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Melantha smiled over the rim of her brandy glass. “I’m sure you do. Now listen to me. All of you are anxious about Royd, it seems. You can’t stand not knowing whatever it is he’s concealing. Rojan has been making up stories for weeks, and he’s ready to believe any of them. Alys is so nervous she cut her finger off. We’re squabbling constantly. Fears like that won’t help us work together as a team. Let’s end them. Easy enough.” She pointed to Thale. “Here sits a class one telepath. Boost his power with esperon and he’ll be able to recite our captain’s life history to us, until we’re all suitably bored with it. Meanwhile he’ll also be vanquishing his personal demons.”
“He’s watching us,” the telepath said in a low, urgent voice.
“No,” said Karoly d’Branin, “we must keep Thale dampened.”
“Karoly,” Christopheris said, “this has gone too far. Several of us are nervous and this boy is terrified. I believe we all need an end to the mystery of Royd Eris. For once, Melantha is right.”
“We have no right,” d’Branin said.
“We have the need,” said Lommie Thorne. “I agree with Melantha.”
“Yes,” echoed Alys Northwind. The two linguists were nodding.
D’Branin thought regretfully of his promise to Royd. They were not giving him any choice. His eyes met those of the psipsych, and he sighed. “Do it, then,” he said. “Get him the esperon.”
“He’s going to kill me.” Thale Lasamer screamed. He leapt to his feet, and when Lommie Thorne tried to calm him with a hand on his arm, he seized a cup of coffee and threw it square in her face. It took three of them to hold him down. “Hurry,” Christopheris barked, as the telepath struggled.
Marij-Black shuddered and left the lounge.
When she returned, the others had lifted Lasamer to the table and forced him down, pulling aside his long pale hair to bare the arteries in his neck.
Marij-Black moved to his side.
“Stop that,” Royd said. “There is no need.”
His ghost shimmered into being in its empty chair at the head of the long dinner table. The psipsych froze in the act of slipping an ampule of esperon into her injection gun, and Alys Northwind startled visibly and released one of Lasamer’s arms. The captive did not pull free. He lay on the table, breathing heavily, his pale blue eyes fixed glassily on Royd’s projection, transfixed by the vision of his sudden materialization.
Melantha Jhirl lifted her brandy glass in salute. “Boo,” she said. “You’ve missed dinner, captain.”
“Royd,” said Karoly d’Branin, “I am sorry.”
The ghost stared unseeing at the far wall. “Release him,” said the voice from the communicators. “I will tell you my great secrets, if my privacy intimidates you so.”
“He has been watching us,” Dannel said.
“We’re listening,” Northwind said suspiciously. “What are you?”
“I liked your guess about the gas giants,” Royd said. “Sadly, the truth is less dramatic. I am an ordinary homo sapien in middle age. Sixty-eight standard, if you require precision. The hologram you see before you is the real Royd Eris, or was so some years ago. I am somewhat older now, but I use computer simulation to project a more youthful appearance to my guests.”
“Oh?” Lommie Thorne’s face was red where the coffee had scalded her. “Then why the secrecy?”
“I will begin the tale with my mother,” Royd replied. “The Nightflyer was her ship originally, custom-built to her design in the Newholme spaceyards. My mother was a freetrader, a notably successful one. She was born trash on a world called Vess, which is a very long way from here, although perhaps some of you have heard of it. She worked her way up, position by position, until she won her own command. She soon made a fortune through a willingness to accept the unusual consignment, fly off the major trade routes, take her cargo a month or a year or two years beyond where it was customarily transferred. Such practices are riskier but more profitable than flying the mail runs. My mother did not worry about how often she and her crews returned home. Her ships were her home. She forgot about Vess as soon as she left it, and seldom visited the same world twice if she could avoid it.”
“Adventurous,” Melantha Jhirl said.
“No,” said Royd. “Sociopathic. My mother did not like people, you see. Not at all. Her crews had no love for her, nor she for them. Her one great dream was to free herself from the necessity of crew altogether. When she grew rich enough, she had it done. The Nightflyer was the result. After she boarded it at Newholme, she never touched a human being again, or walked a planet’s surface. She did all her business from the compartments that are now mine, by viewscreen or lasercom. You would call her insane. You would be right.” The ghost smiled faintly. “She did have an interesting life, though, even after her isolation. The worlds she saw, Karoly! The things she might have told you would break your heart, but you’ll never hear them. She destroyed most of her records for fear that other people might get some use or pleasure from her experiences after her death. She was like that.”
“And you?” asked Alys Northwind.
“She must have touched at least one other human being,” Lindran put in, with a smile.
“I should not call her my mother,” Royd said. “I am her cross-sex clone. After thirty years of flying this ship alone, she was bored. I was to be her companion and lover. She could shape me to be a perfect diversion. She had no patience with children, however, and no desire to raise me herself. After she had done the cloning, I was sealed in a nurturant tank, an embryo linked into her computer. It was my teacher. Before birth and after. I had no birth, really. Long after the time a normal child would have been born, I remained in the tank, growing, learning, on slow-time, blind and dreaming and living through tubes. I was to be released when I had attained the age of puberty, at which time she guessed I would be fit company.”
“How horrible,” Karoly d’Branin said. “Royd, my friend, I did not know.”
“I’m sorry, captain,” Melantha Jhirl said. “You were robbed of your childhood.”
“I never missed it,” Royd said. “Nor her. Her plans were all futile, you see. She died a few months after the cloning, when I was still a fetus in the tank. She had programmed the ship for such an eventuality, however. It dropped out of drive and shut down, drifted in interstellar space for eleven standard years while the computer made me—” He stopped, smiling. “I was going to say while the computer made me a human being. Well, while the computer made me whatever I am, then. That was how I inherited the Nightflyer. When I was born, it took me some months to acquaint myself with the operation of the ship and my own origins.”
“Fascinating,” said Karoly d’Branin.
“Yes,” said the linguist Lindran, “but it doesn’t explain why you keep yourself in isolation.”
“Ah, but it does,” Melantha Jhirl said. “Captain, perhaps you should explain further for the less improved models?”
“My mother hated planets,” Royd said. “She hated stinks and dirt and bacteria, the irregularity of the weather, the sight of other people. She engineered for us a flawless environment, as sterile as she could possibly make it. She disliked gravity as well. She was accustomed to weightlessness from years of service on ancient freetraders that could not afford gravity grids, and she preferred it. These were the conditions under which I was born and raised.
“My body has no immune systems, no natural resistance to anything. Contact with any of you would probably kill me, and would certainly make me very sick. My muscles are feeble, in a sense atrophied. The gravity the Nightflyer is now generating is for your comfort, not mine. To me it is agony. At this moment the real me is seated in a floating chair that supports my weight. I still hurt, and my internal organs may be suffering damage. It is one reason why I do not often take on passengers.”
“You share your mother’s opinion of the run of humanity?” asked Marij-Black.
“I do not. I like people. I accept what I am, but I did not choose it. I experience human life in the only way I can, vicariously. I am a voracious consumer of books, tapes, holoplays, fictions and drama and histories of all sorts. I have experimented with dreamdust. And infrequently, when I dare, I carry passengers. At those times, I drink in as much of their lives as I can.”
“If you kept your ship under weightlessness at all times, you could take on more riders,” suggested Lommie Thorne.
“True,” Royd said politely. “I have found, however, that most planet-born are as uncomfortable weightless as I am under gravity. A ship master who does not have artificial gravity, or elects not to use it, attracts few riders. The exceptions often spend much of the voyage sick or drugged. No. I could also mingle with my passengers, I know, if I kept to my chair and wore a sealed environ-wear suit. I have done so. I find it lessens my participation instead of increasing it. I become a freak, a maimed thing, one who must be treated differently and kept at a distance. These things do not suit my purpose. I prefer isolation. As often as I dare, I study the aliens I take on as riders.”
“Aliens?” Northwind’s voice was confused.
“You are all aliens to me,” Royd answered.
Silence filled the Nightflyer’s lounge.
“I am sorry this has happened, my friend,” Karoly d’Branin said. “We ought not have intruded on your personal affairs.”
“Sorry,” muttered Agatha Marij-Black. She frowned and pushed the ampule of esperon into the injection chamber. “Well, it’s glib enough, but is it the truth? We still have no proof, just a new bedtime story. The hologram could have claimed it was a creature from Jupiter, a computer, or a diseased war criminal just as easily. We have no way of verifying anything that he’s said. No – we have one way, rather.” She took two quick steps forward to where Thale Lasamer lay on the table. “He still needs treatment and we still need confirmation, and I don’t see any sense in stopping now after we’ve gone this far. Why should we live with all this anxiety if we can end it all now?” Her hand pushed the telepath’s unresisting head to one side. She found the artery and pressed the gun to it.
“Agatha,” said Karoly d’Branin. “Don’t you think … perhaps we should forego this, now that Royd …?”
“NO.” Royd said. “Stop. I order it. This is my ship. Stop, or …”
“… or what?” The gun hissed loudly, and there was a red mark on the telepath’s neck when she lifted it away.
Lasamer raised himself to a half-sitting position, supported by his elbows, and Marij-Black moved close to him. “Thale,” she said in her best professional tones, “focus on Royd. You can do it, we all know how good you are. Wait just a moment, the esperon will open it all up for you.”
His pale blue eyes were clouded. “Not close enough,” he muttered. “One, I’m one, tested. Good, you know I’m good, but I got to be close.” He trembled.
The psipsych put an arm around him, stroked him, coaxed him. “The esperon will give you range, Thale,” she said. “Feel it, feel yourself grow stronger. Can you feel it? Everything’s getting clear, isn’t it?” Her voice was a reassuring drone. “You can hear what I’m thinking, I know you can, but never mind that. The others too, push them aside, all that chatter, thoughts, desires, fear. Push it all aside. Remember the danger now? Remember? Go find it, Thale, go find the danger. Look beyond the wall there, tell us what it’s like beyond the wall. Tell us about Royd. Was he telling the truth? Tell us. You’re good, we all know that, you can tell us.” The phrases were almost an incantation.
He shrugged off her support and sat upright by himself. “I can feel it,” he said. His eyes were suddenly clearer. “Something – my head hurts – I’m afraid!”
“Don’t be afraid,” said Marij-Black. “The esperon won’t make your head hurt, it just makes you better. We’re all here with you. Nothing to fear.” She stroked his brow. “Tell us what you see.”
Thale Lasamer looked at Royd’s ghost with terrified little-boy eyes, and his tongue flicked across his lower lips. “He’s—”
Then his skull exploded.
Hysteria and confusion.
The telepath’s head had burst with awful force, splattering them all with blood and bits of bone and flesh. His body thrashed madly on the tabletop for a long instant, blood spurting from the arteries in his neck in a crimson stream, his limbs twitching in a macabre dance. His head had simply ceased to exist, but he would not be still.
Agatha Marij-Black, who had been standing closest to him, dropped her injection gun and stood slack-mouthed. She was drenched with his blood, covered with pieces of flesh and brain. Beneath her right eye, a long sliver of bone had penetrated her skin, and her own blood was mingling with his. She did not seem to notice.
Rojan Christopheris fell over backwards, scrambled to his feet, and pressed himself hard against the wall.
Dannel screamed, and screamed, and screamed, until Lindran slapped him hard across a blood-smeared cheek and told him to be quiet.
Alys Northwind dropped to her knees and began to mumble a prayer in a strange tongue.
Karoly d’Branin sat very still, staring, blinking, his chocolate cup forgotten in his hand.
“Do something,” Lommie Thorne moaned. “Somebody do something.” One of Lasamer’s arms moved feebly, and brushed against her. She shrieked and pulled away.
Melantha Jhirl pushed aside her brandy snifter. “Control yourself,” she snapped. “He’s dead, he can’t hurt you.”
They all looked at her, but for d’Branin and Marij-Black, both of whom seemed frozen in shock. Royd’s projection had vanished at some point, Melantha realized suddenly. She began to give orders. “Dannel, Lindran, Rojan – find a sheet or something to wrap him in, and get him out of here. Alys, you and Lommie get some water and sponges. We’ve got to clean up.” Melantha moved to d’Branin’s side as the others rushed to do as she had told them. “Karoly,” she said, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder, “are you all right, Karoly?”
He looked up at her, grey eyes blinking. “I – yes, yes, I am – I told her not to go ahead, Melantha. I told her.”
“Yes you did,” Melantha Jhirl said. She gave him a reassuring pat and moved around the table to Agatha Marij-Black. “Agatha,” she called. But the psipsych did not respond, not even when Melantha shook her bodily by the shoulders. Her eyes were empty. “She’s in shock,” Melantha announced. She frowned at the sliver of bone protruding from Marij-Black’s cheek. Sponging off her face with a napkin, she carefully removed the splinter.
“What do we do with the body?” asked Lindran. They had found a sheet and wrapped it up. It had finally stopped twitching, although blood continued to seep out, turning the concealing sheet red.
“Put it in a cargo hold,” suggested Christopheris.
“No,” Melantha said, “not sanitary. It will rot.” She thought for a moment. “Suit up and take it down to the driveroom. Cycle it through and lash it in place somehow. Tear up the sheet if you have to. That section of the ship is vacuum. It will be best there.”
Christopheris nodded, and the three of them moved off, the dead weight of Lasamer’s corpse supported between them. Melantha turned back to Marij-Black, but only for an instant. Lommie Thorne, who was mopping the blood from the tabletop with a piece of cloth, suddenly began to retch violently. Melantha swore. “Someone help her,” she snapped.
Karoly d’Branin finally seemed to stir. He rose and took the blood-soaked cloth from Lommie’s hand, and led her away back to his cabin.
“I can’t do this alone,” whined Alys Northwind, turning away in disgust.
“Help me, then,” Melantha said. Together she and Northwind half-led and half-carried the psipsych from the lounge, cleaned her and undressed her, and put her to sleep with a shot of one of her own drugs. Afterwards Melantha took the injection gun and made the rounds. Northwind and Lommie Thorne required mild tranquilizers, Dannel a somewhat stronger one.
It was three hours before they met again.
The survivors assembled in the largest of the cargo holds, where three of them hung their sleepwebs. Seven of eight attended. Agatha Marij-Black was still unconscious, sleeping or in a coma or deep shock; none of them were sure. The rest seemed to have recovered, though their faces were pale and drawn. All of them had changed clothes, even Alys Northwind, who had slipped into a new jumpsuit identical to the old one.
“I do not understand,” Karoly d’Branin said. “I do not understand what …”
“Royd killed him, is all,” Northwind said bitterly. “His secret was endangered so he just – just blew him apart. We all saw it.”
“I cannot believe that,” Karoly d’Branin said in an anguished voice. “I cannot. Royd and I, we have talked, talked many a night when the rest of you were sleeping. He is gentle, inquisitive, sensitive. A dreamer. He understands about the volcryn: He would not do such a thing, could not.”
“His projection certainly winked out quick enough when it happened,” Lindran said. “And you’ll notice he hasn’t had much to say since.”
“The rest of us haven’t been unusually talkative either,” said Melantha Jhirl. “I don’t know what to think, but my impulse is to side with Karoly. We have no proof that the captain was responsible for Thale’s death. There’s something here none of us understands yet.”
Alys Northwind grunted. “Proof,” she said disdainfully.
“In fact,” Melantha continued unperturbed, “I’m not even sure anyone is responsible. Nothing happened until he was given the esperon. Could the drug be at fault?”
“Hell of a side-effect,” Lindran muttered.
Rojan Christopheris frowned. “This is not my field, but I would think, no. Esperon is extremely potent, with both physical and psionic side-effects verging on the extreme, but not that extreme.”
“What, then?” said Lommie Thorne. “What killed him?”
“The instrument of death was probably his own talent,” the xenobiologist said, “undoubtedly augmented by his drug. Besides boosting his principle power, his telepathic sensitivity, esperon would also tend to bring out other psi-talents that might have been latent in him.”
“Such as?” Lommie demanded.
“Biocontrol. Telekinesis.”
Melantha Jhirl was way ahead of him. “Esperon shoots blood pressure way up anyway. Increase the pressure in his skull even more by rushing all the blood in his body to his brain. Decrease the air pressure around his head simultaneously, using teke to induce a short-lived vacuum. Think about it.”
They thought about it, and none of them liked it.
“Who could do such a thing?” Karoly d’Branin said. “It could only have been self-induced, his own talent wild out of control.”
“Or turned against him by a greater talent,” Alys Northwind said stubbornly.
“No human telepath has talent on that order, to seize control of someone else, body and mind and soul, even for an instant.”
“Exactly,” the stout xenotech replied. “No human telepath.”
“Gas giant people?” Lommie Thorne’s tone was mocking.
Alys Northwind stared her down. “I could talk about Crey sensitives or githyanki soulsucks, name a half-dozen others off the top of my head, but I don’t need to. I’ll only name one. A Hrangan Mind.”
That was a disquieting thought. All of them fell silent and stirred uneasily, thinking of the vast, inimicable power of a Hrangan Mind hidden in the command chambers of the Nightflyer, until Melantha Jhirl broke the spell with a short, derisive laugh. “You’re frightening yourself with shadows, Alys,” she said. “What you’re saying is ridiculous, if you stop to think about it. I hope that isn’t too much to ask. You’re supposed to be xenologists, the lot of you, experts in alien languages, psychology, biology, technology. You don’t act the part. We warred with Old Hranga for a thousand years, but we never communicated successfully with a Hrangan Mind. If Royd Eris is a Hrangan, they’ve improved their conversational skills markedly in the centuries since the Collapse.”
Alys Northwind flushed. “You’re right,” she said. “I’m jumpy.”
“Friends,” said Karoly d’Branin, “we must not let our actions be dictated by panic or hysteria. A terrible thing has happened. One of our colleagues is dead, and we do not know why. Until we do, we can only go on. This is no time for rash actions against the innocent. Perhaps, when we return to Avalon, an investigation will tell us what happened. The body is safe for examination, is it not?”
“We cycled it through the airlock into the driveroom,” Dannel said. “It’ll keep.”
