Charles Sheffield - Transcendence

He turned to order the hatch opened, but others were ahead of him. Nenda and Atvar H’sial had given the command as soon as pressures equalized, and already they were floating out toward the corridor that led to the control room of the Erebus . Rebka followed, leaving Kallik to turn the scoutship in case they had to make a rapid departure.

The first corridors were deserted, but that meant nothing. The inside of the Erebus was so big that even with a thousand people on board it could appear empty. The key question was the state of the control room. That was the nerve center of the ship. It should always have someone on duty.

And in a manner of speaking it did. Louis Nenda and Atvar H’sial had hurried far ahead of Rebka. When he arrived at the control room he found them at the main console, leaning over the crouched figure of Julian Graves. The councilor was hunched far down with the palms of his hands covering his eyes. His long, skinny fingers reached up over his bulging forehead. Rebka assumed that Graves was unconscious, but then he realized that Louis Nenda was speaking softly to him. As Rebka approached, Graves slowly withdrew his hands and crossed them on his chest. The face revealed was in constant movement. The expression changed moment to moment from thought to fear to worry.

“We’ll take care of you,” Nenda was saying. “Just relax an’ try an’ tell me what’s wrong. What happened?”

Julian Graves showed a flash of a smile, then his mouth opened. “I don’t know. I — we — can’t think. Too much to think.”

His mouth snapped closed with a click of teeth. The head turned away, to gaze vaguely around the room.

“Too much what?” Nenda moved so that Graves could not avoid looking at him.

The misty gray eyes rolled. “Too much — too much me .”

Nenda stared at Hans Rebka. “That’s what he said before. ‘Too much me.’ D’you know what he’s gettin’ at?”

“No idea. But I can see why the distress signal is going out. If he’s on duty, he’s certainly not able to control the ship. Look at him.”

Graves had returned to his crouched position and was muttering to himself. “Go lower, survey landing site. No, must remain high, safe there. No, return through singularities, wait there . No, must leave Anfract.” With every broken sentence his facial expressions changed, writhing from decision to uncertainty to mind-blanking worry.

Rebka had a sudden insight. Graves was torn by diverging thoughts — exactly as though the integration of Julius Graves and his interior mnemonic twin Steven to form the single personality of Julian Graves had failed. The old conflict of the two consciousnesses in one brain had returned.

But that idea was soon overwhelmed in Rebka’s own mind by another and more pressing concern.

“Why is he on duty alone? It must be obvious to the others that he’s not fit to make decisions.” He bent over, took Julian Graves’s head between his hands, and turned it so that he could stare right into the councilor’s eyes. “Councilor Graves, listen to me. I have a very important question. Where are the others? ”

“Others.” Graves muttered the word. His eyes flickered and his lips trembled. He nodded. He understood, Rebka was sure he did, but he seemed unable to force an answer.

“The others,” Rebka repeated. “Who else is on board the Erebus ?”

Graves began to twitch, while the tendons stood out in his thin neck. He was gathering himself for some supreme effort. His lips pressed tightly together and then opened with a gasp.

“The only other — on board the Erebus is — is J’merlia.”

Rebka, tensed to receive a disturbing answer, released Graves’s head and grunted in disappointment. Graves did not know it, but he had given the one reply that proved he was no longer rational. J’merlia was dead. Rebka had seen him die with his own eyes. Of all the people who had entered the Anfract, J’merlia was the only one who absolutely could not be on board the Erebus .

“That does it.” Rebka moved to stand at Graves’s side. “Poor devil. Let’s get him where he can rest and give him a sedative. He needs medical help, but the only people who can give it are the ones who installed the interior mnemonic twin. They’re back on Miranda, a thousand light-years away. I don’t know what treatment to give him. As for the others on board, when I find ’em I’ll skin them all. There’s no way they should have left him here alone — even if he was nominally in command.”

Rebka moved to one side of Graves and gestured to Louis Nenda to take the man’s other arm. The councilor glanced from one to the other in bewilderment as they lifted him. He offered no resistance, but he could not have walked without them. His muscles had plenty of strength, but his legs did not seem to know in which direction they were supposed to move. Rebka and Nenda eased out of the door. Atvar H’sial stayed in the control room — first rule of space, never leave the ship’s bridge with no one in charge.

They took Graves to the sick bay, where Rebka placed him under medium-level sedation — he already seemed only half-conscious — and swathed him in protective webbing.

“Won’t help him much, but at least he can’t get into trouble here,” Rebka said. He tied the straps in a complex pattern. “And if he’s together enough to figure out these knots, then he’s thinking a whole lot better than he was when we brought him here.”

The two men started back toward the bridge. They were at the final branch of the corridor when they heard the click of Kallik’s steps from the other direction.

“Did you turn the Indulgence ?” Rebka asked without looking at the Hymenopt. Instead of a reply in human speech, Kallik produced a high-pitched whistle and an unintelligible burst of Hymenopt clicks. Louis Nenda at once jumped to Kallik’s side. He picked up the little Hymenopt and shook her.

“What are you up to?” Rebka backed away. One just did not do that to a Hymenopt! Anyone but Louis Nenda who tried it on Kallik would face rapid death. Kallik’s short black fur — the hymantel, so prized by unwise bounty hunters — was bristling, and the yellow sting had involuntarily slipped out a couple of inches from the lower end of the stubby abdomen.

Nenda was unworried. “Hafta do it. She’s in shock, see. Gotta bring her out of it.” He banged the Hymenopt hard on top of her smooth round head with his clenched fist and unleashed a burst of clucking whistles. “I’m tellin’ her to speak human — that oughta help. She don’t know how to moan an’ groan in that. Come on, Kallik, tell me. Whatsamatter?”

“I turned the s-sh-ship.” Kallik spoke, but slowly and badly. She had regressed, back to the time when human speech had been new to her.

“Yeah. Then what?”

“I left the c-cargo hold. I began to move along the corridor. And then — then—”

“Get on with it!”

“Then—” The sting had retracted, but now the little body was shaking in Nenda’s arms. “Then I saw J’merlia . S-standing in front of me. In the corridor that led to the control room.”

“Kallik, you know that can’t be. J’merlia’s dead — you saw it happen.” But Louis Nenda’s eyes told a different story. He and Rebka exchanged looks. Impossible? Maybe. But from two quite independent sources?

“It was J’merlia. There could be no mistake. It was his voice, as well as his appearance.” Kallik was steadying. She was a supremely logical being, and any offense to logic was especially troubling to her. But the explanation in human speech was restoring her natural modes of thought. “He was about twenty meters away from me, farther along this same corridor. He called out my name, and then he spoke to me. He told me that I must go at once to the control room, that Julian Graves was in need of help.” Kallik paused and stared at Rebka. “That is true, isn’t it? And then, while I was looking straight at J’merlia…”