by Paul Jessup
Itsasu swam, letting her thoughts roll around in her head, buoyant. Do they know of what we keep?
A silence. She felt a smile, somehow, hung in her mind. A mental pulling back of lips, of cheek, of teeth gritting together. No, the ship said, but someone else does. Our little stowaway. Although she knows naught of what she sees.
Itsasu blew with weak lips at the holographs of the damage to the ship, scattering them in a whispering wisp of firefly light. She muttered a curse under her breath. She’ll have questions, questions I do not want to answer.
The heart of the ship took form as an avatar in her fluid: red skin, horned head, shadowy black cloak torn and tattered behind it, skull-faced and shadowed. Never mind her. Sugoi is dead. You should at least back up his patuek, if not heal him.
Itsasu clenched her body tightly, her nerves and frail muscles like a fist. She felt skin cracking into dust, floating away in a clay mist. That fool, why should I heal him? He almost killed his brother. We don’t need that kind of friction on the ship.
The AI’s flickering flame of a figure began to melt away into the holofluid. Erase some of his mind, then. Not all of it—whatever memory made him want to kill his brother. That should snuff out the Cain instinct for now.
Itsasu called up the holos for the section of the ship Sugoi was in. She saw the mess of his body and felt a strange detached pity. She wanted to leave him dead. He was far worse a man than her husband. Why did this stupid fool deserve life?
I’m waiting, Itsasu. Bring him back. Or I cut off your lifeline, leaving you to drift on to death, waiting for someone to revive you. How would you like that? Who would save your husband then?
Itsasu floated through the fluid, her teeth grinding together, brittle, frail things. Dammit, okay. I’ll bring him back. But fuck taking out that memory. That’s too much work, and we have too much to do. But if he attacks his brother one more time, I’m leaving him to die in the endless vacuum.
There was no response, just an empty humming in the darkness. The heart of the egia had left her. Its ghost was gone, expelled into the shadows of the ship once again.
Fuck, she thought as she called the thalna to Sugoi’s body, you don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve what I’m about to do.
Act III: Skull Baskets
22
Mari still couldn’t move. The numbness was gone and it left a fine, prickly feeling along her spine. Webbing stretched across her body, heavy silver that bound her tight, leaving only her face visible in the stark darkness of the ship.
She felt drained, like her blood had seeped out of her body and left her an empty husk. She wondered briefly if Sugoi was all right, if the ship was still there. She might be the last living person from Itsasu’s crew. The whole ship might be just scattered star ash by now.
She turned her head, barely, the webbing weighing her neck like stones; a sound came from down the hallway, where the light flickered green and white and the ceiling dripped a rusted red fluid with a harsh echo. The sound of machinery, of clockwork, of banging metallic doors and the whirring of ancient steel sentience.
A doll walked up to her, a pretty, petite thing wearing a red flowered dress and coiled red hair. The eyes were not orbs, but instead flashlights, letting out hot white halos from LED eyes. The jaw dropped down, a nutcracker jaw with a tiny speaker inside, not even feigning speech. The voice was distorted, mechanical, reproduced. Not human.
“Our scan shows two things. One, you are not infected. Two, you are not carrying the patuek.”
Mari tried pushing her limbs out, straining her body against the webbing. She was stuck. “Okay. Good. Great. What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means that you are useless to us and will be discarded of properly.”
Mari laughed. It was a hard, bitter sound. A laughter that rolled around on her tongue, leaving the taste of tin in her mouth. “Great. Just great.”
The doll stomped away from the room and Mari wondered if Sugoi would come and burst down the walls, tearing the ship apart to save her. She wondered if Itsasu would bring her dolls in, betadurs blazing. I can’t die here, she thought, not now. Not in this webbing. This is a mistake.
She pushed her limbs against the webbing, felt her muscles shove against the steel membrane. It felt as if it were going to give, to break, to snap. And then nothing. It still held her down, still tense, still captive in its strong arms.
She sobbed, briefly, fearing death; her tears dripped down her cheeks and then caught in the webs that contained her. Not even those had release, had freedom. Trapped, trapped. Until they disposed of her.
23
Ekhi sat in the heart of the ship, staring at its beating red and veiny skin, listening to it talk with each beat of blood flowing through it. The room was hot and the air tasted salty, like she was caught in the bloodstream of a giant. The heart did not project an avatar of itself into a holofield when it talked to her, nor did it use a doll or a replicant. It just spoke, the voice riding through the air in a sweaty fever dream.
I have had many captains pilot me, many men and women drive me through the starsea. I have seen more worlds than any human, seen more deaths in my lifetime than I could care to see. I was a research vessel. That was my first mission, and, it seems, my only mission. My eternal mission. My original creator died, his work unfinished. Even through all these centuries, I have not seen anything like it.
Ekhi walked up to the box, staring at it, trying to peer into it, see if she could open it somehow. Sealed shut on all sides. And the jewel on top of it seemed to be a part of the box, not cut into the shape, but instead a natural extension of it.
“Anything like what?” she asked.
She had been in the heart of the ship for a few hours, talking with the AI off and on throughout that time, waiting until she felt it was safe to go back outside. She trusted the heart of the ship, felt like the heart and the AI where the only things aboard this vessel she could believe were telling her the truth. It was the only person she had met so far without motive. Without a need to betray her or anyone else.
She didn’t feel vulnerable when she was around it. She felt strong, trustworthy.
Well, it responded in its ancient voice, like this other ship that has attacked us and kidnapped Hodei. When I spoke to it, the onboard AI didn’t feel right. It felt panicked. It sounded obsessed. I can’t explain it. Like a human, it sounded love-torn and hungry.
Ekhi felt her stomach, felt the worlds explode and expand, the new galaxy growing by each moment, each second. She noticed that her stomach was distending a little. Not much, just a little. A hard little bump, like a rock had slid under her belly skin.
“Maybe it’s not an AI,” she said. “Maybe it’s piloted entirely by humans. I’ve heard of some ships doing that. Especially really old ones, when the AI had broken down, unwound. Gone insane.”
She paused for a moment, and then said in a whisper, “My ship was like that. Before. Before I came here. I needed to shut it down. Pilot it in the nude, without a heart for any help. It was sad, the moment I told that AI to sleep. It still hurts me to think about it.”
The heart beat faster for a moment, the ventricles straining, plumping, almost bursting. She walked away, slowly, thinking that it might explode and shower her with whatever juice powered this ship.
I’m sorry, it said. I’ve heard that piloting an egia can be very stressful for a human. It can take a large toll on the mind.
Ekhi shrugged, picked up the box. It was cold to the touch—too cold. Her fingers burned from the cold, the feeling running through her skin like ice in her blood. She dropped it, watching it fall slowly and gracefully like a feather, and then dipped her fingers into her mouth, trying to warm them with her tongue.
“I know. It did, I think. Some of my memories, where I held the controls of the ship in my mind, they’re missing. Like holes in my being, ripping through all levels of thought. I feel partial somehow, broken because of it. But I couldn’t stop, I needed to see
my lover. We were to be married, did you know that? Married. But he died.”
The ship’s heart slowed down, paused. Thump, thump, thump. Ekhi sat down on the floor, her hand over the bump in her stomach, feeling the ghost of stars swim beneath her skin.
I’m sorry. What happened to the ship’s heart?
Ekhi closed her eyes, the holes in her mind swimming around in her thoughts. She remembered this—yes, she remembered this clearly. It had been backed up by her patuek, stored in its memory chambers so that she would never forget it, no matter how hard she tried.
“It went insane,” she said. “The programs broke down. Entropic. I’m not sure how it happened, or why. If I could’ve gotten to a port in time, they could’ve fixed it. Scanned the heart and removed whatever it was that ate the algorithms, making it act in such a cruel way. But I couldn’t stop, don’t you see? I had to go see my lover. And I’m glad I did. If I would’ve been even moments later, he would have gone nova without me. And then what would I have? Not even his memory, not even his daughter. It was worth it.”
Silence was the response. Ekhi walked over to the door, put her hand against the rusted circular frame and tried to feel if there was still danger, if the ship was still under attack.
A sigh. It’s a pity your ship had to die for your love. It’s safe outside, if you want to go now. But be careful, the life form readings from inside the ship that attacked us are, well, peculiar. They have some genetic servants aboard, but that’s not exactly what I’m picking up. Something foreign.
Ekhi raised an eyebrow. “Do you mean an alien?”
No response. She laughed, her pregnant stomach rocking against her ribs with each hearty ha-ha-ha. She stopped for a moment, wiped tears from her cheeks, caught her breath. “Are you serious? Almost every sentient or alien life form that we have met has been obliterated by coming into contact with us. So what, is there a new breed of alien that we haven’t met, hiding in the cosmos? Or is this something else?”
The AI paused, choosing its words carefully. Close. I don’t know. It’s not like anything I’ve seen before. It’s alien, but it’s in a human. Maybe a human changed? Genetically? I have no idea. I can’t tell from this distance. My scans are inaccurate.
The door beside her slid open automatically with a screech and wail of rust freshly disturbed. She walked out, her bare feet warm against the cold metallic cage of the floor.
Yes, that’s it, the ship said, changed humans. At least, that’s part of it.
24
Hodei was on the floor, his body thrown down into a chaotic mess of limbs and shattered bones. His skin ached, his nerves bursting into radial rings of pain. He mewled on the floor, a pathetic noise.
Against the wall at his head were two large cylinders filled with an icy-blue liquid. The cylinders were decorated with intricately complex vine motifs, crawling over the edges and down the sides like a living thing carved out of gold. The leaves folded over, each spot and vein accurately represented in a perfect replication of real vegetation. Suspended in the cylinders were two human bodies, one male and one female, their hair messy tendrils waving through the fluid.
Hodei recognized them and felt his heart tighten, the muscles tensing like a fist. That was her, the girl from the magazine, and him, her brother. Over their mouths were insectile breathing masks, like scorpions wrapped around their jaws. They were in suspended animation of some sort. Hodei had never seen technology like this. In the fluid danced the flickering firefly lights of the thalna, stitching the bodies back together with each second, keeping them in a constant state of health and well-being.
He reached his hand out painfully, his fingers twisted into a broken claw shape, touching the edge of her cylinder. The glass slid beneath his fingers, making a squeaking sound.
A small doll sat next to him, watching him with big black button eyes and fabric lips, sewn fingers and stitched teeth. Its hair was made from curling yarn. This was not one of the dolls that had brought him on board the ship, those waxy almost-human manikins. No, this was a child’s toy brought to life with complex nanomachineries crawling beneath the fabric, running close to the cotton like computerized weevils.
It spoke from a tiny black speaker stitched into its mouth, sticking out like the eyes of an insect. “It has taken me so long to find you, to scan you and see that she is inside of you, her patuek. When I became infected—when the heart of the ship even became infected—I had to take such drastic measures. To slow down the sakre before it destroyed us all.”
Hodei twitched a little, convulsing uncontrollably. Everything was painful. Breathing. Talking. Moving. Everything.
“It was horrible, horrible, happening so fast. I had to hide her patuek before they, too, became infected. I shot them through space, riding the radio waves and coming into your body. I was able to slow it enough in myself, before my patuek were eaten by the sakre. The heart of the ship and the crew were not so lucky.”
Hodei felt his blood vibrate and he remembered, remembered her name, he knew it now. Iuski. It whispered to him in his blood, sang her name through his veins. The name lit up his mind, lit up his memories, brought her personality out so fast that it flooded everything inside of him with glowing halos of her own thought, her own patuek searching for meat to latch onto, meat to be reborn within.
She remembered, inside of his skin, under his thoughts. She remembered hearing that word, that foul and tainted alien word. Her mind was invaded—other thoughts, foreign thoughts, taking over, thinking for her, being her. Memories of an alien landscape, of a world full of ruined cities and a burnt-out shell of a sun. Her thoughts were translated into another tongue, some alien language she had not heard before, these new words changing her own thoughts, her own memories. Trying to rewrite her. Trying to transform her into their puppet.
I don’t want to remember this, Hodei thought, pushing it aside. She can remember that. When she is in her own body.
He looked up at her body, a perfectly preserved sack of meat without soul, mind or memory. Her naked body was holy in person, no longer something made from glossy pages and airbrushed into perfection, but instead a flawed, angelic figure floating in a blue prison, her moles and scars making her more beautiful than he could ever have believed possible.
Staring at her, she saw herself through his eyes and became her own object, objectified through the male gaze, and then became herself. She remembered the first time she had taken that job, posing as a model on some port hung outside of a low-burning blue sun. Her first series of nude images, how uncomfortable she felt, smiling for the camera. How cold it was without clothing.
And then later, looking at the end result, the magazine, remembering what it felt like to see herself like that, as an object of sexual desire, reflected on the page. It was unreal; that could not have been her. Could not ever be her. That woman on the pages was someone else, trapped on the glossy pages. Someone that looked like her from a distance, like a hidden twin, shoved in the background of her life.
Hodei forced the memories out again, feeling sick inside his stomach. This was wrong. Seeing her thoughts, reflecting his thoughts, it made her less perfect, debased her in his mind. He did not want to converse with her, did not want to understand her. “Take her out of me,” he said to the doll. “Take her out of me. Please.”
The doll walked up to him, put a sewn hand against his face. It felt like a washcloth brushing against his cheek. And he remembered his mother, so long ago, washing his face in a sink on a newly terraformed moon hung over the red skull of a wasted Earth.
“I can’t. Not yet. I might even put my own patuek into you, for the time being. Have you carry us back to your ship. You are not infected. We are, still. I’ve slowed it down, but if we are released now, all will be lost. We would be dead before long, and then you would catch it, too. We would whisper the word once, just once, and your mind would become a slave to this foreign tongue, this alien thought device.”
Hodei tried to move away from the doll�
�s stubby white paw, tried to push his cheek back and out of its washcloth caress. Too much pain. Too much. He could only flinch slightly, and then moan.
“First, we need to fix you up. You will be useless to us if you stay a broken shell. Then you will bring our bodies aboard your ship with you.”
Hodei felt something like cotton being wrapped across his skin, mummifying him in its gauzy substance. “What if I say no?”
The doll smiled a sewn grin, black button eyes shining. “Too late,” it whispered. “The process has already begun.”
25
Sugoi’s body was on fire. His head was a mess of bees and ants and screaming things. His mouth was open, toothless, being put back together atom by atom, his whole being erupting in a wall of broken glass, shattering across his nerves in a wave of blinding pain. He pushed himself up on his hands, twisted, bent, being bent backwards, bending back, firefly lights forcing his body the correct way, fixing bones, forcing things back to normal.
He howled and wailed as bone stitched back and brain stitched back and body stitched back. Face bursting, blood, pain, then put back together again, the thalna taking him apart and sewing him into a living thing, their tiny computational matrices rebuilding him from the ground up.
When they were done, he sat arm in hand, his mind hollow and jellied. He had nothing. No idea. Then his patuek came out, came out in tiny fingers, pried open the grey lines of his brain, dug their memories down under the flaps of brain matter, placed the thoughts from before back into his skin.
The dolls. The brain bust. Hodei touched her.
Sugoi smiled. He stood up, his body moving thickly, slowly, the thalna fluttering off now that their work was done, their tiny engines sounding like the whispering of hummingbird wings. The mozorro crawled away from him, and through the intercom he heard the voice of Itsasu, scolding him.