Travellers

Chapter 1Poor old tub, thought Taithur, gently placing a hand on the emergency patch that had been fastened to the hull amid screaming and turmoil, so long ago, in the early days of their journey. The metal plate with its scars and indentations was so familiar that he tended not to notice it. But now, in the quiet artificial shipnight, with most of the systems on automatic, and most of the travellers asleep, he found himself reflective. You belong to both ends of the journey, don’t you? he thought. It’s fitting you should remind me what pains we had at the beginning, now we’re nearing our destination. The image of Konrad returned sharply. Konrad, hurling children and crew members out of the connecting passage and activating the emergency doors as air screamed out into space through the Irm hole. Konrad struggling alone with the patching rig, a two-man job at the best of times and never intended for use in these circumstances — ships were meant to be Irm-free when they left port, weren’t they? And finally, Konrad dying as the weldcutter slipped and slashed through his emsuit releasing its small quantity of oxygen into the freezing near vacuum. Taithur screwed up his face at the bitter ironies of Konrad’s death. Many a young tech had brought Konrad’s anger down on himself by working in an emsuit. “I know they’re easier to put on and easier to move in.” Pause, and a heavenward glance as if for patience to deal with such foolish souls, then a crescendo. “They’re also easier to die in. No autoseal, no atmos backup. And they’re made of fabric as tenuous as that which you laughingly refer to as your intelligence.” Tap on the head. “You’ll have seconds after you stick your little pinkie through that glove, and the most amazing things will happen to you.” Then, finally, nose to cringing nose, a blow by blow account of the process of cleaning out an exploded corpse from an emsuit. The usually green-faced offender would then be sent to the kitchens for a span, with orders to the cook that he work in full deep-space kit. The combination of Konrad’s ferocity, the Cook’s surly contempt at having, “This walking junk pile,” clumping about his kitchens, and the mirth of his peers usually had the desired effect, and offences were rarely repeated. But Konrad did not heed his own teachings when the Irm had taken flight — he had sealed himself into the corridor, thrown on an emsuit and tackled the hole single-handedly, as if he were dealing with just another prayer-meet brawler — “Lock the doors behind them, and we’ll see how brave they are then.” Taithur wondered, as he had many times before, why Konrad had been so reckless. Had he in fact decided, unconsciously, to die rather than face the unknowns into which they were travelling? It didn’t seem likely. Konrad was impulsive but not irresponsible, and he certainly wasn’t without courage; all kinds of courage, as he had often demonstrated in the many trials they had faced as they battled for the right to practice their religion and to make this voyage. Taithur patted the patch and turned away. No point pursuing the matter. It could never be answered. And even if it could, it would tell him little. But the thought niggled, refusing to leave him. It was probably no more than a misjudgement. A flutter of panic and desperation brought on by the presence of the children passing on their way from class, when the Irm entered that last, explosive phase of its life and departed the ship propelled by its own gases and the escaping atmosphere. They had found six more Irm in the subsequent sweep, almost all of them situated where catastrophe could have followed their leaving. Debate theology how you will, thought Taithur. If there was a devil, the Irm was his invention. He paused for a moment opposite a viewport and stared out at the uncaring darkness. Great God, this is an awful place. The phrase came to him from his own inner darkness and rang in his head. It was both strange and familiar, like some old memory, and it had a poignancy that disturbed him deeply. For a moment it seemed to him that it was one of the brief snatches of coherence decoded by the analysers as they monitored the ceaseless electromagnetic jabber from their destination planet. Odd, disjointed phrases like that burst out occasionally as the machines identified some pattern. He dismissed the thought as he looked again at the galaxy. So far away. Just a white gauze strewn negligently across the blackness. An awful place. So few stars here! Even though he could see it, he found it hard to grasp such emptiness, such barrenness. What were they heading for? What was he leading them to? Would it all end in bitter failure, with their slow dying on an alien and hostile rock, an interminable distance from home and any form of succour? He rested his forehead on the cold viewport and let the gloomy forebodings pass through his mind and return to his inner darkness. A soft, bell-like reverberation sounded through the corridor, coinciding with his own diagnosis. Midwatch. He smiled. Everything at its lowest ebb. That’s the time when all the doubts could venture out to torment him. “Don’t fear your doubts, Taithur. Have faith,” his father used to tell him. “The Lord gives them to you so that you can test yourself... make yourself strong. Try to crush them at your peril.” Then he would pause and chuckle. “Mind you. Don’t encourage them just for the sake of a fight.” No need to encourage doubts here though. They were ever-present. But it made no difference. Doubts now were the lingering shadows of earlier debates. Whatever happened, there was only one decision that could be made. Move forward. There was no retreat. Not only was it physically impossible in this ship, but their own kind had set their face against them. Perhaps, sometime in the future, a new order might prevail, and they, or their descendants, could return to live their lives and practice their religion in peace. But now... He twisted his fingers together and stretched his arms in front of him until his fingers glowed in protest. Move forward, he thought. It had a comforting inexorability to it. It cut through speculation ruthlessly, honing it down to various forms of contingency planning. Moving out of the short passageway he gingerly negotiated the shaky steps down into the main perimeter corridor. To his right, the corridor was sealed, closing off an entire segment of the ship that had been damaged by radiation from an irregularity in the main gravity silo grid. Like the patch, the jury-rigged sealing with its ominous warning signs was another reminder of the quality of their vessel. Poor old tub, he thought again. It’s not your fault is it? You were old when we bought you. Entitled to a leisurely retirement, not wild hops across the Darvod-hunt contours into the uncharted reaches of the Galaxy. He pulled a wry face. Thinking about the ship always brought conflicting emotions to the surface. Sadness at the ignorance and intolerance that had forced them to flee their homes. Bitterness at the price they had had to pay for the Rithid because of their beleaguered circumstances. But worst of all, a deep abiding anger at the callous indifference of the Service’s Ship Factors who had covered up the Irm trace and blithely falsified the gravity silo certificate, knowing that either could imperil the ship without warning. Taithur had a strong sympathy for some of the tenets of older religions, particularly those about vengeance, and it galled him that he would not be able to return and confront those individuals forcefully with their perfidy. Strangely, it had been Konrad — Konrad the fighter — who had dissuaded him from sending back a biting message of intent after their first problem with the silo. “Leave it, Taith. Leave it. Let go. Better they think we’re dead or lost in Darvod-hunt. We’re still well within range of the Fleet, and it won’t make life easier for those we’ve left behind.” It was sound advice, and Taithur had taken it, albeit with not too good a grace. But with these thoughts came those that told him it was the very condition of the ship that had brought the travellers into a closer communion with one another. The need to pull together and fight against a common peril had broken down most of the remaining hierarchical restraints that kept each to his own niche in the ordering of all their affairs. The Way is beyond our understanding, he reminded himself. The great bureaucratic tyranny that had formed their very thinking since birth had, in its last act of malevolence, brought to many of them an inner understanding of their own faith that no amount of debating and discussing could have achieved. The thought tempered his anger, though he still fantasized about appropriate destinies for the Factors from time to time. Bending down he picked up a small ball and put it in his pocket. Kids! “Taith.” A soft voice echoed round the corridor. Taithur recognized it as the Captain’s despite the clipped distortion of the individual frequency transmission. He smiled. It was strange the way people spoke quietly when using the IFT at night even though it could only be heard by the intended recipient no matter how loudly the sender spoke. We carry ancient courtesies with us, he thought. “Captain,” he acknowledged, equally softly. “Taith, I saw you on the prowl. If you’ve the time, I’d like to talk. I think we’ve got problems ahead that I’d rather go through quietly before we come to Council.” “Anything new from the monitoring?” asked Taithur. There was a pause, then an uncertain, “Yes and no. It’s... Come on up, we need to talk.” Taithur turned the child’s ball over in his pocket. “Where are you?” he said. “I’ll come immediately.”