The Sky Woman

by JD Moyer

  The hallway ended in a metal spiral staircase. Henning hesitated. Katja pushed him roughly, and he began to descend, gripping the railing tightly. All his bravado and swagger had left him; what was left was a scared, weak man. He shot her a bitter look. “This will happen to you as well. You will not own your emotions so easily. You will feel how Raekae wants you to feel. You will pay the price if you want to see him.”

  “Shut up. Take me to him, and then you can flee like a coward.”

  The staircase deposited them in the center of a vast circular room with a metal floor. The front half of the curving wall was paneled with giant windows, beyond which Katja could see a moving forested landscape. She gripped the staircase railing, struck with vertigo.

  “That’s Raekae,” said Henning, pointing to a small figure seated among a configuration of metal boxes and lights. Katja nodded and closed her eyes, trying to regain her balance, trying not to vomit. She heard the sound of Henning’s boots rapidly ascending the metal staircase.

  After a minute, the vertigo subsided. She walked quickly across the room, toward Raekae, averting her eyes from the scenes in the giant windows. Her boot-steps on the metal floor reverberated throughout the chamber.

  He was a small man with thinning brown hair, and spectacles similar to those Franz wore. He swiveled in his chair to face her, his hands held up with palms pressed together. “Welcome,” he said. “I’m Raekae, though you can call me Rae if you prefer. That’s close enough. Please don’t touch anything.”

  She stopped, resting one hand on her pommel. “You have made a mistake in bringing me here. Whatever your plans for me, I will thwart them. I will fight you to my dying breath. Your best choice is to let me leave. I just want one thing – to return home.” She took a single step forward. “So how do I leave this place?”

  Raekae smiled. “This is your home now. I’m using your body, and I’ll keep using it until it wears out. Your old life is over. But you’ll find you can have a good life here. You can learn more than you ever would in your previous life. And if you’re interested, I’ll teach you how to build your own world. Recreate your village, if you want. Perhaps Henning and Franz would join you in that project. It would take time to learn the skills, of course – a long time. At least five years. Maybe longer. You’re a stubborn one!” He laughed.

  “Tell me how to get home. Or I slit your throat and find my own way.”

  “If you attack me, I’ll press this button right here. You’ll find yourself back in your hut. Then you’ll have to climb all the way back down if you want to continue our conversation. And it will be a little harder next time. I’ve added some disincentives. I don’t mind the occasional visitor, but it’s important to be able to think, to have plenty of alone time. I have an open-door policy, but you have to earn it.”

  “You cursed Henning.”

  “Something like that. Henning and the others are fully virtualized, so I can motivate or demotivate them with a little limbic tweaking. Once they leave the library, the arousal really kicks up. The amygdala in particular. It tends to manifest as fear. You’re not vulnerable yet. The tendrils are still mapping your brain. You’re still using it – your brain – except for the sensory inputs and motor outputs. Those, I’m using.” He gestured toward the giant window panels. “This is what your old eyes are seeing now, in the real world.” Katja resisted looking; in her peripheral vision, she saw a blur of green, trees and moss.

  Raekae stood and pointed at the vast window display. “See, right now we’re about to climb the ridge. On the other side is Kaldbrek. I want to see what Haakon and his goons are up to. I’m afraid they’re planning a raid on your old home.”

  “You know Haakon?” She loosened her dirk in its sheath.

  “Not personally. I considered him as a host – he’s a fascinating character. But ultimately too volatile. He would try to take over the metamind. That’s his nature: he’s a conqueror.”

  “Can you kill him?” she asked.

  “I suppose we could. You’re good with a sword. You should have seen what we did to the mutant!” Raekae pulled one sleeve over his hand and held the limb up, chortling. Then he half stood in his chair and did a ridiculous imitation of sword-fighting, waving his hands in the air like a fool, thrusting and feinting. He plopped back down in his seat, breathing heavily from his exertions. “Henning’s blades are as sharp as ever,” he said, between gulps of air. “Biter, the wolf blade, and Taker, with a human soul. Do you know how a soulsword is forged? Did your brother teach you? Trond, the big one?”

  It angered her to hear him speak her brother’s name. She wanted to spit in his face. “I know how godsteel is forged.”

  “Yes, but not every godsteel blade is a soulsword. There’s some fascinating chemistry that goes on. I’ll teach you in a few years, once you get up to speed in the basic sciences. The carbon from…. Well, yes, I should wait. Metallurgy is one of my many interests, as is the metaphorical symbolism of soul-stealing. I am something of a soul stealer myself. You might even say that I’m literally a soul stealer. Except that souls aren’t real, so that’s not quite accurate.” He giggled. “But as much as they’re real, I steal them.”

  Katja swiveled slightly and looked up at the windows. It was as if she were inside her own head, looking out from behind her own eyes. ‘She’ was climbing a hill through a thick beech wood. She could see her own hands reaching out to brush aside branches. Once again her stomach lurched. Breathing slowly through her nose, she suppressed the sensation, forcing her eyes to stay open. Raekae seemed pleased that she was finally looking at the view, and continued to speak. She was no longer listening. She turned so that her dagger side was obscured from Raekae’s sight, and slowly inched the dirk from its sheath.

  “…looking for the visitor. She was my first choice for a host, you know. Don’t take it personally, you’re an excellent choice as well! But to have someone from the ringstations join us here, how wonderful that would be. Think how much we could learn! We have three centuries of orbital history to catch up on. Imagine the advances they’ve made. And we’re cut off from it, all of it. As interesting as your people are, I’ve learned about as much as I can from the lot of you. I want to know what’s going on in the rest of the solar system. Perhaps even beyond!”

  Katja whipped out the dirk and lunged at his throat. The steel point sunk into the soft flesh of his neck, slipped between tendons, punctured the stiff membranes of his voicebox, and finally stuck in his spine. Raekae’s mouth gaped silently. He waved his hands in the air like a helpless newborn babe. Katja wrenched out the blade and watched the blood seep, then gush, from the wound.

  With a gurgling cry, Raekae lunged for the button on a panel, the one he had indicated would send her away. But she was ready, and kicked his arm (she was skeptical of magical buttons, but not willing to take any chances). Grabbing his shirt with her free hand, she pulled mightily. The garment ripped, but the force was sufficient to pull him down. His head hit the metal floor with a dull clang. She kicked him in the gut for good measure, but he was already dead.

  She sat in the chair, placed the bloody dirk on the machine table in front of her, and examined the array of controls and lights. She would need an ally, someone who understood the Builder machines. Maybe Franz would help. Now that Raekae was dead, perhaps he could come to this place without the sensation of sickening fear.

  In the window display, ‘she’ had stopped moving, and stood among the beech trees in the dusk light. Faintly, she could hear wind in the leaves and the faint chirping of birds. Somehow she was trapped inside her own body. At least now she knew where she was. And she could see and hear the real world. If she could learn to guide her own flesh, then maybe she could make her way back to Happdal.

  The others, Henning and Stian and Franz, they were ghosts. But she still had a body. Raekae had merely cut her off from her own senses and limbs. One way or another, she would find her w
ay back, regain control. She had slain the sorcerer – that much was done.

  She rubbed her eyes and slapped her cheeks. Why did she feel sleepy? A good fight and the sight of blood usually enlivened her, keeping her up for hours or even through the night. And this was her first real kill, a blessing from the Red Brother. She would lay her head down for just a minute. It was all too much, what had happened to her. Her mind was tired from grappling with these strange puzzles.

  * * *

  She awoke in the loft bed, in her hut. She was naked, the sheets soft and warm against her bare skin. The smell of fresh bread filled the room. She had slept well; she felt rested, and lazy. What strange dreams.

  Not dreams. She climbed down the ladder. Her clothes were there, cleaned and neatly folded. Her boots were polished.

  Her dirk was missing.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Car-En smelled frying bacon. Lurking around Happdal she had smelled bacon many times, but it had been months since she had tasted any. She liked the vat-grown bacon on the Stanford, but this smelled meatier and gamier. And probably more delicious. Who could be cooking? Esper was lying next to her. She must still be dreaming.

  Esper opened his eyes. She tentatively kissed him on the cheek, snuggling closer. They’d made love three times during the night, but this was the light of day, and she felt shy again. Would she have regrets? She didn’t now. Would he? Would Esper want to hide their love from his brother, once Trond awoke?

  They were curled up under her cloak and his blanket, both naked. Now fully awake, she could hear sizzling fat. Someone really was cooking bacon. She lifted her head and looked around.

  “Good morning! I see that you have already met my brother.”

  Trond had pulled a large flat rock up to the edge of the rekindled campfire. There he sat, holding a long thin stick draped with strips of bacon over the low flames. He had found his trousers and boots, but was still shirtless. In the light of day, his physique was impressive. His chest and shoulders were immense and well-defined; the fibrous striations of each muscle group were clearly visible. The skin on his chest was still red and raw but had noticeably healed over the course of the night. He had burns on his face as well, and a large purple bruise covered most of his left cheek. Still, he looked cheerful, untroubled by his injuries.

  Esper sat up and yawned. Car-En grabbed the blanket, pulling it up to her neck. “This is Car-En,” said Esper. “She is visiting from the sky, where she lives in a vast floating ship.”

  “A ship in the sky?” Trond said, raising an eyebrow. “Is she a god?”

  “No. Flesh and blood, like us. The Builders did not stop their building here on the ground. They built in the sky as well, and live there still.”

  Trond furrowed his brow and considered this. “Greetings, Car-En. Are you hungry?”

  Using her cloak for privacy, Car-En retrieved her thermal leggings and long-sleeved top from her pack. She wasn’t ready to don the bioskin just yet, and stowed it away. Esper dressed as well. They gathered round the fire and ate a breakfast of bacon, stale sourdough, and dried apples. Car-En had never tasted anything better.

  “How are you feeling?” she asked Trond. “You were badly burned.” Trond looked confused, hearing Orbital English, but he seemed to understand her attempt at translation that followed.

  “I awoke with a sore shoulder, a great thirst, and a headache. But I drank a full skin of water and now I feel well. Very well, with a little food in my belly. Though I’m still hungry. Esper, will you kill something for lunch? A deer would be nice. I could do well with a roast leg of deer.”

  From her limited medical knowledge she knew that Trond had sustained second-degree burns over a good portion of his chest, arms, and parts of his face (the remains of his beard were a sorry sight; most of it had burned off, and his left cheek and jaw were an angry red). A normal course of treatment might include days or even weeks of bed rest, intravenous fluids, antibiotics and steroids, and careful regulation of body temperature, blood pressure, and glucose levels. But Trond had slept off the worst of his injuries with a good night’s sleep. She’d seen his wildstrains, but it was one thing to look at genetic markers and quite another to see a badly burned man wake up the next morning, hale and chipper.

  “Did you slay the giants?” asked Trond. “The last thing I remember is being rubbed down in rancid grease by that huge horrid hag.” He sniffed his own arm. “I still reek of the stuff. I will need to bathe today.”

  “That reminds me of something,” Car-En said. “I’ll be back in a minute.” She retrieved the biosampler from her pack. The sequencing was complete; she brought up the results in her m’eye. She was eager to examine them, but first took a few minutes to reorganize her gear. She grabbed the remaining nutrient bars to share with Trond and Esper (she doubted they would like them, but at least she would have something to contribute to breakfast). Her rifle lay next to her pack where she’d left it, with a mostly full clip, safety on. Gear secure, she sat down to examine the genetic analysis of the child-giant.

  The results were fascinating. The giants appeared to be descended from subjects of a Corporate Age black-market ‘eternal youth’ experiment. There were suppressed myostatin genes (similar to Trond’s), but also souped-up IGF genes for enhanced growth. Remarkably, there were strains of shark DNA interwoven into the sequence, possibly to counteract the cancer risk from long-term growth-factor enhancement, or maybe for other longevity benefits. As far as Car-En could tell, these giants would keep growing for as long as they lived, with no upper size limit. Had that been the original intention, or was it some bizarre side effect of the mutated wildstrain?

  There were also genes for enhanced smell. Like bears and other wild omnivores, it was likely the giants could smell food from many kilometers away. That would be an adaptive trait in the current environment.

  “Car-En, do you want more bacon?” asked Trond from across the campfire. “Do you mind if I finish it?”

  “Go ahead,” she said cheerfully. Her own belly was full, an unfamiliar and odd sensation.

  Car-En heard the crack of a stick from the beech woods to the south, and rustling leaves. Probably a deer. Maybe Trond would get his lunch request after all. For an instant, she worried that the giants had tracked them to their camp, but dismissed the thought. They were far away from the ruins, nearly three kilometers to the north, and the giants didn’t seem particularly bright. She was glad she’d pressed Esper to go the extra distance.

  Esper and Trond hadn’t yet heard whatever was moving in the woods; Car-En’s cochlear implant gave her an advantage. She thought of the drones, and once again cursed Adrian for deactivating them. She’d gotten used to having a near-constant awareness of her safety perimeter. Without the swarm, she felt blind and vulnerable.

  Esper was speaking rapidly to Trond, who was chewing a mouthful of bacon and was only half listening. She considered translating Esper’s words, but instead kept her attention on the animal in the brush. Whatever it was, it was approaching their camp.

  Trond threw the greasy cooking stick into the embers, where the last of the fat sizzled away.

  Hungry giants with enhanced olfactory capabilities.

  “Esper! Trond! Watch out!” She shouted the warning in Orbital English, but her tone was clear enough. Esper stood and grabbed his bow.

  The giants emerged from the beech trees on the south side of the clearing. The female’s wild, bloodshot eyes fixed on Esper. She charged, clutching a long, rusty knife in each oversized fist. The male roared and stomped toward Car-En, waving a branch from a dead snag in his single hand.

  Car-En froze, terrified and dismayed. Why hadn’t they slit the creatures’ throats when they’d had the chance? Months ago, on the Stanford, such a notion would have seemed savage and cruel. Now it seemed like common sense, a missed opportunity that might now cost them their lives. She’d felt sorry for the giantess, seein
g her mourn her dead child. But now the mother’s rage might kill them all.

  Car-En backed away, trying to draw the male away from Esper and Trond. His bulbous eyes swiveled in their sockets, taking in the situation. He took a great stride forward, raised his club, and smashed it down. The fire-hardened wood struck Car-En’s rifle with a sharp crack. She winced. She had underestimated their intelligence.

  Esper leapt away, dodging the she-giant’s slashing knives. Trond drew his sword and stepped in between his brother and the female. The giantess lurched forward, slashing at the smith’s face. Trond parried the blow, breaking a chip of rusted steel from her decrepit blade. Trond drew back and struck the creature’s weakened longknife again with his steel sword, shattering it.

  “Ha!” yelled Trond. “Take that! You wanted to taste my flesh, but you will taste my steel instead!” He lunged forward and thrust the tip of his sword into her meaty thigh. The giantess screamed in pain and rage.

  Car-En caught a blur of movement to her left. Was there a third giant? She had no idea how many lived in those ruins; perhaps there was an entire tribe. She kept her eyes fixed on the one-handed male. He approached her slowly. While the female fought recklessly, this one seemed cautious. Was there a hint of fear in those bulging eyes? Somehow he’d lost a hand. The stump was wrapped in a dirty, bloodstained cloth. Even from where she stood she could smell the fetid stench of gangrenous flesh.

  The giant blinked, perhaps deciding that Car-En was not a threat. Unfortunately, she agreed with his assessment; she was unarmed, and her limited martial training would be useless against an opponent twice her height and ten times her weight. He snarled, raised his club, and charged.

  A figure leapt between them, a blur of blond hair and flashing steel. There was a sickening sound, the crunch of metal slicing through flesh and bone. The giant’s severed head hit the dirt with a thud. Car-En stumbled back as the headless body collapsed, shaking the ground.