She wasn’t sure she could lift it. She leaned on the side of the container, her torso sliding ever so slightly with the vibration. It didn’t matter how hard she pressed against the container, she couldn’t stop the movement.
So she stopped trying, and the feeling of slipping eased. She braced her toes against the floor, pushing her against that container as best as possible. The container bit into her armpits.
She focused on that sharp feeling under her arms, then leaned ever so slightly more and lifted.
The anacapa drive was lighter than she expected. She had thought it would weigh fifty, a hundred pounds. It barely weighed ten. But if her hands hadn’t been fused to it (or felt like they were fused to it), she wouldn’t have been able to keep it steady.
Its interior pulsed with a golden light, but the pulsing wasn’t constant. Not like the vibration.
The vibration was almost alive. She could feel it in her skull, making her bones thrum. It raised a slight sound, almost musical in its intensity. Not a whistle, not a hum, more like a very faint chorus of voices…
“All right,” Bellier said from very far away. “Put your drives down.”
Yash didn’t want to. She wanted to listen to those voices, see what they said.
She had to will her arms downward. They moved, but slowly, as if she didn’t have full control over them.
She set the drive down.
The vibration almost felt normal now, as if it had become a part of her. She let it continue, not quite willing to let go.
“Release the drive,” Bellier said, sounding even farther away, “and stand up.”
Yash wanted to close her eyes as she pulled her hands away, but something told her that would be a bad idea.
She unhooked her right hand, and then her left. The palms felt—scratchy. Not quite hot, but not the same temperature as the rest of her hands.
She could still see the bones and sinew and blood vessels, but not as brightly now.
Slowly, carefully, she raised her arms and—
Someone screamed.
Twenty-Five
“I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!”
The screams got louder with each word.
“I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!”
And another voice joined the first, deeper, more intense.
“Get it off me! Get it off me now! Help! Get it off me!”
Yash made herself sit on her haunches, her knees complaining. The vibration in her teeth and bones was easing, but it took all of her strength to look at Bellier.
Bellier was not helping the two yellers. She was staring at them though.
“I’m stuck!” That voice—the I-can’t voice—was female.
“So am I!” The other voice, male, sounded even more panicked. “Someone help me.”
“Help us!” the woman yelled.
Yash put her hands on her thighs. Normally, someone yelling like that would make her adrenaline spike, but she had a hunch her adrenaline was already spiked.
Bellier was still watching the students, doing nothing.
Yash wondered if this was a test.
“Heeeeeeelp!” the woman screamed.
Yash couldn’t deal with that anymore. She used her hands on her thighs to push herself upward. Standing was harder than she expected. She almost toppled again and had to catch herself on the lip of her container.
The yellers were apart from each other—Triplett and Gallatin—with Mercer between them. Mercer looked stunned.
Triplett had tears running down her face, her body bent over her container. Gallatin was bent over his as well, his face so red it looked like the top of his head would blow off.
Yash wiped her hands on her pants, feeling the vibration ease. She glanced at her own container, the anacapa drive still glowing.
Instructions, from day one, were that anyone who revealed a drive couldn’t leave it unattended. She bent over, used the controls to close the container’s lid, and then she secured it.
Mercer was doing the same.
Triplett had stopped screaming words. She was making a long, almost voiceless scream. Gallatin was yanking his torso backward, but not loosening his arms, grunting with panic.
Yash glared at Bellier, who just watched.
This was another one of those damn tests, and Yash didn’t care. If she was supposed to ignore these people, she couldn’t. They were colleagues, even if she didn’t like them much or interact with them at all.
She sprinted across the room, her feet sliding, her knees aching, the lower part of her legs feeling as if they were being poked with sharp needles.
She reached Gallatin first. His fingers were clenched into his drive, his body rigid with panic.
There appeared to be nothing different about his drive than hers, but she checked the controls anyway and saw nothing. The drive itself was the same size, just as golden, pulsing in the same way.
He looked up at her, sweat dripping down his face. “Help me,” he said. “Please.”
Behind her, Mercer was getting up. And Darlington was running from across the room as well.
It was as if Yash’s burst of energy had inspired them too.
Mercer passed her and went to Triplett. “I got you,” he said, but that didn’t stop her from making that horrible noise.
Somehow, Yash had to separate Gallatin from the drive. If she closed the lid, it might actually hurt him. And yanking one arm might not work at all.
Instead, she got behind him, and poked him in his sides so hard that his breath left in a giant gasp. His entire body jerked, including his arms.
At that moment, she grabbed his armpits and dragged him backward.
He fell on top of her, knocking the wind out of her. Her entire body ached. And she couldn’t catch her breath for a long, hard minute.
But the sound behind her, that weird noise that Triplett had been making, stopped. Supplanted by huge, gasping sobs, and Darlington, speaking calmly, repeating that stupidest of phrases, It’ll be all right. It’s okay. It’ll be all right.
Gallatin remained on top of Yash. He clearly wasn’t going to move on his own. She shoved at him, but he didn’t move. Dead weight. Had he passed out?
She had no idea. So she scooched out from underneath him, toppling him to one side as she did so.
He caught himself as he fell, but that seemed reflexive. He looked terrified.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice nearly gone. “Yash, thank you.”
She nodded, then climbed away from him. She felt bruised and exhausted, her body aching not just from the fall and the kneeling, but from the vibrating too.
The light coming out of Gallatin’s container continued to glow a bright white. She couldn’t just leave it like that. Against regulation. Or something.
Who cared?
Bellier probably cared, but she was going to flunk them all now. So what did it matter that Yash followed procedure?
Except that it would have bothered Yash if she didn’t.
She got on her sore knees, examined the controls again, saw that they were the same as hers, and pressed the right combination to close and seal the container.
The lid came down, the seals engaged, and she leaned against the container, relieved that it wasn’t vibrating.
Mercer was bent over the other container. Triplett was clinging to Darlington and sobbing. Darlington, who looked like she wanted to be somewhere—anywhere—else.
Their gazes met. Yash nodded at her but was too tired to go help. Or maybe Yash was just tired of all the raw emotion in this room today.
Class was supposed to be facts and figures and thinking and logic, not tears and anger and complete panic.
Yash ran a hand over her face. Gallatin remained on the floor, the back of his hand on his forehead, his other hand across his stomach. His skin was a weird pasty color that made Yash think he was queasy.
The lid on the other container rose up, then settled into place, and finally snicked closed. She couldn’t see how
it came up, what made that happen. She suspected Mercer did it.
“Return to your places,” Bellier said.
Yash wasn’t even sure that was possible. She certainly didn’t want to go back to her container.
But she knew she had no choice. Time to take the reprimand, in whatever form Bellier decided to dish it up.
Yash sighed, feeling a little hollow. Even her teeth ached, remnants of that damn vibration.
She brought her legs up, then leaned forward, and used the side of the container to help herself stand.
She felt a little more sturdy than she had a few moments ago. But her chest ached from having the wind knocked out of it, and she just realized that she had a similar ache on the back of her head.
Dammit, Gallatin had knocked her back hard. But Yash didn’t say anything. Her legs felt more like they normally did. No little needles, even though the knees really hurt.
She limped back to her spot, then stood behind the retired anacapa drive, wishing she would make it to tomorrow, sorry she wasn’t going to learn whatever weird and violent lesson that Bellier had been going to teach them but wouldn’t now, now that they had all broken rank and screwed up the instructions and hadn’t focused on the task at hand.
“Sit up, Gallatin,” Bellier said. Her voice sounded sharper, crisper. Or maybe Yash’s ears had become her own again.
“And you,” Bellier said to Triplett, “let go of Darlington so that she can return to her place.”
Yash looked—there was no percentage in failing to look. Triplett was nodding, still crying (not as loudly now), and still clinging to Darlington. Darlington was trying to free herself.
She disentangled one of Triplett’s hands, then the other, and scooted backward, before standing, and running back to her place, as if she expected Triplett to follow and tackle her.
Mercer stood and calmly walked back to his spot, careful to stay away from Triplett’s grasp.
Neither Triplett nor Gallatin stood up. But Bellier didn’t seem to notice.
Instead she tilted her head, that somewhat amused motion she sometimes made.
“Well,” she said. “This was quite a revelation.”
No kidding, Yash thought. An ugly, horrible, terrible revelation, the kind of revelation Yash could have lived without experiencing. Ever.
“There are people,” Bellier said, “who cannot deal with the energy coming out of an anacapa drive. It doesn’t matter how strong they are, how smart, how gifted. Something in that energy spikes their fight-or-flight response, and makes it worse as time goes on.”
Yash frowned. She glanced toward Gallatin and Triplett, but didn’t see them. Still.
“The only way to test that,” Bellier said, “is to have them touch an anacapa drive with their bare hands in a closed environment. Like this lab.”
“You could’ve done it first.” Triplett’s voice wobbled, filled with tears. “We didn’t need to go through everything else. If you wanted to know who could work on an anacapa drive, then the fairest thing to do was do that first.”
“Yes, we used to bring the students in and have them touch an anacapa drive on the first day of class.” Bellier glanced at Yash, then Mercer, and then Darlington, apparently unconcerned about Triplett and Gallatin.
“You shouldn’t have changed.” Triplett’s voice was almost a wail. Yash wanted to step over to Triplett and shake her, wanted to tell her to get herself together and to stop crying.
The emotion was bothering Yash after all. Bellier was right: there was no place in this lab for emotion. It got in the way.
“We made the policy change accidentally,” Bellier said. “One of our instructors forgot to start with the drives, and we learned something.”
Bellier continued to make eye contact with Yash, Mercer, and Darlington. She wasn’t talking to Triplett at all. She was talking to the three students who were still standing.
That meant something, right? It had to mean something.
“We learned that ‘everything else,’ as you called it, Triplett, isn’t for you or anyone like you. It’s for the others, the ones who can touch anacapa drives with their bare hands.”
Yash and Mercer and Darlington. Who also failed this experiment.
Yash looked in Triplett’s direction, but still couldn’t see her. She didn’t respond to Bellier, though, which was a mercy.
When Yash looked back at Bellier, she realized that Bellier was watching her. A slight chill ran through Yash, the cool air coating her sweat. Her adrenaline levels were going back down.
“We needed to see how the others responded to an extreme emergency.” It seemed like Bellier was talking directly to Yash. She resisted the urge to cross her arms and rub her hands on her bare skin. She was cold again, but the chill went deeper than the physical. It also came from the absolute calm in Bellier’s tone.
“The experience you just had,” Bellier was saying, “qualifies as an extreme emergency. As far as you three knew, the energy from the drives was harming the other two, and you needed to stop that harm.”
Yash hadn’t thought about harm, at least explicitly. She hadn’t gotten to the idea of harm. She had simply seen two people in distress, and knew that something had gone wrong. She needed to make matters right before she could ever assess whether or not the other two were harmed.
“The drives were harming us,” Gallatin said, his voice muffled. He remained on the floor. “And you didn’t warn us.”
A small smile crossed Bellier’s lips. “Nice try, Gallatin,” she said. “But you were warned dozens of times. From the moment you started into the engineering program to the day you signed up for the anacapa track, you were always warned that working with the anacapa drives was dangerous. In fact, you even signed waivers, stating that you knew the work in this class might kill you or cause permanent damage.”
“You should bring in doctors,” Gallatin said, “because I don’t feel right.”
Neither did Yash, but she wasn’t complaining. However, her experience hadn’t been nearly as bad as Gallatin’s. Her experience hadn’t been bad at all.
“You will go through a medical exam,” Bellier said. “All of you will. We will be looking for certain things, things that don’t show up in such dramatic form as we saw today.”
Yash did rub her hands on her arms, feeling the pebbling of gooseflesh. She was going to start shivering soon. She could feel it as deep in her bones as she felt that vibration.
“I can tell you, though, that none of you—not even Gallatin and Triplett—suffered permanent damage.” Bellier did not sound reassuring. “I have seen others get seriously injured from anacapa drives, and you have none of the symptoms.”
“That’s supposed to reassure us?” Triplett asked, her voice still thick with tears.
“I’m not here to reassure you,” Bellier said.
Besides, Yash suspected, Bellier was no longer talking to those two. Bellier was probably no longer even thinking much about them.
But Yash had no sense of how Bellier was going to treat her, Mercer, and Darlington. Maybe they would get a chance to reapply to the program. Because Bellier wasn’t dismissing the entire group out of hand, no matter what had happened here.
“Triplett and Gallatin,” Bellier said, her tone suddenly more official. “Can you stand?”
Rather than respond, Triplett started to put her hand on the dead anacapa drive before her to brace herself as she stood. She stopped, midway, and closed her fist as if she never wanted to touch anything like that again.
Instead, she braced herself on the floor and awkwardly got to her feet.
Gallatin was using the container to help himself up. He was still that strange gray color and his eyes looked bruised.
“You two did very well in this class,” Bellier said. “Unfortunately, your reaction to the anacapa drives is not a one-time thing. Nor is it something you can overcome with sheer will. We’ve had students try that as well, in the dark recesses of this course’s history. It doesn’t
work and, for those students, it does eventually lead to permanent damage.”
Yash stopped rubbing her hands on her arms. The gooseflesh was receding, as was the deepest chill. Now she only felt the cold in the room and little more.
“What you’re feeling right now,” Bellier said to them, “is a panic that is leftover from your contact with the anacapa drive. Should you continue to touch anacapa drives through the course of your work, that panic will become permanent. You will respond to everything with a measure of fear. We have treatments for that, but the best is to avoid the condition altogether.”
Triplett let out a shivery sob. Gallatin still braced himself on the container.
Yash did a mental check. Was she panicked and so detached that she wasn’t allowing herself to actually feel it?
The check reassured her: she wasn’t panicked or detached. But she was remarkably calm.
“I am sorry to dismiss you from this class,” Bellier was saying to Triplett and Gallatin. “I am sorry to dismiss you from the anacapa program. You will both be excellent engineers. You’re bright and intuitive and learn well. But you cannot work in an anacapa field. You will have to work in ships that do not have anacapa drives. Or you will need to work in a capacity other than engineering if you wish to serve on a DV-Class ship. Do you understand?”
Triplett sniffed, then wiped a hand underneath her nose. She nodded.
“You’re sure about this?” Gallatin asked, his voice small.
“I am afraid I am,” Bellier said. “You may talk to counselors if you wish, and the chair of the department. But your reactions pretty much sealed your fate here. And again, I am sorry.”
Bellier apologizing. Yash wouldn’t have thought it possible.
“You’re dismissed,” Bellier said to them. “Do you need assistance leaving the room?”
“No,” Gallatin said. Yash recognized his expression. She would have had the same one. She would have left on her own power no matter what had happened to her.
Because this was a pretty big personal setback for them. She had no idea how she would feel in their shoes—how she might actually feel in a few minutes after Bellier finished with her and the other two.
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