Jack Chalker - Balshazzar's Serpent

“A test? What kind of test?”

“I don’t know. But pass it. If not for God’s sake, or your sake, then for my sake.”

She looked surprised. “Your sake?”

He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the cheek, then straightened up and winked. “I think we made a pretty good team. I think we still can.”

And, with that, he left her to her deeply disturbed and thoroughly confused thoughts.

For the first time, the next day he didn’t come to see her, and she felt nervous and abandoned. Why had he kissed her and winked? Had he left for good? Was he saying goodbye?

She worked extra hard and long on her therapy, and managed to grasp a stylus with her right hand and even draw a crude sketch, kind of like one a small child might make but it was a great advance considering all the coordination that had to be brought into play just to do it.

Just after dinner, she received a message. It wasn’t in the form of an intercom call, but rather as a note hand-delivered by one of the cleanup robots. It looked quite imposing, and she struggled, managed to open it, and pulled it out.

It said, in a classical cursive script that seemed out of a different time and place, “My dear Sister Eve: Please join me in the executive office off the Olivet ward room at eighteen hundred hours so that we may discuss your continuing role with our new mission.” That was it, nothing more. And it was signed, “Karl Woodward, Ph.D.”

She started to tremble, and fought to keep herself together. The office off the Olivet ward room! That was virtually the length of the entire ship and several levels up after that! From all the way aft to just about the bow of the entire hybrid vessel. She looked at the small clock in her room. It read “17:20.” Forty minutes! Oh God, I’ll never make it!

She was bright enough to at least suspect that this was either the test John warned her about or a prelude to it.

If she didn’t go, they’d pump her with feel-good drugs and ship her off to a local rehab center and she would be cut off from the body of the congregation, probably forever. But how could she? That far? With all these strangers checking over things and lurking around?

She looked around for a hairbrush before remembering that she no longer had hair long enough to brush and in any event it would be more than she’d managed with her arms to that point. She looked at her clock. “17:25.” Where was it going so fast? Why was there nobody around? She’d need a half hour just to make it there in the chair!

She called the medtech, and after an interminable wait she appeared. “Yes, Eve?”

“I have to go to the Olivet ward room by eighteen hundred,” she told the tech.

“Well, then, go ahead. There are no restrictions on you if you’ve taken your physical therapy and timed medication.”

“But—but I can’t—wait! Will you come with me?”

“Sorry, I’m on duty. Everybody here is. What about that nice fellow who comes around all the time?”

Yes, yes! That was it! John would come! She turned to the intercom. “Robey, seven one two six six, Arm.”

“Buzzing.” Pause. “I am sorry. There appears to be no one in that room at the moment. Would you like to leave a message?”

“Yes. No! Page him!”

“Ship’s page is not available without security or bridge clearance.”

She started to curse the intercom, even though it was a computer and she almost never had said as much as a “damn” or “hell” in her whole life. Suddenly she stopped, realizing that no help would be forthcoming, not from medical, not from the Arm, nor from anywhere. It was arranged that way.

She either would make her way on her own through the ship or she would not, and she now had exactly thirty minutes to do it.

With no one else to help her, she began to pray, silently, but fervently, as she’d never prayed before. Be with me, Lord. Do not forget or forsake me, and give me the strength to do Thy will.

The chair glided forward, rather steadily at first, until it reached the first hallway and she looked down the dimly lit and seemingly endless corridor forward and could only think of those miserable, damnable caves under the surface of that cursed planet.

I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, she prayed, and started on down the hall.

More than once people would suddenly walk into the hallway and look at her or come towards her. In every case she felt her heart jump to her throat and she came to a sudden halt, but each time she prayed a bit more and continued on.

She kept going, straight down the corridor, feeling like she was about to throw up, seeing Sapenza in every shadow or darkened hallway.

She had been born aboard this ship; she’d spent most of her life inside it. This very corridor, like just about every other main corridor, she’d traversed time and time again, knew by heart. She kept telling herself that even as her heart kept pounding, pounding in her chest feeling almost like it was going to burst. She heard herself breathing, breathing hard, and she was tasting bile and having trouble catching one of those breaths.

How could a place so intimately familiar suddenly seem so alien?

On, on down the corridor, past rows of offices and crew’s quarters, past rec rooms and classrooms and training areas. From Suite 1200, the main ship’s hospital, down now to the five hundreds, the four hundreds, the three hundreds…

And then she reached the bulkhead and the stairs and lift to higher levels. She looked at the lifts, which she’d ridden thousands of times, and decided that the time wasn’t yet right for them. Increasing power, she managed to levitate the chair up, parallel to the stairs, carefully avoiding any obstacles like the center handrails or reinforcing molding.

On the second level she passed through a vaultlike hatchway into Olivet, now docked and parked inside the greater ship. Only the emergency hall lights were on; everything else was dark, shut down, terrifying.

The more she looked down the hall the more she was convinced she could see shapes moving in the darkness, hear whispers and hushed laughter. She hovered there, staring, the terror starting to overtake her, unsure that she could go on, resisting the urge to flee back into Sinai ’s safety. But it wouldn’t be to Sinai that she would go if she did; she knew that. It would be somewhere on Marchellus, a planet she didn’t know and full of nothing but strangers and dark places.

She went slowly forward down the corridor. To her right was the large cathedral-like main hall where the Doctor lectured whether aboard ship and en route or as part of the camp meeting and revival he set up on the ground at his colonial destinations. Beyond it would be a stair/ramp combination to one more level up, then back along the complex of offices, quarters, cafeteria, and so forth needed when Olivet was down on the surface and on her own. At the very end of it would be the ward room, with exits to the Olivet bridge and the meeting rooms and quarters of the Doctor and other important high elders.

She was just about to the darkened stairs when she was startled almost out of her wits by a ghostly, supernatural laughter coming from the meeting hall. She struck the bulkhead and almost pitched out of the chair, being saved only by the safety straps. Even so, if she tipped on her side the magnetic resistance would be lost and she would be stuck lying on her side there on the deck until somebody found her.

The sounds came again, and she repressed her panic and realized that it was just the sound of somebody, maybe a couple of people, somewhere inside, probably checking out the layout for the next teaching service once they were under way.