A painful tightness gripped her lungs, a force that grew more unbearable with every second, increasing its hold, compressing the very bones of her ribcage. Another pressure was also building, inside her head, growing slowly, then expanding faster, rippling outward, now feeling like a flower opening in her brain, now exploding like fireworks in a starless sky. Then the energy pulsing out of her mind cut itself loose from her, grew beyond her. She felt it push out of her head somehow, felt it advance like a widening, laser-hot circle of light moving through the skin of her face, or what should have been her face but wasn’t. It expanded across her strange-feeling skin, along the projecting beak where her cheeks and jaw should be, down along the extremity where her legs should be but weren’t. It then leapt away from her, leaving her-body-not-her-body and continuing to expand into the water beyond her, a cast-off skin of pure light. She now knew the energy wasn’t expanding out of her own mind and physical self but out of a different body – Jules’s body! She was inside of Jules’s mind, looking out through the dolphin’s eyes.
She saw the expanding circle around her as a fiery globe of energy now, rippling out to surround her body, Jules’s body, which hung in the center of it, like a sculpture on display, an ornament in a glass bubble, all bathed in the hazy dream-light of the green-black water.
She understood then – the pressure on her chest, on Jules’s chest, was one of the lurker’s feeding tubes, constricting in a muscular loop. She watched in growing terror as another slender appendage tipped with rasp-like teeth undulated toward her, toward Jules, searching, scenting molecular clues as it wove its way through the water. The feeding siphon.
The grip of the lurker was unbreakable, and Zenn could feel the life being squeezed from the lungs of the body she inhabited. A darkness blacker than the watery gloom began to creep in around the edge of her vision. Jules was losing consciousness. Zenn knew with a chilling clarity that when that spark was gone, it would not return. Her paralyzing sense of helplessness spiraled up into impotent fury.
And then another consciousness was there, pushing into her mind, joining with her in the searing cold and suffocating dark. Like a doorway spilling out warmth and light, the other mind opened up into her own mind, shining its uncanny consciousness into hers. She knew immediately what it was. It was the Indra, the same stonehorse whose thoughts she had shared aboard the Helen of Troy. Now Zenn was suspended between Jules and the Indra, her own mind becoming a doorway too, a connecting thread, a conduit for the Indra’s unfathomable intentions. And she knew… no, didn’t know… she felt that if she tried hard enough, if she gathered all the will she could find within her, she could help Jules. Or be the instrument, the channel, of the action that could help him. Yes, just a little more… more intention, more willing that it happen, even if it hurt her, even if this action cut the tenuous bond tethering her to her own body and her world, even if she never found her way back from the place she floated now, just a little more… With a sharp spasm, she was pierced by a lance of burning pain and brilliant, arcing light. And it was over.
TWENTY-SIX
When her vision returned, Zenn hadn’t moved from where she’d been before. She was crouched stiffly in place in the Dancer’s lock, just outside the equalization chamber leading into the Tson. Her body was shaking, and pain hammered between her temples. Liam held her close against his chest. Treth’s face was next to hers.
The Groom was saying something, but Zenn couldn’t make it out; there was a ringing, hissing sound in her ears, as if she’d been deafened by a loud explosion. On the floor of the chamber, something lay in a pool of water. A dolphin! Jules was arching his back in small movements, trying to orient himself so that he faced her. There was something coiled around his torso – the lurker’s feeding tube, or what was left of it. Still and lifeless, it ended in a stump that appeared to be cleanly cut, the raw edge sealed shut as if cauterized by intense heat.
Treth’s voice came to her faintly, as if from far away. “…feeling? Are you injured?”
“I’m good. Jules… is Jules…”
“The dolphin is unharmed. Mostly.”
Zenn worked to focus on him and could see raw red patches where the lurker’s grip had abraded the skin.
“But he was caught.” Her words were coming more easily now, though her head continued to throb. “How did he… get back here?”
“You experienced some sort of… seizure,” Treth said. “There was an atmospheric disturbance. It enveloped you. When it subsided, the dolphin was here.”
I did it! I helped him I thought it, and it happened.
“It was the Indra,” Zenn said, trying to comprehend what has just occurred. “The Helen’s Indra. She did it. Through me.”
The idea was almost enough to make her forget the excruciating pressure in her head.
Treth tapped Liam on the shoulder, gestured at the equalization chamber. “Assist me,” she said.
“You OK?” he asked. “Can you stand?”
“Yes. Go help Jules,” Zenn replied.
He left her side and went to help Treth drag the walksuit to where the dolphin waited on the floor.
“On the Helen, you said you sensed the Indra,” Treth said, as she and Liam helped Jules into the contraption. “You knew she was about to tunnel. This thing that just happened – was it the same?”
“I think so, sort of,” Zenn said, but already the event was receding, dreamlike. “I’m sure it was her. I was in Jules’s mind, then the Indra was in my mind. It… wanted to help. No, it knew that I wanted to help and–”
“Scarlett,” Liam said as he cinched up the body harness on the walksuit, “you saying an Indra read your mind and… zapped Jules back here?” He seemed unable to suppress his disbelief. “That’s some pretty hefty magic.”
“But I believe this is so,” Jules said, adjusting his Transvox connections. “I felt Zenn Scarlett’s thoughts. I felt her thinking – planted inside my head. It must be the Indra brain-cell material inside of her head. That is what saved me from that hungry swimming thing.”
“Indra link with each other,” Treth said. “There is no mystery to that. Impulses are sent by sub-quantum carrier wave. The science is known. But this event…” She looked at Jules, then at Zenn. “Matter transphase executed through another life form? Is this possible?”
“Yeah, well, I guess anything’s possible,” Liam said. “I’m just pretty damn impressed. Whatever it was.” He patted Jules’s side.
An insistent beeping came from the control panel on the wall.
“The sub,” Treth said. A few more keystrokes from her and the circular hatch in the floor leading down to the submersible irised open with a gust of pressurized air.
“The dolphin will be a tight fit,” Treth said, going to the open hatch. “We will need to assist him.”
“Right,” Liam said. “You first, Scarlett. Guide his legs down the ladder.”
“I think you’d better go first,” she said, still shaken from what just happened to her. “You’re stronger. Go ahead. I’ll help from up here.”
“Hey, you’re the boss,” he said as he vanished into the hatch. “I’ll save you a window seat.”
“Here,” Treth said, following him down the ladder. “We will both take the weight of the dolphin from below.”
“Zenn Scarlett,” Jules said, approaching the hatch. “I tried to call out to my First Promised inside that water-ship. As I was swimming. I thought she might be there and hear me.”
“Good idea,” Zenn said, trying to keep his walksuit arms from getting hung up on the hatch as he descended into the sub. “Did you get an answer?”
“I am not certain. That hungry swimmer made a loud noise. It was violent and unpleasant.”
Zenn was about to follow Jules into the sub when she heard a trilling sound behind her. Across the room, she saw Katie, sitting up, holding the severed length of lurker feeding tube in her two front paws, nibbling eagerly.
“Katie,” Zenn said.
&n
bsp; “Come on, Scarlett,” Liam yelled up at her. “We’re all set down here.”
“Give me a second,” she said into the open hatch, then ran over to scoop the rikkaset into her arms. “Bad girl…” Zenn whispered, hugging the animal to her. She’d just reached the hatch when something hit the sub hard from outside, the impact knocking Zenn off her feet. She scrambled up again just in time to see the hatchway to the sub begin to close.
“The hatch – it’s sealing,” Liam yelled from inside the craft.
“No! Wait,” Zenn shouted. Holding Katie in one arm, she ran for the hatch, only to lose her footing on the water-slick floor. She scrabbled ahead on knees and one hand, but was too late. Liam was fighting his way back up into the hatchway, arms reaching out toward her, when the hatch irised shut above him.
Leaping up, she skidded over to the control panel. Katie jumped from her arms to sit on the console. What Zenn saw on the view screen made her faint with fear. The lurker had its tentacles wrapped securely around the sub, its feeding tubes scrabbling against the hull, trying to force a way in. A second later, the creature gave a powerful flap of its winglike fins. With a loud sound of rending metal, the craft was torn from the docking port. Another push from its wings and the lurker vanished down into the inky depths, pulling the sub behind it.
Zenn hunted for the comm button but couldn’t find it. Wild with panic, she pounded at the panel with her fists.
“…taking on water – turn that valve.” It was Treth’s voice. “No, that one, dolphin. Move aside, let me – no, no, I can’t…”
The voice was drowned out by the sound of rushing water, then a confusion of garbled voices shouting, static, and silence. She strained, waiting to hear a voice, waiting for a sound, a signal. There was nothing.
A loud scraping came from behind her. Zenn knew without looking what it was: the Dancer’s airlock door being forced. Pokt and the Khurspex.
“Katie, in,” she signed, and Katie burrowed into Zenn’s backpack. With a grinding of metal on metal, the door swung open. Zenn turned to face them.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Numb, exhausted and heartsick, Zenn allowed herself to be herded back through the Symmetry Dancer by Pokt and the half-dozen Khurspex with him. There was no sign of Charlie or the simstriss. Time passed in a disconnected jumble – a shuttle ride, a docking port, a quick march to a smaller intership ferry, Pokt saying nothing, pushing her ahead of him, the Khurspex crowding into the ship, occasionally stumbling into one another in their deteriorating state, their dank sea smell now tinged with the scent of accelerating decay. The ferry eased into motion, and with no other place available, she slumped down to sit on the floor, unable to stop the horrifying images that refused to stop replaying in her mind: the sub in the grasp of the furious lurker, dragged out of sight to vanish into the black, hopeless depths of the Tson.
“Where are you taking me?” she asked finally.
“To the service ship,” the Skirni said. “From there you will be placed into the stonehorse.”
“Why? What will happen then?”
He bulged his eyes at her. “Pokt knows. Pokt knows much more than you. I have read your diaries. On the shards from your room. You did not suspect what was placed within you, even when it should have been clear. The joinings you shared? With the animals? Yes, I know what grows inside you. The time is ripe. You will enter the stonehorse. These hideous Spex will go homeward. And this business will be concluded.”
Even in her dazed state, the thought of an in-soma run into the skull of a living Indra was enough to provoke a cold stab of fear. “What business?”
“That which ends the years of wandering.” He shook his head at her. Suddenly animated, he hopped up out of his seat. “Years of the Skirni homeless among the worlds. Worlds that turned us away, made us scrape and grovel. And we, we who were denied a planet of our own, we will say who can have a world. We will possess the Indra ships. And we will say who can go from star to star. We will say who walks on green grasses and who lives their life in the cold arms of mother-void. The Skirni will say.”
So that’s what the Cepheians promised them.
Zenn almost pitied him. Almost.
“That’s not true, you know.” She tilted her head up at him.
“What is not?”
“Your allies won’t let the Khurspex hand over the Indra fleet to you. Or to anyone else.”
“You don’t know what you say,” he said, snorting.
“Why should they? Why would they give you the ships when they could keep them for themselves?”
“Lies. Pathetic lies.” But she could see her words struck a chord. “The friends of the Skirni know our value. The Skirni have long survived in the ships of the Accord. We are everywhere yet are so despised we are noticed nowhere. The scorn of others has become our hidden strength.”
“Yes. But what about when you’ve served your purpose? Why won’t these friends of yours just toss you away?”
“You know nothing,” he scoffed, but his mottled color darkened, his hands clenched and unclenched as she spoke. “You simply fear such power in the hands of the Skirni.”
“Oh? What if it is the Skirni who are fools? What if your friends deceived you? Then the Skirni get nothing.”
“No. That is not how it will go.” A wicked smile split his pug-face. “The Skirni have taken steps. To assure we get what is deserved. I am done listening here.” Then he waddled forward to stand next to the Khurspex operating the ferry, muttering to himself.
A short time later, the ferry docked. Pokt ordered Zenn through the side hatch. They entered a larger ship with an open deck area holding a scattering of supply containers. Along one side of the deck was a row of nine or ten compact surgical bays set into alcoves. In them, Zenn could see operating tables, banks of diagnostic scanners and other equipment. The ship was probably a mobile medical unit or rescue craft. Beyond the surgery bays, she could see all the way forward to the pilot’s console at the bow. The pilot’s chair had its back to them.
“The Tson’s mini-sub has gone offline.” The sound of the voice from the unseen person in the chair drew a gasp of shocked recognition from Zenn. Then, the chair rotated, revealing a human male. He wore a vermillion soldier’s jacket. “Your friends should have surrendered,” Stav Travosk said matter-of-factly, the silver-gray eyes showing no emotion.
“You? You’re the ally?” Zenn said.
“Ally?”
“You and the Authority… the Skirni.”
He gave Pokt a scornful glance. “Oh, the valiant Skirni network. Allies, yes. But the Authority? Hardly.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Clearly.” He smiled at her tortured look. “You’re surprised? That the New Law refused to stand by and watch humanity be overwhelmed. The Authority is finished. Or they soon will be.”
“You’re a spy,” she said, the terrible truth dawning. “For the New Law.”
“I prefer ‘patriot’. Someone who refuses to let my species succumb to a tidal wave of alien filth.”
Behind her, Pokt emitted a snort. She turned to see him glaring at Stav, who appeared oblivious to either his insult or the Skirni’s reaction.
“Now it’s time.” He stood and came toward her. “The Indra is ready for you.” Her shock was overtaken now by stark fear closing around her chest like a deathly cold hand. “Pokt, your presence is no longer required. Go to the Delphic Queen and wait. I’ll contact you when I want you to bring him.”
Zenn’s throat tightened.
Father!
Pokt regarded Stav, then went the hatch leading to the shuttle they’d just come from.
“I should enjoy seeing it,” the Skirni said. “The placement of the nexus into the stonehorse. Why do I not wait?” His beady eyes flicked to Zenn, then away again. “I could wait until you have made the interface and the Indra ships are secured.”
“No.”
“Is there some reason I should not see it? It will be a shining moment. When the I
ndra fleet is taken and we divide our prize.”
“I said no.”
“Are we not allies, the New Law and the Skirni?”
“What? Of course we are. Pokt, we don’t have time for this.”
“But if we are? Equals? Why should Pokt not stay and witness the ending of our plan?”
Stav clamped his eyes shut, turned his head away, then swung back to the Skirni.
“I do not explain myself to you, Pokt.” The Skirni didn’t move. “I said go and wait on the Queen.” There was brittle anger in his voice, silver eyes flashing.
Pokt met Stav’s gaze and gave him a hostile smile in return. He glanced again at Zenn, back at Stav, and then he turned and went through the hatch.
Visible through the bow view screen behind Stav, the vast Khurspex structure was suspended in space, floating like an immense, ungainly wagon wheel. At its center was what had once been a starship, but was now a surreal composite vehicle of spires, connective struts, loops of massive ductwork and bizarre engineering permutations, a free-form construction with no visible bow, stern, up or down that Zenn could identify.
Stav saw her staring at it. “There, in the center.” He pointed to the viewport. “The meta-ship. Built for the Asyph, what the Spex call the Helen’s Indra. Built so the Asyph can take the Spex back to wherever they go to spawn more of their kind.”
Now, in the shadow below the meta-ship, extending out into space, Zenn saw her, the Helen’s Indra. The whole of the creature’s mighty head was exposed, floating serenely in the open vacuum, looking strangely vulnerable despite its size. There were four small bronze-gold spheres moving in lazy orbits around the Indra’s head – sedation satellites, keeping her calm and docile.
“Nearly in position,” Stav said, leaning into the console to make a final adjustment for their approach.
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