Richard Russo - Ship of Fools

“There’s only one thing left to do,” Michel Tournier said, his voice rising. “What I tried to suggest before. We attack them. Now. We have plenty of weapons, we’re not defenseless. We have the Metzenbauer Field to protect us. It’s so damned obvious, and I don’t understand what we’re waiting for.”

“It’s not damned obvious,” Toller said. “You really think an attack on their ship has any chance of success? After what happened with the remotes and the missiles?”

“We have to try,” Tournier insisted. “What else can we do? Just wait for them to come and slaughter us?”

“No, we don’t have to try,” Toller said. “We haven’t made any direct attack on them, and that may be the main reason they have not attacked us . We don’t have any idea what they’re thinking, or how they think. Attacking them may provoke just the kind of response you’re most afraid of.”

“I’m willing to take that chance, and I would wager that most of the council—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Nikos broke in. “We’ve already tried it.”

Faces turned quickly to him.

“What do you mean?” Costino asked.

“I decided not to wait. I have the authority. Margita and I carried out a full weapons attack on the alien ship.”

Toller smiled wryly and nodded. “Successful, was it, Captain?”

“Missiles and rockets and bomb clusters all detonated long before they reached the alien ship. Lasers and radiants and vibrationals were deflected or absorbed without effect. We launched three full strikes, and not one thing got through.”

“All those explosions?” Tournier said in disbelief. “I didn’t hear or feel anything.”

Costino sneered at him. “You understand the concept of a vacuum, Michel?”

Tournier just looked confused, but no one was going to explain it to him.

Nikos shrugged. “That is why I’m open to ideas. I don’t have any more myself. I am hoping someone will.”

“Pray,” the bishop eventually said.

No one else said anything. Nikos stood and paced deliberately back and forth at the head of the table.

“I know it seems hopeless. It may be hopeless. But I will not give up. And you will not give up. We’ll reconvene every twelve hours to talk about possibilities and impossibilities, sooner if someone comes up with anything. In between, think . No idea is too strange or ridiculous. An unworkable idea may inspire in someone else an idea that will work.”

He stopped pacing, swept his gaze slowly around the room, letting it rest briefly on each of us. “I am the captain of this ship, and I will not give up.” He paused. “Questions?” When no one spoke up, he said, “We’ll meet again in twelve hours. I expect everyone to be here.”

FORthe second time in less than a week, I was torn from a deep sleep, this time by a relentless pounding at the door. I lay in bed with my eyes closed, hoping the pounding would stop. It didn’t.

I staggered in darkness from the back room, through the front, and opened the door. Fortunately it was still shipboard night and the corridor lights were dimmed, but I still had to blink against the light, trying to focus on the man who stood before me. He looked familiar. One of the church clerics, I thought.

“I have a message from Father Veronica,” he said. He handed me a sealed tube.

I stared stupidly at the metal tube, then looked up. “Why?” I asked. “Why didn’t she call?”

“I don’t know. I was just asked to deliver it to you.” He paused, then bowed his head slightly and said, “Good night.” He turned and left.

I closed the door and felt my way to my reading chair, dropped into it, and turned on the wall lamp, low illumination. In the dim light I cracked open the tube and withdrew a single sheet of vellum. Handwritten in violet ink, the strokes long and beautiful, was a brief message:

Bartolomeo,

Please, meet me as soon as possible in the cathedral. It is urgent.

Iwas suspicious. Why would she send a messenger rather than call me? Then I remembered that I had programmed my system to deny all calls except from Nikos or Cardenas. Maybe she had tried. I was still suspicious, though I could not have articulated why.

Suspicious or not, I could not ignore the message. I showered, dressed, and headed for the cathedral.

Ihad expected the cathedral to still be filled with people who had come for comfort, who would be afraid to leave, as if sanctuary in the church would somehow protect them from whatever horrors awaited at the hands (or other appendages) of the alien creatures biding their time. But I passed dozens of people camped in the surrounding corridors, and the massive cathedral doors were closed, posted with a sign.

CATHEDRAL CLOSED UNTIL 0600. MASS AT 0730, 1100, 1330, 1800.

I tried opening the doors, desperate eyes watching me, but the doors would not move.

“Help us,” an old man pleaded.

I looked at him, not knowing what to say.

“No one can help us now,” another man growled. “We’re doomed. We’re wasting our time out here.” He gestured at me with his bearded chin. “It’s people like him got us into this mess.”

I remained silent, at a loss for a response.

“Forget it, Strekoll,” said a woman seated at the younger man’s feet. She cradled a three-year-old girl sleeping open-mouthed, thin curls plastered to her forehead with sweat. “We have nothing better to do.”

I walked away from them. The other two regular entrances would be locked as well, so I’d have to find another way in. Seventy-five meters from the cathedral doors I turned down a short dead-end corridor, stopped in front of a door leading into the maintenance passages, and keyed in my security code. The door slid open, and I stepped into the narrow, dimly lit passage, the door sliding shut automatically behind me.

Pipe and cable networks lined the wall and ceiling, forcing me to bend over slightly as I walked through the patchwork of shadows and dusty shafts of light. At a fork I took the left turning, and some ways on reached a break on the left wall. I opened the door and stepped through it.

I entered the cathedral through the side wall, near the large main doors and the rear pews. Candles provided the only illumination, and the cathedral was awash in flickering warm shadows and wavering pockets of orange light. I was nearly at the midpoint of the cathedral’s length. Just visible far to my left was the small stained-glass window of the galilee.

To my right, of course, was the enormous stained-glass Crucifixion towering above the apse, looming over the entire cathedral. Yet it held no power now, the colors flat and lifeless, dull reflections of candlelight; I could barely make out the actual images that had blazed with such immeasurable force into the darkness of deep space not many days earlier.

I remained just inside the cathedral, my back against the wall, listening and watching. I was still suspicious, especially since I saw no signs of Father Veronica. I saw no signs of anyone . Silence and candlelight; the air was warm and stuffy.

I considered calling her name, but was reluctant to reveal my presence. The longer I stood there in the warm and heavy silence, the more frightened I became. Frightened of what? I didn’t know, which made it worse.

The doors to the galilee, a small, private chapel, were usually closed. Today they stood open, so I decided to investigate. Keeping to the wall, I worked my way slowly and quietly along the length of the cathedral to the entrance of the galilee. I waited, listening intently, then stepped carefully through the doorway.