In the Company of Others

by Julie E. Czerneda

  So it was up to her, Gail told herself firmly. Aaron would have a say in his own destiny, and the varied self-interests of the universe be damned.

  Almost time. Just as well Grant had—interrupted them. Gail wormed her way through the throng, hurrying to her workstation. Aisha was there and nodded a greeting, busy sorting instruments and humming to herself. Without intending to, Gail found herself capturing her friend’s warm fingers in her hand. “What is it?” Aisha asked, frowning slightly as she searched Gail’s face.

  Gail stretched her lips into a smile and let go. “Know how much you hate my mental leaps?” she asked lightly.

  The other scientist frowned a bit more. “Why do you ask?”

  “Just remember how often they’ve been right, that’s all,” Gail said.

  Time.

  What Aisha might have replied was interrupted by a dull thud, as if a workbench had overturned, then a sudden, loud snap. As everyone started looking for the sounds, the lab lighting turned garish orange and alarms began to shrill.

  Crack! A long, jagged rupture flowed down the side of the case holding the Quill fragment, joining one already climbing from the bottom.

  “Everyone out,” Gail ordered, hearing the order repeated throughout the room as people headed for the doors. “Leave that!” she called to a tech snatching up pieces of equipment.

  No panic, but plenty of confusion and raised voices. Gail eased back, one step at a time. They’d practiced evacuating the lab on the way to Thromberg—for whatever good it did when everyone considered the alarm a break from routine and the ultimate danger being a scathing memo. The doors were open; a steady stream of people moved out through each. The FDs were proving useful at something other than guard duty.

  A hail from somewhere. “Gail?”

  “On my way,” she called out, for once glad to be a head shorter than most. Instead of a door, Gail’s target was the nearest biohazard panel, one being located every few meters along the permanent walls. Gail keyed in a specific sequence, then waited for confirmation.

  “Gail—” Aaron appeared at her side, Malley right behind. “You have to get out, too.”

  “I think it’s too late to make it to the door,” Gail said calmly, although there were at least a dozen people still moving toward the exits. “Right, Malley?”

  It was the first time she’d spoken to him since their argument about Aaron. Malley’s face was being lit by a flashing orange light. He stood there, looking for all the world like some stone gargoyle illuminated by lightning. “Go with her, Aaron,” he said abruptly, his eyes not leaving Gail’s. “The halls aren’t safe for you with this crowd rushing about. Get.”

  Pardell looked surprised but not suspicious. He nodded. “Where?”

  Malley pointed. “Be good,” he growled, before moving away with that unexpected speed of his—incidentally sweeping up three straggling techs in his big arms and hustling them toward the door. Gail heard him shouting to the room in general, not particularly helpfully: “She’s gone out the other door!”

  The ’sider hesitated, looking back at the now-completely fractured case and its colorful, motionless occupant. “The Quill isn’t going to hurt anyone, Gail. If you want, I can put it into another box for you.”

  “Leave it. Come with me, Aaron,” Gail said quietly.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked, with the beginnings of a frown.

  Gail grinned as the floor shuddered once beneath them.

  “How much I hate good-byes.”

  Chapter 75

  PARDELL had been raised where ship’s alarms were taken very seriously. Danger, damage, thieves! It didn’t feel right ignoring this one, if that’s what Gail was doing.

  Not that he had much choice. Malley seemed to be single-handedly preventing anyone from coming back in, while Gail hurried them both behind a screen.

  Which hid an air lock.

  “We’re taking shelter in there?” he asked. Which explained why Malley went for the door option, if nothing else.

  “Not exactly. Help me with this.” This was the set of three inner locks. They came open with the smoothness Pardell had come to expect from the Seeker’s equipment. It still astonished him at times.

  Pardell was equally astonished by what was inside the air lock. “Hurry, Aaron,” Gail said, giving him no time to do more than follow her inside. She started closing the door immediately.

  “Gail?”

  She seemed unable to stop long enough to look at him, as though momentum was all that kept her going. “I don’t want it opening from the inside,” she explained as she started wrapping a length of wire around one of the inner locks.

  “That won’t be enough,” he said knowingly, glancing involuntarily at the suits hanging to his left. Three. One extra large. One small enough for Gail. And his. “Do you want something permanent?” It pained him to suggest damaging the immaculate ship.

  “Not if we don’t have to.”

  There was an emergency tool kit mounted on one wall. For the first time in Pardell’s experience, there were tools in it. “Give me a couple of seconds, then,” he assured her and found a couple of multigrips with handles the right size to jam into the lock mechanisms. A shame to treat tools or doors that way. “Done.”

  “Good. Thanks.” She was busy pulling on the smallest suit.

  “Gail.”

  “Get dressed, Aaron,” she said, not looking at him. “Please.”

  The piece of Quill wasn’t a threat—if anyone knew that, Gail did. Something was up. Equally obviously, she wasn’t prepared to stop and explain. Muttering under his breath, Pardell went over to his suit. He wondered which would impress her more—his ability with tape or that his suit held air—then really looked at what hung on the wall.

  “What have you done?” he breathed, all questions and impatience forgotten.

  “They tested everything; it’s vacuum-ready. You don’t mind, do you?” A pause. “I didn’t think you’d want one of the Seeker’s.”

  He hardly heard, busy running his gloved fingers over what had been his suit and was now this beautiful thing. Someone with far more skill than any spacer or engineer Pardell knew had not just repaired it, but restored the suit to its original condition. Better, probably, since what working ship’s crew bothered with polish and perfect stitching? There were a few additions—he turned it over and saw new power couplings, a propulsion pack he hardly recognized—but nothing that took away from this being his. Even the hooks for sliding cable were on the belt, cleaned and gleaming.

  “Tobo’s chief engineer, Michael Gilbert, took it as a personal challenge—he’s a collector as well as an artist. I hadn’t known before I asked him to take a look at it. It is all right, Aaron, isn’t it?”

  Pardell nodded. “I’ll want to thank him.”

  “Prove it works,” she suggested.

  Anxious. He heard it in her voice. Much as he would have liked to linger over each invisible repair and flawless new part, Pardell suited up faster than ever before. It was certainly an improvement not to have to tape up seams or coax a reluctant conditioning system to work. He did pause before pulling on the boots. “They fit,” he said out loud, dismayed beyond reason to find the mags no longer protruded past heel and toe.

  “Gilbert said the ones you had were the best part of the suit and worth saving. He didn’t replace them—only trimmed them to your size.”

  A profound change, Pardell thought, but forced himself to stop hesitating. When he had his helmet on and clamped, he switched on the interior light so she could see his face. The homemade gauges hadn’t been changed—safety, he decided, inclined to believe the mysterious repairman had known Pardell might not have time to learn a new system.

  Gail reached for the control to evacuate the air, but Pardell tapped her on the shoulder. “Tie up first,” he said through the comm, making sure it was private. She nodded, following his lead in snapping one end of their belt tethers—another marvel: his was brand-new cable—to the ring
beside the exterior door. He set the controls and watched the indicators tracking the decreasing pressure. Fast and smooth.

  Pressure against his chest. Pardell looked down but couldn’t see what it was. Then Gail moved to stand facing him, and he realized it had to be her gloved hands.

  She’d noticed he’d safely touched her shoulder. Or, he reminded himself, she knew from her own experiments that this double layer of metal-laced fabric was enough to protect the two of them, if not against the Quill, then from his skin.

  A second, better surprise. Gail put her arms around him, as far as they could go in the bulky suits, and leaned her helmet against his. He couldn’t see inside from this angle, but the sound of her breathing carried through the comm system, clear, soft, and not quite regular.

  Careful of tubing and seals, Pardell wrapped his arms around her in turn, awed by the sensation of enfolding her smaller self and the powerful protective feeling it aroused. “Now that you’ve got me where you want me,” he said, keeping it casual and cheerful, the way Malley would, “want to tell me what’s happening?”

  “Trial Number Six,” she said, just as the indicator light flashed green and the outer air lock door swung obediently open.

  She must have known what he would see; she didn’t let go and turn, but simply added:

  “Assuming you can get us across that.”

  Chapter 76

  THEY’D break through the inner door. Her air supply would run out. The sun would stop shining. All this and more would happen before Gail felt like leaving the first embrace of her life that sang to her soul.

  “Gail.”

  The voice of reason, accompanied by a firm push to set her at a distance. She gave herself a mental shake before looking up. Aaron stared past her, outward, then bent his head down so she could see his half-smile. “You’ve been busy,” he commented.

  “Level three biohazard,” Gail said absently. “Automatic sphere quarantine.” She didn’t say any more, having a healthy respect for the FDs’ abilities when it came to invading private comm links.

  Level three—the waist alarm would have sounded, its walkway accelerating to remove—more or less intact—any person with unfortunate timing. Then, evacuation to hard vacuum as the accordion walls stretched, thinner and thinner, until waist became tether and the Seeker became two.

  The FDs could have kept them imprisoned simply by locking the access doors to the waist. This, Gail hoped, gave them another option.

  Mind you, she hadn’t realized how far the tether could stretch between the two spheres of the ship. Or that it would look so insubstantial against the night side of Pardell’s World. The command sphere was so distant, she couldn’t make out any detail beyond its round glow.

  She tried to imagine it looked welcoming.

  “We’re going to take over the ship?” Aaron asked, paying her the compliment of not making that sound as silly as it could have. “We could use Malley.”

  Gail looked at the stationer’s suit, hanging on the wall. He’d made it into the ’lock with their gear—something she hadn’t dared doubt. “Nothing that dramatic. This is a kidnapping.”

  “Which of us is the kidnapper?” he asked, logically enough.

  “Both. Neither. Can you do it?” Gail was feeling less sure of this plan every second they stood looking out.

  Instead of a reassuring answer, Aaron bent down and switched on his mags before unclipping himself from the door ring. “Wait here,” he said, then walked out and over the edge of the air lock.

  Gail held on to the ring with one hand as well as the tether, feeling as though she’d fall out if she didn’t despite the gravity of the air lock floor. After what seemed too long, Aaron’s gloved hands overlapped the door’s edge and he flipped himself back inside, catching the door ring with one hand. “No problem.”

  No problem, Gail repeated to herself.

  Aaron unclipped her tether from the door ring and attached it to his own belt, then pulled out the clamps he used for sliding and leaned out, as if judging distance. When she went to switch on her mags in order to walk on the outer hull, he stopped her. “You won’t need those.” He hit the automatic lock, and the air lock’s outer door began closing.

  “I won’t?” Before Gail could more than ask, Aaron pulled them both out into space, pushing off with an unusual twist to his body that belied the awkward mass of the suit, sending them flying.

  Snick.

  Gail gasped and fought against vertigo as their momentum changed in an instant and they began whirling around a center point.

  “Look at me. Not the cable. Gail! Look at me.”

  She forced open her eyes, finding herself helmet to helmet with Aaron. His face, lit from below, was concerned but calm, as if her reaction mattered more than this lazy spiraling into the void. “We’re going to die,” she said firmly, in case he’d missed the point.

  “Not at the moment,” he countered. “Relax and enjoy the ride—it’s not going to be long. This cable’s pretty taut.”

  Ride? She cautiously looked away from him, at where they were going.

  True, they were spinning around, but centered around the clamp in Aaron’s right hand, that clamp wrapped around a wrist-thick cable—all that remained of the waist. She was looking where they’d been, the science sphere glowing in its own lights.

  They’d jumped to bypass the waist’s conveyer system, she realized, seeing the folded mass retracted against the smooth hull. She looked back at his face. “Nice catch,” she said, pleased her voice didn’t break over the words.

  Hard to tell through the helmet, but she thought Aaron looked sheepish. “You said time was an issue. Climbing over the collar—it would have taken a while.”

  “And it was more fun leaping out into space.”

  “There’s that.” His smile was pure, heart-stopping mischief. “You sound like a ’sider.”

  “I don’t spend all my time in the lab,” she responded. Perhaps it was the sensation of spinning, holding on to one another, that made everything else fall away, leaving them in this comforting intimacy. It was as real as it was temporary. “How do we land?”

  “Stay with me,” he said, sounding supremely confident.

  That’s the plan, Gail said to herself.

  She’d find out soon enough what Aaron thought of it.

  Chapter 77

  WHEN Malley didn’t know what to think about something—or someone—he took the ambivalence as a personal affront. He liked things clear, logical, and slotted into categories. Probably why he’d lasted so long on the recycling floor.

  Gail Smith stubbornly refused to fit.

  Each time he had her figured out, she’d change. The only thing consistent about the damned woman.

  “Stationer.”

  Malley rolled his eyes up. He’d noticed Sazaad easing in his direction through the small groups dotting the dining lounge. Until the all-clear came from the lab, there wasn’t much for anyone but the biohaz team to do. Most of the science staff had succumbed to exhaustion and gone to their quarters, but there were always those who had to talk their way past an emergency. Some, like Malley, were more interested in a meal that wasn’t prewrapped.

  He wasn’t interested in the obnoxious Earther. “I’m busy.”

  Sazaad smiled as if he’d expected nothing better, but prudently lowered himself to the end of the curved bench farthest from Malley. “Obviously. But if you could fit me into your schedule, it would be of advantage to your friend.”

  “The dead one,” Malley said.

  Sazaad raised an elegant brow. “I stand by my findings of the time. However, if I’d pursued the course suggested by our delectable Dr. Smith sooner, my machine would have doubtless confirmed what you—believed.” His lips curled over the last word, as if it was something Sazaad found reprehensible.

  Malley leaned back, pushing aside the table so he could bring one foot up on the bench between them, resting his forearm on the knee. He stared at Sazaad across this barrier. The
man looked insufferably proud of himself. More insufferably proud than usual.

  “Do you have anything to say I’m going to care about, Earther?” he asked, keeping it polite—marginally.

  “I am, of course, limited to what you can comprehend and I can say in a public place,” the other said with an equal effort. Malley was quite sure the man remembered—and didn’t forgive—being manhandled in the lab. He was also sure the failure of the cog screen device rankled even more.

  “That should make it nice and short,” Malley returned, reaching for his glass. They didn’t—or wouldn’t—serve alcohol in this lounge, but he’d found Scotch dissolved invisibly in orange juice. It didn’t taste any worse than Sammie’s brew. Which wasn’t saying much.

  “Here.” Sazaad produced a silvered flask from an inside pocket. “We can be enemies tomorrow, Malley.” He took a swallow from the flask, then passed it to the stationer. Malley waited long enough for Sazaad’s face to grow clouded, then put down his glass and took the flask.

  The mouthful was cold, sweet, and thick—with a promising burn down the throat. Malley passed it back. “Fine. Enemies tomorrow. So what advantage are you talking about?”

  “Your friend will want to hear this. Where is he?” the Earther asked slyly. “And our good Doctor Smith?”

  “Catching up on some sleep or working on the Quill—how should I know? Grant’s people don’t exactly keep me briefed, you may have noticed.”

  “I don’t doubt you know more than the rest of us, Stationer,” Sazaad laughed, offering the flask again. Malley refused. “Keep your secrets, then. What I have to tell you—” he took another, deeper drag on the flask, “—you don’t want anyone else to learn first.”

  Malley took a casual look around. They were tucked into one of several alcoves within the lounge. The room seemed designed to encourage quiet conversations, although from what Aisha had told him, those conversations weren’t to be considered private.

  The Earthers allowed an obscene amount of interference in their lives, Malley decided.

  “Let’s take a walk.”