Emissaries from the Dead

by Adam-Troy Castro

  Five, that I hadn’t made peace with Bringen. He’d indicated a thousand ways that he’d wanted to, and I’d shut him out every single time. I didn’t need his response to my mail to know that I’d misjudged him. I knew I had.

  Six, that I hadn’t made a path for myself instead of allowing the Dip Corps to choose my path for me.

  Seven, that I’d adopted the face of the monster I was supposed to be, instead of saying the hell with what people think and becoming someone who might have achieved a little peace.

  Eight, that I’d turned away so many who had tried to befriend me. There had been so many names over the years, passing in and out of my life like rumors: Dejah, Roman, Mikal, too many to name, all refusing to give up on me even after I’d declared myself a lost cause.

  Nine, that I wouldn’t get to finish this thing that had started between me and the Porrinyards. I sure as hell knew what it was and I sure as hell knew I couldn’t trust it. Either way I didn’t care. It was just too goddamned unfair to be losing it now before I even got a chance to explore it.

  Ten, that I’d allowed my past to become my all-purpose excuse. It shouldn’t have been. All it ever did was put up a few walls. It wouldn’t have defeated me, to the extent it had, with me its eager collaborator.

  When all was said and done, I’d been my own worst Unseen Demon.

  But that was all right.

  “An.”

  I’d passed the point where regrets meant a damn.

  “Drea.”

  Like fear, and desire, and ambition, and unsolved mysteries, they were just a waste of my time now.

  “Andrea!”

  All I had left now was the way I faced the little time I had left.

  So I opened my eyes and faced the clouds and saw them, still floating like cotton so far below, still roiling with angry thunder, still waiting for me to join them. I’d keep my eyes open for as long as I could, despite the building wind that was already inflating my cheeks and making a grimace out of my lips. Only the irritation of the air pressure against my eyelids made the tears roll back along my temples: nothing else. Not

  “ANDREA!”

  I almost thought it was Lastogne again. But no, the shout came from my immediate left, from a burned and battered object falling alongside me. Turning my head to see it almost required more strength than I had. Believing what I saw required considerably more effort than that: it was a skimmer, diving straight down in an attempt to match my velocity. The passenger cab paralleled me, with the two standing occupants, Oscin and Skye, both oriented like horizontal protrusions from a sheer vertical surface.

  Less than an arm’s length separated me from Oscin’s outstretched hand. It was enough distance to exclude me from the skimmer’s local grav. The skimmer, not built for speed, was having a hell of a hard time pacing me. Only my blunt position against the wind was slowing me enough to permit even this brief approach.

  I didn’t even want to know how much fancy maneuvering they’d needed to pull off just to get this close.

  They yelled at me again, the words whipped away from the wind.

  I waggled my arms. That did something terrible to my aerodynamics and I veered away from the skimmer. For one queasy instant I overcompensated, and found myself diving a direct vertical that left it far behind. Then I flattened myself against the wind again, slowed, felt a nauseating shock wave against my legs as the skimmer almost slammed into my back, and felt that familiar shape swallow up the sky again, this time to my right.

  This time, when I looked, Skye was sitting on Oscin’s shoulders, reaching for me with everything she had. Her face was desperate and her chin smeared with blood. Her wrists and hands just barely cleared the ionic shields, grasping for me. I almost corrected the wrong way a second time, remembered the way the same action had affected my fall only a few seconds ago, and this time converged on the two familiar faces, at a speed which immediately made me think of head-on collisions with brick walls.

  Too late, I realized that I was not the only person in danger here. One miscalculation, and the weight of my own falling body could yank them both free of the skimmer’s local grav. I couldn’t be responsible for that. I wouldn’t. Given another second to think of it, I would have veered away and gone to my death, rather than allow them to sacrifice themselves for me.

  A gust of wind blinded me just as Skye’s hands converged on my wrist.

  Have you ever passed through one zone of local grav into another, without either warning or a decent period of transition? Everything changes in less time than it takes your neurons to fire. In this case, the skimmer at my side was suddenly and without any argument the skimmer beneath me. I slammed against the seats, doubling over, and almost rolled over the side as the local grav flickered off, rendering the cloudscape down again.

  Both Oscin and Skye were clutching at available handholds with their free hands, while using the other two to grab on to me. It took me a second to realize what they’d done: switched off the local grav at the instant I was pulled inside it, to avoid snapping my neck and rupturing every organ in my body as I was forced into a sudden and unexpected perpendicular jerk.

  My legs flailed behind me. I screamed. I pulled myself closer to my Porrinyards and, the instant I had the chance, threw both my arms around one of the seat backs, once again certain I was going to die.

  I don’t remember any of the next thirty seconds at all.

  Then the grav came on again. My knees settled against the deck. My head bounced lightly against the back of the seat, with a force not much worse than a painful thud. I felt my empty stomach slosh, looking for something to expel.

  I realized, with dull amazement, that we’d stopped.

  The Porrinyards hadn’t managed anything approaching their usual grace. Oscin lay sprawled against the control panel, his forehead bleeding from a nasty diagonal gash. Skye, curled on her side beside him, looked worse: the blood I’d seen on her chin a few seconds ago had been joined by a swelling bruise on her cheek. For the first time I also saw the nasty flash-burn that had turned her right hand a bright shade of red.

  They managed to sit up just as I did, their faces tilting at complementary angles.

  Then they smiled, in the manner of people sharing a naughty personal joke. “Why, Andrea. You look good enough to eat.”

  I didn’t quite get the punchline until I tried to lift my hand off the deck and needed extra strength just to overcome the glue. Then I understood. I was still coated, head to toe, with a thick layer of manna juice. I was good enough to eat. Hell, I was downright delectable.

  And though I might not have said it, under other circumstances…sometimes the straight line is just too perfect.

  We didn’t have to swap information just yet.

  There were other urgencies.

  “You better come here and taste some.”

  They scurried over, on hands and knees.

  We took the skimmer away from the clouds, sharing our experiences of the last few minutes. Mine elicited winces of sympathy, and at one point a fervent, “Juje, we’ll make you a high-altitude specialist yet!”

  Theirs was a little more dizzying. They hadn’t gotten away from the Heckler until they hit upon the radical tactic of using one of the dragons for cover. Flying alongside it, straining the skimmer to its absolute limits in order to keep up with the giant creature’s flight speed, they’d taken advantage of the Heckler’s obvious reluctance to fire weapons in its vicinity, remaining safe in its shadow until the Heckler gave up and flew off.

  They said, “I’m surprised he didn’t come after you next.”

  I sucked some manna juice off my fingertips. “He?”

  “He. She. Whatever. I’m just using the pronoun for convenience. Either way, I have trouble understanding why you weren’t the next target.”

  My ragged fingernails were still glistening from the juice of the Uppergrowth. “I wasn’t expecting to survive the trouble I was already in. Whoa. Damn.”

  “What?”
<
br />   “One of this place’s smaller mysteries just solved itself for me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Not a particularly important one, but one that adds to the big picture. Believe me, I’ll be addressing it before long. You were saying?”

  “I was wondering why your friend didn’t come after you when we proved too hard to get. And I know you were under attack yourself, but as long as he’d given up on us, why didn’t he just zip on up and make sure? Why behave like a cheap neurec villain and trust in a cliffhanger to take care of you?”

  I bit my thumbnail. The clicking sound repelled me, and I felt no urge to do it again. “I don’t know. There could have been a deadline. Maybe he had to get back to the hangar so he wouldn’t be missed. Or maybe he had something else to—” At which point I froze. “Oh, shit.”

  The Porrinyards saw the look in my eyes. “What?”

  “Gibb.”

  For a little while, everything had seemed better.

  And then we returned to the site of what had been Hammocktown.

  Some of the support structures remained, but everything else had been twisted out of recognition, or ripped free of its moorings to plunge into the clouds below. Thickets of loose cables dangled from the Uppergrowth, twisting in the winds, some trailing strips of tattered canvas like banners scarred in battle.

  Everything else that had been here last night, including Stuart Gibb, was gone.

  22

  EMISSARIES FROM THE DEAD

  The mood at the hangar defined grim. The indentures of Hammocktown wandered, directionless, between the sleepcubes set up for them, speaking in hushed voices, weeping, or staring at each other with eyes that could have belonged to any decimated army. With all bravado failed in the aftermath of Gibb’s apparent death, the stench of failure hung over the place like a cloud. Everybody knew that their mission had failed and that the only issue still remaining to them was just how soon they’d be allowed to leave: if they were not prisoners of war or, worse, captives waiting for their own executions.

  Lastogne, who remained in charge by default, had taken pity on our condition and allowed us to stop for first-aid and a change of clothes before debriefing. I could have used a quick sonic, but I was so soiled from my ordeal on the Uppergrowth that I locked myself inside the transport and scoured myself with a luxurious hot-water shower. I didn’t restrict myself to the five-minute limit, either. I dialed both the temperature and the water pressure all the way into the red zone and stood with my face in the direct path of the assault, my eyes closed and my arms hanging limp at my sides.

  By the time I emerged from the transport, wearing a fresh black uniform, I didn’t need all that much sensitivity to feel the fresh hostility directed against me on all sides. Before, I’d just been a severe, hard-bitten suit from New London: maybe a little cold, maybe a little crazy, but at the very minimum a professional, and a voice of authority who had to be respected. Now I was an irresponsible maverick with a scandalous past whose stunts might have gotten Stuart Gibb killed. I couldn’t take a step without feeling eye-daggers sinking into my back.

  Only one person, Oskar Levine, asked if I was all right.

  I nodded, astonished him with a hug, then reported to Peyrin Lastogne in the sleepcube where he’d scheduled the debriefing.

  The Porrinyards were already there, bracketing Lastogne on both sides, their expressions neutral, their eyes warning me to tread carefully. Oscin wore a plastiskin bandage on his forehead. Skye had treated her right hand with a gloss of burn gel. She hadn’t done anything for her facial wounds, either because she considered them too minor to worry about or, more likely, because she hadn’t had the time. But it was Lastogne who looked haggard. He bore the look of a man who hadn’t slept in days, and who no longer believed he’d manage the trick any time soon. “Counselor. You look cleaner, at least.”

  “Thank you,” I said, though I recognized it as the furthest thing from a compliment. “Have you been in touch with New London?”

  “I’m not all that sure you’re the one entitled to ask questions here.”

  “I’m sorry, sir, but until relieved by my superiors, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing. Have you been in touch with New London?”

  His eyes continued to burn like lasers. “I’ve sent a report, but mine won’t cause as much damage as the one the AIsource just shared with me. They’ve declared our entire party persona non grata on this station. They’ve said that no further visitors will be allowed for the foreseeable future, and that any future observers, if permitted, will need to be appointed by one of the other powers, probably the Bursteeni or the Tchi. They’ve further said that we will only be allowed to stay in the hangar until we can be outfitted to leave.”

  “Have they given a reason?”

  “Yes,” he said. “You.”

  My throat tightened. “Me?”

  “They say you engaged in hostilities against the Brachiators. Specifically, that you blinded one. Is that true?”

  Oh, that. “I was taking action to defend myself.”

  “An argument that carries some weight with me. But it would carry more weight if you had been authorized for unsupervised interaction with these indigenes in the first place. We’ve always been very careful to restrict that authorization to people who had been trained for it. You go, without authorization, without training, and without any aptitude at high-altitude survival, and within a few hours alienate them so badly that all of our work building a relationship with them has been busted all to hell.”

  “It was already showing cracks, sir.”

  “You’re talking about the Warmuth incident. But Warmuth didn’t get us expelled from the Habitat. Warmuth didn’t destroy our entire purpose for being here. Warmuth didn’t drag two of our best people,” he indicated the Porrinyards, who refrained from providing one of their frequent reminders that they only counted as one person, “into such a severe infraction of protocol that they’ll be working off the penalties for the rest of their lives.”

  I remained calm. “I agree, sir. But that’s not all Warmuth didn’t do.”

  “Really?”

  “She also didn’t survive.”

  Lastogne’s cheeks twitched. “Necessity will take you only so far, Counselor. Even in the Corps.”

  “On the contrary,” I said, with unwavering confidence, “I think it’ll take me just far enough.”

  He turned toward the Porrinyards, appealing for answers, but finding nothing except an equanimity that matched my own.

  For the first time, it seemed to occur to him that they were not frightened at all: not of him, not of disciplinary action from the Dip Corps, and not of consequences. They were serene, almost happy. He asked them, not me, “What?”

  I started to tell him, choked on the first few words, cleared my throat, and found my voice still wanting. “I’ve had a very rough night, sir, and I think this is the first time I’ve ever had a meeting on this station when somebody didn’t offer me a buzzpatch or a drink.”

  Lastogne could only twitch with the mortification of any professional diplomat reminded that he’d neglected certain formalities. “What would you like?”

  “Anything alcoholic. As long as it isn’t that stuff you make from manna juice. I’ve had enough of that particular taste today.”

  The Porrinyards nodded. “Though we have found out, sir, that it is a delicacy that improves with presentation. It’s a fine sauce.”

  Allowing this to pass without requesting clarification, Lastogne opened one of the crates and returned with a tube of something amber. I thanked him, sucked it dry, blinked away the warmth that suffused my aching limbs, and contemplated the empty before handing it back to him. “Nobody here ever understood the Brachiator beliefs about Life and Death.”

  “These things take time, Counselor. It’s an entire alien psychology.”

  “Nonsense,” I said, my voice rising. “The Brachiators may be alien in ways we haven’t come close to exploring yet, but their underst
anding of these matters are as simple as basic arithmetic.”

  “That New Ghost, Half-Ghost nonsense—”

  “—is not nonsense. It’s completely sensible. Too bad it’s also a viewpoint that Gibb’s people, as good as you are, have always been woefully ill-equipped to understand. I’m perfectly willing to admit you’re good people. You just happen to be the wrong people for this particular job. It’s, all in all, one of the worst staffing errors I’ve ever seen.”

  He shook his head in automatic denial. “I can’t wait to hear you defend this one.”

  “It was a simple mistake, sir. When staffing an outpost in an environment whose inhabitants cling to the very sky, it only made sense to seek out people with a special affinity for heights: mountain climbers, acrobats, orbital construction workers, and other people used to working at high altitudes every day. People like that could thrive in the conditions here. But they were also the people least likely to grasp what the Brachiators go on about.”

  “I don’t—”

  I didn’t let him finish. “People like that, like you, have a three-dimensional mindset. They know the gulf between themselves and the surfaces far below them, and are able to perceive the distance as one that can be traveled, even if only by falling. The unspoken assumption here has always been that the Brachiators share that perception…which is silly, since you only have to look at the way they’re built to notice that they’re designed to spend their entire lives staring at a surface right above their faces. That’s not the perspective of a species destined to understand the panorama. That’s the perspective of a species with limited understanding of up and down, and a perspective your outpost filled with mountain climbers and professional aerialists was not about to grasp. I, on the other hand, have always been afraid of heights, and I know in my gut what the Brachiators know from birth: that the Uppergrowth is Life, and everything below it is Death.”