“Ginger!” Bury shouted. He shoved past Ehta and ran to the girl’s side, grabbing her shoulders. She shook him off.
“Hey, now,” Ehta said, licking her lips. She dropped to her knees and lowered her head until she could see Ginger’s face. “Hey, come on, now, are you—are you okay?”
The girl didn’t speak. Her lips twitched a little, but Ehta didn’t think she was trying to form words. More likely she was in the middle of a seizure.
Caroline Ehta had never been much of a nurturer. She’d spent her life shooting at people, not tending to their hurts. She had no idea what to do. Why the hell hadn’t Bury gone for Lanoe? She tried to remember the minimal combat medicine she’d learned as a marine. Mostly that involved splinting broken limbs and putting pressure on bleeding wounds. What did you do for someone having a seizure? Put something in their mouth? Or were you not supposed to do that?
There was a flight surgeon on the carrier, she thought—one of the Centrocor people. And the cruiser’s sick bay had a medical drone. “We need to move her,” she told Bury, because that sounded right. “We need to get her to—”
“No,” Ginger said. “N-n-n-no. I’m f-fine.”
Ehta looked up at Bury. The boy’s face was racked with indecision.
“Help her,” he said, sounding desperate.
“Ginger?” Ehta said. “Ginger, talk to me. What’s going on?”
“She’s waking up-p-p,” Ginger said, through chattering teeth. “S-sedative’s wearing … off. I expect-t-t-ted this.”
The girl’s head drooped. She collapsed against the floor. She’d stopped shaking, or at least she wasn’t shaking as much as she had been before. Ehta could see how pale her face was, though, and her red hair was slick with sweat. It looked like Ginger was fighting this—this—whatever it was, whatever had come over her.
“I feel every … thing she feels,” Ginger said. “She’s so alone.”
“That’s what this is about?” Ehta asked. She shook her head. “She’s having full-blown convulsions because she’s lonely?”
“You don’t understand. I don’t think you can,” Ginger told her. She took long, deep, gulping breaths.
“Ginj, we want to,” Bury said. The Hellion couldn’t sweat or cry, but Ehta could read the suffering in his eyes. He really cared about Ginger. The two of them had been classmates, friends—even squaddies, for a little while. Ehta knew how deep that bond could run. “We want to understand. Help us.”
“They’re born into a harmony,” Ginger said. “Born surrounded by others like them. They’re called the Choir because they all think together. Each voice an individual, but … shared, their thoughts, their feelings, shared … all shared. Now she’s alone, for the first time in her life. She’s terrified of it. She’s only half-conscious now, not even half, but she … she knows. She knows what she’s going to hear when she comes to.”
“What?” Bury asked. “What is she going to hear, Ginj?”
“Silence. Unbearable silence.”
Ehta had heard enough. She grabbed Ginger under her armpits—the girl was too weak to fight her off—and pulled her up until she was sitting on the floor. Her face was red where she’d pressed it against the padding.
“We’re going to take you to the sick bay,” Ehta said. “I’ll get Lanoe to come down and talk to you, see what we can do about this. How does this work, this telepathy? How does she send you her thoughts?”
“Microwaves … antenna,” Ginger said. She was fading.
“That’s good,” Ehta said. “You can shield against microwaves pretty easy. Maybe we just need to wrap your head in metal foil. Then you won’t have to—”
“No!” the girl said, flailing her arms in a feeble attempt to push Ehta away. “She needs me! You can’t cut her … off. Not now. Not now! She’ll go insane!”
Bury made a quick little gesture, aborted before it could really get started. Ehta thought maybe he was going to try to wrap his arms around Ginger. Hug her. But he didn’t dare.
Ehta understood. What had happened to the girl—what had been done to her—was just too weird. Too wrong.
“Lock my suit. In case … there’s another.” Ginger lifted the fingers of one hand and then they fell again.
“Another seizure?” Ehta asked.
“It’s all … all we can do,” the girl told her. “Ehta. Please.”
Ehta grabbed Ginger’s wrist and brought up the display there. Found the emergency controls.
“Ehta,” Ginger said again. Her eyes were closed now.
Ehta touched a virtual key and Ginger’s suit stiffened, all its joints and flexible elements locking into place. An air bag in the collar ring inflated to hold Ginger’s neck completely immobile. Her helmet started to come up, but Ehta retracted it before it closed over her face completely.
“Ehta,” Ginger said, barely a whisper now. “I chose this. I wanted it.”
The marine just shook her head.
Lanoe put his ship down in the cruiser’s vehicle bay without so much as a bump. He jumped out of his cockpit and headed inside, into the axial corridor, where he sent a signal to Valk indicating that he wanted to talk.
“I’m here,” Valk said, as if he’d ever been anywhere else. “Come up to the wardroom. I have the disk up on a display here, and I have a really interesting computer model of its formation I want to show you. I think you’ll find that—”
Lanoe tuned the AI out. He twisted his neck around, his eyes darting up and down the axial corridor. He’d heard something.
“What was that?” Lanoe demanded. “Did you hear it?”
Valk answered chirpily. “Oh, yes,” he said. “That’s a scream.”
He could hear it clearly now. Someone—a woman—was shrieking in agony. It sounded like it was coming from below him. From the direction of the brig, he thought. It was Ginger. It had to be Ginger.
Lanoe’s eyes went wide. “What the hell is going on?” he demanded.
“She’s been doing that for the last ten minutes, I think,” Valk told him. “I think she’s in incredible pain. Or maybe just distress.”
“And you didn’t think to tell me?” Lanoe demanded.
“Oh. No, I suppose I didn’t,” Valk said. “Honestly, I hadn’t given it much thought. It was getting distracting so I just turned off most of my auditory pickups.”
Lanoe scowled at the wall. He was sure Valk would be able to see his expression. Could the AI understand it, though? Valk was becoming less human all the time. Becoming more of the machine he was.
Lanoe would have to do something about that, he thought. Eventually. In the meantime he had an emergency to deal with. He got moving, hurrying not up—toward the wardroom—but down.
“Wait,” Valk said. “Where are you going? What about my computer model?”
Lanoe didn’t even bother to reply.
“Shh,” Ehta said. “Shh.” She couldn’t think of what else to say. She gripped Ginger’s shoulders and pulled her close, unable to stand the screaming anymore, unable to bear Ginger’s dismay. Ehta had to try to help, even if she knew it was futile. The girl’s eyes had rolled up in her head and her face was slack, only her lungs seeming to still work. Across the room Bury sat slumped against a wall, staring, just staring at them.
“Shh,” Ehta said again. “Shh.”
In the cell, the alien’s big body twitched like a bug, one jointed leg kicking at the air. Rain-on-Stones thrashed and hit her head on the floor, but it was padded, and anyway nobody was going in there—nobody was going to try to comfort a three-meter-long insect crustacean whatever thing.
When Lanoe came hurrying into the room, Ehta barely looked up at him. He should have been there, she thought, he should have been waiting with the girl. After all she’d done for him, after everything he’d asked from her.
No, no, that wasn’t right. Ehta knew Lanoe would have been there for Ginger if he could. He was a good man, he was the best man she’d ever known. He’d saved her life once. She had followed
him through thick and thin. This wasn’t the thing that would break her loyalty to Aleister Lanoe.
It was just the screaming. It was just so hard to listen to Ginger, to hear her pain, and not want to lash out on her behalf. To—
Sudden silence crashed all around them. For a second Ehta didn’t understand what had changed.
“Lanoe,” Ginger said.
The girl had stopped screaming.
Ehta checked and saw that the girl’s eyes had rolled back down, that she was looking at Lanoe with a clear, dispassionate gaze. Her face had regained some of its muscle tone and even a little of its color.
That was all it took? For her to see Lanoe?
“You said we had ten days,” Lanoe said, standing in the hatchway. “That was barely a week ago.”
“I said we’d have ten days if I rationed the drug. I couldn’t,” Ginger said. “She was too close to waking up, so I had to give her full doses. I think she developed a tolerance to it.”
Ehta looked from one to the other of them. She could barely believe it. The transformation was so extreme. A moment ago Ginger had been crazy with pain, with suffering, and now …“You heard her, before?” she demanded. “Lanoe, you heard her screaming? That’s what brought you running?”
Lanoe frowned. Then he looked to the side and pointed at Bury. “Lieutenant,” he said. The kid didn’t even look up. Maybe he’d forgotten that he’d been promoted. “Bury,” Lanoe said, putting a little anger in the name. “Get back to your post.”
“I need to be with Ginger,” the Hellion replied.
“Why? You’re not helping her right now,” Lanoe told him. “You’re just sitting there. Looking foolish.”
Ehta wanted to gasp in surprise. That was just cold. But Bury got up, brushed off the back of his suit, and left without a word.
“I suppose you want me to leave, too,” Ehta said, when Bury had gone.
“No,” Lanoe told her. “You can hear this. But what I need to say to Ginger right now, it’s not for anybody else’s ears. Understood?”
“Yeah, of course,” Ehta said. You didn’t get far in the marines without knowing when to keep your mouth shut.
Lanoe came over and squatted down, his hands on his knees. He grunted just a little, an old man forced to adopt an uncomfortable posture. “Ginger,” he said. “Look at me. I know you’re fighting it off right now. I know it can’t be easy.”
“She’s almost awake,” Ginger told him. “She knows … she knows that she’s alone. That’s all. Not how far we came. She just wants to get back to the Choir, to rejoin the harmony. She still thinks that’s possible. When she wakes fully, when she understands—”
“I know,” Lanoe told her. At least his voice was softer now. “I know it’s going to be very difficult for her. Being cut off from the Choir. I guess it’ll be like—what? Waking up in the morning and realizing you’ve gone blind overnight? I wish I could help with that.”
“You don’t get it,” Ginger told him. “It won’t be like that.”
“No?”
“No. It’ll be like if you woke up tomorrow and you realized that you could still see just fine. But that every light in the universe had gone out.”
Lanoe shook his head. “You’ll have to help her. Keep her from—”
“Going insane? That may be too much to ask,” Ginger told him. “But I know my job. I know what I need to do.”
“Actually,” Lanoe said, “that wasn’t what I was going to ask you. I need to make sure she doesn’t talk to anyone else, no one but me. It’s crucial to our mission. Absolutely crucial that we keep her from talking, especially to any of the Centrocor people. I don’t trust them. I think they might try to get in here, to get access to her. We can’t let that happen. We can’t let them seize her. She’s the main thing keeping them under control.”
“Because …” Ginger glanced at Ehta. “Because she’s our only way home.”
Lanoe smiled. “Exactly.”
Something had just passed between them. Something secret. Ehta wished very much she knew what it was. Clearly, though, neither of them was going to tell her.
“You need me to isolate her further,” Ginger said. “It might actually help her to talk to lots of different people. But instead you want her in solitary confinement.”
“Not entirely solitary, since she’ll have you. And I’ll come by as often as I can, to check up on you, to talk. I promise.” He rose slowly to his feet. “Ehta,” he said, “can you step outside with me for a moment? We need to make sure these two are safe.”
Ehta gently extricated herself from Ginger. With her suit frozen the girl couldn’t move, but Ehta tried to make her as comfortable as possible, sitting there with her back against the wall. Ginger didn’t seem to care. Her eyes looked straight forward, not at anyone.
“Don’t go,” the girl said. “When he’s done with you—come back and stay with me, just a little longer. Please?”
“You got it, kid.”
Out in the hall Ehta gritted her teeth. Thought of all the things she would like to say to Lanoe just then. Most of them involved profanities.
But Ehta was a PBM, a Poor Bloody Marine, and she knew about duty, and respect for your commanding officers. That was one of the first things they taught you in combat school. You don’t have to like a man to stand at attention when he enters a room.
“I want guards down here, a full detail,” Lanoe said. “Set up shifts but make sure there’s never less than two marines outside this hatch.”
“Sir,” Ehta said.
“I’ll send a neddy over and we’ll see what we can do to soundproof the brig. In case she starts screaming again.”
“Sir,” she said.
“I want a full report on everyone who comes and goes in this hallway, even if they’re on their way somewhere else, even if they’re just passing through. I want to know if they so much as glance at that hatch. Understood?”
“Understood, sir,” she said.
He nodded and turned on his heel, walking away.
She stepped back inside the brig, to see that Ginger had fallen over. Her suit was still locked, so she had to lie there bent over, as if she were a statuette of a sitting girl that someone had knocked over on its side. Ehta hurried over and propped her back up. The girl hadn’t started screaming again, which had to be a good sign.
“You fought through it,” Ehta said. “You brought yourself back, when he came. You won’t let him see you hurting, will you?”
Ginger’s eyes turned to focus on Ehta’s face. She did not answer Ehta’s question, not directly. Instead she started whispering, words spilling out of her so fast and so low that Ehta could barely make them out.
“I need to tell you something,” Ginger said. “There isn’t much time. I need to say this before she wakes up. Once she does, she’ll hear everything I say, everything I think. And I don’t want her to hear this.”
“Go ahead,” Ehta told her.
As desperate and as short of time as she was, Ginger seemed to have real trouble getting the words out, though. Her eyes filled with tears and her lip quivered. But then she cleared her throat and stuck her jaw out and clearly worked hard to get control over herself.
“It’s too much,” she said.
“What?”
Ginger shook her head. “It’s too much. I can’t do it—I can’t take all her pain. I can’t save her, and trying will … will … I won’t make it.”
“Kid,” Ehta said. “If you need me to stand up to Lanoe for you, I—”
“You can’t. Nobody can—he’s on a crusade.”
Ehta frowned. “He’s got a mission here. He has a lot on his mind, sure, but—”
“He’s hell-bent on revenge, and he won’t let anyone stop him. He won’t set me free. He needs Rain-on-Stones too much. He doesn’t care if I don’t survive what’s about to happen. That’s just collateral damage.”
“Kid … come on,” Ehta said.
But she knew Ginger was right. About it a
ll.
Lanoe, the man who’d saved Ehta’s life, had changed. She didn’t want to think about how, about what it meant. But she couldn’t deny it forever.
“Ehta. You need to find another way. I know I’m asking a lot but, Ehta—please. Please. Help me.”
And then her eyes rolled back up into her head. And she started once more to scream.
Lanoe headed up to the wardroom that served as the cruiser’s bridge, climbing up the axial corridor hand over hand. Valk kept sending him messages, green pearls appearing in the corner of his eye. He flicked his eyes to dismiss them—he intended to speak to the AI in person.
When he reached the top of the ladder, though, and came out into the wardroom, he wasn’t sure that was an option anymore. Valk’s suit lay slumped across the controls. The helmet was down and the sleeves hung slack, the gloves dangling and brushing the floor. The AI was making no attempt to impersonate a human being anymore.
“I’m here,” Valk said, his voice coming from a speaker in the ceiling. “As much as I can be said to be anywhere. It’s an interesting question, actually, one I—”
“Save it,” Lanoe told him.
The AI went quiet.
Bury sat at one of the narrow tables, a half-finished squeeze tube of food abandoned in front of him. He looked up at Lanoe with feverish eyes. “Ginger,” he said. “Is she okay? I mean, is she going to be okay?”
“Sure,” Lanoe said. An outright lie but the kid needed to hear it. “She’ll be fine. Listen, I know seeing her like that was rough. Take the rest of your shift off. Go catch up on some sleep, read a text, whatever.”
Bury’s face creased in concern, the plastination across his nose wrinkling and fracturing the light. “Is something wrong, sir?”
“What makes you say that?” Lanoe asked.
“You’re being strangely nice to me.”
Lanoe considered upbraiding the Hellion on his candor, but instead he sighed and shrugged. “It wasn’t easy for me, either. Listening to those screams. Maybe today we don’t stand on ceremony. Just get out of here. I need to talk to Valk.”
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