Richard Russo - Ship of Fools

“What’s happened since?” I asked.

“We’ve continued to explore the ship,” he said. “Much more carefully, of course. We make a little progress each time. Sometimes the access is hard to work out, and the absence of gravity makes things more difficult—it’s been all zero g since that one room. And now the teams take the time to inventory and record everything they see.”

“Any more casualties?” I knew the answer had to be yes.

Nikos nodded. “Four more dead, seven others with severe injuries. All accidents, each one unforeseen. Ruptured pressure suits, broken limbs, concussions. And stranger things. Barry Sorrel returned from an excursion inside, went to sleep for sixteen hours. Could hardly wake him. Physically, he checked out fine with the doctors. But he refuses to go back into the alien ship, and won’t say why. Actually, what he says is that he just doesn’t feel like it. And do you know Nazia Abouti?”

I told him the name sounded familiar, but I couldn’t picture her.

“She’s been inside the alien ship several times, and lately she’s been behaving strangely. A few days ago, her husband brought her in to see a physician. She didn’t want to be examined; she said she was feeling fine, but her husband insisted. Primary symptoms: sleeping more than usual, and periodically going into a kind of fugue state—she’ll be unresponsive for hours, but doesn’t remember anything when she comes out of it. In fact, she insists the fugue states aren’t occurring at all, that her husband is fabricating them. Another major symptom is what her husband describes as an overwhelming apathy.” He paused. “You understand why I’m worried?”

“Let me guess,” I said. “The physician found nothing wrong with her, either.”

“That’s right. Three different physicians have examined her, and they spent two days running tests. Nothing. But her husband insists she isn’t the same.”

“You continued to send teams in,” I said.

“Yes. Two weeks ago I temporarily suspended all exploration, but we’re going to start up again soon. What else are we going to do? An alien starship, Bartolomeo. As far as we know, this is the first and only time in human history that we have had any contact, any evidence of an intelligent alien civilization. We can’t just stop now, leave it all behind as if it didn’t exist.”

That was Father Veronica’s argument for staying on Antioch, but I didn’t remind the captain of that. I was sure he would say, perhaps with some justification, that this was very different, and far more important.

“I’m sure some people have argued we do just that,” I said. “That whatever might be discovered isn’t worth the loss of lives.”

“Yes, some have.”

“The bishop?”

“No. Actually, the bishop has a different agenda.”

“And what’s that?”

Nikos smiled ruefully. “The same old agenda.” But he didn’t say any more, his gaze unfocused, as if lost in his thoughts. Or simply lost.

“Why do you need me?” I asked.

“I’m in trouble again, Bartolomeo.”

“Because of the casualties.”

“Yes. I am being blamed for them, like everything else.”

There was something about the way he said that…

“What else are you being blamed for?”

“There’s more trouble with the downsiders. After we put down the mutiny, I expected the downsiders would become more docile, at least for a few years. Instead of fear, the quelling of the mutiny has stirred up only more resentment. We have rebellion, now. Nothing major, but dozens of small rebellions, subtle bits of sabotage, disgruntlement, resistance. They are making life on the ship difficult without going far enough to warrant arrests or reprisals or other punishments.” He gave a grudging smile. “We often can’t identify who is causing the difficulty, or what exactly has been done. Occasionally, I imagine, nothing at all has been done, and some piece of equipment breaks down simply because of age, as has always happened on this ship. Now, however, we question everything.”

“You’ve engendered resentment in them, and they have in turn engendered paranoia in you.”

“Yes, that is an apt assessment.”

“What do you want from me, Nikos?”

“The bishop wants to take over the exploration of the alien ship.”

“Let him. Let him take all the risks.”

Nikos shook his head. “I can’t, Bartolomeo. I can’t trust him, you know that.” He paused. “And he’s up to something. He thinks he’s been sly, that no one’s on to him, but… He’s made an excursion over to the alien ship on his own. I don’t know what he’s looking for, or what he has in mind, but I do not want to put him in charge. If I let him take over now, I might just as well hand the captaincy to him. Even if he failed, I would never become captain again. Never.”

“What do you want ?” I was exasperated. More than that, I was angry, although I wasn’t sure at what.

Nikos finally looked directly at me. “I want you to take charge of the exploration of the alien ship. I want you to bring me success.”

I felt I was being set up as scapegoat and distraction. If by some chance I could achieve success, all the better. If not, I gained time for the captain. I didn’t like it.

“If I refuse?”

“Your cell remains empty.”

“You would imprison us all again?”

Nikos cocked his head and stared at me, and his true state of mind showed itself—in the intensity of his eyes, the tightness of his lips as they formed a mirthless smile.

“I would not hesitate,” he said.

Islept long and hard and without dreaming, or at least without any memory of dreams. When I woke, I thought I was still in my cell. The room was dark, and as I sat up I became confused, sensing something vaguely unfamiliar about my surroundings. I stumbled out of bed—its height was not the same as the bunk in my cell—and bumped into a wall where one shouldn’t have been. Yet some unconscious part of me apparently realized where I was, for my hand reached out involuntarily to the correct place on the wall and brought up dim lights. I saw I was in my own quarters, and finally remembered my release.

I sat in a chair, surveying my quarters, trying to decide what to do, what to think, struggling against the urge to return to bed and go back to sleep. My rooms were so quiet and lifeless, as if the inorganic matter which composed the furniture and all of my few possessions had dropped into an even lower level of existence while I was gone, and now needed to be resurrected to its former state. The same for me, I thought.

I should have been elated to be free of my cell, but I was strangely depressed, and did not understand why. Everything was changed; perhaps that was it. The captain was still fighting with the bishop over the captaincy, but even that had changed, and my place within the struggles, my relationships to the key participants, were not the same. I saw everyone differently now, and I was sure their perceptions of me, too, had changed.

And Nikos? We had been friends for years, since we were children, but that time was gone, and I began to fully understand that there was no regaining that friendship. Out of necessity we could work together, each of us distrusting the other, but there would never again be more, and that realization depressed me as well. An enormous sense of loss threatened to overwhelm me.

I got up from the chair, showered and dressed, then tried to get something to eat. The room’s food system had been shut down while I was in prison, and no one had yet restored its function. I would have to go to one of the common halls.

Fortunately it was between regular meal times—late morning—and there were few people in the common hall nearest my quarters. None of them knew how to react to my presence, though I detected less surprise than when Nikos and I had walked along the ship’s corridors to the command salon. Word of my release had obviously spread through the upper levels.