But Lasamer had been dead a long time. His blood ought to have dried by now, she thought.
“Oh, merciful god,” said Dannel.
“What?” Lindran demanded. “Did you find him?”
Dannel was fumbling his way back towards the door, creeping along the wall like an oversized insect, back the way he had come. “Get out, Lindran,” he warned. “Hurry!”
“Why?” She trembled despite herself. “What’s wrong?”
“The screams,” he said. “The wall, Lindran, the wall. The sounds.”
“You’re not making sense,” she snapped. “Get ahold of yourself.”
He gibbered, “Don’t you see? The sounds are coming from the wall. The communicator. Faked. Simulated.” Dannel reached the door, and dove through it, sighing audibly. He did not wait for her. He bolted down the corridor and was gone, pulling himself hand over hand wildly, his feet thrashing and kicking behind him.
Lindran braced herself and moved to follow.
The sounds came from in front of her, from the door. “Help me,” it said, in Rojan Christopheris’s voice. She heard moaning and that terrible wet choking sound, and she stopped.
From her side came a wheezing, ghastly, death rattle. “Ahhhh,” it moaned, loudly, building in a counterpoint to the other noise. “Help me.”
“Help me, help me, help me,” said Christopheris from the darkness behind her.
Coughing and a weak groan sounded under her feet.
“Help me,” all the voices chorused, “help me, help me, help me.” Recordings, she thought, recordings being played back. “Help me, help me, help me, help me.” All the voices rose higher and louder, and the words turned into a scream, and the scream ended in wet choking, in wheezes and gasps and death. Then the sounds stopped. Just like that; turned off.
Lindran kicked off, floated towards the door, knife in hand.
Something dark and silent crawled from beneath the dinner table and rose to block her path. She saw it clearly for a moment, as it emerged between her and the light. Rojan Christopheris, still in his vacuum suit, but with the helmet pulled off. He had something in his hand that he raised to point at her. It was a laser, Lindran saw, a simple cutting laser.
She was moving straight towards him, coasting, helpless. She flailed and tried to stop herself, but she could not.
When she got quite close, she saw that Rojan had a second mouth below his chin, a long blackened slash, and it was grinning at her, and little droplets of blood flew from it, wetly, as he moved.
* * *
—
Dannel rushed down the corridor in a frenzy of fear, bruising himself as he smashed off walls and doorways. Panic and weightlessness made him clumsy. He kept glancing over his shoulder as he fled, hoping to see Lindran coming after him, but terrified of what he might see in her stead. Every time he looked back, he lost his sense of balance and went tumbling again.
It took a long, long time for the airlock to open. As he waited, trembling, his pulse began to slow. The sounds had dwindled behind him, and there was no sign of pursuit. He steadied himself with an effort. Once inside the lock chamber, with the inner door sealed between him and the lounge, he began to feel safe.
Suddenly Dannel could barely remember why he had been so terrified.
And he was ashamed; he had run, abandoned Lindran. And for what? What had frightened him so? An empty lounge? Noises from the walls? A rational explanation for that forced itself on him all at once. It only meant that poor Christopheris was somewhere else in the ship, that’s all, just somewhere else, alive and in pain, spilling his agony into a comm unit.
Dannel shook his head ruefully. He’d hear no end of this, he knew. Lindran liked to taunt him. She would never let him forget it. But at least he would return, and apologize. That would count for something. Resolute, he reached out and killed the cycle on the airlock, then reversed it. The air that had been partially sucked out came gusting back into the chamber.
As the inner door rolled back, Dannel felt his fear return briefly, an instant of stark terror when he wondered what might have emerged from the lounge to wait for him in the corridors of the Nightflyer. He faced the fear and willed it away. He felt strong.
When he stepped out, Lindran was waiting.
He could see neither anger nor disdain in her curiously calm features, but he pushed himself towards her and tried to frame a plea for forgiveness anyway. “I don’t know why I—”
With languid grace, her hand came out from behind her back. The knife flashed up in a killing arc, and that was when Dannel finally noticed the hole burned in her suit, still smoking, just between her breasts.
* * *
—
“Your mother?” Melantha Jhirl said incredulously as they hung helpless in the emptiness beyond the ship.
“She can hear everything we say,” Royd replied. “But at this point it no longer makes any difference. Rojan must have done something very foolish, very threatening. Now she is determined to kill you all.”
“She, she, what do you mean?” D’Branin’s voice was puzzled. “Royd, surely you do not tell us that your mother is still alive. You said she died even before you were born.”
“She did, Karoly,” Royd said. “I did not lie to you.”
“No,” Melantha said. “I didn’t think so. But you did not tell us the whole truth either.”
Royd nodded. “Mother is dead, but her—her spirit still lives, and animates my Nightflyer.” He sighed. “Perhaps it would be more fitting to say her Nightflyer. My control has been tenuous at best.”
“Royd,” d’Branin said, “spirits do not exist. They are not real. There is no survival after death. My volcryn are more real than any ghosts.”
“I don’t believe in ghosts either,” said Melantha curtly.
“Call it what you will, then,” Royd said. “My term is as good as any. The reality is unchanged by the terminology. My mother, or some part of my mother, lives in the Nightflyer, and she is killing all of you as she has killed others before.”
“Royd, you do not make sense,” d’Branin said.
“Quiet, Karoly. Let the captain explain.”
“Yes,” Royd said. “The Nightflyer is very—very advanced, you know. Automated, self-repairing, large. It had to be, if Mother were to be freed from the necessity of a crew. It was built on Newholme, you will recall. I have never been there, but I understand that Newholme’s technology is quite sophisticated. Avalon could not duplicate this ship, I suspect. There are few worlds that could.”
“The point, captain?”
“The point—the point is the computers, Melantha. They had to be extraordinary. They are, believe me, they are. Crystal-matrix cores, lasergrid data retrieval, full sensory extension, and other—features.”
“Are you trying to tell us that the Nightflyer is an Artificial Intelligence? Lommie Thorne suspected as much.”
“She was wrong,” Royd said. “My ship is not an Artificial Intelligence, not as I understand it. But it is something close. Mother had a capacity for personality impress built in. She filled the central crystal with her own memories, desires, quirks, her loves and her—her hates. That was why she could trust the computer with my education, you see? She knew it would raise me as she herself would, had she the patience. She programmed it in certain other ways as well.”
“And you cannot deprogram, my friend?” Karoly asked.
Royd’s voice was despairing. “I have tried, Karoly. But I am a weak hand at systems work, and the programs are very complicated, the machines very sophisticated. At least three times I have eradicated her, only to have her surface once again. She is a phantom program, and I cannot track her. She comes and goes as she will. A ghost, do you see? Her memories and her personality are so intertwined with the programs that run the Nightflyer that I cannot get rid of her withou
t destroying the central crystal, wiping the entire system. But that would leave me helpless. I could never reprogram, and with the computers down the entire ship would fail, drivers, life support, everything. I would have to leave the Nightflyer, and that would kill me.”
“You should have told us, my friend,” Karoly d’Branin said. “On Avalon, we have many cyberneticists, some very great minds. We might have aided you. We could have provided expert help. Lommie Thorne might have helped you.”
“Karoly, I have had expert help. Twice I have brought systems specialists on board. The first one told me what I have just told you; that it was impossible without wiping the programs completely. The second had trained on Newholme. She thought she might be able to help me. Mother killed her.”
“You are still holding something back,” Melantha Jhirl said. “I understand how your cybernetic ghost can open and close airlocks at will and arrange other accidents of that nature. But how do you explain what she did to Thale Lasamer?”
“Ultimately I must bear the guilt,” Royd replied. “My loneliness led me to a grievous error. I thought I could safeguard you, even with a telepath among you. I have carried other riders safely. I watch them constantly, warn them away from dangerous acts. If Mother attempts to interfere, I countermand her directly from the master control console. That usually works. Not always. Usually. Before this trip she had killed only five times, and the first three died when I was quite young. That was how I learned about her, about her presence in my ship. That party included a telepath, too.
“I should have known better, Karoly. My hunger for life has doomed you all to death. I overestimated my own abilities, and underestimated her fear of exposure. She strikes out when she is threatened, and telepaths are always a threat. They sense her, you see. A malign, looming presence, they tell me, something cool and hostile and inhuman.”
“Yes,” Karoly d’Branin said, “yes, that was what Thale said. An alien, he was certain of it.”
“No doubt she feels alien to a telepath used to the familiar contours of organic minds. Hers is not a human brain, after all. What it is I cannot say—a complex of crystallized memories, a hellish network of interlocking programs, a meld of circuitry and spirit. Yes, I can understand why she might feel alien.”
“You still haven’t explained how a computer program could explode a man’s skull,” Melantha said.
“You wear the answer between your breasts, Melantha.”
“My whisperjewel?” she said, puzzled. She felt it then, beneath her vacuum suit and her clothing; a touch of cold, a vague hint of eroticism that made her shiver. It was as if his mention had been enough to make the gem come alive.
“I was not familiar with whisperjewels until you told me of yours,” Royd said, “but the principle is the same. Esper-etched, you said. Then you know that psionic power can be stored. The central core of my computer is resonant crystal, many times larger than your tiny jewel. I think Mother impressed it as she lay dying.”
“Only an esper can etch a whisperjewel,” Melantha said.
“You never asked the why of it, either of you,” Royd said. “You never asked why Mother hated people so. She was born gifted, you see. On Avalon she might have been a class one, tested and trained and honored, her talent nurtured and rewarded. I think she might have been very famous. She might have been stronger than a class one, but perhaps it is only after death that she acquired such power, linked as she is to the Nightflyer.
“The point is moot. She was not born on Avalon. On Vess, her ability was seen as a curse, something alien and fearful. So they cured her of it. They used drugs and electroshock and hypnotraining that made her violently ill whenever she tried to use her talent. They used other, less savory methods as well. She never lost her power, of course, only the ability to use it effectively, to control it with her conscious mind. It remained part of her, suppressed, erratic, a source of shame and pain, surfacing violently in times of great emotional stress. And half a decade of institutional care almost drove her insane. No wonder she hated people.”
“What was her talent? Telepathy?”
“No. Oh, some rudimentary ability perhaps. I have read that all psi talents have several latent abilities in addition to their one developed strength. But Mother could not read minds. She had some empathy, although her cure had twisted it curiously, so that the emotions she felt literally sickened her. But her major strength, the talent they took five years to shatter and destroy, was teke.”
Melantha Jhirl swore. “Of course she hated gravity! Telekinesis under weightlessness is—”
“Yes,” Royd finished. “Keeping the Nightflyer under gravity tortures me, but it limits Mother.”
In the silence that followed that comment, each of them looked down the dark cylinder of the driveroom. Karoly d’Branin moved awkwardly on his sled. “Dannel and Lindran have not returned,” he said.
“They are probably dead,” Royd said dispassionately.
“What will we do, then? We must plan. We cannot wait here indefinitely.”
“The first question is what I can do,” Royd Eris replied. “I have talked freely, you’ll note. You deserved to know. We have passed the point where ignorance was a protection. Obviously things have gone too far. There have been too many deaths and you have been witness to all of them. Mother cannot allow you to return to Avalon alive.”
“True,” said Melantha. “But what shall she do with you? Is your own status in doubt, captain?”
“The crux of the problem,” Royd admitted. “You are still three moves ahead, Melantha. I wonder if it will suffice. Your opponent is four ahead in this game, and most of your pawns are already captured. I fear checkmate is imminent.”
“Unless I can persuade my opponent’s king to desert, no?”
She could see Royd’s wan smile. “She would probably kill me too if I choose to side with you. She does not need me.”
Karoly d’Branin was slow to grasp the point. “But—but what else could—”
“My sled has a laser. Yours do not. I could kill you both, right now, and thereby earn my way back into the Nightflyer’s good graces.”
Across the three meters that lay between their sleds, Melantha’s eyes met Royd’s. Her hands rested easily on the thruster controls. “You could try, captain. Remember, the improved model isn’t easy to kill.”
“I would not kill you, Melantha Jhirl,” Royd said seriously. “I have lived sixty-eight standard years and I have never lived at all. I am tired, and you tell grand, gorgeous lies. Will you really touch me?”
“Yes.”
“I risk a lot for that touch. Yet in a way it is no risk at all. If we lose, we will all die together. If we win, well, I shall die anyway when they destroy the Nightflyer, either that or live as a freak in an orbital hospital, and I would prefer death.”
“We will build you a new ship, captain,” Melantha promised.
“Liar,” Royd replied. But his tone was cheerful. “No matter. I have not had much of a life anyway. Death does not frighten me. If we win, you must tell me about your volcryn once again, Karoly. And you, Melantha, you must play chess with me, and find a way to touch me, and…”
“And sex with you?” she finished, smiling.
“If you would,” he said quietly. He shrugged. “Well, Mother has heard all of this. Doubtless she will listen carefully to any plans we might make, so there is no sense making them. Now there is no chance that the control lock will admit me, since it is keyed directly into the ship’s computer. So we must follow the others through the driveroom, and enter through the main lock, and take what small chances we are given. If I can reach my console and restore gravity, perhaps we can win. If not—”
He was interrupted by a low groan.
For an instant Melantha thought the Nightflyer was wailing at them again, and she was surprised that it was so stupid as to t
ry the same tactic twice. Then the groan sounded once more, and in the back of Karoly d’Branin’s sled, the forgotten fourth member of their company struggled against the bonds that held her down. D’Branin hastened to free her, and Agatha Marij-Black tried to rise to her feet and almost floated off the sled, until he caught her hand and pulled her back. “Are you well?” he asked. “Can you hear me? Have you pain?”
Imprisoned beneath a transparent faceplate, wide, frightened eyes flicked rapidly from Karoly to Melantha to Royd, and then to the broken Nightflyer. Melantha wondered whether the woman was insane, and started to caution d’Branin, when Marij-Black spoke.
“The volcryn!” was all she said. “Oh. The volcryn!”
Around the mouth of the driveroom, the ring of nuclear engines took on a faint glow. Melantha Jhirl heard Royd suck in his breath sharply. She gave the thruster controls of her sled a violent twist. “Hurry,” she said loudly. “The Nightflyer is preparing to move.”
* * *
—
A third of the way down the long barrel of the driveroom, Royd pulled abreast of her, stiff and menacing in his black, bulky armor. Side by side they sailed past the cylindrical stardrives and the cyberwebs; ahead, dimly lit, was the main airlock and its ghastly sentinel.
“When we reach the lock, jump over to my sled,” Royd said. “I want to stay armed and mounted, and the chamber is not large enough for two sleds.”
Melantha Jhirl risked a quick glance behind her. “Karoly,” she called. “Where are you?”
“Outside, my love, my friend,” the answer came. “I cannot come. Forgive me.”
“We have to stay together!”
“No,” d’Branin said, “no, I could not risk it, not when we are so close. It would be so tragic, so futile, Melantha. To come so close and fail. Death I do not mind, but I must see them first, finally, after all these years.”