by S. L. Viehl
Time passed as I did, in and out of consciousness. Voices roused me, and then metal screeched and I fell out into dazzling white and blue light.
The fall stunned me as much as the icy ground, but as soon as I saw the furry, humanoid forms of my rescuers, I reached up. My hand flopped on the end of my shattered wrist, and cool blood streamed down my face.
A smaller form appeared. “Skjæra, it lives! ”
The taller one jerked back. “Not for long.”
They spoke Terran, although it sounded wrong. The head injury I’d sustained must have affected my hearing. The small one dropped down beside me and shouted for someone named “Skrie.” Then it looked up at the taller one. “Skjæra, can you heal it?”
Another one came, and they began arguing in their muddled Terran while I tried to stay conscious. The little one touched me with its funny hand coverings, and pulled its face covering down, and I saw it was a little girl. It babbled something and then ran off. The other two followed it.
I blinked the blood out of my eyes and rolled onto my side. I could see the others now, some standing together by sleds on the ground, and others in some type of airborne vehicles. I couldn’t hear what they said, but one of the taller forms dragged the child away from the hovering craft.
The one who had found me, the healer, followed, arguing again, but nothing stopped the one dragging the child. It threw the little one down on the ice, and drove two stakes through her mitts. It handed a blade to the healer and barked out an order.
I understood what they were doing then. They wanted the healer to kill her. To kill a kid.
“No.” My voice hardly made a puff in the cold air. I tried again. “Stop.”
The healer straddled the child, and held the blade over her chest, but didn’t move. Shots were fired from the hovering craft, and one of the people by the sleds fell.
The one who had dragged the kid away took hold of the blade and the healer’s hand, and forced both down. I heard the snap of a wrist, a gurgled word.
The child was dead, and the healer was coming toward me.
The blood had frozen on my face, and I couldn’t feel my body anymore. I don’t know how I reached up again, but I saw my limp hand rise between us.
The healer pulled off one mitt with her teeth, revealing a human hand, and curled long, skillful fingers around mine.
The touch made tears spill from my eyes.
“Her name was Enafa. She was born twelve seasons past, and her mother often favored her above her sisters.” The healer gently placed my hand against my chest. “I could not favor her above mine.” One long finger touched my cheek.
The healer wept, blind tears of sorrow and regret and rage. I didn’t understand what had happened, but I knew it had destroyed her. Just as it had destroyed me.
I couldn’t do this anymore. No matter where I went or what I did, life would never change. Every species in the galaxy would go on breeding and butchering. That was all they wanted. Sex and death.
I could put an end to it. Something inside me told me I could. I could stop the killing, and the breeding. I could be merciful and put life itself out of its misery.
The healer rose, and lifted a pistol.
Yes. I kept my eyes open, waiting for the shot that wouldn’t kill me. Let her decide how it will be.
Instead of shooting me, she pressed the weapon to her own head, and pulled the trigger.
“Mama.” A small, cool hand patted my cheek. “You have to wake up now.”
I came to with a jerk, bolting upright as I reflexively clutched Marel to my chest. Everything rushed over me as I shed the remnants of the horrible dream and climbed off the berth.
“Are you hurt?” I sat her down and checked her over quickly.
“Mama, I’m fine,” she insisted, and pushed my hands away. “We’re home now.”
We’d gone through another rift, judging from what little I remembered. “Look at me.” I checked her pupils. “How do you know we’re home?”
“I can feel it.” She looked past me and smiled. “Daddy.”
Reever came over and wrapped us both in his arms. “I was in the corridor on my way here when the wave hit,”he murmured. “I’m sorry I didn’t reach you in time.”
“We’re okay,” I assured him.
Once I was satisfied that Marel and Reever hadn’t suffered any ill effects from the transition through time, I left them to check on the other patients and my staff. Everyone was shaken, and the abrupt jump had frightened some of the patients, but there were no new injuries. I quickly checked in with Command, and Xonea confirmed that we were indeed back in our own time.
“All levels report no new casualties,” he added. “We were quite fortunate. The blast from Odnalla was so powerful it could have easily vaporized the ship.”
I didn’t remember a blast. “Did they attack us again?”
“No, something happened on the planet, a chain reaction of some sort,” he said. “According to our last readings, it detonated the gases in their atmosphere. The entire world would have been engulfed in a firestorm.”
No matter how clever the Odnallak had been, nothing could have survived that. “I should say how sorry I am that an entire civilization was wiped out, but good riddance.”
“Agreed.” He sounded very satisfied. “I am taking the ship back to Joren for repairs now. Our stardrive is still inoperable, but the blast threw us just outside Varallan. We should reach the homeworld in a few hours.”
I saw Maggie wander out of one of the treatment rooms. “Thank you, Captain.” I left the console and went over to her. “Are you all right?”
“Of course I am.” She turned around in a full circle, her brow furrowed. “We have traveled a great distance. This is your time.”
“So it seems.” And we had accidentally removed Maggie from hers, which made me wonder why I still existed. “Can you go back to Jxin? To your own time?”
“No,” she admitted. “But your timeline appears to be intact, so I will return eventually.” She rubbed at her ear slits. “What is that unpleasant resonation?”
“We’re flying back to Joren, but the engines are damaged. It could be from them.” I couldn’t hear anything, but I felt a vague discomfort settling over me. “Maggie, what sent us back through the rift?”
“The undesirables. They destroyed themselves with their machines and their equations, just as I told you they would.” She studied my face. “Since I made you, Cherijo, you should call me Mother.”
There was no way I was doing that. “You haven’t made me yet. How did the Odnallak setting their world on fire create a new rift?”
“It did not create it. They did not collect all of the infinity crystal from your vessel.” She turned away from me. “Some of it stayed hidden from them. It must have created the rift and brought the ship through it to protect you.”
“Is it still on the Sunlace?”
She shook her head. “It is inside you now.”
“It’s in me?” I glanced down at myself. “Where?”
“In your fluids and parts and things.” She glanced back at me with an odd expression. “You should be happy. Nothing can harm you now.”
I felt a cold trickle of fear inch along my spine. “Maggie, does the crystal being inside me make me like the Jxin?”
“No. Are you hungry?” She seemed eager to change the subject. “I can make a meal for you.”
“Thanks, but I’m fine.” I thought of how the oKiaf protocrystal had nearly devoured Shon. “What will the crystal do to me?”
“It will care for you,” she said, sounding impatient now. “The crystal will not allow anything to harm you. It is a good thing. You should be happy.”
I wasn’t. “Will I infect others?”
“It will stay in you.” Another vague gesture. “None of the others could . . . it does not want others.”
Trying to get her to explain something was like slamming my head into a plasbrick wall. “Why, Maggie? Why did it come into
my body?”
“You are necessary.” Bored again, she let her gaze wander. “I will make food in the wall machine for the nurses. They like the things I make with the sweet-tasting flowers.”
I let her go and play with the prep unit. As soon as we reached Joren, I decided, I’d have Squilyp run a microcellular series on me. After that, we’d figure out some way to remove the crystal from my body.
I performed rounds, and changed ChoVa’s dressing while I updated PyrsVar on our situation. “Xonea will signal the Hanar and let him know we’ve returned. I imagine he’ll send a ship for you and ChoVa and the delegates.” But before we let anyone off the ship, we would have to find the Odnallak; we couldn’t risk letting him escape again.
“That is good. I wish to present myself to him.” He lifted a scaly hand. “Now that the Jorenian has been separated from me, he will have no objections to our betrothal.”
“Let me give some friendly advice,” I said. “Where TssVar’s concerned, don’t assume anything. He can still veto this love match.”
“My father will not oppose it,” ChoVa said, her voice rasping out the words. “I told him that if he did, I would leave the homeworld and live with PyrsVar elsewhere.”
“You never said this to me,” the rogue complained.
“Your skull is large enough already.” She looked up at me. “I cannot feel my tail.”
I grimaced a little. “That’s because I amputated it and used it for the grafts you needed.”
Instead of becoming angry, she nodded. “A clever alternative. I should have thought of that myself. The shoulder?”
“I was able to completely rebuild it.” I went over what I had accomplished with the surgery, and then ordered her to rest.
“You should do the same, Namesake,” she said before she closed her eyes. “You have not slept in days.”
As I left recovery, I tried to remember the last time I had slept, and couldn’t. I should have been dead on my feet, but I didn’t feel tired in the slightest. I hadn’t lied to Maggie; I didn’t feel hungry, either. Then it struck me, what else I didn’t feel. I put one trembling hand up to my throat, and felt for my carotid. Then I checked my other pulse points.
My heart beat only once every two minutes.
I didn’t panic right away. I calmly went into my office and carefully scanned myself several times. Only after every reading displayed the same results did I come to a grim diagnosis.
The function of all my organs had slowed dramatically; my heart was barely pumping any blood at all. My core temperature had also dropped twenty-one degrees. My platelet counts had been reduced to an eighth of what they should have been, thanks to my bone marrow, which was disappearing. My skeleton still scanned somewhat normal, but sections of my largest bones had begun to turn transparent, as if they were made of crystal.
I ran a dozen simulations, and all of them indicated that reversing the process was impossible. I then calculated the rate at which my body was being transformed, and discovered that the process was a little less than half-complete.
Maggie was wrong. In roughly forty-eight hours, I would be exactly like the Jxin.
Fifteen
I signaled Shon, asking that he come to take over for me in Medical, and then left. I walked through the corridors without speaking to anyone or thinking; it was all I could do to keep moving.
Somehow I ended up in my quarters, standing by the viewport, watching the stars slide by. Soon we’d reach Joren and safety, and the HouseClan would throw another welcoming celebration, and everyone would be happy.
While I walked among them with my dying heart and my crystallizing bones, and pretended to be the same.
“Cherijo.”
It was Reever; he’d followed me here. He was always doing that. Ever present, ever vigilant, forever waiting on me to finish an operation or cure a plague or save a planet. If I didn’t respond, he’d wait until I did. No one was as patient as my husband.
This time he didn’t wait; he turned me around to face him. “Tell me.”
I took from my pocket the scanner with the last set of readings I’d taken in my office, and handed it to him. While he read them, I went back to my sleeping platform. The bed adjusted to the slight weight of my body, and the upper deck remained thankfully as blank as ever.
Not that it mattered. In two days I would outlive the bed and the deck. In two days I would outlive everything.
“Did Maggie do this to you?” I heard Reever ask.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. What would be the point?” I frowned as I spotted something. “There’s a crack in the ceiling up there. I’ll have to report it to maintenance.”
He stretched out beside me, his body touching mine. That, I thought, was because this platform was smaller than the one we’d always shared in our old quarters.
“Did Jarn like our bed?” I asked him.
“No.” His hand stroked my arm. “She preferred to sleep on the deck.”
“That must have been hard on your back.”
“At first it was. But I have slept in worse places. Cherijo—”
“Shhh.” I pressed my fingers against his lips. “It’s done. There’s nothing to say. Nothing you can do to fix it. Nothing I can do.”
“There must be something. Some cure.”
“I’m not sick, Duncan. It’s not an infection like Shon had, or a disease, like the ones the black crystal causes. I’m evolving.” I rolled over and buried my face in my pillow, and then sat up. “I can’t even have a good cry anymore.” I glanced down at myself. “I guess no body functions, no tears.”
“Your body still functions. You’re alive, Waenara,” he said quietly, rising onto his knees and holding me by the arms. “Don’t let this destroy you.”
My dry eyes closed. “That’s precisely what it’s doing, Duncan. In a couple of days this crystal will take away everything that makes me human—not that there was much left to begin with—and complete the transformation.” I pressed my forehead to his shoulder. “I don’t know what I’ll become.”
He kissed me, a gentle brush of his warm mouth over mine. I could still feel that, and smell his scent, and while my heart would never again beat faster, his touch enveloped me like a soft cloak. I felt the vast emptiness inside me evaporate as I opened my mouth to him.
I couldn’t remember why I had been so angry with him, not when he touched me like this. We unfastened our garments and pulled them away so our skins could touch and glide against each other, and to my surprise, nothing had changed. Making love with him was as thrilling and powerful as it had ever been. As it always had been between us.
For now, we were still us. Still lovers. Still human.
I stopped thinking, and immersed myself in the moment. I ran my hands over his body, stroking each sensitive spot, murmuring to him in wordless pleasure as he did the same. When he glided into me, I felt complete again, and gave myself over as he began to dance inside me.
He sank into me over and over, his eyes locked with mine. They changed colors, from gray to green to blue, and darkened as we came to the edge. It was so easy to lose myself in him, in this simple act, and then we both came together, merging and pulsing with heat and sensation.
Our bodies cooled. Duncan held me tightly against him as he rolled to his side, his hand tangled in my hair, his mouth tracing the curves of my lips. “My wife.”
I smiled beneath those slow, lingering kisses. “My husband.”
He fell asleep in my arms, and since I couldn’t do the same, I held him and watched his peaceful face. It was funny, but in the past I’d always resented the need to sleep, and considered it a waste of time. Now that I would be wide-awake until the end of time, I felt a pang of regret. I would miss drifting off into that sweet, mindless oblivion.
I heard the console chime, and slipped off the platform. Careful not to disturb Reever, I pulled on a robe before I went out into the other room.
I answered the signal from Command. “What is it?”<
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“The captain requests you and Linguist Reever attend him in the main briefing room, Healer,” the com officer said.
I sighed. “What now?”
“The captain needs to consult with you about the disposition of refugees.”
“What refugees?” Before he could answer, I said, “Never mind. We’ll be right there.”
I woke Reever, and once we dressed, we took the lift up to the briefing room. Xonea and every officer on the ship were there, and on the room monitors was an image of Joren. There were so many ships flying in orbit around the planet it looked like an invasion, and I could see more approaching.
When Xonea saw us enter, he called for order, and then began the briefing. “We received several distress calls from ships en route to Varallan, which I relayed to the Ruling Council. At that time they informed me of their current situation, and that Joren will provide temporary asylum to all refugees who can reach our homeworld.”
“What situation?” I asked.
Xonea pulled up several star charts of nearby solar systems. “Over the last three hours, the entire populations of fifteen planets in the quadrant have been destroyed.” He illuminated the worlds, but each appeared to be in shadow. “Another fifty have been invaded, and if their inhabitants are not able to escape, they are not projected to survive.”
I blinked. What Xonea had said made no sense; if it was true, then billions of lives had been extinguished.
“Who is waging this war?” Reever demanded.
“They are not being attacked by anyone.” Xonea brought up a vid transmission. “They are being enveloped.”
The poor quality of the vid made it hard to see many details; static occluded most of it. There was enough, however, to follow what had happened.
A humanoid with orange skin spoke urgently into the screen, and then turned his recorder away to show the view of a colony. The inhabitants were pouring out of their dwellings and businesses and trampling over one another as they ran. In the background a dense shadow rose up over the colony and came crashing down like an enormous wave of dark water. Everything it touched vanished beneath it as it crushed the colony. When it reached the humanoid recording the disaster, a wall of strangely glittering black filled the display. The transmission abruptly terminated.