Jack Chalker: Priam's Lens

“Well, I can see that,” he admitted. “Even in my lifetime. But whoever lured you here wasn’t your friend, I can tell you. You’d get mugged before you got to the street level now that you’ve shown up here. I’ll have them call for a Navy police escort.”

“That’s all right. I know where I am and what I am doing,” she assured him. “You are Navy, I take it?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m a chief warrant officer on the Hucaniarea —that’s a frigate in drydock above. Been here a month and a half getting repairs and refitting. Probably be stuck here another month or more. Name’s Gene Harker. Just `sir’ or `Mister Harker’ to most folks. Not much for a spacer to do when he’s drydocked, I’m afraid. The kind of stuff that can be had in here makes the time pass a little quicker. Wouldn’t take most of it in here, though. You give any of these hard-asses a hair and they steal the whole beard.”

“I would think that they are all spacers or employees of the Navy and these support establishments,” she resounded. “I shouldn’t think that any would stoop to the level of mugger. Smuggler, certainly, or even hired killer, but not a mere mugger of a little old lady. What the devil could I have that any of them would find useful?”

“Some of ’em were just born bad, and some are on all sorts of drugs and hackplays and just don’t have the same sense of real life that they would if they weren’t so fucked—sorry, ma’am—fouled up.”

She gave the soft cackling laugh once again. “Sir, don’t spare any language on my part! I’ve forgotten more foul language in countless tongues than you can possibly know! But every character here who is truly `fucked up’ makes himself as vulnerable as anybody is to them. No, I suspect that few allow themselves to get that off reality, even in this place. Enough to take away the stink, perhaps, but you come here for those things and you buy and take them away with you. If you stay, you stay for business or for the company.”

“Guy was killed here not four hours ago,” the bartender commented, having edged over closer to them. “Two old captains got into some kind of fight over something that happened twenty, thirty years ago. They got to screaming, and before we could stop them they shot each other. One was vaporized, the other lost a leg and a hand. Don’t think they aren’t dangerous, ma’am.”

“I didn’t say they weren’t dangerous,” she responded softly. “I simply meant that I am no babe in the woods, and that they are not the only ones in here who might be dangerous.”

It was said so simply, so softly, so matter-of-factly in that little old lady voice of hers that both men felt an odd chill when they heard it. You just never know about anybody, not really. While it was hard to take anybody who appeared and sounded like she did as any kind of a threat, who knew what she might have under those baggy clothes?

“You say the Dutchman’s ship is not in port?” she asked, changing the subject. “The message we received was that he would have gotten in this morning.”

“Pardon, but if you’re talking Die Fliegende Hollander, van Staaten’s ship, then you’re talking more legend than reality,” the bartender told her. “Like its namesake, nobody has ever reported the ship making port. It’s a ghost ship from a long-overrun world. I’ve heard every kind of talk and legend about him from those who come in here, but nobody’s ever really seen it, let alone connected with it. It’s not real.”

The officer looked thoughtful for a moment, then sighed. “Oh, he’s real enough, I’m afraid, but he still wouldn’t be coming in here.”

Both the bartender and the old woman stared at him. “You know of him, then?” she asked.

“Oh, yes. He’s number one on the most wanted list, if you want to know. He never makes port. He attacks likely prey, small freighters and the like, stealing what fuel and spares he needs, sometimes taking the whole ship and cannibalizing it. He’s got all he needs on that ship. You spot him, he either makes tracks at maximum speed or he attacks and destroys, depending on who and what you are. That’s why they say that spotting the Hollander is signing your death warrant. He’s totally insane, but he’s damned good at what he does. But he doesn’t talk, not to anybody, except to occasionally give an automated warning to prey to abandon ship now or be destroyed. If he has it cold, he’ll sometimes do that much. We’ve chased him from one end of the Arm to the other at one time or another. We think he actually lurks inside the Occupied Zone, somehow keeping just beyond the interest of the Zuni Demons, as we call ’em in the Navy.”

“Fascinating,” she responded. “So if he were to show up here, somehow, you would be forced to arrest him or something?”

Harker smiled. “Something like that. I’m not a cop, but I’ve come close enough to him once on the ship to take it kind of personally that he’s still at large. You know how much brass he’s got? His identification signature shows up on screens and instruments as an ancient sailing ship with all sails up!”

He sensed her smiling, although he couldn’t see it, and he could hear her amusement at this. “Ah, yes, the Flying Dutchman. I used to sing it, you know, when I was young.”

“Ma’am?”

“Die Fliegende Hollander. It is Dutch for The Flying Dutchman. A captain who, consumed by jealousy, murdered his wife in a rage thinking she had betrayed him while he’d been gone on his voyages, only to discover that she had indeed been true and that only his own inner demons were the evil. Cursed by her family, condemned to sail his ship forever, making landfall only once each century for just a week or so, condemned otherwise to sail alone forever, a symbol of death and a curse even to behold, until and unless a woman of her own free will sacrifices her life to free him. It’s an ancient legend, and a classical one. You’ve not heard of it, either?”

“I think I have, yes,” the officer admitted. “One of those nautical ghost stories Navy types love, even the ones who sail in space. I wasn’t puzzled by the invoking of the legend but rather by your comment that you’d `sung’ it.”

“Impossible to believe now, but once I was quite beautiful,” she told him. “And I had not only the looks but the voice of an angel. A soprano with a three-octave range. Grand opera, Mister Harker. Oh, it was glorious when it was done! An entire play that was sung, with full scenery and props and all the rest, with a full symphony orchestra, voices and instruments in perfect harmony, all musical instruments. These days the only instruments anybody knows how to play are the small portable consoles that can synthesize anything and anybody. You have to come to a place like this just to hear anybody sing anything any more, and that mostly bawdy songs and nasty little ditties off-key. Once, though, it was all done with people, the best people playing the best instruments, even if their instrument was their voice. Now you’d have to dig into some ancient archive, I suppose, to find a good VR holographic performance, but so few people do that nobody knows or cares or understands anymore. It’s too bad, really. It wasn’t just art, it was a total experience of a kind nobody gets these days.”

“And you sung this grand whatchamacallit? That’s kind of impressive,” the security officer commented. “I assume you were the woman who eventually sacrificed herself?’

“Of course. Great opera usually ended in tragedy, but even that was compensated for. Why, a great soprano or great tenor with the right work might take twenty minutes to die!”

“Talk about singing your heart out,” the bartender muttered.