by David Liss
There was nothing I could say. I mean, there were a million things I felt, but I couldn’t figure out how to say any of them. They all stuck in my throat. I sat there silently, looking down while Tamret stood up and left the pod.
CHAPTER SEVEN
* * *
About an hour after Tamret left, Steve came into the escape pod. The seats weren’t built with Ish-hi in mind, and he shifted uncomfortably and moved his tail around so that he wasn’t putting too much pressure on it.
“You look like rubbish,” he said.
“I’m having a bad day,” I told him.
He patted me on the shoulder. “Yeah, I kind of figured. The enhancements, your families, and Tamret giving you the old heave-ho.”
I looked up. “She told you.”
“Didn’t have to,” he said, his tongue tasting the air. “All those emotions hovering about. I smelled the whole thing.”
“She wants to go back to Rarel with Villainic,” I said.
“That’s daft,” he said, sounding genuinely surprised. “There’s something else going on. You can count on it. That girl is emotional, even for a mammal, but she’s not barking mad, and there’s no way she’d throw over a relatively choice bloke such as yourself for a git like Villainic.”
“Thank you for saying so.”
“The thing is, upgrades or not, you’re part of the team, yeah? You can’t sit in here and mope all day. Also, if I know anything about girls, you don’t want to let her see she’s got to you. Act like it’s no big deal. Maybe get a little chummy with Mi Sun. Make her jealous. That’ll bring her around.”
“All it will do is get me kicked in the face.”
“Probably true, but the point is to act like you don’t give a toss. That’s what works for me.”
“You’re cooler than I am,” I said.
“I’m a reptile, mate. Do we need to review the whole warm- and cold-blooded thing?”
I sighed. “I just don’t see why I should even be out there. I have nothing to contribute at this point.”
“Nothing if you’re feeling sorry for yourself. Look, there’s not a stupid, reckless, and irresponsible thing this lot has done that you weren’t at the center of. You think we’ve gotten this far because of the technology? It helped, but in the end we did all that because you’re always there saying we need to go off on one mad romp or another. Even if you can’t be on the ground, we need you with us to figure out what completely daft approach is going to get the job done.”
“Thanks for saying so, but—”
“There’s a strategy meeting in ten minutes. And you’d better be there or I will mock you.”
• • •
No mockery was required. I was there when the meeting began. Neither Tamret nor Mi Sun would look at me, but Villainic was friendly—so, bonus there. We were still about two hours out from the planet where we were to meet Captain Qwlessl. Meanwhile, the agreeably comatose Ardov was put in the escape pod. Dr. Roop didn’t want to take any chances with him, so at the first sign we couldn’t control him, we could simply jettison him into the void.
“We have all been very concerned about what happened to Zeke during his battle with Ardov,” Dr. Roop said. “Why did his Former enhancements shut down, and why can they not be reactivated? Might the same thing happen to the rest of us? We have some answers, and I’m afraid the news is not good.”
“Did Zeke somehow damage our systems?” Mi Sun asked.
“Don’t be stupid,” Tamret snapped. “How could he have done that?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
Tamret rolled her eyes. “As near as I can tell, he burned out his upgrades. He used too many abilities in too short a time, and the nanites that control the Former upgrades stopped working. They took out the standard Confederation skill tree as well. The only thing that didn’t shut down was the translation technology. I think it’s because, as Dr. Roop said, it’s an entirely separate system.”
“It appears,” Dr. Roop said, “our ability to integrate this technology is limited. I told you back at the Hidden Fortress that there was something I did not like about the code. It appears to be unstable.”
“Will these nanites harm us?” asked Charles.
“Only if you are in a dangerous situation when you experience a malfunction,” Dr. Roop said.
“You mean like pretending you’re Superman?” Mi Sun asked.
“Just back off,” Tamret said. “This is my fault. I should be able to fix it, but I can’t figure out how to repair the code.”
I was grateful to Tamret for defending me, but she still wouldn’t meet my eye when I looked at her.
“No one is to blame,” Dr. Roop said, his voice very kind. “The Formers were perhaps the most advanced beings ever to exist in our galaxy. They built a sophisticated civilization that regarded millennia the way we regard months. Tamret, that you cannot solve a problem with technology they engineered is hardly to your discredit. In any event, given what we know about the Formers, it is possible that the code may not be flawed at all. It may have been designed this way.”
“It may have been designed to malfunction?” Charles asked. “That makes no sense.”
“To beings like you and me, perhaps,” Dr. Roop agreed. “Our knowledge of the Formers is very limited, but we do believe they were experimenters, compulsive tinkerers on a cosmic scale. They were possibly even capricious by our standards. Some legends portray them as cosmic tricksters who loved nothing more than to put beings, worlds, even entire civilizations in difficult positions to watch what happened next. Planting technology that gives beings astonishing powers—and then taking those powers away—is entirely consistent with what we know of the Formers.”
That made sense to me. Smelly—full name Smellimportunifeel Ixmon Pooclump Iteration Nine—an artificial consciousness who had spent months living inside my head, hadn’t been a Former, but it had come out of Former society, and it had loved putting me in difficult situations just to see how I’d deal with them. I didn’t think it would have ever allowed me to come to real harm, but it hadn’t minded testing my limits.
“But what about the rest of you?” I asked. “Are you going to just shut down at some point?”
Tamret sighed. “The short answer is yes, and there are two ways it can go. The first is that these nanites will fail under heavy use. That’s what happened with you, Zeke. You overtaxed them, and the code went into some kind of self-destruct loop. It seems to be a mechanism that, as Dr. Roop says, is worked directly into the source code. From what I can tell, it may be too deeply embedded in the tech tree’s operating system to remove or modify or work around. And like with Zeke, it will take out Confederation skill tree abilities too. Everything but translation will be wiped out.”
“I understand,” Charles said. “This limits our options, but it does not change the overall plan. We must simply avoid conflict, use less-taxing, stealth-based skills rather than combat skills, which tend to require multiple uses simultaneously—weapons, shields, speed, and so forth. Might that not solve the problem?”
“Unfortunately not,” Dr. Roop said, “for there is an additional flaw. I fear that time is also a factor. The code is in a constant state of decay, and any of us could find our skills nonfunctional at any time.”
“So,” Mi Sun summarized, “using these abilities too much could shut down the system, but saving them might not do any good because the system could shut down on its own anyhow.”
“Yes,” Dr. Roop agreed.
“Then either approach to managing upgrades—aggressive or cautious—could be equally flawed?” Charles asked.
“That pretty much sums it up,” Tamret said.
“So, how do we get everyone out of prison without risking our lives?” Mi Sun asked.
“I’m afraid we don’t have an answer to that yet,” Dr. Roop said.
Something then occurred to me. “Wait a minute. If everyone is vulnerable, then there’s no reason why I can�
��t go along with you.”
“I do not think so,” Charles said. “Every one of us might be vulnerable, but if I understand all of this, we might also get through an operation without any of us experiencing problems. We certainly had no difficulties at the police station.”
“We might experience difficulties, but we might not,” Dr. Roop said. “It is not the same as bringing along someone who we know is entirely vulnerable. I’m not sure I can agree to anyone taking that sort of risk.”
“And who put you in charge?” Mi Sun asked. “Zeke thinks he can tell us what to do, and so do you, but I don’t remember agreeing to that.”
“Let’s hold on—” I began.
“No,” Dr. Roop conceded. “It’s a fair point. I have been presuming that I should be in charge, at least until Captain Qwlessl is among us, because I am eldest. It seemed the most natural arrangement, but I do not wish to force this hierarchy on you.”
“Of course Captain Qwlessl should call the shots,” I said. “She has the most experience. Nothing else makes sense.”
“Easy for you to say,” Mi Sun said. “You guys are always the ones making the decisions. I don’t see that it is getting us very far.”
“Back off,” Tamret told her.
“She may have a point,” Villainic offered. “Perhaps it is time for some new voices to be heard.”
No one responded to this.
It wasn’t that I didn’t get where Mi Sun was coming from. She’d never asked for any of this. She’d agreed to go to an alien space station as a kind of cultural ambassador, and now she found herself in constant danger—space battles and prison breakouts were not for everyone. She was tough, but even she could only take so much. Now that her family was in danger, maybe she’d reached her breaking point. I knew that thinking about my family being held by Nora Price made me sick.
“Look, Mi Sun,” I said, “I understand what you’re saying. None of us knew what we would face when we left Confederation Central, and maybe things are worse than we expected. It’s hard, but we’re in a situation where we can make a real difference, and I think we have to try. Letting the beings with the most knowledge and the most experience make the calls is the smart move.”
“I agree with Zeke,” Charles said. “Doing nothing and waiting is not a choice we have. The headmaster of my school, who has been like a father to me, has been arrested, and I want to help him, but we are doomed to fail if we do not get the Phands off Earth. Alice is growing weaker, and our own prospects of helping anyone diminish, rather than grow, with time.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that Zeke and his alien friends are always the ones deciding where we go and what we do?” said Mi Sun.
“I have no need to be the one to make the decisions if the decisions are sound,” Charles said. “And I think that Zeke’s record, when you factor in the difficulty of our situations, is quite impressive. I am certainly content to have Captain Qwlessl take charge once we reach her. Swift action, under her leadership, is surely still our best option.”
“Unless Captain Qwlessl has an idea of how we might fix the Former skills,” Dr. Roop said. “What if she has a way for us to be back to full and dependable strength, but doing so will take weeks or months?”
“And what about Alice?” I asked.
Dr. Roop looked away. “We may have to make some difficult decisions.”
“I’m not signing on to any decisions that involve letting one of us die,” I told him.
“Of course not. There are always options, but every option may involve additional risks.” He sighed. “That is all we know for now. When we transfer to Captain Qwlessl’s ship, the medical staff may be able to help Alice. At the very least, we should be able to place her in medical stasis. We will see what our choices look like at that time.”
“Maybe we should put this to a vote,” Mi Sun said.
“All those in favor of handing the operation over to Captain Qwlessl,” I said, and raised my hand. So did everyone else, including Mi Sun. I knew she was frustrated, and I figured her pushing back against our decision-making was just her way of expressing it, but she still wasn’t going to argue against reason.
“I’m going to go over the code one more time,” Tamret said.
“Perhaps you should sleep,” Dr. Roop said.
She snorted. “Like that is going to happen.”
Tamret went over to work the console, and I followed her. The things she’d said before had hurt me, and I felt uncomfortable trying to have a normal conversation with her, but I could see she was being hard on herself.
By the time I reached her, she was already at a workstation, streaming through lines of code. I put a hand on the back of her chair.
“Not now,” she said to me.
“Look, give yourself a break,” I told her. “Dr. Roop is right. You can’t be expected to be able to figure out something like this. You are putting yourself up against the Formers.”
She shook her head. “You don’t understand. This is the moment when everyone is counting on me, and I’m letting them down.”
“What do you mean the moment? What about all the other moments? What about all the times we needed stuff done and you just did it and made it seem like no big deal? It’s not like this is your one turn at the plate.”
“I have no idea what that last part meant,” she said. “I’m getting something about team-based recreational activities, which sounds pretty stupid. I don’t have time for that sort of thing.”
“Why don’t you take a break—at least until we get to the new ship?”
“No,” she said with a sigh. She brushed hair out of her eyes. “I’ll be miserable if I stop working. I appreciate your trying to make me feel less bad about myself, but it’s really not your concern.”
Not so long ago, I’d believed we were going to burst into whatever prison held our friends and shut down any resistance. I’d known what it felt like to be almost unimaginably powerful, and now we were all powerless—or close to it.
I sat by myself, trying not to think about how miserable I was, watching Tamret work. I was also trying not to think about how miserable she obviously was. She was always so hard on the beings she didn’t like, but I realized now that she was a thousand times harder on herself. I also had to admire how she would not quit. Maybe her tenacity, her single-mindedness, could get her into trouble, but it had also saved her life, and our lives, plenty of times. If anyone could fix this problem with sheer intellect and force of will, it would be her, but I worried that it would be out of her reach.
I lost track of time, but then Steve snapped me out of my thoughts by telling us that we were coming out of tunnel. I braced myself for the weird, disorienting feeling as the ship shifted from who knows what or where and back into the universe as we understand it.
We emerged in the outer fringes of a solar system typical of those the Formers had touched. There was a single yellow dwarf star at the center and several large gas giants pulling dangerous space debris into their gravity wells. We zoomed passed these until we saw an Earthlike planet ahead. At first glance it seemed almost identical to Earth, but there were more, smaller continents, and while there was plenty of blue water, there were few patches of green to be seen through the cloud cover. Most of the land looked brown or dull yellow.
Tamret looked out and sighed. “You know, I feel like [marine predator] poop, but seeing that actually kind of puts things in perspective.”
“What?” Steve asked. “Some fringe planet no one has ever heard of?”
She shook her head. “We’re so wrapped up in our own problems—which are pretty big, I admit—that it’s kind of easy to forget the bigger picture. We’re traveling on a spaceship in a galaxy full of amazing life. We’re playing with the technology of beings who were so smart we can only gape at them like morons.”
“I never gape like a moron,” Steve said. “My gaping is always dignified.”
I smiled to myself. Tamret could come across as the most negative being
, but then she would say something like that. Maybe she was really an optimist. I needed to be an optimist too, I decided. I didn’t really understand her reasons for wanting to go back to Rarel, but I had to respect them. At the same time, I hoped I could change her mind.
She turned and saw me smiling at her.
“What?”
“I just like how you think about things.”
For an instant she smiled, and then, as though she was remembering something, her expression turned cold and she looked away.
She was hiding something from me, I was sure of it now, and if her decision to go back to Rarel was a problem, then it could have a solution. I was going to find it, and I was going to fix everything. Maybe that was a little ambitious, since I had no idea how I was going to fix myself, but I felt sure I could come up with something.
Things were going to work out, I told myself. They always had, and they would again. Maybe Tamret would crack this problem, or maybe Captain Qwlessl would know what to do. If it came right down to it, I still had the Smelly option. Before leaving, it—Smelly had no gender—had given me a small metallic disc, an entangled quantum signaling device, which I still had in my pocket. Smelly had promised it would come help me one time if I needed it. Given my history of getting into horrible life-or-death situations, I hated to call in that favor until I was really desperate, but if it was the only option left on the table for resolving the current crisis, I wouldn’t hesitate.
I actually felt a little less terrible. We were going to make it through this, I decided. We’d won before and we would win again.
“This is a bit odd,” Steve said. “Captain Qwlessl was supposed to meet us, but I don’t see any ships, Confederation or otherwise, in this system.”
Dr. Roop looked up, alarmed. “Let me take a look.” He began to walk over to the console.
That was when everything went black.
• • •
Often when people say everything went black, they are using the term metaphorically. Not this time. I wasn’t hit on the head or given a knockout injection. No, everything went black because there were no lights. Not only had all shipboard illumination shut down, but all equipment as well. Our viewscreens were not real windows, but image projections, so there was no ambient light from outside. We were in total and complete darkness. There was also no gravity, I was both blind and weightless.