Nightflyers & Other Stories Read online

  He was alone in the Nightflyer.

  A cautious man, Christopheris kept his suit on, though he collapsed the helmet and yanked loose the suddenly limp metallic fabric so it fell behind his back like a hood. He could snap it in place quickly enough if the need arose. In cargo hold four, where they had stored their equipment, the xenobiologist found what he was looking for; a portable cutting laser, charged and ready. Low power, but it would do.

  Slow and clumsy in weightlessness, he pulled himself down the corridor into the darkened lounge.

  It was chilly inside, the air cold on his cheeks. He tried not to notice. He braced himself at the door and pushed off across the width of the room, sailing above the furniture, which was all safely bolted into place. As he drifted towards his objective, something wet and cold touched his face. It startled him, but it was gone before he could quite make out what it was.

  When it happened again, Christopheris snatched at it, caught it, and felt briefly sick. He had forgotten. No one had cleaned the lounge yet. The—the remains were still there, floating now, blood and flesh and bits of bone and brain. All around him.

  He reached the far wall, stopped himself with his arms, pulled himself down to where he wanted to go. The bulkhead. The wall. No doorway was visible, but the metal couldn’t be very thick. Beyond was the control room, the computer access, safety, power. Rojan Christopheris did not think of himself as a vindictive man. He did not intend to harm Royd Eris, that judgment was not his to make. He would take control of the Nightflyer, warn Eris away, make certain the man stayed sealed in his suit. He would take them all back without any more mysteries, any more killings. The Academy arbiters could listen to the story, and probe Eris, and decide the right and wrong of it, guilt and innocence, what should be done.

  The cutting laser emitted a thin pencil of scarlet light. Christopheris smiled and applied it to the bulkhead. It was slow work, but he had patience. They would not have missed him, quiet as he’d been, and if they did they would assume he was off sledding after some hunk of salvage. Eris’ repairs would take hours, maybe days, to finish. The bright blade of the laser smoked where it touched the metal. Christopheris applied himself diligently.

  Something moved on the periphery of his vision, just a little flicker, barely seen. A floating bit of brain, he thought. A sliver of bone. A bloody piece of flesh, hair still hanging from it. Horrible things, but nothing to worry about. He was a biologist, he was used to blood and brains and flesh. And worse, and worse; he had dissected many an alien in his day, cutting through chitin and mucous, pulsing stinking food sacs and poisonous spines, he had seen and touched it all.

  Again the motion caught his eye, teased at it. Not wanting to, Christopheris found himself drawn to look. He could not not look, somehow, just as he had been unable to ignore the headless corpse near the airlock. He looked.

  It was an eye.

  Christopheris trembled and the laser slipped sharply off to one side, so he had to wrestle with it to bring it back to the channel he was cutting. His heart raced. He tried to calm himself. Nothing to be frightened of. No one was home, and if Royd should return, well, he had the laser as a weapon and he had his suit on if an airlock blew.

  He looked at the eye again, willing away his fear. It was just an eye, Thale Lasamer’s eye, pale blue, bloody but intact, the same watery eye the boy had when alive, nothing supernatural. A piece of dead flesh, floating in the lounge amid other pieces of dead flesh. Someone should have cleaned up the lounge, Christopheris thought angrily. It was indecent to leave it like this, it was uncivilized.

  The eye did not move. The other grisly bits were drifting on the air currents that flowed across the room, but the eye was still. It neither bobbed nor spun. It was fixed on him. Staring.

  He cursed himself and concentrated on the laser, on his cutting. He had burned an almost straight line up the bulkhead for about a meter. He began another at right angles.

  The eye watched dispassionately. Christopheris suddenly found he could not stand it. One hand released its grip on the laser, reached out, caught the eye, flung it across the room. The action made him lose balance. He tumbled backward, the laser slipping from his grasp, his arms flapping like the wings of some absurd heavy bird. Finally he caught an edge of the table and stopped himself.

  The laser hung in the center of the room, floating amid coffee pots and pieces of human debris, still firing, turning slowly. That did not make sense. It should have ceased fire when he released it. A malfunction, Christopheris thought nervously. Smoke was rising where the thin line of the laser traced a path across the carpet.

  With a shiver of fear, Christopheris realized that the laser was turning towards him.

  He raised himself, put both hands flat against the table, pushed up out of the way, bobbing towards the ceiling.

  The laser was turning more swiftly now.

  He pushed away from the ceiling hard, slammed into a wall, grunted in pain, bounced off the floor, kicked. The laser was spinning quickly, chasing him. Christopheris soared, braced himself for another ricochet off the ceiling. The beam swung around, but not fast enough. He’d get it while it was still firing off in the other direction.

  He moved close, reached, and saw the eye.

  It hung just above the laser. Staring.

  Rojan Christopheris made a small whimpering sound low in his throat, and his hand hesitated—not long, but long enough—and the scarlet beam came up and around.

  Its touch was a light, hot caress across his neck.

  * * *

  It was more than an hour later before they missed him. Karoly d’Branin noticed his absence first, called for him over the comm link, and got no answer. He discussed it with the others.

  Royd Eris moved his sled back from the armor plate he had just mounted, and through his helmet Melantha Jhirl could see the lines around his mouth grow hard.

  It was just then that the noises began.

  A shrill bleat of pain and fear, followed by moans and sobbing. Terrible wet sounds, like a man choking on his own blood. They all heard. The sounds filled their helmets. And almost clear amid the anguish was something that sounded like a word; “Help.”

  “That’s Christopheris,” a woman’s voice said. Lindran.

  “He’s hurt,” Dannel added. “He’s crying for help. Can’t you hear it?”

  “Where—?” someone started.

  “The ship,” Lindran said. “He must have returned to the ship.”

  Royd Eris said, “The fool. No. I warned—”

  “We’re going to check,” Lindran announced. Dannel cut free the hull fragment they had been bringing in, and it spun away, tumbling. Their sled angled down towards the Nightflyer.

  “Stop,” Royd said. “I’ll return to my chambers and check from there, if you wish, but you may not enter the ship. Stay outside until I give you clearance.”

  The terrible sounds went on and on.

  “Go to hell,” Lindran snapped at him over the open circuit.

  Karoly d’Branin had his sled in motion too, hastening after the linguists, but he had been further out and it was a long way back to the ship. “Royd, what can you mean, we must help, don’t you see? He is hurt, listen to him. Please, my friend.”

  “No,” Royd said. “Karoly, stop! If Rojan went back to the ship alone, he is dead.”

  “How do you know that?” Dannel demanded. “Did you arrange it? Set traps in case we disobeyed you?”

  “No,” Royd said, “listen to me. You can’t help him now. Only I could have helped him, and he did not listen to me. Trust me. Stop.” His voice was despairing.

  In the distance, d’Branin’s sled slowed. The linguists did not. “We’ve already listened to you too damn much, I’d say,” Lindran said. She almost had to shout to be heard above the noises, the whimpers and moans, the awful wet sucking sounds, the distorted pleas for help. Agony filled their universe. “Melantha,” Lindran continued, “keep Eris right where he is. We’ll go carefully, find out what i
s happening inside, but I don’t want him getting back to his controls. Understood?”

  Melantha Jhirl hesitated. The sounds beat against her ears. It was hard to think.

  Royd swung his sled around to face her, and she could feel the weight of his stare. “Stop them,” he said. “Melantha, Karoly, order it. They will not listen to me. They do not know what they are doing.” He was clearly in pain.

  In his face Melantha found decision. “Go back inside quickly, Royd. Do what you can. I’m going to try to intercept them.”

  “Whose side are you on?” Lindran demanded.

  Royd nodded to her across the gulf, but Melantha was already in motion. Her sled backed clear of the work area, congested with hull fragments and other debris, then accelerated briskly as she raced around the exterior of the Nightflyer towards the driveroom.

  But even as she approached, she knew it was too late. The linguists were too close, and already moving much faster than she was.

  “Don’t,” she said, authority in her tone. “Christopheris is dead.”

  “His ghost is crying for help, then,” Lindran replied. “When they tinkered you together, they must have damaged the genes for hearing, bitch.”

  “The ship isn’t safe.”

  “Bitch,” was all the answer she got.

  Karoly’s sled pursued vainly. “Friends, you must stop, please, I beg it of you. Let us talk this out together.”

  The sounds were his only reply.

  “I am your superior,” he said. “I order you to wait outside. Do you hear me? I order it, I invoke the authority of the Academy of Human Knowledge. Please, my friends, please.”

  Melantha watched helplessly as Lindran and Dannel vanished down the long tunnel of the driveroom.

  A moment later she halted her own sled near the waiting black mouth, debating whether she should follow them on into the Nightflyer. She might be able to catch them before the airlock opened.

  Royd’s voice, hoarse counterpoint to the sounds, answered her unvoiced question. “Stay, Melantha. Proceed no further.”

  She looked behind her. Royd’s sled was approaching.

  “What are you doing here? Royd, use your own lock. You have to get back inside!”

  “Melantha,” he said calmly, “I cannot. The ship will not respond to me. The lock will not dilate. The main lock in the driveroom is the only one with manual override. I am trapped outside. I don’t want you or Karoly inside the ship until I can return to my console.”

  Melantha Jhirl looked down the shadowed barrel of the driveroom, where the linguists had vanished.

  “What will—”

  “Beg them to come back, Melantha. Plead with them. Perhaps there is still time.”

  She tried. Karoly d’Branin tried as well. The twisted symphony of pain and pleading went on and on, but they could not raise Dannel or Lindran at all.

  “They’ve cut out their comm,” Melantha said furiously. “They don’t want to listen to us. Or that … that sound.”

  Royd’s sled and d’Branin’s reached her at the same time. “I do not understand,” Karoly said. “Why can you not enter, Royd? What is happening?”

  “It is simple, Karoly,” Royd replied. “I am being kept outside until—until—”

  “Yes?” prompted Melantha.

  “—until Mother is done with them.”

  * * *

  The linguists left their vacuum sled next to the one that Christopheris had abandoned, and cycled through the airlock in unseemly haste, with hardly a glance for the grim headless doorman.

  Inside they paused briefly to collapse their helmets. “I can still hear him,” Dannel said. The sounds were faint inside the ship.

  Lindran nodded. “It’s coming from the lounge. Hurry.”

  They kicked and pulled their way down the corridor in less than a minute. The sounds grew steadily louder, nearer. “He’s in there,” Lindran said when they reached the doorway.

  “Yes,” Dannel said, “but is he alone? We need a weapon. What if … Royd had to be lying. There is someone else on board. We need to defend ourselves.”

  Lindran would not wait. “There are two of us,” she said. “Come on!” She launched herself through the doorway, calling Christopheris by name.

  It was dark inside. What little light there was spilled through the door from the corridor. Her eyes took a long moment to adjust. Everything was confused; walls and ceilings and floor were all the same, she had no sense of direction. “Rojan,” she called, dizzily. “Where are you?” The lounge seemed empty, but maybe it was only the light, or her sense of unease.

  “Follow the sound,” Dannel suggested. He hung in the door, peering warily about for a minute, and then began to feel his way cautiously down a wall, groping with his hands.

  As if in response to his comment, the sobbing sounds grew suddenly louder. But they seemed to come first from one corner of the room, then from another.

  Lindran, impatient, propelled herself across the chamber, searching. She brushed against a wall in the kitchen area, and that made her think of weapons, and Dannel’s fears. She knew where the utensils were stored. “Here,” she said a moment later, turning towards him, “Here, I’ve got a knife, that should thrill you.” She flourished it, and brushed against a floating bubble of liquid as big as her fist. It burst and reformed into a hundred smaller globules. One moved past her face, close, and she tasted it. Blood.

  But Lasamer had been dead a long time. His blood ought to have dried by now, she thought.

  “Oh, merciful god,” said Dannel.

  “What?” Lindran demanded. “Did you find him?”

  Dannel was fumbling his way back towards the door, creeping along the wall like an oversized insect, back the way he had come. “Get out, Lindran,” he warned. “Hurry!”

  “Why?” She trembled despite herself. “What’s wrong?”

  “The screams,” he said. “The wall, Lindran, the wall. The sounds.”

  “You’re not making sense,” she snapped. “Get a hold of yourself.”

  He gibbered. “Don’t you see? The sounds are coming from the wall. The communicator. Faked. Simulated.” Dannel reached the door, and dove through it, sighing audibly. He did not wait for her. He bolted down the corridor and was gone, pulling himself hand over hand wildly, his feet thrashing and kicking behind him.

  Lindran braced herself and moved to follow.

  The sounds came from in front of her, from the door. “Help me,” it said, in Rojan Christopheris’ voice. She heard moaning and that terrible wet choking sound, and she stopped.

  From her side came a wheezing ghastly death rattle. “Ahhhh,” it moaned, loudly, building in a counterpoint to the other noise. “Help me.”

  “Help me, help me, help me,” said Christopheris from the darkness behind her.

  Coughing and a weak groan sounded under her feet.

  “Help me,” all the voices chorused, “help me, help me, help me.” Recordings, she thought, recordings being played back. “Help me, help me, help me, help me.” All the voices rose higher and louder, and the words turned into a scream, and the scream ended in wet choking, in wheezes and gasps and death. Then the sounds stopped. Just like that; turned off.

  Lindran kicked off, floated towards the door, knife in hand.

  Something dark and silent crawled from beneath the dinner table and rose to block her path. She saw it clearly for a moment, as it emerged between her and the light. Rojan Christopheris, still in his vacuum suit, but with the helmet pulled off. He had something in his hand that he raised to point at her. It was a laser, Lindran saw, a simple cutting laser.

  She was moving straight towards him, coasting, helpless. She flailed and tried to stop herself, but she could not.

  When she got quite close, she saw that Rojan had a second mouth below his chin, a long blackened slash, and it was grinning at her, and little droplets of blood flew from it, wetly, as he moved.

  * * *

  Dannel rushed down the corridor in a fre
nzy of fear, bruising himself as he smashed off walls and doorways. Panic and weightlessness made him clumsy. He kept glancing over his shoulder as he fled, hoping to see Lindran coming after him, but terrified of what he might see in her stead. Every time he looked back, he lost his sense of balance and went tumbling again.

  It took a long, long time for the airlock to open. As he waited, trembling, his pulse began to slow. The sounds had dwindled behind him, and there was no sign of pursuit. He steadied himself with an effort. Once inside the lock chamber, with the inner door sealed between him and the lounge, he began to feel safe.

  Suddenly Dannel could barely remember why he had been so terrified.

  And he was ashamed; he had run, abandoned Lindran. And for what? What had frightened him so? An empty lounge? Noises from the walls? A rational explanation for that forced itself on him all at once. It only meant that poor Christopheris was somewhere else in the ship, that’s all, just somewhere else, alive and in pain, spilling his agony into a comm unit.

  Dannel shook his head ruefully. He’d hear no end of this, he knew. Lindran liked to taunt him. She would never let him forget it. But at least he would return, and apologize. That would count for something. Resolute, he reached out and killed the cycle on the airlock, then reversed it. The air that had been partially sucked out came gusting back into the chamber.

  As the inner door rolled back, Dannel felt his fear return briefly, an instant of stark terror when he wondered what might have emerged from the lounge to wait for him in the corridors of the Nightflyer. He faced the fear and willed it away. He felt strong.

  When he stepped out, Lindran was waiting.

  He could see neither anger nor disdain in her curiously calm features, but he pushed himself towards her and tried to frame a plea for forgiveness anyway. “I don’t know why I—”