“D’Branin,” Agatha Marij-Black said in a low, urgent voice. “Can’t you feel?”
Karoly d’Branin looked at her as if seeing her for the first time.
“Can you feel them? You are a three, can you sense them now, strongly?”
“Long ago,” the psipsych said, “long ago.”
“Can you project? Talk to them, Agatha. Where are they? In the center area? The dark?”
“Yes,” she replied, and she laughed. Her laugh was shrill and hysterical, and d’Branin had to recall that she was a very sick woman. “Yes, in the center, d’Branin, that’s where the pulses come from. Only you’re wrong about them. It’s not a them at all, your legends are all lies, lies, I wouldn’t be surprised if we were the first ever to see your volcryn, to come this close. The others, those aliens of yours, they merely felt, deep and distantly, sensed a bit of the nature of the volcryn in their dreams and visions, and fashioned the rest to suit themselves. Ships, and wars, and a race of eternal travelers, it is all—all—”
“Yes. What do you mean, Agatha, my friend? You do not make sense. I do not understand.”
“No,” Marij-Black said, “you do not, do you?” Her voice was suddenly gentle. “You cannot feel it, as I can. So clear now. This must be how a one feels, all the time. A one full of esperon.”
“What do you feel? What?”
“It’s not a them, Karoly. It’s an it. Alive, Karoly, and quite mindless, I assure you.”
“Mindless?” d’Branin said. “No, you must be wrong, you are not reading correctly. I will accept that it is a single creature if you say so, a single great marvelous star-traveler, but how can it be mindless? You sensed it, its mind, its telepathic emanations. You and the whole of the Crey sensitives and all the others. Perhaps its thoughts are too alien for you to read.”
“Perhaps. But what I do read is not so terribly alien at all. Only animal. Its thoughts are slow and dark and strange, hardly thoughts at all, faint. Stirrings cold and distant. The brain must be huge all right, I grant you that, but it can’t be devoted to conscious thought.”
“What do you mean?”
“The propulsion system, d’Branin. Don’t you feel? The pulses? They are threatening to rip off the top of my skull. Can’t you guess what is driving your damned volcryn across the galaxy? And why they avoid gravity wells? Can’t you guess how it is moving?”
“No,” d’Branin said, but even as he denied it a dawn of comprehension broke across his face, and he looked away from his companion, back at the swelling immensity of the volcryn, its lights moving, its veils a-ripple as it came on and on, across light-years, light-centuries, across eons.
When he looked back at her, he mouthed only a single word: “Teke,” he said.
She nodded.
* * *
—
Melantha Jhirl struggled to lift the injection gun and press it against an artery. It gave a single loud hiss, and the drug flooded her system. She lay back and gathered her strength and tried to think. Esperon, esperon, why was that important? It had killed Lasamer, made him a victim of his own latent abilities, multiplied his power and his vulnerability. Psi. It all came back to psi.
The inner door of the airlock opened. The headless corpse came through.
It moved with jerks, unnatural shufflings, never lifting its legs from the floor. It sagged as it moved, half crushed by the weight upon it. Each shuffle was crude and sudden; some grim force was literally yanking one leg forward, then the next. It moved in slow motion, arms stiff by its sides.
But it moved.
Melantha summoned her own reserves and began to squirm away from it, never taking her eyes off its advance.
Her thoughts went round and round, searching for the piece out of place, the solution to the chess problem, finding nothing.
The corpse was moving faster than she was. Clearly, visibly, it was gaining.
Melantha tried to stand. She got to her knees with a grunt, her heart pounding. Then one knee. She tried to force herself up, to lift the impossible burden on her shoulders as if she were lifting weights. She was strong, she told herself. She was the improved model.
But when she put all her weight on one leg, her muscles would not hold her. She collapsed, awkwardly, and when she smashed against the floor it was as if she had fallen from a building. She heard a sharp snap, and a stab of agony flashed up her arm, her good arm, the arm she had tried to use to break her fall. The pain in her shoulder was terrible and intense. She blinked back tears and choked on her own scream.
The corpse was halfway up the corridor. It must be walking on two broken legs, she realized. It didn’t care. A force greater than tendons and bone and muscle was holding it up.
“Melantha…heard you…are…you…Melantha?”
“Quiet,” she snarled at Royd. She had no breath to waste on talk.
Now she used all the disciplines she had ever learned, willed away the pain. She kicked feebly, her boots scraping for purchase, and she pulled herself forward with her unbroken arm, ignoring the fire in her shoulder.
The corpse came on and on.
She dragged herself across the threshold of the lounge, worming her way under the crashed sled, hoping it would delay the cadaver. The thing that had been Thale Lasamer was a meter behind her.
In the darkness, in the lounge, where it had all begun, Melantha Jhirl ran out of strength.
Her body shuddered and she collapsed on the damp carpet, and she knew that she could go no farther.
On the far side of the door, the corpse stood stiffly. The sled began to shake. Then, with the scrape of metal against metal, it slid backward, moving in tiny sudden increments, jerking itself free and out of the way.
Psi. Melantha wanted to curse it, and cry. Vainly she wished for a psi power of her own, a weapon to blast apart the teke-driven corpse that stalked her. She was improved, she thought despairingly, but not improved enough. Her parents had given her all the genetic gifts they could arrange, but psi was beyond them. The genes were astronomically rare, recessive, and—
—and suddenly it came to her.
“Royd,” she said, putting all of her remaining will into her words. She was weeping, wet, frightened. “The dial…teke it. Royd, teke it!”
His reply was faint, troubled. “…can’t…I don’t…Mother…only…her…not me…no…Mother…”
“Not Mother,” she said, desperate. “You always…say…Mother. I forgot…forgot. Not your mother…listen…you’re a clone…same genes…you have it too…power.”
“Don’t,” he said. “Never…must be…sex-linked.”
“No! It isn’t. I know…Promethean, Royd…don’t tell a Promethean…about genes…turn it!”
The sled jumped a third of a meter, and listed to the side. A path was clear.
The corpse came forward.
“…trying,” Royd said. “Nothing…I can’t!”
“She cured you,” Melantha said bitterly. “Better than…she…was cured…prenatal…but it’s only…suppressed…you can!”
“I…don’t…know…how.”
The corpse stood above her. Stopped. Its pale-fleshed hands trembled, spasmed, jerked upward. Long painted fingernails. Made claws. Began to rise.
Melantha swore. “Royd!”
“…sorry…”
She wept and shook and made a futile fist.
And all at once the gravity was gone. Far, far away, she heard Royd cry out and then fall silent.
* * *
—
“The flashes come more frequently now,” Karoly d’Branin dictated, “or perhaps it is simply that I am closer, that I can see them better. Bursts of indigo and deep violet, short and fast-fading. Between the webbing. A field, I think. The flashes are particles of hydrogen, the thin ethereal stuff of the reaches between the stars. Th
ey touch the field, between the webbing, the spurs, and shortly flare into the range of visible light. Matter to energy, yes, that is what I guess. My volcryn feeds.
“It fills half the universe, comes on and on. We shall not escape it, oh, so sad. Agatha is gone, silent, blood on her faceplate. I can almost see the dark area, almost, almost. I have a strange vision, in the center is a face, small, ratlike, without mouth or nose or eyes, yet still a face somehow, and it stares at me. The veils move so sensuously. The webbing looms around us.
“Ah, the light, the light!”
* * *
—
The corpse bobbed awkwardly into the air, its hands hanging limply before it. Melantha, reeling in the weightlessness, was suddenly violently sick. She ripped off the helmet, collapsed it, and pushed away from her own nausea, trying to ready herself for the Nightflyer’s furious assault.
But the body of Thale Lasamer floated dead and still, and nothing else moved in the darkened lounge. Finally Melantha recovered, and she moved to the corpse, weakly, and pushed it, a small and tentative shove. It sailed across the room.
“Royd?” she said uncertainly. There was no answer.
She pulled herself through the hole into the control chamber.
And found Royd Eris suspended in his armored suit. She shook him, but he did not stir. Trembling, Melantha Jhirl studied his suit, and then began to dismantle it. She touched him. “Royd,” she said, “here. Feel, Royd, here, I’m here, feel it.” His suit came apart easily, and she flung the pieces of it away. “Royd, Royd.”
Dead. Dead. His heart had given out. She punched it, pummeled it, tried to pound it into new life. It did not beat. Dead. Dead.
Melantha Jhirl moved back from him, blinded by her own tears, edged into the console, glanced down.
Dead. Dead.
But the dial on the gravity grid was set on zero. “Melantha,” said a mellow voice from the walls.
* * *
—
I have held the Nightflyer’s crystalline soul within my hands.
It is deep red and multifaceted, large as my head, and icy to the touch. In its scarlet depths, two small sparks of smoky light burn fiercely, and sometimes seem to whirl.
I have crawled through the consoles, wound my way carefully past safeguards and cybernets, taking care to damage nothing, and I have laid rough hands on that great crystal, knowing it is where she lives.
And I cannot bring myself to wipe it. Royd’s ghost has asked me not to.
Last night we talked about it once again, over brandy and chess in the lounge. Royd cannot drink, of course, but he sends his spectre to smile at me, and he tells me where he wants his pieces moved.
For the thousandth time he offered to take me back to Avalon, or any world of my choice, if only I would go outside and complete the repairs we abandoned so many years ago, so the Nightflyer might safely slip into stardrive.
For the thousandth time I refused.
He is stronger now, no doubt. Their genes are the same, after all. Their power is the same. Dying, he too found the strength to impress himself upon the great crystal. The ship is alive with both of them, and frequently they fight. Sometimes she outwits him for a moment, and the Nightflyer does odd, erratic things. The gravity goes up or down or off completely. Blankets wrap themselves around my throat when I sleep. Objects come hurtling out of dark corners.
Those times have come less frequently of late, though. When they do come, Royd stops her, or I do. Together, the Nightflyer is ours.
Royd claims he is strong enough alone, that he does not really need me, that he can keep her under check. I wonder. Over the chessboard, I still beat him nine games out of ten.
And there are other considerations. Our work, for one. Karoly would be proud of us. The volcryn will soon enter the mists of the Tempter’s Veil, and we follow close behind. Studying, recording, doing all that old d’Branin would have wanted us to do. It is all in the computer, and on tape and paper as well, should the system ever be wiped. It will be interesting to see how the volcryn thrives in the Veil. Matter is so thick there, compared to the thin diet of interstellar hydrogen on which the creature has fed so many endless eons.
We have tried to communicate with it, with no success. I do not believe it is sentient at all. And lately Royd has tried to imitate its ways, gathering all his energies in an attempt to move the Nightflyer by teke. Sometimes, oddly, his mother even joins with him in those efforts. So far they have always failed, but we will keep trying.
So goes our work. We know our results will reach humanity. Royd and I have discussed it, and we have a plan. Before I die, when my time is near, I will destroy the central crystal and clear the computers, and afterwards I will set course manually for the close vicinity of an inhabited world. The Nightflyer will become a true ghost ship then. It will work. I have all the time I need, and I am an improved model.
I will not consider the other option, although it means much to me that Royd suggests it again and again. No doubt I could finish the repairs, and perhaps Royd could control the ship without me, and go on with the work. But that is not important.
I was wrong so many times. The esperon, the monitors, my control of the others; all of them my failures, payment for my hubris. Failure hurts. When I finally touched him, for the first and last and only time, his body was still warm. But he was gone already. He never felt my touch. I could not keep that promise.
But I can keep my other.
I will not leave him alone with her.
Ever.
to Gardner Dozois
“Manatees!”
BY GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
A Song of Ice and Fire
Book One: A Game of Thrones
Book Two: A Clash of Kings
Book Three: A Storm of Swords
Book Four: A Feast for Crows
Book Five: A Dance with Dragons
The World of Ice & Fire: The Untold History of Westeros and the Game of Thrones
Dying of the Light
Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle)
Fevre Dream
The Armageddon Rag
Dead Man’s Hand (with John J. Miller)
Short Story Collections
Dreamsongs: Volume I
Dreamsongs: Volume II
A Song for Lya and Other Stories
Songs of Stars and Shadows
Sandkings
Songs the Dead Men Sing
Nightflyers
Tuf Voyaging
Portraits of His Children
Quartet
Edited by George R. R. Martin
New Voices in Science Fiction, Volumes 1-4
The Science Fiction Weight Loss Book (with Isaac Asimov and Martin Harry Greenberg)
The John W. Campbell Awards, Volume 5
Night Visions 3
Wild Cards I-XXII
Co-edited with Gardner Dozois
Warriors I-III
Songs of the Dying Earth
Down These Strange Streets
Old Mars
Dangerous Women
Rogues
Old Venus
The Book of Swords
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GEORGE R. R. MARTIN is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including the acclaimed series A Song of Ice and Fire—A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Feast for Crows, and A Dance with Dragons—as well as Tuf Voyaging, Fevre Dream, The Armageddon Rag, Dying of the Light, Windhaven (with Lisa Tuttle), and Dreamsongs Volumes I and II. He is also the creator of The Lands of Ice and Fire, a collection of maps from A Song of Ice and Fire featuring original artwork from illustrator and cartographer Jonathan Roberts, and The World of Ice & Fire (with Elio M. García, Jr., and Linda Antonsson). As a writer-producer, Martin has worked on Th
e Twilight Zone, Beauty and the Beast, and various feature films and pilots that were never made. He lives with the lovely Parris in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
georgerrmartin.com
Facebook.com/GeorgeRRMartinofficial
Twitter: @GRRMSpeaking
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
DAVID PALUMBO is a Philadelphia-based painter known primarily for fantasy and horror genre illustration. His work is characterized by dark themes and moody atmosphere with a traditional painterly technique. Palumbo, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, began his career showing in galleries in 2003, but his primary focus has long been centered on illustration. His images have since won numerous honors and have been featured in exhibits from New York to Paris.
dvpalumbo.com
Facebook.com/dvpalumbo
Instagram: @dvpalumbo
What’s next on
your reading list?
Discover your next
great read!