Sister Ships and Alastair - Chapter 15

15. What Do You Know About Unified Field Theory?

"Why would they do that?" said Alastair's voice in Cleo's ear.

The sickbay was full of concerned crewmen who had not yet been ordered out by Kay, though it could only be a matter of time. Jenkins and Kay were standing by the bed; Doctor Prendergast was taking Captain Pulsipher's temperature.

"He seems normal. No bruising, no rise in heart rate, no signs of poisoning...it's almost disappointing, really..."

Pulsipher stirred weakly on the bed, his eyelids fluttering into an attempt at waking up.

"He doesn't look healthy to me, sir", said Kay.

"He's been like this since almost right after he was shot. There was actually relatively little bleeding once we'd got the wound dressed...I suspect internal bleeding. Possibly an internal infection. We need to get him somewhere with better diagnostic and treatment facilities. A planet would be good. What's that planet whose name begins with E? Rhymes with Mirth. I hear it has gravity. Good for a healthy patient, gravity. Blood bleeds out, runs down, doesn't hang around in mid-air cluttering up the surgery..."

He looked pointedly across the sickbay at Jenkins, who looked away.

"I have no idea why anyone would want to kill an invalid", whispered Cleo into the phone, shrinking back into a space between ventilation pipes to prevent herself being overheard.

"I'm afraid I can think of several reasons. How did it happen?"

"Someone heard a noise in the sickbay, rushed in, and found the Captain lying there with his restraints cut by a scalpel that was still lying on his chest. Whoever did the cutting got away."

"Interesting. Why didn't they finish their cutting? And how did they get away? There's only one exit to the sickbay on a Revere. Could they have hidden in the sickbay itself? How many people are in there now?"

Cleo looked around herself. "Uh, quite a few. I don't know, he could have hidden under the bed, maybe...there's a screen for undressing...curtains round the bed, though they're drawn now...that's just about it, unless he was a circus midget."

"I put the restraints on the Captain yesterday", continued Doctor Prendergast. "He kept throwing off his bedclothes, you see. I'd strap the sheets over him, come back an hour later, and all the straps would be untied. If I let him thrash around like that, he'd have popped his stitches."

"Who found the Captain?" said Alastair.

"Able Spaceman Crook."

"How long did Crook have on his own with the Captain before anyone else came in?"

"I think he yelled until someone else came, then ran off to get the Bridge crew once he was sure the Captain was under guard."

"And the Captain seems to be fine...of course, that could mean nothing. The Soviets have many slow-acting poisons..."

Cleo emerged from behind the pipe and put up her hand, as if asking a question. "Excuse me - could he have been poisoned?"

Prendergast frowned and turned back to his patient.

"Well, he isn't exhibiting any symptoms of poisoning -"

"Apart from thrashing around as if he's in terrible pain, you mean?" said Cleo. "What if the murderer wasn't here to kill him? What if he was just here to give him a fresh dose of a poison he'd already given him several times already?"

Prendergast smiled indulgently, as if this were clear proof Cleo was mad. "Why ever would he want to do that?"

"I th-think we sh-should let the doctor d-do the d-doctoring, Cleopatra", said Jenkins.

Cleo shrugged - please yourself - ducked back behind the pipe, and began talking to her phone again.

"Speaking of Soviets, Alastair, you appear to be a Soviet mole."

Alastair chuckled. "I work in Intelligence. I am suspected of being a mole about one day in every three. Who was it who accused me?"

"A Russian carrier captain. He's threatening to Blyow Us Out Of The Skyy unless we hand you over. He knows you're on the planet. He claims you're under Soviet protection."

"Interesting. How does he know I'm down here?"

"Jenkins routed our communications through a Russian satellite. From then on they weren't encrypted. The Russians have been listening to everything we say."

"Hmm. Well, that could be made to work for us as well as against us -"

"All right, EVERYBODY OUT!" Petty Officer Kay had finally lost patience with the press of concerned crewmen round the bed. "TO YOUR STATIONS! ONE EXCEPTION! CORPORAL SPINK, YOU WILL STAND GUARD OVER THE SICKBAY!" He looked at Cleo's mobile phone suspiciously, as if this was the first time he'd realized she was speaking into it. "Just a minute. Aren't you a bit far away from home for good network coverage?"

"I'm playing Tetris", lied Cleo.

"With y-your ear?" said Jenkins, suddenly realizing that a fourteen-year-old girl with a mobile phone plastered to her ear, while normal on Earth, was definitely abnormal on a spaceship. "This is some f-form of audio T-Tetris for the b-blind, I take it?"

In Cleo's ear, Alastair began saying, in a deadpan voice: "FOUR SQUARES VERTICAL, FALLING IN COLUMN THREE - TWO SQUARES HORIZONTAL, FALLING IN COLUMN FOUR -"

"Erm. Rotate clockwise", said Cleo.

"BZZT! FOUR SQUARE HOCKEY STICK, FALLING IN COLUMN ONE - BIG FIVE SQUARE SWASTIKA FALLING IN COLUMN FIVE -"

Jenkins seized the phone, listened briefly, and spoke into it. "Hello, M-Mr. Drague. You can stop p-pretending to be an audio T-Tetris game now. How l-long have you been t-talking to Miss Shakespeare?

"...I see. And is this line of c-communication encrypted?

"...And it d-didn't occur to you that if w-we'd had access to this encrypted l-line ourselves w-we wouldn't be in the t-trouble we're in now?"

Drague's voice grew louder in the phone speaker. Jenkins' face grew marble white. His hand shook on the handset.

"Mr. D-Drague, I am ending this c-call now."

He thumbed the call closed, but did not hand the phone back to Cleo.

"No-one is to enter this s-sickbay but myself and Doctor Prendergast", he said to the guard. "You are to sh-shoot to k-kill if necessary. Do n-not let anyone within a m-metre of you."

"And don't shoot me by accident", said Doctor Prendergast. "I hate having to treat my own gunshot wounds."

"Are you going to hand us over to the Russians?" said Cleo.

"I've a good m-mind to. C-certainly they can h-have their citizen back."

Cleo was outraged. "But she's a prisoner! That planet was a prison! And her whole family's dead! They'll just send her on to another goolog!"

"Gulag", corrected Karg.

Jenkins paused briefly in the doorway.

"Rather one p-person", he said, "th-than my whole crew. You're used to easy d-decisions, Miss Shakespeare, like wh-what sh-shade of pink to put on in the m-morning, or whether to p-put salt or syrup on your p-porridge. Someone has to make the d-difficult d-decisions, and you're looking at him."

He stalked out of the room. Cleo turned to Karg and Kay.

"Salt?" she said. "Yuck!"

***

"I have absolutely no idea who the traitor is."

Penelope bounced the rubber bouncy ball off the metal wall of the Communal Space Toilet and caught it absent-mindedly.

The Communal Space Toilet was a lounge-sized room with a double row of sheet metal seats down the centre. There were enough seats for a squad of men to do Number Two in strict military formation.

Mr. Karg was standing in a corner, hands clasped behind his back. Cleo was sitting on a toilet. The toilet was clean enough to see her face in.

"All right; let's examine our attacker's motive", said Karg. "We already know his intended means of murder; he left the scalpel lying on the Captain. We have no idea how he got the opportunity; he seems to have vanished into thin air out of the sickbay."

"Alastair thought it might have been Able Spaceman Crook", said Cleo.

"Fine except for the fact that Crook wasn't on the bridge when Callaway noticed the transmission", said Karg. "Crook is innocent unless he's working with another guilty party, and we agreed to keep it simple. So - why would anyone want to kill the Captain?"

"Except", said Cleo, catching the ball on the rebound and squeezing it so hard, all of a sudden, that she felt her own knuckles through the rubber, "that he didn't kill the Captain. He's been very efficient so far. What, are we supposed to believe he suddenly lost his nerve after he'd already killed one man and sent a message that led to the deaths of an entire colony?"

"Okay", said Karg. "Let's say I go with that. What motive could he have for just slicing through the Captain's restraints?"

"I don't know. What if he was just doing something to keep the Captain unconscious, so that Jenkins stayed in charge? After all, the ship isn't as well run while Jenkins is running it. Half the men are going to Kay for orders."

"And Kay was on the bridge when the transmission shut down", said Karg. "Interesting."

He paused a second, watching Cleo intently.

"What?" said Cleo. "Why are you looking at me like that? It's creepy."

Karg smiled wanly. "Nothing. I was just expecting you to walk up and down the room shouting 'OF COURSE IT'S CHIEF PETTY OFFICER KAY! IT'S SO OBVIOUS NOW!'"

Cleo bounced her ball off the wall again mournfully. "Somehow it all seems not quite that simple any more."

***

The wide screen TV showed slag heaps again. By now, the bridge crew were gathered round it like Cleo's family round The Ali G Show. Not a man said a word to interrupt the shambling, space-suited figures on screen.

"I must say", puffed Alastair through the console speaker as he struggled up the face of a hill of sinter the height of a towerblock, "you people really do love your rubbish heaps."

"Yis not rubbyish", said Vladlena contemptuously. "Yis Grade Three Cyat Lyitter, yextra absorbent, surgyically styerile. Yis wyaiting for lyoading onto tryansport." She tapped a plastic sign stuck into the slag. "Hyas been chyecked by Quality Controller."

"So you basically -
- take the slag from the blast furnaces -
- and ship it out as cat litter", wheezed Alastair as he battled higher. "Ingenious." He fell forward onto the litter, catching himself with his suit gloves. "I'll - be - all right - - in a minute - or sixty -"

"You shyould tyake off syuits", said Vladlena, frowning. "Thyey do not hyelp. You do not fyeel when you are infyected with Yorganyism. And you move too slowly."

Alastair looked up at Penelope in mute appeal.

"It's a choice between wearing your suit and carrying it", said Penelope severely. "When we get back to the ship, how do we know we're not carrying the goop contamination with us? Keeping these suits on is safer. If we have suits on, blowing the cockpit canopy when we get out of the atmosphere will kill anything in the jollyboat that's alive and isn't us."

Alastair looked up at the helmet cam despairingly, and shook his head.

"I'm sorry", he said. "I'm afraid you are dealing with a very old man. And, if he walks around in this suit any longer, a dead man."

He began to squirm his way out of the suit.

"Yis very correct", said Vladlena with satisfaction.

"I also fail to see", came Alastair's voice, now from behind the camera, "why it's necessary for us to crawl all over every slag heap on the planetary surface."

"We must move fyaster than Yorganyism. We must gyet to lyanding fyield. Yorganyism will try to yintercept us."

"Try to CUT US OFF?" Penelope's voice was incredulous. "A BIG BLUE AMOEBA?"

"Yorganyism will try to yintercept us", said Vladlena with absolute certainty, picking her way down the spur of a north-facing slag hill. "Tyunnels and dryains run under all of Potemkinsk. But do nyot run under High Quality Cyat Lyitter Heaps. Yorganyism cannot follow."

"This organism", gasped Alastair, rising to his feet with difficulty, "has shown itself to be capable of making its own tunnels."

Penelope's helmet cam swept downhill and stopped dead, fixed on a black, glittering surface stretching out into the distance. In that distance, a variety of saucer-shaped vessels stood silent on the spaceport apron like crockery forgotten from a giant alien picnic.

"And its own barriers."

Alastair lumbered forward. "What? What am I supposed to be looking at? The way looks clear to me."

"Mr. Drague, THAT IS NOT ASPHALT."

Drague's breath sucked in sharply as he realized what he was actually looking at.

"I think", he said, "that we've been Yintercepted."

Vladlena pulled out a stick the size of a travel umbrella from her greatcoat, snapped the top off it; it began to blaze like an oversized sparkler. She threw it overarm, quite unlike a girl, downhill onto the oily black surface. As soon as the white light hit it, the black gleamed blue. At every point where the flare bounced onto the ground, the blue retreated from it, possibly not wishing to be burned by the flames, revealing genuine black tarmac underneath.

"We can't get round. It's surrounded the landing field as far as I can see in both directions."

There was an element of panic entering Vladlena's voice now. "But we must reach shyip. Yis night soon. Night is the most dangyer."

"We won't be able to see the goop coming", said Penelope.

"You must call new shyip", said Vladlena. "We cyannot last out night. Yalastair is too old and fyeeble."

"Я желаю я противоречило с вами", muttered Alastair under his breath.

Penelope's helmet cam was still fixed on the landing field. "We don't need to call another ship down", said Penelope. "There's a way through."

Vladlena shook her head. "Yis no way through."

"There is." Penelope pointed. "There."

Vladlena looked, and shook her head again. "Yis foryest. Cyannot go through foryest."

"Why not?"

"Leshiy."

***

"Of c-course, there's no p-proof that the goo is a s-single-c-celled organism", said Jenkins, as softly as possible so as to not disturb the bridge crew's viewing pleasure.

"If it is", said Cleo, "it's a very big cell."

"Parts of it d-detached from the whole continue to op, to operate independently", said Jenkins. "L-like t-terrestrial slime moulds. B-big patches of goop the s-size of dinner plates. If it r-rains for a few days straight, they'll stroll out of the w-woods and walk across your lawn. T-takes them a whole m-morning to do it, mind you. Intelligent for g-goo, too. In a crude sort of way, they can f-find their way through mazes."

"And these are things that live on Earth", said Cleo.

"Oh y-yes", said Jenkins. "C-Croydon."

"It's a good job", said Cleo, her eyes narrowed, "that I don't live in Croydon, then."

"Actually, they l-live all over -"

Cleo's eyes drilled into Jenkins. "The train standing at Platform 2 has just arrived to take the people interested in slime moulds back home to their mothers. Curiously, they were all male with poor skin and round glasses, had an encyclopaedic knowledge of Farscape, and thought Blair Witch 2 was a really good movie. You don't want to to be on that train, Captain Jenkins. Are you on that train?"

Jenkins obligingly fell silent.

"What do you think the Leshiy are?"

Jenkins shrugged. "S-some sort of forest creature. They can h-hardly be more dangerous than the g-goop."

Alastair, Penelope and Vladlena were walking down a slag slope into a dusty, dry field of twisted and atrophied plants. Many of the plants had labels attached to their stems in Russian. On the other side of the field towered a concrete wall, far higher than a man. In front of the wall was a pit filled with what could have been water, oil, sulphuric acid, or cherryade. On top of the were gun turrets. The guns in the turrets swivelled constantly, sweeping the dark below them with powerful searchlights. They were big. They were multibarrelled. They were fully automated.

"You might want to reconsider that", said Cleo. "Because I'm pretty sure those fortifications are there to keep the Leshiy out."

"Will those guns fire on us?" said Penelope apprehensively.

Vladlena shook her head. "Leshiy have lower body tyemperature. Guns know diffyerence."

"What are all these plants?"

"We try to grow crops in sunlyight from Krasnaya Zvyezda", said Vladlena. "Use plyants from Yarctic Ryegions on Earth, and from Jyungle and Cyave Yentrances. Plyaces where light is low." She kicked a plant in disgust, knocking it out of the ground. "All yuseless. All our food, we still grow in ccccchydroponic complyex under yartificial light."

"PENELOPE", said Jenkins, "THIS IS LIEUTENANT J-J-JENKINS. CAN YOU ASK VLADLENA WHAT THE L-LESHIY ARE? ARE THEY FOREST CREATURES?"

Vladlena gave a dry guffaw.

"Leshiy are foryest", she said.

Alastair was stumbling behind Penelope as he hurried to keep up. "The Leshiy is the spirit of the forest. In the middle of the forest, he is as tall as the highest tree. On the forest's outer edges, he is a dwarf. His principal skill is in getting people lost. If you are troubled by a Leshiy, Russian folk wisdom advises you to take off all your clothes, then put them on again backwards, and put your left shoe on your right foot."

"Nice try, Alastair", said Penelope. "My clothes are staying on." There was a chorus of disappointment from the bridge crew, who had evidently got their hopes up.

"MR. JENKINS, SIR." A rating had entered, his face white; he was tugging on Jenkins' sleeve, muttering in his ear. Cleo caught the words 'sabotaged', 'stranded', and 'killed'.

She followed Jenkins and the rating off the bridge.

***

"Our C Plus system has been disabled. We can't leave Krasnaya."

Chief Engineer Firth was an officer Cleo had never seen before, a frog-faced, balding little man with glasses so thick they should have been stamped DEPOSIT PAYABLE ON RETURN. Where he had been hiding on the ship up till now, Cleo had no idea, but she suspected it was anywhere he would be surrounded by warm and comforting machinery.

"Disabled? How?"

"Professionally. The main Spatchcock Flange has been welded permanently into the open position. A head of reverse-time is building up on the other side of it."

"The Spatchcock Flange", said Cleo. "Isn't that directly connected to the Forellen Turbine?"

Firth looked at Cleo suspiciously. "Yes. How do you know that?"

Cleo shrugged. "I pick things up."

Firth gave Cleo a surly look; then he took out a shiny gold pocket watch, breathed on it, and rubbed it on his uniform jacket. "I put my grandad's watch in there on the end of a batten, and it came out shiny and new. If anyone on board stuck his head in there, it'd wither to child size, then baby size, then disappear. Couple of damn fool engineers were talking about shoving their hands in to get baby soft skin. I told 'em if I saw any such behaviour I'd take their skins off and wear 'em with a zipper up the front. I'm handy with a needle and thread."

Cleo put a hand up, feeling stupid. "Ah - please? Why is time running backwards?"

Firth looked at her warily. "What do you know about unified field theory?"

"About as much as anyone else on Earth", said Cleo. "It's not been officially discovered, I believe."

"Good point, good point. Well, for the uninitiated, it's like this." He turned in the direction of the bridge. "You can walk from here into the bridge by going this way." He turned through ninety degrees. "You can walk from here to the portside missile station by going that way. All you have to do to change direction from bridge to missile station is turn through a quarter of a circle. It doesn't matter whether you go to the bridge or the missile station - they're just different directions, but they both still involve walking. Now - imagine you could walk not from here to the bridge, but from here into tomorrow; and that all you have to do to find the direction of tomorrow is to turn yourself around some other way. Space and time are linked; they're different aspects of the same thing. Do you follow me so far?"

Cleo nodded, despite the pain in her head resulting from the presence of logic. "I think so."

"Good. Now, our ship's C Plus system is what allows us to go faster than light. It allows us, actually, to break out of normal space into hyperspace, an area with different physical laws. That also means that we break out of time, too, because time and space are the same thing. Do you follow that?"

"I think so, yes."

"Excellent. Now, if we imagine Minkowski space as a four-dimensional real collection of objects that can be scaled and added, and if we attribute to this collection a nondegenerate, symmetric bilinear form -"

"Chief", said Jenkins, "I think the train c-containing the people who know what M-Minkowski space is m-may have j-just left Platform Two." He grinned and scratched the back of his regulation haircut. "And I'm n-not sure I'm on it myself."

Firth pouted like a prize trout. "Platform Two?"

"I'll explain l-later. Now, I believe there was a p-part two to the bad news."

The rating and Firth exchanged glances; neither of them seemed to want to be the first to speak.

"Corporal Spink is dead", said Firth. "Stabbed to the heart, just like poor Edwards."

Jenkins quivered in alarm. "And the C-Captain?"

"Still alive and sleeping like a baby, for the first time in hours."

Jenkins looked at Cleo, anticipating the question she had already thought of.

"Drugged?"

"Doc Prendergast reckons not with anything life-threatening he's aware of. He even checked the skipper over with a geiger counter, after what your young lady here -" here Firth nodded at Cleo - "apparently said about slow poisons."

Jenkins' brows were pent with lack of understanding. "B-but why would they k-kill a man to b-break in to the sickbay, then leave the C-Captain alive?"

"Maybe the Captain wasn't what they were looking for", said Karg from behind Cleo. She had not realized he was there. "Maybe there was something else of interest in the sickbay."

Firth shook his head. "We thought of that. The doc says nothing is missing. All the medicine cabinets are as locked as they were yesterday."

"Maybe what we're looking for is invisible", said Cleo. "Maybe it was in the sickbay all the time right in front of us, but we never saw it because it was rendered invisible by Alien Stealth Technology."

"Occam's Razor, Cleo", cautioned Karg.

"I don't need a razor", snapped Cleo. "I wax."

Karg, unable to find any shred of relevance in this, fell to chewing his lips in confusion. There was a long silence. Firth, looking up at the rating who had fetched Jenkins from the Bridge, said:

"Don't blub, sailor. You're a member of Her Majesty's Astro Navy."

The rating, who looked young enough to be one of Cleo's school prefects, wiped away a tear in huge embarrassment.

"Sorry Mr. Firth sir. Corporal Spink was, uh, a good friend, sir. We, uh, both come from Plymouth, sir."

"Ships under fire are full of men who both come from Plymouth, lad. But they've all got to pick theirselves up and carry on like the rest of us. You've put your Queen's Uniform in disarray there. What would Her Madge think of you?"

He reached up to adjust the crewman's tunic; the rating stood stiffly to attention while he was adjusted.

"M-much as I'm loath to agree with C-Cleopatra", said Jenkins, "I f-fail to see how anyone c-could have got p-past an armed g-guard who had orders to sh-shoot to k-kill, unless they were invisible. Invisibility isn't entirely p-preposterous. There are certain f-fish -"

Cleo, however, was no longer listening. Instead, she was staring at Firth as he adjusted the rating's collar.

"Invisible", said Cleo. "What was in the sickbay was right in front of us, and we never saw it. That marine, Spink, he never stood a chance, because the enemy was invisible. It walked right up to him and killed him, and he never saw it."

She looked up. Jenkins, Karg, Firth and the rating were gawping at her in incomprehension.

"I think", said Karg, "we're having difficulty figuring out the exact platform, station and line of the train currently boarding passengers who Know What The Hell You're Talking About is on."

"Let me explain", said Cleo.