Ascending

15: WHEREIN I TAKE CHARGE OF OPENING DOORS

Logic Scum

We rounded the bank of computers at a run… then stopped in the face of chaos.

First, there was the Pollisand: exactly as I had seen him in the lava garden. Indeed, I could still detect reddish stains on his feet, obtained when he peevishly stomped the scarlet flowers. This was definitely the same creature I had met hours earlier… or else such a perfect copy I could not tell the difference.

The Pollisand was not the only one with crimson stains on his skin. In front of him stood a human dressed in dark brown attire: a woman whose flesh was dark brown too, except for the fingers of both hands. Those fingers were smeared a vivid red — not blood, but a scarlet dust that sifted off flakes whenever she moved. Speckles of that dust lay scattered across the floor at her feet… and red chalky fingerprints glowed on the access panels of the computer in front of her.

Though those panels were shut, something bubbly leaked out around their edges: a charcoal gray foam, forcing itself through the seams of the computer’s casing, trickling down the machine’s exterior, and pattering onto the floor tiles. The glup had a musty smell, like human feet enclosed too long in stockings. When a clot of the stuff slopped down near the brown woman’s boots, she jumped back fearfully as if the foam could hurt her.

"Bloody hell!" Festina said. Shoving the brown woman aside, my friend drove a kick into the junction between two of the computer’s access panels. The kick must have snapped whatever locking mechanism held the panels in place; both doors swung open, propelled by great gouts of foam that had built up inside. Gray bubbles spilled and gushed to the floor, releasing such a wash of musty odor I nearly gagged.

"What is that?" I asked, feeling choked.

"Logic scum," Festina said. "Chunks of the ship’s data get encoded in organic molecules: DNA, long chain polymers, stuff like that — then all those chemicals are packaged into a single living cell. A data bacterium. The only problem is that bacteria can be killed."

She nodded toward the red powder on the floor. "That’s a chemical called Modig — a bio-poison that rips data bacteria to shit. This foam is the result: a slurry of bacterial corpses. All that’s left of the logic circuits."

Festina booted another kick into the left access door, cracking it off its bottom hinge. The impact splashed back a flurry of foam that spattered onto the leg of her trousers. She retreated a quick step and shook her foot, endeavoring to throw off every speck of foam clinging to her pants. As she did so, she said, "Oar, break that panel off. Try to stay clear of the scum."

"Yes, Festina." I pulled down the sleeve of my jacket so it completely covered my hand, then slammed my forearm against the remaining hinge of the access door. The hinge was flimsy indeed — it broke with a ‹PING›, and the door flew several paces before clattering to the tiles. Sergeant Aarhus ran after it; snatching it up, he hurried back to the computer and began using the panel to shovel foam onto the floor. Although he still wore his armor, Aarhus flinched whenever the froth splashed against him.

"Is logic scum poison too?" I whispered to Festina.

"Not the scum itself," my friend said. "But mixed in with the dead bacteria are traces of the Modig that killed them; and Modig is an utter bitch."

She glanced toward the woman in brown… particularly at the red dust on the woman’s hands. The woman was looking at the dust too: lifting her hands in front of her eyes, staring at her crimson fingers. Bits of gray foam had begun to bubble from beneath the woman’s fingernails — the same type of foam that was flooding from the computer, only this came from the woman herself. Festina opened her mouth as if to tell the woman something; then she shook her head. Turning away sharply, she headed in the oppositedirection, toward a console at the far end of the computer bank.

The Pollisand Follows His Trade

"The circuits are shot," Aarhus said, still scooping foam out of the computer. "Electronics as well as biologicals. Must have been a feedback surge." He glanced at a label on top of the machine. "Unit 4A51," he told Festina. "What is it? Navigation? Engine control?"

Festina had reached the console. She bent over it, tapping buttons. "4A51 is the primary security module. Damn… the readout says it’s in master mode."

Aarhus growled. "How the hell could she put it in master? Only the captain and the XO know the privileged access codes."

"Not true," Festina told him. "Admirals on the High Council know the codes too… or backdoors to get around the usual security. Obviously, some admiral ordered this woman to sabotage us, and gave her the codes to do it."

"But why did she follow such an order?" said a nasal voice. "And why so incompetently?"

We had forgotten about the Pollisand. He stood exactly where we had first seen him… but by some disquieting coincidence, that position was conveniently out of the way of everything we had been doing. He had not been in the flight path of the panel I knocked across the room, nor Aarhus’s rush to grab the panel, nor Festina’s route to the control console. When the woman in brown stumbled back from the foam, the white headless creature had been just a bit to one side of her retreat.

As I looked around, I could not see a single other spot he could have settled himself without getting in the way of at least one of us. Yet he had put himself in that special location before we entered the room.

Deep in the creature’s neck, one of his glowing eyes vanished for a moment — a Pollisandish wink. It was almost as if he were acknowledging the thought which had silently gone through my head… but I did not want to believe that, so I put it out of my mind.

Meanwhile, the Pollisand’s words had drawn Festina’s attention. She whirled on him, shouting, "What are you doing here? What do you want?"

"I want answers to my questions," he said, "but do I get them? Not bloody likely. Nobody ever has time to talk: it’s always Crisis this and Emergency that, with everyone far too busy for civilized discourse. Bet it would be different if I had a goddamned head — but no, you’re all so superior, constantly wearing hats and flaunting your peripheral vision, never mind how it eats me up inside, condemned forever to be cranially disadvantaged…"

He lifted his large foot and pointed toward the woman in brown, whose hands were now covered in foam that bubbled from her own skin. "Speaking of being eaten up inside," the Pollisand said, "this woman has thirty grams of Modig ripping her apart. You might want to deal with that before she dies of shock."

"Damn!" Festina said. Raising her voice, she called, "Ship-soul, attend. Tell Dr. Havel we have a severe case of Modig poisoning in the main computer room."

"Aye-aye, Admiral," a metallic voice answered from the ceiling.

"Hurray," Aarhus muttered, "the computer is still on-line."

"Don’t celebrate too soon," the Pollisand told him.

The sergeant winced. "Why?"

"You’ll see in seventy-two seconds."

"God damn it," Festina said, "quit being a know-it-all, and tell us something useful. What did this woman do, and how can we stop it?"

"You can’t stop it," the Pollisand replied. "And what this woman did — by the way, her name is Zuni, if you care, which you don’t, or you wouldn’t need a complete stranger to introduce you to someone who’s been under your command since the day you inherited this ship — but no, let’s not waste time on civilities which are only the bedrock of society, what this woman, Zuni, that’s still her name, even if you don’t care about it, did…" The Pollisand took a breath. "What Zuni did was write a program she believed would let her override the captain’s commands."

"Which explains why she put the system in master mode," Aarhus said. "If her program worked, she could set our course straight back to New Earth… and prevent anyone from changing it."

"But the program didn’t work," the Pollisand told him. "Zuni didn’t test it first: she just wrote it and ran it. Which clearly shows that possessing a head isn’t the same as using it. (Not that I’m bitter.) What kind of programmer is so divorced from reality she thinks she’ll get complex software right the first time? Especially when she’s hacking the ship’s most important security settings."

"Look," Festina interrupted, "we’ll discuss Zuni another time. Just tell us what the program did."

"It went out of control," the Pollisand said. "Romped off on its own, overwriting basic system code. She tried to rein it in from the console, but it had already stomped part of its own control settings; that’s when she popped open a tube of Modig powder."

"Why was she carrying a vile red poison?" I asked. "Was she a secret assassin?"

"No," Festina answered, "it’s navy policy to have some Modig available precisely for situations where you’ve got a runaway computer and can’t shut it down."

"It is better to turn off the power switch," I told her, "or to adjust the machine’s mechanisms with an ax."

"Zuni didn’t have an ax," the Pollisand said, "and the way to turn off a power switch on this ship is to ask the computer to do it — which doesn’t work if the computer is already fucked up the snout. Anyway, Modig is standard issue for last-ditch emergencies, and Zuni had been immunized against tiny exposures… but she should have known better than to scoop it up with her hands and smear it into the circuits. No immunization can protect a human from that much contact. Why would my poor Zuni do such a thing?"

"We’ll ask her at the court-martial," Festina said. "Right now we have to figure out what’s beendamaged, what the runaway program did…"

The Pollisand’s eyes flared brightly. "I can tell you that. It overrode the safeguards on Captain’s Last Act."

"Oh shit!" Festina and Aarhus said in unison.

"What is Captain’s Last Act?" I asked.

Festina’s face looked pained. "If a crew is forced to abandon ship, it’s the final command a captain gives… to make it impossible for outsiders to learn military secrets if they capture our equipment. Captain’s Last Act means—"

The room lights suddenly went out.

"Doing some drastic Science thing that breaks all the ship’s machines?" I asked.

"Good guess," Festina said.

Shutdown

The room had not been noisy — the computers operated with quiet hums rather than ventilatory hiss. But when the lights went out, the sound level dropped to complete silence, as soft whirs and purrs faded to nothingness. The gentle breeze caused by the ship’s air circulation system grew still. A moment later, within the cores of all the machines, trickles of fluid began to drip, drip, drip, as if the circuits were bleeding.

"Look on the bright side," Aarhus said in the blackness. "At one time, the Admiralty wanted Captain’s Last Act to cause a total self-destruct. Fortunately, the League wouldn’t let navy ships sail around with their bellies full of explosive."

"So," Festina said, "instead of blowing ourselves up, we get to freeze in the dark. Goody."

A light clicked on from the direction of her voice. My friend held a thin wand that gave off a bright silver shine; the beam reflected off my hands, so that when I moved my arms, little patches of silver flashed across the floors and ceiling.

"I see you came prepared, Admiral," Aarhus said.

"In rank, I’m an admiral," Festina told him, "but at heart, I’m an Explorer. I don’t go anywhere without a chemically powered light, a first-aid kit, and twenty meters of rope."

"Same things I carry on a first date." Aarhus dropped his gaze to the floor and asked, "Why do we still have gravity? The Higgs generators are surely off-line."

"They’re more than off-line," Festina said. "The whole grav system is now a steaming pile of slag. Why do we have gravity?"

"Oh for heaven’s sake," the Pollisand grumped. "Don’t you know anything about your own ship?"

"Not really," Festina replied. "The navy likes to keep Explorers uninformed about ship operations — otherwise, we might realize how incompetent the regular crew members are."

"Same with Security," Aarhus said. "We only guard the ship, we don’t push the buttons."

"And you wonder why your species hasn’t evolved farther." The Pollisand raised his eyes heavenward in exasperation. The eyes cast dancing red glows across the dark ceiling. "Listen," he said, turning back to us, "just because your gravity generators go poof doesn’t mean your gravity field does too. The field dissipates gradually — like heat when you turn off a furnace. Ten hours from now, you and your gear will be floating off the floor, but it doesn’t happen all at once."

"Thank God for small mercies," Festina muttered. "And speaking of mercy," she said to the Pollisand, "I don’t suppose a technically brilliant entity like yourself would help resurrect some of Hemlock’s basic ops?"

"Never!" said the Pollisand in shocked tones. "How will you lesser creatures learn to take care of yourselves if you don’t face the consequences of your actions? Hardship builds character… and I’m sure you’ll build a lot in the next few hours. Ta-ta, y’all."

He lifted a front paw high and flipped off a salute from where his forehead would have been if he possessed one. A moment later, his body exploded into a million pinpricks of light; they scattered in all directions, making zings and whistles as they disappeared through the walls. Then the room fell quiet again, with a conspicuous absence of Pollisand where he had just been standing.

"Ooo," said Festina. "Showy."

We all nodded silently.

Knock-Knock

Our contemplative silence was interrupted by a crashing noise from the other side of the computer bank. In the blink of an eye, Festina dived to the ground, rolled along the tiles, and ended on her feet again. Her hands came up clenched into fists. Somewhere during her dive, she had dropped the glow-wand; it lay a short distance from her feet, casting strong upward shadows across her features.

The sound came again: a smash that echoed through the quiet computer room. Festina grabbed up the light and disappeared around the bank of dead machines. The sergeant and I ran after her; we were just turning the corner when we heard a third kaboom. It was someone battering against the closed door to the hallway, an unknown person trying to bash through. Already the door had a conspicuous bend in it, though it was made of metal and appeared to be moderately thick.

One more whump and the top of the door snapped out of its frame. It sagged slightly inward, but not far enough to reveal who was hammering on the other side. I quickly assumed an aggressive stance in case the intruders should prove to be enemies — perhaps the Shaddill had invaded the ship now that we had no defenses. Festina, however, had put down her fists, and Aarhus was making no effort to prepare for attack. They simply stood warily, clear of the doorway, waiting for whoever came through.

Something struck the door with a fierce thud. The mangled metal could not withstand this final impact — it collapsed completely, propelled by a muscular body that fell forward with the door onto the floor tiles.

Lajoolie looked up, blinking in the beam of Festina’s light. Behind her, Uclod and Dr. Havel peeked around the edge of the door frame; the watery-eyed physician held a shining wand exactly like Festina’s. Smiling down at Lajoolie, Havel said, "Nothing like a Tye-Tye, ha-ha, when you have to make a house call. Someone reported a poisoning?"

Medical Matters

The doctor hurried off to examine the woman in brown… or perhaps I should call her Zuni, though I do not know if she deserves to be dignified with a name. This Zuni was a spy and saboteur; I did not quite understand what she had tried to do or what she accomplished instead, but the end result was readily apparent. There was no light in the hallway, and no machinery sounds either. "It appears," said I, "this vessel has slain itself."

"Yes," Havel called from the other side of the computer bank, "the Hemlock has taken hemlock, ha-ha."

If that was a joke, no one laughed. I asked, "Do all starships have suicidal tendencies? Because I have only ridden in two such vessels, and both have killed themselves within hours of my coming on board. This constitutes a Disturbing Pattern… and I should like to point out I am not to blame."

"Don’t get defensive," Festina said, patting my shoulder. "If anyone here is a trouble magnet, it’s me."

She turned to check on the others. Uclod was helping Lajoolie stand up after bashing the door. He did not provide much practical assistance — since his head only came to her wallabies, he could not actually pull her up to her full height — but she held on to his hand anyway and tried not to look too encumbered by him as she got to her feet.

"Are you okay, sweetie?" Uclod asked. His voice had a ragged edge to it and his eyes were ringed with red, but it seemed he had finished weeping over his grandmother… at least for the moment. Lajoolie did not answer the little man’s question, but she pressed his hand softly to her stomach.

"All right," Festina said, "let’s get to the bridge and see what the captain can do about this mess. Havel," she called, "do you need any help?"

"No, Admiral, not right now," came a reply from the other side of the computer bank. "Eventually we’ll have to carry the patient to sick bay…"

"I’ll send you some stretcher bearers," Festina said, "but I don’t know if sick bay is any better than here. Captain’s Last Act will have killed all your medical equipment."

"Oh dear, yes," Havel said. "Then maybe, ha-ha, it’s best if we stay away from the infirmary. The place is swarming with Analysis Nano, and without the ship-soul controlling them… well, the eager little devils may get out of hand. There was a case on Morrikeen where a clinic’s power went down and every last nanite decided to give the attending physician a blood test. Sucked the poor fellow dry, ha-ha."

"Ha-ha indeed," Festina said. "And here I thought our only alternatives were freezing to death or starvation. I love it when new options thrust themselves forward." She made a face. "Come on — let’s find the captain."

Forging Forward

It turns out a starship has many many doors… which Sergeant Aarhus claimed were not doors at all but hatches. Festina said I could still call them doors; she reveled in the use of anti-nautical terms, because it vexed the ship’s normal crew. (She called regular crew members Vac-heads, which may or may not have been because they spent their lives sailing through vacuum.)

Many of the hatch-doors were closed, and most were exceedingly stronger than the one Lajoolie had broken. The biggest doors were designed to remain secure despite vast extremes of air pressure; so thick, even I had no chance of smashing through. Fortunately, such violence was not required — though the doors no longer opened automatically, they contained Cunningly Concealed Mechanisms that allowed manual operation via wheels and cranks. Once Festina showed me how these devices worked, I got to turn all the wheels… which I did most prettily, ensuring our party’s speedy progress toward the bridge.

We were not the only persons desirous of making contact with the captain. As we moved forward through the ship, numerous crew members peeked out of doorways, saw who we were, and joined our company. The newcomers did not speak; I do not know if they were intimidated by my beauty, Festina’s rank, or Uclod’s orangeness, but they seemed as shy as woodland creatures, keeping their distance yet mutely following.

This muteness struck me as foolish. If I had not already known this darkness was the result of a complicated computer tragedy, I should have been asking, "What happened? What happened?" But then, I was not such a one as greatly revered machines. Perhaps these humans were so cowed by the demise of their ship, they had plunged into grief-stricken mourning.

Or perhaps they were not so much wallowing in sorrow as silently giddy with excitement. It is Eerily Thrilling to walk through soundless corridors when your only illumination is a tiny wand of silver, and the blackness stretches for lightyears in all directions. You feel that anything could happen… and even if there is danger afoot, it will be vastly preferable to lying on the floor with a Tired Brain.

Having a perilous adventure is always better than comatose safety. Always, always, always, always, always.

In The Halls

I did not know how many hatches stood between us and the bridge… but I could tell when I opened the last. As I pushed back the great thick door, I saw light on the other side and heard voices talking in subdued tones. Five crew members had gathered in the corridor to listen to a sixth person: a dark-skinned man in a powder blue suit.

He stood slightly apart from the others as he spoke to them, and he held a glow-wand just like Festina’s. At the moment I opened the hatch, he was gesturing with the wand, pointing in our direction. The waving light made shadows leap along the corridor walls in a manner delightfully creepy. However, the man stopped waving as soon as he saw our party.

"Admiral!" he said — in a voice not loud but fervent. "I don’t suppose you know what happened?"

"A saboteur," Festina told him. "Hacked the ship-soul into committing Captain’s Last Act. I’m afraid the ship is…"

"EMP’d to rat-shit from bow to stern," the blue-suited man finished her sentence. "That’s what Captain’s Last Act means." He gave Festina a rueful smile. "At my court-martial, you’ll testify I didn’t do it, right, Admiral?"

"Of course, Captain… if any of us lives that long."

I looked at the man again. This must be Captain Kapoor, who spoke to us earlier on the intercom. He did not impress me much as a Figure Of Authority: he was shorter than I, with thinning black hair and a poorly shaped mustache. I am not well-informed on the subject of mustaches — my own people do not grow true hair, we merely have the suggestion of hair as part of our solid glass skulls — but if I were to possess a mustache, I would endeavor to carve it with bilateral symmetry instead of letting it become an unkempt blob of fur that appears to be sliding off the left edge of one’s lips.

Still, this Kapoor man did not seem totally foolish. He had happy crinkles around the edges of his eyes as if he must laugh a lot… and for all the tension that filled the air, he did not seem snappish or stressed. Indeed, one could argue he was altogether too blase about the situation, considering that his ship had been disastrously incapacitated in the depths of Unforgiving Space.

"I suppose you’ll be wanting a status report," he said to Festina. "Well, Admiral… the status is that everything’s Gone Oh Shit."

Many of the crew members looked confused at his words. I, however, knew that "Going Oh Shit" was an Explorer expression meaning dead, dead, dead. It derived from the fact that many Explorers blurt out, "Oh shit," just before some terrible calamity befalls them. I suppose Kapoor used the phrase to show Festina he was familiar with Explorer vernacular… which means the captain was sucking up to the admiral, but I thought he did it most charmingly.

"Everything’s gone?" Festina asked. "What about communications?"

"Especially communications," Kapoor answered. "Those systems have all kinds of top-secret crypto built into them: not just for encoding transmissions, but for switching bands a few hundred times a second, so we’re never broadcasting in one place very long. And then there’s the—" He stopped and threw a reproachful look at those of us who were not navy persons. "Ahem. I’m sure you know, Admiral, Hemlock has all kinds of gadgetry for keeping our messages secure, and one hundred percent of it is classified. Captain’s Last Act makes certain no such equipment can be salvaged. Nothing but melted plastic and defunct biomass."

"But that can’t be your only broadcasting stuff," Uclod said. "At the very least, you must have a Mayday signal, right? Something that runs off batteries and doesn’t get vaporized when everything else goes pfft. Civilian vessels have to carry at least three Mayday boxes in case of emergency. So a navy ship must surely…" He stopped; his eyes narrowed, glaring at Kapoor. "You don’t have a working Mayday?"

"Of course we do," the captain replied defensively. "Just not a good one. The Outward Fleet doesn’t likedistress calls that can be heard by absolutely anybody — it’s bad publicity to advertise how often navy ships break down. Even worse, the laws of salvage say the first person to find us gets to claim the whole cruiser. The Admiralty doesn’t want a civilian vessel, or even worse an alien, tracking us by our distress signal, taking our ship in tow, and dragging Royal Hemlock home to use as a lawn ornament. So… our Mayday only broadcasts to other navy ships."

"Ouch," Uclod said.

"Very ouch," Festina agreed. "The last thing we want is to tell the Admiralty we’re stuck adrift. They’ll send one of their dirty-trick ships to pick us up, and that’s the last anyone will see of us."

Uclod made a disgusted sound. "So you don’t have a single useful signaling device?"

Kapoor shrugged. "The ship’s escape modules are perfectly fine. They all have homing beacons… but they’re old-fashioned radio. From here, it would take five years for transmissions to reach the closest inhabited planet. As for using the escape modules for travel — they don’t have FTL capability. They can put you into stasis so you won’t feel time passing, but it’ll be almost a century before you get back to civilization."

"Fat chance of that," Uclod said. "With the Shaddill still in the neighborhood, we won’t get back to civilization at all… especially not in rinky-dink emergency capsules with their beacons blaring, Here I am!" He leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. "We are right royally fucked."

Festina stared at him a moment, then turned her gaze to the captain. Kapoor only shrugged. "We can check all the systems to see if anything survived, but Captain’s Last Act is intended to be one hundred percent thorough. It even hits the storerooms that contain our spare parts. We can’t repair a thing."

"So," Festina said, "how long can we last without life support?"

"I don’t know," the captain said. He turned to the crew members around him. "Anyone here ever calculated how long the oxygen in a heavy cruiser lasts with a half-crew breathing it?"

Nobody answered.

"Well, Admiral," Kapoor turned back to Festina, "if this were a VR adventure, the captain would put on a somber face and say we’ve got twenty-four hours before the oxygen runs out. Damned if I know if that’s anywhere close — could be two hours, could be two hundred — but let’s go with dramatic tradition till our lungs tell us otherwise."

"Just bloody wonderful," Uclod said. "If twenty-four hours is anywhere close to correct, we’d better whip off a Mayday now. Even at that, we’ll be lucky to find a navy vessel close enough to reach us in time."

"But," I said, "there are many navy ships back at Melaquin, and that is not so far away."

"Missy," Uclod told me, "that is a whole heap too far away. When my dear baby Starbiter left Melaquin, she was traveling ten times faster than anything the human navy can do… and she held that speed for something like six hours, not to mention however far Hemlock has gone since picking us up. Those ships back at Melaquin can’t get to us in less than two and a half days; and I doubt if the Outward Fleet has any ships nearer. We’re a long way past the Technocracy’s usual stomping grounds — it’ll be a pure fluke if anyone gets to us in time." "It’s not quite that bad," Festina said. "The escape pods can put us into stasis and keep us alive indefinitely. When we run out of air here in the main ship, we’ll turn on our Mayday, ditch into the evac modules, and wait for someone to pick us up. But once we’re in stasis, we’re really sitting ducks… so let’s hold off on that while we try to solve our problem."

"Festina," I said as softly as I could, "what is our problem exactly? What is our Goal?"

She gazed at me a moment… and I wondered if she was mentally phrasing her answer in comprehensible words, or if she was debating why she should bother explaining the situation to such a grossly ignorant person. In many cases, Science-Oriented People respond dismissively toward those not of the Science faith — especially when the Science-Oriented People have decided that only extra special Science can save them.

But Festina was not cruel. After a few seconds, she answered, "We need a way to call for help. But all our equipment is either broken or it calls the wrong people." She smiled. "I don’t suppose you have a trans-light communicator in your back pocket, do you?"

I patted the pockets of the Explorer jacket. They all felt empty. "It seems I do not have such a device; but I know where to get one."

"New Earth," Uclod said gloomily.

"There is one much closer than that," I told him. "In Nimbus’s cabin."

"In…" Festina stopped as she realized what I meant.

"Zaretts," I said, "have the ability to make long-distance broadcasts. And we have an infant Zarett."

Without waiting for an answer, I headed off. I had been official communications officer on Starbiter Senior; I intended to assume the same role with Starbiter Junior.