Richard Russo - Ship of Fools

“I have one question,” he said. “What’s the point?”

He remained standing, watching the looks of puzzlement and confusion growing around him. He finally spoke again.

“They’ll come and find us. They know where Antioch is, remember? They were responsible for what happened there. They’ll know that’s where we’re headed. After all, they led us out here from Antioch.”

Oh no, I thought to myself, watching the fear and panic reappear in faces all around the table, although they could not know what exactly they were afraid of, they could not yet understand what he was saying.

Bishop Soldano turned and looked directly at Nikos. “Tell them, Captain .”

Nikos nodded. “Yes, that’s true. And that’s why there is a second component to this plan.”

“Forget the damn second component,” a man called out from the far end of the table. “What the hell does the bishop mean, ‘they led us here’?”

Nikos looked askance at the bishop; he was probably wishing he had locked him up after all. Then he looked out at the committee.

“When we were on Antioch, after the skeletons were discovered, a highly directional signal was transmitted from the landing site—perpendicular to the system’s orbital plane, so we knew it wasn’t meant for any of the other worlds or satellites. We couldn’t locate anything it might be destined for—the nearest star in its vicinity was hundreds of light-years away.” He hesitated. “When we left Antioch, it was decided that we would follow the direction of the signal. We ended up here.” He turned to me and gave me a half-smile. “See, Bartolomeo? Everyone can make decisions that don’t work out.”

“Who decided?” someone else asked.

“Bishop Soldano and I decided.”

Cardenas stood up. “It doesn’t matter who decided,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how we ended up here. What matters now is how we get out of here. That’s all we’re discussing.”

“But the bishop is right,” Renata Tyler said. “There’s no point in any of this if they’ll just follow us to Antioch.”

I stood, intending to argue just what Pär had said: that at least we would have a chance on Antioch. But Cardenas spoke first.

“Let Captain Costa finish, and you will understand.” She sat back down, and so did I. I wondered what Nikos had in mind; we hadn’t discussed any “second component.”

“I will be staying with the Argonos, ” he said.

I sat there stunned, not yet understanding.

“The bishop has a point,” Nikos resumed. “We can’t leave the alien ship here, even if we can escape from it. It will find Antioch again, or some other world, some other starship. We can’t let that happen. Margita Cardenas and I, along with three other crew members, will stay aboard the Argonos to direct it on a blind jump out of this galaxy. With luck, completely out of the universe.”

This set off a lot of murmuring, questioning looks; I saw someone biting their knuckles, as if afraid for Nikos and the others. I wanted to object, but I was dazed, and couldn’t think very clearly, couldn’t think of a reason to object. What Nikos said made perfect sense, as much as I didn’t like to admit it.

But Geller spoke. “Can’t we just set the ship to do a blind jump automatically?”

Cardenas shook her head. “It has to be piloted into the discontinuity. Besides, if it doesn’t go as expected, we want to be aboard to make a second jump if necessary. I don’t like it, but there’s no choice.”

Everyone was quiet, letting it settle in. The bishop slowly rose to his feet again. “Then I, too, will be staying aboard the Argonos . I will speak with Father George, and ask him to be the new bishop. I will stay with the cathedral, with our archives.”

Now he would be a martyr, I thought to myself. Let him.

“That’s it,” Nikos said, essentially ignoring the bishop. “If we are to have any chance at success, we need the complete support of this committee. There is way too much that will need to be done, and it needs to be done quickly.”

The vote was unanimous, but I felt sick. I was losing nearly everyone who had meant anything to me. I considered offering to stay with Nikos and the others, but I recognized the urge for what it was—a fear of appearing to be a coward; a conceit.

“One more thing,” Nikos said. “I want to nominate Duncan Geller to replace me as Captain.”

Though Geller was surprised, he reacted as a fine future captain should—he accepted the nomination with grace and respect and sincere humility. His nomination was seconded by Cardenas. That vote, too, was unanimous.

That was the end of the meeting. A dozen smaller meetings would take place almost immediately. We adjourned. Preparations began.

IFnothing else, I told myself, this gave people hope; it gave them something to do, which had to be better than withdrawing frightened and paralyzed and despairing into psychological cocoons, waiting in terror for death.

There was too much to do, and of course no one knew how much time we had. Maybe we had all the time we wanted, maybe we could have spent weeks retrofitting the shuttles and harvesters, rebuilding them and outfitting them, planning carefully until everyone and everything was accounted for, packed and loaded, everyone leisurely boarded and settling themselves in for the long journey. Maybe the aliens would come the next day, and we wouldn’t have a chance.

We tried to decide on the absolute minimum necessary to make it to Antioch and survive once we got there; then we set to work on that minimum. There were screwups and tempers and accidents, shouting and crying and fistfights, pouting and nervous breakdowns. But there was also laughter and tears of relief and companionship, stolen moments of affection, and much cooperation.

Through it all, the work got done. With the bishop’s assistance, we installed the gravity generator in one of the harvesters. Partitions were erected in the vehicles; sleeping bunks and benches were built into walls. Bathrooms and recyclers, water tanks. Storage lockers and food systems. Minimal amounts of packaged foods in each vessel, just enough for the voyage to Antioch; larger stores would be loaded into the cargo harvester.

Fuel was a problem. We would maximize all tanks, but the shuttles weren’t designed for long-distance space travel. If there had been more time, perhaps we would have been able to build special tanks to store the fuel in the cargo harvester, build fueling systems so the shuttles could be refueled during the journey. There wasn’t more time.

Even if there had been time, it wouldn’t have been a good idea; we couldn’t depend too much on what was loaded in the cargo harvester. It would be the last to leave the Argonos ; what would happen if it was attacked by the aliens, destroyed or disabled? What would happen if there was some other kind of unforeseeable accident? Each vessel, each shuttle and harvester, needed to be self-sufficient, equipped to be capable of making the journey to Antioch and landing without aid from any of the others.

We’d be crammed into the vessels, without privacy, like the herd animals down in the lower levels, but amazingly we had the capacity to take everyone. However, there were people who couldn’t go. Decisions were difficult to make, they were brutal, but there was no choice. Most of those in the downsiders’ madhouse would have to stay. The same for a dozen people in the upper-level psychiatric wards. Of those in the ship’s jail cells, the lesser offenders were released; the more violent remained imprisoned.

One of the most difficult decisions was what to do with those people who had begun to behave strangely after going into the alien ship: Barry Sorrel and his family, Leona Frip, Nazia Abouti. We didn’t know what was wrong with them. Infected somehow? Possibly contagious? Perhaps they were in the early stages of becoming possessed by the spirits of alien beings. It was impossible to know. As hard as it was, amid the feelings of guilt at the price they were paying for all their efforts, in the end we knew we had no choice: they would have to remain.