The Shadow and Night (110 page)

T
he moment Merral set foot in the intruder ship he felt that something had changed. It was as if he had left his own world and passed into another—one that was strange and unfriendly. He found it impossible to define why he felt that this was so. The interior of the ship was dark and foul-smelling, and there were strange noises, but it was more than that. He was aware that there was something else: something too subtle to be instantly pinned down, but something that was wrong.

His hands clenched on the gun, Merral stood still, looking cautiously around. The dully lit corridor stretched to either side of him, with metal ribs protruding out along each wall and casting deep shadows on the floor. At each end, the corridor appeared to join larger longitudinal passageways that ran along each side of the ship. The corridors were higher than he had expected, as if made for giants. Or, he thought darkly, monsters.

Nothing moved. He took another step forward. With a hiss, the door closed behind him. The light and distant sounds of the outside world abruptly vanished.

Merral was suddenly aware of being isolated—more isolated than he had ever been in his life. Struggling to suppress an invading fear, he listened carefully, trying to make sense of the noises that he could hear from within the ship. Some of the noises were mechanical: a faint electrical hum, the sloshing of fluid in pipes, a distant vibration from some pump. Yet there were also other noises less easy to assign an origin to. There was a soft, high-pitched chatter, like that of far-off animals in a zoo, and a low, irregular, insectlike chirping whose source was impossible to locate.

There was a chillness to the ship, an odd, clammy coldness, different from the fresh cold of a Farholme winter. There was something about this austere green corridor and this bleak ship that seemed to speak to Merral of wild, deep, and hostile space. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, and for a moment, he shivered uncontrollably.

“Okay, now which way do I go?” he asked quietly, his voice echoing in the stillness. He realized that he expected no answer.

“Go right, Man.”

The voice was just there. Clear, audible, and unmistakably the same voice he had heard on the other side of the lake. Merral looked around, trying in vain to find the source of the voice. Against one of the bracing girders ahead of him was a deeper shadow that he was sure had not been there a moment earlier.

“So you
are
here.”

“Man, the King's servants keep their promises,” the strangely flat voice said, and Merral sensed the hint of a rebuke. Yet despite it, Merral felt curiously relieved at hearing the envoy's voice.

Then, catching a glimpse of Lorrin's blood, still wet on his sleeve, Merral turned to the shadow. “Lorrin Venn's dead!” he said, and he could hear the bitterness in his voice. “The others are at risk.”

“I know. They are my concern too,” the voice stated. “Yet evil must be fought, and battles cost. If you want to serve your men and their families best, do what I say. Lorrin played his part and is safe in the Father's house. You are not yet there and there is much to do. This is a most dark and perilous place, and there are many dangers. As you have just found.”

“Yes,” Merral answered, disturbed but somehow not surprised that the envoy knew of his hesitation.

“Now go right.” The tone did not allow for argument.

“Envoy,” Merral said, “can you go ahead first?”

“Man, do you not understand?” The voice was sharp. “This is your race's war.”

“I see. But I thought you had the power.”

“Power has nothing to do with it, Man. It is what is right. Only those that are human can fight for humanity. Even the High King bowed to that law. Or have you forgotten what you learned about the Nativity?”

“I see. I just hadn't seen this as the same. . . .”

“Man, I can only advise you. Am
I
human? Now go right.”

The urgency in the voice was such that Merral instantly started right along the corridor.

As he padded along the floor, Merral glanced around constantly, trying to take in his surroundings. The contrast with the
Heinrich Schütz
could not have been more marked. That had been an artistic masterpiece of light and smoothness; this, he sensed, was a coarse, even brutal, assembly of parts.

He had now come to the passageway. Here he stopped and peered cautiously around the corner. As he had suspected, it was a major corridor and seemed to run the entire length of the vessel. It too seemed to be deserted. He listened, aware of a strange, twisting soft breeze that moved around him as if there were pulses of air in the corridor.

“To the front of the ship,” came the order.

Merral was suddenly struck by the way that the voice sounded exactly the same here as it had out by the lake. It was as if it was unaffected by the local acoustics. Perena had described how the words of the envoy sounded as if they had been “pressed out of the air.” Now he understood her description.

Merral turned left toward the nose of the ship and began moving along the corridor as rapidly and quietly as he could. The light was all wrong: it was not just dull; it was as if it was somehow drained of energy. He thought longingly of sunlight.

In this part of the ship, the outer fuselage was supported by large protruding girders, and feeling that they might provide him some cover, he walked close to them. A hasty glance over his shoulder gave him the impression that a dark shadow glided along after him in the dark margins of the corridor.

Merral, his nerves on edge, was aware of new noises in the ship: a distant clattering, muffled thudding sounds from below, a high-pitched scratching somewhere. A small, eddying spiral of dust flickered around on the floor ahead of him. Despite the coolness in the air, Merral realized that he was sweating profusely.

As he moved down the long, dark passageway, staring nervously into the shadows, his initial impressions about the ship hardened. In addition to the crude, rather unfinished workmanship that was all around, nothing seemed to be as neat as on an Assembly ship. In one place, an indecipherable label seemed to have been slapped on the wall in such a hurry that it was not horizontal. In another place, a panel had been put back so carelessly that a bolt head still protruded. He passed a crumpled fragment of plastic on the floor and the Ancient English word
litter
came to mind. He had a growing feeling too that there was something fundamentally wrong about the whole way the ship was constructed. On Assembly ships, the framework and supporting structures were always hidden. Here they were standing visible. It was almost as if the designers hadn't cared how things looked.

Midway down the corridor Merral stopped, suddenly struck by a new phenomenon. At his feet the metal floor had clearly been badly damaged and then patched up. The job had been done in such a rough and untidy manner that he could feel the join through his boots. He saw that the hull skin and the roof were heavily scarred; through the uneven paint, the sheen of bare metal could be seen in places. Something traumatic had happened here, and sensing it might be important, Merral wondered what. He glanced at a girder nearby to see that fine silver globules were speckled on its surface. Gingerly, mindful of the sharp surfaces, he ran a finger along a raised edge, pulled it away and looked at it. A number of tiny, perfect, shining metal spheres were stuck to it. Rolling them between his fingers, he puzzled briefly over what they meant. Merral walked on a few more steps and paused. Just ahead of him, he heard a fragile metallic tapping sound, like the noise of a tiny hammer striking pipes.

A little more than a meter beyond him something moved. Two gray tendrils, like enormously elongated fingers, crept round a wall strut at the height of his head.

He froze as a dull metal egg-shaped structure, perhaps a meter long, followed after the fingers. Its surface was made up of dozens of facets, almost as if it was some strange crystalline growth.

Merral felt he was being stared at. He raised his gun.

“Wait!” came the sharp command from the envoy, and Merral eased his finger a fraction away from the trigger.

Suddenly the egg-shaped body seemed to rotate on its fingers and, in a fluid, precise movement, swung down two impossibly long legs behind it onto the floor. Then, letting go with the front limbs, it dropped free. With delicate and economic movements of its four extraordinary limbs, the thing moved to the center of the corridor in front of him.

There it rose up so that the body was at the level of Merral's face.
A mechanical insect,
Merral thought, before realizing that the four legs, nowhere larger than a child's wrist, were without visible joints or segments. Indeed, they seemed to have both the suppleness of tentacles and the rigidity of limbs.

The machine—Merral had not the slightest doubt that it was a machine rather than a living thing—moved closer to him with smooth, impeccably coordinated leg movements.

Merral stared at it, trying, through his fear, to make sense of something so totally unfamiliar. As he looked at it, he saw that high on a front facet were two small, glassy black circles that stared at him. The machine bobbed and swayed as if trying to get a thorough look at his face.

As it did, Merral realized, with a further strange assurance, that what he faced was not simply a remote surveillance machine but something with an intelligence of its own. He stared back at it, now able to make out details on the body panels. There was an array of small green lights on one surface, a series of sockets along another, and fine lettering on a third.

The machine spoke, but Merral could make no sense of the jagged syllables. He knew, though, that they were words rather than noise.

“The machine says it doesn't recognize you. It wants your identity.” The envoy's steady voice seemed to come from just over his shoulder.

“What do I do?” Merral whispered back, wondering how you dealt with an intelligent and probably hostile machine, barely an arm's length away from your face.
We should have predicted this,
he told himself with a spasm of recrimination
. We knew the intruders had worked without restrictions. We should have guessed that they would have ignored the notoriously complex Technology Protocol Two about creating autonomous sentient machines.

“Man, show it the identity disc you bear,” said the envoy.

“But the disc isn't mine. We don't have them.”

The machine swung its head as if it was trying to find out who he was talking to.

“Do it!”

Merral found the chain around his neck and, jerking it out, held the disc firmly up in front of the machine.

A panel flicked down on the underside of the body, and a tendril, as fine as a man's little finger, uncoiled smoothly out and extended to just in front of Merral's chest. Four delicate digits flowered on its end and grasped the disc with a gentle firmness.

The machine seemed to stare at what it held. “Lucas Hannun Ringell,” it pronounced in slow tones. Then, after a moment's hesitation, it carefully enunciated the date of birth, “Three
dash
three
dash
twenty eighty-two.”

There was a pause, as if it was thinking or consulting with something.

Suddenly the digits released the disc. The limb whisked back inside the body and the machine stepped back sharply with a simultaneous movement of all four legs.

“
Captain
Lucas Hannun Ringell?” it said, and there was no mistaking the note of questioning in the voice.

Along the length of the corridor, bright red lights began to pulse and a wailing siren sounded.

“Now shoot it,” said the envoy.

Merral aimed at the body and squeezed the trigger. There was a brief cherry red glow on an underside plate, and a puff of smoke belched out. A flurry of thin, pale gray shards whistled outwards, clattering against the walls and floor. Fragments of metallic and plastic circuitry popped out. Amid thrashing limbs, the creature banged against the wall and crashed to the ground.

“Sorry,” Merral muttered, wondering if he should apologize to intelligent machines. Then, stepping carefully over a still-flicking leg, he moved on down the corridor. He began to stride quickly forward. There was no point in stealth now; the alarm had been triggered, and the next machines or creatures he met would know that he was hostile.

“I should have shot it first,” he protested. “The alarms have been sounded.”

“No. The ship's defense systems think that Lucas Ringell is loose on the ship. They will divert forces to deal with this most serious threat.”

“You mean,” Merral spluttered, “you
want
them to come after me?”

“It is necessary. Your men cannot handle the Krallen pack they now face.”

“The
what?
” asked Merral, struck by the menacing sound of the term
Krallen pack.

“You will find out.”

“Thanks,” Merral said, recognizing in some distant and neutral part of his mind that he was being sarcastic. “I hope you can handle them. But—another thing—how can they imagine Lucas Ringell to be here? They must know that he died millennia ago.”

“They think you are like them,” the voice said but did not elaborate.

Suddenly the lights flickered, and Merral heard a faint click from his gun. He glanced down to see that there was no status light of any sort on. He stopped, tapping the various switches. But no light turned on. It was as if all the power had vanished from the machine; his weapon was dead.

“My gun's malfunction—,” Merral began and stopped, jarred by the realization that the status light on his diary had gone off as well.

The indefinable shadow spoke. “The being at the heart of this ship has power over such things. Shoulder your gun; you may need it later. Move on.”

Despite feeling a need to protest, Merral did as he was told. He found his knife, grasped the handle firmly, pointed it away from him, and pressed the release button. With a smooth click, the meter-long, dull gray blade extended. He pressed the retract button, and the blade hissed back into the handle.
At least my knife works.
The idea gave him little reassurance.