Each captain had her place, or his, marked with a handwritten placard, the Master Captain's loud script obvious at a distance. The placement of one's chair was everything. Rank mattered, but so did the quality of the officer's year. Captains to be bestowed new honors sat near the Master's own table. Captains who needed humiliation were assigned more distant seats than expected, the worst of them set behind a bank of walkyleen flycatchers. The meal itself was meant to be a surprise, and in an attempt to honor their passengers, it was usually an array of alien dishes, their amino acids and stereochemistry left untouched - a grand tradition that made a few bellies uncomfortable, and some years, more than a few.
Today's meal was cold uncooked fish from the sunless depths of the harum-scarum sea. Vast dead eyes stared up at the hungry captains. The eating mouths were clamped shut while the gill mouths slowly opened and closed, the flesh too stubborn to stop its useless search for oxygen. Inside every fish stomach was a salad of purple vegetation and sour fruits and tenoil dressing that resembled, in texture and in odor, unrefined petroleum. Hidden elsewhere inside the corpse was a golden worm, smaller than any finger and treasured by the harum-scarum as a delicacy to be consumed one lucious segment at a time.
Every active captain had a place set for her and for him.
Even the absent captains were given a plate, a fish, and the honor of a seat. Though cynics liked to complain that the apparent honor only underscored their absence, giving their snobbish peers the opportunity to say whatever they wished about those who weren't present to defend themselves.
Centuries ago, w
hen the captains vanished abruptl
y, their seats remained, and placards with their names written by one of the Master's automated hands, and their meals were prepared in the captain's galley, delivered by crew members in dress uniforms, and left there for the flies.
For years, the Master would rise to her feet, beginning the evening with a vague yet flowery toast to those missing souls, wishing them well as they fulfilled the mysterious duties of some unmentionable assignment.
Then came the inevitable dinner when she announced with a booming, yet sorrowful voice that the captains' vessel had struck a shard of comet, and they would not be seen again. Her toast was made with vinegary wine — the standard drink for such gloomy occasions — and dinner itself was the funeral feast borrowed from a species of cold deep-space aliens.
The captains destroyed their mouths with a ritualistic bite of a methane-ice fruit. That was the last year when places were set for their vanished colleagues. For Miocene, and Hazz. And Washen. And for the rest of the much-honored dead.
More than forty-eight centuries had passed since the Vanishing.
One hundred and twenty-one feasts had been held since two ghosts had appeared suddenly, talking about a nonexistent world called Marrow.
Nothing had come of it. Someone's stupid and very cruel joke had thrown the Master into an unseemly panic, and she had spent the last century trying to convince everyone that the apparitions were anything but real. They had to be someone's cruel illusion. Because what other choice did she have? A Master Captain's first duties were to her chair and her ship, and what kind of Master would she be if a holoimage and a handful of vague clues were to steer her away from traditions that had served both ship and chair for more than a hundred millennia . . . ?
No, she didn't want to think about the Vanished. Not tonight, or ever again. But she seemed unable to stop herself, and trying to purge her mind, to make herself stronger and inflexible, only seemed to make the ghosts stronger, too.
The Master's long table was set on a grassy ridge, affording a view that improved when she slowly, majestically rose to her feet. Her goblet was filled with a blood-colored harum-scarum wine. Was that why she was thinking of th
e dead? Or was it because directl
y in front of her, practically mocking her, was the empty chair reserved for Pamir? Absent again. Just like last year, and the year before. What was wrong with that captain? Such a talent . . . questionable but quick instincts married to an admirable, almost transcendent tenaciousness . . . and despite his ugly temperament, a captain able to inspire his subordinates and the average passenger . . .
Yet he couldn't let himself bend for these little captainly rituals.
It was a weakness of character, and spirit, that had always, even in the best times, crippled his chance to rise into the ship's highest ranks.
'Where's Pamir?' she asked one of her security nexuses.
'Unknown,' was the instant response.
'Are there any messages from him?'
The next response was slow in coming, and odd. The nexus's sexless voice asked her, 'Where do you think that captain might be?'
In frustration, she killed that bothersome channel.
Sometimes the Master found herself thinking that she had lived too long and too narrowly, and the simple grind of work had worn away the genius that had earned her this high office. If everyone in this room were suddenly set equal, she almost certainly wouldn't be named the Master Captain. Even in her most prideful moments, she understood that others could fill her chair as well as she could, or better. Even when she felt utterly in control, like now, a wise and ageless and extremely weary part of herself wished that one of these worshipful faces would tell her, 'Sit elsewhere. Let yourself relax. I'll take the helm for you, at least for a little while.'
But the rest of the woman seethed at the idea of it. Always.
It was the steely, self-possessed part of her that was standing now, gazing across the hectares of smiling faces and mirrored uniforms and cold dead fish. For this feast, the local birds and the louder insects had been lured into cages, then taken away. Everything that could know better knew to be quiet. An unnatural silence hung over the room. With her right hand, the Master grasped the crystal goblet. She swirled the wine once, a dark red clot dislodging from the rim and turning slowly as she lifted the goblet to her face, inhaling the aroma before the hand raised the goblet higher, up over her head, as she said, 'Welcome,' in a thunderous voice. 'All of you who cared enough to be here today, welcome. And thank you!'
A self-congratulating murmur passed through the audience.
Then again, silence.
The Master opened her mouth, ready to deliver her much anticipated toast. Captains who dealt with the newest alien passengers were to be singled out this year. She would sing praises for their excellence, then demand improvements in the coming decades. The ship was entering a region thick with new species, new challenges. What better way to ready your staff than by feeding them congratulatory words, then showing them your hardest gaze?
But before the first word found its way out of her mouth, she hesitated. Her breath came up short, and some obscure sense tied to one of her security nexuses started to focus on something very distant, and small, and wrong.
Her eyes saw a slow, unexpected motion.
From behind the walkyleen flycatchers came several figures. Then dozens more. And accompanying their appearance was a growing commotion, the seated captains wheeling around to stare at these visitors.
They were captains, weren't they?
Pamir and the other rude ones were arriving, at last and together. That's what the Master told herself, but she couldn't see anyone with Pamir's build, and she noticed that most of the newcomers, no matter their color, had a smoky tint to their flesh.
For a better look, she tried to interface with the security eyes, only to learn that each of them had fallen into their diagnostic modes.
Like a clumsy person trying to hold a lump of warm grease, the Master struggled to find any working security system.
None were responding.
'What's happening?' she asked every nexus.
A thousand answers bombarded her in a senseless, unnerving roar. Then she focused on the newcomers, on their nearest faces. The ship and everything else had vanished. The Master found herself staring at the handsome woman at the lead, the tall one with her constricted face and the slick, hairless scalp, who looked rather like someone in whom she had given up all hope . . .
'Miocene,' the Master blurted. 'Is it?'
Whoever she was, the woman smiled like Miocene — a sturdy, almost amused expression leading her up to the main table. Flanking her were people who resembled the missing captains, in their faces and builds and in the confident way they carried themselves. One man in particular caught the Master's attention. He had Miocene's face and baldness, and a boyish little body, and bright eyes that seemed to relish everything he was seeing. He was the one who looked left, then right, nodding at his companions, causing them to stop next to the various tables, each of the strangers picking up the cold fishes, examining them with a peculiar astonishment, as if they had never before seen such creatures.
Miocene, or whoever she was, climbed the grassy ridge.
The bright-eyed man remained at her side.
Softly, the Master asked, 'Is it you?'
The woman's smile had turned cold and furious. Her uniform was mirrored, but too stiff, and the leather belt was totally out of place. She paused in front of the Master, and looking up and down the long table — staring at each of the Submasters - she said nothing. Nothing.
Earwig and the other Submasters were hailing the nonexistent security systems. Demanding action. Begging for information.
Then, looking at one another, a wild panic began to take hold.
Softly, the Master asked, 'How are you, darling?'
The reply came with Miocene's voice and her cold firmness. She stared across the table, saying, 'Earwig. Darling. You're in my seat.'
The Master halfway laughed, blurting,
'If I'd known you were coming—'
'Bleak,' said the bright-eyed man.
A hundred other strangers said, 'Bleak,' together, in a shared voice.
Thousands of voices, from every part of the Great Hall, screamed, 'Bleak,' in a ragged, chilling unison.
Finally, the Master's First Chair started to rise, asking, 'What are you saying? What's this "bleak" mean?'
'That's you,' the man offered with a cold smile.
Then Miocene reached out with her left hand, taking a gold carving knife from the Master's place setting, and with a quiet, hateful voice, she said,
'I waited. To be found and saved, I waited for centuries and centuries . . .'
'I couldn't find you,' the Master confessed.
'Which proves what I have always suspected.'
Then she used the Master's name, the pathetically ordinary name that she hadn't heard in aeons. 'Liza,' said Miocene. 'You really don't deserve that chair of yours. Now do you, Liza?'
The Master tried to answer.
But a knife had been shoved into her throat, Miocene grunting with the exertion. Then grasping the gold hilt with both hands, she gave it another thrust, smiling as the blood jetted across her, as the spine and cord were suddenly cut in two.
Thirty-five
W
ith a bright
whoosh, the laser fired.
A whiff of coherent light boiled away half of Pamir
’
s fist.
But he kept swinging what remained, feeling nothing until his blackened flesh and the blunt ends of his bones struck the stranger's face, a dazzling sharp pain racing down his arm, jerking loose a harsh little scream.
The other man grunted softly, a look of dim surprise coming to the grayish face, to the wide gray eyes.
Even without both hands, the captain had a thirty-kilo advantage. He drove with his legs, then his right shoulder, shoving his opponent against the sealed elevator door and pinning the arm with laser flush to the body
...
a second whoosh evaporating a portion of his ear and the edge of his captain's cap . . . and Pamir screamed again, louder this time, his good hand smashing into the squirming body, punishing ribs and soft tissues while he flung the man's hairless head against the hyperfiber door.
With a heavy clatter, the laser fell to the floor.
Pamir absorbed blows to his belly, his ribs. Then with his good hand, he grabbed the other man's neck and yanked and twisted, squeezing until he was certain that not a breath of oxygen could slip down that crushed throat. Then he used his knee, driving bone into the groin, and when a look of pure misery passed across the choking face, he screamed, 'Stop,' and flung the man back up the hallway.
The laser lay beside Washen's clock.
Pamir reached with his bad hand, realized his blunder, then too late, put his good hand around the weapon's handle, the whiteness of polished bone braced with the archaic heft of forged steel.
A booted foot, hard as stone, kicked Pamir in the face, shattering both cheekbones and his nose.
He felt himself flung back against the door, and lifting his good hand, he fired, a sweeping ray of blackish-blue light cooking his opponent's other foot.
The man collapsed, and moaned quietly for a breath or two.
With his own trembling legs, Pamir pushed against the slick door, forcing himself upright, watching the stranger's face grow composed. Resigned. Then once again, a look of defiance came into the gray face.