“But the plot—” Reese double-checked the data. “They had an energy surge. No, it only looks like a surge. They flashed their lights.”
“Why would they do that?” Sascha asked.
“No idea,” Reese said. “And as long as they’re not chasing us, I don’t care either.”
“I just hope they don’t think of us as friends,” Sascha said.
Reese glanced at him askance.
“You know. Sending code. Why would you change your running lights for an enemy? Maybe they think we’re on their side.”
Reese laughed. “If thinking that keeps them off our backs, it’s fine with me.”
“Dropping into the Well in ten minutes.”
“Not a minute too soon,” Reese said.
Under Allacazam’s care, Hirianthial felt divorced from the outside world, even the parts of it his physical body would typically report. He floated in a sensory deprivation that would have alarmed him had he not been so tired. Instead, he sank into the exhausted unconsciousness of healing and woke only infrequently to “feel” the Flitzbe’s mental touch. On one occasion he remained aware long enough to wonder at the sutures one bound an invisible wound with. Instead of floss, did one use sunlight? Was the needle a memory of a mother’s touch? What kind of antibiotics did one use on a person’s mind?
The Flitzbe healed the way he talked—invisibly, using mechanisms that seemed as natural as the waves on a pebbled beach. Hirianthial had no idea how long it would take, only that it wanted all his strength.
The memories began to seep back into him. This time, Allacazam let them filter through. The touch of the boxes, the sense of unease, the nausea... the screams.
Screams.
“I need to wake up,” he said.
Allacazam showed him the barely stitched bits of his mental center. To shield with it would be impossible. Waking would mean subjecting himself to everyone’s thoughts and wishes and feelings, and though he would now remain centered in his body the experience would undo some of the Flitzbe’s work.
But the screams rang in his ears. “It’s that important.”
Unease, like seeing shadows in an empty house when walking alone to bed. Warning, as well, this time pulled directly from Hirianthial’s own memories of a halo-arch monitor emitting a piecing siren as its patient attempted to break free. Hirianthial ignored it and rose toward the light.
Riding through the Well would have proven pleasantly monotonous had it not been for Hirianthial’s state. He remained unconscious, so deeply so that Kis’eh’t had had only marginal success hydrating him and they were now all worrying about him drinking. With the ship guiding itself on its pre-determined course, each of the crew took a shift at his side, sometimes doubling up if fear overcame other considerations.
Reese arrived for her shift to find Kis’eh’t facing the door, hands clenched on her paw’s wrists. Some of the medical supplies Hirianthial had brought with him were laid out on her lap on a clean towel. There was a needle there. And a tube. And a bag of some fluid Reese couldn’t identify.
“Is that what I think it is?” Reese asked, stopping at the door.
“It’s been five days,” Kis’eh’t said. “We have to do something about this or he’s going to die.”
“We’re not doctors,” Reese said.
“No,” the Glaseah agreed. “We’re just going to have to follow the instructions in the manual and hope we get it right.”
“But we might puncture something!”
Kis’eh’t bent forward and examined the needle’s tip. “I hope not. Or at least, I hope we puncture the right thing.” She covered her face. “Aksivah’t hear me, Reese. I don’t want to. But I can’t think of anything better to do.”
“I thought... isn’t there some other way to keep him alive?” Reese asked. “Something besides needles? One of those pumps?”
“Pumps require vials full of something to be pumped,” Kis’eh’t said. “I found plenty of anti-toxins, antibiotics, anti-virals, vaccines and anti-fungals, but I didn’t find anything we could use to sustain him. Only this. And before you ask, no I can’t break open the bag, or it won’t be sterile anymore. And even if I did I have no idea if the hydration formula for the pump is different from the one for the needle. The pump is pushing through tissue, the needle isn’t… I have no idea if that makes a difference, but I don’t want to be wrong.”
Reese waved a hand at the mysterious-looking machine Kis’eh’t had brought with her from Harat-Sharii. “You synthesized glass beads... can’t you synthesize whatever the pump needs?”
The Glaseah choked on a laugh, then covered her eyes with a hand. “No. I need a formula to make something I’m not familiar with and appropriate supplies to make it out of. My specialty is inorganic chemistry, Reese, not medicine and not pharmaceuticals. I can identify drugs but I don’t know how to make them. And I certainly don’t know what you inject directly into someone’s bloodstream to hydrate them, beyond it not being plain water.” She sighed and dropped her hands onto her wrists. “Look, all we have that we know will work is this bag. I looked and looked, but the u-banks all say if you don’t have a halo-arch and you don’t have medical facilities and you don’t have what you need for the AAP and you do have one of these... this is what you use.”
Reese sat next to Kis’eh’t before her shaky limbs dumped her there. “I can’t stick a needle in him. What if we do it wrong?”
“Then I guess he’ll die,” Kis’eh’t said. “He’ll certainly die if I can’t get more water into him somehow. The health monitor in his own pack says so.”
Reese stared at the limp body and its cocoon of blankets. “Someone should get first aid training.”
“What a good idea,” Kis’eh’t said. “Too bad we didn’t think of it, oh, say, several years ago.”
Reese eyed the Glaseah, ready with a retort of her own, then let it die in her mouth. She’d never seen Kis’eh’t so exhausted. Embarrassed, Reese looked away and found Hirianthial’s face among the blankets. “I guess we should get it over with.”
“Yes,” Kis’eh’t said.
But neither of them moved.
They remained that way for a while. Long enough for Irine to show up for her shift and pause at the door, as startled by the tableau as Reese had been when she’d entered.
“Are you sticking him with that thing?” Irine asked.
“We’ve come to the conclusion that we should,” Reese said.
Kis’eh’t nodded. “Definitely.”
Irine looked from one to the other. “And that’s where you stopped.”
“Do you know how to do it?” Reese asked hopefully.
Irine sat between them and shook her head. “No.” She looked clear-eyed but her coat was dull. Had any of them been resting well? “Maybe Bryer knows.”
“We could consult Allacazam,” Kis’eh’t suggested.
Reese started laughing. “Consult Allacazam. I like that.” It continued to seem funny until it stopped. “Wait a minute. That might actually work.”
Both women stared at her.
“Allacazam knows the things that are in your mind,” Reese said, working it out as she spoke, “that’s how he communicates with you. He’s hung in Hirianthial’s arms long enough to pick up something of what’s in his mind. Maybe he’ll have a memory of putting a needle like this in!”
“I’m not sure I followed that,” Kis’eh’t admitted.
“Me neither,” Irine said. “Try it anyway!”
Reese reached for the Flitzbe’s mottled fur, patched in magenta and deeper purple. Her hand creased the fibers. “Allacazam?”
A distracted bobble made her close her eyes and brace herself. She hadn’t realized the Flitzbe could make her doubt her senses.
Please, she said. We need help—
A wall this time. Not slammed before her, but just there. Was the Flitzbe actually turning her away? She listened carefully and heard a low buzz, like an annoyed insect. It didn’t seem directed at her. She caught edges of image
s that made no sense: a monitor above a patient, maybe. A distant alarm.
Is this a bad time? Reese asked.
“Reese! Come back!”
Reese blinked a few times to clear her vision; as she pulled her hand away she saw the wound again, a translucent hole barely pulled together with brilliant white stitches. Allacazam’s fur wriggled as it released her fingers, and the vision vanished. The thick white lashes lining Hirianthial’s nearest eye trembled, then parted to reveal something mostly pupil, a great black hole with the slimmest rim of dried-blood red.
“He’s awake!” Irine squeaked.
“Hirianthial?” Reese said, hesitant with the name. She couldn’t quite believe his open eye above the taut gray skin of his cheek. He couldn’t possibly be conscious.
“Reese,” he whispered, and she bent lower to hear, low enough that his breath warmed her ear and lifted the hair along her arms. A few moments later, he finished, “They were alive. They thought.”
Her stomach clenched tighter. “I don’t understand.”
“The crystals. They were alive.”
“No,” Reese said.
Hirianthial’s eye closed, and Allacazam’s brilliant plum-purple faded to dark red.
“Reese!” Irine’s head lifted, golden eyes rounder than ten-fin coins. “He can’t be right... can he?”
“Crystal people?” Kis’eh’t mused. “That would be new. Not impossible, though.”
Reese could only look at Allacazam. How long had it taken the first humans to understand that the Flitzbe were sentient? A species that ate like plants, looked like furry volleyballs, reproduced by budding and talked in a way that could be mistaken for a brain disorder? Reese reached again for the soft fur, fingers trembling. She let her hand sink on top of the rippling fibers, closed her eyes again.
Is it true? She asked the Flitzbe. She’d only known Hirianthial a few months, but Allacazam had been her companion for years. She trusted him. Did we kill them?
A complicated mesh of color and sound resulted, blacks and lurid reds, blood and void, hues translated from the Flitzbe’s discordant electrical signals into ones with the proper associations. From the back of her mind, the crash of a thousand cymbals, like ice shattering against a stone floor.
Reese yanked her hand away.
“Reese,” Kis’eh’t said, touching her arm. “Keep him awake. He can talk us through the IV.”
“I think it’s too late,” Irine said.
It was too much at once, and anger had never been one of her easier masters. Reese grabbed Hirianthial’s shoulder and shook him, ignoring the jangled alarms Allacazam sent through her other hand. “Wake up! You need to drink something.”
Lashes parted again. The lines beneath his eyes were so deep they almost convinced her to let him die in peace. Instead, she said to Kis’eh’t, “Get the water. Real water, not whatever’s in that bag.”
The tools on the blanket scattered as the Glaseah lurched to her feet and grabbed a bowl.
“You,” Reese said to the eye. “You will stay awake until you finish whatever Kis’eh’t gives you. And you,” to Allacazam, “will only let him sleep once his body has what it needs, and not one moment earlier. Understood?”
Muted unease and an unexpected surge of dry humor. She imagined him saying ‘Yes, lady’ and added, “And stop calling me lady!”
“He didn’t say anything,” Irine said in a small voice as Kis’eh’t rejoined them.
Reese ignored her. “Watch him,” she said curtly to them both as she rose to her feet. “Keep him warm.”
Before the arrival of the crew, Reese had preferred to brood in the Earthrise’s vast cargo bays, perched on one of the horizontal spindles that would ordinarily have hung swollen with bins had she made a normal run. Instead she’d opted for a long flight to an icy middle-of-nowhere and ended up killing three boxfuls of crystal people. Same amount of money, but now she had blood on her hands. Water. Whatever.
Reese sighed and cupped her chin in small dark hands. One booted foot against the docking clamp braced her on her perch. The floor hung fifteen feet below her, but she had no fear of heights, particularly in the lighter gravity of the bay. The childhood she’d spent dashing across the branches of the eucalyptus that had grown unexpectedly tall on Mars had prepared her so well for her chosen profession. She’d climbed more than one tree, of course, but mostly the eucalyptus. And now those were trees she could no longer return to. Maybe it bothered her more than she let herself accept. She was very good at not looking at things she couldn’t let herself accept.
A shadow painted itself against the cool gray floor, bristling with feathers. Reese frowned, sliding her hands onto the spindle and leaning over.
“Bryer.”
He stopped under her and met her gaze.
“I came here to be alone.”
The Phoenix spread his wings and leaped easily onto the spindle alongside hers. Great clawed feet grasped the cylindrical axle as he crouched, tail fanned.
Reese sighed. “Look, I don’t want to talk.”
He trained that impenetrable eye on her, too much iris for his eye socket. One eye ridge twitched in a credible imitation of a raised brow.
She looked away, dropping her head. If he wasn’t going to leave until she talked, then she might as well get it over with. “Bryer... we’re murderers.”
He canted his head.
“The crystals,” Reese said. “They were living beings.”
He considered that for a few beats. Then, “A mistake.”
“Fine. So it’s manslaughter. It doesn’t matter if it was an mistake or not. Those things... we killed them.”
“Certain?”
Reese glanced at him so sharply her braids whipped her neck. “Hirianthial said so.” She looked down. “Besides, Allacazam agreed.”
“So now what?”
She twisted around to face him. “Now what?” she asked, incredulous. “Now what? Bryer! We’re killers!”
“That’s past now. Cannot be changed. Now what? What will you do?”
“I... I hadn’t really thought about it.”
The Phoenix mantled his wings. He looked alarmingly like a real bird in the heavy shadows of the cavernous bay. “Think now.”
Reese rubbed her forehead. “I guess I’ll call our buyer and tell him we can’t sell these things. Corpses. Whatever. Then contact the sector authorities and inform them of our findings.”
Bryer’s crest slicked back. “Better. You focus now on what needs to be done.” He straightened, leaped lightly off the spindle. “Do not lose focus, Captain.”
“No, Bryer,” Reese said softly.
His shadow receded. She strained her ears in the following silence until she heard the soft hiss of the door.
Reese hugged the axle and let her feet slide off so that she dangled above the ground. She landed lightly and headed toward her quarters with so little enthusiasm it surprised her that she even arrived. How should she tell her employers that she was backing out of the contract? They’d be upset, though perhaps they’d understand once she explained why. They might even be upset themselves. There was the cachet of having discovered a new alien species, even by accident... surely that was something to celebrate?
Of course, making first formal contact with aliens by presenting them with over a hundred corpses wasn’t ideal.
Reese dropped in front of her terminal with a sigh and entered the contact code the contract had stipulated for emergency use. The screen glowed blue and a status indicator in the lower left corner scrolled through the connection and handshake messages. The Alliance sigil popped up on the screen seconds later as the Earthrise punched the call through the loopholes some Tam-illee engineers had found in Well space. It took a few minutes to reach their destination and the screen de-pixellated on a pale weed of a human man whose narrow limbs and hunched posture made him look harmless... until one spotted his cold eyes.
“Captain Eddings? We weren’t expecting you.”
�
��Mm. Yes. I’m afraid we’ve run into a problem.”
The man leaned toward the screen. “I’m afraid you’ll have to solve your own problems, Captain. Just get to the delivery point within the specified time frame.”
“I can’t deliver,” Reese said.
He stopped. “Pardon me?”
“The crystals you asked us to get? Well,” Reese paused, then rushed on, “They’re living things. Or they were before our harvest killed them.”
The man’s mouth stretched into a grim smile. “And you discovered this how?”
“Our on-board esper evaluated them,” Reese said, alarmed by the glint of curiosity in his eyes.
“Your on-board esper? Curious, Captain. I had no idea you had one.”
“He’s a recent addition,” Reese said.
“Ah. Not your Glaseah, then,” the man said. “Perhaps this is the Eldritch.”
“How did you—” Reese stopped and composed herself. What did it matter if they knew about Hirianthial anyway? “It doesn’t matter, sir. What matters is that I can’t give you these people.”
“Corpses, Eddings. Not people. When will you be arriving?”
“You misunderstand me,” Reese said. “I can’t give you these things. They’re bodies! Of a new alien species! They need to be reported!”
She knew instantly she’d done something wrong, though the man’s voice remained calm and measured. “The contract you signed holds you to silence, Captain Eddings.”
“Silence about something like this? You must be making a joke,” Reese said and then stopped as a cold wave passed through her body. “Unless you knew.”
“A pity you didn’t read the paperwork more carefully,” the man said. “We would encourage you not to renege on the contract, Captain. We would hate to have to send someone to enforce it.”
Reese stared at him.
“You’ll be along, won’t you?” he said.
“Yes,” Reese said, and then galvanized by the threat, “Of course. They’re bodies right now... there’s nothing we can do about that. Why raise a fuss?”
He smiled again, though the smile never made it to his eyes. “We love a reasonable woman, Captain. We’ll see you soon.”
Earthrise (Her Instruments Book 1) Page 28