The Dark Reaches

by Kristin Landon

  Food. “Freezers! There’s got to be a big freezer in a ship that goes this far out, runs this slow.” Linnea looked around the big, shadowy space, a confusion of storage cubbies, hatches, dark control boards. A child’s toy, a black-and-white stuffed bear, floated past her face, and she jumped. The light from her headlamp made the shadows leap wildly. She felt Mick grab her arm. “Lin—”

  There. A big hatch with a temperature readout, soft green, saying -19.9.

  At the same moment they all heard the thin screech of metal being cut. “They’re coming in,” Linnea said. “Hurry!”

  “In there?” Mick squeaked, as Linnea pulled open the refrigeration unit.

  But Linnea saw Pilang suddenly half smile. She understands. “Yes, Mick, in there. Quick now.” At that moment, they all felt a faint breeze, heard a distant hiss of atmosphere. Linnea saw Pilang’s eyes widen. They’re in. No one said anything.

  They pulled themselves into the unit, which was the size of a small room, and Linnea sealed the hatch behind them. The space was crammed with white bags and boxes with scribbled labels. While Pilang and Mick tucked the three small bagged bodies behind a storage rack, then anchored a couple of crates to hide them, Linnea drew her knife and began to slash at the bags. In a moment, Pilang was doing the same. Lumps of frozen food floated out. “Mick. Help us scatter these. Fill the air. Quick.” She moved to the next bag.

  Soon the chamber was a cloud of frozen bits of food—peas and beans and chunks of potato and squash. “Good enough,” Linnea said. “Now get down in back, behind anything cold you can find. Then—quiet as can be. Don’t move. Don’t move ever. Mick, with me.”

  In moments she was huddled down behind a crate marked “FISH 500g × 128,” with Mick under her arm, saw that Pilang was also safely hidden, switched off her headlamp. Mick was crying with fear, but voicelessly. Linnea breathed in a tear, fought a sneeze, wiped the girl’s face with her left hand. “Shh,” she said. “Hush now. It will be all right.” Carefully she wrapped her arms around the girl. Her knife was still in her right hand; she held it carefully—next to the side of Mick’s neck. They won’t get her. Whatever happens, they won’t get her. “You’ll be safe,” she breathed. “Quiet now.”

  The girl’s shuddering subsided, and they waited. Through the fabric of the station, Linnea could feel the faint vibration of—something—moving. It steadily increased. A rapping, clattering sound—something crawling along the metal walls.

  Faint blue light filtered through the small round port in the door, illuminating the cloud of floating frozen food above their hiding place. The Cold Minds had found the cargo hold, where they knew the cold sleepers would be—the safest part of the ship. Linnea closed her eyes, thinking with aching pity of the three people still helpless out there. Too late, we were too late—

  The clattering came closer. Linnea could hear hatches opening, closing, all along the walls of the chamber. Searching, they were searching—

  The door of their refuge creaked open. Harsh light played around, illuminating the mess in the air from the side, tiny lumps of food in half-phase, swirling slowly in the bitter air.

  Clatter. Closer now. Inside the cooler. Linnea’s arms tightened around Mick, her grip on the knife tightened. If the light found them, one quick slashing cut, and Mick would be safe, Mick would never be one of their pilots. . . .

  The light stabbed, turned, the clattering sidled along the metal walls—

  Gone. The hatch’s spring swung it closed. Linnea squeezed Mick, putting all the warning into it that she could. Wait. Wait. Don’t move yet, don’t speak.

  Almost an hour passed, and there was only darkness outside, only silence; but Linnea knew, as Pilang must, that this was not time enough to be sure. They waited. After an endless time, they felt a bump and shudder, then a brief sketchy roar of jets against the skin of the ship. Mick stirred in her sleep in Linnea’s arms. Then utter silence fell again.

  Finally, Pilang spoke in a low voice. “That’s it, I think.”

  “It must be,” Linnea said, shifting her aching limbs. Only the faint light from the internal temperature readout oriented her in the utter darkness, but she was afraid—truly afraid—to turn on her headlamp. Too close.

  “Lin,” Pilang said quietly, “please keep Mick with you for a moment.” The thin beam of a tiny wristlight lanced out, and Pilang found the hatch, opened it, and passed through. She was gone only a few moments and returned; in the faint reflected light Linnea saw her face—grim and pale. “They found the parents,” she said. “Dead. I closed the hatch on, on where they are, but—Mick, listen, there’s a little blood out there. Just—close your eyes, okay? Lin will pull you.”

  Obediently, Mick closed her eyes and put both hands over her face. Linnea switched on her headlamp and made her way, hauling Mick through the floating food debris to the front of the freezer. Behind her, she heard the thump of heavy crates bumping together as Pilang cleared them aside to recover the unconscious bodies of the three small children. Linnea pressed the handle and shoved the hatch aside, then floated through, Mick in tow.

  It was, as she’d expected, more than a little blood. It stirred idly on the cold drifts of air, a constellation of droplets that seemed to twinkle in the light of her headlamp as they danced and jiggled. She kept her head down, her mouth tight shut, and when they’d reached the hatch to the ship’s main passageway, she closed it behind them with a wash of relief. “Mick, hang on here, okay? I have to go back in there and help Pilang gather her medkit.”

  “That’s my job,” the girl said.

  “Not this time,” Linnea said, and at the grim note in her voice, the girl offered no more arguments.

  Together, the three of them got Pilang’s equipment and the three children to Linnea’s ship—Pilang had simply bagged all three in a big cargo net, with frozen goods packed in around them to keep them cool. Pilang and Linnea were splashed with drops of blood. “Put the children into the passenger shell,” Linnea said. “Then find something to hang on to. I promise I’ll barely boost.”

  The slow acceleration out to a safe jump distance was agonizing. Sealed in her shell, she could not even speak to Pilang; a few quick words had been all she’d been able to give her about Iain’s condition, about Linnea’s hopes that Pilang might be able to save him. And Pilang had gone very quiet after that. Ominously quiet.

  But she didn’t say it was impossible.

  Linnea counted the seconds down raggedly, watching the chrono with her inner eye, watching the space all around—empty, still empty—Now.

  Weary, sad, aching with dread of what she might soon have to face, Linnea jumped for Hestia.

  NINETEEN

  DEEPSIDER HABITAT HESTIA

  When Linnea docked her ship at Hestia at last, medtech teams were waiting to take the three rescued children off for the care they needed. But Linnea, Mick, and Pilang needed about as much care, or so the doctor in charge of the teams told Pilang, frowning. “How long has it been since any of you slept?” he demanded. “You did good work, Pilang. Don’t follow it up with bad. You’ve got more sense than that. Go and rest.” He looked over at Linnea, who was holding Mick. “All three of you. Rest and a bath, eh?” And he was gone, launching himself briskly after the last of his stretcher teams.

  Pilang had commed the clinic first thing and learned that Iain was stable; and now she insisted firmly that there was no use in going to look at his cold-sleep container—no, Linnea would not be able to see his face, he was sealed up, didn’t she understand that? “Let go and rest, Lin,” Pilang said gently. “You’ve done what you can for now. You’ve done miracles.”

  The sympathy broke through what was left of Linnea’s strength, and she could not speak for a while. “I only need one more,” she said at last, blinking back tears. She saw Pilang’s mouth tighten. Then the older woman sighed, reached out, and caressed Linnea’s cheek. “We’ll see, eh? After we’ve both had some sleep. I don’t want to see you for ten hours, hear me?”

 
; Linnea looked away. “I’ll try.”

  Pilang, obviously not convinced, trailed along with Linnea as far as Esayeh’s quarters, which were still empty. She helped Linnea strip off the sweaty, stained coveralls she had been wearing for so long and climb into the sleep sack in her old cubby, then dimmed the lights to a faint amber glow and left her there.

  Linnea had had no intention of sleeping, but a dark, towering wave of sleep overwhelmed her almost instantly. But she slept lightly and strangely, coursing along just under the surface, her mind swirling with sharp-edged and vivid dreams. Terror and joy in waves; and always, beneath it all, ran the deep dragging tide of dread.

  A long time later she jerked awake. Stillness all around her; she glanced at the chrono. Four hours, only. But her buzzing, nervous alertness warned her that she would not sleep again, not soon.

  Good. Time to go see Iain. To get as near to him as she could, and make them tell her everything about his condition.

  She slid out of the bag into the chilly air, found her last clean clothes, and dressed hastily. Two minutes later she was soaring along the passageway, past glowing curtained doorways, spills of herbs and food plants under flickering fluorescent lights, here the sound of someone playing a reedy wind instrument, there an argument in some other language. The brown smell of baking onions. She took a shortcut through the park, in night cycle at the moment, the blue “moonlight” making deep shadows under the trees. Far off she heard a group of women laughing, and nearer a couple making love.

  The intensive-care clinic never closed, so she swung her way into the little waiting room, expecting to find a few people, friends or family members of patients, and the hovering medtech who processed records and doubled as a receptionist of sorts. But the room was empty.

  Linnea did not bother with the tautly curtained door; she pulled herself through the window usually manned by the medtech, and on down the passageway beyond, following the bright painted signs pointing to COLD ROOM.

  She arrived to find light spilling from the door, and an intent murmur of voices. She pulled herself to a stop before swinging into sight, then peered around the corner—and froze in shock.

  Pilang was there. And Hana. And two other techs. And—Iain’s container lay open, clamped to a rack around which they were all huddled. It was open. An infested patient, open to the air.

  Iain. She saw him, lying stiffly strapped in place, clearly still in cold sleep. But they had pulled him out of his capsule, turned him over—Pilang was leaning over the purple, ragged stab wound in his back just under the rib cage. She was painting something into the wound. Something black, from a jar Hana held for her. Through her shock and terror, Linnea made out a few words—“Let them work their way well in.” Pilang’s voice, tired but satisfied. “We’ll get a good image in a couple of hours.”

  Linnea found that she had pulled her way through the door, that she was clinging to a handhold just inside. And she saw Hana look up and gasp, saw Pilang jerk around to face her.

  “He’s infested,” Linnea said in a thin voice. “You can’t—it’s not safe—” Then, with a wild glance at the jar in Hana’s hand, she cried, “What are you? What are you people?”

  “Get her out now,” Pilang said flatly. “She’s not safe in here.”

  “What are you doing to Iain?” Linnea started forward, but two of the medtechs she did not know caught her, pushed her back into the passageway. One of them held one of the ubiquitous medication patches, and he reached out with it for Linnea’s neck. She twisted away, twisted away—but firm hands caught her and held her. The patch touched her neck, and the world spun away into darkness.

  She drifted awake, soon after or long after, to find herself tied into a patient’s cot. She began to struggle to reach the ties and free herself, knowing it was hopeless, and a moment later Pilang appeared in the doorway. Linnea shrank back against the firm support of the cot. “Don’t come near me,” she said in a thin voice.

  “Lin—”

  “You’re infested,” she said. “You’re—them. Part of the Cold Minds.”

  Pilang did not move closer, but her calm expression did not change. “Lin, I am as human as you are. And the Cold Minds have never touched me. They never will.”

  “But you were right there with Iain, all of you—” She broke off. “Is he cured?”

  She saw her answer in the sadness in Pilang’s eyes, before she spoke. “No. He’s not cured. We were setting up for a test to determine whether his kidney is injured. Maybe to correct it.”

  “They said surgery wasn’t safe,” Linnea said. “On Triton.”

  “It wasn’t safe—on Triton,” Pilang said. “Lin, there are some things you don’t understand. And you have to understand them, because you need a treatment, now, right away, and I want you to give free consent.”

  “Wait,” Linnea said. “Treatment?”

  Pilang sighed. “Lin, we—the deepsiders—we can’t be infested by the Cold Minds. That’s why they want us for their pilots. Those ships—their bots are everywhere inside. Someone who wasn’t immune would last only a few weeks as a pilot in one. They get infested, they lose their piloting ability, they die.”

  “How?” Linnea took a shaking breath. “How have you done this?”

  “We infest ourselves,” Pilang said evenly. “With bots we control, that are dormant unless they detect Cold Minds nanobots. Then they bloom out in our bloodstreams and destroy them.”

  Linnea was silent for a while, absorbing this. “Bots . . . that you control,” she said slowly. “How?”

  “Nanobots were deepsider technology from the start,” Pilang said. “We’d been using them for a hundred years for our own applications, for manufacturing, for medicine. Where we lived, if they got away from us, we had vacuum, radiation, everything we needed to control them right there; energy and resources aren’t unlimited out here, so they can’t run wild. We controlled them. We still do. But—eventually someone got greedy. Brought the technology to Earth, without our knowledge—stole it for one of their own industrial processes. And”—she looked sad—“in time, they broke loose.”

  Linnea stared at her. “You’re telling me that your people—the deepsiders—you made the Cold Minds.”

  She saw Pilang wince at that. After a moment, the older woman shook her head. “My people,” she said steadily, “fight the Cold Minds. We die fighting them.” But the grief was clear in her eyes. “But, Lin. This is what I need to tell you. You walked in when you shouldn’t have, last night. You may have been exposed. I need—” She sighed and rubbed her eyes. “I need to inoculate you.”

  Linnea felt herself go rigid with fear. “You mean—with bots.”

  “With our own nano. Harmless nano.” Pilang looked her in the eye. “Look, you’ve already had them in you for short times—that’s how our drug patches work so fast, the nanobots carry the drug straight to the target. Then they destroy themselves.”

  “But these would stay in me forever,” Linnea said.

  “It is safe,” Pilang said firmly. “They’re dormant in your bones unless needed. They can’t even be detected in your blood except during an infestation.”

  Linnea’s breath caught, and she looked toward the door. “Could this—Pilang, could your nano save Iain?”

  “No, Lin. I’m sorry.” Pilang looked grim. “It would be as little use as giving someone an immunization for a disease when they’re in the last stages of dying from it.”

  “If you gave him a lot of your nano at once—”

  “The metals and toxins from all the dead bots would only kill him faster.”

  Linnea looked at Pilang, her mind racing. “All right. Give me the bots. Then—let’s think of what you haven’t thought of.”

  Linnea sat fighting nausea while a medtech carefully painted a patch of black on the inside of her left elbow. As she watched, the black faded, leaving a residual yellow like a bruise. They’re burrowing in. She felt a sudden chill, felt her face break out in a sweat. The tech got a bag
over her mouth in time. As she retched she thought, Now it’s happened to me, too, Iain.

  Clinic hours were over, and Pilang had finished her rounds. When Linnea’s stomach had settled, she made her way a little unsteadily to Pilang’s office. As she came in, she saw that Esayeh and Hana were there as well. Esayeh looked up at her and shook his head slowly. “Dear God, Lin.” Then he filled a little bulb full of the fiery clear whiskey of the deepsiders, squeezing it from a half-full pouch hooked to the bulkhead beside him, and handed it to Linnea. “You could use this.”

  She took a sip, held it in her mouth—sweet and mild, deceptive—then swallowed. Fire all the way down. “Oh,” she said with her eyes closed. “Oh, that’s—good.”

  “No more for a bit,” Pilang said dryly. She coughed. “It’s time to consider our problem. The infested patient.”

  “Iain,” Linnea said stubbornly. “He’s still Iain. Use his name.”

  Pilang flung up her hands. “All right. Look, Lin. Here’s the outline. Iain’s blood is full of bots. And we can’t filter them out without filtering out his blood cells, too.”

  Linnea looked at her. “Can you separate the cells from the bots somehow?”

  “No,” Pilang said. “We don’t have the tech to do it fast enough when he’s warm, to keep up with the bots’ growth rate, the damage they do.”

  “But in the cold—”

  Pilang shook her head. “No, Lin. I’m sorry. We can’t do sorts in the cold—the blood is too viscous. And if we warm him even a little, the bots take over and—there won’t be anything left to do but kill him.”

  “Can you—” Linnea shook her head, thinking hard. “Just drain out all his blood and replace it?”

  “A complete replacement would kill him in his weakened state,” Pilang said. “Even if it didn’t, the blood would just be reinfested from the surrounding tissues.”

  “But at a lower titer,” Hana said with a frown. “After a few cycles, it might be low enough for our own nano lines to handle what was left.”