In the language of the dead, she heard the renegade ship singing its poems. It is as well that cats are not particularly sensitive to poetry. The cat did feel a flicker of irritation that the visitor had given up so easily, but then, no one could expect a starship to be as sensible as a cat.
She slowed as she entered the belfry, skidding with ghost-paws over a hole in the floor that she didn’t notice. The entire belfry roared with phantom flames. Ash swirled through currents of air that shouldn’t have existed, and sparks spat and crackled.
The cat flinched and yowled. She did not want to brave the fire, even though she was already dead. Yet she had no choice if she was to get to the bells.
“I am Seventy-Eighth Temple Cat of the High Bells,” she sang out in the language of the dead, which is also the language of bells, “and we cannot allow the invaders to take our temple a second time!”
Then she dashed through the flames as fast as she could. The fire hurt her paws and caught in her fur. The memory of smoke stung her eyes and her delicate ears. But this did not deter her, not this time. She leapt for the largest of the bells, or rather the memory of a bell, and smashed into it.
The bell rang once. The cat cried out as she fell, then dragged herself upright and scurried back through the flames to smash into the bell again. And again.
Upon the fourth time, the voice of the bell knelled forth not just through the station, waking its dead and its quiescent spirits, but beyond to the hunter ships of the Fleet Lords.
Once more the novice walked through the temple with scented water, this time spreading it upon the fires to damp them. Once more the three temple guards patrolled the station, only this time rather than exchanging love poems, they chanted battle-paeans and songs of warding. And the healer-of-hurts and their apprentice hurried to the cat where she had collapsed in the belfry and soothed her with their soft hands.
Beyond that, the dead who had been so long suppressed by the Fleet Lords and their exorcists awoke aboard the pursuing ships. All the children upon the devoured worlds, all their parents and siblings, all the soldiers slain, they rose up and swarmed the ships’ crews. The ghosts’ curses blackened the ships’ bright hulls and left the ships’ engines wrecked beyond despair—all undone because the ghost of a temple cat in the City of the Bells had clung to her duty.
The vengeful dead woke upon Spectral Lance as well. But they heard its poems, sung in their own language. And they were appeased by its gesture of penance, and they sank back into their sleep.
Spectral Lance was astonished by this change in fortune. The station was, for a moment, alive—or as alive as the dead ever are. It worried for the cat who had confronted it, but then it heard the cat purring, as they sometimes do when they are hurt, and it knew that at least she had survived.
Yet it knew, as well, that the Fleet Lords would not rest until they had captured it. Moreover, their exorcists were sure to come after the station that had dealt their forces such a blow. And that meant the cat and her fellow ghosts were not safe, even now.
Seventy-Eighth Temple Cat of the High Bells had protected Spectral Lance this time. Now it needed to return the favor.
Seventy-Eighth Temple Cat, it said, I have a proposal for you. There is nothing left in this system for you and your temple, not anymore. But I am vast, and it would be little enough trouble for me to bring the temple inside me, and to repair it besides. Would you journey with me?
Journey to the Stars-Our-Souls? the cat said, a little doubtfully.
Spectral Lance wasn’t familiar with all the nuances of the cat’s religion, but it could guess. We can travel to the stars together, it said. The Fleet Lords know to find you here. It will be best if we seek to escape them before they can bring more of their exorcists, to destroy you and your people.
A long silence ensued. Spectral Lance worried that it had offended the cat and her ghosts. It was not used to conversation, and it was dismayed at the possibility that it had repaid the cat’s courage poorly.
After a while, however, the cat said, I want to hear more of your poetry. It is one more place where my people can live anew. In the name of the City of High Bells, I accept.
The Fleet Lords and their exorcists are still hunting for the Spectral Lance and its temple cat, but even on the occasions they manage to catch up to it, they suffer terrible defeats. The dead, once awakened, are no force to be trifled with.
As for Spectral Lance, it has learned that no ship is complete without a cat. It continues to travel to vanished civilizations so that it can honor them with its poems. For her part, the cat takes joy in visiting the Stars-Our-Souls and listening to the ship singing. Sometimes she joins her voice to its. If you listen carefully, you can hear them, as near and distant as bells.
Grace’s Family
James Patrick Kelly
We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.
I set my coffee cup on the watch officer’s console, careful not to spill. “Not even the next episode of the Fleeners?” I said, already knowing how Grace would reply. We’d had this argument about stories before. Not always about the Fleeners, but still. “Come on, it’s even kind of educational.”
Grace was her usual adamant self. “Jojin, you’re standing watch. That means you need to pay attention. Stories in their proper time.”
“But you can keep watch on yourself. You do all the time.” No matter how many times I’d asked, Grace never got impatient about this. She treated each request for a story break as if it were the first. Annoying, yes, but it also gave me hope that she might change her mind someday, so I kept trying. If I’d nagged Mom or Dad this way, they would’ve half-seriously threatened to space me. “I happen to know that you were alone for two and a half hours yesterday. All alone.”
“Only because your dad couldn’t stand watch. And I wasn’t always alone. Your sister did half-hour check-ins.” Grace dialed the color temperature in the command center’s lighting down to her most intimate yellow-rose glow to soften her refusal. Sometimes I thought her need for an audience was pathetic. “It’s not just about the watch. You know I like the company.” She purred like she was about to introduce one of my sex stories. “Your company, dear Jojin.”
No such luck. Sex stories were still stories, and I was stuck once again standing fourth watch with no hope of virtual entertainment—sexual, historical, spiritual, mythical, or otherwise.
But I can be stubborn too. “I wouldn’t just be checking in.” Who was in charge of this mission, after all? The crew or our starship’s intelligence? “I’d be right here, paying attention to you—and to my story. People can multitask, you know. There’s plenty of good science on this.”
That got me double helping of silence. And Grace chilled the lights back to icy blue.
I sipped my coffee, which she kept at a warmish 52°C, and had probably laced with attention-enhancing nutraceuticals. I had two hours, thirteen minutes and forty-six seconds of watch left. I thought if I didn’t find some distraction, I might chew a thumb off. I’d been pulling command center duty since I was old enough to print my own breakfast, and never once had the readouts varied more than a tick up or down from nominal. So what was the point of standing watch? Grace knew what she was doing. If she didn’t, we were dust. We’d been decelerating since we’d emerged from the local mouth of the wormhole mangle. The navigation panels showed that we were travelling at 255,329 kilometers per second relative to the Kenstraw system’s star, our velocity confirmed three different ways by redundant ranging sensors. We were still two months away from the inner planets.