Alternate Realities

by C. J. Cherryh

  “Come on,” my lady said, and meant to keep our interval: I came, hearing the others’ sounds of breath and fighting—heard Griffin’s voice and Lance’s, and Lynn who swore like a born-man and yelled at Gawain to watch out. We ran forward as best we could, behind the others. “No!” I heard Viv wail, but I paid no attention, staying with my lady.

  And oh, my comrades bought us ground. Shadows in the mist, they cut and hewed their way with sobs for breath that we could hear, and no creature got by them, but none died either. We crossed the threshold of the rained bulkhead, and now Griffin pushed the fight into the lock itself, still driving them back. “Wait,” I heard, Viv’s voice. “Wait for me.” But Dela and I kept on, picking our way over the wreckage of the fallen bulkhead, then past the jagged edges of the torn inner lock.

  And then they carried the fight beyond the lock, in a battle we could not see ... driving the serpent-shapes outside.

  But when we had come into the lock, my lady and I, and Vivien panting behind us—it was all changed, everything. I knew what we should see—an access tube, a walkway, something the like of which we had known at stations; but we stared into lights, and steam or some milky stuff roiled about, making shadows of our folk and the serpents, and taller, upright shapes behind, like a war against giants, all within a ribbed and translucent tube that stretched on and on in violet haze. “Look out!” I heard Lance cry, and then. “Percy!”

  And from Lynette: “He’s down—”

  “Dela—” Griffin’s voice. “Dela—”

  “I’m here,” she said, wanting to go forward, but I held her arm. They had all they could handle, Griffin and the rest.

  “Fall back,” I heard him say. “We can’t go this—Get Percy up; get back.”

  They were retreating of a sudden as the other, taller shapes pressed on them like an advancing wall. I heard Gawain urging Percy up; saw the retreat of two figures, and the slower retreat of three. “Back up,” Griffin ordered, out of breath, and then: “Watch it!”

  Suddenly I lost sight of them in a press of bodies. I heard confused shouting, not least of it Dela’s voice crying out after Griffin; and Gawain and Percy were yelling after Lance and Griffin both.

  But still Griffin’s voice, swearing and panting at once, and then: “You can’t—Lance, get back, get back.—Dela!—Dela, I’m in trouble. I can’t get loose—Modred—Get Modred—”

  “Modred,” Dela said. She turned on me and seized my arm and shook at me so that I swung round and looked into her eyes through the double transparency of the helmets. “Let him loose—let Modred loose, hear?”

  I understood. I gave her my spear and I plunged back past Viv, back through the lock again and over the debris—no questioning; and still in my suit com I could hear my comrades’ anguished breaths and sometimes what I thought was Lance, a kind of a sobbing that was like a man swinging a weight, a sword, and again and fainter still ... Griffin’s voice, and louder—Dela’s.

  “Get them back,” I heard. That was Lance for sure; and an oath: that was Lynette.

  I had the awful sights in my eyes even while I was feeling my overweighted way over the debris in the corridors; and then my own breath was sobbing so loud and my heart pounding so with my struggle to run that the sounds dimmed in my ears. I reached the open corridor; I ran in shuffling steps; I made the lift and I punched the buttons with thick gloved fingers, knees buckling under the thrust of the car as it rose, one level, another. Up here too I could hear a sound ... a steady sound through the walls, that was another attack at us, another breaching of the Maid’s defense.

  Get Modred. There was no one else who might defend the inner ship, and that was all we had left. I knew, the same as my lady knew, and I got out into the corridor topside and shuffled my clumsy way down it with my comrades’ voices dimmed altogether now, and only my own breaths for company.

  I pushed the button, opening it. Modred had heard me coming—how could he not? He was standing there, a black figure, just waiting for me, and when I gestured toward the bridge he cut me off with a shove that thrust me out of the way ... ran, the direction of the bridge, free to do what he liked.

  “Go,” his voice reached me over com, in short order, but I was already doing that, knowing where I belonged. “Elaine ... get everyone out of the corridors.”

  “Modred,” Dela said, far away and faint. “We’re holding here ... at the lock. We’ve lost Griffin—”

  “Get out of the corridors,” he said. “Quickly.”

  I made the lift. I rode it down, into the depths and the glare of lights beyond the ruined corridor. They might have taken it by now, I was thinking ... I might meet the serpent shapes the instant the door should open; but that would mean all my friends were gone, and I rushed out the door with all the force I could muster, seeing then a cluster of human shapes beyond the debris, three standing, two kneeling, and I heard nothing over com.

  “My lady,” I breathed, coming as quickly as I could.

  “Elaine,” I heard ... her voice. And one of the figures by her was very tall, who turned beside my lady as I reached them.

  Lance and my lady and Vivien; and Gawain and Lynette kneeling over Percivale, who had one arm clamped tight to his chest, his right. But of Griffin there was no sign; and in the distance the ranks of the enemy heaved and surged, shadows beyond the floods they had set up in the tube.

  “Modred’s at controls,” I said, asking no questions. “He’ll do what he can.” And because I had to: “I think they’re about to break through up there.”

  My lady said nothing. No one had anything to say.

  Modred would do what was reasonable. Of that I had no least doubt. If there was anything left to do. We were defeated. We knew that, when we had lost Griffin. And so Dela let Modred loose, the other force among us.

  “Lady Dela,” Modred’s voice came then. “I suggest you come inside and seal yourselves into a compartment.”

  “I suggest you do something,” Dela said shortly. “That’s what you’re there for.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Modred said after a moment, and there was a squealing in the background. “But we’re losing pressure in the topside lab. I think they’re venting our lifesupport. I’d really suggest you take what precautions you can, immediately.”

  “We hold the airlock,” Dela said.

  “No,” Modred said. “You can’t.” A second squealing, whether of metal or some other sound was uncertain.

  And then the com went out.

  “Modred?” Dela said. “Modred, answer me.”

  “We’ve lost the ship,” Lynette said.

  “Lady Dela—” Lance said quietly. “They’re moving again.”

  They were. Toward us. A wall of serpents and taller shapes like giants, lumpish, in what might be suits or the strangeness of their own bodies.

  Dela stopped and gathered up a spear, leaned on it, cumbersome in her suit. “Get me up,” Percy was saying. “Get me on my feet.”

  “If they want the ship,” Dela said then in a voice that came close to trembling, “well, so they have it. We fall aside and if we can we go right past their backs. We go the direction they took Griffin, hear?”

  “Yes,” Lance said. Gawain got Percy on his feet. He managed to stay there. Lynette stood up with me and Vivien. Out of Vivien, not a word, but she still held her spear, and it struck me then that she had not blanked: for once in a crisis Vivien was still around, still functioning. Born-man tapes had done that much for her.

  The lines advanced, more and more rapidly, a surge of serpent bodies, a waddle of those behind, beyond the hulking shape of the machinery they had used to breach us, past the glare of the floods.

  XVI

  But now farewell. I am going a long way

  With those thou seest—if indeed I go—

  For all my mind is clouded with a doubt—

  To the island-valley of Avilion.

  So we stood. In front of us was that machine like a ram, and that was a formidable thing in itse
lf; but it was frozen dead. And about it was a fog, a mist that made it hard to see—I thought it must be of their devising, to mask how many they were, or what they did, or prepared to do. Within the mist we could see red serpent shapes shifting position, weaving their bodies together like restless braiding, like grass in a sideways wind, like coursers held at a starting mark, eager and restrained. It was peculiarly horrible, that constant action; and broadbodied giants stood behind, purplish shadows less distinct, an immobile hedge like a fortification.

  “You understand,” said my lady Dela, “that when they come, we only seem to hold; and fall aside and lie low until we can get behind their lines. Don’t try more than that. Does everyone understand?”

  We avowed that we did, each answering.

  And then a clearer, different voice, that was from the Maid’s powerful system. “My lady Dela.” Modred. And a sound behind his voice like groaning metal, like—when the lock had given way. “I’ve sealed upper decks. They’re breaking through the seal. I suggest you withdraw inside. Now.”

  “My orders stand,” Dela said.

  “There’s danger of explosion, lady Dela. Come inside now. I am in contact with the alien. It instructs we give access.”

  “Protect the ship.”

  “I’m doing that.”

  “You take your orders from me, Modred.”

  A silence. A squeal of metal.

  “Modred?”

  “They’re in. We’ve lost all upper deck. Withdraw into the ship.”

  And now it began. In front of us. The serpents were loosed, and they came, looping and heaving forward like the breaking of a reddish wave. The giants behind them moved like a living wall.

  “Stand still,” Dela said, paying no more heed to Modred. Lance and Lynette put themselves in front of her, and Percy and Gawain stood to either side. Myself, I gripped my spear in thick gloved hands and left Viv behind us, moved up to Percy’s side, because his one arm was useless now.

  Oh, there was not enough time, no time at all to get used to this idea. I had never hit anything. I had a sudden queasiness in my stomach like psych-sets amiss, but it was raw fear, a doubt of what I was doing, to fall under that alien mass—but that was what our lady had said we must do.

  “They’re hard to cut,” I heard Lance tell us; very calm, Lance, my lady’s sometime lover and never meant for more. “But hit them. They do feel it.”

  They. I could see them clearly now. The serpents had legs and used them, poured forward overrunning their own slower members, like the rolling of a sea, all soundless in the insulation of my helmet, and time slowed down as my mind began to take in all of this detail, as my heart beat and my hands realized a weapon in them. The tide reached Lance and Lynette and boiled about them, hip-high until they felt Lance’s blows. One reared up, and others, and those behind overran, climbing the rearing bodies, with blind nodding heads, and flung themselves aside and poured past. One came at me, a snaky, legged body whose hide was a slick membrane of purples and reds. I swallowed bile and jabbed at it with all my strength: the point of the spear made a dent in its muscle and scored its slickish hide: it nodded its head this way and that in eyeless pain: a small O of a mouth opened and its screaming reached me past my comrades, amplified sobs for breath and my lady’s curses. I had no idea what became of that beast or where it went: there was another and I struck at that, and went on jabbing and beating at them until my joints ached, until finally one slithered behind my legs and another slid off an attacking body and came down in my face, huge and heavy and horridly alive.

  I was buried in such bodies. I yelled out for horror, bruised, aghast at the writhing under and over me as I became flotsam in that alien tide. “My lady!” I cried, and heard someone cry out in great pain—O Percy! I thought then, with his arm already torn; and where my comrades were in this or where my lady was I could not see. Even the light was cut off, as a body pressed over my faceplate, and then my com went out, so that I had only my own voice inside my helmet, and the murmuring rush from outside.

  Then the mass above flowed off me, and I saw light—saw—the giants passing near, next in the alien ranks. One almost trod on me, indifferent, and I clawed my way aside, scrambled atop that heaving mass of dragon-shapes, tumbled then, borne toward the Maid’s gaping lock. I remembered the com control on my chest, pressed the button and had sound again, Lance’s deep voice calling out a warning: “Look out!”

  And oh—the giants were not the worst, them with their broad violet bodies like gnarled trees come to life—There was a shape that shuffled along as if it herded them all, a lumpish thing larger even than they, and puffed with delicate veined bladders about its face, its—I could not see that it had limbs in its fluttering membranous folds. It seemed brown; but the membranes shaded off to greens, to—blues about its center and golds about its extremities. It rippled as it moved. There was a wholeness and power about it that—in all its horror—was symmetry.

  I saw one of us gain his feet, sword in both his hands. It was Lance: I heard his voice calling after help even while he swung at it to drive it off. Its membranes fluttered with the cuts. I scrambled over bodies to gain my feet; I saw another of us closer, trying to help; but it came on, and on—just spread itself wider and gathered Lance in sword and all; and that other, who must be Gawain—it got him too, and it kept coming, at me. I couldn’t find my spear; but of a sudden my feet met bare decking, the serpents all fled as the fleshy webs spread about me, all dusky now: more limbs/segments—I saw the floods glow like murky suns through the folds as it swept about me. I felt—horror—muscle within those folds, a solid center. I heard one of my friends cry out; I heard someone curse.

  And it spoke to us—our Beast: it was nothing else but that. It rumbled deep within and moaned and ticked at us, a sound that quivered through my frame until it was beyond bearing. I yelled back at it—I screamed at it, till my throat hurt and my voice broke. I heard nothing. The sound pierced my teeth and marrow, too deep for hearing.

  I hit the flooring on my back suddenly, which for all my lifesupport and padding hardly more than jolted me. The veil of its limbs swept on, the sound was gone, and it passed, leaving me lying amid the litter of our weapons. I flailed about getting over on my knees so that I could begin to get up. I heard Viv making a strange lost sound, but she was there. And my lady—“Lady Dela,” I called, trying to reach her to help; but Lance was first, pulling her to her feet. A hand helped me, and steadied me, and that was Gawain. Percy—I looked about, and he was on his feet, with Lynette. I found my spear, or someone’s, and gathered it up. Our Beast lumbered on, into the Maid’s open airlock, as all the rest had done, leaving us alone.

  “Modred,” Gawain cried, and he would have gone after, but Lance caught his arm. And Lynette:

  “My lady,” she said then, and pointed with her sword the way toward the machine, the way down the passage, that we had hoped to go.

  And there amid the smokes stood another rank of giants, no less than the first.

  Dela swayed on her feet. The weight we all carried seemed suddenly too much for her. “We’ve lost,” she said. “Haven’t we?” And slowly she turned toward us. I couldn’t see her face: our faceplates only reflected each other, featureless. “Percivale,” she said, “is the arm broken?”

  “My lady,” he said, “I think it is.”

  She was silent for a moment. “So we’ve nowhere to go.”

  She bent down. I thought she meant to sit down. But she picked up a spear from off the ground and stood up and faced toward the giants.

  So did we all then. It was that simple. It occurred to me finally that my knees hurt and I was bruised and sore from that battering, when my heart had settled down, when the minutes wore on. One of us sat down, slow settling to the deck. We looked; and that was Viv, sitting there, but not blanked ... “Vivien,” my lady asked, “are you all right?”

  “Yes, lady,” Viv said, a small thin voice. She was with us. She had her spear in both her hands. She was ju
st never very strong, except in will. She wanted to live. She fought for that, perhaps. Perhaps it was something less noble. With Vivien I never knew.

  But she was there.

  It was a strange thing, that none of the rest of us sat down, when it was so much more reasonable to do. When giving up, I suppose, was reasonable. But getting up took so long a time, and we had seen how fast the enemy could move. Besides—besides, there was a sense in us that it was not a thing to do, facing this thing. My hands clenched tight about the spear and while I had no strength to go charging at them, I wished they would come on so that I could do something with this frustration that was boiling in me ... in me, who could feel such a thing.

  We should have the banner here, I thought. We should have the bright true colors, which was what we were, in this place of violet murk and white mist and glaring floods. It might be they would understand us then—what we meant, standing here. Maybe others besides humans used such symbols. Maybe it would only puzzle them. Or maybe they would think it a message where voices meant nothing at all, one side to the other.

  But we had nothing. We had no faces to them; and they had none for us, standing like a wall of trees.

  And silent.

  “Ah!” Vivien cried, a sudden gasp of horror from behind us. I jerked about, nextmost to her—a serpent was among us, loping from out the lock. Vivien hurled herself aside from it, and I did, thoroughly startled; but as I turned to see it pass, Gawain hit it with his sword. It writhed aside and scuttled through with all its speed, evading Lance and my lady and Lynette, running as hard as it could go toward the cover of the machine and its waiting giant comrades.

  “A messenger,” Dela said. “We should have stopped it.”

  “My lady—” A faint voice, static-riddled.

  “Modred,” Dela exclaimed. “Modred, we hear you.”