Kina’s smile faded. “Yeah, I… There was a time when I tried to hide in the bottom of a bottle. Tai sorted me out. It wasn’t pleasant.”
Sara thought about asking for more information.
“Another time, my love,” Kina said. “Not here. Not now.”
Sara nodded. “What’s in the orange liquid?”
“It’s called wake-me-up juice. Mostly water, plus vitamins and minerals to make up for the ones he’s losing right now. And a mild stimulant. It tastes nice, designed for humans, have a glass.” Kina reached for the carafe and poured two glasses.
“Won’t Tai need a glass?”
Kina grinned. “Nope.”
The wake-me-up tasted of oranges and buzzed slightly on Sara’s tongue. Her mind sharpened, and she laughed.
“Maybe not quite that mild a stimulant,” Kina admitted.
Tai reappeared from the toilet half an hour later, his face drained of color. The stench wafting around his body made Sara want to gag, but she breathed through her mouth and leaned away from him. He reached the table, lifted the carafe, still more than three-quarters full, and drained it in four prodigious swallows. Wiping his hand across his mouth, he gave Kina the evil eye and said, “Paid in full?”
“Oh, I think so.” Kina stood. “Let’s go see what Dylan has been up to. After a visit to Madam Zoura’s, of course.”
“Of course,” Tai said. Color was starting to return to his face, but his hands still shook slightly.
“Aren’t we using the elevator?” Sara asked as Kina led them in the opposite direction across the dance floor.
“There’s no way I’m getting into an enclosed space with him until he’s cleaned up,” Kina replied.
“I thought the stairs were dangerous.”
“Madam Zoura’s on this level. She does good business this close to the G and S.”
***
Dylan awoke on the dirt floor of Sweet-Sap’s resting room. The deep peaty smell of the loam filled his nose, and again he was back on New Earth, playing at war, scrabbling through the forest floor, building dens and forts: twelve years old and still innocent. Alicia laughing, James giggling, Dylan refusing to admit he was dead. “I’m wearing an electron shield,” he insisted. “Can’t kill me with a blaster when I’m wearing an electron shield.” The argument turned to scuffling until Dylan admitted defeat and lay back in the loam and howled with laughter.
Good times.
Alicia’s voice was calling to him from further away into the forest, away into the past.
She had turned away from him when he joined the Crowner Fleet. She hadn’t understood why he signed up. Maybe she was still out there, between the stars in the Draco sector, a merc ship captain trying to get by…
James had died when Crowner troops opened fire on a peaceful protest against food shortages. Or so Dylan had heard. He hadn’t been back to New Earth for over a decade.
“Dylan Meredith James.” Sweet-Sap’s voice once again snapped Dylan back to the here and now. “Can you hear me?”
The same sickly yellow lambent glow illuminated the small glade within the room when Dylan opened his eyes. “What happened?”
“You became unconscious. It was a difficult process. Many of the Drifts now recover in their own resting rooms. I brought you here to keep watch over you.”
Dylan sat up. “How long was I out?”
“Two and a half cycles have passed since we tried to extract Sethan from your mind.”
Dylan rubbed a hand over his face. He drank the water that Sweet-Sap supplied in a jug made from the stem of some bulbous plant. He blinked and thought back to what Sweet-Sap had said, and asked, “Tried?”
“We could not remove all of the engrams inserted into your mind and body by Sharp-Thorn’s malicious attack. Without the original mind to drain them back into, it was not possible to remove them all.”
“He’s still there?” Dylan said. “I can’t feel him.”
“No, every hundred cycles you must return for further cleansing.”
“Return.” Dylan laughed bitterly. “I can’t leave. You own me.”
“Your indenture has been revoked. Against what Sharp-Thorn did, your crime is insignificant. This is an enzyme.” Sweet-Sap extended a small stick. “You must place it against your skin once every cycle. It will help to keep you free of Sethan’s dangerous engrams.”
“I’m free?” Dylan took the stick and examined the dark red bark. It smelled faintly of mint.
“Yes. We offer you paid tenure with the library. You may come and go as you please, read whatever you want, or carry out whatever research you desire. It is our greatest honor. You are a Scholar now, Dylan. Very few non-Drifts are given such access.”
Dylan sneered. “A guilty conscience.”
“We do not feel guilt, Dylan Meredith James, but we do have laws which we abide by.”
“And if I do not accept your tenure?”
“It does not matter. You are a Scholar now—whether you accept it or not. We will not revoke our judgment.”
Dylan stood and stretched. “And Sharp-Thorn, what is going to happen to him?”
“He is banished.”
“Banished,” Dylan snarled. “Is that all? The bastard should be spaced.”
“We do not kill Drifts, Dylan Meredith James.”
“You kill anybody else you want, though.”
“It is the law,” Sweet-Sap said. “Sharp-Thorn is banished. He has no more access to his resting room. He will diminish. He will fade. But he will not die. We do not die. And then, when he is weak, twisted in upon himself, we will find him, take a bud from him, examine it fully to see that the madness has drained away, and then he will be replanted to grow again. That is our law, Dylan Meredith James.”
“No better than the Crown,” Dylan said. “One law for you and another one for everybody else.” He pressed the enzyme stick to his neck and lurched away from the unexpected sting. “If I find him first, I’ll kill that shrubby piece of crap.”
“That is your right,” Sweet-Sap said. “He is no longer under our protection. But you are under our protection now, Dylan Meredith James.”
“So what now? What did you do with the book I brought back? What was so special about it?”
The Drift rustled as if considering. “From the information within, we have discovered why Hollow Space exists.”
***
Tai stood under the shower in Madam Zoura’s, letting the filth of a three-cycle bender wash away from him. He let the hot water pound at his skin, his head bowed. The look on his mother’s face made everything worthwhile.
One last soaping, one last blast of hot water, and Tai stepped out of the cubicle. He toweled himself dry, dressed in a robe, and stepped back into the changing room. More wake-up juice, clean clothes, and Tai emerged into the shop feeling almost human again.
Madam Zoura gestured to a table laden with pastries and other highly sugared items to raise Tai’s depleted blood sugar. Kina and Sara were drinking coffee and giggling about something.
“How much do I owe you?” Tai asked.
Madam Zoura waved it away. “Kina paid. Eat, drink coffee, recover.”
“I’ll return to pick up my laundered clothes.”
“Ha. Those I sent to the reclamation vats. They were beyond cleaning.”
“I liked that shirt.”
“You were the only one.” Madam Zoura folded her arms across her bony chest. She was, by all accounts, at least seventy years old, and she looked it.
Tai shrugged. He’d buy another to celebrate his newly found freedom. He sat down with Kina and Sara in the café and ate sweet pastries, drank coffee, and talked of nothing of any importance, enjoying the extremely rare pleasure of just being. No running around, no shooting at something that wanted to eat him, and no worrying about… well, that wasn’t strictly true. Something still bugged him; the picture here wasn’t as complete as he wanted.
Eventually, he pushed away his plate. “Let’s go see how Dy
lan is doing. Oddly, I miss the mad bastard.”
“He fought well,” Kina said. “He is a comrade now. I don’t see that as being odd.”
“But he’s still indentured to the Drifts,” Sara said.
“Aye, we’ll have to do something about that,” Tai said. “Drink up, ladies, we’ve got a pal to rescue.”
***
An eerie quiet filled the library. Tai’s hand automatically rested on the grip of his Dorian, and he could see Kina was unnerved too: she flipped her blade constantly in her palm. Where were the damned Drifts? It was early afternoon—no reason why they shouldn’t be here.
Kina circled left while Sara and Tai circled right around the row of pews.
“Where is everyone?” Sara asked in a whisper.
A door hissed open behind them. Tai turned toward the sound and drew his weapon, hammer back, finger on the trigger. Dylan stepped into the library, closely followed by Sweet-Sap.
Tai eased the hammer down, holstering it. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Kina sheathing the knife.
“Hey,” Sara said, a slightly strangled quality to her voice. She coughed. “Hey, Dylan, how are you doing?”
Dylan’s eyes were hooded and closed off. “Fine,” he said. “Bit jumpy, aren’t you?”
“Never seen the library so empty is all.” Kina hoisted herself onto one of the desks and crossed her legs.
“There have been… developments,” Sweet-Sap said.
Sara sat in the chair in front of her and rested a hand on Kina’s thigh. “What kind of developments?”
“You okay, Dylan old son?” Tai asked, watching the man’s eyes. The depths of pain there scared him. “What do they want you to do now?” Tai turned his gaze on Sweet-Sap. “He got your damn book. He did what you wanted. He didn’t know what indentured meant. Where is your law in this, Sweet-Sap-Rising-Long-And-Slow-Filled-With-The-Sanctity-And-Beauty-Of-Life-In-A-Universe-Defined-By-Boundaries-And-Edges-That-Bud-And-Flower-Into-The-Essential-Chaos-Of-Existence? Where is justice?”
“Justice?” Sweet-Sap rustled. “Justice and the law are two different things, Tairon Cauder. However, Dylan Meredith James has been released from his indenture and has been granted tenure with the library.”
“Whoa, wait, what? He’s a freaking Scholar now?” Kina whistled. “Bit of a step up, from slave to Scholar. That book must have been very important.”
“It was,” Dylan said. “Tell them, Sap.”
Tai rested against a desk. “Tell us what?”
“Why Hollow Space exists. And what it is.”
Sara leaned forward with eagerness.
“Hollow Space”—Sweet-Sap seemed to settle upon his roots—“is a mistake, an error, a means to an end that did not disappear as it should.”
“Why?” Sara asked.
“That, we do not yet know. That was not discovered on the Old Station by the abomination of Sharp-Thorn’s clone. He is banished. He is outside the protection of the library.”
“Another rogue Drift.” Tai remembered the last one. “Haggard will be so pleased. How is Dark-Stem these days?”
“His bud is growing strongly.”
Kina sneered. “I’ll tell the widows and the orphans; they will be so pleased.”
“Come on, Sap,” Sara asked impatiently. “What is Hollow Space? And no more riddles.”
“It is, as I have said, an error. The Xantonians created Hollow Space to forge a link between different universes.”
“What? That’s impossible,” Sara snapped, standing up. “There can be no link between different realities, different universes. They lie parallel. They cannot touch—even I know that much.”
“Seen many void hornets in your ’verse, have you?” Tai asked. “How about frecking space dragons?”
“But…” Sara looked at Kina, who shrugged. “Okay,” Sara said, “let’s suppose that gates between uni—between ’verses can exist. Why does Hollow Space disrupt any technology higher than a simple relay or switch? What the hell is going on with that?”
Sweet-Sap continued as if nobody had spoken. “The Xantonians created many such gates, always between realities where the physical laws are the same, the constants of forces are the same.”
“Makes sense,” Sara said. She seemed to have assimilated the impossibility of travel between parallel universes remarkably quickly. “If gravity was different, stars would not form. If the strong force was different, matter itself could not form.”
“They used bubble universes like Hollow Space to forge the connection. A bubble of space-time that connects two or more realities—we are unsure of how many connections are forged through a single gate. Then the bubble is supposed to collapse and leave the gates in place, creating a direct connective link.”
“If that’s all this bubble ’verse is, then why the star? Why the planet?” Tai asked.
“The star was used to power the creation of the bubble universe,” Sap said, rustling his leaves, clearly excited for a Drift to be able to reveal these mysteries. “In fact, an entire globular cluster was used. Only the single star remains. The other stars were used up in the expansion of Hollow Space. The planet no doubt came along as part of the last remaining star’s system.”
“But why the Hollow Space effect?” Sara asked, sighing with exasperation at the lack of an answer.
“There is a force emanating from the planet’s surface. A dampening force. We have always known it was there, but we still have no idea what is causing it and lacked the instrumentation necessary to derive the full answers,” Sweet-Sap said.
“So, to recap,” Sara said. “One, the Xantonians, whoever they are, created a bubble of space-time with the energy of an entire globular cluster to create a link between different realities.” She obviously did not like the use of the term ’verse. “This bubble universe is supposed to be destroyed, to leave the gate as a single point in… what? What the hell do you call the space between realities?”
“The interstices,” Dylan suggested.
“Fine.” Sara accepted the term. “One: bubble of space-time, within the interstices, supposed to decay, doesn’t. Two: you have no idea why Hollow Space is still here. Three: you have no idea what causes the dampening field. Four: how do ships get sucked into Hollow Space? Five: how long has Hollow Space been here, because there’s a freck load of ships out there?” She raised an eyebrow. “The last two were questions.”
“We postulate,” Sweet-Sap said, “that jump-drives in fact travel through the interstices between different realities, or rather, skim along the boundary back into their own reality without actually crossing into the interstices, which would probably cause the ships to simply cease to be. Sometimes that skimming-jump intersects with Hollow Space and a ship gets stranded here. We also assume, by evaluating the differing levels of technical specifications in ships from what appear to be the same universe, that Hollow Space has existed for at least…” He paused and seemed to be calculating. “Three thousand human standard years.”
“About when the Romans started kicking everybody’s ass on Old Earth,” Dylan supplied.
“Who the hell are the Romans?” Tai asked. He held up a hand. “Don’t answer that.”
“So,” Sara said, “you don’t know a hell of a lot more than you knew before we went to Old Station and Lofreal died.”
“Data is all, Sara Lorelle,” Sweet-Sap said from behind Tai. “Data is all.”
“First you get the data,” Dylan said. “Then you create the theory that fits the data. Then you test the theory against reality. That’s how science advances.”
“So what now?” Sara asked. “We prove a theory?”
“Exactly that,” Dylan said, and this time his bespectacled eyes did not hold the deep burning pain of some inner torment but instead the light of a curious man seeking answers. It was the look of adventure.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sara yawned as she stretched her arms above her head. A warmth radiated over her body. Opening her eyes, she blink
ed away the sleep and the nightmares and instantly felt calmer. Lying next to her, with her legs entwined with Sara’s, Kina snoozed with her head on Sara’s shoulder. The two women lay as close as can be in Kina’s large, comfortable bed.
Her apartment was still in darkness, the blinds shutting out the light of the sun. Before she woke her new lover, Sara ran her hand gently down Kina’s back, tracing the knife wounds and scars that crisscrossed her skin.
The story of how they happened came back to Sara as she recalled their conversation the night before. The slight buzzing quality to her head likewise proved a handy reminder. After the ceremony to honor Lofreal, they’d met up with Tai and Dylan and drunk the night to freedom and survival.
Sara came back to Kina’s, where they continued to drink some of that too-delicious kronac wine and the two women shared their stories. The origin of Kina’s scars was one of the more interesting tales. Kina revealed to Sara that before working with Tai, she had served a pair of Wraiths as an initiate assassin.
Even within the Crown, outside of Hollow Space, the Wraiths were well known—and feared. Working under the auspices of the mysterious Penumbra group, the Wraiths were often hired by wealthy organizations to take out key targets. Sara had often wondered if Aleatra and the other Crown Central governors had used their services in order to further their advancement. She certainly wouldn’t put it past them. The Crown and morals were mutually exclusive.
When Kina decided she no longer wished to work for these rogue Wraiths trapped in Hollow Space, they had taken out their revenge on her. Sara tried to push for more information, but quickly noticed how uncomfortable Kina was about it, and one thing Sara had learned about Kina in her time here was that she rarely ever looked uncomfortable.
Kina was the coolest person Sara had ever met.
And unlike her other disastrous relationships and crushes, this one seemed to definitely be going in the right direction if last night was anything to go by. But now there was that awkward feeling tightening in her stomach.
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