CHAPTER ELEVEN

In Which Our Heroes Learn To Hang Together --

Or Else They Will All Hang Separately

Before the discussion of the Zeban's truth-telling could be continued, Polydora was distracted by

Cynthia's realization that her arm really hurt, and was beginning to turn strange colors and swell up.

By the time Eloise and her ubiquitous salt-shaker had confirmed what the two were already pretty

certain of, that the arm was broken, and Pock had been left in mid-apology as the two went downstairs

to get the first aid kit and rig some kind of splint, Pock had decided it was time for someone who was reasonable and unemotional to go and deal with the Zeban Empath. Himself, of course.

"Excuse me. Thebes? I must speak with you."

Eloise was just returning to Thebes' chair-side from diagnosing Cynthia's broken arm. She tried to fend off Pock. "Shhh, can't you see she's asleep? We never disturb passengers who are sleeping."

Pock touched the button that moved Thebes' chairback into an upright position. The chair shot up, and Thebes' eyes shot open.

"She is now awake," Pock pointed out. "Please take this pillow downstairs to Cynthia's berth. I think she will need it for her arm."

"I was using that pillow," Thebes protested as Eloise obediently took it away.

"But you are not, at present. Now tell me, why did you inform me that Cynthia was a Pointy-Eared Person who accepted a contract with the Stellar Beauty Conglomerate, thus turning her back on her racial identity?"

"But -- it's true...!" Thebes groped for the button that would lower her chair back. It is more difficult to look feeble while sitting up.

"No, it is not true," Pock told her. "She has told me that she was born an Arcturan, and that she has papers to prove it."

"Oh -- that -- well," Thebes waved this aside airily. "Don't you know that at age eleven, at the beginning of puberty, Stellar Beauty Queens' memories of their childhood and their origins are erased? Of course she thinks she's from Arcturus. They all do, poor dears..."

"Then it is true?"

Thebes' eyes opened very wide. "Isn't that what I told you?"

"Yes, but...Perhaps, since she did not herself remember her origins, I should not have hit her quite so hard. Or should I have hit her harder?" He frowned, trying to work it out.

"Pock, listen to me," Thebes clutched his arm adoringly. "I have something else to tell you."

Church woke from an uncomfortable, aching sleep to find Miranon sitting beside him. "Hey -- whoa --"

"Relax. I'm not going to hurt you. Just tell me one thing. Do you know the scientist Russarl-Agwen-Nurtofistal?"

"Well, I've heard of him, of course, the famous experimental biologist --"

Miranon leaned closer. "Are you related to him in any way?"

"Related to him? Well, no -- I wish I was. He's really rich, isn't he? Owns the Biological Systems Enterprises Corporation that controls Orcan-6?"

"I wouldn't know," Miranon answered sarcastically. "He abandoned me as soon as he had completed the successful experiment. He was my biological father."

Church was staring up at the smooth half of Miranon's face that was her heritage from her humanoid, slightly-less famous and much less well-off mother. He moved a little so he could see the jutting brow and glittering eye that was her heritage from her famous, rich and capricious father. "And I'm supposed to be related to him?" He ran a hand across his own smooth face. Well, he needed a shave, but he wasn't in the least bit scaly.

"Thebes told me you're his son."

"And you believed her?"

"I think my father's capable of it." She rubbed the brow that was exactly like her father's.

"And that's why you jumped me?"

"Yeah. Well. Sorry about that. If you knew my father -- you'd understand."

"That's okay. I don't think I want to. So then --"

"What?"

"It's not true? About the brain tumor?"

"Brain tumor?"

"That Zeban told me you were depressed because you have a brain tumor."

"First I've heard of it. Shouldn't it hurt, or something?"

"Yeah. Probably. Then you don't --?"

"No, and I'm not depressed, either."

"Oh."

"Is that why --"

"Look, all I did was touch your face. I mean -- no offense, really."

"Yeah? Well, I spent twelve years on Minaous-4. Have you heard of rhinosquitos?"

"Four foot long flying insects that remove two pints of blood in three seconds by brushing against your skin? Yuck."

"I'm very sensitive to an unexpected light touch to any part of my body. On Minaous-4 you have to act fast. Once the rhinos tag you as having slow reflexes, they mob you, and you might as well just flush yourself down the toilet."

"I see. Well, your reaction seems perfectly reasonable under the circumstances. In both cases. And as soon as my cracked ribs heal, and my concussion, so that I only see one of the four of you at a time, I'll be happy to continue this discussion."

Miranon got up. "Well, anyway -- sorry."

"Right. Ask Eloise to bring me some more Fringian mushrooms, will you? And a drink."

"Right."

Just as Miranon moved to step over his recumbent form, the ship shuddered suddenly as though it had been hit, and the lights went out. Miranon cursed as she lost her balance, and Church yelled when she fell on top of him. Then he cursed, too.

"What happened?"

"I don't know."

A light blossomed at the end of the first class cabin. Polydora, sitting with Cynthia, turned on the flashlight she had hanging on the end of her com key. "Who is up on the bridge?" she asked, but she was on her way before anyone could answer. Cynthia followed her, painfully climbed the ladder one-handed after her in the reflected light from the flashlight above her. Miranon followed.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know. Polydora says someone's messing around on the bridge."

"Is it Axel? I'll kill that kid."

In the main cabin there was shouting and screaming, mostly of an hysterically accusatory nature. Polydora made her way to the bridge through the tumult. The door -- still broken -- had been barricaded with parts of the wall she and Miranon had been building. With the aid of the flashlight they gave Eloise to hold, Polydora, Miranon, Cynthia with one arm, and Axel pulled the obstructions out of their way. Thebes was still yelling and howling, so that by the time they had cleared themselves an entrance to the bridge, they knew who they would find there.

"Pock!" said Polydora as she pulled her way passed the last section of wall, "What are you doing in here?"

"He said he was going home!" Thebes howled. "All I said to him was --"

"What?" Miranon threw the Empath against the wall of the bridge and held her there. "What did you tell him?"

"I -- told him --"

"Why listen to her?" Cynthia asked. "She's only going to lie about it."

"I won't! I swear! What -- what's the matter with him?"

Polydora had pushed Pock out of the center chair on the bridge, sat down, and proceeded to talk very seriously with the computer. The lights went back on. The ship stopped shuddering. Soon, Rom and Rem could again be seen in the view finder, looking just as distant as ever. Everyone sighed with relief.

Polydora turned around in her seat. "Yes. What did you say to Pock? What made him come in here and readjust the ship's life support functions so that in just a few more minutes the ship would have been only suitable to support Caderean radishes while setting the ship's course for a post-nebulae dead zone?"

"A post-nebulae dead zone? Where? I want to see!" Church had found his way to the bridge, where all the excitement was.

"I want an answer!" Polydora insisted.

Everyone looked at Thebes. Thebes sniffed. "Look, it isn't my fault. I can't tell anybody anything they don't really want to believe. It's not my fault what they do about it."

"Oh yeah?" asked Miranon. She took Thebes roughly by the head and made her look at Pock, now shuddering uncontrollably in a corner of the bridge. "So that's not your fault, is it?"

"No," said Polydora, bending over Pock. "I'm afraid it isn't. I'm afraid that the very worst possible fate has happened to us. We have become trapped in a series of episodes."

"Yes!" shouted Church. "No more boredom! Things to happen! Things to see and explore! I am Captain Church! I AM Captain Church!"

"How often?" asked Cynthia, sitting down in the right-hand seat on the bridge. "What's our episodic tempo? Weekly? Monthly?"

"Every day?" Miranon let the empath go, and sat down in the left-hand seat.

"It's worse than that," Polydora told them. "Because what Pock is suffering at this moment is not connected to what Thebes told him, and what he deduced from the information she gave

him --"

"I knew it!" Church said. "I told him not to go figuring things out without asking me first! I told him!"

"Pock is suffering from a completely unrelated set of circumstances. And that means that not only are we trapped in an episodic field, but that episodic field is collapsing in on us, and if we don't get out of it, we're all going to die of exhaustion, overwork, and excessive exposure to scenes."

"Oh my Two-Headed God-Fish!" Miranon cried. She was a little mixed up, but no one corrected her. "What do we do?"

"Can't we just space him?" Cynthia asked. It had been hinted that Stellar Beauty Queens had their hearts wholly or partially removed during the course of their development, but nothing had been proved. "If we space him," she told everyone, "maybe the problem is just with him, and it'll go away."

"I don't think it will," Miranon said apologetically. She held out her hand. The firm green scales had faded to gray. Some of them were cracking. "Perhaps you don't understand. Look at this one." She held out her smooth, humanoid hand. The joints were swollen with arthritis; the skin was paper thin, limp, and blotched with age spots. "I don't know how it is, but I'm suddenly growing old."

Axel leaned heavily against the wall. "I'm pregnant! It kicked me! I'm pregnant..." he started to cry.

Eloise stepped inside the door. "Greetings," she spoke in a manly baritone. "I am an exalted being from the advanced culture of Billigoes-Myon-12."

"Oh don't talk nonsense!" Cynthia shouted. "There is no Billigoes-Myon-12!"

"Au contraire. That is what you puny brained humanoids are meant to think. I have taken over the body of your Journey Steward in order to look in and see whether any of you have advanced sufficiently so that we should actually speak to you."

"Quiet!" said Polydora.

Strangely enough, they all fell quiet.

"We will solve these problems. We must solve these problems. One by one, beginning with --" she pointed at Pock, still shuddering in the corner of the bridge, "him."