The Warlock Unlocked

CHAPTER EIGHT

The excitement, the glory of it!” Brother Chard burbled. “Just think, Father, we may be the first clergy to contact these poor, benighted people in centuries!”

“Quite so, Brother.” Father Al couldn’t help smiling at the young pilot’s enthusiasm. “On the other hand, we may arrive to find them quite well-equipped with their own clergy; one never knows.” He gazed at the viewscreen, letting his subconscious read ecclesiastical symbols into the random swirls of color that hyperspace induced in the cameras.

“Roman Catholic clergy, in a society devoted to magic? Scarcely, Father! Just think, a whole new world of lost souls to save! We must try to get some estimate of the population, so that I can come back to His Grace with some idea as to how many missionaries we’ll be requiring! How long before we get there?”

“Why ask me?” Father Al hid a smile. “You’re the pilot.”

“Oh! Yes, of course!” Brother Chard peered at his instrument panel. “Let’s see, ten light-years… It should be about six more days.” He turned back to Father Al. “Sorry the quarters are so cramped, Father.”

“It’s easy to tell you’ve never spent much time inside a confessional. Don’t worry, Brother, the quarters are positively luxurious. Why, we even have a separate cabin for sleeping!… Ungh!”

His body slammed into his shock webbing, as though the ship had suddenly rammed a wall. Then it took off like a bear with a fire on its tail, slapping Father Al back into his couch. His vision darkened, and he fought for breath, waiting for the bright little stars to stop drifting across his field of view. They didn’t, but they did dim and fade, and the velvet blackness with them. Through its last tatters, he saw Brother Chard leaning forward groggily, groping toward his control console.

“Wha… what happened?”

“See for yourself.” The monk pointed at the viewscreen. Father Al looked, and saw the velvet darkness and bright little stars again; but this time, they stayed still. “We’re back in normal space?”

Brother Chard nodded. “And travelling at sub-light-speed. Very high, but still below C. We’re lucky the difference in velocity didn’t smear us against the forward bulkhead.”

“It would have, without the webbing: What went wrong?”

Brother Chard peered at a readout screen, punching keys. “No significant damage; everything’s padded as well as we were… There! The isomorpher quit!”

“Quit? Just… quit? Why?”

“That is a good question, isn’t it?” Brother Chard loosed his webbing, smiling grimly. “Shall we go have a look, Father?”

They climbed into pressure suits, cycled through the tiny airlock one at a time, clipped their safety lines to rings on the ship’s skin, and clambered aft to the drive unit. Brother Chard slipped out a wrench and loosened the access hatch. He slid through head-first; Father Al followed, groping for the rungs set into the hull, gaze riveted to the mirror-surfaced unit before him. “Doesn’t appear to be a break in the shielding.”

“No,” Brother Chard agreed. “At least we can rule out any effects from stray radiation. Though you never know; if we can’t find anything else, we’ll have to go over it with a microscope.” He turned a knob, and the silver egg split open, the top half lifting up like a clamshell. A steady background of white noise faded in on Father Al’s helmet speaker. He frowned. “It is sick, isn’t it?”

“Yes; we should be hearing a 1650 Hz tone.” Brother Chard looked up. “I didn’t know you knew electronics, Father.”

Father Al shrugged. “Cathodeans pick up a lot from each other, especially during the seminary bull-sessions. I wouldn’t claim to be an FTL mechanic, but I know basically how the isomorpher works.”

“Or how it doesn’t. Well, let’s see where the circuit broke.” Brother Chard pulled out a set of probes and started poking at the isomorpher’s insides. Father Al crouched beside him in the crawl space, silent and intent, watching the meter on the forearm of Brother Chard’s suit, atop the pocket that held the probes.

Finally, the monk looked up. “No break, Father. Current’s flowing through the whole beast.”

“Then you’ve got a grain that’s passing current, but not doing anything with it. May I try?”

Brother Chard stared at him; then, reluctantly, he moved back. “Certain you know what you’re doing, Father?”

“Enough to know how to find out which grain is gone.” Father Al slipped the probes out of his sleeve pocket. “We just test each pair of terminals, and when the needle goes into the red, we’ve found the trouble-spot, haven’t we?”

“Yes, that’s all,” Brother Chard said drily. “Check your chronometer, Father; I think we’ll have to go back for a recharged air cycler in about an hour.”

“Oh, I don’t think it’ll take us that long.” Father Al started probing.

Brother Chard was silent; when his voice came over the headphones, it was strained. “I hope you’re right, of course, Father—but it could take a week. If only we had a diagnostic computer aboard!”

“Well, a pinnace can’t carry everything,” Father Al said philosophically. “Besides, Brother Chard, I have a certain faith in the perversity of electronic circuitry.”

“You mean a faith in perversity, period, don’t you, Father? I’ve heard some of the stories you Cathodeans tell about Finagle; sometimes I think you’ve fallen into heresy, and made a god of him!”

“Scarcely a god—but we might promote him to the status of demon, if he were real—which, fortunately, he’s not. But the perversity he personifies is real enough, Brother.”

“True,” Brother Chard admitted. “But the perversity’s in us, Father, not in the Universe.”

“But so much of our universe is man-made, Brother, so many of the things around us, the things that keep us alive! And it’s so easy for us to build our own perversity into them—especially really complicated pieces of electronics!”

“Such as an isomorpher?”

“Well, yes. But computers, too, and 3DT cameras, and any number of other gadgets. Have you ever noticed, Brother, how they’ll sometimes stop working for no apparent reason, then suddenly start again?”

“Now and then. But when you dig into them, Father, you can always find a reason.”

“When you dig into them, perhaps. Not when I do. But then, I seem to have an anti-mechanical personality; any chronometer I carry, starts gaining about five minutes a day as soon as I touch it. On the other hand, there’re people machines seem to like; let one of them walk in and lay his hand on the widget, and it works perfectly.”

“A little far-fetched, isn’t that, Father?”

“Perhaps. But I’m fetching as far as I can, right now.” Fetching aid from my patron, I hope. St. Vidicon, no matter how far away you may be, please come to my aid now! Intercede with the Almighty for me, that this isomorpher may begin working again, long enough to get us to Gramarye and to get Brother Chard safely home again! “That might do it.” Father Al withdrew his probes. “By the way, Brother Chard, you did disengage the isomorpher before we came out here, didn’t you?”

“Of course, Father. There’s just a trickle of current flowing through it now.”

“Good. Can you fire it up fully from in here?”

“I could.” The ghost of a smile tugged at Brother Chard’s lips. “But I wouldn’t recommend it. The ship might not go into H-space, but we might.”

“Hm.” Father Al turned away toward the access hatch. “Then let’s go back to the bridge, shall we? We’ll try it from there.”

“But you can’t think it’ll work again, Father! We haven’t even found the trouble yet.”

“Perhaps not.” Father Al turned back with a smile. “But I think we may have fixed it.”

“That’s impossible!”

“Brother Chard, you should be ashamed of yourself! All things are possible—with God.”

“And St. Vidicon of Cathode,” Brother Chard muttered; but he closed the isomorpher’s shell, anyway, and followed Father Al.

On the way back to the airlock, Father Al finally let himself feel the dread at what might happen if the isomorpher couldn’t be fixed. They’d be stranded light-years away from any inhabitable planet, with only a month’s supply of food and water. The air cycler would keep working for several years and, with strict rationing, the food might last an extra month; but no matter how you looked at it, even if they accelerated the ship to nearly the speed of light, by the time it came near enough to civilization for its beacon to summon aid, it would be carrying only two mummies.

Dread clutched at Father Al’s belly; fear soured his throat. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. Thy will, Father, not mine. If it suits Thy purpose that I die in this place, then let it be as Thou wilt have it.

Serenity filled him; the fear ebbed away. Smiling, he ducked into the airlock.

They loosened their helmets and webbed themselves into their couches. Brother Chard fed power into the engines, then engaged the isomorpher and fired it up.

The stars disappeared in a swirl of colors.

Father Al heaved out a huge sigh. “Praise Heaven!” And I thank you, St. Vidicon, for interceding with Him for me.

Brother Chard just sat staring at the viewscreen. “I don’t believe it. I see it, but I don’t believe it.”

“Faith, good Brother,” Father Al chided gently. “With faith, all things are possible.” He took out his breviary and began reading his Office.