Then the ghost of Gregorovich’s voice sounded from the speakers, and he said, “Retracting radiators. Transitioning to FTL in four minutes. Prepare thyselves.”
Only then did Kira notice how cold it had gotten in the antechamber. Frustrated that she didn’t have any more time for questions, she informed Itari of the impending jump and then retreated from the doorway and closed and locked the airlock door.
The lights switched to the dull red of ship-night, a whine sounded near the back of the Wallfish, and the exposed skin on Kira’s cheeks tingled as the Markov Drive activated and they set out on the last and longest leg of their journey: the trip to Sol.
5.
Through the airlock window, Kira watched with interest as Itari wound a cocoon around itself with goo secreted from the undersides of its tentacles. The viscous substance hardened quickly, and within only a few minutes, the Jelly lay hidden within an opaque, somewhat greenish pod stuck to the floor of the airlock.
Kira wondered how the alien would know when to wake up.
Not her problem.
She retreated to her own little nest, secured herself to the webbing, and wrapped herself with blankets. The antechamber was dark and intimidating in the nighttime lighting; hardly a friendly place to spend the next three months.
She shivered, finally feeling the cold.
“Just you and me, headcase,” she said to the erstwhile ceiling.
“Worry not,” whispered Gregorovich, “I shall keep you company, O Varunastra, until your eyes grow heavy and the soft sands of sleep dull your mind.”
“How comforting,” Kira said, but she only half meant the sarcasm. It was nice to have someone to talk to.
“Forgive me for my irrepressible curiosity,” said Gregorovich, and he chuckled, “but what strange scents did you exchange with our be-tentacled guest? You stood there for quite some minutes, and you seemed most affected by the stench afflicting your delicate nostrils.”
Kira snorted. “You could say that.… I’ll write a proper account later. You can see the details there.”
“Nothing immediately helpful, I take it,” said Gregorovich.
“No. But—” She explained about the Nest of Transference and ended with, “Itari said, The form is unimportant.”
“Bodies do tend to be rather fungible these days,” the ship mind said dryly. “As both you and I have discovered.”
Kira pulled the blankets tighter. “Was it difficult becoming a ship mind?”
“Easy certainly isn’t the word I would use to describe it,” said Gregorovich. “Every sense of mine was stripped away, replaced, and what I was, the very foundation of my consciousness, was expanded beyond any natural limit. ’Twas confusion piled upon confusion.”
The experience sounded deeply unpleasant, and it reminded Kira—somewhat to her distaste—of the times when she had extended the Soft Blade, and in doing so, extended her sense of self.
She shivered. The soft sway of her body in zero-g caused her to swallow hard and focus on a fixed spot on the wall while she tried to calm her inner ear. The darkness of the antechamber and the abandoned, empty feeling of the Wallfish affected her more than she liked. Had it really been less than half a day since they’d been fighting through the streets on Nidus?
It seemed as if it had been more than a week ago.
Trying to fend off her sudden loneliness, she said, “My first day here, Trig told me how—in your last ship—you crashed and got stranded. What was it like … being by yourself for so long?”
“What was it like?” said Gregorovich. He laughed with a demented tone, and at once, Kira knew she’d gone too far. “What was it like?… It was like death, like the obliteration of the self. The walls around my mind fell away and left me to gibber senselessly before the naked face of the universe. I had the combined knowledge of the entire human race at my disposal. I had every scientific discovery, every theory and theorem, every equation, every proof, and a million, million, million books and songs and movies and games—more than any one person, even a ship mind, could ever hope to consume. And yet…” He trailed off into a sigh. “And yet I was alone. I watched my crew starve and die, and when they were gone, there was nothing I could do but sit alone in the dark and wait. I worked on equations, mathematical concepts you could never comprehend with your puny little brain, and I read and watched and counted toward infinity, as the Numenists do. And all it did was stave off the darkness for one more second. One more moment. I screamed, though I have no mouth to scream. I wept, though I have no eyes for tears. I crawled through space and time, a worm inching through a labyrinth built by the dreams of a mad god. This I learned, meatbag, this and nothing more: when air, food, and shelter are assured, only two things matter. Work and companionship. To be alone and without purpose is to be the living dead.”
“Is that so great a revelation?” Kira asked quietly.
The ship mind tittered, and she could hear him swaying on the edge of madness. “Not at all. No indeed. Ha. It’s obvious, isn’t it? Banal even. Any reasonable person would agree, wouldn’t they? Ha. But to live it is not the same as hearing or reading it. Not at all. The revelation of truth is rarely easy. And that is what it was like, O Spiked One. It was revelation. And I would rather die than endure such an experience again.”
That much Kira could understand and appreciate. Her own revelations had nearly destroyed her. “Yeah. Same for me.… What was the name of the ship you were in?”
But Gregorovich refused to answer, which upon reflection, Kira decided was probably for the best. Talking about the crash only seemed to make him more unstable.
She pulled up her overlays and stared at them without seeing. How did you provide therapy for a ship mind? It wasn’t the first time she had wondered. Falconi had said that most of the psychiatrists who worked with them were ship minds themselves, but even then … She hoped Gregorovich would find the peace he was looking for—as much for their own sake as his—but solving his problems was beyond her.
6.
The long night crept past.
Kira wrote up her conversation with Itari, played her concertina, watched several movies from the Wallfish’s database—none of them particularly memorable—and practiced with the Soft Blade.
Before she started working with the xeno, Kira took time to think about what she was trying to accomplish. As she’d said to Falconi, control alone wasn’t enough. Rather, she needed … synthesis. A more natural joining between her and the Soft Blade. Trust. Otherwise she would always be second-guessing her actions, as well as those of the xeno. How could she not, given past mistakes? (Her mind wandered toward the subject of the Maw; with an effort of will, she resolutely pulled it back.) As she’d learned through painful experience, second-guessing could be every bit as deadly as overreacting.
She sighed. Why did everything have to be so hard?
With her goal in mind, Kira began much as she had before. Isometric exercises, unpleasant memories, physical and emotional strain … everything she could think of to test the Soft Blade. Once she was confident her grip on the xeno was as strong as ever, then and only then did she start to experiment by relaxing her dictatorial control. Just a little bit at first: a tiny amount of leeway so she could see how the Soft Blade would choose to act.
The results were mixed. Around half of the time the xeno did exactly what Kira wanted in the way she wanted, whether that was forming a shape on her skin, helping to hold a stress position, or fulfilling whatever other task she’d put to the organism. Perhaps a quarter of the time the Soft Blade did what she wanted but not as she expected. And the rest of the time, it reacted in a completely disproportionate or unreasonable manner, sending spikes or tendrils every which way. Those, of course, were the occurrences Kira was most concerned with.
When she’d had enough and stopped, Kira didn’t feel as if she had made any noticeable progress. The thought dampened her mood until she reminded herself that it would be over three months before they arrived at Sol. She
still had lots of time to work with the Soft Blade. Lots and lots of time …
Gregorovich started talking with her again soon afterward. He seemed to have returned to his usual self, which she was pleased to hear. They played several games of Transcendence, and though he beat her every time, Kira didn’t mind, as she enjoyed having the company, any company.
She tried not to think too much about the nightmares or the Maw or even the great and mighty Ctein brooding in the depths of the Plaintive Verge … but her mind returned to them time and time again, making it difficult to relax into the state of dormancy needed to survive the journey.
It might have been a few hours, it might have been more than a day, but eventually Kira felt the familiar slowing of her body as the Soft Blade responded to the lack of food and activity and began to prepare her for the sleep that was more than sleep. Each time she entered hibernation, it seemed to become easier; the xeno was getting better at recognizing her intent and taking the appropriate action.
She set her weekly alarm, and as her eyes drifted shut, she said, “Gregorovich … think I’m going to sleep.”
“Rest well, meatbag,” the ship mind whispered. “I think I shall sleep as well.”
“… perchance to dream.”
“Indeed.”
His voice faded away, and the soft strains of a Bach concerto took its place. Kira smiled, snuggled deeper into the blankets, and at long last, allowed herself to relax into oblivion.
7.
A shapeless while passed, full of half-formed thoughts and urges: fears, hopes, dreams, and the ache of regrets. Once a week, the alarm roused Kira, and she—groggy and bleary-eyed—would train with the Soft Blade. It often felt like fruitless labor, but she persisted. And so did the xeno. From it she sensed a desire to please her, and with repetition of action came clarity of intent, if not mastery of form, and she began to feel a hint of yearning from the Soft Blade. As if it aspired to some type of artistry in its endeavors, some form of creativity. For the most part, she shied from those instincts, but they stirred her curiosity, and often Kira had long, deeply strange dreams of the greenhouses of her childhood and of plants sprouting and twining and leafing and spreading life, good and healthy.
Once every two weeks, the Wallfish emerged from FTL, and Kira went down to Sparrow’s makeshift gym and pushed her mind and body to their limits while the ship cooled. Each time, she sorely missed her right hand. The lack of it caused no end of difficulty, even though she used the Soft Blade as a substitute to hold and lift things. She consoled herself with the knowledge that using the xeno like that was good practice. And it was.
As she trained in the hold, the Marines stood watch among the nearby racks of equipment: Hawes and three others frozen in their blue-lit cryo tubes; Sanchez, Tatupoa, Moros, and one other wrapped in the same cocoons that had saved Trig’s life. Seeing them there left Kira feeling as if she’d stumbled upon a row of ancient statues set to defend the souls of the dead. She gave them a wide berth and did her best to avoid looking at them, an odd bit of superstition for her.
Sometimes she ate a ration bar after exercising, to keep up her strength, but mostly she preferred water and a return to hibernation.
Partway through the first month, in the empty hours of the night, as she floated outside Itari’s airlock—all but insensate to the universe around her—a vision coalesced behind her shuttered eyelids, a memory from another time and another mind:
Summoned once more to the high-vaulted presence chamber, she and her flesh stood as witness before the gathered Heptarchy, three to each ascension, and the Highmost stationed between.
The central seal broke, and through the patterned floor rose a gleaming prism. Within the faceted cage, a seed of fractal blackness thrashed with ravening anger, the perversion pulsing, stabbing, tearing, ceaselessly battering its transparent prison. Flesh of her flesh, but now tainted and twisted with evil intent.
“What now must be done?” the Highmost asked.
The Heptarchy replied with many voices, but one spoke most clearly: “We must cut the branch; we must burn the root. The blight cannot be allowed to spread.”
But dissent made itself known with another voice: “True it is we must protect our gardens, but pause a moment and consider. There is potential here for life beyond our plans. What arrogance have we to put that aside unexamined? We are not all-knowing nor all-seeing. Within the chaos might also dwell beauty and, perhaps, fertile soil for the seeds of our hope.”
Long discussion followed, much of it angry, and all the while the captive blackness struggled to escape.
Then the Highmost stood and struck the floor with the Staff of Blue and said, “The fault is ours, but the blight cannot be allowed to persist. The risk is too great, the rewards too uncertain, too slight. Although light may emerge from dark, it would be wrong to allow the dark to smother the light. Some acts exist beyond forgiveness. Illuminate the shadows. End the blight.”
“End the blight!” cried the Heptarchy.
Then the rainbowed prism flashed blindingly bright, and the malevolence within shrieked and burst into a cloud of falling embers.
PART FOUR
FIDELITATIS
Not for ourselves alone are we born.
—MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
CHAPTER I
DISSONANCE
1.
Kira’s eyes snapped open.
Why had she woken? Some change in the environment had roused the Soft Blade, and it her. An almost imperceptible shift in the air currents circulating throughout the Wallfish. A distant whir of machinery coming to life. A slight decrease in the otherwise stifling temperature. Something.
A jolt of alarm caused her to glance at the nearby airlock. The Jelly, Itari, was still inside where it ought to be, encased in its secreted pod, barely visible in the dull red light of the long ship-night.
Kira let out her breath, relieved. She really didn’t want to have to fight the Jelly.
“G-Gregorovich?” she said. Her voice was rusty as an old wrench. She coughed and tried again, but the ship mind still didn’t answer. She tried a different tack: “Morven, are you there?”
“Yes, Ms. Navárez,” the Wallfish’s pseudo-intelligence answered.
“Where are we?” Kira’s throat was so parched, the words came out in a faint rasp. She tried to swallow, despite the lack of moisture in her mouth.
“We have just arrived at our destination,” said Morven.
“Sol,” Kira croaked.
“That is correct, Ms. Navárez. Sol system. The Wallfish emerged from FTL four minutes and twenty-one seconds ago. Standard arrival procedures are in effect. Captain Falconi and the rest of the crew will be awake soon.”
They’d made it. They’d actually made it. Kira dreaded to think about all the things that might have happened since they’d left 61 Cygni six months ago.
It hardly seemed real that they’d been traveling for half a year. The wonders of hibernation, artificial or otherwise.
“Has anyone hailed us?” she asked.
“Yes, Ms. Navárez,” Morven replied, prompt as could be. “Fourteen messages from UMC monitoring stations. I have explained that the crew is currently indisposed. However, local authorities are most insistent that we identify our system of origin and our current mission as soon as possible. They are rather agitated, Ms. Navárez.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Kira muttered. Falconi could deal with the UMC once he was out of cryo. He was good at that sort of thing. Besides, she knew he would want to speak for the Wallfish.
Feeling uncomfortably stiff, she began to extract herself from the nest of blankets and webbing she’d constructed close to the airlock.
Her hand.
Her forearm and hand that she had cut off in the Jelly ship had … reappeared. Astonished, disbelieving, Kira held up the arm, turned it so she could see every part, worked her fingers open and closed.
She wasn’t imagining things. The arm was real. Hardly believing, she touched it with her
other hand, feeling fingers sliding across fingers. Only five days had passed since she’d last woken, and in that time, the Soft Blade had constructed a perfect replica of the flesh she had lost.
Or had it?
A sudden shade of fear colored Kira’s thoughts. Drawing a breath, she focused on the back of her hand and, with an effort of will, forced the Soft Blade to retreat.
It did, and she uttered a soft cry as the shape of her hand caved inward, melting away like ice cream on a hot summer’s day. She recoiled, both mentally and physically, losing her focus in the process. The Soft Blade snapped back into shape, again assuming the form of her missing limb.
Tears filmed her eyes, and Kira blinked, feeling a sense of bitter loss. “Dammit,” she muttered, angry with herself. Why was she letting the missing hand affect her so much? Getting an arm or a leg replaced wasn’t that big of a deal.
But it was. She was her body, and her body was her. There was no separation between mind and matter. Her hand had been a part of her self-image for her entire life up until Bughunt, and without it, Kira felt incomplete. For a moment she’d had hope that she was whole again, but no, it wasn’t to be.
Still, she had a hand, and that was better than the alternative. And the fact that the Soft Blade had managed to replicate her missing limb was cause for optimism. Why had it done so now and not before? Because it knew they were nearing the end of their trip? As a demonstration of the sort of cooperation she’d been attempting to train all the way from Bughunt? Kira wondered. Regardless of the answer, she felt vindicated in the results. The Soft Blade had acted of its own volition (although perhaps guided by her own, unvoiced desires) and in a constructive manner at that.
Again, Kira examined her hand, and she marveled at the detail. It was, so far as she could tell, a near-perfect copy of the original. The only real difference she noticed was a slight disparity in density; the new arm felt perhaps a hair heavier. But it was a small change, hardly perceptible.
To Sleep in a Sea of Stars Page 59