Once & Future

by Cori McCarthy

  “We do?” Merlin asked.

  “We’re sealing the doors,” Ari said, a hand clamped on his shoulder.

  Merlin’s stomach tightened into a complex system of knots as Ari dug through a closet. Soon Merlin was wearing a spacesuit that made him feel like a walking marshmallow.

  A metallic catastrophe came from the engine room. Everyone jumped and winced as a wave passed through the walls, shuddering the ship to a stop. Merlin tipped over, his suit padding his fall.

  “Should we be on this ship if it’s so easy to break?” Jordan called from the cockpit.

  Within seconds, the radio went live—just as Ari had predicted.

  “What’s your situation?” asked a blank voice.

  “What’s our situation?” Gwen hissed.

  Kay yelled from the engine room, “Trydecker. Kaplow.”

  “Our trydecker valve is broken,” Gweneviere said in a voice that suggested the person on the other end should be reasonable. Merlin was impressed. “We’re going to need…”

  “Twenty minutes!” Kay yelled.

  “Twenty minutes, at least,” Gwen relayed.

  “You have ten,” the blank voice said.

  “Ten minutes!” Gwen yelled throughout the ship, and Merlin felt how desperately small that number was. How many times had he lost ten years to a useless Arthur? Ten decades to a long sleep? Ten minutes was nothing…

  “Ha!” Kay said. “I knew those Mercer bastards would cut the number.”

  “How much time do you actually need?” Val asked.

  “Fifteen,” Kay mumbled. “I didn’t know they’d cut it that much.”

  “Let’s go,” Ari said, waddling with Merlin to the double set of doors that led into space.

  “Have you ever spacewalked before?” Lam asked Merlin.

  “Yes and no,” Merlin said. “I self-propelled to the moon once.”

  “This is a dangerous walk for a beginner.” Or anyone, Merlin read in the creases that appeared on Lam’s usually smooth forehead. “Take it slow. You and Ari are tied together, and your helmet coms are on if you need to talk.”

  “You’re also going to be tethered to Error,” Ari said. “I’ll hook us up.”

  Merlin nodded, but his plan to train her was becoming less delightful with each moment. They moved through the first set of doors, which Lam and Val sealed behind them. Merlin mimicked Ari, taking hold of a bar as the second set of doors opened.

  Space greeted him, endless and cold, the blackest of blacks.

  I want to go home, Merlin thought. But he didn’t know where home was. He meant the crystal cave, but that was just a way station on his endless journey. He seemed to understand space in a way that terrified him. Here was endlessness in its purest form.

  At least Ari didn’t seem to be worrying herself into oblivion. She sealed a metallic clip to the side of the ship, hooking a cable to Merlin’s suit and one to her own. She pointed to the short tether that held them together.

  Merlin picked a cable that would lead them to the first of the six ships. It wasn’t thick enough to walk across. Ari let herself out. In her white suit, she was like a falling star. She caught the cable and started to move, hand over hand. Merlin thought, very seriously for a second, about canceling this whole cycle. Even if it was his last chance. But then Ari looked back at him with her eyes wide, thrilled. She was having fun.

  Merlin let go.

  His organs lurched as he propelled himself out, missing the cable. His fingers sifted through space. For a second Merlin thought he was lost—that he would be floating, forever. Unable to die. Waiting out his time in a suit that kept him perfectly alone. Panic closed in on him.

  “Merlin,” Ari said, her voice crackling through his helmet. That voice brought him back from the brink of nothing. Ari tugged him, one hand on the cable and the other on the tether between them. She was his lifeline out here, in more ways than one. Ari’s laugh was sharp and bright. “I bet none of your Arthurs have done this.”

  “This is… unique,” he said, pulling himself after her.

  They reached the doors of the first Mercer ship, and Ari gave Merlin a can of something to spray. It released a puffy sealant that covered the edges of the door. Merlin watched it grow with a wondrous satisfaction. Magic was his personal cup of tea, but technology wasn’t too shabby, either. They slid along the rest of the cables with growing ease, writing their defiance in puffy white goop. In his desperation to end the cycle, and his worry over turning Ari into Arthur, Merlin had forgotten how good it felt to strike a blow—any blow—against oppression.

  They started along the final cable back to Error, and Merlin felt the first trickle of confidence he’d had in ages. Then one ship twisted, pulling taut against the cord that connected them to Error.

  It would snap any moment, setting Ari and Merlin adrift.

  He hummed a deep note, breaking the wire tied to the Mercer ship. Ari’s surprise sent her teetering backward, and Merlin grabbed her hand in a firm grip. Arthur 42 would not die—not today. Not tomorrow. Not while Merlin was here to protect her.

  “Thanks,” Ari breathed.

  “What is magic for?” Merlin asked.

  When they made it back to the ship, Lam and Val hauled them in and sealed the doors behind them. Merlin ripped off his helmet, gulping Error’s blessed oxygen.

  “Nine minutes, people!” Kay said, emerging from the engine room with grease smears all through his gray hair, arms lofted high.

  “We’re cleared to continue,” Gweneviere said over the radio.

  Error coughed her way back to life, but she flew smoothly enough. Merlin joined the rest of the crew at the window. The Mercer ships were no longer a sign of their impending doom. “It worked,” Merlin said, shock lifting the edges of his voice.

  “I thought you knew it was going to work the whole time,” Ari said. “Aren’t you my wise and all-knowing mentor?”

  “I used to be.” Now Merlin was walking without a tether, toward an unknown future. And it felt brilliant.

  Error landed on Troy’s sterile atmospheric docks, the shining silver platforms connected to the city by tethered elevators.

  Ari’s band of knights couldn’t resist making a few faces in the small ship windows of their armored escorts. Ari tasted a wild humor at having trounced Mercer in this simple—and yet bizarrely satisfying—way. She displayed her middle finger for the shouting, shoving associates, while Kay dropped his pants and gave them the pressed ham on the glass.

  “We only have minutes,” Gwen said heatedly, drying out everyone’s laughs. “Merlin, block their communications.” Merlin complied, fingers dancing while various sensors and dishes crumpled on the outside of the Mercer ships. Ari’s sense of lightness crumpled as well.

  They dropped into the city in a glass elevator. Merlin’s jaw hung open as he took in a planet that was entirely human-made. One enormous city covered the entire thing, without interruption. “Troy has no indigenous nature,” Lam explained. “Just barren rock coated and recoated by skyscrapers. Bet you haven’t seen anything like it.”

  “I have,” he said. “This is quite like Mumbai or Tokyo or New York City in the twenty-third century, but even then, we had… sky.” Merlin’s eyes pointedly turned toward the pale atmosphere that glowed digitally, changing advertisements at swift intervals.

  Ari put an arm around her magician. “It could be worse.”

  “It’s worse,” Kay said, pointing to a patch that lit up with Ari’s picture. WANTED. DANGEROUS. KETCHAN. DO NOT APPROACH. The words scrolled beneath her scowling face, the image taken from too close—from when she’d used that couple’s watch to take tourist photos on Heritage. She could see the visor of the knight’s suit pushed all the way up. She should have kept the damn thing on to talk to them.

  “Shit,” Gwen said, and Ari looked at her wife, startled into a smile by how sexy Gwen sounded when she swore. “Val?”

  “They can’t detain her once you’re inside the government offices,” Val sai
d. “It’s a bizarre sanctuary loophole left over from when Troy had its own government, before Mercer swallowed it. You’ll have to get there before anyone spots her, though.”

  “We move fast,” Jordan said, her armor taking up most of the elevator. “The people here aren’t strong enough to stand up to Mercer. They do as they’re told. They’ll report us.”

  Lam took off the purple scarf they were wearing and draped it around Ari’s head. “And we’ll go separate ways. We’ll draw less attention if there are fewer of us traveling together.”

  Gwen took control with a succinct tilt of her head. “Jordan and Ari are with me.”

  Ari touched Merlin’s shoulder. “You’re with the boys and Lam. Take care of them?”

  “No harm will come to them,” Merlin promised, holding up two fingers as if making some kind of strange pledge.

  She squeezed his thin shoulders and ruffled his red hair. “I trust you,” she whispered. She never wanted to catch him staring into the void like he had during their spacewalk—as if he were about to be eaten whole by a cruel, pointless universe. Ari had felt like that after she lost her family, before she settled into life with Kay and the moms. “You’re one of us now, got it?”

  Merlin nodded with those large brown eyes that had grown on her so much that it felt like they’d always been familiar. The elevator slowed and stopped at the ground level of Troy. When the doors opened, they shot out into the city like a flock of birds from a tower window, splitting apart and yet staying in formation. Gwen knew the way, so Ari followed, and Jordan brought up the rear. Ari kept one hand near her shoulder, at the spot where Excalibur was strapped to her back.

  The overcrowded nature of the planet helped matters. No one looked at Ari’s face. They were too busy hustling—a rushing river of humanity that would not pause its flow for anything. The same force that was keeping her anonymous had a dark side, though. Troy had a history of terrible riots. People trampled beneath the heels of hysteria. Bodies strewn like litter in the aftermath. Which was why Mercer kept such a tight lockdown on the entire planet; she wouldn’t be surprised if every single person was monitored.

  Ari shivered as they wound down several streets and approached a wide, circular stone courtyard bearing an enormous gold statue of the Mercer Company logo. The gleaming building behind it wore the—much smaller—silver words GALACTIC STATE DEPARTMENT.

  “They’re not even trying to hide Mercer’s control over the government,” Ari noted. “They’re bragging about it.”

  “Don’t stop,” Gwen said, nearly running inside. Ari followed but the doors blocked her entry. At first she thought she was busted, but then a red warning scrolled across the glass at eye level.

  NO WEAPONS ALLOWED ON THE PREMISES.

  Jordan was already unstrapping a number of concealed blades and dropping them into one of the lockers in the row beside the building. Gwen stood just inside the door, anxiously beckoning Ari to enter. Ari heaved Excalibur from her back, swinging it around in a way that cleared the crowd and caught some attention. Just then, the sky lit back up with her stark image and Mercer’s ugly lies, and several people pointed and shouted.

  She slammed Excalibur into the courtyard, the sword sliding through the metallic pavement as if it were as soft as earth.

  Ari entered the building, leaving the crowd behind her. “We made it,” she said, arms encircling Gwen. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Relief and amusement tangoed in Gwen’s expression. “Don’t look now, Ari, but that was a bit of pageantry.”

  “If they already know I’m here, I’d rather not be shy about it.”

  “Hmm,” Gwen mouthed, a silky sound that sent Ari’s mind and heart racing back to their naked, tangled hours on Error. “Ari,” Gwen murmured, running her hands up Ari’s arms. “I know what you’re thinking about.”

  “How?” Ari asked, blushing and glancing at Jordan as the knight pushed through the thick glass doors.

  “Because my body’s been memorizing yours since the moment I met you.” Gwen turned, pulling Ari along behind her with their fingers entwined.

  “Fuck,” Ari whispered, mouth dry. That statement didn’t just satisfy Ari’s addiction to truth. It set her heart on fire. “The things you do to me, lady…”

  Gwen looked over her shoulder with a small, proud smile.

  Minutes later, Ari and Gwen sat in the interplanetary marriage approval department. Ari eyeballed the people waiting to be interviewed and either granted legality or rejected. The white, sterile place criticized romance acutely, and everywhere she looked, Mercer had left its mark. Troy was no longer the democratic center of the galaxy. It was Mercer’s favorite puppet.

  Gwen was bent over a sticky, government-issued tablet, entering their information into the system with a typing speed that Ari had only imagined to be possible. She swept her curls over one shoulder, adjusting her silver crown the same way Merlin pushed his horn-rimmed glasses up his nose. The crown garnered a lot of looks. Most likely half of the new couples in the room had gone to Lionel for their medieval-styled honeymoons.

  “You need one, too,” Gwen said, tapping her crown without looking up from the tablet. “But don’t worry. Consort crowns are smaller.”

  Consort. Ari would never get used to that.

  “I imagine ‘Helix’ is your adopted name. Do you know your birth name?”

  Ari peered backward into her memories. They ended in that dying water heater when Kay’s chubby face peered over the edge. He’d cried when he saw her. She must have looked bad, but her brain seemed determined to protect her from the worst of the details—from whatever had come before, whatever had caused the shipwreck.

  Ari shook her head. “I don’t remember my last name, but Ari is a nickname. My birth name is Ara.”

  Gwen changed it on the tablet. “What should I call you?” she asked, her words poised but weighted.

  Ari had given her nickname to her adoptive family. She’d never told them about Ara. She’d never told anyone until this moment, and now she wondered why it had come forward and where the rest of her old life might be hiding. “Ari. That’s who I’ve been in both lives.”

  “And what about the other forty-one lives Val told me about?”

  Wow, Gwen had chosen now to bring up the King Arthur stuff? “I haven’t figured that out, but I know how off the wall it sounds. Merlin and Excalibur’s magic are rather convincing, and confusing…” Ari shrugged. “I’m just trying to help my friends.”

  “We’ll tackle that later, then.” Gwen finished tapping on the tablet. “It’ll be a few minutes. Relax. Both of you.” Jordan’s shoulders sank, clinking her armor. When Ari didn’t follow suit, Gwen put a soft hand on the back of Ari’s neck. “You might be Ketchan, but you are my wife, and the rules are clear. I will keep you safe.”

  Ari felt Gwen’s confidence—or was it that soft touch?—lean through her, easing Ari’s nerves. “But you’re lying. You don’t know that.”

  “I’m hoping. I’m trusting. That’s not a lie. It’s a leap of faith.”

  Ari always faltered when it came to hope; it felt like a lie that wanted to be a truth. “What about the boys and Lam? They’re still marked for being my acquaintances and they’re not great at blending in, if you didn’t notice.”

  Gwen squeezed her fingers. “Lam’s hand was not your fault.That was Mercer being”—she raised her voice pointedly—“tyrannical bullies!”

  Ari glanced around. “Should you be saying that here?”

  “A government that cannot handle criticism cannot handle governing. Isn’t that right?” Gwen said, her voice floating across the room as if she were speaking to a stadium on Lionel.

  Many, many eyes turned to her. They held shock and no small amount of fear.

  “Besides,” she continued with bravado. “This is the galactic state department. This is Troy. And it might be ground zero for the Mercer Company, but they can’t own the government, can they? Or perhaps, they can’t admit to owning it.”
<
br />   People were astounded. Ari was, too.

  Gwen’s tablet vibrated. “See? Always works. No one wants a salty queen in the waiting room stirring up trouble.” She winked, stood, and pulled Ari toward the doors to the interior, their fingers linked in a sweetheart hold. “Stay, Jordan,” she called over her shoulder.

  Ari only had a few moments to categorize her impressed reaction. Gwen was not only playing a game with Mercer, she was enjoying it. “How do you do that, Gwen?”

  “All the universe is a stage.” She smiled. “The right spotlight pointed at the right place can make all the difference.”

  They followed the lighted signs on the floor toward a small interrogation room devoid of everything but a table and chairs. Ari and Gwen sat with their backs to the wall, waiting.

  Ari crossed her arms. Her legs. Gwen was infuriatingly calm, and she knew that drove Ari nuts. The door opened, and a woman in a green suit held her hand out for Gwen’s tablet. “Goody, a queen,” she muttered. “You’re going to help me win my bingo this month.”

  Gwen handed over the tablet, while the woman dropped into the seat on the other side of the table. She flicked through the first few pages of their information. “You were married nine days ago. On Lionel. So romantic. Consummated?” She looked up, one eyebrow high.

  “Yes.” Gwen looked at Ari.

  “Yes,” Ari said stiffly.

  “Are you sure?” the woman asked.

  Gwen inhaled in a pointed way. Val had just won the bet over whether they’d ask, and Ari couldn’t help sinking back to Kay’s room.

  “But it’s a political marriage,” Ari had argued.

  “Even those need physical ties, unless you’d like to say you are ace. I’m afraid it wouldn’t work for me. Too many known lovers,” Gwen admitted casually.

  “Same,” Ari replied, trying not to stare at Gwen with a brand-new kind of hunger.

  “So you’ll have to lie.”

  “I am not a convincing liar. When I lie I actually feel sick.”

  “Well, we can’t have you throwing up in the galactic state department at the very thought of sleeping with me.” Gwen had tried to cross the room, but Ari caught her around the waist, amazed at how merely cupping Gwen’s hip made both of them inhale.