“I can look like something, if you need that.”
Seth frowned when a vague distortion of light and air coalesced before him. He stepped around the counter separating the galley from the cabin and circled the thing taking shape there. He gasped when a small Prime formed, growing arms, legs, torso, head. It moved slowly as if discovering its limbs as they appeared. Details emerged as it sprouted hair and sharpened its features. “Cazun…” he evoked for the second time that day.
The small being taking form looked toward him, its eyes not quite focused on his face. “You have so many shapes. Is this correct?”
“Hmm, looks like a Feydan juvenile. Female child. But the hair is Human, maybe Centauri.”
The stranger grew in size, changing her form several times along with hair and skin color. Seth’s eyes widened in surprise and a slow grin tugged on his lips. He turned away with some reluctance.
“Don’t do that,” Khoe said. “I’m using your eyes. I cannot see me if you’re not looking at me.”
“Put some clothes on,” he said, feeling the absurdity of the moment.
“I’m in your head. I can’t feel cold if you don’t.” She fell silent for a moment. “Oh. Cultural idiosyncrasy. You can look now.”
He turned back, a little sorry that the pleasantly curved shape she had flashed at him was now covered by what looked like a mix of Magran and Feydan clothes, fetchingly arranged.
She inspected herself through his eyes while she changed a few things to her liking. “Is this funny?” she said when he smiled.
“Green hair? That is… rare among our species.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Doesn’t matter what I like,” he said diplomatically.
She went through another series of changes, picking individuals seemingly at random from his database.
“Not that,” he said when a tall redhead, Human and in uniform, appeared before him.
“You said it doesn’t matter.”
“That one does.”
She changed her hair to blue and her features to the sharp contours of a Delphian. Finally she decided, perhaps in deference to his own origin, to present herself as mostly Centauri, with the characteristic violet eyes that reflected the dim light of the cabin. She settled on Bellac Tau for a source of her hair, which now hung in long white ropes from her head.
He watched her play with some gestures and facial expressions she found among his data files. Why was it that even a gender-neutral wisp of energy escaping subspace managed to figure out what female traits unerringly hit their target?
“So if you’re only in my head and in my processors, you’re not actually there?” He pointed at the spot where she stood, her feet not quite touching the floor.
“That’s right. You only think you see me.”
His brows drew together as he contemplated this. “You seem awfully real. I can hear you, see you, like I would anyone.” He stepped closer and cautiously touched her arm.
Both of them recoiled when he encountered solid substance under his fingers. Clearly, he had felt the soft fabric of the shirt she created out of nothing. She seemed as surprised as he.
“You felt that?” he asked.
“Yes. No. I felt what you felt. What your fingers felt. It’s a strange thing.”
“Guess that isn’t something you can read up on.”
“I can’t see your face, though.” She reached out to find his chin, rubbed awkwardly over his nose, and then lingered over a scar above his eye. Seth had to smile when she touched her own face and then leaned closer to turn left and right as if examining herself in a mirror.
He winced when she jabbed a finger into his midriff. She did, too, but whether in response to the touch or to copy his reflex was unclear. Seth considered once again the possibility that he was suffering a mental collapse. How could any of this be real? It wasn’t real, of course. She created every sound and sight and now this touch in his mind. What difference did it make if a sensation was real or if his brain simply told him it was? It was the same, in the end, wasn’t it? Neurons reacting to stimuli, real or imagined.
Something even more disturbing came to mind. “You… I mean, can you tell what I’m thinking? My thoughts?”
“No, I cannot. You’re worried that I’m spying into your mind? Do you have secrets?”
“Everyone does.” He watched her experiment with hand motions that looked like various forms of greeting. “How do your people sustain yourselves?”
“Out here? Your thorium. And you, a little.” She clapped her hands, apparently pleased by the sound it created.
Seth hurried into the cockpit. Indeed, the monitors there showed a slight drain of the ship’s thorium levels. Not yet alarming, but noticeable. “Me?” he said, a little worried.
“Yes. I don’t need much. Most of the time.”
“Most of the time?” He looked up and then did a quick double-take when she appeared to be floating in the air. He supposed there was no real need for her to be standing on the Dutchman’s deck plates.
“I expect that if you do more, you have to eat more,” Khoe said philosophically. “Holding this shape for you is taking up energy. Is this making you tired? Hungry?”
“A little.”
“Then you must eat. I need more words. I will look at more stuff now.” As soon as she said this, she simply winked out of sight.
“Didn’t mean to bore you,” he grumbled.
2
When Seth awoke hours later he smiled with the realization that all of this had been a very strange dream. The breach into the Dutchman’s tightly-guarded systems, the girl, everything. He blinked up the ceiling, having as usual simply fallen asleep on the main cabin’s lounger rather than one of the bunks in the cramped and untidy crew quarters. He stretched and turned to find himself nose to nose with Khoe.
“Damn!” he exclaimed and jerked back. “What are you doing?”
“Practicing sleep.”
“You have to sleep?”
“No. But your brain does interesting things when you do.”
He sat on the edge of the lounger and ran his hands through his tousled hair. “You don’t just crawl into someone’s bed uninvited.”
“Oh,” she said as if making note of that. “I was bored.”
He turned to look at her, unsure if he should be amused or annoyed. “You live in subspace. We call that the Big Empty. What’s more boring than that?”
“It’s not empty. And turning yourself off for hours at a time seems pretty boring to me.” She drifted past him to hover near the cockpit entrance. Her language skills had improved over these past few hours and had taken on a pleasant twang. “Besides, we don’t count time. We’re almost at Rishabel.”
“We’re not landing on Rishabel. There is a station in orbit I need to visit to top up the coolant. And maybe thorium, if I can get some there.”
“I know your flight plan. You are going to the correct place.”
“I am definitely not in the correct place.”
“You are. I brought you here.”
“You what? How? And, just to round things out, why?”
“There’s no need to shout. I will put you back. I need to find… something. I can’t get there on my own. Obviously.”
“Nothing is obvious right now. Who are you looking for? How would you know who is on that orbiter?”
“Some people there took something from us. I can feel its presence from here.” She shrugged as if there was no more to the story.
Seth stared at her for a while, digesting this bit of news. “Who took what?”
“I don’t know who. One of your ships passed and some of my people got stuck. One of them is very important. They took them all to Rishabel.”
“Important?” Seth said, still not even close to understanding how subspace could possibly give rise to sentient beings.
“Very. Without it we can’t be.”
“Can’t be what?”
“Just be. We need it to exist. It makes
us live, I suppose.”
“So what happens if you don’t get it back?”
“We stop being,” she said as if surprised by the simple-mindedness of his question. “Eventually. And there won’t be new ones. Without it, we’re just particles scattered around subspace.”
“You don’t seem worried.”
She fell silent while, he assumed, she checked his archives for some reference. “I am, I think.” She pondered this a little more. “I will combine emotions with physical symptoms. Is that correct?”
Seth winced. “Within reason.”
“I will study that. But, yes, I am afraid for my kind. We are fragile.”
“And so you are going to… do what? Ask the people on Rishabel nicely to give your friend back?”
“Or maybe you could. I’m sure they didn’t mean to. We would like to learn how they did that. And maybe not have that happen again.”
He scratched his head. “If they’re out here they’re likely rebels or pirates. Not the sort of people you ask nicely.”
“You’re out here.”
He sighed. “For someone who’s learned six languages in a matter of hours you’re being awfully obtuse.”
“Are you going to help me?”
“We’ll have a look around, since I have no choice but to go there, anyway. I don’t promise anything. And then you’re going back to wherever you came from.” Technically, he supposed, the thing to do was to contact one of the Union’s research stations to report a sighting of what may well be a heretofore unknown species. Of course, since he was the only one who could actually communicate with this one, reporting it might just waste a perfectly good opportunity to stay far, far away from Union concerns. “Do you have to do that? Float around like that? It’s a bit creepy.”
“I don’t know where the floor is unless you’re looking at it.”
He dropped his eyes and, indeed, she lowered herself to let her feet touch the floor. They were bare, he noted, but then there was no real need for her to wear shoes, anyway.
He stood up. “You really only see what I see?”
She moved farther away from him and carefully put one foot in front of the other to walk around the small space between the cockpit and the lounge. “And your ship’s cameras, but they’re not on. Don’t worry, I won’t look at your stuff if you have to go bathe yourself or whatever you do.”
“Thank you,” he said, a little primly and with a growing suspicion that she was enjoying herself tremendously, as he left for the crew cabin.
He made use of the ship’s hygiene chamber and then dug through his inventory for something suitable for Rishabel. He normally slouched around the Dutchman in well-worn coveralls but now slipped into a clean shirt and lightly armored jacket, sturdy leather trousers and boots. Doing that, he wondered if his passenger was actually and tactfully averting her eyes. He doubted that he would.
Before nodding off on the lounger, he had spent a few hours poring through his database as well, looking for any instance of an unknown entity emerging from subspace or of any sentient species known to live in there. He had found nothing. Was she telling the truth? Or was he victim to the intrusion of some sophisticated artificial intelligence? If so, where was the program? Who would send a shape-shifting apparition to watch him sleep? That someone had become interested in his movements presented more of a problem than having an alien aboard.
An hour later he received permission to dock onto one of the piers stretching out from the orbiter’s central, domed hub like the legs of a dark arachnid. He swung the Dutchman around a bit to see what else was parked there and saw mostly private cruisers and small transports lining the covered concourse. In the distance, a curved platform accommodated freighters and black sky travelers. The interior of the massive dome enclosing a town of sorts was coated with something no one ought to be breathing in. It was night on this side of the planet and most of what he saw was outlined in multi-colored lights, dimmer inside the dome.
He approached the upper level of the two-tiered dock when a ship on the lower deck caught the attention of the Dutchman’s scanners. It was always prudent to be alert to the presence of Air Command patrols in case one wanted to avoid them. Seth usually did. And now his sensors picked up a definite scent of military among the hardware on the pier.
“Now what brought that bird down here,” he muttered to himself as he eased the Dutchman into its assigned berth.
“Birds?” Khoe said, making him flinch in surprise at her sudden appearance beside him. “Where?”
“Not a real bird. There is a military ship down there.”
She followed him to the airlock where he picked up his weapons. “Are you going to shoot them?”
“What? No.”
“Are you going to shoot rebels?”
He sighed. “When are you going home again?”
She shrugged.
“I’m going to have a look around. Go scan some more stuff. I won’t be long.”
She laughed. It was an agreeable sound, taken from a Feydan recording, he suspected. “You still think I’m some program living in this flying machine? I’m in your head, Sethran. Where you go, I go. Besides, you don’t really think I’d wait around here while you’re exploring out there, do you?”
“You don’t need the ship to… for energy?”
“No. You’re enough. And I can tap into other things here, I’m sure.”
“All right. As long as nobody notices you doing that.”
Outside, Seth tested his legs for a moment, finding the gravity reasonable. The air in this tunnel leading to the hub tasted humid and stale. Whatever kept it moving up here created unpleasant turbulence that chased garbage along the concourse and people hurried by with their heads tucked between their shoulders. The Genen native stalking past him had no shoulders and Seth felt mildly sympathetic.
After haggling over the coolant he needed to get back to civilization, he crossed over to the vehicle rental at the perimeter of the concourse and signed out a skimmer, a small two-seat sled. He paid real currency, as always. His favorite kind of money included bits that were not easily traced.
The sled took him to the lower dock to where his sensors had detected that suspicious cruiser. He trundled past the ship, looking for signs that this was not just the sort of non-descript private traveler favored by those who could afford them. The crossdrive port markings looked familiar, as did the rear shield assembly. Someone had taken pains to disguise it but he knew enough about Targon-built technology to recognize this as Air Command issue.
He put his foot on the ground to steady the skimmer just outside the perimeter scan range. This boat had seen action, that much was clear. Eagle class, he suspected, which meant Vanguard agents. What were they doing all the way out here on Rishabel? So far, Air Command, the Union’s military arm, had shown little interest in this planet. Their jurisdiction did not extend out here and, while Rishabel’s leaders tolerated rebels and smugglers, none of the Union’s firepower was welcome here. Smugglers brought revenue; military brought trouble.
“What are you doing?” Khoe said, peering over his shoulder where only a moment ago she had hovered in front of him.
He ducked out of the way. “Must you do that? You don’t need to move around at all, do you?”
“No. Just having fun. This all so new. You have no idea how exciting this is.” She spun in front of his sled, long braids flying somewhat contrary to the laws of local gravity, her arms stretched out to encompass all he saw.
He looked around the dreary concourse as he started the vehicle up again. “I admire your attitude. So where is this ship you’re looking for?”
She pointed at his data sleeve and waited while he ran the mapper. Guided by her, it scrolled through the hub of the orbital station, laid out like the spokes of a wheel. Their destination appeared to be the edge of the shipping platform near the shield generators. Probably not the finest part of town. Likely popular as a place where the generators would nicely confound most
scanners.
“Do you know what sort of ship it is?”
She pondered a moment, recalling his archives. “Transport class. Fleetfoot, I think.”
“That’s a small cargo vessel. Black?”
“I don’t know. We don’t have color. I just recently got eyes.” She pointed at his face. He waved her hand away before realizing that, to someone watching them, that probably looked odd.
“Likely smugglers in that class of ship,” he said. “Let’s go take a look.”
Considering the distance from the ground to this city in orbit, the temperature of the stale air up here felt oppressive. By the time Seth threaded his way through the increasing commercial traffic on the loading dock, his hair clung to the skin of his neck and visions of a long bath shifted around his thoughts. Or maybe just a nice hot shower instead of the stinging decon cycle aboard his Dutchman. He looked up along the vast, curving wall of the dome to see its apex lost in a haze of pollutants and moisture. It occurred to him that any water available for bathing up here was probably poorly recycled or condensate. He decided to wait for friendlier shores before looking for a swim.
The dock turned out to be an expanse of multi-level rail systems along dismal racks of storage units used for warehousing as well as shipping. A few of those moved around overhead, hinting by the creaks issuing from their derricks that walking beneath them was ill advised.
“How do you know which ship you’re looking for?” Seth said, slowing to cruise past the air locks leading into the parked transports. Some of the massive hulks looked like they had felt one too many debris fields. Outside the transparent dome larger vessels hovered at a distance, using cargo tugs to exchange crews and merchandise.
“I can feel… my friend. It’s near here.” She had decided to sit on the console of the skimmer and he noticed a few loose wisps of her hair moving with the air flow around the sled. He wondered if she made him see it like that or if his brain just imagined it that way. Like in a dream, there was nothing about her that did not seem absolutely real. “Over there!”
“Huh? Where?”
“They’ve taken it this way.” She changed the display on his mapper.
Rogue Stars Page 54