Godspeed (novel)

Chapter 20

Looking back, I see my time inside Home as a dream, a strange period where everything was touched with fantasy.

Strangest of all, I had the illusion of safety. Certainly, I knew that danger walked the surface above my head, and at any moment some crewman might find a way to the interior. But everything else around me was so different from what I knew, danger became unreal, too. Inside Home I could think about Danny Shaker rationally, even affectionately, and wonder if I was totally misjudging him. As Mel Fury pointed out, Shaker had killed Sean Wilgus only to defend himself, and it was no more than his good fortune that he happened to have acquired Walter Hamilton’s gun to do it with. She did not see him as a cold-blooded killer. When she talked that way, I had trouble with the idea myself.

Well, all dreams ended six hours after my session with the controller. Reality came back like a plunge into cold lake water as I watched the circle of plant-covered earth descend toward me, stepped onto it, and was lifted through the access point to the drenched surface of Paddy’s Fortune.

I was dressed again in my torn and ragged clothes. They were clean now, but that would not last long in the mud and undergrowth. In my pockets I had Walter Hamilton’s electronic book and the new navigation aid. The hours of tutoring that Mel Fury had given me were not nearly enough, but at least I knew how to read out the coordinates and general information I needed. I would have liked instruction in the hundred other capabilities that the navaid possessed, but I dared not stay longer in the interior. The rain on the surface had ended. Danny Shaker, if no one else, would suspect the truth if the search for me continued unsuccessful for much longer.

Maveen was rising. In its pale dawn light I stared around me at the world of Paddy’s Fortune.

The tall vegetation was water-logged and bowed down, and the ground underfoot was a swamp into which I sank ankle-deep. The controller had certainly done its job in providing rain.

Now I had to do my job. When I described the plan to Mel Fury she frowned and shook her head, although I made it sound simple and straightforward. I would return to the surface at the access point closest to the cargo beetle in which I had landed. From there, according to the controller, all I had to do was head slightly north of east, almost toward the rising sun. In a few minutes I would see the beetle itself. Then it was a matter of lying low, waiting until the beetle was unattended so that I could go aboard. I was sure that I knew enough to fly it away from the surface of Paddy’s Fortune and up to the translucent shield. Even if I had trouble after that, I could send my warning to Doctor Eileen and the others aboard the Cuchulain.

Simple and straightforward—in principle. The trouble began with the first step I took on the surface. I had to assume that the crewmen were still hunting for me, so I dared not lift my head above the plants. But now the leaves were so heavy with water that the tops of the tallest plants came only to waist height. I had to squelch along doubled over, moving as silently as I could with one eye out for danger and the other on the golden circle of Maveen. Twice I had to detour sideways, to avoid a couple of the long, narrow crevices that were scattered across the surface of Paddy’s Fortune. In such low gravity I could probably have cleared them with a high, running jump, but I dared not take the risk of exposure.

After a few minutes the vegetation around me began to steam in the sunlight. Sweat trickled down my forehead and into my eyes. My body must have been sweating, too, but I couldn’t be sure because my clothes had been soaked through in the first steps.

Encouraging myself with the thought that at any moment I would see the cargo beetle, I plodded on.

And on, and on. Finally I stood up to my full height and stared ahead over the top of the plants. Nothing.

I stopped and squatted down on my haunches. It couldn’t be this far to the beetle. Somehow I had gone astray, too far north of east or not far enough.

I stood up, turned, and looked back the way I had come. As the rain water evaporated from the leaves of the plants they were beginning to lift and straighten. I might be able to follow my own track to the access point and start over—or I might not.

But there was really no choice. I had to go back. Otherwise I would be reduced to wandering randomly around the surface. Chances were that the crewmen would then find me long before I found the cargo beetle.

I stood upright, prepared to take a first disconsolate step.

And I saw the topmost leaves swaying, maybe twenty paces away and directly in front of me.

I froze. If I ran, the noise would make my presence obvious. If I did not, I would be caught without making any effort to escape.

The only other option was to stay and fight. That didn’t hold much hope, either, because even if the crewman following me was as weaponless as I was, any one of them was twice my size.

I took a couple of steps back along my own faint track, eased into a small gap between the plants that grew beside it, and as an afterthought bent down and scooped up a double handful of wet mud. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it was all I had.

I waited.

And heard nothing. It seemed incredible that any of the hulking crewmen, wheezing and broken-winded as they were, could be moving so silently toward me. Maybe what I had seen was no more than one of the little native animals, bustling along at the base of the plants and making their tops shake.

I stood with muscles locked, unable even to wipe the sweat from my eyes. Then, when I had to move or die of unrelieved tension, the curtain of leaves in front of me was swept aside.

“I knew it!” A familiar voice whispered, right in my ear. “You goofbrain. You’re totally lost, aren’t you?”

I dropped my handful of wet mud, though now I almost wish I had thrown it. Because peering in on me, grinning all over her bony and self-satisfied face, was Mel Fury.

She was mud-spattered and sweaty but she wasn’t nervous and breathless, as I was. Mostly, she seemed terribly pleased with herself.

“What do you mean, why did I follow you,” she said. “Don’t forget I’ve seen you blundering around out here before. You may have fooled the controller, saying you knew what you were doing, but you sure didn’t fool me.”

“You’ll be in trouble when you go back.” We were both talking in whispers.

“Of course I will. Big trouble. If I go back.”

“You can’t come! You mustn’t follow me any more.”

“Follow you!” Her voice was fiercely indignant. “You dummy. If you’re going anywhere on this world, I’ll have to lead you.”

I didn’t argue, because she was right. Paddy’s Fortune was her home ground, and in her rambles she had been over every square meter of it. She knew exactly where we were, exactly how to get to the cargo beetle with minimal exposure. I knew neither where I was, nor where I was going.

We set out, I following in her footsteps as silently as possible. In less than five minutes, she paused. With one finger she pointed up. I saw the top of a cargo beetle, and realized that we were moving through the tall purple-flowered succulent plants that I had seen on our first landing.

I moved to Mel’s side and leaned to put my mouth near her close-cropped head. “Is there anyone aboard?”

“How would I know?” Her whisper had the rising tone of irritation. “You should be able to answer that question a lot better than I can.”

She was right. But I couldn’t. It was something else I had not thought through before I left the interior. I think it was embarrassment more than anything that gave me the resolve to take the next step. I would have to learn the answer to my own question the hard way.

“Wait here. And I mean wait. Don’t move!”

I crept forward, until I could see the whole of the cargo beetle and the area in front of its entry port. There was no sign of anyone now, but plenty of evidence of earlier activity. The plants in the area around the port were trampled flat, and the ground beneath them was mashed into mud like a hog wallow.

I could guess what had happened. When the heavy rain began, the crewmen would have refused to remain unsheltered on the open surface. They would have rushed back here, and waited in the cargo beetle until the storm was over. Then they had gone off again to hunt me down.

The big question was, had anyone stayed behind, to sleep or eat or keep watch?

I couldn’t answer that. All I could do was wait, knowing that Mel Fury was becoming more and more impatient behind me. At last I couldn’t stand it any longer myself. I tiptoed forward through the disgusting squishy mud, until I could stand at the side window and see through to the interior. It was completely empty, and the rush of relief that gave me is indescribable.

I turned and nodded. It was not necessary to speak—Mel was sure to be watching my every move. Without waiting for her to appear I went to the hatch and climbed into the beetle.

As soon as I was inside I knew that I had been right. The crew had been here during the rain—there was mud and mess everywhere. But the area over by the control panel was relatively clear, and that was all I cared about. I went across to it and scanned it briefly, making sure that I knew what I had to do to take off. I didn’t want another debacle, when I stood baffled and Mel Fury snootily watched my hopeless incompetence.

In less than half a minute I knew it was going to be all right. I could fly the beetle, no doubt about it.

I turned in triumph to Mel, who was climbing in through the hatch, wiping her shoes fastidiously at the entrance and slipping off her brown leather backpack. She stared around in disgust at the mess.

“Don’t your robots take care of this for you?” she complained. “It’s revolting.”

“No robots here. But never mind that now.” She was moving too slowly for my taste. “Come on, Mel, close that door and let’s go. We can worry about cleaning up later.”

“No need for hurry, Jay,” a deeper voice said.

I went rigid with surprise and horror, and ran for the hatch.

It was too late. Danny Shaker, neat as the cabin was messy, was already stepping into the beetle. As I watched, he turned and slammed the hatch shut.

“There,” he said. “I’m sure that’s what you were proposing to do anyway. But let’s make it with me inside, shall we, and not out?”

It was absolutely typical of Danny Shaker. The other three crew members had been mad with impatience during the long rain storm, and at the end of it had insisted on dashing out to search for me. He had gone outside, too—about twenty steps. There he had made himself comfortable, and waited.

“It’s the old principle, Jay,” he said. “If you want to catch a bear, one way is to go and thrash through the woods looking. That’s what the lads insisted on doing, they can’t bear inaction. But an easier way is to set out a delicacy the bear wants more than anything else in the world, and then sit by it and wait. This cargo beetle was what you wanted most of all, to take you back to the Cuchulain and Doctor Xavier. How could you possibly have resisted it?”

He smiled at me, then nodded his head toward Mel. “But I must say, it was a real surprise for you to show up with a friend. You found a way to the interior, didn’t you? And now I have to ask myself the important question: Is the inside of this worldlet Godspeed Base, and did you find a Godspeed Drive?”

Shaker was sitting in the pilot’s chair, where I had been. Mel and I stood against the beetle wall, farthest from the port. He had told us to do that, and although I saw no sign of a weapon neither Mel nor I made any move to rush him. She didn’t know him, and I knew him too well.

“It’s not,” I said desperately. “I mean, it’s not Godspeed Base, and there’s no Godspeed Drive here.”

“Mm.” Shaker sat rocking in the swivel seat, fondling his biceps. “Nice to see you so cooperative, but you weren’t listening closely. I said, I had to ask myself that question, not you.” He pointed a finger at Mel. “What’s your name?”

“Mel—Mel… Fury.” No cockiness in her expression now.

“Well, Mel Fury, there’s an old technique I’ve used often in the past to make sure people are telling the truth.”

I gasped, and he glanced at me reprovingly.

“Now really, Jay, you should know better than to suspect me of barbarism. I’m talking of something quick, and painless, and just about foolproof. I want you, Jay, to go outside for a few minutes. And Mel, you stay here with me. Don’t be afraid, all I want from you are answers to a few questions. And you, Jay, you can run away if you want to, but I wouldn’t advise it. The others of the crew don’t believe in the refined approach. Get outside now, and close the hatch. Be quick. For your sake, we want this all over and done with before anyone else gets back here.”

I looked at Mel. With her backpack and her skinny, muddied legs and short hair, she didn’t resemble any girl from Erin. I wanted to tell her, “Make him think you’re a boy! Whatever you do, don’t let him suspect that you or anyone else here is a female.”

But there was no way to say anything to her at all without Danny Shaker catching every word. I went reluctantly through the hatch and stood outside leaning on the hull of the beetle. Even with my ear pressed against it, I could not hear what was said inside.

The wait seemed endless, though I know from the changing angle of Maveen in the sky that it was no more than a few minutes until the hatch slid open and Shaker was saying, “All right, Jay, back inside.”

Mel was sitting down now. Shaker nodded his head toward her and said, “See. Good as ever. So it’s your turn, Jay. What do you have to tell me about what you learned when you were inside Paddy’s Fortune?”

It was obvious what he was doing. If Mel and I were telling the truth, we would have to be consistent with each other. But what had he asked her, and what had she told him?

I made the hardest decision of my life. To keep Danny Shaker and his crew away from the inside of this world, I had to offer something better. Doctor Eileen would have fits if she knew what I was going to do, but I had no choice.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the navigation aid. “I learned that Paddy’s Fortune isn’t Godspeed Base. But a Godspeed Base and a Godspeed Drive may still exist, at a place called the Net, which seems to be some kind of hardware storage facility. The instructions to get there are inside this.”

Danny Shaker took the aid from my hand and stared at it, with no trace of expression on his smooth face. “Did you get this from Paddy Enderton?”

“No.” It was a good thing to be able to answer him honestly, because I was never a good liar. “It’s like something that Enderton had, but I got this one here.”

“You know how to use it?”

“I do. But Mel—he knows it better than I do.” There. I had slipped in one lie after all.

“Does he now.” Shaker turned his sparkling grey eyes to Mel and inspected her closely, while I wondered if I had made another mistake. What I had just said made Mel less likely to be killed, but more likely to be taken away with Shaker from Paddy’s Fortune. But hadn’t I made it more likely that I myself would be killed, since I had just stated that Mel was better qualified to use the aid than I was? Surely we would both be useful, even if only as backups to each other.

“Outside. Both of you, this time.” Shaker spoke before I had time to consider further permutations. “I need five minutes solo thinking. Stay right by the hatch, now, or don’t hold me responsible for the consequences.”

He didn’t bother to suggest what those might be, and I didn’t choose to ask. As soon as we were outside again and the hatch was closed, I turned to Mel. We might not have much time to ourselves, and there were things that had to be said.

“Does he realize you’re a girl?”

“Huh?”

At last I had managed to surprise her. “No matter what else Danny Shaker learns, he must never know that you are a female. None of the crew must even suspect it. Ever. Understand?”

“No.”

“You will, but I’ve no time to explain now. You didn’t tell him?”

“That I’m a girl? No. It never came up. But he asked me if there were females inside Home.”

“What did you tell him?”

“The truth, the same as you did—except when you called me a he. I said that there are. But I didn’t say we’re all females. Look, I don’t see why you’re so terrified of lying to him. I’m not.”

“That’s because you don’t know him. He’s smart.”

“I can see that.”

“Deadly smart.”

“Then why are we standing talking, instead of running away?”

It was a question without a simple answer. Because I was convinced that Shaker would find a way to track us down? Certainly. Because I felt that Shaker was our only defense against the rest of the Cuchulain’s crew? That too. I knew it for a fact in my case, and Mel’s sex put her even more at risk. The only place we could run to was the interior of Paddy’s Fortune, and that would expose everyone in Home to the risk that we ran now.

Maybe that was the strongest reason of all, but I had no time to explain any of this to Mel, because the hatch of the beetle was sliding open again. Danny Shaker’s head poked out.

“I have a problem,” he said. “Come on in, and let me tell you about it. I think I need your help.”

Mel stared at me. He has a problem? said her look. But she climbed back in through the hatch without a word, and sat down next to me where Danny Shaker indicated.

He sat down opposite us, and began rubbing the fingers of his right hand over the top of the navaid. “First, let me clear a few things out of the way. I don’t know how to work this gadget—I don’t even see how to turn it on. But I believe that the two of you understand it, and can make it work. Second, I accept that this world is not Godspeed Base. Actually, I decided that for myself a long time ago. Paddy’s Fortune, inside or outside, does not contain a Godspeed Drive. What it does contain I’ll come to in a moment, when I tell you my problem.

“Now, the two of you were told that if we follow the directions provided by this thing I’m holding, we’ll be led to the real Godspeed Base. Fair enough. You may be right, and we may find a Godspeed Drive there. I’m not sure I believe it, though I believe you believe it. So we have the classic question: The value of the bird in the hand, this world, against the value of the bird in the bush, Godspeed Base.”

I knew what Danny Shaker was saying, but apparently Mel didn’t, because he looked at her and said, “Sorry, I’ll try to make it clearer. What I know I will find inside this world has value. What I may find if we go somewhere else in the Maze could have enormously more value—almost infinite value, you might say, because I don’t know how I would begin to put a price on it. That means there’s a calculation to be done: the value of what we have here, compared with the value of what we may find elsewhere, multiplied by the chance that it’s there when we arrive. All right?”

Mel nodded.

“Well, I’ve done that calculation, and the result isn’t even close. If it were up to me alone, I’d go for the risk and the big prize. I’d take the coordinates you two feed us, and head for a new destination and the Godspeed Base. But now let me tell you my problem.”

Shaker looked right at me, and smiled as though I was his best friend in the world. “I think Jay recognizes it already. It’s my crew. I told them at the start of all this that we were heading out to find wealth. Somehow that got twisted, so all they ever cared about was that we would find women. Wealth to women, see, and nothing I’ve been able to say has changed that. At the moment they’re as mad as hell at me, because after coming all this way there’s been not a sign of a female. They’re close to mutiny. And now I want them to buckle down to more hard work in space, heading for another unknown destination. That will be uphill work. But I might be able to do it anyway, mixing force and persuasion, so to speak—so long as they never suspect there are women to be found right here.” He pointed his index finger directly down. “No more than a few steps, right, if you head in the correct direction? The big job is to find an entry point, but once you know one exists that’s just a matter of time. If the lads knew that, they’d go mad. And I’d never get them away from here, except maybe back to Erin with their prizes. I’m quite sure we’d not be making another trip to seek Godspeed Base.

“So now let me pull it all together, and tell you how you can help. Number one: I need Mel Fury to work with the gadget here, but as far as the crew are concerned Mel Fury mustn’t even exist. They have to think that this world is no more than the way it looks from the surface, wild and uninhabited. Certainly with no people.”

“But it’s an artificial world,” I objected. “Obviously something inside must keep it going.”

“Obvious to you, Jay. But I’ve told you before, you’re an exception.”

I felt ridiculously pleased at the compliment, and wondered why.

“But most don’t think that way,” Danny Shaker went on, “so I don’t see that as a problem. The existence of Mel Fury is a problem, though, and that means we have a secret to keep. Mel must be hidden here on the cargo beetle before the crew return—no problem there, I can find a dozen hiding places—and stay out of sight until we get to the Cuchulain and are on our way again. All right?”

Mel nodded. I had the feeling that Danny Shaker had her practically hypnotized, but I didn’t blame her for that. I had been there myself.

He smiled, as though Mel had just done him the biggest favor in the world, rather than having no choice but to do whatever he said. He turned to me. “As for you, Jay, you’ll have to say you gave yourself up, voluntary-like, after nearly starving and dying out on the surface in the rain. And you’ll say that after talking with me you want in with us, instead of sticking with Eileen Xavier. I’ll tell the crew you gave me this”—he held up the navaid—“that Doctor Eileen had, and that used to belong to Paddy Enderton. But now here’s the hardest part.” His voice became soft, and he looked right into my eyes. “If we’re to carry this off, Jay, Doctor Eileen has to think that way, too. She must believe you’ve betrayed her. Or it won’t work. Can you do it?”

The honest answer was, I didn’t know. But I really had no choice, any more than Mel had a choice. What would happen to us if we said no? I had a strong suspicion, but I didn’t want to prove I was right.

“I can do it,” I said firmly.

What he was asking of me would be unpleasant, especially when I had to face Doctor Eileen, but it didn’t sound too difficult. And it seemed to me that Mel and I were coming out of this unbelievably better than I could have imagined just half an hour earlier.

For one thing—the main thing—we were alive. And now we would be operating with the protection of Danny Shaker himself. Not only that, we had kept the girls in the interior of Paddy’s Fortune out of the hands of the crew of the Cuchulain. I understood what that meant, even if Mel did not. It was a major achievement.

As Shaker discussed where to stow Mel safely out of the way in the cargo beetle, in a place where no one was likely to look for her, I felt nothing but relief. And the image of him that I had tried to paint for Mel, as a deadly, heartless killer, was one that I no longer found credible.

Why didn’t I question more closely, at least to myself, Shaker’s own motives in all of this?

I have no excuses, though I know I was ignoring Tom Toole’s comment, that the Chief was a deep one. And I had forgotten, or at least managed to push to the back of my mind, Danny Shaker’s own words to his crew, back on board the Cuchulain, “I’ll take the possible value of a live something over the guaranteed zero value of a dead one.”

Maybe that was it. Maybe I refused to reduce my own self-image to that of a mere live something.