The Goog stealthed toward the planet.
"I wish you could link with whatever might be out there," Dicey said, not for the first time. "If you could only hook us up with other ships and tell us what was going on on their bridges…."
"I need visual contact," I lied again. This ability she wished I had would endanger me if she actually believed I had it. She already made me sleep through any contact we had with ships or people near and in ports, fearing I would link with other crews and seek rescue or at least try to get someone to listen to me.
I had grown gray to the possibility of ever escaping her. All I really cared about anymore was the next link with something bigger than the Goog, something I would cherish as long as I could, and visit in memory afterward. I had a stockpile of memories now, though the ones I took out most often carried me back to my family's island.
Besides, I didn't know my own range. Could I reach out and touch someone in another ship halfway across a solar system? Sometimes I tried seeking contact when the ship's proximity alarms let us know we weren't alone, but at times like that, Dicey was quick to lock me down and put me under.
I underplayed my abilities as much as I could. The less information Dicey had about me the better. She was too good at reading my face already.
On Whishter, we did our usual scan from orbit. Dicey's rumors had not told her the best place to contact the volcanoes. She and Malad surveyed infrared scans that showed heat activity beneath the surface, and picked a spot near a likely range of mountains for a touchdown point.
The ground danced as we set down, crumpling one landing spar and tilting the ship. "Damn!" Dicey said. She checked the air for breathability, then loaded Grecia up with a welder and some other repair equipment and sent her out.
"Malad, you keep watch. Keep one finger on the dealer-with and both eyes on the scanner," Dicey said. Her scalp shivered. She didn't like it here.
Then Dicey and I went out to look for life I could link with.
The air tasted fiery and smoky, and the sky was darker than most sky blues, though it was midday. A thin green mist cloaked the ground. I felt strange walking across the broken-stone ground, all sharp-edged blocks with fissures between them, veiled and dangerous. My smartmetal boots tried to compensate for the variations of the ground, but I could not help stumbling, no more could Dicey. A feeling of frightening excitement spun in my stomach, amplifying with each step.
"Where?" Dicey muttered when we had walked a ways in the thickening mist. "Where's the damned life? What's wrong with this spot, Tonia?"
I quickened my step. Something unfamiliar but sweet built inside me. I wanted more of it.
"Hey! Don't you dare run away or I'll drop you where you stand!"
I stopped. I waited for her to catch up without looking back at her.
"Don't get spooky on me, Tonia, or I'll scrub this whole mission. I hate this planet already."
I could taste this feeling in my throat. Besa wine aged seven years, finer than any I had ever tasted before. "Just a little farther," I said. My voice sounded too high.
"Shit," said Dicey. "I don't need this. For sure I don't. Come on. We're going back." She gripped my arm, her head swiveling back and forth. I felt her fear, but it didn't infect me, and I didn't understand it. It was different from the kinds of fears she liked.
There was no reason for her to pull me along. I had resisted her enough times to know it did no good; I would have followed her without touch. She held onto my arm anyway and dragged me back toward the ship.
Something glowing blue and swifter than sight whipped up out of the rocks before us, looped around Dicey's chest and tightened. She screamed and dropped to the rocks, spasming. The blue thing vanished like a ghost.
I squatted beside Dicey. She twitched and tremored uncontrollably, her eyes blinking open and shut, her jaw clenching and relaxing, arms and legs flopping. The lights on her chestplate blinked and sizzled, all their configurations wrong. I held out a hand, thinking maybe I could hit an emergency reset switch, but her chestplate didn't have one where mine did. I realized I didn't know any of Dicey's settings; Malad had taught me something about my mods, and a few things about the mods he had that I didn't, but he had never told me anything about Dicey's.
Slowly I stood up, feeling a queer lightness in my head. I didn't know what was wrong with Dicey, but I knew she couldn't threaten or hurt me, not the way she was now. For however long that lasted.
I turned and walked away into the fog.
I came to the standing stones as the sky darkened toward twilight. I had climbed the lower slope of a mountain, and still I hadn't seen anything like vegetation. It was all rocks and green mist, and here the ground was hot, even through smartmetal soles built to resist the vacuum of space.
Jagged shapes loomed up through the mist, like upraised arms ending in clenched fists. The spinning excitement inside me stopped dead. I stood and stared at the stones.
Then I went to the nearest one and leaned against it.
I had never linked with rocks before. Slime, birds, plants, lizards, animals large and small, even eternally embryonic creatures in a womb matrix, those I had linked with. But not stone.
The rock was warm against my arms and upper legs, the only places where bodymods didn't come between us. I pressed my face to the rock, and my mind fell into a pool of magma. Heat flared through me, and a mind deep and broad and ancient wrapped around me and swallowed me whole.
If no sea had separated Ooliya's islands from each other, the link might have been like this, or perhaps not: it had never occurred to me to drop to the ground and try to link with it. Here was a planet united; no matter what terrains it wore on its upper crust, beneath them all lay the worldmind, hot and red and friendly and strong, ready to engulf anything that touched it.
The best besa wine, the best link, the best death I had ever embraced. I wanted to never leave. I felt like a baby in a sea of motherlink, home at last.
Dicey shocked me out of it.
It hurt worse than the first time she had cut all my links. I folded in on myself. I could feel my skin shriveling, my bones poking out through all my crumbling edges. Too much. I couldn't do this anymore.
"Get over it!" she yelled, and shot me full of stims. "We're leaving this stinking planet!" She twitched, her head bobbing. She shuddered. "Right now, Tonia!"
Sure that my skin was paper-fragile and my bones brittle as stretched glass, I tottered after her for a few steps, then collapsed.
"Don't do this. Don't do this, you klotz. You will get up and follow me." Her hand closed around my arm.
The ghost-blue glow whipped up and tapped her chest, and she thudded to the ground.
Released, I staggered back to the standing stone.
It flowed. It flowed into a shape that cradled me as I sat down on it, and this time, a link came to me instead of me sending one out. The magma nudged me open and embraced me again.
For a comfortable age I basked in the link, building back all the strength Dicey had shocked out of me.
Then I noticed something tapping on my outer edge.
"Hey. Hey, solid. Hey."
Still linked, I opened my eyes and stared at a glowing blue snake, translucent as glass, less solid than the green mist around my rock throne.
"Hey," said the big-headed snake. It was not a species I had ever seen before.
"Hey," I said. I raised my hand to touch its chin and felt nothing solid, just a surprising isle of warmth in the cooling air of evening. Through my eyes the planet watched and studied too.
"Hey," said the snake. "What are you doing?"
"Not much," I said. "Sitting here not thinking. Why?"
"This is a forbidden planet. Why are you here?"
"I go where I'm taken," I murmured, wondering what kind of trouble I was in now. Though I had never seen or heard of a thing like this blue snake, it must be part of Allied Sentients if it cared that this planet was forbidden.
And it had paralyzed Dicey tw
ice.
"So rumors were true," said the snake. "Are you from Ooliya?"
"Who are you?" I asked.
"Oh. Sorry. Suessa, Allied Sentients Police."
I glanced to where Dicey lay, her arms and legs spread wide. She no longer twitched. Nothing about her moved except her eyes, which glared at me.
"Yes. I am Ooliyan," I said.
"Huh," said Suessa. "This explains multitudes. Sort of."
"Will you take me home?" I asked in a small voice. Remnants of my squashed dream still whispered in my head.
Rock flowed across my lap, binding me to my throne.
"Uh," the snake said.
You are home, thought the worldmind.
I closed my eyes and opened to the warm sea of worldmind. Not my sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers, grandparents — no one I had known before. But big enough to be all the link I needed. For the first time since Dicey stole me, I felt entire, and not crippled.
"Hey. Hey, solid. Hey."
I opened my eyes and smiled at Suessa. The ground jumped as I shook my shoulders. Oops.
"So I'm going to arrest the sentient on the ground," Suessa said, "for invasion of a forbidden place, and I'll be taking custody of the ship and its other sentients as well. I get the feeling you are not considered an invader?"
Worldmind sent an extra jolt of heat. It had accepted the arrival of several beings like Suessa, who flowed through atmosphere but did not touch ground or disturb anything. It wanted me, and I wanted to belong here. "I'm staying here," I said.
"So, well, then, there are choices to consider." The blue glass snake flickered away, flashed back. "Can you translate for us to the local solids, or whatever lives here? We would like to discover whether they want to join the Allied Sentients. No one has been able to make contact before."
Worldmind sent glow. "Yes," I said.
"I will return." It flickered out.
Have you ever considered oceans? I asked Worldmind.
Tell me more.
=End=
About the Author
Over the past thirty years, Nina Kiriki Hoffman has sold adult and YA novels and more than 250 short stories. Her works have been finalists for the World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Sturgeon, Philip K. Dick, and Endeavour awards. Her fiction has won a Stoker and a Nebula Award.
A collection of her short stories, Permeable Borders, was published in 2012 by Fairwood Press.
Nina does production work for the Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. She teaches through Lane Community College. She lives in Eugene, Oregon.
For a list of Nina's publications, go to: http://ofearna.us/books/hoffman.html.
Connect with the Author
You can connect directly with the Nina Kiriki Hoffman through Facebook.
Other Nina Kiriki Hoffman Titles
You can find the following titles online. The links below will allow you to purchase directly from Amazon or read free fiction online.
Short Fiction:
"Trophy Wives," by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"Family Tree" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"Escapes" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"The Ghosts of Strangers" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"Ghost Hedgehog" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"How I Came to Marry a Herpetologist" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"The Weight of Wishes" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
"Key Signatures" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman
Fast Wedded to the Ground Page 2