Changing Vision

by Julie E. Czerneda

  “I didn’t try,” I objected, not sure why this mattered so much to him. “I see no reason the membrane alone would have stopped me. Now that I know its properties, I would simply cycle into web-form. As myself, I could absorb the energy. Why?”

  Paul’s eyes were dark and somber. “Because, old friend, this means someone, somewhere, knows enough about a web-being to design a trap capable of subduing you—if only this once.”

  “And gave it to Kearn,” I added uncomfortably, thinking it through. “Kraal tech.” There wasn’t much doubt in my mind, and I could see echoing agreement on his face. Well, this couldn’t get much worse, I told myself.

  “What else do they have?” Paul speculated, immediately proving me wrong.

  Elsewhere

  LEFEBVRE’S eyes snapped open. There weren’t too many things that could rouse him like this from an exhausted sleep, but a footstep in his supposedly empty cabin was one of them. He lay still, breathing easily, trying to identify the location of the intruder.

  There!

  He lunged over the side of his bed, sweeping out both arms. The unseen figure gave a sharp cry of pain as Lefebvre’s momentum drove them both to the floor in a pile of covers and limbs. He kept one hand wrapped around what felt like a neck, reaching back with the other to snap on the light.

  Then Lefebvre let go. “Sir?” he exclaimed, squinting down at Kearn. “Are you all right? What are you doing in my quarters?”

  Kearn’s eyes were watering, his mouth working without words coming out. Lefebvre offered his hand, but the other Human refused, pushing free of the tangle of covers as he stood up unsteadily. “I w–wanted,” Kearn began, then rubbed his throat as though it helped. “I needed to talk to you, Captain. Privately.” With a familiar trace of affronted dignity in his voice, he added: “I hardly expected to be assaulted trying to wake you up. That’s a nasty habit. You could have killed me.”

  “Sorry, sir,” Lefebvre said, hiding a smile. He offered Kearn his desk chair, then, on a whim, grabbed two glasses and the half-bottle of Brillian brandy Timri had kept from the Feneden for him, before taking the remaining chair. “Drink, sir?”

  Kearn blinked slowly. Lefebvre took in the puffy, shadowed eyes, and sallow skin. Kearn looked pasty at the best of times, but now it was as if he hadn’t slept for weeks. Without waiting for a reply, Lefebvre poured a generous dollop of brandy into each glass and pressed one into Kearn’s unresisting hand.

  “Cheers, sir.” Lefebvre tossed back his own drink in one gulp, welcoming the soothing burn on the back of his throat. Kearn followed suit, coughing as the alcohol hit, but keeping it down. Lefebvre refilled both glasses before asking: “What can I do for you, sir?”

  “Sir?” Kearn stared at the glass in his hand like someone suspecting poison, then downed the next shot in two quick swallows, barely wincing this time. “Sir.” He gave a bitter laugh. “As my commission is unlikely to continue once our current mission ends, Captain Lefebvre,” he said, matter-of-factly, “you might as well call me Lionel.”

  Lefebvre didn’t argue the point. As if my career will last any longer, he reminded himself, toasting the person most likely to destroy it. “Rudy,” he invited, before draining his glass.

  “Rudy. Thank you.” This as Lefebvre filled their glasses a third time. “Rudy, I have a question to ask you,” Kearn continued. “Off the record. Just you and me.”

  Lefebvre kept his face open and neutral, despite the alarm bells ringing in his head. “That’s fine, Lionel,” he said, “as long as ‘off the record’ means you aren’t recording this.”

  “This isn’t a conversation I want recorded either.” Kearn thumped his empty glass rather hard on the desk. “I dream about the Esen Monster every night, you know,” he began slowly, heavily. “Fifty years, I’ve dreamed Her. Sometimes, I win—and everyone believes me. Sometimes,” his pudgy fingers reached out into the air, “I almost catch Her, but she escapes, running away. But since I found out Ragem was alive, I’ve been losing, Rudy. I’ve been losing to Her—and She destroys everything.” There was, Lefebvre decided, something appalling about the haunted look on Kearn’s face. It was the look of a being who has faced his own death over and over again. No one deserved that.

  “Ask your question,” Lefebvre said, knowing he was being a fool, but pitying Kearn nonetheless. He shared the last of the bottle, sucking out the dregs before tossing it behind him. “After all, this is just the two of us, Rudy and Lionel, chatting in the dark, having a few drinks.” Fair warning, Lefebvre decided. He wouldn’t promise the truth or future verification.

  Kearn nodded, as if acknowledging what was unsaid. “I thought She’d killed him, you know,” he began, keeping his eyes on the glass in his hand, tilting it so the amber liquid flowed from side to side. “Ragem was like you—he didn’t take orders, my orders, well. He was bright, smart, ambitious. A gifted linguist, mind you. Truly gifted. He was my second, but I knew he’d outrank me within a few years; less with luck. He seemed to have that, too.” Kearn paused, then went on as if the brandy or Lefebvre’s attentive silence was a goad. “I didn’t like him, but I depended on him. Like you.

  “Then our Captain was murdered, and I was pushed into command. I needed Ragem more than ever, but that’s when he brought Her aboard. It all changed. I could see it, we all could. She—this Esen—was everything to him. We were nothing.” Kearn paused, taking a huge mouthful of brandy before going on. “He insisted She was harmless, innocent, well-meaning—even after the killings started. There was nothing I could say to convince him and, then, She killed him.”

  “But she didn’t,” Lefebvre said very quietly, remembering a delicate, green-eyed face. “You know that now.”

  “No,” Kearn agreed. “She didn’t. She’s protected him, hasn’t She? All these years.” He looked up, straight at Lefebvre, a mute demand for the truth.

  Lefebvre nodded, once.

  Kearn squeezed his eyes shut for several seconds. Lefebvre waited, more curious than concerned. Maybe it was the brandy, he warned himself. Or the lack of sleep. He hadn’t had much lately either.

  Kearn’s eyes snapped open. “Has Ragem been Her pet?” he sounded bitter. “A plaything?”

  “You knew him,” Lefebvre countered. “Do you believe that?”

  “Yes.” The smaller Human rubbed his gleaming forehead, then sighed. “No, I don’t. Ragem told me Esen was his friend. I thought, all this time, She’d betrayed him.”

  “That’s not what happened, is it?” Lefebvre’s temper flared. “You’re the one who betrayed him, Kearn. You branded Ragem a traitor, cost his family the memory of their son. You’re the one who tried to charge him with crimes he didn’t commit and, when that failed, spread rumors until no one could separate the truth from your lies.”

  His outburst brought only a shrug from Kearn, deep in his contemplation of a now-empty glass. “Ragem could have defended himself,” he said almost mildly, but his hands were perceptibly shaking. “He could have returned to his family. Instead, he chose to hide, to leave everything—for Her. Why?”

  “I don’t know,” Lefebvre said, hearing the truth in it. Paul hadn’t explained, not yet, maybe not ever. A tiny flicker of anger burned at that thought, then faded to resignation. “He had his reasons.”

  “Does She control his mind? Does She rule him by fear?”

  “Those must be quite the dreams you’ve been having,” Lefebvre snorted.

  “I don’t recommend them,” Kearn replied, without irony. “Then what is it? What is it about the Esen Monster that could draw such loyalty from someone like Ragem? That’s my nightmare, Captain Lefebvre. That I—that I—” Kearn seemed to lose his voice.

  “That you’ve been wrong for fifty years?” Lefebvre finished for him, unsure what was more dangerous: Kearn’s vulnerability or his.

  Again the urgent glance, this time from eyes filling with tears. “Can you tell me that, Captain—Rudy?” Kearn pleaded. “Have I been wrong? Or is Esen a monster? I’m going to catch
her. What will I be facing when I do? My destruction? Do you know?”

  “What I know—what I know is that we’re both overtired and need to be fit to deal with the Feneden in the morning. Anything else, you’ll have to find out for yourself. Sir.” Lefebvre took back the glass, hating himself as he watched the desperate hope on Kearn’s face fade to despair alone.

  Paul warned there’d be a price for keeping Esen’s secret, Lefebvre reminded himself.

  He hadn’t expected it to be Kearn.

  44: Asteroid Midnight

  WE’D explored the entire dome and taken turns staring gloomily at the sabotaged vent control. All we had to show for our efforts was a pile of packing material to sit on and, certainly on my part, a greater appetite for what was not present—lunch.

  We’d caught up on some news, most of it deteriorating into arguments about which of us should have listened to the other before leaping into situations alone. On the whole, I decided, we were remarkably even.

  Now we sat, grateful for the warmth of our helmetless suits, although mine was set appropriately cooler than Paul’s, and contemplated the lovely spray of stars overhead. There wasn’t much else to be done. I was of the opinion the Iftsen would come to check on their asteroid. Paul had doubts, especially once I told him about the inscription I’d seen on the side of The Messenger.

  “ ‘Messenger of Peace and Harmony, donated by the First Citizens’ Art Gallery of Brakistem, a work in mixed media,’ ” he repeated for what had to be the fifth time. “I thought you said it rhymed.”

  I chuckled. “It has a very nice rhyme in the original dialect. You want me to say it for you?”

  “No, I believe you.” His gray eyes sparkled with grim amusement. “So Inspector Logan stole a work of art.”

  “And was very pleased with it, I might add,” I said pompously. “Sometimes, there is symmetry, my friend.”

  He shook his head in amazement. “As long as you’re sure the thing’s harmless.”

  “Totally. Except to the backs of anyone trying to lift it. And,” I grinned, “to the reputations of those who try to use it.”

  “Which leaves us with three problems.”

  We were sitting side by side. At the sudden seriousness in his voice, I turned to face him. “Three?” When had our troubles multiplied?

  My friend gestured at the view. “Getting out of here. Reconciling the Feneden and Iftsen.”

  “That’s two,” I tallied suspiciously.

  “Our friend Logan. He may not have his superweapon, but he’s still a threat to Inhaven—and to Largas Freight.”

  I tapped a slender finger against the medallion hanging outside his suit. “I’ve taken a step or two in that direction,” I confessed, peeking up at him through a flash of red eyelids.

  Paul raised one brow. “Why am I not surprised?”

  Fortunately, my Feneden-self was spared a Human-like blush. “Nothing you’d object to,” I hastened to assure him. “I merely—clicked—a bit of information into the right ears.”

  My friend had a wide, generous mouth, one that smiled particularly well, I’d always thought, with an infectious, warm quality. It was smiling now. “You told the Herd.”

  “Oh, not just the Herd Logan dropped on Iftsen Secondus,” I corrected, smiling back. “I informed the Ganthor Homeworld.”

  If I’d thought he smiled before, I was dazzled by the warmth in his face now. “That’s just—that’s just—”

  When Paul appeared at a loss for words, I supplied: “That’s just brilliant, Esen?”

  He shook his head. “I was thinking poetic, but brilliant? Definitely, old friend. Logan’s biggest misjudgment. No one deceives the Ganthor on the battlefield.” His smile softened, and he put one hand on my shoulder. “That lonely soldier on Minas XII would have appreciated this, Esen.”

  His praise made me uneasy. Why was my solution to the least of our problems so important to him? I asked myself. Of course, it was an ephemeral trait, one Paul had in full measure, to ignore the life-threatening in favor of the emotionally satisfying. It was a good thing I was here, I decided, to make sure he had the right priorities. “The air is getting thinner,” I reminded him, waving one arm at the dome. The venting air was freezing as it escaped, snowing on the rocks and forming a rim of frost along the lower third of that area of the dome’s surface, occluding the stars. I’d hoped it would jam up the vent, but the mechanism had a servo heater to maintain an opening. “We have a few hours left before the pressure drops too low for—comfort.”

  “I know,” Paul said, too calmly. I narrowed my eyes, blinking red once or twice before turning my back on him.

  “See if you can pry that tank off my suit,” I suggested. “We can rig something to keep the pressure up in yours—won’t be pretty, but—”

  “Esen, we have to talk about what might happen.”

  I froze, not turning to look at him. Ersh. I hated that note in his voice. “I don’t need the air,” I went on. “Let’s get working on this.”

  I felt his hands on my suit, but they didn’t start working on the fastenings of the air tank. Instead, they pulled me around.

  “Just listen,” Paul insisted.

  “This is a good idea. I can—”

  “Shut up, Esen.” Paul’s smile was gone. In its place were deep lines drawn around his eyes and mouth, lines I’d never noticed as prominent before. “If the air keeps venting, I’m going to die.” He stifled my involuntary protest with a hand over my mouth. “Listen to me! We both know it could happen. And I’ve something I want you to do for me.”

  I nodded, licking blood from my lip as Paul removed his grip: my Feneden teeth were sharper than Human norm. “Anything,” I said despondently. “You know that. But you aren’t going—”

  “Shh,” gently. “I want you to use my mass. To assimilate—isn’t that the word?—my body into yours.”

  Whatever I’d expected, it wasn’t this. I stared at my friend. “It won’t preserve you,” I told him, feeling the truth as a sharp wound. “Your flesh would be altered into web-mass. Nothing Human, nothing of you, would be left. No transfer of memory. No remnant of self. Believe me, Paul. I would give anything if that could be, if I could take you into me and—and save you.”

  Wonder of wonders, he smiled. “I know, Es. I think I understand the process as well as it’s possible for an alien to do so. But this is what I want you to do for me. You’ll know the moment.”

  Oh, yes, I told myself bitterly. I was very good at detecting the imminent death of cells, of the cessation of life, if not restoring it. “You are my friend,” the last came out past a hiccup I couldn’t help. “I will do whatever you want. But why this?”

  His fingers fluffed the soft, sensory cilia under my skin. I savored the warmth of his touch and the patterns of heat from his face. “I want you to have my mass, Esen-alit-Quar,” Paul Ragem said. “And I want you to use it to fly.”

  I lurched back from the gentle-voiced Human and his horrifying vision. “I won’t leave you,” I snarled, knowing even as I spoke that he was right, that if we were here long enough to cost him his life, I could escape by spending his mass for propulsion. In web-form I could easily break free of this dome, and soar into space. His body might be enough to take me translight to safety, to a future, to a new life.

  Alone.

  “There will be,” I promised him with utter and complete conviction, “another option, Paul. I don’t want to hear this wish of yours again.”

  “I’ll stop if you promise me.” He could be as rock-solid, immovable, and depressingly irresistible as Ersh. “Promise, Esen.”

  I dropped my face into my hands, admitting the inconceivable with a nod.

  “Good,” I heard him say, but with a little break in the word as though he’d been sure I’d argue longer.

  I didn’t bother telling him he didn’t have the air or time for it.

  Obviously, Paul knew that as well as I.

  Elsewhere

  “WE’VE decoded
the Feneden transmission, Captain.”

  Lefebvre ran a hand through his hair, wishing he’d had time to stick his head under the ’fresher. Kearn looked worse than he felt—something Lefebvre attributed more to last night’s conversation than the brandy or few minutes of sleep they’d had before this urgent summons to the bridge. Timri stood with the message in her hand, immaculate as always, and looked from one to the other of her superiors as if wanting to ask, but knowing better.

  “I’ll take that, Comp-tech,” Kearn said before Lefebvre could reach for it, almost snatching the sheet of plas. Lefebvre settled one hip against the railing behind navigation, waiting to be enlightened, and stifled a yawn.

  Kearn, already pale, looked about to faint as he read. Lefebvre glanced at Timri. Her lips were tightly pressed together and her look was a warning. “Sir?” Lefebvre prompted. “Is it about the weapon?”

  “Take it.” Kearn’s voice was reed-thin, and his hand shook as he held out the message. Then he threw back his shoulders and raised his head to look Lefebvre in the eyes. “I told you this day would come, Captain,” Kearn said before turning on his heel and leaving the bridge.

  Lefebvre read: “Our congratulations to the Shifter Hunter. Your glorious trap has worked. We have imprisoned the Esen Monster and her Human slave within the asteroid dome, awaiting your arrival. This has been a victory for all of Fened Prime and your Commonwealth. Glory to the Shifter Hunter!”

  45: Asteroid Morning

  HAVING a painfully empty stomach did offer one advantage I’d never considered. It made a fine distraction from the difficulty I was beginning to experience whenever I exerted my Feneden-self and had to gasp for air.

  Not that exerting myself was a problem, I thought, looking over at Paul. There wasn’t much room and no reason to move anyway. We’d managed to coax the inner air lock door into opening, then made a snug nest inside from whatever was portable. With the door closed again, we had a bubble of air that wouldn’t be vented, although it was mountaintop-thin by the time this plan had occurred to us. Our air tanks raised the oxygen levels near our faces whenever we allowed some to escape. There was nothing we could do about the accumulation of carbon dioxide within this space except refrain, as Paul quipped, from dancing.