“Help me!” He spoke it aloud to the darkness, hopelessly. “God, help me!”
“What do you require?”
It was either the voice of God, or the voice of Tug himself, the one that had dictated all their awakenings and sleepings all this long way. It didn’t seem to Raef that it mattered which. It asked him what he needed as if it could grant it.
“Sanctuary,” he begged.
“Sanctuary?”
“They’ll kill me if they find me. Because I have …”
“I know. But you still want to live?”
“Yes.”
“It won’t be much of a life.”
“It will be better than death.”
“Interesting.” The voice sounded intrigued. “This way.”
The corridor lit dimly before him. He followed the light, glancing back once to see it fading behind him. It led him far, winding deeper and deeper into the ship, and finally to a womb chamber, where wombs hung slackly grey, waiting.
“Enter one,” said the voice. “You’ll be safe here.”
Raef didn’t hesitate, but crawled into a womb, discarding his paper gown on the way. He groped and found the umbilical cord, coupled it to the fitting still implanted in his belly. He curled himself for Waitsleep.
“What will you have?” the voice asked, muffled by the walls of the womb. “Without the companionship of other Humans, without a hope of a home, with no future save what you have this minute? What will you have worth living for?”
“The only things I’ve ever had,” Raef muttered. “My dreams.”
He could feel his heart beating, beating too fast, dammit, Tug, don’t you notice my heart is going too fast? The dreams merged, touching until he couldn’t tell them from now, that curling into Waitsleep from this sinking away from the too-vivid dream memory. Finally, he escaped the old nightmare the only way he could, by retreating into a deeper dream.
Long John Silver stands on the deck of his ship, the wind is in his face. Above his head, the sails crack and the crew bustles up the lines to carry out his orders. For on this ship, he is no stowaway, but is the captain, and one word from him can set a lash to a man’s back, or gift him an extra ration of grog….
1
“I HATE THESE DAMN SCREENS.”
Tug didn’t reply to John’s complaint. Neither did Connie, but at least John had the satisfaction of seeing her hunch a little tighter into her own station, nervously aware of the captain’s frustration and displeasure. He glared at the bank of monitors. Runny images. Another one of the Conservancy’s negative improvements. He rubbed again at the biotrol strip that was supposed to stimulate the screens to greater brightness. Nothing happened.
“What’s the matter with the monitor bank?” he demanded, and when he got no reply, he raised his voice in sarcastic incredulity. “Is it biodegrading right before my very eyes?”
Still no answer. Connie’s solution to any problem was to shut up and make herself small until someone else handled it. This was the deckhand’s second ship-out on Evangeline, and John still hadn’t figured out how to get her to react in a constructive way. In her own way, she was as frustrating to him as the dimming monitors. He didn’t understand it. Her papers were good, her scores for her ratings exemplary. Even John’s personal sources had given good reports of her. Or had they? He frowned, remembering Andrew’s words.
“Quiet.” First Mate Andrew on the Beastship Trotter had characterized Connie when John had requested a very unauthorized personal opinion of Andrew’s former shipmate. “Not unfriendly, but quiet. I didn’t know her that well. But from what everyone says, she’s supposed to be very bright. Very competent. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed in her. I know you like your privacy, John. Well, so does she. Should work out well, you two hermits rattling around in a scow that size. You can come out of Waitsleep, grunt at each other, and go back in without bothering each other at all.”
So John had hired her, more on Andrew’s word than on her high ratings on the standardized tests. And found her not competent or bright, but only quiet. Very quiet. And passive to the point where it was driving him crazy. Needling her only seemed to make the crewwoman more reclusive, and yet there were times he could not resist doing it, just for the sake of getting some kind of reaction from her. She seemed to have all the personality and social skills of an algae vat. Thanks a lot, Andrew. I owe you one.
As for Tug’s silence, well, the Arthroplana was playing at protocol again. Speak when spoken to. John hated it, but gave in and addressed him by name. “Tug. Can you boost the monitor screen from your side or something? Something’s got to be malfunctioning; nothing this fuzzy could have met standards. I don’t remember the monitor images being this bad last time we used them.” That, of course, had been a number of years and several Wakeups ago. Still, the ship’s equipment wasn’t supposed to biodegrade that fast.
The picture improved minimally as Tug made whatever adjustments he could from his separate living quarters within Evangeline’s body. Tug’s synthetic voice thrummed softly through the command chamber. “My readings indicate that the picture is within the parameters for acceptable vision. It has, as you noted, biodegraded somewhat since our last use of the equipment. The bacterial action that triggers the luminors may be slowing. If you are so dissatisfied with it, I suggest you might have the unit recolonized while we’re docked at Delta. Still, according to all my references, the image is within safe and acceptable parameters.”
“Safe and acceptable parameters? Tug, don’t try to tell me that this image is as good as the one we got on the old equipment that they made us turn in for this.”
Tug considered a moment. “While the image may not be as sharp nor as adjustable, the equipment is much more harmonious with the environment. All components are completely recyclable with a waste factor of less than point two percent.”
“Wonderful. We can’t see a damn thing on the screen, but we can be content knowing that the whole thing can be remanufactured into something even less useful with a minimum of waste.”
Tug either couldn’t think of a reply or chose not to. John crossed his arms on his chest and settled back into his couch. Despite his resolutions, the true source of his frustration pushed itself to the front of his mind again. It had been the first message up on his screen when he’d come out of Waitsleep. Norwich Shipping thanked John, Tug, crew, and the Evangeline herself for their years of service, but were regretful to inform him that such services were no longer required. References would be furnished, of course. Brief and to the point. And totally maddening in that John could think of no reason why they would want to terminate their contract with the Evangeline. She was the only Beastship around that was still unmodified from the old Lifeboat days. No one else had their cargo capacity. They’d never missed a deadline or screwed up a delivery. It made no sense at all, and it promised to turn what should have been a relaxing shore time into a maze of negotiations as John hunted down new clients for the Evangeline. Dammit, it made no sense.
He wanted to stew on Norwich Shipping’s sudden refusal to renew their contract, but was distracted by one monitor’s image. It was a station relay of Evangeline approaching the dock. Not even the fuzziness of the degrading biologics could totally obscure the beauty of the Beast that powered his ship. He ignored the functional cell-meld structure of the gondola fastened to Evangeline; that was but the container that housed the Human crew and provided cargo space. It had no intrinsic beauty, only functional practicality. No, it was Evangeline herself—the organic Beast portion of his Beastship—that captivated him. He realized abruptly that he had been staring silently at the screen for several minutes. After all these years, she could still entrance him like that. He snorted at his own sentiment, and shifted his gaze to another monitor.
It