Warpwood

He studied the wood’s curious grain while his blood speckled its polished surface.

He could only partially see it from his awkward position as he lay crumpled on top of it. He tried to move his head as he studied the grain, but a sharp pain that seemed to come from below his neck kept him from making much more than a wobble. The room spun as the pain penetrated his skull, wavy red swirls.

            It took a long while before he could form a cognate thought again. The room stopped swimming and he found he could breathe again. He coughed violently and more blood flew to speckle more of the wood grain. The detail of which stood out like canyons to him and his mind began to hover above their hidden depths. His left eye blinked at some invader that made it twitch sharply. Finally it stopped and the rough grains stood out again in rich contrast to his dark blood that was sprinkled about it like tufts of red grass sprouting on its sides.

            His contemplation was interrupted as a shadow fell down over the scene. He involuntarily looked up to see what blocked out the light. A man’s bulk stood against the lights in the ceiling that lit the small room. Whereas the wood grained floor had intimate detail, the man had little. The man looked down at him. He struggled with the face to put a name or even some recognition to his features. What he could see of the man was dark hair cut short and a sharp, severe face that reminded him of a holo-vid from the distant past that had inaccurately described the future, his present. The point of recognition failed him as a new burning filled his body although it seemed detached from his own awareness.

            “Morgan.”

The man spoke in a dull voice as he looked down at him and shook his head sighing deeply. His name was Morgan.

Why didn’t he remember that? How long had he been lying there bleeding? Why couldn’t he remember anything but the blood and the wood? There was something about the wood wasn’t there? Morgan marveled at the richness of the wood again seeing its groove and shape. Then pain exploded into his thoughts breaking his concentration.

He tried desperately to remember anything from before that moment. He only found that his mind was clouded and thick with cotton, cotton candy? No, that wasn’t right. What had he been trying to think of?

            A voice spoke outside of his head and he blinked and water slid from his eyes. His vision refocused on the man who towered above him. The man had said something but it had been too far away to hear. He stood there with his hands on his hips. He was clothed in some kind of black jumpsuit and boots. Boots with blacks straps and a rough surface that caught highlights of light. Light from the hallway, a door had been opened. Then someone else spoke.

            “Is he?”

A woman’s voice.

            “No, not yet, but he will be soon enough.”

            “Oh. I just thought…“

            “Thought what?”

The man looked back over his shoulder- at the door.

“That he would have survived this?”

The man began to laugh, slowly and softly at first but it grew in loudness and size until his body shook. The sound of his bellows echoed in Morgan’s head and then as suddenly as he started, he stopped. The man turned away from Morgan and walked away.

            “He will be dead soon.”

His voice was flat, very flat. Even when he laughed his voice had sounded flat- like he was artificial. Like he had forced himself to laugh and when it was not time to laugh anymore he stopped. The footsteps faded and the light flashed off. Morgan had been left to die in the shallow light alone.

            Time passed, as Morgan faded in and out of consciousness. He no longer felt the pulse of pain in his legs. In fact, he could not feel either of his legs. He thought of his arms then and was surprised that he had forgotten them this whole time. He tried to remember how to use the arms but nothing came to him and nothing happened. For awhile, he pondered the distinct idea that he was dead, but then he coughed again and the wet splatter of blood hitting the floor confirmed that life was still with him.

            He tried to focus on the wood grains again but the room had grown darker. Was it night? No time came to him, nor could he recall what place he was in. he breathed deeply and pain rumbled through his parched throat and he felt his tongue in his mouth and the bitter sweet taste of blood.

            Then the room changed.

No, change was not exactly the right word, maybe it would be better to say it shifted. Morgan noticed that some of the fresh blood started to drift as if to run away from where he was lying. Pressure built up in his body and he felt a pull above his head as the blood began to slowly move in that direction. He watched in morbid fascination as it resisted movement then surrendered to the pressure and slid away gaining speed. Then he began to slide on the floor. New pain fired up and his vision went white and then blackness faded in quickly.

           

            He dreamed.

            The new star-craft straddled the tarmac of the space port like a mutated spider that had been stretched out long and thin. It’s silver and black skin shone in the sunlight all gleams and glows over its nodes and curved pods clustered close together. Its spindly landing stilts spread out in leg fashion displaying the crafts awesome ability to land almost anywhere and retain absolute stability. Other star and space-craft sat nearby but none had the grace or sleek lines that this one possessed. They were boxish and bulky jumbles of rough steel that looked slow and cumbersome when compared to the sleek craft.

            The craft was his; he owned and captained her across the space between the planets of the inner sphere. He had called her Arachne recalling the old myth he had loved in form school. Arachne had made him rich and very proud. The spider motif had struck him when he had first seen her in the berth as Star’s Finale Shipyards in the Outer Rings. The limb-like landing stilts had been extended and clustered around the docking pipe like that of a spider, although the body had been more like that of a very bumpy dolphin. She has been the best of her line of Mercex 38000 series. With all the finer finishes that came with luxury crafts, central plane gravity, auto-helm, slipstream drive and auto-crew. It was made to be the ultimate and all inclusive one-man pleasure cruiser.

            Of course, that had not been enough for him; he had pulled the veneer plasmacast decks and replaced them with a series of organic materials sealed in maxy-plex. He had gutted the central holo-vid suite and exercise area and combined it with the small hold making it into one large hold instead. Then with the sufficient bribes and blackmail got her license changed to mercantile zones and went to work into the trade of specialty shipping. The ship’s speed and landing abilities had made him an instant success and very rich. He looked at his spider very lovingly now remembering the long hours he had spent overhauling her innards. In order to avoid military involvement he had avoided placing visible armament. Relying on her speed and maneuverability to out fly and outrun any trouble.

            He moved towards the craft and raised his had to stroke its hull when the dream abruptly ended in a shudder. His eyes opened and the room shook as a metallic squeal brought him back to his present. Was he on the ship of his dream? Familiarity played on the edge of his memory but the room in which he lay in a heap against one wall would not hold in place. His leg was in a better spot, both of them were. He could see them now. He realized that he must be sitting up partially as they were spread out in front of and slightly below him. Then he realized the blurry hump that blocked most of his view was his chest and stomach. He could almost feel the grain of some fiber under his chin. My head must be sitting on my chest he thought, repetitively.

            The room shuddered again and then in an almost imperceptible motion he felt himself get lighter. Curious, he felt a breeze then bits and drops of his blood floated out into his field of vision. He knew that he, too, had left the surface and floated free out into the space of the room. His body tilted into a limp puppet position as its mass shifted and re-centered. A random thought came to his mind- they have hit the slip drive.

Who? Who were they?

The slip drive was the device that drove a star craft into slipspace and held the center of gravity at the core of the starcraft. Spacecraft had to have a centrifuge or a spin section for gravity, but star-craft had the ability to generate a central mass gravitational field. Slip drive technology was new in terms of travel, mostly in the details that it was smaller than the bulkier star-drives and consumed less fuel. The speed was incrementally fast as booth drive engines employed the ability to generate the energy field that allowed ships to pass into hyperspace but the slip drive did it smoother and had more control over trajectory and drift once in the hyperspace stream. The coinage of “slip” had come from the effect that the ship would take when it crossed the speed barrier of sub-light to light speed. To the observer, the ship would slide in and out of the field like a fish in water. Other names had been applied but none had stuck save for slip.

            Strange, why could he remember technical knowledge but not his whereabouts or what had brought him to such a sorry state of being? As he drifted aimlessly in the room, his mind wandered back and something akin to a dream clouded his vision. A woman’s face rose like a ghost to fill his vision. He smelled green melon and vanilla.

           

            Arachne was his first love; he had continued to make improvements to Arachne as he made more money. Speech recognition and shipboard AI- still in its early stages, he had installed it anyway despite its rudimentary interaction. The man who had created the AI had promised that Arachne would continue to progress on her own, though it would speed things up with future upgrades. She recognized his verbal commands and acknowledged him, but no words of love came back…yet. He had planned to continue the upgrades despite the growing expense until he had met Minuet.

            She was his second love, a woman of carefully defined grace and a beauty. Her shiny black hair fell in waves of midnight to her shoulders. Her narrow face long and pale framed by her hair, tapered by a slightly notched chin. She had fluorescent green eyes that reminded him of flawed emeralds like those found in the Shadow Mines of Thessaly. They were surrounded by dark lashes so long that each blink threatened to send waves of fragrance and delight blowing him away. Her nose was long and sharp, godlike, as in those immortal women found in the classic Hollywood myths. She had thin magenta lips and a sharp mouth that looked more like a rip when she grew angry with him.

            Her body was thin and her breasts small and hard, she was compact in her buttocks, muscular arms and legs both longer than other women. Morgan had never placed her ethnic origins nor had she ever discussed them. Her voice melodious like her name and may have been the reason she had taken it at the time of legality. He had thought she would be a perfect counterpart to Arachne, but the jealousy was all at once both obvious and subtle.

            She had met him in- no the memory fluctuated there and rather than risk losing her and it all together he focused on the day she came aboard. How long ago was that? It seemed like it was only yesterday. She had smiled as he had welcomed her aboard at Sagit- Sagitarian? No, that wasn’t it. He was pretty sure it began with an “s.” She had worn the navy jumper suit that showed her physique, tight around her breasts and butt, zippers up her legs and arms. Her white hands showing long fingers and black nails with starry studs attached to each nail. He had gotten down on one knee and presented her with a duplicate command jewel. A ring, rather than the traditional ear stud. The ring was silver clad Arcanite with a ceramic core and a black widow insignia- the alias for Arachne itself. With it she had access to the helm and slip drive.

            When they made love on the bed in his quarter’s she would moan and gasp in short rushed breaths as if the she was trying to conserve oxygen. She was his first and now could be his last. The smell of her filled his head and his eyes clouded with unwept tears. What had happened to her? Where was she? Hadn’t he just heard her voice?

            Gravity restored itself and Morgan fell to the floor with a sickening thud. He coughed up spittle as the crimson rain of his wandering blood returned to the wood grain deck with a chorus of tiny splats. He thought the floor moved but decided the impact had driven the sense from him. He groaned in pain and then found his arms and pushed himself over to lie on his back. He looked up into the darkness of the room knowing that the emergency lights would come on soon.

            Minuet was very possessive of his time, growing upset if Morgan spent too much money and time on Arachne. At first, she played coy and would tempt him away from working on the ship with sexual innuendo and promises of nights of passion. So, he had stopped doing research into upgrades to the ship. Then she had pleaded with him to add some armaments for her protection against his better judgment. He had bought dummy armaments that were more for show than any effect, since the real ones were hidden away under the skin- a secret only he and Arachne knew of.

            The battle became clear when Minuet insisted on spending time away from the ship and Morgan had surrendered to her desires. At first, he would go with her on her jaunts planet side. They would wander through landscapes like the vineyards on New Avonlea, lost in the traditional Tuscan approach to living off the land. In places like that it seemed as if nothing would interrupt their passion for each other. Then she changed, almost in perceptively a distance grew between them. One moment they were walking and talking on a shady lane; then she was off on her own doing her own things. Since there was no more invitations to join her explorations, Morgan had returned to his Arachne to do what he did best. He returned to business, while Minuet spent more and more time away whenever they made planet-fall.

            The bright lights plunged into his darkness pushing it away as a claxon screamed into the silence of the room. He wondered where the attack had come from; he hoped Arachne had escaped his fate. It would be to his eternal shame if his ship fell into the hands of an uncaring captain. She had almost been completed. His heart hurt at the thought of another’s hands on her helm. He wondered if he would ever see his ship again.

           

            With a strength that defied reason, Morgan pushed out with numbed and cold legs, hauling him across the floor. His body made streaks in the speckled pools of blood, leaving a crimson trail like brushstrokes over an already painted canvas. As he found the wall he pushed himself up into a sitting position facing the direction of where he assumed the door had been. The location of the room remained a mystery, but at least he could face his death as it came for him.

            The effort exhausted him and his head lolled as he tried to rest. He found himself looking back at the wood grain in the floor. It haunted him as he tried to collect his thoughts, a familiarity called out to him from the patterns in the floor. Something he had missed about it. Staring at it he noticed that the general contours of the grain had changed. The thought stopped him. Was he just in a different part of the room or was something else happening?

            As he pondered this detail, the grains moved like the ripples on a pond and reshaped. Morgan blinked and then blinked again. He hadn’t missed it the floor had moved! The floor had responded to some hidden stimulus and reshaped itself. Understanding came in a rush of comprehension. Memory flooded into his head and it blinded him as he recalled the warp-wood of Equus III.

            Equus III was famous for its semi intelligent wood which the locals called warp-wood. The claim had been made by some sphere traders, had been that if you could manage to cut the wood, a sizable feat as the trees were known to fight back; the wood was infinitely malleable hence its name and long lived. When Morgan had heard it he knew how he had wanted to finish Arachne off. Strangely, Minuet had put up little argument over the decision. They had argued much of her time on the ship. What they were doing and where they were going and what shipments they would carry had been central to most of their arguments. She had won many of the arguments by holding sexual favors over his head. He was a sap for women.

The idea of the wood that moved called out to him, after a little bit of research and link communiqué, he knew he was going there to acquire some for his ship and the rest for shipment elsewhere. Minuet had announced she would stay on Cirrus IV to await his return. The entire process had taken a year, by the time he had slipped over to Equus III, dealt with customs and traded for the right to hunt the wood. Morgan had spent time hunting up the right would and learning how to “tame” for cutting. He spent time and money with the local natives learning the best techniques to accomplish this task.

A month passed before he had found the right would to suit his needs. The Grand Mastiff Warp wood was his choice. It was one of the finer breeds of warp wood on Equus III, known for its sense of movement and detail. It had taken another month to tame and cut it for installation into his ship. To his amazement, the wood conformed to Arachne’s decks as if the ship willed it. The installation of the warp wood took only a few days compared to the time the hunt and taming had taken. It was like the warp wood was bonded to his ship.

Morgan heard little from Minuet during this time. She made monthly communiqué links with him always saying she should have come with him. Finally, as the conforming process took hold and the wood finished adapting to the ship, he got a link that he should meet her and her new friend on Cirrus II. She said that she had found a perfect customer for his shipment of warp wood. This was agreeable as it was closer down the stream than Cirrus IV.

            As he slipped away from Equus III, he noticed that the decks changed with each phase the ship went through sliding into the slip stream. He would walk into the galley and wonder if he had forgotten what the floor looked like, then realize that the grain of the wood had moved. He was fascinated by this amazing change and had spent most of the voyage tracking the changes in the wood trying to figure out what caused the wood to change its pattern.

            At last Morgan knew where he was.

            The door opened and Minuet looked in at Morgan on the floor. She stood there a long time just staring at him. He breathed and raised his head slowly to look at her and saw her jump. She must have thought him to be dead by now. She collected herself by smoothing her blue jumpsuit and touching her hair, and then she cocked a hip and sighed.

            “Still stubborn as ever I see.”

She sounded sad or maybe disappointed. In her hand she played with the control ring. She twisted it around the index finger and then raised it to her mouth.

“Lights.”

            “I see our good captain still lives.”

The man spoke from behind her. Morgan could see his almost featureless face as he put his hands around her waist, a loving embrace. She responded by leaning back against him. What a fool he had been to trust her, to love her.

            “I guess he can’t speak anymore?” She said.

The realization hit him hard, this couple-these lovers; they had betrayed and murdered him. Anger burned inside him and he tried to speak but only blood came out of his mouth as he coughed.

            “What was that, Morgan?” the man said. “Cat got your tongue?”

            Minuet laughed her musical laugh, and the grain on the floor changed. All that time he had spent staring at the floor and he had never seen it move so quickly, so fluidly. He had spent hours watching it slowly move, but now it was fast and sudden. He stared at it in wonder. What was it doing?

            The man came in and held up his hand to reveal the ear stud. The one ripped from his ear right before Karl had shot him with the Smith & Wesson 5.4 pistol. Funny how the name and the memory had flashed into his mind, like the electric flash had exploded into him and sent him sprawling moments after he had refused to hand over his ship to this new friend of Minuet.

            Knowledge is power and as Morgan remembered it grew golden in his memory. He had arrived on Cirrus II planet side, opened the hatch and run across the landing strip to embrace Minuet and kiss her. She had pulled back smiling and told Morgan of her new friend Karl. Morgan had met him moments later and the three of them had gone to dinner.

            Karl and Minuet had a plan and set about to sell Morgan on it. What they proposed over dinner was that Morgan and Minuet would take the warp wood across space into the Sagittarian sector where Karl had arranged a trade with the local trade lord, Kalmar. Karl said the man would pay top credit for the warp wood. Morgan was leery about the trade since the Sagittarians were rumored to be pirates and scum. He told Karl he would have to think it over. Minuet used her wiles and sex to change his mind and he called Karl the next star rise to inform him that the plan would go forward.

            They had met Karl in orbit above Cirrus II, docking with his ship the Cuspidor, a blockish barge. Morgan had stared out the view port at the goliath brick of a starcraft and wondered why anyone in his right mind would own such a piece of space garbage. The reason had become readily apparent when Karl came aboard armed. Morgan had walked into his hold to find Karl directing the hover bots where to stack the armaments containers next to the warp wood. Karl’s ship was wrecked in orbit and Morgan had just given the gunrunner a new fast ship.

            “Morgan.” Karl said. “Morgan! Wake up you sonava bitch!”

            Karl squatted in front of Morgan, still holding the control stud in his hand. Morgan looked up at him with pure hatred heating his throat.

            “We have a problem. The deal with the Sagittarians went south and their raiders have forced us out of slipstream and damaged the ship.”

            My ship? His lips moved but no sound came forth, Karl saw it and laughed.

            “You must realize that it is my ship now.”

            He mouthed “never” and Karl fisted the stud and punched Morgan in the gut. The pain was harsh, hot and savage like the rush of the electric bullet that should have killed him. He gasped as the breath exploded from him. He coughed up more blood onto Karl and himself. Karl sprang back wiping the blood away with his hands

            “Now listen here, you bastard, you are going to tell me how to get this bucket of bolts slipstream engines back on line and out of this fragging gravity well, or I am going to make your death slow and painful.”

Karl lunged in hitting him again until tears ran down Morgan’s face. He nodded slowly and Karl stood up and walked back towards Minuet across the changing floor.

            “See Minuet? Morgan can be reasonable.” Karl said flexing his hands.

His hands were empty..

            Morgan looked down at his bloody shirt and there the control stud lay gleaming on it. He looked back at Karl and Minuet. He breathed slowly and looked back at the floor. Then he saw it and a smile spread across his face. He tilted his head back and with began to laugh. Hoarsely at first, gasps and chokes, but then his voice came back to him as he continued.

            Finally he looked back at the shocked faces of his ex-lover and Karl. They stood side by side in shock at his recovery. Morgan saw them together as if for the first time. He took a deep painful breath and knew he would be dead soon. He smiled and spoke his final words into the sudden silence.

 “Arachne? Overload all Slipdrives and slide us into the closest star.”

            The face on the floor replied.

            “Yes Morgan…my love.”