Starship Alchemon Read online

  Ericho nodded and considered other possibilities. Rigel was out. LeaMarsa noticeably disliked him.

  “Hardy wouldn’t do,” June mused. “He sees her in terms of career advancement and practically treats her like a lackey.”

  “Jonomy?”

  “Strictly a solo exerciser. And lately he’s not even doing that much. Instead, he’s been spending an inordinate amount of time engaging with dreamlounge fantasies.”

  Ericho was surprised. “How’d you find that out?”

  “At his request, we’ve had some psych sessions.” June hesitated. “This is touching on areas of doctor-patient confidentiality. I’d rather not say more.”

  Medical ethics had permitted her to divulge details about Donner because of what had occurred on the bridge. A potential threat to a captain trumped confidentiality issues.

  Still, Ericho couldn’t help but be concerned at the idea of a lytic having psych sessions. The breed tended to behave more like AIs than humans, which was in some ways comforting given their level of control over systems and networks.

  “That leaves only one possibility,” June said, getting the discussion back on track.

  “Alexei.”

  “He’s the closest in age to LeaMarsa. More importantly, his lack of psionic abilities means that she shouldn’t be able to influence him in that way. Will you talk to him?”

  Ericho hesitated.

  “You wouldn’t have to make it an order. Alexei looks up to you. A subtle suggestion presented with just the right touch of paternal encouragement should do the trick.”

  “Let me think about it.”

  Ericho rose from the sofa. He was due on the bridge in ten minutes to start his shift. But as he headed for the door he hesitated and turned back to June.

  “What was your nightmare about?”

  For a long moment she didn’t respond. Finally…

  “Would you mind if we didn’t talk about it right now? The feelings are still close to the surface.”

  “No problem. Maybe later.”

  He headed for the bridge, feeling more anxiety for a ship and its crew than he had in his entire career.

  CHAPTER 7

  LeaMarsa awoke lying at the edge of the pool with knees dangling over the padded lip and feet submerged in the cool liquid. Ultraviolet refractors dotted the natatorium walls. The overhead dome was tinted blue and overlaid with televised stratus clouds in imitation of an Earth sky.

  It didn’t remind her of home.

  Fighting sluggishness, she adjusted a fallen strap on her one-piece bather and struggled to her feet.

  Two figures splashed noisily in the water. She ignored them, stumbled between two multifunction exercise machines that resembled a pair of slumbering octopi and onto a winding path amid a garden of roses and hyacinths. She tabbed “lemonade” on the dispenser, downed the beverage in five quick gulps and crushed the cup. It disintegrated into powdery gases, recycling itself into the atmosphere before any remnants could touch the floor.

  An analog clock above the door revealed she’d been asleep nearly an hour, which explained why her legs from the knees down were pruned. She’d come for a swim but after only a few laps had been overcome by tiredness.

  “LeaMarsa!”

  The male voice emanated from the water and was followed by a loud splash. She ambled back to the rim, stared at the two figures swimming toward her.

  Alexei Two Guns hopped from the pool and shook his head, sending a fine spray of water from reddish hair styled unfashionably long like her own. The tech trainee was a bit taller than LeaMarsa. Slim and deeply tanned, he was naked except for a yellow crotchpad.

  “We need a third for waterball,” Alexei said, gesturing to Faye in the water. “Come in and get wet.”

  “No thanks.”

  “Don’t think about it, LeaMarsa. Just do it!”

  Alexei was pleasant enough, but she didn’t understand how a person could be so relentlessly exuberant. And since yesterday he seemed to be hanging around her an awful lot, pushing her toward doing physical exercise with him.

  Did he want more than that? Sex? She couldn’t be sure. His intentions remained unclear. Odder than that, they seemed to have come out of the blue, as if he was following some mandate rather than his feelings.

  Yesterday, during a random encounter in the updeck corridor near her cabin, he’d complimented her for wearing a simple skirt and blouse. The apparel, outputted from a PYG receptacle, was a generic ensemble she’d selected from among the thousands of fashion templates stored in the primary genesis complex. It wasn’t even smart clothing. As usual, and against PYG’s recommendation, she’d chosen the nano-free option.

  Alexei had seen her dressed in such attire since the outset of the voyage and had never before said a word, which made the praise all the more bizarre, as did his subsequent proposal that they go swimming together. In any event, since that brief infatuation with the captain at the start of the voyage, she’d had no desire for sex, if that’s indeed what he was awkwardly leading up to.

  Faye propped her arms on the pool’s lip and rested her chin in her hands. “Come play with us, dear.”

  “Maybe later.”

  “Not afraid of the fish, are you?” Alexei challenged.

  LeaMarsa shook her head.

  The pool was multifunctional, also serving as a reservoir for the Alchemon’s carefully maintained biosystem. Today, there were only a few fish darting about, but on occasion the water became saturated with schools of bass and groupers. Then some complex feedback system would be triggered, and klaxons would sound. Water and fish would be piped elsewhere, and the pool refilled and revitalized. Such transformations provided some of their food and potable water.

  “Were you ever down here when Rigel was swimming?” Alexei asked.

  LeaMarsa shook her head.

  “You’re really missing out.” The trainee winked at Faye, sharing some private joke. “Rigel likes to swim with the fishes. Sometimes he catches them with his teeth. I’ve heard he eats them raw!”

  “Gross,” Faye said, making a face.

  “He scares me,” LeaMarsa said.

  “Rigel? His bark is worse than his bite.” She laughed at the double meaning of her remark. “Did you know he’s taken a vow of celibacy for the duration of the voyage to honor his fiancées, whom he plans to marry in a joint celebration when we get back?”

  “One’s from Salt Lake City, the other from Dubai,” Alexei added. “The three of them are getting married in a non-denominational ceremony aboard one of those submarine cruises in the middle of the Atlantic, halfway between the cities.”

  LeMarsa nodded, feigning interest. Alexei sat cross-legged at her feet, stared up at her. “You’re coming to the Homebound, right?”

  “I don’t like parties.”

  “You’ll like this one. You know about Homebounds, don’t you?”

  She shrugged.

  “They’re special events,” Faye said. “Exceptional times when you can lose yourself. Follow the yellow brick road to wherever it takes you, right Alexei?”

  The trainee grinned. His passion for that famous movie, The Wizard of Oz, was well known among the crew.

  “Homebounds are where you can let it all hang out,” Alexei said, his excitement building. “An ancestor of mine, a great-great-great-great whatever, was a crewmember on one of the first starships to leave the solar system through a Quiets. I remember reading about his adventures when I was young.”

  “When he was young,” Faye mocked. “When was that, junior, like three hours ago?”

  “I’m just saying, Homebounds are a tradition with a long history.”

  “You have to come,” Faye added. “Main social room, tomorrow at thirteen hundred hours. Be there or be square.”

  “High five!” Alexei snapped.

  The two of them raised their right arms and smacked their palms together. LeaMarsa had seen them use the vintage celebratory gesture on numerous occasions.

  Alexe
i and Faye were Helioteers, the popular movement whose adherents practiced the customs and phraseology of the Helio Age, that period prior to humans emigrating in large numbers from the solar system. The megas, ever ready to incorporate fashionable memes, had amplified the public’s enchantment by naming new planets after Helio Age commercial products such as Toyota Corolla and Big Mac, and the terraformed desert world, Viagra Hard.

  Some Helioteers outfitted themselves in elaborate vintage attire and spoke only the various dialects of the era. LeaMarsa had picked up some of the lingo, although nowhere near the level of Faye and Alexei, as well as Rigel, who relished the profanity and insult-laden syntax then in common use.

  Alexei had once proclaimed that if he had the power to go back in time he’d settle in the midst of the Helio Age, and within that mythical entertainment enclave known as Hollywood. There, he would aspire to dual professions: by day, a multimedia actor doing Wizard of Oz sequels; by night, the owner of something called a hip-hop club.

  Alexei’s face twisted into a cocky smile. “Rigel told me that Captain Solorzano is going to allow a full array of ingestors. Pannis frowns on that and a lot of ship commanders won’t do it. But our captain’s no mega lackey.”

  “So tomorrow we leave for home,” LeaMarsa said. The thought of returning to Earth should have made her feel better but didn’t. Not with that creature onboard.

  She had a sudden memory from adolescence, of the awful discovery she’d made shortly after her thirteenth birthday, when she’d learned of her parents’ abominable manipulation. It was something they’d taken great pains to keep from her.

  Her discovery had been accidental. At school, she’d been accessing her parents’ home system for some research notes she’d forgotten to transfer to her scholastic wafer. She’d come across one of her father’s files that he’d apparently forgotten to encrypt. It detailed the injection of a unique strand of mitochondrial DNA into her mother’s womb, and into the tiny embryo that months later would become their only child.

  But before LeaMarsa could confront her parents about what they’d done to her in utero, they’d perished in that shuttle crash while on a business trip to Luna.

  Afterwards, besides dealing with her grief, LeaMarsa had experienced surges of anger toward her parents. They’d made her into a genejob for completely selfish reasons. She’d felt cheated by their deaths, denied the opportunity to lash out at them for doing such an awful thing.

  The vile odor of something dead assaulted her nostrils. Her first thought was that it came from the pool. Covering her mouth and nose didn’t help – it kept getting stronger. Only then did she realize it was of psionic origin and that it was the smell that accompanied the reek. As if on cue came the mind-numbing dread and sensation of being strangled.

  Yet the symptoms didn’t achieve full strength. Instead, a psychic blackout overtook her. The reek retreated into the subliminal depths from which it had sprung. The voices of Alexei and Faye dissolved into a mush of indecipherable sounds.

  And then she was floating in that alternate universe, neurospace – countless pinpoints of starlight against a tapestry of black. Not its true nature, she again sensed, merely the best interpretation vision could offer, a way for her mind to depict a thing wildly distinct from normal comprehension.

  Another strange aspect of this realm of luminous dark was the sensation of being able to perceive billions – or perhaps it was trillions or quadrillions – of those stars at the same time. Such a thing was impossible in the real universe. But here, vision, or what passed for vision, didn’t adhere to logic. Neurospace functioned by its own rules.

  From somewhere amid those stars came a gravelly female voice, straining to be heard as if from a great distance.

  “Sentinel Obey.”

  “Who are you?” she whispered. “What does that mean?”

  There was no response. LeaMarsa’s focus abruptly returned to the natatorium to meet the worried frowns of Faye and Alexei.

  “Dear, are you OK?”

  “Fine.”

  “You looked like you’d blacked out for a moment. And you were talking to yourself. Maybe you should go to medcenter for a checkup.”

  She shook her head.

  “Let’s swim,” Alexei suggested, gripping LeaMarsa’s elbow. “You’ll feel better after exercise. That always helps me.”

  “No.”

  Alexei released her arm and dove into the pool.

  “Anything you’d like to talk about?” Faye asked, still concerned.

  “No. And even if I did, you wouldn’t understand.”

  “Maybe not. But sometimes it’s good to let things out. A girl chat might make you feel better.”

  LeaMarsa had no desire to discuss the psionic incident. But she was intrigued by the phrase uttered by the phantom woman.

  “I’ve heard people mention the ship’s Sentinel. I don’t really know much about it.”

  Faye looked surprised by the abrupt change of subject. LeaMarsa pressed on.

  “I know there are six levels of control and that the Sentinel somehow sits above it all. But I’m not up on the technology.”

  “Well, you pretty much have the basics. Six levels, with each level generally having a greater degree of control and more critical responsibilities than the one beneath it. Although actually it’s more complicated than that.

  “For instance, this natatorium – LSN – is Level Six, a rather lowly system. Most of the other luxury systems, such as the dreamlounge, are sixers as well. However, LSN is also part of FWP – food and waste processing – which is a Level Three system. And other Level Three systems get involved in the pool’s operation as well, such as hydroponics and geonic stability.

  “And since this is a crew area, the pool has to have a breathable atmosphere, so that involves a Level Two system – EHO – ecospheric homeostasis. And we have to have power, and that’s routed by Level One systems like POP and NEL – primary operating power from the battery banks and the four nucleonic engines that provide our main propulsion.” Faye smiled. “Confused yet?”

  “It seems to make sense.”

  “It does, at least in a general way. But my point is, hardly anyone really understands or can make sense of it all. The interactions among these systems have grown too complex for a regular person to assimilate. That’s why most of the newer ships have lytics. Still, I have a hunch that not even Jonomy and his ilk fully understand all the complexities.

  “And the Sentinel?”

  “Ah, yes, the big bad Sentinel. It fascinates people but there’s really no great mystery. First of all, although there’s only one Sentinel, it’s capable of being in more than one location simultaneously. Think of it sort of like an octopus, an entity with one brain but possessing multiple arms.

  “SEN is the Level Zero system designed to protect the Alchemon from dangerous programming commands, internal or external threats, malevolent humans, whatever. Anything that menaces the safety and security of the ship and its mission.

  “In the event of such a menace, a Sentinel is awakened, which means that SEN generates and projects electrical signals throughout the ship via an overlapping superconductive network.”

  Faye hesitated, reading LeaMarsa’s confusion.

  “Sentinel signals travel at a speed infinitesimally faster than the ship’s regular systems, nearer the actual perfect speed of light when unimpeded, such as in a vacuum. Actually, what goes on can be even more convoluted. The velocity of SEN signals sometimes exceeds the speed of light according to the somewhat paradoxical theories that form the basis of subatomic physics.”

  “You’re talking about superluminals?”

  “Same principle. Call it a cousin to what you’re familiar with, those faster-than-light impulses known to have something to do with psionic interaction. Anyway, a Sentinel can literally outrun the ship’s normal circuitry transmissions, which allows them to take control of whatever system they enter.”

  “How does this Sentinel know what to obe
y. I mean, someone must program it, right?”

  “Sentinels follow guidelines laid down by the director’s board of the Corporeal, which is made up mainly of representatives from Pannis and the other megas.” Faye gave a wry grin. “In other words, a bunch of bitchpricks not overly concerned about the welfare of lowly crewmembers.

  “Still, at the end of the day it’s challenging for anyone, even lytics, to forecast exactly what will or won’t awaken a Sentinel, or exactly what it will do once it’s up and running. They tend toward the unpredictable.”

  “I heard the phrase ‘Sentinel Obey.’ Does that mean anything?”

  “Something of a non sequitur. Once a Sentinel gets activated, it’s in charge and calling the shots. The whole idea is that Sentinels don’t obey anything or anyone. They might take input from humans, but they don’t have to follow it. They’re their own masters.”

  LeaMarsa felt a sudden chill even though the natatorium air remained comfortably warm.

  Faye glanced at the clock. “I should get going. Soon time for me to be back in the salt mines.”

  “The salt mines?”

  “Hardy. The containment.”

  “Have you learned anything new about the organism?”

  “We’re finally probing the fetal creature inside Bouncy Blue, which by the way, I’m calling Baby Blue. Of course, Hardy absolutely hates the name.” Faye’s eyes sparkled, amused at Hardy’s conventionality.

  “Anyway, Baby Blue is fascinating. We see the morphogenetic beginnings of an advanced, undoubtedly intelligent lifeform. A head, complete with eyes, ears, nose and mouth, plus an additional sensory organ located between the mouth and nose that we can’t identify.”

  LeaMarsa recalled being on the bridge several weeks ago and seeing Lieutenant Donner draw a skull-like face in the holographic display. It seemed to match Faye’s description of Baby Blue’s face. She had no idea what that might mean.

  “A central spinal structure is present. Internally, there are some tantalizing organs that resemble the valved heart and kidneys found in our own species.”