Nightflyers and Other Stories

Rojan Christopheris fell over backwards, scrambled to his feet, and pressed himself hard against the wall.

Dannel screamed, and screamed, and screamed, until Lindran slapped him hard across a blood-smeared cheek and told him to be quiet.

Alys Northwind dropped to her knees and began to mumble a prayer in a strange tongue.

Karoly d’Branin sat very still, staring, blinking, his chocolate cup forgotten in his hand.

“Do something,” Lommie Thorne moaned. “Somebody do something.” One of Lasamer’s arms moved feebly, and brushed against her. She shrieked and pulled away.

Melantha Jhirl pushed aside her brandy snifter. “Control yourself,” she snapped. “He’s dead, he can’t hurt you.”

They all looked at her, but for d’Branin and Marij-Black, both of whom seemed frozen in shock. Royd’s projection had vanished at some point, Melantha realized suddenly. She began to give orders. “Dannel, Lindran, Rojan – find a sheet or something to wrap him in, and get him out of here. Alys, you and Lommie get some water and sponges. We’ve got to clean up.” Melantha moved to d’Branin’s side as the others rushed to do as she had told them. “Karoly,” she said, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder, “are you all right, Karoly?”

He looked up at her, grey eyes blinking. “I – yes, yes, I am – I told her not to go ahead, Melantha. I told her.”

“Yes you did,” Melantha Jhirl said. She gave him a reassuring pat and moved around the table to Agatha Marij-Black. “Agatha,” she called. But the psipsych did not respond, not even when Melantha shook her bodily by the shoulders. Her eyes were empty. “She’s in shock,” Melantha announced. She frowned at the sliver of bone protruding from Marij-Black’s cheek. Sponging off her face with a napkin, she carefully removed the splinter.

“What do we do with the body?” asked Lindran. They had found a sheet and wrapped it up. It had finally stopped twitching, although blood continued to seep out, turning the concealing sheet red.

“Put it in a cargo hold,” suggested Christopheris.

“No,” Melantha said, “not sanitary. It will rot.” She thought for a moment. “Suit up and take it down to the driveroom. Cycle it through and lash it in place somehow. Tear up the sheet if you have to. That section of the ship is vacuum. It will be best there.”

Christopheris nodded, and the three of them moved off, the dead weight of Lasamer’s corpse supported between them. Melantha turned back to Marij-Black, but only for an instant. Lommie Thorne, who was mopping the blood from the tabletop with a piece of cloth, suddenly began to retch violently. Melantha swore. “Someone help her,” she snapped.

Karoly d’Branin finally seemed to stir. He rose and took the blood-soaked cloth from Lommie’s hand, and led her away back to his cabin.

“I can’t do this alone,” whined Alys Northwind, turning away in disgust.

“Help me, then,” Melantha said. Together she and Northwind half-led and half-carried the psipsych from the lounge, cleaned her and undressed her, and put her to sleep with a shot of one of her own drugs. Afterwards Melantha took the injection gun and made the rounds. Northwind and Lommie Thorne required mild tranquilizers, Dannel a somewhat stronger one.

It was three hours before they met again.

The survivors assembled in the largest of the cargo holds, where three of them hung their sleepwebs. Seven of eight attended. Agatha Marij-Black was still unconscious, sleeping or in a coma or deep shock; none of them were sure. The rest seemed to have recovered, though their faces were pale and drawn. All of them had changed clothes, even Alys Northwind, who had slipped into a new jumpsuit identical to the old one.

“I do not understand,” Karoly d’Branin said. “I do not understand what …”

“Royd killed him, is all,” Northwind said bitterly. “His secret was endangered so he just – just blew him apart. We all saw it.”

“I cannot believe that,” Karoly d’Branin said in an anguished voice. “I cannot. Royd and I, we have talked, talked many a night when the rest of you were sleeping. He is gentle, inquisitive, sensitive. A dreamer. He understands about the volcryn: He would not do such a thing, could not.”

“His projection certainly winked out quick enough when it happened,” Lindran said. “And you’ll notice he hasn’t had much to say since.”

“The rest of us haven’t been unusually talkative either,” said Melantha Jhirl. “I don’t know what to think, but my impulse is to side with Karoly. We have no proof that the captain was responsible for Thale’s death. There’s something here none of us understands yet.”

Alys Northwind grunted. “Proof,” she said disdainfully.

“In fact,” Melantha continued unperturbed, “I’m not even sure anyone is responsible. Nothing happened until he was given the esperon. Could the drug be at fault?”

“Hell of a side-effect,” Lindran muttered.

Rojan Christopheris frowned. “This is not my field, but I would think, no. Esperon is extremely potent, with both physical and psionic side-effects verging on the extreme, but not that extreme.”

“What, then?” said Lommie Thorne. “What killed him?”

“The instrument of death was probably his own talent,” the xenobiologist said, “undoubtedly augmented by his drug. Besides boosting his principle power, his telepathic sensitivity, esperon would also tend to bring out other psi-talents that might have been latent in him.”

“Such as?” Lommie demanded.

“Biocontrol. Telekinesis.”

Melantha Jhirl was way ahead of him. “Esperon shoots blood pressure way up anyway. Increase the pressure in his skull even more by rushing all the blood in his body to his brain. Decrease the air pressure around his head simultaneously, using teke to induce a short-lived vacuum. Think about it.”

They thought about it, and none of them liked it.

“Who could do such a thing?” Karoly d’Branin said. “It could only have been self-induced, his own talent wild out of control.”

“Or turned against him by a greater talent,” Alys Northwind said stubbornly.

“No human telepath has talent on that order, to seize control of someone else, body and mind and soul, even for an instant.”

“Exactly,” the stout xenotech replied. “No human telepath.”

“Gas giant people?” Lommie Thorne’s tone was mocking.

Alys Northwind stared her down. “I could talk about Crey sensitives or githyanki soulsucks, name a half-dozen others off the top of my head, but I don’t need to. I’ll only name one. A Hrangan Mind.”

That was a disquieting thought. All of them fell silent and stirred uneasily, thinking of the vast, inimicable power of a Hrangan Mind hidden in the command chambers of the Nightflyer, until Melantha Jhirl broke the spell with a short, derisive laugh. “You’re frightening yourself with shadows, Alys,” she said. “What you’re saying is ridiculous, if you stop to think about it. I hope that isn’t too much to ask. You’re supposed to be xenologists, the lot of you, experts in alien languages, psychology, biology, technology. You don’t act the part. We warred with Old Hranga for a thousand years, but we never communicated successfully with a Hrangan Mind. If Royd Eris is a Hrangan, they’ve improved their conversational skills markedly in the centuries since the Collapse.”

Alys Northwind flushed. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m jumpy.”

“Friends,” said Karoly d’Branin, “we must not let our actions be dictated by panic or hysteria. A terrible thing has happened. One of our colleagues is dead, and we do not know why. Until we do, we can only go on. This is no time for rash actions against the innocent. Perhaps, when we return to Avalon, an investigation will tell us what happened. The body is safe for examination, is it not?”

“We cycled it through the airlock into the driveroom,” Dannel said. “It’ll keep.”

“And it can be studied closely on our return,” d’Branin said.

“Which should be immediate,” said Northwind. “Tell Eris to turn this ship around!”

D’Branin looked stricken. “But the volcryn! A week more and we shall know them, if my figures are correct. To return would take us six weeks. Surely it is worth one additional week to know that they exist? Thale would not have wanted his death to be for nothing.”

“Before he died, Thale was raving about aliens, about danger,” Northwind insisted. “We’re rushing to meet some aliens. What if they’re the danger? Maybe these volcryn are even more potent than a Hrangan Mind, and maybe they don’t want to be met, or investigated, or observed. What about that, Karoly? You ever think about that? Those stories of yours – don’t some of them talk about terrible things happening to the races that meet the volcryn?”

“Legends,” d’Branin said. “Superstitition.”

“A whole Fyndii horde vanishes in one legend,” Rojan Christopheris put in.

“We cannot put credence in these fears of others,” d’Branin argued.

“Perhaps there’s nothing to the stories,” Northwind said, “but do you care to risk it? I don’t. For what? Your sources may be fictional or exaggerated or wrong, your interpretations and computations may be in error, or they may have changed course – the volcryn may not even be within light years of where we’ll drop out.”

“Ah,” Melantha Jhirl said, “I understand. Then we shouldn’t go on because they won’t be there, and besides, they might be dangerous.”

D’Branin smiled and Lindran laughed. “Not funny,” protested Alys Northwind, but she argued no further.

“No,” Melantha continued, “any danger we are in will not increase significantly in the time it will take us to drop out of drive and look about for volcryn. We have to drop out anyway, to reprogram for the shunt home. Besides, we’ve come a long way for these volcryn, and I admit to being curious.” She looked at each of them in turn, but no one spoke. “We continue, then.”

“And Royd?” demanded Christopheris. “What do we do about him?”

“What can we do?” said Dannel.

“Treat the captain as before,” Melantha said decisively. “We should open lines to him and talk. Maybe now we can clear up some of the mysteries that are bothering us, if Royd is willing to discuss things frankly.”

“He is probably as shocked and dismayed as we are, my friends,” said d’Branin. “Possibly he is fearful that we will blame him, try to hurt him.”

“I think we should cut through to his section of the ship and drag him out kicking and screaming,” Christopheris said. “We have the tools. That would write a quick end to all our fears.”

“It could kill Royd,” Melantha said. “Then he’d be justified in anything he did to stop us. He controls this ship. He could do a great deal, if he decided we were his enemies.” She shook her head vehemently. “No, Rojan, we can’t attack Royd. We’ve got to reassure him. I’ll do it, if no one else wants to talk to him.” There were no volunteers. “All right. But I don’t want any of you trying any foolish schemes. Go about your business. Act normally.”

Karoly d’Branin was nodding agreement. “Let us put Royd and poor Thale from our minds, and concern ourselves with our work, with our preparations. Our sensory instruments must be ready for deployment as soon as we shift out of drive and reenter normal space, so we can find our quarry quickly. We must review everything we know of the volcryn.” He turned to the linguists and began discussing some of the preliminaries he expected of them, and in a short time the talk had turned to the volcryn, and bit by bit the fear drained out of the group.

Lommie Thorne sat listening quietly, her thumb absently rubbing her wrist implant, but no one noticed the thoughtful look in her eyes.

Not even Royd Eris, watching.

Melantha Jhirl returned to the lounge alone.

Someone had turned out the lights. “Captain?” she said softly.

He appeared to her; pale, glowing softly, with eyes that did not see. His clothes, filmy and out-of-date, were all shades of white and faded blue. “Hello, Melantha,” the mellow voice said from the communicators, as the ghost silently mouthed the same words.

“Did you hear, captain?”

“Yes,” he said, his voice vaguely tinged by surprise. “I hear and I see everything on my Nightflyer, Melantha. Not only in the lounge, and not only when the communicators and viewscreens are on. How long have you known?”

“Known?” She smiled. “Since you praised Alys’ gas giant solution to the Roydian mystery. The communicators were not on that night. You had no way of knowing. Unless …”

“I have never made a mistake before,” Royd said. “I told Karoly, but that was deliberate. I am sorry. I have been under stress.”

“I believe you, captain,” she said. “No matter. I’m the improved model, remember? I’d guessed weeks ago.”

For a time Royd said nothing. Then: “When do you begin to reassure me?”

“I’m doing so right now. Don’t you feel reassured yet?”

The apparition gave a ghostly shrug. “I am pleased that you and Karoly do not think I murdered that man. Otherwise, I am frightened. Things are getting out of control, Melantha. Why didn’t she listen to me? I told Karoly to keep him dampened. I told Agatha not to give him that injection. I warned them.”

“They were afraid, too,” Melantha said. “Afraid that you were only trying to frighten them off, to protect some awful plan. I don’t know. It was my fault, in a sense. I was the one who suggested esperon. I thought it would put Thale at ease, and tell us something about you. I was curious.” She frowned. “A deadly curiosity. Now I have blood on my hands.”

Melantha’s eyes were adjusting to the darkness in the lounge. By the faint light of the holograph, she could see the table where it had happened, dark streaks of drying blood across its surface among the plates and cups and cold pots of tea and chocolate. She heard a faint dripping as well, and could not tell if it was blood or coffee. She shivered. “I don’t like it in here.”

“If you would like to leave, I can be with you wherever you go.”

“No,” she said. “I’ll stay. Royd, I think it might be better if you were not with us wherever we go. If you kept silent and out of sight, so to speak. If I asked you to, would you shut off your monitors throughout the ship? Except for the lounge, perhaps. It would make the others feel better, I’m sure.”

“They don’t know.”

“They will. You made that remark about gas giants in everyone’s hearing. Some of them have probably figured it out by now.”

“If I told you I had cut myself off, you would have no way of knowing whether it was the truth.”

“I could trust you,” Melantha Jhirl said.

Silence. The spectre stared at her. “As you wish,” Royd’s voice said finally. “Everything off. Now I see and hear only in here. Now, Melantha, you must promise to control them. No secret schemes, or attempts to breach my quarters. Can you do that?”

“I think so,” she said.

“Did you believe my story?” Royd asked.

“Ah,” she said. “A strange and wondrous story, captain. If it’s a lie, I’ll swap lies with you any time. You do it well. If it’s true, then you are a strange and wondrous man.”

“It’s true,” the ghost said quietly. “Melantha …”

“Yes?”

“Does it bother you that I have … watched you? Watched you when you were not aware?”

“A little,” she said, “but I think I can understand it.”

“I watched you copulating.”

She smiled. “Ah,” she said, “I’m good at it.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Royd said. “You’re good to watch.”

Silence. She tried not to hear the steady, faint dripping off to her right. “Yes,” she said after a long hesitation.

“Yes? What?”

“Yes, Royd,” she said, “I would probably sex with you if it were possible.”

“How did you know what I was thinking?” Royd’s voice was suddenly frightened, full of anxiety and something close to fear.

“Easy,” Melantha said, startled. “I’m an improved model. It wasn’t so difficult to figure out. I told you, remember? I’m three moves ahead of you.”

“You’re not a telepath, are you?”

“No,” Melantha said. “No.”

Royd considered that for a long time. “I believe I’m reassured,” he said at last.

“Good,” she said.

“Melantha,” he added, “one thing. Sometimes it is not wise to be too many moves ahead. Do you understand?”

“Oh? No, not really. You frighten me. Now reassure me. Your turn, captain Royd.”

“Of what?”

“What happened in here? Really?”

Royd said nothing.

“I think you know something,” Melantha said. “You gave up your secret to stop us from injecting Lasamer with esperon. Even after your secret was forfeit, you ordered us not to go ahead. Why?”

“Esperon is a dangerous drug,” Royd said.

“More than that, captain,” Melantha said. “You’re evading. What killed Thale Lasamer? Or is it who?”

“I didn’t.”

“One of us? The volcryn?”

Royd said nothing.

“Is there an alien aboard your ship, captain?”

Silence.

“Are we in danger? Am I in danger, captain? I’m not afraid. Does that make me a fool?”

“I like people,” Royd said at last. “When I can stand it, I like to have passengers. I watch them, yes. It’s not so terrible. I like you and Karoly especially. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“What might happen?”

Royd said nothing.

“And what about the others, Royd? Christopheris and Northwind, Dannel and Lindran, Lommie Thorne? Are you taking care of them, too? Or only Karoly and I?”

No reply.

“You’re not very talkative tonight,” Melantha observed.

“I’m under strain,” his voice replied. “And certain things you are safer not to know. Go to bed, Melantha Jhirl. We’ve talked long enough.”

“All right, captain,” she said. She smiled at the ghost and lifted her hand. His own rose to meet it. Warm dark flesh and pale radiance brushed, melded, were one. Melantha Jhirl turned to go. It was not until she was out in the corridor, safe in the light once more, that she began to tremble.

False midnight.

The talks had broken up, and one by one the academicians had gone to bed. Even Karoly d’Branin had retired, his appetite for chocolate quelled by his memories of the lounge.

The linguists had made violent, noisy love before giving themselves up to sleep, as if to reaffirm their life in the face of Thale Lasamer’s grisly death. Rojan Christopheris had listened to music. But now they were all still.

The Nightflyer was filled with silence.

In the darkness of the largest cargo hold, three sleepwebs hung side by side. Melantha Jhirl twisted occasionally in her sleep, her face feverish, as if in the grip of some nightmare. Alys Northwind lay flat on her back, snoring loudly, a reassuring wheeze of noise from her solid, meaty chest.

Lommie Thorne lay awake, thinking.

Finally she rose and dropped to the floor, nude, quiet, light and careful as a cat. She pulled on a tight pair of pants, slipped a wide-sleeved shirt of black metallic cloth over her head, belted it with a silver chain, shook out her short hair. She did not don her boots. Barefoot was quieter. Her feet were small and soft, with no trace of callous.

She moved to the middle sleepweb and shook Alys Northwind by her shoulder. The snoring stopped abruptly. “Huh?” the xenotech said. She grunted in annoyance.

“Come,” whispered Lommie Thorne. She beckoned.

Northwind got heavily to her feet, blinking, and followed the cyberneticist through the door, out into the corridor. She’d been sleeping in her jumpsuit, its seam open nearly to her crotch. She frowned and sealed it. “What the hell,” she muttered. She was disarrayed and unhappy.

“There’s a way to find out if Royd’s story was true,” Lommie Thorne said carefully. “Melantha won’t like it, though. Are you game to try?”

“What?” Northwind asked. Her face betrayed her interest.

“Come,” the cyberneticist said.

They moved silently through the ship, to the computer room. The system was up, but dormant. They entered quietly; all empty. Currents of light ran silkily down crystalline channels in the data grids, meeting, joining, splitting apart again; rivers of wan multi-hued radiance crisscrossing a black landscape. The chamber was dim, the only noise a buzz at the edge of human hearing, until Lommie Thorne moved through it, touching keys, tripping switches, directing the silent luminescent currents. Bit by bit the machine woke.

“What are you doing?” Alys Northwind said.

“Karoly told me to tie in our system with the ship,” Lommie Thorne replied as she worked. “I was told Royd wanted to study the volcryn data. Fine, I did it. Do you understand what that means?” Her shirt whispered in soft metallic tones when she moved.

Eagerness broke across the flat features of xenotech Alys Northwind. “The two systems are tied together!”

“Exactly. So Royd can find out about the volcryn, and we can find out about Royd.” She frowned. “I wish I knew more about the Nightflyer’s hardware, but I think I can feel my way through. This is a pretty sophisticated system d’Branin requisitioned.”

“Can you take over from Eris?”

“Take over?” Lommie sounded puzzled. “You been drinking again, Alys?”

“No, I’m serious. Use your system to break into the ship’s control, overwhelm Eris, countermand his orders, make the Nightflyer respond to us, down here. Wouldn’t you feel safer if we were in control?”

“Maybe,” the cyberneticist said doubtfully. “I could try, but why do that?”

“Just in case. We don’t have to use the capacity. Just so we have it, if an emergency arises.”

Lommie Thorne shrugged. “Emergencies and gas giants. I only want to put my mind at rest about Royd, whether he had anything to do with killing Lasamer.” She moved over to a readout panel, where a half-dozen meter-square viewscreens curved around a console, and brought one of them to life. Long fingers ghosted through holographic keys that appeared and disappeared as she used them, the keyboard changing shape again and yet again. The cyberneticist’s pretty face grew thoughtful and serious. “We’re in,” she said. Characters began to flow across a viewscreen, red flickerings in glassy black depths. On a second screen, a schematic of the Nightflyer appeared, revolved, halved; its spheres shifted size and perspective at the whim of Lommie’s fingers, and a line of numerals below gave the specifications. The cyberneticist watched, and finally froze both screens.

“Here,” she said, “here’s my answer about the hardware. You can dismiss your takeover idea, unless those gas giant people of yours are going to help. The Nightflyer’s bigger and smarter than our little system here. Makes sense, when you stop to think about it. Ship’s all automated, except for Royd.”

Her hands moved again, and two more display screens stirred. Lommie Thorne whistled and coaxed her search program with soft words of encouragement. “It looks as though there is a Royd, though. Configurations are all wrong for a robot ship. Damn, I would have bet anything.” The characters began to flow again, Lommie watching the figures as they drifted by. “Here’s life support specs, might tell us something.” A finger jabbed, and one screen froze yet again.

“Nothing unusual,” Alys Northwind said in disappointment.

“Standard waste disposal. Water recycling. Food processor, with protein and vitamin supplements in stores.” She began to whistle. “Tanks of Renny’s moss and neograss to eat up the CO2. Oxygen cycle, then. No methane or ammonia. Sorry about that.”

“Go sex with a computer!”

The cyberneticist smiled. “Ever tried it?” Her fingers moved again. “What else should I look for? You’re the tech, what would be a giveaway? Give me some ideas.”

“Check the specs for nurturant tanks, cloning equipment, that sort of thing,” the xenotech said. “That would tell us whether he was lying.”

“I don’t know,” Lommie Thorne said. “Long time ago. He might have junked that stuff. No use for it.”

“Find Royd’s life history,” Northwind said. “His mother’s. Get a readout on the business they’ve done, all this alleged trading. They must have records. Account books, profit-and-loss, cargo invoices, that kind of thing.” Her voice grew excited, and she gripped the cyberneticist from behind by her shoulders. “A log, a ship’s log! There’s got to be a log. Find it!”

“All right.” Lommie Thorne whistled, happy, at ease with her system, riding the data winds, curious, in control. Then the screen in front of her turned a bright red and began to blink. She smiled, touched a ghost key, and the keyboard melted away and reformed under her. She tried another tack. Three more screens turned red and began to blink. Her smile faded.