by Alex Oliver
Nori clapped a hand over it and squirmed so he could look up into Felix's face. “You don't want to feel this. I don't want you to feel this.”
Felix agreed. He'd lost his father five years ago, and it had unraveled his whole world for the next two years. He could barely imagine what it must be like to have lost a score of siblings all at once, and he knew he didn't want to experience it. But that wasn't the point.
“I love you, Nori. I think. And I will always stand by you. If I see a robot dog coming for you, I will protect you. Why should this be different?”
“Because I'm not going to die of this. I'll get over it eventually.”
Felix snorted. His drill instructors would have appreciated the attitude, but he was going to have to be meaner. “Well, I'm sorry, but we don't have eventually. This accelerated pontoth is out there now, and you're the only one who still stands a chance of fixing it somehow. Let me share my calm with you, so you can work on a solution – so you can save everyone else. Didn't they send any other messages? Now you have the idea of an antidote, can you create your own?”
Nori gulped so hard it shook the bed, and then he took his hand away. Felix slid the connector into its port, and eviscerating grief body-slammed into him like he'd been buried alive. But a moment later, he felt Nori's relief at his own prior dispassion, and then Nori's distress when he sensed Felix sensing his misery.
They seesawed through four more cycles of this before Felix stopped trying to fight Nori's emotions off, and simply allowed the grief to close over him, drowning him into a numbness that was very like being dead. As if in response, Nori gasped, “Oh, wait!” and scrambled to his feet, forcing Felix to come after him, linked by the short leash of wires.
“I thought it was just static,” he explained, when he had returned to his lab and brought up a half dozen signal-analyzing programs on his computer, feeding the audio part of the message through various filters.
Loss cratered Felix's mind, as though all the atmosphere that sheltered him had been stripped away and his surface left barren, open to the chill of the void. He bit his lip and didn't cry, concentrating on holding it away from Nori's spark of inspiration.
“But look.” A bunch of wavy lines of different colors. What looked like a DNA analysis, models of atoms? Tables of… something. “They've sent me the antigen.”
“The one that doesn't work?”
Even down in the ooze and pressure of the bottom of a sea of grief, Felix could feel Nori's spike of annoyance, his feeling that people should realize he was cleverer than them and trust him accordingly. It felt like a kiss after the guilt and misery.
“It doesn't work yet.” Nori echoed back Felix's pleasure with a harmony of hope. “But I can't see any flaws with it on a first examination. I wonder if it's something to do with the fact that they had the feral stuff. There's a subroutine in here that calls for input from the controlling intelligence, and that would never get answered in pontoth that wasn't linked back here.”
“Are you saying that the antidote forces it to listen to Bryant when he tells it to turn itself off? And the new super-pontoth doesn't have a Bryant to listen to?”
“That's exactly what I mean,” Nori actually smiled at Felix then, but Felix was being crashed over by a wave of guilt so strong he couldn't appreciate it as it deserved. “Did you pick that out of my head, or are you actually good at understanding science?”
“Don't patronize me,” Felix almost growled, made cruel by the absorption of too much unhappiness. It would be nice to have a little respect paid to him before his inevitable death. “Because if that's the case, we're worse off than before. This stuff is aggressive and accelerated, and we don't have a spare Bryant to give it.”
In the absence of a door to knock on, Felix kicked at the base of the wicker walls that enclosed the space Aurora had taken for her office in the city. Most of the computers salvaged from the colony had been linked together and spliced into the planetary net in a control room closer to the temple. That was where the launchers were monitored, and the slow opening up of disused maglev tunnels was tracked. But Aurora had taken a computer for herself and set it up here, so that she could be more accessible to the people.
Bryant – or whatever was left of him – had begun to bring the maglev tunnels on line, and only yesterday the first scavenging/hunting party had piled their guns and nets onto a powered sled and slid off towards the other side of the planet, where winter hadn't yet arrived, and richer pickings would be available for those who couldn't live on sunlight.
Things were coming together. The colony was pulling itself out of starvation and becoming viable. Or it would be, if it could survive the Destroyer it had let loose on itself. Still, the mood of the other colonists Felix had passed had been jaunty, as though they felt the worst was over and invincible Aurora would single-handedly deal with the rest.
“Come in!” Aurora called. Her small cell was right at the base of the city's entrance ramp, so that she could look up and see exactly what was coming and going and be ready to welcome it with blaster or smile as appropriate.
Her smile was a wretched thing, though. Felix appreciated the amount of willpower that must have gone into it, but wished she hadn't tried. Its unconvincing quality was tragic. He rubbed his head to soothe the slight sting from the sensor net and tried to return to himself through the echoes of Nori's grief.
“Felix,” Aurora said, and it still sounded strange to him after being accustomed to 'Lieutenant'. “I heard the news feed. Tell me the sudden outbreak of pontoth on Nori's home world has nothing to do with us. They're calling us terrorists now. Well, of course they are, but… how is he?”
If he wasn't a lieutenant anymore and she wasn't a captain, then what were they? Friends? He folded himself to the floor on the other side of her laptop set-up. Furniture was another thing the Lice had done without – if they wanted to rest they simply retracted their legs and settled on their carapace – so Aurora's 'office' was basically an open roofed hut in which she sat cross legged on a twine-bound bale of dry grass. A few more bales had been pushed against the walls – cushions for visitors – and Felix pulled one to himself now, too tired to stand upright or to kneel in discomfort on a slick ceramic floor.
“He sent the chemical formula of the pontoth to his research team back home,” Felix said, trying to explain it in terms that minimized how inhuman it made Nori seem. “They manufactured an antigen for it, but when they tested the antigen, it didn't work. And their pontoth is not linked to...”
He hesitated before saying the name, realizing suddenly what she was bearing. Everything had been so busy he hadn't thought what it must be like to have the person you loved be entombed but still alive, chasing something more important than you. Unavailable, unloving, but not gone enough to mourn.
“Their pontoth isn't linked in to Bryant.” Aurora nodded, folding her hands in front of her and giving a small sigh. “That's why I asked him to stay in there – to give us time to find a solution.” She pressed her lips together as though she was biting something down. “Okay. Well, we want to make it be linked in to Bryant, then. Do you think he can get control over the InfiniTech batch?”
She might not be captain anymore, but she retained her ability to instinctively know what was happening in the situations over which she had been given responsibility. Felix's smile became a little more genuine. Without her, they would probably not have survived even that first attack on the Froward. They would have been killed by the convicts, and eaten when the days grew darker. The fact they were still here, still handling bigger disasters and surviving them was because of her.
“Nori hopes so,” he said. “He thinks that if some part of the InfiniTech pontoth came into contact with this world, it would communicate with our native batch, and the control protocol would be switched on, so that Bryant could communicate with it and slow it down too.”
Aurora got to her feet and stood with her hands behind her back. She looked up at the long ramp, which
was dimly lit by flower-light and the occasional brighter pool of storm lantern. Convenient though living in a bunker was, it was dispiriting too. “If he's wrong, and I put out a communique telling all the InfiniTech Utopia refugees to come here, we're doomed the minute they touch down.”
“I know,” Felix snorted. This was all above his pay grade and he had begun to despair of ever having the wherewithal to cope with any of it again. The day spent bearing Nori's grief and guilt didn't help, nor did the knowledge that with Felix here, talking to Aurora, Nori would be bearing it alone. “But if they go anywhere else, it is a certainty they will destroy that place. If they try, they'll be shot down.”
“I don't even know if we have room or resources for that many people, even if they survived.”
Felix caught a worrying note in Aurora's voice that he wasn't sure he'd heard before. What was that? He'd heard her in the grip of repressed anger, of determination, even of plain dogged duty, but this was darker, more like resignation or despair.
He looked closer at her handsome face. It was harder to read now that it was tinted with a shade of teal green, but he thought it looked heavier, as though she was reaching the end of her strength. And really, why wouldn't she be? Despite the rumor, she wasn't invincible. She grew tired and dispirited as all people did. When had she yet had a chance to recover from anything?
“The InfiniTech pontoth is virulent and very fast acting,” he said, meaning this to be comforting but aware it probably didn't sound that way. “And it's already at large in the galaxy. If it destroys us, then I think it was always going to destroy everything. But if it doesn't destroy us – if we can gain control over it – then we still stand a chance. Nori can perfect the antigen, and it can be spread, and then we can fight back against our own pontoth. Perhaps even get to the point where Bryant is able to come back--”
“Don't!”
Aurora spun to face the wall. He couldn't see her face, but the rigidity of her posture told him everything, eloquent as a sob. It made him wonder what it would feel like if it was Nori there, buried alive, while he could do nothing even to ease Nori's mind. While he actively had to tell Nori to stay there, even against his own will, because it was always his duty to think of everyone else first.
“I am sorry, Aurora,” Felix said, daring to use her name. “But Nori thinks we need to try this. Let them at least bring a ship close enough so their pontoth can touch ours. And then we'll see. But we have to try to help them. That is the right thing.”
“I hate always having to do the right thing!”
Felix chuckled, mostly from sadness. “I know. Is it Bryant you're thinking of now? What is the wrong thing that you wish you could do?”
Aurora turned and gave him a glare that morphed into weariness when he didn't rise to it. “Everyone's trying to be my shrink these days. Do I look like I need one that bad?”
“I'm sorry,” he said again, patting the floor to invite her to sit back down. He wished he could offer food or tea, or a nip of something stronger. There would be minimal rations for those who could photosynthesize for the foreseeable future. Everything that came in was going to the pure humans who needed it most. For the rest of them, a big source of comfort and hospitality had been taken away along with the need to eat.
“But yes. You look like you're one short step away from burn-out. This planet can't afford to have you compromised like that. So I am asking you again, what do you need that I can give you? What would make you ready to fight again?”
Perhaps in this world where he wasn't a soldier anymore, he could learn to be a therapist? He'd never been more aware of how much one was needed.
Captain Campos gave him a stubborn look, but he kept his expression open, encouraging, and tried not to smile as she slumped down to the floor again and rubbed the heel of her hand across her brow. “I can't bear to think of him,” she confessed. “His mind's under my feet, in the air, I breathe it in with the dust, and I know he's fighting for us, but...”
But Felix knew that wasn’t quite the same as being held.
“It's like he's found a better toy, you know? Every moment of every day he's choosing that thing over me.” She raised a hand. “I know. I know, that's unfair. I know I asked him to stay under and I would keep asking that of him if I had to. I'm not telling you what I think, I'm telling you what I feel. And then there's Autumn.”
Her eyes sheened with tears that never quite spilled. “They took her away from me, and at this rate the galaxy's going to end and I'll never have held her. I want my child, Felix. If this is the end for us all, I want her with me.”
Apart from his father, Felix had not got along well with his own family. When he went into the space force at the age of fourteen, he had left them behind with some relief. They would watch out for themselves, they always did. But hearing Aurora's yearning for her loved ones made him feel oddly, guiltily blessed, because all his friends from the Froward were here, and Nori was here, and Felix was exactly where he wanted to be.
“And then there's Crouch and Citlali,” Aurora shook her head, her shoulders slumping lower. “I asked them to find her for me. I sent them into danger, and… They'd be here in the safest place in the galaxy, right now, if it wasn't for me. How can I just abandon them?”
Maybe he'd been spending too much time in Nori's head, because the idea arrived almost as though he a lightbulb switched on. Aurora was a woman of action, never happier than when she was in the middle of a fight. And she was wearing herself out down here with hospital visits. With talks about the constitution with Bousaid, with political negotiations with Xan Hu and whatever other politicians could be talked into potentially recognizing Cygnus 5 as an independent, neutral state. Maybe what she needed was a chance at doing something she really cared about – something dangerous and pointless and entirely for her own benefit.
“Everything I love is already here on Cygnus Five,” Felix suggested. “And I am good at organization. It would delight me to keep careful spreadsheets of resources and personnel to offset against needs and tasks. Soon, now they are eating, Ademola and Dr. Atallah will be on their feet again. Dr. Atallah would be magnificent as the face of Cygnus 5. She has that dignity, you know? People trust her, when sometimes they feel a little threatened by you. And Ademola is a sergeant. The logistics of how to absorb the refugees will keep him from worrying himself sick about the post-humans among us. With their help--if we are not destroyed by the InfiniTech pontoth--I could hold the fort for you while you went to find your child and bring our sisters home.”
Aurora wetted her lips with her tongue as though her mouth had suddenly gone dry. “You mean that? Because I won't deny I already thought about it. I asked Xan Hu about backup, even.”
“I mean it,” Felix smiled, watching with satisfaction as a faint gleam came back into her eye. “But first there are refugees and systems being threatened by the InfiniTech pontoth. Nori thinks we can control it. I told him I would ask you if we could try. If we try, but fail, we’ll only have accelerated the galaxy’s doom a fraction. But if we try and succeed, we will have saved a hundred worlds and bought ourselves time to save all the rest later. It is a test he thinks needs to happen, and I trust him in that. I know he wouldn't risk us...” he wouldn't risk me “unless he was 99.9% sure it was safe.”
Aurora shrugged, like she'd already reached the point where she didn't care if it turned out they were the 0.01% remainder, but she smiled. “And then I get to go find Autumn?”
“Yes, and I'll make sure things run fine here while you're gone.”
“Deal.” She smirked, looking brighter than she had done in weeks. Some turning point had been passed, he thought, but whether it was the point where Aurora began to recover, or the point where he'd just doomed the planet and with it the galaxy, he didn't know. Too late to take it back now, though. She had already brought up a comms channel to Jenkins and was giving the word.
“Jenkins? Tell the refugees from InfiniTech Utopia they can come here. They're to remai
n in orbit until we give them the word, so we can collect data and work out how to disinfect them. Only let them land once Nori gives the all clear.”
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
The guided missile that is Aurora is aimed in a new direction
Aurora felt the potential end of the world shouldn't happen like this. She stood in Bryant's workshop – Nakano Nori's workshop now – and watched Nori watch lines of numbers scroll up the screen of his cobbled-together human-alien hybrid computer. Up beyond the stone ceiling of the city, outside Cygnus 5's atmosphere, the first ship from InfiniTech Utopia had just sailed slowly into a patch of pontoth blown off one of the rocks from the launcher.
She understood that what was happening now was that Bryant, in some conscious or subconscious way, was trying to get the new pontoth to listen to him. Down in the bowels of the planet and up in space all kinds of intricate realignments were probably going on. Nori was certainly jumpy enough, his eyes red rimmed, his skin clammy. But from Aurora's point of view, there was time to wring her own heart by looking at this room for which Bryant had such hopes. This room that was going to be the operating theater of his restored practice, where he remade people to their own designs, saving lives and making wishes come true.
Bryant's clutter had been tidied onto the steps at one side of the amphitheater, as if the steps were shelves. Now the room was almost as bare as it had been before humans arrived, the bottles of preserved Lice its only occupants. Aurora appreciated the order, but beneath that surface approval, something far deeper mourned. It felt as if Bryant were truly dead and replaced. Yeah, she needed to get out of here. She needed to get out, and fast.
“It's looking good,” Nori mused, his nose almost pressed up against the screen. “I think we're getting communication between the two batches. There's a lot of activity going on in the core of the planet we haven't seen before.”