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= NEBULA EXPRESS =

a DarkSF novel

by John Argo

Page 24.

"It was either this or let mankind die out. Earth perished in a swarm of comets that circle around every hundred million years or so. There is no home left to go back to. The Nebula Express is moving faster and faster through deep space seeking a new home."

"Do you know the mudmen ate all the colonists?" Tomson said.

"Not all of us," Venable said. "Not any of us, in fact. Those were the original colonists who set out. We all donated our memory information, our DNA, our hopes and ambitions and the good and the bad of us, into the ship's laboratories. It's all automated and a hundred times redundant. The cleaners started turning sour and eating the freight, but we have plenty of growth stock and the electrochemical soup to cook it with. That's how we made you."

"You cooked us from stray memories and left-over love affairs," Brenna said in a tone that made Ridge cringe, and he hoped Venable felt her disdain. "You made soup from human lives and created us for what purpose? To fix things that cannot be fixed?"

Venable gave his clean-cut, cheerful smile. "You fix things that will require generations to fix, but they can be fixed. They must be fixed, even if eons are required. The ship was badly smashed by a stray comet."

"That would explain the charred and glazed wasteland out there," Tomson said.

Venable said: "Your kind have been laboring for ages to set things right. You are winning the battle."

"Yes, but we live our lives in those cold black tunnels," Lantz said, "while you sit in your nice cozy little CP. Is it warm in there?" She ran around the desk and banged her fists on the view screen. "Is it cozy in there?" Tears flowed down her strong features. "Is it like our workpod in there? Do you lift weights? Take showers? Listen to music?"

"No," Venable said, "I am all alone." He said it so plaintively that the four humans fell silent. Ridge felt all anger and rage leave him. It was clear that Venable was somehow as much a victim as they were. "Are you real?" Ridge asked Venable. "Are you a person?"

"Yes."

"You are the captain of the ship?"

"Yes."

"You are the captain but you are trapped in there and cannot help us?"

"I am safe from the cleaners," Venable said simply.

Tomson grew animated in the remnants of his own anger. He waved his arms and made faces to imitate the mudmen. "Those are the baseball-heads with the stitches and the slits for eyes? Round mouths?" Tomson made fishlike mouth gestures at Venable, thrusting his chin aggressively forward. Sweat glistened on his dark skin, and his eyes looked ravaged from the continuous succession of frightening revelations.

"They are the cleaners," Venable said. "They were made to take away your bodies when you die."

"Damn!" Lantz welled up with anger, then punched the desk with a loud bang. "Just like that, eh?"

"I'm sorry. It is the truth. It had to be. Things got out of control. We are hoping you can make it right. Then we can all be free again."

"What do you mean?" Ridge asked.

"When the ship is fixed, then we can go away."

"Like my children and my husband," Brenna said.

There was a moment of silence in which Venable appeared to be thinking, while the gossamer cobwebbing of stars sprawled behind his head. "Think of it this way, Brenna. You are a composite of many people, but you are the impression of some primary woman who lived a life much like the one you remember. Your babies lived in Buenos Aires and probably grew up to be fine men. They would have listened to tango and drunk and played futbol in La Bombonerita..."

"But you don't know for sure?" Brenna said. Her eyes were wide and hopeful, her teeth like little chicles of desire.

"I have no idea, nor would the most loving mother have control over their lives."

"But they lived?"

"Yes, they lived."

"Oh, thank you," Brenna said and started to cry again, this time for joy. She turned away, dabbing her eyes with her fingertips.

Ridge wondered if it was a lie, but he was happy for her. "What about Dorothy?" he asked. As Venable smiled again, before Venable could reply, he blurted: "What were their names? I loved my children but I can't picture them and I don't know their names." Truth was, he'd nearly forgotten them, and that made him sad.

"Here they are," Venable said. "Patrick Jr. after you, and Robert after Dorothy's dad."

"Then my name is Patrick?" Ridge almost laughed. Tomson did laugh. Brenna and Lantz joined in.

Tomson yelled "This is all more bullshit!" and punched the screen. He couldn't harm the wall, and Venable was unfazed. "No," Venable said, "these are all real people. They lived long ago. Brenna's two boys Ricardo Jr. and Matteo would have lived their lives back on Earth, two or three thousand years ago."

"They are dust," Brenna said, losing some of her joy. Then she brightened again: "But they lived. They had their lives." She bit her lip before continuing: "I hope they loved me as much as I loved them. Or as much as the woman who I was..." She was unable to say more.

"You see," Venable said, "it's not so bad. The engineers and thinkers meant well. They were kind people who tried to think of everything. They tried to think about how we would feel." The screen flickered, and he looked up. "Power is fading. Will need a few hours to recharge." He laughed. "I haven't talked this much in ages. I am all alone here."

And half nuts, Ridge thought.

"...Many secrets," Venable said, his voice breaking up. "...Largo, the city of the future."

"What is he saying?" Tomson asked.

"When we orbit New Earth, we'll drink to that," Venable said. He grinned. His image pulsed weakly as the batteries fed their remaining juice into the com nodes. "Great view from Largo. You and I won't be around, but our descendants will remember us."

"Tacoma!" Lantz shouted, desperate to get her share of the information. "What street did I live on?"

"Off Pearl Street near Point Defiance Park."

"Yes!" Lantz said. "Pembroke Court."

"Pembroke Court No. 34, the house with the basketball hoop on the sidewalk. That's where Dr. Werner Lantz lived, the geneticist at SeaTac University."

"So that's it," Tomson said. "You dumb shit. You gave it away. Some guy named Lantz was mixing test tubes at the lab, and he cooked a few people up."

"Shut up!" Lantz said.

"Easy," Ridge said, putting a hand on Tomson's powerful arm. "Let her have her memories. We don't know how much of this is real and how much is phony, but that's all we're going to get."

The screen flickered again. "Please come talk to me again," Venable said. He smiled as before, but against a dimmer background. The stars were gone, and the background with the coffee-drinking woman had been replaced by a kind of neutral cottony fog.

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