Hendersons.

This was sleeper deck.

The platform halted. Before Ston were the cold corridors of his destination. There were no duty stations on this deck. The ship’s computer monitored the conditions of the Hendersons, which were efficiently racked in long, monotonous, uniform rows. Ston guided Mora’s couch between the close rows of these black metal boxes, relaxing. This part was planned very carefully; it should run smoothly.

He eased up to the first available empty capsule, opened it, lifted Mora in, hooking up the waste evacuation and breathing equipment. He did not activate the cryogenic circuits; should Mora recover from her single psychemicidian injection, her metabolism would have to remain normal. Therefore, to prevent the monitor computer from sounding an alarm because of the unit’s “malfunctioning” freezer device, he’d have to cut the sensor cable before he initiated power into—

Damn. He’d forgotten the wire cutters.

Praying that it would be enough, he yanked at the sensor cable with his good hand. The cable held a moment . . . then jerked free. Relieved, he set it down on the floor in a space he hoped no one would notice. Then he pulled down the lid of the Henderson, switched on the air supply and the emergency heating coils.