by Wil McCarthy
“It isn't your job to get angry with me, to test me,” she said, feeding her hypothesis back to him to gauge his reaction. “We are not arm wrestling, you and I—no dominance games. I take it that is someone else's job?”
Plate looked offended, his copper eyes glaring blankly. “You owe us your life, madam. There is no reason to be rude.”
“Am I a prisoner?” she asked calmly. Do you have any idea who you're dealing with?
“No. Madam, we simply need your help.”
“How fortunate for us,” she observed, casting a glance along the row of glass coffins and the nude, frozen corpses within. “How long might we have stayed here, otherwise?”
“Our resources are finite. We cannot simply—”
There was a rippling in the white membrane that had replaced the north wall, and presently a human figure stepped through it as if through a curtain. Crow. The membrane closed behind him without, Malye thought, the inside and outside atmospheres ever coming in contact.
Crow had a bundle of cloth in his arms, which he dropped to the floor, save for a single strip he held out in both hands. “Will this suffice, Madam?”
She stepped closer to examine it. Thin, flat, textured-looking, with bumps and ridges forming strange, bas relief patterns.
“This is a towel?” she asked.
“It will serve as one,” Crow replied, a little testily. “The fabric is soft, and extremely absorbent.”
“You don't bathe?” she asked. Not so much a question as an insult, and right away she regretted it. But the two men, these “Workers,” seemed not to take offense in the ways she would expect.
“Our skins do not serve an excretory function,” Plate explained calmly, “and we do take care not to sully them with environmental contaminants. It's nothing you need trouble yourself about.”
You, who had claimed to be human, she thought.
“I see,” she said. “And robes? Have you brought those, as well?”
Crow nodded. “As you requested, Madam. And one for you, as well.”
They had given back her old C.I. uniform, taken from the locker where it had lain for two millennia. The black and burgundy garments, surprisingly durable, had passed the years with little change in appearance, but they had grown stiff, and if she wore them for another hour they would crack and fall away like shed skin, leaving her chafed and itchy and naked for her trouble.
“Thank you,” she said. She turned back to the coffins. “I'll change in a little while. I'm impatient to begin. This one and that one—” she pointed “—are familiar with the cryostasis equipment. They helped me before, and either of them should be better able than we three to revive the others, should complications arise.”
“Others?” Crow sounded puzzled. “These two appear healthy, and your two children, but the other cryogens are all sick or injured.”
“Awaiting treatment, probably,” Malye said. “The hospital facilities here are small. Were, I mean. Complex treatments sometimes had to wait. But I suppose you can treat them fairly easily.”
“You do? Why?”
Because you are from the future, she did not say. Because in the future all problems are solved, all squabbling and selfishness put aside. What a puny, stupid thought. Already, she knew that was not so.
“You cannot, then?” she asked, turning and looking at the two of them, their strange faces and bodies.
Crow made a gesture of exaggerated helplessness. “If they were of any use to us, I'm sure some arrangement could be made. But Madam, please understand, we do not have the leisure to play at medicine. Our business in this world is of the utmost urgency and transience. We will not remain here much longer.”
Anger clawed suddenly inside her, seeking escape. She contained it, forced herself to reason. She would not willingly revive Elle and Vadim to face another Waister assault. That would be madness. But neither would she abandon them, nor allow herself to be abandoned here with them. If Crow's people were leaving, then Malye's children would be right at their sides, enjoying the highest possible degree of protection. Carefully, she said, “I require my children, Crow. And so, I think, do you; they are witnesses to the attack, as much as I am.”
Witnesses to the inside of a rescue ball, for the most part, but these men didn't have to know that. Ialah, she felt so alone here! It all still felt very much like a dream, but even dreams could be frightening. She felt an almost pathological need to talk to someone, to verify that all this was really happening. And of course, she wanted her children safe and warm in her arms. What mother did not want that?
“We can speak to the Queen about it,” Plate said, gently enough, the red jewel once again in his hand. A communication device? He pressed it to his head, paused a moment, then withdrew it and continued, “Certainly, your children will come to no harm in their present circumstances, and I think you will concede that the older witnesses, these two healthy males who lived through the war as you did, are much more important to us at this moment.”
Malye conceded no such thing, but could think of no reply that would make her sound anything but ungrateful and petty. Perhaps she was in these men's power, after all, not a prisoner but a debtor who could never repay her debt. Not unless she did whatever it was they had revived her for.
“All right, then, let's get to it,” she said finally.
~~~
A gasp, a gurgling scream, a labored attempt to breathe around all the cold, clear fluid. Coughing, vomiting, the young man opened his eyes.
“You,” he rasped, when he had his breath. His tone was full of accusation, his eyes attempting to focus not on Malye's face, but on the collar of her C.I. uniform. ALEKSANDR PETROVOT TOPURI, said the coffin's faded label in hurried, hand-drawn letters.
“Good morning, Sasha,” Malye said, guessing that that was what this man's friends would call him. Not Alek, probably, and certainly not Aleksa.
“You lied to me,” he gurgled. “You weren't supposed to be here.”
“Take deep, slow breaths,” she advised. “You have no idea how glad I am to see you.”
He flared. “Don't you tell me how to do my job, lady. Don't—” The words disintegrated into a coughing fit.
“You may want this,” Malye said, handing him one of the strange, thin towels. He took it.
What to say to him now? That his world was destroyed, and all the other worlds with it? That everything he'd known was two thousand years gone? How could such a thing be told gently? Not now, that was how—she needed Sasha Topuri to help her with the other coffin. She was a protector of citizens, after all, and damned if she'd let some equipment failure take the life of one of the handful of citizens she had left to protect.
“We are safe now,” she said to him instead. She pointed back at Crow and Plate. “These people have come for us, Sasha. The Waisters are gone, and we are rescued.”
“You lied to me,” he spluttered again, now feebly toweling himself clean of the hibernation jelly.
Yes, okay, enough already. “We had no time to argue about it, Sasha. How long would the air have lasted? You might not be alive now, if not for me. Think about that while you say these things.”
“Bitch.”
At that, she finally took offense; her feelings of camaraderie fell away, her muscles suddenly tight and brittle as glass, and she hit him with a gaze like twin lasers. “Listen to me, sir: I make no apologies. If you feel I have wronged you in some way, take it to heart, and have a care that I do not wrong you again. There's work here for you, and I will see it done. Is that clear?”
Sasha looked back at her with wide eyes.
“Is that clear?” she repeated.
“Yes, Colonel,” he said cautiously, his anger twisting up in visible folds of confusion, edged with fear.
“Thank you.” She let her voice go soft. “When you are well enough, I have clothing for you.”
“I'm well enough,” he said, sitting up in the coffin.
“You recover quickly, Sasha. I'm impressed.�
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He said nothing, and so she handed him one of the robes Crow had brought, and watched him dress himself awkwardly. In a few minutes he was well enough to rise, which he did without complaint, though he wobbled.
“We must revive your companion next, that repairman,” Malye said to him, casting a meaningful glance at Crow and Plate as she spoke, “but I am told we must leave the others alone for the time being.”
“Alone? Even your precious children?” Sasha asked in a suspiciously polite voice.
She nodded, bristling inwardly. “Even my precious children, yes, for the time being. I will speak to the... authorities about it soon.”
“Are you well enough to begin?” Plate asked, stepping forward as if to help. Malye held him back with a stern look: we do not need your copper eyes and green hair upsetting him right now.
Indeed, Sasha looked hard at the two men for the first time, and did not appear to like what he saw.
“A little time has passed,” Malye said quickly. “These men are with a group you would not know. They are our rescuers, but they lack certain specialized knowledge regarding your cryo ward. You should be the one to operate the equipment, I'm sure you'll agree.”
“They look so strange.” He said, seeming a little more afraid.
“Yes,” Malye agreed, “they really do, don't they? I'll explain everything once the other man has been revived.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” His eyes never left the two, until Malye waved a hand in his face, and pointed to one of the cryostasis coffins. VIKTOR SLAVANOVOT BRATSEV, said the crude name label.
Sasha stepped up to the coffin and activated its diagnostics. The equipment had weathered the centuries fairly well, Malye thought, but even so, only half the lights on the panel came on. Sasha frowned.
“Do you require any assistance?” Malye asked.
He shook his head. “No, no, I don't. But this equipment... has been damaged.”
“That surprises you?” Malye asked, a bit sharply, thinking once again of her husband, of her friends. “The Waisters damaged a lot of things. Did you think this ward was inviolate?”
Sasha merely grunted, and began, hesitantly, to work the coffin's controls.
“We had quite a time with your own revival,” she said, to mollify him, and herself. “The printed instructions are not very helpful, if things are not working correctly.”
He was shaking his head. “Not working correctly at all. The acoustic system appears to be damaged, and we can't very well revive him without that. If the backup unit is also damaged....” He turned, edged past Malye and the two “Workers,” and began rummaging through the lockers on the antispinward wall. After a few moments he pulled out something that looked like four large suction cups joined by an X of black plastic. A flatscreen was attached at the center of the X, though, and other compact machinery beneath that.
“What is that thing?” Malye asked, partly to let him speak, to let him feel important, and partly because she was genuinely curious. She herself had never been suspended until... until today, she'd been thinking, but of course that was not right. At any rate, she knew little of the equipment and procedures that had apparently saved her life. Sasha's own revival had been mostly uneventful.
“Thermoacoustic coupler,” he replied, moving back to the coffin and placing the contraption atop it, like a gigantic spider about to consume its sleeping prey.
“For heating?”
“And for cooling.” Without looking up, he did things to the apparatus. Frowned more deeply. “Colonel, something is wrong; these batteries are completely dead. I'll have to run the unit off wall current.”
Presently, he opened a small door beneath the flatscreen, withdrew a small plug at the end of a power cord. Unspooled it until it reached a socket on the wall.
“Why is the battery dead?” he asked, looking up fearfully at Malye. “The Waisters didn't do that.” His gaze flicked down to his instruments, and back up again. “This wall current is wrong, too. Wrong voltage, wrong frequency. Names of Ialah, why is your uniform falling off you in pieces?”
“A little time has passed,” Malye admitted. “I'll explain when you've finished.”
Sasha shook his head and went back to work, looking deeply troubled. He did something to the flatscreen, made it light up with a display of yellow numerals. The unit began to hum faintly.
“What is it you're trying to do?” Malye asked him.
He looked up at her. “This body is supercooled, vitrified like glass, not actually frozen at all. When we warm him, it must be very quickly and very evenly, to avoid thermal shock, because if his tissues crystallize it will cause extensive cellular damage which is difficult to repair. And if he cracks or shatters, well... We can hope he's lived a good life. This unit will induce a synchronized molecular vibration, and by adjusting the frequency we can warm every part of him simultaneously. A flash oven works on the same principle.”
“Are you doing it now?”
“I am about to begin. I... need you to be quiet so I can listen for problems.”
Sasha touched the flatscreen. Colors shifted across its display, and he touched it again. The ward was filled, suddenly, with low, rumbling noises that hurt Malye's teeth. The rumbling quickly became a loud hum, and then a whine. She cringed; Sasha's own coffin had made no such noises during his revival.
The effect on Viktor Slavanovot Bratsev's body was immediately apparent. Before, he had looked like a stiff manikin encased in a cylinder of transparent, vaguely blue-tinted plastic, but now the blue tint vanished, and the small bubbles surrounding him began to shiver, and then to rise. He was a rubber doll in thick, carbonated fluid. And then he was simply a naked man, drowned, violated here and there by tubes.
The fluid began to drain from the coffin. Sasha hurried around to the other side, leaned over to activate some control or other, came back up to check the half-lit diagnostic panel.
“How is he?” Malye asked, with a bit more urgency than she'd intended.
“Normal, no vital signs,” Sasha replied absently.
“He is dead?”
“For the moment, yes.”
A green light flickered on the diagnostic display.
“We have neural activity.”
Another light, and another. Sasha took the black X off the coffin and set it down gently on the floor, without once taking his eyes off the diagnostics.
“Let's see here... cellular metabolism, transpiration... the machine is ready to shock him... Colonel, can I ask you to open the lid, please?”
Wordlessly, Malye stepped forward and pressed the appropriate button at the foot of the coffin. The glass hemicylinder popped and whispered up into the wall. The drowned man now lay beached in a shallow pool of slime.
“Here it comes,” Sasha said.
The body jerked, spasmed, jerked again. Its chest began to heave. Malye could hear mechanical valves forcing air in through the throat tube, then sucking it back out again with wet, whistling sounds.
“And... this patient is alive again. Ialah be praised.”
The tubes withdrew, prompting gagging and retching sounds from the patient, who presently gasped and began to breathe on his own.
“Take it slowly,” Sasha said to the man. “Stay relaxed. The warming process can be very unpleasant if you aren't prepared—”
The patient opened his eyes, brown, pupils hugely dilated. Unable to lift his head, he nonetheless turned it, looking around the room in dazed, sightless horror. Finally, he drew in a deep, gurgling breath, seeming to relax for a moment before he spread his lips wide, and screamed.
CHAPTER FOUR
TYUMEN, SIRIUS SYSTEM:
11 FEBURY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 3125
“Wait outside, please,” Malye said to the greenbars guarding the interrogation room.
“I'm afraid we can't do that, Colonel,” one of them said stiffly. “The suspect has repeatedly stated an intention to kill you, with his bare hands.”
Malye counted the man's
bars—three—and then looked up and offered him a relaxed not-quite-smile. “Sergeant, do you know how often I hear threats of that sort? I assure you, Gostev will not harm me. Is he manacled?”
The sergeant nodded.
“I'll need the key, then,” Malye said, holding out her hand.
Both officers looked shocked. “Colonel, are you insane? I can't let you in there with an unrestrained prisoner. If anything happened, I'd be—”
No one else in all the worlds could glare like Andrei Brakanov's little girl. The sergeant flinched, shrank back into himself. “The key, please, Sergeant.”
Reluctantly, the man dug in his pocket, produced a coin-sized metal disk, and surrendered it to her. The look on his face suggested he considered this quite possibly the last act of his law enforcement career.
Malyene raised the flatscreen she'd been holding, spoke into it: “Let the record show I've ordered both guards to remain outside the room during interrogation procedures, and that I'm preparing to release Gostev's restraints. The guards have requested and received clarification of my orders, and are in full compliance.”
The sergeant relaxed visibly, though he still looked far from happy. “I hope your reputation is justified,” he said. “Why haven't you at least brought your staff with you?”
She half-smiled again. “They can't seem to think or speak of anything but the Waist of Orion and its supposed envoys, so I've ordered them to the nearest observation blister to watch the stars. When I spoke with them yesterday, they were very upset.”
“Yes, Colonel,” the sergeant agreed, his posture and tone straightening up again. “As we all are.”
She inclined her head, as if in agreement. Six of the Waister ships had passed through Sirius system, slowing from nine-tenths lightspeed to only one tenth, but nonetheless looping a great, S-shaped course around the suns in only twenty hours, clearing the path ahead of themselves with blasts of coherent gamma and high-velocity dust. Unfortunately, the Lesser Worlds of Yessey and Ikarka had found themselves in that path, and had been destroyed, along with their thousand-odd inhabitants.