Was she in VR, then?
Frankie?
Nothing.
Maud swallowed. “Reset sim defaults.”
Nothing.
“Restore basic skin.”
Nothing.
“Fine.” She groped her way to a corner, sat cross-legged, and closed her eyes. “Nothing to do but go back to sleep.”
Sardonic hand-claps sent her heart into overdrive. Maud kept her eyes shut.
After a second, the flimsy protection of a swimsuit replaced the sensation of sand between her buttocks. Light glimmered, brightening the room. A circus midway formed around her. A platform, extended above a tank of bright blue water, became her floor.
A dunk tank.
“What’s happened?” Maud said.
Headmistress and Misfortune appeared. Misfortune was holding a bright yellow ball. Ice shards glinted in the pool beneath her.
“Your Frances did indeed leave your husbands on Sneezy and took off in the saucer.”
Maud’s thoughts whirled. By now, she’d hoped Frankie might have made it back to the others. “What’s Champ done to them?”
“Focus on Frankie,” Misfortune said. “Where did she go, and why? And where’s she now?”
“Am I in a shipping tube? Are you bringing me back to the tunnels?”
Misfortune threw a ball, right on target, plunging Maud into ice-cold water. There was a sound of a crowd laughing and cheering as the shock and chill hit her. Trembling, she spat and treaded. Just an illusion, she told herself, but they would have given her massive doses of buy-in drugs. She couldn’t make herself ignore it. She lunged for the ladder, climbing back up to the dunk tank platform.
“Are EmberJerm okay?” she demanded.
Misfortune wound up to take another throw, but Irma put out a hand, calling a pause. “Darling, darling … I don’t want to medicate you.”
“Oh, and you haven’t already?” Maud crossed her arms. “You haven’t strip-searched me and stuck me in a shipping tube—”
“Focus up.” Misfortune threw another ball, underhand this time. Maud caught it. The yellow fuzz of a tennis ball transformed into a soap bubble, containing a display. “Here’s an easy one. Do you know this man, Maud?”
The bubble contained an image of the old blind hoaxer getting off a bus at Tatween: “Jackal? He’s one of Frankie’s old conspiracy cronies—”
The platform collapsed, plunging her underwater again. This time, the surface iced over before she could get out. Maud sucked in a lungful of water, her whole body convulsing in response. It was all too easy to imagine Misfortune, out on the surface, pressing a pillow over her face.
Illusory torture or real torture? Her vision went white. Within the light she got a faint sense of Frankie …
Dragging herself by the hands, in nullgrav … hurt …
… all in, all in, burn the place down, Maud, you were right …
She pounded on the ice, mind dimming, light fading … and then it broke. She bobbed to the surface, paddling, cutting her hands on ice shards. Slick crystalline formations burned at her hands as she tried to grasp the frozen rungs of the ladder while hauling herself back up.
“Stop this,” she coughed. “Please, stop.”
“Luvvie darling, the presence of this Jackal person, it troubles us. We can’t help thinking you’re trying to make contact with troublemaking, monkey-wrenching—”
Maud gasped, clinging to the platform, shaking with cold.
Go on the offensive!
“You think you’re so bloody smart,” she sputtered.
Misfortune lofted a ball up, catching it before it could plunge her again.
“Of course Frankie’s hoaxer chums keep tabs on me!”
“Jackal’s trying to meet, isn’t he?”
“That’s not my fault.”
“You didn’t know? That’s not why you wanted to go up top so badly?”
“No!”
Had they actually grabbed Jackal? She hoped they’d been afraid to move so openly.
Afraid.
This whole thing smacked of fear. All their neat plans, spinning out of control.
“How did Jackal even get to Tatween?” she asked.
“Smart arse.” Misfortune dunked her again.
Maud flailed. Trauma, experiencing trauma, now Frankie and I venn even harder … Is it meta-trauma when you’re thinking about the psychological damage as they inflict it on you—
She saw the corridor again. Emerald Station, near the infirmary. Atmosphere alarms were going off. Jalopy docked nearby.
The water broke … and then she was awake. Her body was dry, mummified in foam.
It was, indeed, a shipping pod.
They’re changing things up to disorient you, love.
Maud was suddenly glad she’d played those ridiculous zombie sims with Frankie. Had weathered those waves of opposition, the changing rules, shifting circumstances.
Misfortune was there, in what appeared, this time, to be the real world. Irma, for the moment, wasn’t. And …
Maud could smell fresh greenery, sulfur, and a hint of moss. The quantum comms was nearby. “Where’s Nata?”
“Unharmed.” Misfortune was leaning against a wall. There was no sign at all that she was out of sorts. “For now.”
The threat to Nata—another sign they were scared. “It’s all gone wrong, isn’t it?”
“We’ll get ahead of Barnes yet,” Misfortune said. “We’ve got you, don’t we? That’ll stop her in her tracks.”
“I left her, remember?”
“Hardly matters. She’s besotted. Anyone can see it. She’ll throw away the men, perhaps, but—”
“Taking hostages. Always your go-to play.”
“Which brings us back to your Nata and what kind of choices you’re planning to make right now.”
“Me? I’m a sweet girl.” Maud rolled her shoulders, creating room at the top of the pod, and fought to extract her hand from the confinement of the foam. Her elbow burned as she forced the issue, breaking a hand out into open air. The old crocodile made no move to stop her. She started caterpillaring out of the sarco, rucking it up as she freed herself. She let her fingers brush over her ankles and feet as she slid out of the tube.
Tender skin, bandages, and … yes! Her finger found the hard lump of the encysted, pregnant locust.
“Jackal,” Misfortune said. “He visited you in Hyderabad.”
Maud nodded. The virtual dunk tank had been bad enough; she didn’t want to tempt Misfortune to start abusing her actual body. “He had a Braille tape for me.”
“From Frankie Barnes?” Misfortune held a sheet of nanosilk just out of reach, leaving Maud naked as she waited. “What did it say?”
“I love you I’m sorry,” Maud said, with a bitter laugh, and snatched at the sheet. Misfortune let her have it.
Now that Frankie’s various paranoid fantasies had turned out to be so real, Maud found herself feeling a little more charitable about that Braille apology.
She’s not wrong. I am besotted.
You have to let me handle this, Franks, she said. Threats or no threats. You can’t surrender if they hold a virtual gun to my head.
She had a sense of a long pause, eleven light-years away. I trust you.
Maud tried to hide her expression in the folds of the nanosilk as she configged it around her body.
Please don’t go splat, okay?
You’re one to talk.
“Where is Barnes now?”
It couldn’t matter if they knew, could it? And Frankie had told her to play Misfortune. “She’s back on Sneezy.”
“Don’t be cute.”
“Not joking. She’s hurt.” It felt strange to say it when she felt, by contrast, obscenely well. Sarcos were meant to do this—full physical reset—but Maud had never experienced it. No aches or pains except the slight pull of the blisters around her ankles. She was well rested, and—now the panic from being half-drowned three times over was wearing off—her
head was clear.
They’re scared, she thought again. Their plans were in disarray.
“So, she went … somewhere. And now she’s back. I don’t suppose you want to tell us where?”
“All Frankie cares about is proof the Kinze are cheating on the noninterference pact. She went to the Dumpster, and she found something out there,” Maud said. “I think … maths? I’m getting more information every second…”
Misfortune glazed momentarily, sending this latest response.
“She went to the Dumpster, she found … whatever’s out there, and now she’s on Sneezy and hurt,” she said.
“Doing what exactly?”
“Wasn’t Champ supposed to murder her? Aren’t they all supposed to be dead by now?” Trying not to scuttle, Maud edged over to the door and stepped out into the corridor.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
She froze, heart pounding. “I need the bathroom.”
A flick of the dead eyes: go, it meant.
Maud made her way to the canteen. Her first bite of hydrogel almost made her vomit—memory of drowning—but she made herself drink. She mashed up her last mouthful of jellied water, straining it through her teeth, mixing her own saliva with the fluid as she headed for the bathroom.
She sat and peed, shuddering, trying not to imagine Misfortune going over her primer, examining all her worldly goods. The idea of the older woman, flipping her unconscious body like a side of meat …
Spitting the mashed hydrogel and saliva combination into her hand, she slapped it onto the double bandage at her ankle and then loosened the adhesive at the bottom of the fabric seal.
The medium encasing the pregnant locust reacted to enzymatic triggers.
She washed her hands, stepping out into the corridor. Misfortune awaited.
“Is Pippin down with the quantum-comms array?” she said. “Unless you have more questions, I want to talk to him about boosting the signal from Frankie.”
Something twitched against the tenderized skin of her foot.
Misfortune gave her a wary nod and fell into step beside her.
Walking carefully—her knees felt shaky and precarious—Maud made her way to the chasm. She peered down the crevasse at the long green expanse, an almost-vertical stretch of lawn, with that red band of nutritive tissue at its base.
What’s the play? Frankie again.
We can’t leave them with comms. They’re keen to bring in an invasion fleet.
Burn the whole place down? A note of admiration in Frankie’s voice. That’s your move?
If it works, we’ll fall out of touch again.
Only until I get home. With the rest of the whole fam damly.
“What is it?” Misfortune asked; Maud had failed to hide a smile.
“Ember’s still alive,” Maud said.
“What about the sapp?”
“Babs’s … It’s weird. Not sure what’s happening there. I’ll try to find out.”
She made a big performance of turning her focus inward, ignoring another twitch at her ankle as she descended still deeper. Walls of seedlings rose up around her, millions of green shoots rooted into growth medium, plant-insect hybrids. New-formed leaves and microfilament antennae waved in the breeze of a warm updraft. Suspended artificial suns, each the size of her fist, rose and fell within the cavern, providing the light necessary for growth.
The two women rounded a last curve in the corridor, encountering a polished clean room, square of shape and low of ceiling, embedded in the rock. A hum indicated the presence of chillers, coolant for conventional server farms.
Maud asked, “What’s this?”
“Sensorium interface and translation for the comms,” Misfortune said. “Once Punama ships are in-system, we can download new operating instructions for the global economy. Secure the banks, establish online content restrictions, control the newscycle, what have you.”
Maud peered through the glass doors. A large case of processing tish, wrapped in what looked like fungiplex skin, was connected to an elaborate life-support system. Pumps pushed water and meds through hoses connected to the base of the tank. Thin green tendrils of lichen-like material, at its crown, were threaded through a series of tiny holes, entangled with the shoots of the living comms array growing all around her.
Not bugproof, then.
On the walls of the tank, the tish connected via cybernetic relays to a bank of #oldschool computer servers. Pippin was inside, working within his log-shaped casing, coaxing a new shoot out of the tangle up top with his long, raptor-like claws.
Maud felt the tickle of insect legs on her ankle and then the top of her foot as the locust cleared the bandage. She kept her eyes on the computing equipment, hoping the locust would crawl down, into the foliage, rather than opting to aim for higher ground somewhere on her body. It’d be bad luck if it walked over her face.
She tapped on the glass and then, when Pippin’s robotic casing turned and focused cameras on her, mojied a greeting. “Ready to work anytime you are.”
“Return to the imaging suite and get started,” it said. “I will join you.”
Tickle of legs over her toe. Maud imagined biohazard alarms ringing.
She turned to Misfortune. “Is it really too late to convince you to pack up and go back into hiding with Headmistress?”
A bark of laughter.
“She’s going to lose again.” Maud felt the pregnant locust finally making its move, stepping off her toe, hopefully making for the wall of green just a meter away. She bit the inside of her cheek, trying to hide the wave of relief.
“Family first,” Misfortune said, tone stolid and certain. “Keep us up to date on the situation out at Sneezy, and your Nata just might make it through the Foreclosure.”
“To what? Enslavement? For everyone? Forever?”
“Just be sweet,” Misfortune said, mimicking Headmistress with uncanny perfection, and with that, she forcibly turned Maud’s back on the server farm and goosed her in the direction of the rest of the complex.
CHAPTER 50
NONINTERFERENCE ZONE, PROCYON SYSTEM
EMERALD STATION (INFORMAL DESIGNATION: SNEEZY)
Frankie’s feet were afire, twitching balls of heated pins and needles, sending waves of blinding sensation through her body as they, apparently, woke up. She could barely think through the surges.
She didn’t know if the return of sensory input from her lower body meant she was going to regain use of her legs. Maybe this was just her life now.
The pain in her feet felt worse—louder somehow—than her throat, which had gotten an alarming squeeze, or the couple of blows she’d taken to the face. Her nose was throbbing in time to her pulse, and there was a sharp something stuck in her side, stabbing every time she tried to inhale. She decided to pretend that one didn’t exist.
If she didn’t admit to it, it wasn’t there, right?
The same couldn’t be said for the raw hunk of steak at the base of her spine, where the implant had been. That just felt … wrong. Gone. Like she’d been bitten in half and her pelvis was hanging by a strand. Given the state of her feet, she felt a mute animal misery. Gnaw them off and crawl away.
Lipizzan was locked in place directly above her, clamped to the walls, all safety features engaged. Champ’s helmet was glue-smeared without and steamed over from inside. She couldn’t see his face, but she could feel him thrashing inside, screaming.
Frankie had muted his mic. Transcription crawl ran on her HUD, variations on kill you, kill you, rip you limb from limb …
“Charming,” she muttered.
The pegasus’s arms had grabbed on to the station and Iktomi. Champ would outlive her if this kept up; the leak might be slow, but the hangar would be null for atmo soon enough. She might well suffocate while he hung there, yelling at her with the last of his canned air.
Had she really heard Fatale say “Incoming ship”?
External shipcams showed a glimmer of anyspace. The enormous Yump
asteroid flowed through it.
“Hello there! Welcome to Solakinder Outpost VII, also known as Emerald Station, also known as Sneezy,” Fatale said. “As you can see, we’re losing air. We believe we may also have something called a temporal tripwire aboard—”
“Shut up, you stupid sapp!” Champ bellowed.
“I am required by regs to make new arrivals aware of regional safety hazards.”
“I’m in charge! You tell ’em what I say!”
“Better give her some orders, then,” Frankie said, moving away in slow motion. She felt clumsy. It occurred to her that that, too, was an effect of ripping out her sacral implant. All that preternatural agility, gone. She was back to being clumsy Franks, disappointment to her athlete parent Gimlet. Reduced to a ghost of the kid she’d left behind.
“Outpost Seven, we are rendering assistance.” The Yump ship transmitted on all speakers, using the fabricated voice that was a combo of Frankie, Babs2, and Iktomi’s technical manual.
The egg-shaped asteroid rolled sideways, extruding a massive blob of gel, essentially burping a loogie over the mail slot and the saucer, Iktomi. The gel formed a temporary seal, coincidentally making it impossible for Champ—or anyone—to make off with the saucer.
Anyone, huh? Frankie shook away her illusions. Champ had spoken the truth—after what she’d done to her back, she would never plug in again. Not into a pegasus, not into an anyspace ship. She was finished with augmented piloting.
Grief burned through her, so strong and hot and bloody-tasting that it almost blotted out the pins and needles.
No matter. Now the hull breach was solved, the air pressure would stabilize. Lipizzan might let go of its safety overrides any minute. That would free Champ to come disassemble what was left of her.
“Yump craft, we have serious crew injuries aboard,” Babs2 said. “Can you assist?”
“We do also have additional protein, if you still need it,” Frankie said.
“Shut up, Barnes!”
Injuries. Plural. Too many plurals. Could Jerm still be saved? Jerm and who?
“Yump, you call yourself?” Champ demanded. “We got no relations with you. You’re in a noninterference zone established by … Goddammit, back off!”
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