As the two of them walked hand in hand toward Mira’s shuttle bay, Caz took in the halls she’d passed through every day since childhood with a wonderment she’d never felt before. She’d taken it all for granted—the halls, the ships, living in space away from a home planet she would never visit. She’d miss the structure and formality, even though she’d struggled against it. She’d miss the paintings in the communal spaces, the music played on ship-tooled instruments. She’d miss her lab. And family dinners.
She promised herself she would never take anything for granted again. It could all change so quickly, purpose and time and the thrust of history shifted like sand on her favorite now-defunct faux beach.
Ivan, Vega, Min-Seo and her wives met them at their scheduled shuttle.
Caz asked her girls—women, they were all women now—to line up, so she could take them in one last time. She held Min-Seo’s face in both hands, trying to burn her round features and dark hair into her mind’s eye forever. She had photographs, of course. She could draw up archived pictures at any time. But she wanted to remember the warmth of her, the love shifting between them. This would be the last time she could peer into her daughter’s face and know her daughter was peering back.
She and Diego shared a group hug with Hiro and Kexin, bidding the two women take good care of Min-Seo.
“It’s going to be the other way around,” Kexin said playfully.
When Caznal broke away from her daughters-in-law, she meant to reach for Vega immediately, but pulled her hand back.
Vega and Diego were locked in a tight embrace, father and daughter not ready to let go yet. “Miss you forever,” he said against her hair.
And then, finally, it was Caznal’s turn to say goodbye to her youngest. She pulled her in for a full-body hug, desperate to let go of the tension that had spoiled the air between them these past years. All she needed was for Vega to understand that she’d never meant to hurt her.
“I love you, Mama,” Vega said sounding so much like the five-year-old that used to hang on her mother’s hip so long ago.
“Love you too, baby.”
Her tears had been falling for minutes now, though Caz had tried to ignore them. She brushed her eyelashes against Vega’s shoulder before giving her up into Diego’s arms once more.
“I made you guys something,” Vega said after a minute. She held out a small paper-wrapped bundle. “Remember that pottery class I was taking?” She sniffed wetly. “Anyway, I made you these. You guys have one part, and Min-Seo and I have the other, and when . . .” Her lip trembled, but she took a deep breath and continued. “You pass them down to your clones, see? And Min-Seo and I pass ours down, and when the convoys come back together, it’s . . . it’s a full set again. Don’t open it yet, you’ll—you’ll see what I mean after the convoys split.”
After a litany of repeated “goodbye’s” and “we love you’s,” Caznal and Diego boarded their shuttle.
The docking bay was cleared for decompression, and as Caz watched her girls disappear through the airlock doors, she had to fight with everything she had not to throw herself against the shuttle door and forsake her new mission forever.
The mood on Shambhala was reverent. Everyone moved with a quiet intensity, sharing looks that were more sympathetic and reassuring than excited. One or two manically minded crew members whooped and hollered as they found their new quarters, but for the most part people seemed introspective.
Diego went to settle into their new living space, while Caz strode slowly through the halls, watching the volunteers as a naturalist might watch squirrels or bees. She admired their work, their business, and tried not to feel saddened for the loss of community that would soon follow.
They’d have a lot of work ahead of them—not so much in terms of the mechanics of the ships or even the politics of their social structure, but in building a togetherness. There was comradery in the choice they’d collectively made, but no one would be able to forget all the people, the vibrancy, the tenacity, the unity of their original home.
And they shouldn’t. They needed to keep it fore in their minds. This mission was for them, after all, as much as that idea might have been rejected. Noumenon Ultra would try to help its twin, to bolster its efforts with discoveries Noumenon Infinitum could not make.
They needed to be sure Convoy Seven remained real to them, and vice versa. That the sibling notion did not fall out of use.
“I.C.C.?” she said. This would be the last time she spoke with the AI. As soon as they dove, the connection would be severed. “You keep everyone in Infinitum honest for me, okay? Make sure they don’t forget us, please. Make sure we don’t become just another myth to them.”
“I will do my best,” it said. “I will miss you. All of you. And I will miss Shambhala—it has been a part of me for a long time.”
“One day the ship will come back to you.”
“But you, Caznal the Fourth, I shall never see again.”
“Thank you, I.C.C., for everything.”
A blast of cold air from a duct had Caz jumping back suddenly. It was someone on the environmentals panel just getting a renewed feel for things, she was sure. The air died down as quickly as it had roared up, leaving the hearty laugh of Dr. Baraka in its wake.
He stood near the star-windows, watching her approach. His mannerisms were just as she remembered, warmed now to use again. The way he stood, with his back slightly bent, the paunch of his belly thrust forward, one hand dithering near his face as though twisting a nonexistent mustache was all familiar. They brought back fond memories of her apprenticeship.
He crooked a finger at her, and she jogged to his side, glaring over her shoulder at the offending air duct.
“So,” he said, a chuckle still living under the fluctuation of his tenor. “That’s our planemo?”
“Yep,” she said, admiring the rock for the last time. She hadn’t been to the surface in years—not since before I.C.C.’s proposal to split Convoy Seven. A dull twinge of regret coiled through her chest, but she pushed it away. There were so many places she would never set foot again.
“I’m glad I saw it,” he said.
He had never gone down. This was his first, and last, encounter with the Nataré’s mysterious first X.
“Will I live to see our next rendezvous point?” he asked. The inherent wistfulness made the question redundant, but Caz longed to reassure him. She herself would be an old woman when they arrived. Dr. Baraka might make it, or he might not.
Their retirement system would be different from Convoy Seven’s. No more sending people off into the spiritual unknown at a scheduled date and time. End of life would mean dreaming for everyone. Even as one’s mind or body failed, the caretakers would see them off without pain, without worry. Without, even, knowing they were dying.
Dr. Baraka leaned his forehead against the window then, and a flash of memory struck her. It was Dr. Baraka who she’d first seen press against the glass like that, letting himself go cross-eyed as the unreal patterns projected by the window swelled and swirled. She’d learned it from him, and passed it on to Min-Seo.
She hoped Convoy Seven would see fit to install a new window like this somewhere on the remaining ships. That way Min-Seo might teach the silly ritual to her children, and they theirs.
Shambhala rumbled, and the planemo started to recede. Caz set herself next to Dr. Baraka, mirroring him as the Convoy Seven ships passed by.
They needed to be a safe distance away from the other convoy before they dove.
Someone cleared their throat behind Caz, and she whirled. Perhaps the crew would think it immature of her, pressing her face to the glass like an eager child beholding a fish tank for the first time. If the crew was to take her seriously, perhaps she shouldn’t indulge in such things.
“Room in this party for one more?” Diego asked.
Dr. Baraka swiftly appraised Diego, giving him a sporting once-over. Fond nostalgia flitted across his cheeks, crinkling his eyes, before h
e gestured to the other side of Caznal. “Pull up a chair,” he joked.
Dr. Baraka returned his forehead to the glass, followed by Diego. Caz glanced at both of them, emotion welling in her chest, and undefined gratefulness swirling around her heart.
“You want to see what Vega left us?” Diego asked, flicking his gaze at her, smiling a one-sided smile. “These,” he said, reaching into his uniform pocket.
He presented to her, on the flat of his brown palm, a miniature version of Mira. Its details were rough, the baked clay gritty. But little windows had been carefully indented into its surface, likely with the head of a pin, and the bridge and docking areas were easily distinguishable.
As distinguishable as the miniature’s maker. Vega had crafted it with love. Her devotion beating out her skill for importance.
“It’s a whole set of nine. I laid them out on a bookshelf in our quarters.” He pocketed mini-Mira before adding, “I’m guessing she and Min-Seo have three.”
“And in the future, hopefully they will make twelve again,” she said, finally joining them in their strange posture. The glass was either especially cool, or her cheeks and forehead especially hot.
The convoy ships continued to fall away—Mira looking more and more like the version in Diego’s pocket by the moment.
Now, we, too, will be part of their mythic pantheon, she realized. They will remember us as some moralistic story. Whether good or bad, we will likely fall into legend, no matter how hard I.C.C. tries. How long will that take? When will we pass from memory into myth?
But now was not the time to dwell on how they’d be remembered. Today was about new beginnings.
With her old master on one side, and her husband on the other, Caznal looked toward the future. It was full of hope, discovery, and most importantly, the unknown.
She reached out for both of their hands as the light in the hall turned purple.
Chapter Three
Stone: Whatever Souls Are Made of
Convoy Twelve
The Day of the Accident
July 6, 2127 CE
Stone tried to keep his temper on the level, under control, but it was as futile as trying to pilot this goddamned infernal machine. Tension radiated off the officers closest to him, amplifying his own stiffness. The tendons in his jaw hurt from clenching, and his brown knuckles were turning sickly pale around the joystick.
Pod thirty-three should have been bizcocho e’ Titi: easy. What was it doing? Why in the hell was this experiment going so wrong?
The telemetry readouts on his dash flickered and spun, the holographic overlays on the dials fluctuating wildly. The gyroscopes weren’t working at all—their monitors had all flatlined. The Y-axis readings were the only displays that didn’t look like they’d been possessed.
The pod wasn’t dipping above or below the artificial horizon, but it sure as hell wasn’t maintaining its intended trajectory.
He flicked the joystick to the right, willing the thrusters to properly engage.
“Come on, come on,” Stone gnashed under his breath.
Stone clenched his teeth, keeping his head down. His hair fell into his eyes and he batted it away with a huff.
I can do this. Come on you stupid machine, come on.
Someone said something about an SD bubble, and engaged-drive data. Stone focused on what he could control. He powered down the thrusters, rebooted steering, and programmed in a new flight path. But the damned pod was still reeling toward the convoy.
The floor pitched as Breath lumbered to life. Captain Tan was trying to move the ships out of the way of the oncoming pod.
In the same moment, the stick went slack in Stone’s hands, like the system had shut off—
Or disappeared.
He looked up. The distant pod flashed in electric reds and golds, its body completely obscured by the phenomena.
Then it was gone.
Thank god. If the thing had wormed its way into a subdimension, they were fine. Safe. Nothing to worry—
Another flash, more pink-and-orange this time. The pod was back, and it . . .
Anda pa’l sirete.
“Doctor Kapoor!” He leapt to his feet and pointed out the bay windows. The pod was back and kilometers closer than before.
When he saw her attention snap in its direction, he fell back into his seat, desperately flicking the engines on and off again. He had to get them to engage. The convoy ships moved too slowly, like lumbering beasts. If he couldn’t regain control of the pod, they were going to collide.
“It’s getting closer!” someone shouted.
Stone glanced up for a blink’s time, only to see the pod jump and cover half the remaining distance in the wink of an eye. Blood roared in his ears as he tried everything he could think of, everything.
The light in the room turned purple, and he was vaguely aware of Captain Tan’s voice over the intercom.
“Dive!”
The pod jumped once more, appearing right outside the deck’s window, like the tip of a fatal iceberg jutting out of the water.
The sizzling sound of blood in Stone’s ears was overpowered by a high-pitched screeching that felt like it sliced him between the eyes. His head pounded, felt simultaneously squeezed and shattered.
On the tail of the screech came a deep bass reverberation that made his insides cramp. He doubled over at his station, felt like he was falling, only to realize . . .
I’m flying?
No. It’s the gravity, the grav—
He flailed, looking for something to grab onto, to keep him upright, to weigh him down. His eyes found Dr. Kapoor in the fray, equally floundering. But her gaze was fixed on the collision point, and he turned to look, too.
White sparks leaked through the window—so white, so pure, they threw rainbow reflections across the ceiling and floor. Following the sparks, as though dragged by them, was a haze of cosmic distortion.
She was so close to it—closer than anyone else in the room. He feared it might reach her, might tear her apart—
Outside, the dark star-pocked tableau shifted as they phased, went black as they dove into one of the travel subdimensions.
Just as they crossed over, the sparking field engulfed Kapoor, twisting around her, encasing, enfolding—not just connecting with her or passing over her, but warping around her.
She was too bright to look at, the pinky-tangerine glow too harsh. He tried to yell for her, but the panic turned his lungs to ice, froze the scream in his chest.
Stone braced for the field to take him, too. It seemed like forever, waiting for it to cover a distance it really only took nanoseconds to traverse.
But there was no pain, as he’d been expecting. No sizzle of skin turning to plasma on his bones, no instant madness or popped eyeballs or insides becoming outsides.
Just a light tingle. Its edge came close enough to raise the hair on his arms, but never made contact.
Dr. Kapoor dimmed, and he looked at her once more. She hovered for a moment, seeming still—asleep, maybe—and then . . .
Then she vanished.
The bright orange field recoiled. Not dissipated, retreated. As though sucked back to whence it came.
The purple light flicked back to normal, only to be reengaged seconds later. They were reemerging, surfacing out of the SD and into regular space.
Stone felt lightheaded. He couldn’t have seen what it looked like, what he—
He was having a hard time forming coherent thoughts.
Shifting instantly from one-g to no-g’s was messing with his mind, and that field—he wanted to puke, but his stomach disagreed.
Stars flickered to life beyond the window, like little twinkle lights being turned on one by one.
They were back.
And so was the gravity. As it reengaged, everyone fell to the floor. Stone narrowly avoided smacking the underside of his chin on his desk, catching the side of his cheek instead.
Captain Tan was saying something over the comms again. But S
tone’s brain was awash with a buzzing.
One thought wriggled its way to the forefront of his mind as he looked toward the command chair:
Is Dr. Kapoor okay?
He had no memory of falling asleep—blacking out—but waking up was like being ripped out of cold water and taking a long-awaited breath. His temples throbbed, pain ran a jagged path across the seams of his skull, and his face burned where it had slammed into the desk. Apparently, he’d hit it harder than he’d first thought.
The convoy’s emergency PSA was playing on a loop—a din of Tan’s voice telling them to report to their emergency positions and to remain calm. Sparks flew from a severed snatch of wires—it looked like a chair had collided with an overhead light during zero-g. The small blips of fire winked in and out, sometimes sharp, occasionally blurry.
He had a concussion, obviously. But others were faring far worse.
Off to his right, a handful of people had a fire extinguisher blasting at a control panel while the pinpointed automated fire suppression system rained foam down around them. Chairs, holoflex-sheets, tablets and mugs were everywhere, like the room had been under siege from a supernatural storm that exclusively rained office supplies.
Beside Stone, Maureen Stevenson—who came from the clone staff—sat like a little girl, her knees turned inward, feet akimbo. She’d lost a shoe, and blood ran down the side of her face from a deep gash in her brow. Her eyes looked at something nonexistent under Stone’s desk.
“Hey. Hey!” He snapped his fingers in front of her nose, letting out a thankful sigh when her eyes focused and found him. “Can you stand? Is anything broken?”
She shook her head, then raised stiff fingers to her wet face. She made a yip of denial when they came away with blood—clearly, she’d been expecting tears.
“It’s okay. You’re okay . . .” he said, hoping it was true. He leaned forward to take hold of her and together they stood—he using her for support as much as she used him.
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