Ship of Fools

by Richard Paul Russo

On Sunday I went to early Mass, but there was no sign of her. The bishop said Mass, with Father George assisting; Father Archibald gave the sermon, but I didn’t register a word of it. At the midday Mass, it was the same. This time I waited for everyone to leave, hoping to speak to Father George alone.

“They . . . they rescued us,” Sarah said, trembling again. “They rescued us, then . . . then . . . died. They died.” “Who rescued you, Sarah?”

“We were on . . . Antioch,” she eventually said. “Oh . . . God . . . all the . . . all the killing . . . the bodies, bodies hanging . . . we couldn’t . . . couldn’t couldn’t couldn’t get away, madmen . . . slaughtering us . . . slaughtering . . .” She was becoming more agitated, clawing again at the blanket. “. . . men monsters, they were men and women they were . . . madmen . . . madmen killing us. . . .”

found Francis in the circular blue-lit room. He was sitting on the steps holding his head in his hands; his pressure suit lay on the floor halfway across the room. He heard me come through the doorway and looked up. The blue light was dim, but I could see the haunted look in his eyes. Something was terribly wrong. I wasn’t sure he knew where he was. “Francis.” Then I realized he couldn’t hear me and switched on the external speakers. “Francis, it’s Bartolomeo.” He didn’t respond. His expression didn’t change.

Bodies. Human bodies. Men and women and children naked, blue and gray and dusted with ice crystals twinkling in the faint light, the bodies impaled on hooks like the skeletons of the dead infants back on Antioch. Rows of them on the far wall, row after row both rising and descending until I could no longer see them in either direction. Thousands of mutilated corpses preserved in this cold dark chamber for who knew how many years, how many decades. Preserved for what purpose? Why would they let us discover this? Why now?

There was something wrong here, terribly wrong. I thought about what the old woman had implied, that this ship, the aliens on this ship, had rescued her and others from Antioch where they were being slaughtered. They may have rescued them, and they may have kept her alive, but the aliens had surely killed all these others.

And that’s when my stomach tightened and turned on itself. Antioch. Antioch. The old woman had said she’d been rescued from Antioch. How had she known that’s what we had called that world? I knew then that this ship was no longer dead, if it ever had been. “Get your suit on, Francis. Now.”

It was crazy, but that’s what I was thinking: show no fear, and we might get out alive.

“These aliens. They did this, they killed all those people in there, and they killed all those people on Antioch.” “Yes,” I managed to say. “Get your helmet on now. We have to go.”

do, get her out

“Antioch is the problem,” I said. “The old woman said ‘Antioch.’ She said she’d been rescued from Antioch.” I left it there, hoping they would truly understand.

“What are you saying? That the old woman is . . . what? She’s an alien?” “She isn’t human,” I said. “What? The aliens look just like us?”

“I don’t know, Michel; I won’t even pretend to know. It could be anything. An alien . . . essence animating an old woman’s body they kept alive. Or some creature that can take on the form of an old woman. I . . . don’t . . . know. And it doesn’t matter. What matters is, she isn’t human.” I paused. “And we’ve got to get her off this ship.”

“Damn, I’m glad it’s you,” he said. “I’ve been trying to get through, but I was told you were in emergency session and couldn’t be interrupted. I told Communications the survival of the ship was at stake, but they didn’t believe me. I’m not sure I believe it myself.” “You get Dr. G. out?” I asked.

“Only she’s not an old woman. I don’t know what she is, but she’s definitely not human.”

He did not turn to look at me, but he slowly nodded. “She wasn’t supposed to be there.” His voice was hoarse and cracked. “No one should have been there. Only you. Only . . . you.” I could see him swallow, his throat moving with difficulty. “Now I am truly damned.” “You expect me to feel pity for you?” I shouted at him. I was afraid of losing all control. “Because you killed her instead of me?”

“It was from the alien ship,” I finally said. “That device you took from it.” He looked surprised. “How did you know about that?”

He didn’t move or speak for several moments; then he turned to me and said, “Peripherally. It’s from 2 Esdras, which is part of the Apocrypha.” “Which is . . . ?” “A group of religious writings that are considered important, but not an official part of either the Old Testament or the New. The issues surrounding the Apocrypha—which writings are a part of it, and which aren’t, their relative importance, and so on—are complex, and were debated for centuries. Our own Church recognizes many books of the Apocrypha as deuterocanonical—they belong to a second level of the canon, although that is not to imply that they are of less importance than those books that are in the Old and New Testaments. Oddly enough, though, 2 Esdras is not one of them. In a way, it floats around in its own canonical Limbo.” He smiled to himself, shaking his head. “Sorry, I don’t intend to bore you. And it doesn’t really matter.” He sighed. “That verse has been going through my thoughts for days now.”

“Bartolomeo.” Then he hesitated, unsure. “Bartolomeo, do you want to know who your parents are?” “You know?” “Yes.” “How long have you known?” “Since I became captain.” I didn’t have to think about it long. I felt surprisingly little curiosity. “No,” I told him. “It’s too late for that. They’ve been dead and buried in space to me all my life. Better they stay that way.”