Ship of Strangers

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Surgenor found himself running towards the observation room.

He felt an unutterable gladness at still being alive against all the odds, but the feeling was counterbalanced by a new kind of dread—not fully acknowledged as yet—and it seemed imperative that he should scan the universe with his own eyes. Two men, Mossbake and Kessler, were swaying drunkenly outside the observation room door, their expressions a mixture of bleary triumph and surprise. Surgenor brushed past them and walked on to the gallery-like viewing area. The surrounding blackness was complete. He looked into it, absorbing the psychic punishment, then lowered himself into a chair beside Al Gillespie.

“It took no time at all,” Gillespie said. “The sky looked the same right up to the last second. Then I got a feeling the stars were changing colours—then there was this. Nothing!”

Surgenor stared into the ocean of unrelieved night, his eyes darting here and there, uncontrollably, as his optic nerves registered spurious glimmers of light, creating and immediately destroying distant galaxies. Only by an effort of will was he able to prevent himself from shaking his head in denial.

“It looks as though conservation is conserved,” Gillespie said, almost to himself. “Matter and energy aren’t wasted. Go down a black hole—come up through a white hole. Go down a dwindlar—and you get a continuum to yourself.”

“We’ve only got Aesop’s word for that. Where are the suns that must have come through before us?”

“Don’t look at me, friend.”

“Hear these words, Aesop,” Surgenor said. “How do you know all your receptors and pick-ups are functioning properly?”

“I know because my triplex monitoring circuits tell me so,” Aesop replied gently.

“Triplication doesn’t mean a thing if each circuit has been given the same treatment.”

“David, you are venturing opinions on a highly specialized subject—one in which, according to your personal dossier, you have no qualifications or experience.” The computer’s choice of words turned a statement of fact into a reproof.

“When it comes to going through a dwindlar,” Surgenor said doggedly, “I have as much experience as you, Aesop. And I want access to the direct vision ports.”

“I have no objections to that,” Aesop replied, “even though the request is unusual.”

“Good!” Surgenor got to his feet and glanced down at Gillespie. “You coming?”

Gillespie nodded and stood up, and the two men left the observation room. On the way upstairs past the living quarters they were joined by Mike Targett, who seemed to sense where they were going. They reached the first of the computer decks, where the geognostic data banks occupied rows of metal cabinets, then climbed a little-used stair leading towards Aesop’s central processing units.

Massive vacuum-tight doors slid aside to admit them to a circular gallery which skirted a forest of multicoloured cables, the enormously complex spinal cord which connected the Sarafand’s brain to its body. The computer itself still lay above them, beyond hatches which could be opened only by base maintenance teams. At four equidistant points around the gallery were circular ports which permitted direct vision of the ship’s environment. Spaceship designers had a powerful aversion to putting holes in pressure shells, and in the case of the Mark Six they had grudgingly provided four small transparencies in a part of the ship which could be hermetically sealed off from the other levels.

Surgenor went to the nearest port, looked through it and saw nothing but a man’s face peering at him. He eyed the reflection for a moment, vainly trying to see through it, then asked Aesop to cut the interior lights. An instant later the deck was plunged into darkness. Surgenor looked out of the circular window, and the blackness was like an enemy lying in wait.

“There’s nothing out there,” Targett whispered, from his position at another port. “It’s like we’re sunk in pitch.”

“I can assure you,” Aesop said, speaking unexpectedly, “that the surrounding medium is more transparent than interstella space. The amount of matter per cubic metre is precisely zero. Under these conditions my telescopes could detect a galaxy at a range of billions of light-years—but there are no galaxies to detect.”

“Let’s have the light again Aesop.” Surgenor resisted an impulse to apologize to the computer for having doubted its word. He was relieved when the glowtubes sprang into brightness once more, shuttering the portholes with reflections.

“Well, we’re not dead—at least I think we’re not—but this is worse than the last time,” Targett said. He held up his hands and examined them, frowning.

Gillespie looked at him curiously. “Shakes?”

“No—not yet. One of the old classical philosophers—I think it was Kant—used to talk about a situation like this. He said, suppose there was nothing anywhere in the whole universe but one human hand–would you be able to state that it was a left hand or a right hand? His answer was that you would, and this proved to him that there was a handedness about space itself, but he was wrong. Later thinking brought into account the idea of rotation through four-space…’

Targett stopped speaking and his boyish face seemed to crease into age. “Oh, Jesus– what are we going to do?”

“There’s nothing we can do except sit tight,” Surgenor said. “Ten minutes ago we thought we were finished.”

“This is different, Dave. No more outside factors. This time there’s nothing left but ourselves.”

“That reminds me,” Gillespie said in a dour voice, “we’d better call another meeting as soon as everybody sobers up.”

“Is it worth another meeting? That’s all we seem to do– and it might be best if they went on being drunk.”

“That’s the whole point. Liquor is food. It’s loaded with calories, and it’ll have to be rationed out like anything else.”

The meeting was fixed for ship midnight, which left Surgenor two hours in which to think about dying of starvation, dying of loneliness in an empty and black continuum, dying of spiritual hypothermia. He kept on the move, rather than return to brood in his room, but this had the effect of indefinitely multiplying his sense of shock. A few minutes of involvement with some menial job would drive the hopelessness of the situation to the back of his mind, and then as the task was on the verge of completion an inner voice would tell him it was time to start thinking about the overall picture again, and he would take another mental plunge.

Once he encountered Christine Holmes in the corridor near his room and tried to speak to her, but she slipped past him with the impersonal gaze of a stranger and he understood that neither of them had anything to give or receive. He continued moving, working, talking, and was confronted when the designated hour arrived and the eleven remaining members of the Sarafand’s company drew together at the long table in the mess. The “windows’ around the semi-circular outer wall were dark, as befitted the middle of the night, but the room lights glowing orange and yellow and white created an atmosphere of secure warmth.

Just as the meeting was about to begin, Gillespie took Surgenor aside. “Dave, how about if I do the talking for a change?”

“Suits me.” Surgenor smiled at Gillespie, suddenly appreciative of the fact that the former Idaho foodstuffs salesman had acquired new stature. “I’ll back you up this time.”

Gillespie went to the head of the table and stood there until the others had taken their seats. “I guess I don’t need to tell anybody here that we’ve run into big trouble. It’s so big that none of us can see a way out– even Captain Aesop can’t see a way out– but, just the way we did when we thought we could reach a planet, we’re going to agree a set of rules. And we’re going to stick to them for as long as it takes.”

“Dress for dinner, stiff upper lip, salute the Queen,” Burt Schilling muttered. He had swallowed two Antox capsules, but his face had a sullen stiffness about it which suggested that he was still drunk.

“Most of the rules will, of course, be concerned with how we make use of our supply of food,” Gillespie said, unperturbed, glancing at his note pad. “I think we want to prolong life– but not beyond a reasonable period, not under conditions which would make it meaningless– and for that reason it is proposed that we have a daily ration of a thousand calories of solid food and non-alcoholic beverages for each person. Aesop has supplied me with an inventory, and on the basis of a thousand calories each per day we have enough food to last eighty-four days.”

We’ll be old by then, Surgenor thought. It isn’t a long time, but getting through it will wear us down to nothing.

“We’ll be a lot thinner, naturally enough, but Aesop says a proper mix of protein, fat and carbohydrate will keep us healthy.” Gillespie paused and looked around the table. “Next there’s the question of booze– which isn’t so easy to decide. Taken over the same period of eighty-four days, we have three hundred calories a day each in beer and wine, and two-forty calories a day in spirits. The thing we have to work out is do we in fact want a daily ration, or would it be better to save it for a…?”

“I’m sick of listening to all this crap,” Schilling announced, slapping the table. We don’t have to make rules and regulations about how we drink.”

Gillespie remained calm. “The food and drink has to be properly allocated.”

“Not as far as I’m concerned,” Schilling said. “I’m not going to sit around here nibbling crusts for the next three months. I don’t want any food– I’ll take my ration in booze. All of it in booze.”

“You can’t do that.”

“Why not?” Schilling tried to sound reasonable. “It would mean extra solid food for the ones that like that sort of stuff.”

Gillespie placed his note pad on the table and leaned towards him. “Because you could pour your entire ration down your throat in a couple of weeks, easily; then when you sobered up you’d decide you weren’t ready to starve just yet, and other people would have to feed you. That’s why not.”

Schilling snorted. “All right, all right. I’ll make private deals with my friends– my food for their liquor.”

“We’re not going to permit that sort of thing, either,” Gillespie said. “It would lead to the same situation.”

Listening to the exchange, Surgenor was in general agreement with Gillespie, and yet he felt that some degree of flexibility was required. He was wondering how to voice his opinion without appearing to go against Gillespie when Wilbur Desanto– who had begun to partner Gillespie in Module Two– raised his hand.

“Excuse me, Al,” Desanto said unhappily. “All these calculations are based on eleven people being around for the whole period– but what if anybody wants to get it over with right now?”

“You mean commit suicide?” Gillespie considered the idea for a moment and shook his head. “Nobody would want to do that.”

“Wouldn’t they?” Desanto gave the others at the table a lop-sided, shame-faced smile. “Maybe Billy Narvik had the right idea.”

“Narvik tripped and fell by accident.”

“You weren’t there,” Schilling put in. “He did the neatest swallow dive I’ve seen in years. He meant to do it, man.”

Gillespie puffed out his cheeks impatiently. “Narvik is the only one who can settle this argument, so if you see his ghost coming out of the tool store let me know, will you?” He studied the faces at the table, making sure his sarcasm had not been wasted. “And until that happens I’d like to concentrate on the living. Okay?”

Desanto raised his hand again. “How about it, Al? What’s the arrangement for anybody who decides he’d rather have a quick exit? Will Aesop issue the right sort of package in the dispensary?”

“For the last time…’

“It’s a legitimate query,” Surgenor said in a low voice. “I think it deserves some sort of an answer.”

Gillespie looked betrayed. “For starters, Aesop doesn’t carry suitable drugs in his inventory. He’s programmed to jump back to the nearest Service base if any crewman develops a serious illness, so…’

“That’s it!” Victor Voysey spread his hands in a QED gesture. “Somebody should pop an appendix, and Aesop will just have to get us back home.”

“In any case,” Gillespie continued, ignoring the interruption, “Aesop wouldn’t assist a man to end his own life, no matter what the circumstances were.”

“Let’s ask him about that– just to make sure.”

“No!” Gillespie’s voice was hard. “The purpose of this meeting is to discuss arrangements for staying alive. Anybody who wants to talk to Aesop about how to commit suicide can do it privately in his room later on, but it seems to me that any moron should be able to arrange a simple little thing like that without any help from a lousy computer. It seems to me that it doesn’t take much imagination, and that anybody who really wanted to kill himself could easily do it without making grandstand plays at our general meetings and wasting everybody else’s time.”

“Thank you, Al.” Desanto stood up and gave a curious little bow. “I apologize for wasting everybody’s valuable time.” He pushed his chair back, walked to the companionway and climbed up it to the sleeping quarters, nodding thoughtfully to himself.

“Somebody should go after him,” Mossbake said nervously.

“There’s no need,” Gillespie countermanded. “Wilbur couldn’t commit suicide to save his life. I know him– he’s gone a bit huffy ’cause I told him off.”

The meeting resumed with a distinctly different atmosphere from that which had been prevalent in the initial stages, even the mulish Schilling going along with its general resolutions. Surgenor, in spite of his unvoiced reservations, had to admit that Gillespie’s bluff organizational approach had provided a steadying influence. He was doing what Surgenor had so often done in the past– stepping into the command vacuum, making himself into a tangible and identifiable target for the negative emotions human beings always experienced when things were going wrong.

It was a courageous thing to do under the circumstances, Surgenor decided. The ship was a tiny bubble of light and heat, surrounded by black infinities of emptiness, and there were no prospects other than that things would continue to go further and further wrong until the captain and all his jolly sailor boys were dead. A lot of negative emotions were going to be generated before the end…

“I think we’ve done enough for one day,” Gillespie said an hour later, glancing at his watch. “It’s past one o’clock, and we could do with a break.”

“Too right,” Kessler grumbled as the members of the group stood up and looked at each other uncertainly.

Gillespie gave an artificial-sounding cough. “There’s just one more thing– the liquor rationing scheme we agreed on only applies to the ship’s official stores, not to private supplies. Enough said?”

There was an immediate flurry of excitement as men who had just been browbeaten into accepting austerity got the unexpected scent of a final mind-erasing, peace-bringing alcoholic feast. Those who had little or no personal reserves of intoxicants looked hopefully at the known stockists and began crowding round them with offers of cigars and home-baked cakes without which, they claimed, no party would be a success. The easing of tension, coupled with the knowledge that their respite would be brief, precipitated the younger men like Rizno and Mossbake into noisy horseplay.

“Nice touch,” Surgenor murmured to Gillespie. “There’s nothing like a Mardi Gras hangover to make Lent seem like a good idea.”

Gillespie nodded looking gratified. “I’ve got a bottle of cognac in my room. What do you say the two of us go up there and split it?”

Surgenor nodded, his gaze drawn to Christine Holmes, who had separated from the others and was making her way upstairs. Suddenly realizing where she was going, he excused himself and hurried after her. He went up the steps two at a time, entered the corridor and found Christine standing hesitantly outside No. 4, Wilbur Desanto’s room. She was listening intently.

“I knocked a couple of times,” she said as Surgenor halted beside her. “He doesn’t answer.”

Surgenor reached past her and threw the door open. The room was almost in darkness, the only light coming from a printed page which was projected on to the ceiling from a micro-reader beside the bed. Desanto was stretched out on the bed, unmoving, his face turned towards the wall. Surgenor switched on the main light, and Desanto raised himself on one elbow, smiling his lop-sided smile.

“What do you guys want?” he said. “Is the meeting over?”

“Why didn’t you answer when I knocked?” Christine demanded over Surgenor’s shoulder.

“Guess I must have dozed off. What’s all the fuss about anyway?”

“There’s a bottle party starting downstairs– thought you’d like to know.” Surgenor closed the door and stood looking down at Christine, whose face had hardened with anger.

“I swear he did that on purpose,” she said in a taut whisper, “and I fell for it.”

“There’s no need to put it that way– you didn’t fall for anything.” Surgenor felt he was taking a risk, but he pressed ahead. “You thought he might be trying to kill himself, and you were worried about it even though you hardly know him. That’s good, Chris. It shows…’

“That I’m still human? In spite of everything?” Christine almost smiled as she reached for her cigarettes. “Do me a favour, big Dave– forget that I went to your room. Deathbed recantations aren’t worth a damn.”

Surgenor glanced to his left as he heard Gillespie ascending the steps. “Al and I are going to open a bottle of his fancy brandy. Would…’

“There’ll be more fun downstairs.” She walked away from him, brushed past Gillespie and clattered down the companionway, expertly transferring most of her weight to the handrail by way of her forearms to make a sliding descent.

“You trying to get something going there?” Gillespie said, giving Surgenor a quizzical look.

“What are you talking about?” Surgenor was reminded of the meaningful stare Billy Narvik had directed at him after their tussle a few paces along the same corridor, and he became indignant. “What are you saying, Al? Does she look my type?”

“She doesn’t look anybody’s type, but there’s nothing else available around here.”

“Chris puts on a show, you know. She’s been churned up a few times and she doesn’t want to risk it happening again, so she…’ Surgenor abandoned what he had been going to say as he saw Gillespie’s eyebrows creeping up. “Why are we standing around here? Are we aging the booze?”

They went into Gillespie’s room, which was next to Desanto’s, and Gillespie produced two glasses and a resplendent bottle of pot-distilled brandy. “This was supposed to give me one shot a night for a thirty-day mission, but I’m ready to see it off tonight and forget the gracious living bit.”

“You’ll forget everything.”

“So?”

“So…’ Surgenor held out his glass and watched its transformation into an orb of sunlight. “Here’s to amnesia.”

“Long may she reign.”

The two men sat in companionable quietness, drinking slowly but steadily, savouring the escape from reality. Surgenor’s warmest memories of life in the Service were of lengthy bull sessions, which sometimes went on all night, while the ship was circling an alien star and its crew were drawn together by enhanced awareness of their humanity. Here the effect was greater. Having been buffeted by the tides and maelstroms of space, the ship was now becalmed in a boundless black sea. An infinity of emptiness pressed inwards on its shell, and all those on board knew the adventuring was over, because in a continuum where nothing existed nothing could happen. No surprises lay in store, except for those unexpected discoveries a human being may make about himself, and therefore the only logical thing to do was to concentrate on being human, extra-human, more than human. Tomorrow that would be difficult because the countdown to death would have begun, but for the time being…

“Albert Gillespie and David Surgenor!” Aesop’s voice jolted Surgenor out of his drowsiness. “Please acknowledge that you can hear me.”

Taking his cue from the fact that his name had been mentioned first, Gillespie said, “Hear these words, Aesop– we’re listening to you.” His eyes were wide with speculation as he set down his glass and glanced at Surgenor.

“The unusual circumstances in which we find ourselves have brought about some changes in my relationship with crew members,” Aesop said. “As Michael Targett had already observed, I am simply a computer and my areas of competence are necessarily limited by the characteristics of my programmes. This is an in-built limitation brought about– as we have discovered– by the programmers’ inability to foresee every possible type of situation. Do you understand what I am saying?”

“That’s quite clear.” Gillespie jerked into an upright position. “Aesop, are you saying you might have made a mistake about what’s outside the ship?”

“Not about what is outside– but an internal event is taking place which I am unable to explain and which appears to transcend all my frames of reference.”

“Aesop, don’t waffle about,” Surgenor chipped in. “What’s happening? Why did you call us?”

“Before I describe the phenomenon, I wish to clarify the position with regard to inter-crew relationships. In normal circumstances I make important announcements to all crew members simultaneously, but I have no way to estimate or judge the psychological effects of what I have to say, and I fear they may be harmful. You two have assumed positions of responsibility– do you accept the further responsibility of transmitting my message in what you deem to be a suitable form to the other nine members of the ship’s company?”

“We do,” Surgenor and Gillespie said together. Surgenor, his heart beginning to lurch, cursed Aesop’s inhuman tendency to wordiness.

“Your acceptance is noted,” Aesop said, and there followed a delay which intensified Surgenor’s unease.

“Aesop, will you please get on with…

“Albert, at 00.09 hours this morning, during the general meeting of the ship’s company, you uttered the following words with respect to the deceased crewman William Narvik– ‘If you see his ghost coming out of the tool room store let me know.” Do you remember saying that?”

“Of course I remember it,” Gillespie said, “but it was only a joke, for God’s sake. You’ve heard us making jokes before this, Aesop.”

“I am familiar with all the various tropes associated with humour. I am also familiar with various writings of a religious, metaphysical and superstitious nature which describe a ghost as resembling a patch of white, misty radiance.” Aesop’s voice was calm, inflexible.

“And I must inform you that an object which has the classical attributes of a ghost is now emerging from the corpse of William Narvik.” “Bull,” Surgenor said, and he repeated the word to himself numerous times as he and Gillespie made their way downstairs, quietly crossed the mess room and went down the wider stair which led to the hangar deck. He was still intoning it when the door of the tool store slid open at Aesop’s command and they saw– enveloping Billy Narvik’s torso and expanding outwards from it– a lens-shaped cloud of cold, white brilliance.