The Pinnacle Read online

  THE PINNACLE

  Sequence:

  Judas Gene

  The Pinnacle

  Almost Human

  Gary Moreau

  The Pinnacle

  Gary Moreau

  First Edition Copyright © Gary Moreau, 2017

  Published by Yard Dog Press at Create Space

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Print Version ISBN 978-1-945941-09-2

  The Pinnacle

  First Edition Copyright © Gary Moreau, 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology should send their inquiries to Yard Dog Press at the address below.

  Yard Dog Press

  710 W. Redbud Lane

  Alma, AR 72921-7247

  http://www.yarddogpress.com

  Edited by Selina Rosen

  Copy Editor & Technical Editor Lynn Rosen

  Cover art and Design by Mitchell Bentley

  First Print Edition September 15, 2017

  Printed in the United States of America

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  Table of Contents

  Table of Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  About the Cover Artist

  Dedication

  For my mother, Vel Moreau

  Chapter 1

  Casey Conklin was empty. He sat at the console and leaned forward with his head cradled in his hands. His mind drifted, an empty boat on a vast sea. Rituals and habit ruled his skeletal existence.

  Occasionally, one of the screens in a bank of screens would blink to life, bright with symbols indicating well-being. “All is as it should be,” they would say. The same message had been repeated for fifty years. The content of the screens no longer held meaning. It was like the rest of his minuscule world, changeless in its small, repetitious changes.

  There had been a time when he had been special, chosen to serve on this, the seed ship of humanity. It was survival of the species as expressed by the remnants of Earth’s civilization. It was humanity’s insurance policy against extinction.

  It wouldn’t be long now. Soon he would join his charges in cryogenic sleep to await journey’s end. Midpoint was only five days away.

  A chime sounded. As if clicked on, he pushed himself to his feet. He shuffled across the deck toward the curved passageway, which was lined with cryogenic capsules. The long row of vertical tubes glowed with the ghostly light of stasis. He began his daily inspection of the capsules; each contained one well-preserved youth, deep in winter’s sleep. During the first years of the journey, he had intervened to save the lives of many of the sleepers, but that was long ago. The capsules had stabilized.

  He paused before the first capsule. He focused on the faint reflection from the convexity of the clear, ceramic surface. The face that stared back at him was balding with wispy, white hair. There were shadows under the cheekbones and sagging skin beneath the eyes. He didn’t recognize this old man.

  He looked beyond his own reflection. The sleeper’s face, with its sharp nose and square jaw, proclaimed confidence and strength. Even though wearing the death mask of cryo-sleep, the face was fresh with youth. The narrow, almost lipless mouth perversely reminded Casey of a gluteal cleft. Butt-face had a future; he had a real face, preserved for real life.

  He continued down the passageway. Except for an odd few, he knew all their personal information, everything about them that was stored in the ship’s computer. He was keeper of the living dead. Halfway down the passage, he stopped in front of his favorite, Lisa Bouviet. Lisa was her given name but he wasn’t fooled. He knew her real name was Virgin of the Woods. As always, she remained unchanged, but he took time to study her round face and the curves of her body. His gaze glided over the jeweled communication collar around her neck and settled on her pink nipples, which were contracted and erect as if sexually aroused. Her scant pubic hair was as blond as the hair on her head, but she was forever beyond reach. He had grown old, but she had escaped the inexorable passage of time. She reminded him of a woman he’d left behind. It might have only been the shape of her face, but it was enough. What he imagined and what he remembered were mixed together like the marbling of a cake.

  Through the years, many of the sleepers had come to life in his mind and had revealed their real names. The small woman with the straight black hair, delicate epicanthic folds, and unblemished olive skin, the one with the child-like breasts, had become the Child Princess. The giant man, who could have been a sumo wrestler, became the Unsmiling Buddha. There was Prissy and Shrew, Mister Attention and Little Pecker, Teddy Bear and Gingersnap, and all the rest. They were his collection, his ice people, neatly lined up along the passageway for his daily inspection. If he’d been capable of rational thought, he would’ve admitted that he didn’t like them all but, whether good or bad, they had all become his children, even Butt-Face.

  Raucous laughter echoed down the passageway; it sent a shiver of fear down his back and he hurried back to the command center. He had been hearing it for some time but, regardless of how quickly he turned, he could never discover the source. There were times when his scalp prickled with warning and he would pivot, but he could never catch the prankster. At first he had thought it was Vlada Bezdicek, the guardian of Deck Two, the one who had left a message that he could take it no longer and had cycled into space. He could imagine Vlada’s boiled and bloated body hurtling through the void alongside the starship, a grotesque moon. But now, he was almost positive it was Julio Mendoza, the guardian assigned to Deck Three. He had found Mendoza’s decomposing body years ago and had dumped it into ship recycling. He suspected Mendoza had merged with the ship and had oozed into the bulkheads.

  There were times that he would hear a voice. It sounded like his own. It would say, “Fail-safe, fail-safe, fail-safe failed.”

  He thought that was a good joke and it brought a rare smile to his face. He began to think it was all a grand joke, an April Fools forever, and had decided to play a joke of his own; he had
constructed his own cryo-capsule and it was well hidden. He wasn’t going to be the only one not to get pricked by the magic spindle. They had told him at Midpoint his replacement would awaken and then he would join the others in frozen sleep, but he wasn’t that gullible. A joke is a joke, but he wasn’t going to shrivel up like Mendoza; that wasn’t funny.

  Wild laughter careened around the room.

  “Where are you, Mendoza?” he yelled, and then stomped his foot on the deck. “Did that hurt?”

  There was no answer. There never was. Meanwhile, the chronometer marked off another microscopic passage of time. Midpoint was coming ever closer.

  He touched each capsule with the tip of his index finger as he shambled back to the bridge and then crouched behind the control chair to study the hall of sleep. It was dimly lit by the soft light of the crystalline capsules but he could only see a short distance into the passage because it curved to follow the contour of the ship. He switched his gaze to the opposite corridor. It was a mirror image of the hall of sleep, but there were no cryo-capsules; its inner wall was lined with doors that opened into rooms filled with instruments.

  When he was certain no one was watching, he stood and crept toward the down-tube. His eyes jerked from place to place, first the passageway, then the bulkhead, then the overhead, and then back to the passageway. He had to be especially careful now; the time for his own joke approached. He slid as smoothly as a wet noodle into the mouth of the down-tube, but kept his hand on the lip. He raised his head so that he could peer with one eye into the bridge. There was no one, but he wasn’t fooled. They were cunning, so he had to be even more cunning, but that was fair. It was one of the rules of the game; everything was fair.

  He released his grip and floated downward, past Deck Two, past Deck Three. He was going all the way down to Storage. When he neared the short side-tube that opened into Storage, he touched the wall of the cylinder with his fingertips. His descent slowed until, with well-practiced precision, he flipped feet first into the side-tube and slid out to stand on the landing platform. The light-lines in the overhead came to life, revealing the cavernous hold.

  A voice spoke, “Never fail, never fail. What a good ship am I, am I, am I....”

  The words reverberated in his mind. He stood perfectly still and then screamed. “Ship, I’m warning you! If you tell Mendoza, or any of the others, I’ll kill you!”

  There was no answer.

  After a few moments, his self-satisfaction reasserted itself. The ship understood. He was certain of it because it was fair.

  He walked down the steps of the landing platform and over to the ladder that stretched upward to the control cabin of the land-shaper. It was a mammoth piece of machinery, the biggest, single artifact they had brought with them, other than the ship itself. He climbed the rungs and paused at the top, as high as the roof of a three-story building. He gazed out across the clutter of vehicles and machinery. It was quiet and still. When he was satisfied Mendoza hadn’t seen him, he tugged on the handle of the massive hatch. It opened on its automatic hydraulics at its own rate; it could not be rushed. He climbed into the dark hole and activated the closing mechanism. The hatch closed with a muffled “clang” and a soft “hiss”. His rigidly straight back relaxed. He was home again.

  For years he had studied the information on cryo-capsules stored in the ship’s computer and had become the proverbial, self-taught expert. He had connected power cables that were fed directly from the starship engine. He had successfully bypassed the ship’s computer. His isolation was complete.

  He reached with confidence to touch the control panel and activated the lighting and environmental systems. Then he turned to let his eyes feast on his creation: his very own cryo-capsule, built piece by piece, separate from the rest, and hidden in the bowels of this great, mechanical beast. It was his pea pod and he was to be the pea.

  Suddenly he was furious! He kicked viciously at the capsule and pummeled it with his fists. Someone had beaten him to it. Tears leaked from his eyes and he cried loudly, a broken-hearted baby. Someone had cheated. Someone was sleeping in his bed. He leaned forward, flattening his nose against the glass-like surface, and began to giggle wildly, just as he had cried without restraint only a moment before. He was already inside the capsule; no, it was his dummy inside the capsule.

  He smiled and rubbed his chest. Is there anyone more clever than I? Not likely, he admitted.

  “It is a good trick,” he declared out loud. “It’s a trick, a treat, a teat to suckle.”

  He settled onto the deck of the cabin and curled up to suck contentedly on his thumb, to sleep in safety.

  He awakened with a start. He slowly withdrew his thumb from his mouth. What was that? Little needles dashed up and down his legs and lightly across his arms. It felt like the cradle of his womb had slipped sideways. There was a sinking in his gut; all joy leaked out. Had he missed his time?

  With trembling fingers he opened the hatch and gazed into blackness. He listened until he could hear his heart, but nothing more. Something had happened. He stuck his head out of the hatch and sensors reactivated the light-lines. He quickly glanced around; all appeared as it should be.

  He climbed down the ladder of the land-shaper, all the while whispering, “Cheater, cheater, cheater….”

  When he arrived at the up-tube, he stopped whispering and peered cautiously into it. The shaft was empty and quiet. He slipped soundlessly into the up-tube and exited on Deck One, where he immediately slithered onto his stomach and carefully worked his way over to the control console. Harsh laughter shattered the silence. He stopped, as still as any prey sensing a nearby predator.

  “Shhhh,” he whispered, “a joke is a joke, but fair is fair.”

  He listened; the control room had become ghostly silent. He continued his squirm across the deck until he could see down the hall of sleep; there was nothing but the quiet of glowing capsules. He took a chance and scrambled to his knees to look at the chronometer. His forehead wrinkled in puzzled concern; Midpoint was still five days away. He leaned forward and slammed the deck with both fists. His faced flushed. Someone was changing the game. Was it that tricky Mendoza?

  He slipped back to the floor and worked his way over to the control chair. He pulled himself into the chair and kneeled to cautiously peer over the back. The blue of his irises was completely encircled by white. Eyes right, eyes left, back and forth.

  “I’m looking now,” he said in a soft voice, “so you can’t move. It’s the rule.”

  Almost at once the coarse rattle of the warning signal grated on his ears. The red, danger-light flashed insistently, demanding attention. He collapsed and curled deeply into the chair. His heart fluttered. The warning had sounded and flashed only once before, years ago, when Vlada had cycled into space to take his solitary walk. Vlada, the name struck horror in his mind, disfigured, exploded, monstrous. The airlock on Deck Two was opening to space. Vlada was coming to get him!

  The light on the console changed to green; cycling was complete. His breath was coming in chest-heaving gasps. He could imagine Vlada gliding down the passageway of Deck Two. Soon, Vlada would enter the up-tube and burst onto Deck One, an overripe ghoul, dripping with putrefaction. He imagined the greasy remains smothering him, swallowing him whole.

  He bolted for the down-tube, slipped and fell, and scrambled back to his feet. He jumped feet first into the mouth of the tube, barking his shin on the edge, but the pain was nothing compared to his fear. Vlada was coming! There was no doubt, but Casey could fall only as fast as the tube would allow. He floated gently downward in contrast to the hammer beating of his heart, feeling as if it were about to burst. He slid past Deck Two, past Deck Three, and then swung into the exit tube of the Storage Deck. Vlada was right behind him; he could feel it.

  Before the light-lines had reached their final brilliance, his foot was on the bottom rung of the ladder that led to his secret hiding place in the land-shaper. He climbed the ladder with the speed of pani
c and slid through the hatch before it had fully opened. He slapped the close-switch and collapsed onto the cabin floor, shaking uncontrollably in absolute darkness. The air filled with the pungent odor of sweat. He crawled across the deck on quivering arms and legs and pulled open the cryo-capsule. He reached in and jerked the dummy out with such force that the dummy’s head flew off and rolled to a stop at the base of the control panel.

  He stripped, as if he would have the benefit of the watchful eyes of a guardian, and stepped into the capsule. When he activated the closing switch, power surged into the unit, lighting the darkness of the control cabin with an eerie glow. Time stopped. He didn’t trust the master computer. He had timed his awakening to the chronometer in the land-shaper.

  There was no sensation. His life was held in suspension by the wintry grip of cryo-sleep. Years weren’t even a moment. When he awakened his heart was in mid-beat, but picked up its furious pace as if it had been uninterrupted. He stood still until his heart slowed and his breathing quieted. He had won! He was certain he had beaten them all.

  The land-shaper cabin was invisible in the darkness, but he had no difficulty in activating the lighting and then the hatch. While he waited for the hatch to open, he stared absently at the dummy he had tossed onto the floor years before. The glass eyes stared back at him.

  He climbed out and his movement activated the Storage Deck lights. The brightness was almost painful until his eyes adjusted. He looked for signs that the others had awakened, but could see no evidence that the sleepers had been down to Storage.

  He chuckled. “Won’t they be shocked when they find out I’m the winner? But, fair is fair.” He spoke out loud, though there was no one to hear him. It had become his way.

  He slid into the up-tube with confidence and flipped out of the tube onto the deck of the upper most level, jauntily landing on his feet, expecting to see the area buzzing with activity, but stopped without taking a step. It was quiet. He was annoyed. He looked at the bank of control screens. No messages declaring well-being scrolled across them. They were like black windows. The rounded shadow of a head protruded over the top edge of the console chair, but he saw no movement. He was impressed; the person was obviously deep in thought. He decided it wasn’t proper to disturb such profound contemplation. After all, he was not irresponsible.