HELLO BEAUTIFUL

Ch 22

Duncan set the last of Theopoulis’ boxes on the chair and carefully unpacked its contents. Over the past few days he had done so with all of the boxes he had brought with him. Their contents were spread all over the desk in his quarters, and pinned and tacked to any available surface. Bishop had come in several times, to bring tea, to tell him about their progress. Duncan believed that the real reason that Bishop dropped in on him was to try to figure out how he did what he did, how he tracked men so well. Duncan looked back over his shoulder to the door of his quarters and looked down at his watch; he expected Bishop any minute. Over the past few years he had begun to grow predictable; Duncan never pointed it out as a dangerous habit.

He stood back once the task was complete and stood back to look at the charts and other documents as a whole. Some of them were from Theopoulis’ home and others were blown up from files that he had resurrected from the man’s computer files. A deep rumble came from him, it could have been a hum or a growl; it wasn’t really important, it was an absent noise that he made when in deep thought. He stroked his chin and tilted his head to peer at the bare spot in the charts, and compared the area to all the other star charts of the known area, also blown up and pinned on the wall of his cabin.

Theopoulis had spent years at this task and had probably thought that he hid his work well. To look at it one piece at a time that would be true; it was another to pull a man’s entire life, his entire defining goal, and look at it as a piece. He had to admit that he was impressed at the man’s drive, his dedication. A man with a goal and the will to achieve it was admirable, and this particular goal appeared epic in scope, which only increased his admiration.

Duncan smiled as Bishop knocked quietly at the open door of his quarters; it was gone by the time he turned to clear a spot for Bishop to sit. There were empty boxes everywhere. “How do you manage to sleep in here, Duncan?”

Duncan tilted his head and eyed Bishop until the other man fidgeted with the stack of papers he had brought with him. “You know I don’t sleep.”
—-

He had stood there as the storm started to blow in and listened as something predatory roared out there in the grass. Riddick had listened to whatever it was for days now; it didn’t appear to want to get any closer, but he listened to it anyway. He had watched from the deck of the ship earlier as it had chased what looked like an antelope through the long grass before it was brought down, hidden again. ‘Quiet is good for the soul, it clarifies’ and he found that he liked the quiet.

They hadn’t really talked about the move here, to the Moorglade, it had just happened, and by the time they had realized aloud that they intended to move from one ship to the other the move was mostly made. Theo had rationalized it; he didn’t know what it would take to really get the Odyssey off the ground. They could expend all of the energy of the generators in a wasted effort, and then where would they be? The Moorglade appeared to run on the energy fields of the planet itself, it just made sense. The generators had made the trip last, on a makeshift sled pulled by both himself and Theo. It reminded Riddick of the planet they had been on and the trip through the canyon. Of the others, Fry, Johns. Imam.

He looked out at the out flung sails of the ship as they rippled and sang in the sharpening wind. They were new; a pale grey green just a little lighter than the wood that the ship herself was made of. It was Jack that had found them, while she and Shazza had been in the lower deck, going through the cabins. There was so much dust in some of the rooms that Jack had fled in a fit of sneezing but in her haste to get off the lower deck she had stumbled upon a storage area, where they had found the sails.

He remembered how Theo’s hands had run over the folded fabric of those sails, when he finally realized that was what they were. Like he couldn’t believe it unless he touched it with his own hands. When they had found the ship it had been like that too, but this was more, because with every day that passed it felt like a thing fated. It made Riddick uncomfortable, he felt uneasy with the idea of fate, because he had always felt that he was damned. If there was no such thing as fate he felt he could escape that, like he had managed to escape from everything else. He had held Jack at the waist, as she helped Theo and Shazza rig the sails, and wondered a lot about fate. He wondered if maybe he had got it all wrong.

Theo had joined him one night out on the deck of the ship and the two of them had sat quietly for a while, and listened to their thoughts in the dark. “Now that I’m actually here it’s so hard to believe it’s real. I keep expecting to wake up and still be some goddamned merc, that this was all some crazy dream.”

Riddick hadn’t known what to say; it was hard to look at Theo and think of him as ever having been a merc at all, so much had changed for all of them. He wondered if Theo had trouble seeing him as a convict and a murderer, or if that had changed forever as well. He thought of Imam, and he thought of fate, before he answered quietly. “Maybe this place is some sort of a crazy fucking dream.” He had closed his eyes as he thought of Shazza as she rode him, now asleep soundly, exhausted, in their cabin below. If it was a dream it was one he didn’t want to end. Theo had just nodded. This place was a dream, in a way, but it was more real than anything he had ever known. After a few nights of being with Shazza in this place, it was the rest of his life before it that felt like some horrid nightmare, like his past couldn’t possibly be real. And maybe, if he stayed here long enough, that could be true; he could put it behind him and never look back.

He looked up again as the sky darkened in the distance behind the ship. They had all watched as it happened, and had watched the wind as it filled and rustled the sails, and made the ship shift uncomfortably in her place; like a thing that wanted to fly free. Jack and Theo had worked with the ‘engine’; a different sort of generator altogether that seemed to draw on the fields that ran across the surface. She ran like a battery on low, her potential locked deep, she needed just a little more, but couldn’t reach it, not where she was. It was so close.

He remembered Theo as he pulled himself over the railing back onto the deck, so excited by one small movement. The Moorglade had moved. Not any great distance, more of a shake than anything else. Jack was back underneath the console, a place she had grown comfortable in, and Theo had jumped ship to take a piss. When he had leaned on the ships’ hull on the way back she had moved under him, like a thing alive.

Later, he had walked out with Theo in a straight line from where the Moorglade lay; it had taken them half of a mile before they ran across one of the ley lines. A half of a mile was a long way for a ship that couldn’t move, but for one that could it was a different thing altogether. It would be crazy to even think of such a thing. Anywhere else it would be crazy, that is.

They all stood outside on the deck of the Moorglade and looked out over the grassland sea and contemplated how to move a ship without an engine half a mile across the ground. No one laughed. Jack didn’t have all of the words to describe what she thought, but she kept coming back to the sails, ‘wings’ she called them. With their new green sails they caught every stray breeze, and with the low thrum of whatever drove the heart of the Moorglade, it was possible, Jack thought. She had smiled quietly when all of them turned to listen to her, having expected to be laughed at or dismissed.

Theo had run his hands over his face as he stood at the bow and looked out. There were no markers to discern where the ley line began but it was out there, half a mile out. It was as though he tried to wipe the dream from his head by rubbing his face, to force some sense of reality to come through. “What if we get out there and it’s nothing? I don’t really know anything about those ley lines, it’s just something…I don’t know, what if I got it wrong? There couldn’t be that much power in those ley lines to move this ship, do you think?”

He had shared a look with Shazza, as they stood on the deck beside Theo and Jack, and felt again that incredible surge that connected him to her so powerfully. Riddick walked up beside Theo and looked out over the grass with him, and answered without looking at him. “It’ll work Theo.” He hadn’t elaborated, he couldn’t. There was no way he could put into words what he had felt with Shazza that night and deep down he knew it was something private between them, that he could never share with another.

He stood in the grass before the Moorglade and looked up at Shazza’s face as she stood on the bow and watched him. Her dark hair was wild in the wind that whipped across the grassland and made him ache for her. He curled the heavy rope they had found in the bow of the ship around his wrists, and pulled the line taut. It seemed like such a ridiculous idea on its face, but it was less so when he stood here in the grass and held onto the Moorglade; that’s how it felt, that he held on to her. She was his now too.

Shazza shuddered as she watched him, her fevered dream from the skiff come back to her full force. She watched as the powerful muscles across Riddick’s arms and back rippled when he tightened his hold on the thick rope he held, and knew that he belonged here and nowhere else. And she belonged here with him.
—

Duncan laughed quietly and turned to make Bishop a cup of tea; he watched Bishop as Bishop watched him, in the reflection of the stainless steel at the counter. “What have you brought with you?”

“The tech officer has been searching for a particle stream since we entered the system; he thinks he might have picked up the passage of the Odyssey.” Bishop’s voice was steely and cold, as always, but Duncan heard the question on the back end of it. Bishop had come here after all, he could have easily had the tech officer set the course on the bridge and never come down here at all.

Duncan took his time with the tea and drew out the wait; he liked to make Bishop wait, to make him tense. Very few people could do so and live to tell about it. He leaned over Bishop’s shoulder to pass him his tea, and to look at the papers he had brought with him. He hummed softly to himself again, and grinned inwardly at the effect he knew it had on Bishop, before he walked over to the star chart he had pinned to the wall. “Your techie’s trail puts them here.” Duncan traced a line on the map, quite some distance from where they were now, without turning around; he knew that Bishop watched his every move. “We could divert our course, and maybe meet up with their trail, but I guarantee that by the time we get there, the trail will be cold. With this nebula there’s no guarantee, and it would take us a week just to get there.”

Duncan closed his eyes and strained to hear every sound in the room. Bishop wouldn’t ask, he knew, he would never want to appear that eager, so Duncan listened to the man’s breath as it sped up; he could almost hear the man’s heart beat faster. Bishop swallowed his tea in a gulp and rustled his papers again, his only outward sign of unease. Duncan turned to the desk, at the makeshift quilt of charts that was scattered across its surface. His fingertip circled the area of the chart that was blank. “He’s here.”

“There’s nothing….”

Duncan continued as though he hadn’t heard the interruption. “He plotted all of this over the span of years, and this one piece he hid, above all others. This is where he will be.”

Bishop didn’t need to ask if Duncan was sure, he knew that he was, he always was, and he was always right. If he had any reason to doubt him, he wouldn’t come here to ask him. “Is there any way to narrow it down further? It’s still a large area.”

Duncan looked down at his charts and concentrated until they were a blur. He thought of Theopoulis; the man’s house, his books, his essence. “Search for water, he won’t go anywhere without a sea.”

Bishop nodded imperceptibly; he would have the tech officer set the course. He took the coordinates from Duncan. “How long?”

Duncan rested his hand on the empty spot on the chart. “From where we are now, a day, at the most.”

Copyright © October 2006 xxxevilgrinxxx