Now And Forever Part 14

"Quickly," said the captain. "Scan, study, see."

Redleigh turned the disk over in his hands.

"For there you will find Doom," the captain went on. "But, if serenity, sweet peace, and mild excursions are your findings, man...if you discover instead fair Heaven and find green Eden, say your say with graceful data! Play the computer. If your final tune is joy, I will accept it, and turn us back toward stallion and mare meadows and fine frolics; no remorse."

"Fair put, sir."

"Where's your hand?" said the captain, reaching out upon the air.

"Here, sir."

The captain seized it. "Now man, attend. Here's one who gives his palm on palm to me. May I beg hearts and souls from all the rest?"

"They're here!" came all our voices.

"And all about!" I added.

"Aye and aye!" cried many voices.

The captain still held tight to Redleigh's hand, binding him to his compact as he cried out a final oath: "Christ's wounds swallow comets! Much thanks for that sweet sound. Men! Ours is a holy mission. There will be none greater in the history of humanity, though our sands run forever through a gla.s.s as big as Creation's landfall in far Centauri! We will save our Earth! Technicians, stand alert! Oh, men, Leviathan is a long white unhealed wound in s.p.a.ce, a light that puts out light. Let us heal it forever. Ready the alarms. The first man who spots it gets double his pay for the journey! Squads, disperse. Fall out!"

The crew ran to their stations, all but Quell. Sensing that my friend was not with me, I pulled up short, and turned to see Quell, gazing at the captain with a look of terrible revelation. Redleigh, too, took note of Quell's expression, and stood quietly beside the captain.

The captain, feeling the silence, said, "Dismissed, Redleigh."

"Sir."

And Redleigh turned and walked away.

"Ishmael?" the captain said suddenly. "Dismissed."

"Sir!" I saluted to those blind eyes, and started to leave but hesitated to look back at the captain and Quell.

The captain sensed Quell drawing near. And yet Quell would not look at him. The captain raised a hand to touch the air near Quell's strange green face. He seized his hand back as if it was half-burnt. Then he turned and stepped back through the door leading off the main deck and the door whispered shut.

There was a long moment in which Quell's face gathered shadows of his own future. I could not bear to witness it.

And then I heard the voices of the crew, coming from all around, one by one.

"The comet Franciscus 12."

"Halley's comet."

"The comet of Pope Innocent the Third."

"The Great India comet of '88."

"The comet of Alcibiades."

And on the great star screen, one by one, I saw gigantic manifestations of comets, meteors, star cl.u.s.ters, all of "What is a comet, anyway?" I heard myself say. "Who knows, really," I answered myself. "Universal vapors. The mighty indigestion of our creator. Quell?"

Quell's thoughts touched mine.

"On my world, such comets are known as pilgrim visitors, far-traveling specters, haunters of the feast. You see? Our history has as much romantic nonsense as yours."

"Well, then," I said, "the captain has his reasons for seeking his comet, and we have ours. There's nothing like a riddle."

"A riddle," said Quell. "Let us sleep on that tonight. Perhaps in sleep, we'll dream, and in the dream, find an answer. A riddle. A riddle."

And it was in the midst of the night, while I slept, that I heard something stirring. Quell. I felt his mind move in mine and then, at last, his voice: "May all the men rise up and listen."

Then, not only in my mind, but with his tongue, Quell said the syllables that made "Elijah."

"Quell," I whispered faintly.

And then how strange it was, for it was not Quell's voice that I heard now, in the middle of the night, but the voice that spoke in his mind. It was the voice of Elijah, recalled.

"Oh, listen, hear!" said the voice that I'd last heard in the cathedral on Earth. "Aboard this ship, far out in s.p.a.ce, there will come a time when you see land where there is no land, find time where there is no time, when ancient kings will reflesh their bones and reseat their crowns."

"What's that?" I heard from some other room along the corridor.

"Shut him off, shut him up," cried another.

"No, wait, wait," I whispered.

And Quell continued with the voice of Elijah: "Then, then, oh, then, ship, ship's captain, and ship's men, all, all will be destroyed. All save one!"

"All?" someone said.

"Save one," said another.

"All will be destroyed," said Quell, with the voice of Elijah.

And then he sank back into silence and slept.

I turned over but could not sleep, and sensed my crewmates in their cubicles, up and down the corridor, sleepless till dawn.

The voice clock in every cabin ticked and named the hours and at last, with no sunrise, in our minds we saw a ghost comet loom in spirit smoke above the captain's bunk, and the captain mourned his own death in his sleep.

From the log of First Mate John Redleigh: Records dating 400 B.C. Rumors have it that Alexander the Great's death was predicted in the appearance of the comet Persephone. The comet Palestrina arrived in the year one; it may well have been the Star of Bethlehem. This much we know, but little more. The main material of a comet's body is methane gas and wintry snow, wintry snow.

Unable to sleep, I arose and left my bunk, drawn to the captain's cabin. From outside that sealed door I could hear his nightmares within. "No," I heard him groan. "No, no, I say. Get off. Go!"

A figure came along the corridor: Redleigh. I pulled back into the shadows as the first mate pounded on the captain's door.

"Captain?"

The captain called out from within. "What? What?"

"You were having a nightmare, sir," said Redleigh.

The door opened and the captain stood there, his white hair wild. "G.o.d, I dreamt I fell, I fell, down in s.p.a.ce, forever. Let me grasp my soul."

"Ship's log to be signed, sir," said Redleigh.

"At four in the false morning? Good, Redleigh, something to keep me from my nightmares. I'll come with you to sign. How go the star computers?"

"They burn, sir, from overuse."

"You jump to prove me wrong?"

"You have said you were right, sir," said Redleigh. "I would prove that."

The captain stepped out of his cabin, and I moved back further into the shadows, even though he could not see me. They started down the corridor, toward the main deck, and I followed along.

"I know you, Redleigh. You have no heart for this chase, do you?"

"If by 'chase' you mean our proper business of charting stars and exploring worlds..."

"No, no! Here!" the captain said as he emerged onto the vast main deck, nearly empty now, and pointed toward the star screen. The three-dimensional display hung brightly on the air.

"What do you know of the pa.s.sage of dark planets and bright comets?"

"I think you must teach me, sir," said Redleigh.

"And I will," said the captain. "Here are a thousand thousand star-charts, stamped, runneled, and humped. Run your hand over this expanse. Touch the long mark of Halley's comet; feel the heat of the comet of Alliostro Minor. Here, the deep night plans for all G.o.d's circuitings and maunderings, all his long thoughts. G.o.d dreams joy: green Earths appear. G.o.d suffers torments: Leviathan issues from the vast portal of His raving eye and mouth. It rushes here! I know a way to meet it head-on, fast, six weeks before it destroys Earth. We must move fast to surprise it."

"Surprise?" Redleigh turned from the charts that hung so brightly on the air. "You cannot surprise a comet, sir. It neither lives nor cares."

"But I live, I care," said the captain.

Redleigh shrugged. "And shift the burdens of your knowledge to some great wandering child, some universal accident that prowls the worlds, homeless for eternity. I-"

"Go on," said the captain.

"Sir, if as the Reverend Colworth says, all s.p.a.ce is one flesh with us, all worlds, suns, creatures extensions of one ground, one all-encompa.s.sing will, then that ghost you speak of, sir, that comet, that great terror-trailing monster, is but a true outmouthing of G.o.d Himself. Not his sickness and despair, but His bright will that lights the universal night. Would you stand against such breath?"

"If it wrenched my soul and burnt me blind, yes! Listen to the sound it makes this very hour, out beyond."

The captain reached out a hand, touching a screen. A loom of energy wove immense sounds throughout the ship.

Nodding at this, the captain continued. "There's the breath you spoke of. It is a cold thing. It is all the graveyards of history somehow put to s.p.a.ce, and in its light-year shroud, ten billion on a billion men's lost souls yammer for release. I-we-go to rescue them!"

"That sound is but a dumb thing, sir, mere chemistry born of chaos, now pulled by this tidal star, now hauled by that. You may as well stop your own heart as try to stop that great pale beating."

"But if both stop at once?" said the captain, "will not my victory over it be as large as its victory over me? Small man, great traveling doom-both weigh the same when the scale is death."

"But in rending it," said Redleigh, in quiet desperation, "you rend your own flesh, Captain, which G.o.d has loaned you."

"This flesh offends me!" cried the captain. "If it is all one, G.o.d manifesting himself in minerals, light, motion, dark, or sensible man, if that comet is my sister-self come preening by to try my Job-like patience, was it not blasphemy it first tried on me? If I am G.o.d's flesh, why was I felled, struck blind? No, no! That thing is lost and evil. Its great face hovers in the abyss. Behind its mindless glare I sense the blood that oils the cogs of nightmare and the pit. And whether I perceive all this in h.e.l.lfire man, sweet blood-mouthed cannibal shark, or huge white blinding mask flung down among the stars to frighten men and push them to impulse much less than human, more than bones and soul can bear, I must attack. Talk not of blasphemy to me, sir. It tried me at breakfast. I will dine on it tonight."

"Oh G.o.d," whispered Redleigh. "Oh G.o.d help us, then."

"He does," the captain responded. "If we are His stuffs, alive, then we sinew His arm, thrust out to stop that light-year beast. Would you turn away from this greatest hunt?"

"I would," murmured Redleigh, "and go to check my computers, sir."

Redleigh turned to leave, but stopped when the captain said, "Why then you're as mad as me. No, madder. For I distrust 'reality' and its moron mother, the universe, while you fasten your innocence to fallible devices which pretend at happy endings. Lie down with machines, rise up castrato. Sweet Jesus, you'll make the pope's choir yet. Such innocence quakes my bones."

"Sir," Redleigh responded. "I am against you. But don't fear me. Let the captain beware the captain. Beware of yourself...sir."

And once more Redleigh turned, and this time he walked away.

CHAPTER 4.

I backed off and returned to my cabin, deeply distressed. I barely slept the hours remaining till dawn, instead tossing and turning in my bunk, while Quell lay undisturbed, dreaming who knows what alien dreams.

At the first bell, I rose and made my way to the communications deck. There I found crewman Small, bent over his console.

"Do you know that a rocket feeds itself in s.p.a.ce?" he asked.

"Feeds? What do you mean?"

"It wallows," he explained, "like a great fish in currents of solar vibration, cosmic rays, interstellar X-ray radiations. Ever hungry, we-this ship-search for banquets of shout and shriek and echo. I sit here, day in and day out, tuned to the great onrushings of s.p.a.ce all around us. Most of the time, all I hear is variations of anonymous sound-hum and static and vibration. And once in a while, by accident...listen!"

He touched a contact and from the console speaker came voices-distinct human voices. He turned his face to mine, a strange light shining there.

As we stood, we heard broadcasts that had been made to crowds on Earth, to the listening ears of people two hundred years ago. Churchill spoke and Hitler shouted and Roosevelt answered and mobs roared; there were football and baseball games from long-ago afternoons. They rose and fell, moved in and out, like ocean waves of sound.

Small said, "No sound, once made, is ever truly lost. In electric clouds, all are safely trapped, and with a touch, if we find them, we can recapture those echoes of sad, forgotten wars, long summers, and sweet autumns."

"Mr. Small," I said. "We must trap these broadcasts so we can hear them again and again. Is there more? What have you found?"

"We have come upon a fountain of Earth's younger days. Voices from centuries past. Strange radio people, ghosts of laughter, political charades. Listen."

Small fiddled with the console dial again. We heard the moment the Hindenburg went up in flames. Lindbergh landed in Paris in 1927. Someone named Dempsey fought someone named Tunney in 1925. Crowds screamed in horror, mobs cheered. And then, it began to fade away.

"We're beyond them now," said Small.

"Go back!" I cried. "That is our history."

Another voice sounded from the console: "This afternoon at Number Ten Downing Street, Prime Minister Churchill..."