Richard Russo - Ship of Fools

“Winton’s disappeared.” He looked tired, the dark areas beneath his eyes more pronounced.

“What the hell does ‘disappeared’ mean?”

“What do you think?” His words were slightly slurred, but I couldn’t tell if it was from alcohol or exhaustion.

“All right, tell me what happened.”

“We don’t know what happened. She was supposed to report to the central med clinic for more tests, but never showed. The security escort posted outside her cabin eventually overrode her door locks, but she wasn’t anywhere in her rooms. She just disappeared.”

“I suppose the security escort swears he or she never left the door unattended.”

“That’s absolutely correct. He says he never left his post, and the escort on before him says the same thing. She’s just gone.”

“It’s probably nothing, but I’d warn Starlin,” I said.

“I already have. He’s not worried. I got the impression he welcomed a confrontation with her.”

I leaned back in my seat, thinking about what, if anything, this meant for us.

“What do you expect me to do from here?”

“Nothing. I just thought you should know. It’s one more complication in this whole mess.” He paused. “Are you going to tell anyone there?”

“What’s to tell? As you said yourself, we have no idea what happened. Until we know more, all it would do is set off useless speculation, and maybe start some people worrying. We don’t need that.”

I watched him shrug and nod. “How is it going there?” he asked.

“Everything’s fine. Nothing exciting, but nothing bad, either.”

“How long will you stick with it, Bartolomeo? You’re learning nothing, you’re finding nothing. How long?”

“A lot longer than this, Nikos. Why do you care? Isn’t finding this ship what you wanted?”

“What do you mean by that?”

I shook my head. “Nothing. Thanks for letting me know about Winton.”

We spoke for a few more minutes about official matters, and ended the linkup. I sat in the pilot cabin, thinking and worrying. Winton’s disappearance did disturb me. But as I’d said to Nikos, there was nothing I could do about it from here. I tried to forget about it.

FIVEdays after Father Veronica and Dr. G. joined us, we found something remarkable. Actually, what was remarkable was not the object itself, but the fact that we found it, when we had found nothing like it in all the weeks we’d explored the alien starship.

My team was in a large room broken up by metal girders so that our lanterns cast long and harsh shadows in all directions. Each of us had gone off to explore different parts of the room, but none of us had yet seen anything of interest.

I was crawling through a triangular opening where three of the girders intersected, when Father Veronica said, “I’ve found something.”

Leona Frip and I joined her where two pairs of girders were fused together as they entered the wall. She had spotted a box wedged into the junction, and she pointed to it as we approached. Then she reached into the junction, gently took hold of the box, and pulled it out.

The box was half a meter long and twenty or twenty-five centimeters high and deep. It was made of dark, reddish polished wood, the top inlaid with tiny bits of colored stone—dark blue pieces irregularly shaped but placed in a swirl pattern. Leaflike shapes were carved into the two ends. There were no clasps or visible hinges, but the fine separation of the lid was visible.

“Do we try to open it?” Father Veronica asked.

That was a good question. We hung there, drifting slightly, looking at each other.

“Remember Pandora,” Leona said. No one laughed.

“It’s just a box,” said Father Veronica.

I think we all knew we were going to open it, just as we all knew the logical and cautious approach would have been to bring in a remote and try to open it from a distance.

“I’ll do it,” Leona said.

She reached for the box, but before her gloved fingers touched it, Father Veronica raised the lid. The lid came free—no hinges, nothing physically holding it in place—and nothing happened. Father Veronica angled the box so that lantern light fully illuminated the interior. Inside were delicate balls of dust, or disintegrated matter. Nothing recognizable.

The underside of the lid appeared to be painted, and the images looked vaguely like white clouds against a deep blue sky, but they could have been anything.

No one spoke. When I looked at Father Veronica, who still held the box in her hands, I thought her eyes had grown moist.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

She just shook her head.

“Father?” Leona put her hand on Father Veronica’s arm.

“This was once somebody’s box,” she finally said, her voice little more than a cracked whisper. “Human or alien, this was something personal , I’m sure of it. It meant something to someone. And that person is gone, long gone, and there is no one left to remember what this box was, or what it meant. Or why it was placed here.”

I thought it an odd sentiment from someone who believed in life after death. The owner of the box was physically long gone, but in Father Veronica’s belief system his (or her or its) soul was still with us, alive, somehow, presumably with the memories and feelings about that box intact. But it’s also possible there was something to her feelings that I did not comprehend.

Father Veronica carefully closed the box, then put it back where she’d found it, gently wedging it into place so it would not drift away.

EXCITEMENTgradually returned. Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say that the kind of true excitement we’d been expecting was only now manifesting for the first time since we started exploring the alien starship. Much of it came from the increased speed of our progress, and from the other new places we found: another spherical chamber like the Greenhouse, but this time with facets made of a reflective material that repeatedly refracted light and images throughout it; long, clear tubes leading through a tank of some kind of liquid, lantern light revealing bits of slowly moving matter in the fluid; and a long corridor illuminated by rows of faint green phosphorescence. There were still no revelations, no mysteries solved, no understanding of the function of anything, but we all sensed a growing complexity, or variety—something different.

Most tantalizing of all, as insignificant as it might have seemed on the surface, was the discovery of the box. Although we never touched it again, it was always there in our minds, and I am sure I was not the only person who detoured to look at it as we moved through that room. It was an artifact, something that was not an integral part of the alien ship. More than that was the feeling, unspoken but felt by most of us, that it had been made by human hands.

Iwas alone in the galley, eating hot soup and working a stereograph puzzle when Rogers stuck his head through the doorway.

“Bartolomeo? You’re going to want to see what’s on the monitor.” Then, after a slight pause: “We’re all going to want to see this.”

I sensed the excitement in his voice and pushed the puzzle aside, letting it fall apart as it drifted across the room. “On my way,” I said.

I fought to stay calm, trying not to expect too much. We were all too keyed up, too ready to find something of importance; I was afraid of disappointment, and not only my own.

By the time I got out to the main cabin, the others were gathering around the large monitor. I took a quick mental census, and no one seemed to be missing. Two or three people were drifting free, but most were sitting, strapped into chairs or wall cushions.