In the water, gleams of light shot upstream, flashing and fighting against the current. Greenish-white they were, and gold, with rare reds and blues. Here a gleam, there a multiple glow; a moment's quiescence, and then half a tetron of radiant forms raced up the stream, then yet more, and more. Once an effulgent fish, as long as Darioch's hand, burst from the water in a streak of cold flame.
"The sophonids tell us that these were created by the philosophonts of The Heights, by Altering the germ-plasm of common fishes," Darioch mused. "They once were far more decorative, with fringed fins and other gewgaws, but generations in the wild have deprived them of such useless fancies."
"A childish pleasure indeed," said Ziana, awe in her voice, kneeling on a cushion from the chair and peering into the black stream.
For some moments they watched the fish fighting their way upstream.
"That woman ghosted you today, eh?" Ziana asked softly, her face toward the light-shot water.
"Lisiani, you mean," he said, after a moment. "No, heh, she visited in person. Rode Wingfoot, her Flamboyant. Changed from travel attire to a most seductive creation before sending Ifft the Weft to me." His tone attempted lightness.
"She wants you to return to her, of course."
"Of course, heh, and of course I wish I could go. But she made no attempt to urge me, which I thought indicates some largeness of mind."
Ziana sighed, but her tense posture did not relax. "They will continue to come at you until they p-persuade you, I have no doubt."
"No doubt they will continue to try. So far at least I remain strong."
Still her face was turned away from him, fitfully revealed by the gleams from the water. "They will succeed, someday. You will go from me and leave me alone. I-I w-will have n-no one b-but G-G-Ginchy—"
"Ziana," he said, attempting to put his arm around her shoulder. She pulled away, weeping openly. "Ziana, ha, calm yourself, I have resolved never to leave you while you need me—"
"B-but you will go—you w-will l-leave—"
He succeeded in embracing her, and she turned frantically to him, flinging her weakened arms around his neck, crying—almost shrieking, "Don't leave me, och please don't leave me, Darioch, Darioch, och please—"
She clung to him in a passion of tears that soon exhausted her; the shudders that shook them were his own. Finally her passion subsided; her breathing steadied from the sobs, caught and came and caught again. She took a long shaky breath.
"I am sorry to have d-distressed you, Darioch," she said, trembling in his arms.
"I am sorry you were distressed."
"I m-must also b-beg your pardon for expressing doubts of you. O Darioch, you have been so good to me, and to be reproached for faithlessness as a reward, ha! I am so sorry— my illness makes me weak in more than one way—O Darioch—"
He squeezed her shoulders. "Shush, ho, you'll be weeping again, and already you are exhausted. I am not offended, I am only disturbed—O Ziana, my heart breaks to see you reduced to this, ha!" His cry rang with grief, tears trickled down his tense cheeks.
Presently he mastered himself. In the glow of moons' light reflected from the pond, her expression was calm, relieved, affectionate.
"O Darioch," she said softly. "I know you have never loved me as you love Lisiani, yet I know that you do love me in lesser fashion. With this I must be content, and I am."
"I suppose I must love you; who could not, eh? I know that I have always esteemed and admired you. I will not leave you."
"So say you now, but if higher duty calls, I myself will urge you to go. O Darioch, it is rarely all or nothing in human affairs; I may recover enough to accompany if not help you. Or more like, I will die and free you."
He opened his mouth to speak, but she put a finger over it.
"True it is, our life does not well fit us for death, or the contemplation of it. Come, my foolish fit is passed. And now I am quite exhausted; I fear I shall be asleep before you carry me up the hill." She turned her head, observed the fish still struggling lambently upstream. "See, the fish, wiser than we, get on with their little lives, and all our foolish passions they disregard."
"Dr. Reevish was quite right about your beauty and grace," Darioch said. "When you smile thus, you might be a lucent bottle, with the light glowing through."
"Och, if only the doctor could learn to flatter me in such wise, how much more enjoyable our game, ha." But her eyelids sagged as she spoke.
Darioch helped her to her feet, picked up the cushion, and lifted her. At the pool, he contemplated the wheeled chair and the hill. Dropping the cushion in the chair, he mounted the path.
Partway up he saw Ginchy, standing breathlessly next to a tree.
"Forgive me, mea dominus," she began in a whisper, but he hissed. More quietly still, she asked, "She does how, eh?"
"She sleeps, heh, she is merely exhausted."
"She shall sleep well tonight. I will fetch the chair."
At the top of the slope, as they entered the yard, the flood of moons' light poured full on Ziana's face. She opened her eyes, looked up at Darioch.
"I am such a burden to you," she said quietly. He looked at her, said, "No, my dear, bearing you makes me strong."
She looked at him wonderingly, then closed her eyes wearily and her head fell on his shoulder.
Darioch carried his wife into Jollicot, rubbed her back well, and disposed her in her bed, all without waking her. He turned off the air to the lucent bottle, and sitting on crossed legs, placed his palm on Ziana's cheek. In sleep and dimming light the ravages of the disease were erased, and she seemed but a girl.
Head bowed, touching her face, he sat by her while the light waned and sleep came at last to soothe and obliviate.
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Determined Spirits
Grey Rollins | 8212 words
His mouth tasted strongly of wet dog fur and burned rubber. They'd said it would be bad when he woke, but he hadn't thought it would be this repulsive. He lay there, only half-awake, considering the taste in his mouth. One thing was certain, he'd be glad to brush his teeth.
No one had come for him yet so he kept his eyes closed, drifting between sleep and a muzzy awareness of his Hibernation Bay—his cocoon. It was soft and warm and quiet and he was close to weightless within it, as though drifting on a cloud. There was a gentle, almost subliminal susurration coming from above his head as filtered, recycled air entered the chamber, to exit below his feet. So far, it was dark... well, nearly so. Dim light from tell-tales made it through his eyelids. One must be blinking because the light kept flickering, bright—dim—bright—dim... in time with a thin, reedy beep.
Blinking?
Adrian Cunningham forced his eyes open, feeling the crust of sleep break free as he did so.
Nothing should be blinking. They'd drilled that into the colonists, knowing that they would need to follow simple protocols as they came out of suspended animation because their minds would be slow. Blinking meant something was wrong. Blinking was bad!
Adrian tried to breathe deeply, but only succeeded in starting a coughing fit. His diaphragm and lungs weren't accustomed to anything more than the most minimal movement. He needed to oxygenate his blood so his brain would work, but his body wouldn't cooperate.
Blinking lights and the onboard computer chose me to wake. That means Gandhi thinks it's a mechanical problem, elseways it would have woken someone else. But I was second—third?—on the roster. Why me? Why not Henri or... or whoever was second? Or was there a second? He couldn't remember.
He gingerly tried another deep breath, but his lungs burned and he coughed convulsively, straining against the straps that kept his body from drifting.
Coughing's just another way to breathe hard, Adrian thought, but the rationalization brought him no comfort.
All he could see lying on his back was the top of his cocoon—pleated rolls of beige fabric, twenty centimeters from his nose. With great effort, he unfastened the restraints and rolled onto his left side so he could face the terminal set into the side of the cocoon. There were thirty-six indicators in a six-by-six grid next to a small screen. Below it was a miniature keyboard.
Three of the indicators were flashing red, but his eyes refused to focus. He blinked, squeezed his eyes shut, then tried again without success. Slowly, painfully, for his arm muscles were stiff, he brought up his hand and pawed clumsily at his eyes, dislodging the gummy grit that had formed as he slept.
Squinting, he peered again at the lights. Not good. There was hard vacuum on the other side of the hatch to his cocoon. He twisted his neck, ignoring the creaking as his vertebrae protested, so he could peer out the palm-sized window above his head. All he saw was darkness, punctuated by colored dots from the external displays on other colonists' cocoons across the bay. There was power, but the main lights were not on. He tried to think of reasons why that might be, but failed to come up with anything that made sense.
He screwed his eyes shut again, then reached for the keyboard and began to slowly and carefully press buttons with numb fingertips. The screen came alive with red flashing icons and warnings not to attempt to exit his cocoon. He rubbed at the stubble on his chin with the back of his hand, grimacing. Not that his cocoon's hatch would open into vacuum, but the people who had designed the system wanted to make sure he understood why he couldn't get out.
He needed to get to the Main Operations Deck. Once on the MOD, he'd be able to investigate what had happened. Had there been air pressure, he'd just pop the hatch of his cocoon and climb out, then down the ladder that ran next to it. That was out of the question, so he began working his way through a series of menus on his screen, telling the ship's computer that he'd need an accessor with a hard suit. Once he'd requested that, he pulled the lines from the Eison intravenous port on his right forearm, removed the catheter and various other connections that were necessary for suspended animation, then spent the next few minutes practicing breathing.
There were two types of vacuum suits: A tight, form-fitting suit and a large hard-shell suit. Adrian would have preferred the smaller, more maneuverable one, but there was no way to get from his cocoon into the smaller one. He would have to seal the hatch of his cocoon against the access portal in the back of the hard suit and slither into it.
He knew he needed to think, but he was still thickheaded from hibernation. It was all he could do to keep from drifting off, no matter how many times he told himself that over three hundred lives depended on him being alert. Giving in to the residue of drugs in his system, and drifting away into comfortable, woolly sleep where he wouldn't have to worry about annoying things like life and death, was nearly irresistible.
He forced himself into a contorted position where he could look out the window at the top of his cocoon and over to the right. He was rewarded with a distorted view of the blinking yellow warning lights on the long central column of the accessor as it slowly approached. The accessor ran on a recessed track in the deck. When it drew even with his cocoon, it stopped and a thick, forked arm, one side of which gripped an egg-shaped vacuum suit, rose from deck level until it was even with the hatch to his cocoon.
The back of the suit carried a reinforced accordion tunnel capable of making an airtight seal with other surfaces. Once the tunnel was sealed to the outside of his cocoon, he directed it to pressurize using his keypad. He un-dogged his hatch manually and slid out into the suit. There was enough room, barely, for him to awkwardly twist around and close the hatch to his cocoon, and then the port in the back of the suit. Once that was done, he turned on the suit's headlights, retracted the tunnel, and detached from the accessor.
He saw that there were quite a few cocoons without power—or at least there were no lights showing on their displays. Adrian exhaled noisily. He hoped the other hibernation decks were in better shape than his.
The hibernation decks were long and narrow. Three sides were filled with two rows of fifteen cocoons; thirty per side, ninety per hibernation deck. There were four identical hibernation decks, for a total of 360 colonists. The fourth side held the track for the accessor, a ladder, and storage bays. The slow rotation of the ship made the fourth side "up," but the pull was gentle enough he had no trouble holding onto the ladder. His main problem was the numbness in his hands. He was afraid that he would lose his grip if he didn't concentrate. His feet were no problem; the boots of the hard suits had hooks on the toes to latch over the rungs.
Left hand. Grip. Right hand. Grip. Left foot. Hook. Right foot. Hook.
He climbed down the short ladder next to his cocoon, then carefully shifted over to the longer one on the fourth wall that would take him to the end of the hibernation deck. Over and over, he performed the same ritual. Keep it rhythmic. Keep it si
mple. Even if he lost his grip and fell, it was only three meters or so to the outside wall and the impact would be trivial. There were clear, protective plastic shields over the external controls for the cocoons so he wouldn't accidentally hit a button and cause a problem, but that didn't give him license to be careless, and he didn't like the idea of losing time.
If the hibernation deck lacked air pressure, it was possible that the MOD was also in vacuum even though all hatches had been sealed before departure. There weren't many vacuum suits, because the colonists aboard the Gandhi were not expected to need to work in space. The plan was for the majority of the colonists to use a Holmes Door to get to the surface of the planet Anish once the shuttles had landed and established a temporary base of operations. The vacuum suits were only intended to be used by a relatively small number of people for routine maintenance... or for emergencies.
The cylindrical central access silo had not lost power or pressure. He waited impatiently by a rack of empty vacuum suits while it de-pressurized, before undogging the hatch from the hibernation deck and squeezing the bulky hard suit through. Although it would have been faster in the short run to repressurize the access tube, make his way to the MOD, and work in a shirt sleeve environment, he anticipated going back out to investigate and make repairs. So rather than go through repeated pressurizations and depressurizations, he left it in vacuum and depressurized the MOD also. Once inside, he withdrew his arms from the suit's sleeves and used the keypad within his suit to bring up the Engineering station. Multiple screens awoke and began displaying status reports on the condition of the ship. He was relieved to see that only the galley and Hibernation Deck 3—his—were in vacuum. Still, that was a lot of air to lose. The loss of light on the hibernation deck was due to a tripped breaker, which he reset.
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