The Fenris Device (10 page)

I hesitated. Should I tell Maslax I could do my own navigating? I decided there was no point. He probably wouldn't leave Ecdyon loose in the ship anyway.

Back into the elevator we all went, and off we went again, this time to the monitoring room. I had a sneaking suspicion that this might be it. If one were going to hide a manual control panel anywhere, the logical place to do it would have to be the place where one had the facilities to monitor all the ship's instruments and mechanical devices. I expected to find the monitoring room a veritable maze of machinery and instrumentation.

In actual fact, it was surprisingly sparse. There was a console running around the room about four feet from the ground, but it was only a foot deep and it wasn't a very big room. There couldn't have been more than a couple of hundred information outputs, and most of them were tape-clutches, screens, and speakers rather than dials. On the far wall, however, above the console, was a single panel with a big switch set in it.

Ecdyon stepped forward to precede the rest of us into the room, and he supported himself against the console while he began to read the manifold labels and signs that were all over the panels of the console.

Maslax, though, had eyes for one, thing only. As he stepped past me I turned to look at him.

“Is that the activator switch?” he asked Ecdyon.

The Gallacellan looked up, saw where Maslax was pointing, and said. “I think so....”

I watched Maslax put the gun between his teeth and reach up to the big switch on the wall. I spent a couple of valuable seconds inwardly wondering whether I could jump him while he had the gun in his teeth, and then the full import of what he was doing dawned on me.

“Oh God no!” I yelled. “Don't touch it!”

I plunged forward, but he mistook my action and yanked the switch down hard, then snatched the gun from his teeth to ram it hard into my chest. He didn't fire, but for one horrible moment I almost wished that he had.

Into the silence of the room surged a deep-throated murmur that grew and grew. I almost imagined the room shuddering, but all was absolutely and perfectly still. There was just the deep, deep noise hammering at my ears. The entire console seemed to spring to life as tapes chattered, screens lit up, and the needles of such dials as there were leaped from the null position.

Maslax looked scared. His face was paper-white. “What's happening?” he wanted to know.

“You stupid bloody tool!” I howled at him, with the gun still jammed hard into my fifth rib. “This is an automatic ship! She's already programmed. Don't you see?

“She's lifting!”

He stood there looking at me, for just a moment, looking as if things were utterly and totally beyond him. Uncertain, frightened, childlike.

Then he smiled.

I think I'd rather have seen the gorgon smile than watch that slow grin spread across his warped little face.

“That's right,” he said. “That's all right. I knew we could do it. You see, this is what I wanted. You see?”

I was rendered almost speechless. I just shook my head, and said—in a perfectly level, ordinary tone of voice. “The storm will break us into a million little pieces. She just isn't built for it. There's no ship in the known galaxy that could do it. No ship.”

But Ecdyon had been reading the labels all around the room. “I think you're wrong,” he said. “You said that the ship was never intended to take off. But right here, on this screen, there is a series of...words, symbols, I cannot read all of it. But it is a program for takeoff. The ship was left ready to lift. It was built for it.”

I knew that he was right and I was wrong. I could feel it, in the deep, heavy throb of the ship as she mustered her forces, distributed them, and put them into action. I had been too free with my impossibles. Once again I had misjudged the limits of my own ignorance. The Gallacellans, it seemed, were capable of a lot more than I'd ever given them credit for.

While I was busy lamenting my mistakes, Eve picked out the really important thought and exposed it for us all to see.

“Johnny and the captain,” she said softly. “They're still down there. They've no way back.”

Maslax looked me in the eye, but he couldn't hold the stare. His gaze dropped.

“You can go back,” he said. “You can take the ship back down. You can go get them. But not until we've been to Pallant. Not until we've used the Fenris device.”

I felt quite helpless. I had been riding the tide of events for a long time, and now it had taken me too far. At last, the situation was rendered impossible. I was left alone with the consequences of my own inaction.

Eve, a madman, a wounded Gallacellan, and a gigantic ship bound for an unknown destination. Probably Andromeda. I felt at that moment as though Andromeda was a pretty fitting destination. Right out of this world. Out of the known galaxy, out of the whole damn galaxy altogether. Into the mighty dark. We'd all be dead, of course. It was a long way to Andromeda.

“Maslax,” I said quietly, “the
Varsovien
is already programmed. It's not going to Pallant. We don't know where it's going. You've killed us, Maslax. You, Eve, Ecdyon, me—we're all dead, just as dead as if you'd pulled that trigger. And the
Hooded Swan
. What use is the bomb to you now, Maslax? That ship is already doomed. Blowing it now would only be a mercy killing.”

Eve took my arm. “Stop it, Grainger,” she said. “There's no need for that. There must be a way to override the controls—to reprogram the ship. We must be able to take control of the ship.”

“What for?” I said, spreading my arms wide in a gesture of bitterness and defeat. “So that crazy cripple can tell us to go murder Pallant? So he can shoot us all down when we refuse? How do we win, Miss Lapthorn? You tell me that—just how do we win? We're trapped between the devil and the mighty dark. There's no way. No way at all.”

She's right, said the wind. This is no time for you to indulge your penchant for self-pity. There must be a reprogramming inlet if there isn't a manual override. We have to find it. First, though, we have to take Maslax.

It was a remarkably sane and sensible summation of the situation. I wasn't feeling too sane and sensible just at that moment, but I had to admit that when I finally did get around to thinking about it, that would definitely be the way the cookie had crumbled.

At that moment, though, there were other thoughts dancing in my mind. Like, for one, this ship was rising steadily through the worst conditions any spaceship had ever survived. Sure, she was big and strong, but could she do it? I wished that I was back in the screen room so that I could watch the fiery sky until it disappeared and left us alone with black infinity and stars. Even if we made it out of atmosphere, could we ever come back? Logic said yes—somebody has sent the
Varsovien
down to Mormyr in the first place—but fear said no.

I needed somewhere to sit down, but there probably wasn't a chair in the entire ship. Only those damned coiling-couches. And there weren't even those in here.

The long silence gave Maslax a chance to decide that he was still in command of the situation, still handing out the orders.

“You,” he said, indicating Ecdyon, “you read the screens and things. Figure out how to make this thing go where we want it to. You two just stand still.”

“Can I take my suit off?” I asked. I was hoping, of course, for a general disrobing. Maslax nodded, and I began to strip the suit off. Eve followed my example, but Maslax showed no sign of doing the same, and when Ecdyon paused, the little man told him to get on with his allotted task. I could see that the Gallacellan was still supporting himself by leaning on the console, but there was no way to find out how badly he was injured. Probably he couldn't tell himself.

“And while you're at it,” added Maslax. “Find out how to operate the Fenris device.”

I was sick to death of that damned Fenris device. Who had called it that? Not a Gallacellan, obviously. Ferrier? But who was Ferrier? And why had the Gallacellans in the
Cicindel
contacted him?

“You won't accept it, will you?” I said to him. “There is no Fenris device. Why would anyone put a weapon like that on to a ship that's obviously built for carrying people?”

“There is a Fenris device,” he said coldly.

“So OK,” I said, feeling that the time had finally come to insist that some of this mess was sorted out. “You help us to find it. You tell us what you know. Just tell us how you found out about the bloody thing and what you think it is.”

He licked his lips.

“I read it,” he said.

“In a book of fairy tales?” I suggested.

“In his mind!”

“Whose mind?”

“Ferrier's. Ferrier knew. They told him—the Gallacellans. They sent him a message....”

“Which you read?” I guessed.

“I read his mind,” insisted Maslax.

“OK,” I said. “You read his mind. So what did the message say?”

“It said that the ship on Mormyr that Titus Charlot was trying to raise was armed with a weapon that could eat up moons, and Ferrier laughed when he told that woman, and she.... He said it was a Fenris device, and he laughed. They both laughed because they didn't understand, and they thought it was a joke. The message said that Ferrier ought to stop Titus Charlot, for everyone's sake, because Stylaster didn't know what was best for either humans or Gallacellans. And Ferrier laughed because he thought it was a joke, and the woman, she….”

Maslax's voice petered off again. He couldn't seem to remember what the woman had done.

I didn't understand. Ferrier was a big man—that we had been told. But there was nobody on Pallant big enough to put in a polite request to Titus Charlot, let alone tell him what to do. Who was Ferrier—the law? Was he, after all, a king?

Eve, apparently moved by a sudden insight or inspiration, said: “What did the woman do? What did she do to make you kill them? What happened next? After you heard him read the message to her?”

Maslax's eyes narrowed.

“I had a reason,” he said, harking back to our earlier conversation. “I had to kill them. I had no choice. You don't understand. You don't know what it was like. You just can't understand….”

“Tell us,” said Eve, pressing home her advantage. “Make us understand. Tell us what it was like.”

I'd already tried that, but I guess I just didn't have Eve's diplomatic touch. This time, it set him off. This time, he began to make us understand.

“They hate me,” he said. “They always hated me. I only had to walk down the street, and everyone I passed everyone—looked down at me—they always look down—and I'd hear them, inside their heads. I'd see it there, in their faces. As soon as I could read I could read it in their minds—animal—ugly—cripple—goblin—hate and fear, whenever eyes looked at me. And even when they wouldn't look—couldn't look—they'd be peeping and I could read the words—hideous—creature—dwarf—miserable—always the same. Everyone I passed on the street. Other children used to try to kill me—used to laugh and chase and hurt. When I got a job—with machines, machines don't think, don't hate, don't fear, don't use the words—it went on. I was bad with machines—big hands—clumsy. They wouldn't let me be with the machines—fetch and carry—sweep up—lift this—take this message. They wouldn't let me have a job—not with the machines—not even the typers—big fingers—slow—fetch and carry. And every day—all of them—send him away—make him work somewhere else—don't want him here—ugly—little—creature—insect—spider—foul—go away—sweep up—in the cellar. When they spoke—their voices—talk down, talk sweet—patient—nice—friendly—inside, hate and fear—loathing—despising—revulsion—read the minds, not bear the words—call me surly—sullen—vile—hate me—hate me. Years and years—they don't know that I can hear them, read their minds. They don't know that I can see the words, that I know, that I understand. They think they have me fooled. They think Maslax—some kind of insect—little—mad—stupid—feeble—minded. But it's not true. I can read. I know them. I know just what they are. No more than the machines they work—less—every day those machines print out things they want to know—thousands of pages—everything—the machines know—the people, they know nothing. Nothing but what the machines say. They think they're everything, but they're not. They can't even read....”

“This place where you worked,” I interjected, as softly as I could. “What was it?”

He had been flickering his eyes back and forth from the ceiling to Eve to the floor to Eve...Now he stopped and looked at me.

“It was the Library,” he said.

And there it was—the vital piece. It was all in place. I knew what had happened now.

“Go on,” Eve prompted the little man. “What happened before you killed Ferrier?”

“Ferrier,” he said, rolling the name around on his tongue as if he wanted to spit it out. “Ferrier was the boss. The big man. Always peering—walking—inspecting. Couldn't stand the sight of me. Wanted to be rid of me. But he couldn't—not on Pallant—everybody works on Pallant. Made me do work over again—swore at me—laughed at me. He didn't care if I knew he hated me. He liked hating me. He liked letting me know. I could read him—vicious. He had a woman—working on the machines—used to come to see her—meet her. She hated me too—he made her hate me more—they talk about me—laugh—swear—he hurt me for her. I read her mind—hideous—nasty—horrid—brute—beast—spider. They say those things. They don't know I can hear. But I'm always there—I'm always around. Out of sight—they all want me out of sight. I help them—I have my hiding holes—I have my places. Out of sight—I can hear what they say. I can read what they think. I hear them when they get the message. They laugh and laugh loud—they don't understand—they're happy—they kiss and they say good—bye for now. The woman, she comes out of the office. Too sudden. I am in the corridor, she bumps me, she falls. A filing cabinet is open—the drawer has a sharp edge. She is cut, not bad, just on her arm. It bleeds—lot of blood—not bad, but she screams and she screams. More at me than because she is hurt. Ferrier comes out. He yells at me, he kicks me, she is still screaming, still bleeding. He says he's going to kill me—I know he doesn't mean it, but he comes after me when I run and I keep running. I run right away, but only to my hiding place. Then I get my gun, I come back, and I kill them both. They scream again, and they keep screaming. They are dead—I killed them—but their minds—I can read their minds. Their minds keep on screaming. The words—I can still read the words—they keep coming out—filthy—beast—vermin—kill it....”

He stopped.

“OK,” I said. “We know the rest.”

There was a gap of some several minutes while he replayed all the things he's said to us through his mind. I didn't have to be a mind reader to know he was doing that. Any more than he had to be a mind reader to know what people thought when they passed him on the street or told him to get out of sight. Maybe he'd missed reading one or two words of pity, maybe a little sympathy here and there, certainly a lot of indifference. But one could hardly say that what he'd picked up was completely false and imagined. He didn't have to read minds. He knew all right.

I turned to Eve. “It's all a tragic mistake,” I told her. “It's a misunderstanding. Difficulties in translation. The Gallacellans didn't want to know about humans—they never wanted to know. Only a handful, like Ecdyon, knew anything about us. And they're under obligation, you see—Ecdyon works for Stylaster. Stylaster regards him as an extra leg, or a sense-organ, or something. What Ecdyon knows, Stylaster knows. But it couldn't possibly occur to another Gallacellan to come to Ecdyon or to anyone like him and ask him about humans. Status, you see. The Gallacellans just didn't understand.”

“What are you talking about?” she asked.

“This whole crazy affair. Can't you see what's been happening? Stylaster wants to raise the
Varsovien
. He has to use our ship, but using us is exactly what he tries to do. It would no more occur to him to give away one extra fact than it would occur to the Caradoc Company to finance the Library at New Alexandria. Stylaster uses Charlot. Some other Gallacellan wants to let sleeping dogs lie, wants to let the
Varsovien
stay exactly where she is. How does he go about doing it? Does he go to Charlot? Of course not. Automatic Gallacellan policy is to go to the man of higher status.”