The Trapping of the Ceteroquin

The Debriefing

This story appears in full in M/U's 2020 speculative fiction anthology, Demiurges and Demigods in Space, Vol. 1 and will be run as a serial online every Tuesday and Thursday for the next couple of months. To read this in its entirety, along with all of the other brilliant pieces included in the collection, you can obtain paperback and PDF copies in our store, with Kindle versions available on Amazon.

In one hour, it would be time to launch. The entertainment vessel Ceteroquin and its crew would be on its way to the next stop, the next gig, the next show, the next group of people hungry for indefinable things that they would nonetheless provide. The crew – relaxed, comfortable, neither craving the trip nor resisting it – was gathered as usual in the Control Room. 

That it was still referred to in such terms was merely a holdover from days long past; theoretically, there were manual controls, but the actual work of space travel was wholly automated. Nobody in the room had to do anything in order for them to get from point A to point B, nothing more than a single two-minute task entering coordinates. This would serve to both register their flight path with the requisite transit agencies and to let the ship know where to go and what to do. It was usually done days in advance. 

The nine present sat comfortably around a long elliptical conference table made of lightly iridescent metal-plastic fusion. This was not a military ship, nor even a commercial vessel, and thus there was little to no expectation of formality. They lacked even a particularly rigid hierarchy. Nonetheless, and even without a head to the table, eight were listening while one was speaking. 

Even radical artistic musician collectives – and even fully automated spaceships – need a captain. 

The Ceteroquin had James Hancock. Captain Hancock had a somewhat grizzled appearance: medium height but thick and sturdy, with a trimmed white beard and magnificent wavy white hair parted to the side, accentuated by black and bushy eyebrows. He appeared, at first, to be of late middle age, but those who met him invariably had the sense that he was younger; they suspected his physical age could only be counted in experience – and perhaps some measure of disaster. The running joke was always that he looked and acted more like a stereotypical storybook capital-c ship Captain and less like the troupe’s Producer, technically his main professional role. 

“Now. There’s something I haven’t told you,” he was saying. “The next gig isn’t much of a gig at all. It’s…more of a straight-up mission.”

“Always with the surprises,” Dr. Frietag cracked. He hadn’t bothered to wait until liftoff to begin imbibing, but he wasn’t being belligerent. This was his good-natured way.

“Yes,” Hancock grinned, arching one eyebrow in his trademark fashion. “I wanted to wait until we’d had this planet’s work complete before I dropped the bomb.”

There was a slight pause, before Frank Mario chimed in. “I know it probably goes without saying, but—”

“—but you’re gonna say it anyway,” Hancock said, leaning back in his chair and gesturing for Frank to continue. 

“Well, yeah, I think it is worth saying, for the record—”

“I know this is beside the point, Frank,” Molly jumped in, “but you do have this habit of saying ‘for the record’ in these things and I just want to check – you know we don’t actually take minutes or any records at all of these meetings, right? There’s no ‘record’?”

“Jesus!” Frank waved his arms. “It’s an expression. Let me rephrase, since some people don’t appreciate literary flair all of a sudden: I think it’s worth saying openly and out on the table that we’re overdue for R and R, and while we aren’t hurting, time spent not earning doesn’t help. There, I said it. I’m done.” 

There were some nods and murmurs and eye rolls around the table. Everybody already did know, including the captain. 

“I do appreciate you entering this in our nonexistent record,” Hancock said, “but we do all already know this, including me, and I’m not in a different position than the rest of you. We agreed from the beginning to run this whole operation as a collective. We’re all in the same ship.” 

“The Ceteroquin!” Dr. Frietag exclaimed. 

Captain Hancock paused and looked at him quizzically, eliciting some chuckles. “Yes. This ship. And we are a collective and thus any objections to our current course can and will be heard in due time – once I finish explaining. And let me just say – ‘for the record’ that I need money and a vacation just as bad as anyone here.” 

“Jimmy, I’m not trying to be a pain in the ass, I swear I’m not, and maybe I’m in a mood, I don’t know,” Frank persisted, “but could we in this collective actually overrule you if we wanted to?”

“Probably not,” Hancock admitted. This was a cooperative, collective enterprise, that much was true. After expenses, revenues were always split evenly; Hancock received the same as everyone else. But a body needs a head. This was about authority, not the gratuitous kind, but the kind you need to keep a thing together and get just about anything done. 

“Can you just chill, Frank?” asked Ben Collins, seated to Frank’s left. 

Before Frank could respond, Laura Contessa (who served as de facto first mate), flanked him from his right. “Let’s just hear the story first,” she said, “and then decide if we want to mutiny and hang Jimmy.” 

For the small crew to be feeling exhausted and irritable in these moments when the end of one trip only marked the beginning of the next was hardly unusual. It was, on the one hand, a saving grace that each stop at a given planet or orbital station lasted between three and six weeks. Interstellar travel was a tiring and tiresome affair and even grizzled, seasoned voyagers (not unlike Captain Hancock) would tell you the more time you can get in between hyperspace jumps the better. On the other hand, their work during these weeks spent off-ship was extensive and rigorous, and rarely was any proper rest time allocated before they were obligated to move on again. Frequent breaks for R and R compensated for this in normal times, but such breaks had become awfully infrequent. 

These commonplace complaints aside, it was not a bad life. Each one of them  believed in the work they were doing, which was the only way any of it could have worked. A traveling troupe of artists and actors was a remarkably quaint notion, positively Medieval, in an age of galactic expansion and technological dominance of the cosmos, which is precisely why such a thing had become trendy across settled space. In an age when any art or craft or act of expression could be done flawlessly and without effort by ubiquitous AI, authentic, analog human entertainment, especially anything improvisational, had become a rare and valued commodity. The notion that non-living things could out-perform actual people at creative endeavors had been a deflating turn for the humans, robbing from them much of their desire to create. Traveling performers served as missionaries of hope, in a way, breathing new life into this inherent and integral drive to express and to build and to make. The crew of the Ceteroquin, known as “The Journeying Jesters,” was far from the only such traveling carnival in the galaxy, and far from the first, but they had achieved a moderate degree of fame and were regarded as among the elite.

Their program was comprehensive. They would be brought in – sponsored was the favored term – by any entity, be it a community or municipal government, a corporation, a nonprofit organization, an aristocratic estate, whatever. The length of their stay and precise composition of the Jesters’ performances and services was variable based upon how much their sponsor was willing and able to pay, but the overall thrust was fairly consistent. Five or six nights per week, they would hold the performances: multi-hour variety shows including mixed drama (plenty of skits of all moods and flavors, occasionally full plays, both classic and original) and vibrant music (mini-concerts that displayed a wide virtuosity with regard to musical genres). Once per week, they would hold a Grand Jesters’ Revel, a three-hour program that mixed ritual, tradition, theater, song, and dance. These performances in particular were not to be missed. 

Everyone in the group could act, write, and play instruments (or at least sing), but each had one or two areas of specialty. Dr. Frietag, for instance, played some mean bluegrass and was serviceable in other musical roles, but hardly ever did any acting. Ben, Molly, and Jason were better actors than they were musicians, while Nick and Melissa were more distinguished for their music than their acting. Frank Mario was equally good at both, and might have been the best writer in the group. Jimmy and Laura served as producer and manager, respectively, and mainly appeared on stage as masters of ceremony and other similar roles. 

During the daytime, they conducted the workshops. Their value went beyond what they could deliver from the stage and into what they could leave behind, what those they encountered could take for their daily lives and keep long after the Jesters had moved on. They taught people how to create, showed them why. They taught them writing, acting, how to play existing music and how to make new songs. Molly was an artisanal breadmaker and would conduct small group sessions demonstrating, to the surprise of many used to automatic food preparation, the art and mindfulness that can be found in making food by hand. Nick served as the designated priest and mystic, and, whenever they found themselves in a society receptive to such things, would offer counseling, life advice, and even divinatory consultation. Several of the others, including the captain, made paintings and other visual art or little crafts or even wrote books. These, along with Molly’s bread and (sometimes) Nick’s services, were sold at relatively low cost, and they sold well. 

“Our destination is the Blue Striper Orbital Station in the Arcturus Sector. We expect – and are expected – to arrive in just 36 hours,” Hancock continued. “We will not be performing there -- the only standard work will be a few low-maintenance workshops out of the corner of some casino. There won’t be much revenue, but there’s some good news. Most of you will have a fair amount of downtime while a few of us attend to business.” He paused. “I know I don’t need to remind anybody that this is what we’re actually out here for. The business we are to conduct is likely to take no more than half a day, maybe more, maybe less. We’re staying the full week, of course, to avoid blowing our cover. Officially, we are there to provide our wares to a generic private consortium that mostly only exists on paper, as well as to shake hands with a few small-time luminaries who do exist but hold no significance for us.

“I’m sure you’re speculating as to who is doing what, and you all can probably guess. Laura, Ben, and I will see to our true objective and the rest of you mostly are required to convincingly make merry – as befits all true artists and performers.” 

There were murmurs around the table as the information sank in. 

Frank Mario, who had been restraining himself, was first to speak. “Great!” he exclaimed. “Listen, don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to complain about free time. But for real, though – Arcturus?”

“Yes,” Hancock stared back at Frank. 

“Arcturus.” Frank Mario repeated. “I don’t think I need to remind anybody of the stories about that place.” 

“We are a legal entertainment organization with a formally granted charter guaranteeing us safe passage and free travel through all sectors,” Laura said tensely.

“Yeah?” Frank came back. “So were the other companies in the Group that went in there and never came out. You guys all know that place is a black hole for people like us.”

“Those stories are unverified, though,” Nick objected.

“Yet there’s plenty of reason to believe there’s some truth to at least some of them,” Ben said grimly. “We shouldn’t delude ourselves into thinking that this isn’t more dangerous than usual. That said, I refuse to believe we are likely to disappear.”

“We’re The Journeying Jesters, for Christ’s sake,” Dr. Frietag slurred. “It’d be actual news all across known space, if we suddenly disappeared. People know us. They can’t just make us disappear.” 

“Yes, well, perhaps not front page news,” Molly said. 

“But at least third- or fourth-page,” Ben said, taking a deep breath. “Frank, look. We’re all tired and a little restless and even sick of each other, but take a goddamn deep breath and step back a minute. You know if we gotta go there we gotta go there. It’s who we are and what we do.”

“’Take a goddamn deep breath,’ what are you, Father Nick now? You take a deep breath,” Frank spat back. The others always called him by the archaic honorific of “Father” when they wanted to mock him. 

“I would have said it much more eloquently than that,” Nick said. “I would have had you all inspired.”

“Okay then, my snake-charming wizard friend,” Frank said, “inspire us. Do your thing. Dazzle us. Dazzle me.” Despite this display of stubbornness, they all could tell his resolve was weakening. Everyone knew this wasn’t worth fighting about, even Frank, at least on some level. 

“I can’t,” Nick replied wistfully. “You already ruined the moment. You’ll have to wait until I get my mojo back. Might take a few days…maybe a week.”

“Fortunately,” Laura interjected sternly, “we don’t need inspiration because we have a mission.”

“Are there specific orders?” Molly turned back to Captain Hancock. 

“My details are limited,” Hancock admitted, “but we’re to await contact with a deep-cover local company with the Group. We’ll be instructed to make a certain rendezvous. Most likely they have something to give us, something they need to get off the Blue Striper but can’t safely through any other means. Clearly, our brothers and sisters need our help – and we will give them the best help we can. But you’re all right, this is dangerous for us. Just not as dangerous as it is for our compatriots who live out there every day. Think about them, Frank Mario. We can only hope our fellows would do the same for us in our hour of need.”

No additional questions were asked and the meeting wrapped. 

Perhaps the most exhausting part of their endeavor was the fact that their cover story had to be not merely believable but to be wholly real. All their energy and efforts were poured into the cover story – The Journeying Jesters. They were a real elite, semi-famous performing troupe. But their real work yet waited, lurking in the corners of their minds to be done and fulfilled at the most inconvenient times. 

Hancock reminded everyone that liftoff would commence in roughly half an hour, followed by the first hyperspace jump within a half hour after that. The Ceteroquin being a modern ship, they would feel no discomfort, or much of anything at all, from the harsh travel the ship itself would conduct on their behalf. Everyone retreated to private quarters during liftoff and hyperspace as more a matter of longstanding, diehard spacefarers’ custom and habit than anything practical. 

The Captain, Laura, and Dr. Frietag lingered after the others had gone. 

The doc spoke first. “You got nothin’ to say? ‘Cause if you really got nothin’ to say, I’m gonna go get started drinkin’ in my room.” 

The other two laughed at the idea of Frietag just now getting started. 

“I don’t like anything about this,” the Captain admitted. “But I need everybody to stay cool. Paranoia will only make everyone act abnormally, and that’s the opposite of what we need. But I’ll tell the two of you – and Ben, I’ll talk to him later – I need you to keep your eyes up and watch everyone’s back.”

“What’s the likelihood that this is a trap?” Laura asked. 

“Statistically, less than fifty percent,” Hancock replied. “In theory, I might raise some objections if I could prove our chances were worse than that.”

“Is there something you can’t prove?” Laura asked.

“A feeling I can’t shake. If I’m being honest, I’m personally sure this is a trap.”

“Well it is Arcturus!” the doctor said gleefully. 

“Yes,” the captain said. “And from what I know about Arcturus, this company we’re supposed to rendezvous with, they’re either vanguard cowboys living on the edge depending on us to get a strictly word-of-mouth message out to the Chiefs above us in the group, or…” He trailed off.

“Or?” Laura asked. 

“Or they’re compromised.”

“And it’s a trap!” the doctor said with the same boozy glee, but behind it lay a certain shade of old sorrow.

“And it’s a trap,” Captain Hancock acknowledged. “We’ll find out soon enough. Our course is set.” He yawned and stretched his arms. He was more tired than he’d even realized. “I need to lay down.” 

“I bet you two are gonna wait until I’m out of sight around a corner and—” 

“That’s enough, Frietag,” the captain growled. 

“For Christ’s sake,” Laura rolled her eyes, making for the hall to her chambers. 

The accusation would have been better received by all parties had it been true, but the ship’s “officers” had very strictly kept their relationship professional, even after all these years. All three of them retired to their respective chambers, alone.