by Linda Nagata
He checked the time. Not long now.
He was just about to return to the coffin and prepare for the next leg of acceleration when a ghost came to him.
“You again!” Nikko hissed, as he recognized the odd little gentleman who’d sabotaged his atrium so many weeks ago.
His visitor sat cross-legged on nothing, his lithe figure floating in vacuum about a meter off Nikko’s right shoulder. His blond hair waved as if he were underwater; he wore no vacuum suit. “Success,” he said. “My assault Makers were replicated along with your body. I guess Fox didn’t notice that.”
“What do you want from me?” Nikko demanded.
The man’s lower lip swelled in an angry pout. “I wanted you to stay away from the Maker!” he said. “I warned you weeks ago, but you wouldn’t listen. Oh, you’re good. But now you’ve forced me to move against you. I’m sorry for what I have to do to you. Slave atriums repulse me. But you should understand their occasional necessity, better than most. I can’t change the course of this silly ship you’re on. But I can control you. I can prevent you from taking on any passengers.”
Nikko stared at the little gentleman, feeling brutally, utterly terrified. The kisheer reflected his emotion. It swelled up in his throat until he thought he would choke. “Slave atrium? But you can’t—”
“I’m sorry. I really am. But you’ve left me no choice. My assault Makers are modifying your atrium now.”
“But you don’t understand what’s going on!” Nikko protested, the atrium working an interesting croak of panic into his voice.
“Oh I’m sorry. But you’re wrong. I do understand. Phousita’s aboard that ship, and she has my Maker.”
“Your Maker?” Nikko blinked in astonishment. Was this little man really . . . ?
“Phousita has to stay aboard that ship! So the police can recover her. Kirstin’s finally figured out how you got the Maker out of Castle, you know. Marevic gave her the ship’s control code, or most of it, anyway—”
“Kirstin?” Nikko echoed dumbly. “Marevic?”
“Your scheme’s falling apart,” Bohr said. “It was a valiant effort, though.”
So Marevic had been arrested. She was probably dead by now. And Kirstin . . .
“Kirstin will have Phousita executed,” Nikko said, wondering what it would take to elicit sympathy from this ghost. “Do you know Phousita? Have you met her? There’s no harm in her. She doesn’t deserve to die.”
The ghost looked suddenly uncomfortable. “Nature can be so unkind,” he admitted. “But it has to happen. She’s told me she will share the Maker with anyone who wants it. I can’t let that happen.”
“Why not?”
Bohr seemed to curl into himself like a spider that had been knocked from its web. “Look at yourself,” he mumbled, his eyes averted as if he were embarrassed to speak of these things. “I don’t have anything against you personally, understand. But you’re not a child of the Goddess. You don’t belong to the Earth. You’re not a part of the continuity of life that is unique to our Mother. What’s to stop the development of more like you if my Maker is widespread? The lineage of the Goddess will be broken. The natural continuum shattered.”
“That’s crazy!” Nikko hissed. “Nature is blind and deaf and dumb, a reactive machine, no more. It doesn’t matter if we change it! It’s a good thing. Look at Summer House. The technology that made Summer House can fill the void with life. That can’t be bad.”
Bohr’s chin came up in a little boy’s stubborn gesture. “What’s crazy,” he said, “is our presumption that we have the vision to be the guiding hands of evolution.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry,” the ghost interrupted.
“But my brother’s pattern is on that ship. If the police recover it—”
“I’m sorry,” the ghost repeated. He seemed truly apologetic. “This whole affair has become so ugly.”
Nikko’s kisheer fluttered across his face. He struggled to calm it. “But Phousita will die if—
“Phousita made her choice— What’s this? What’s this? Oh, damnation! Your dad’s got a new Maker in you. It’s attacking the atrium. Smart move. That’ll get rid of me, won’t it? More effective than attacking me direct.”
The ghost was gone.
What for the love of Nature?
Nikko stiffened. He’d meant to speak the words. But they were a thought, no more. His voice was gone. He ordered a check on his atrium, but his command went unacknowledged. He tried to access his atrium notebook. He tried to get a reading on the time. The atrium didn’t respond. He felt suddenly dizzy. Pain flared through his skull. What had Fox done to him? He pressed his head against the deep cold of the coffin, trying to hold on to consciousness.
Fox had destroyed his atrium.
Fox had saved him from slavery.
Fox had stranded him in the void, because without a functioning atrium, he had no way to signal this absurd little ship to begin the voyage home.
He blacked out. When he came to, he found himself in the coffin. He didn’t remember climbing in. But the engine had kicked on, so it was good that he’d managed it. He tested the atrium. No result. He drew nutrients from the coffin and mulled his problems and grew hungrier, until he could think of little else but his hunger. If the atrium were working, he could suppress that physiological reaction. . . .
The atrium was gone.
He didn’t climb out of the coffin again. He felt weak, and vaguely dizzy. The shaking in his hands was beginning to be replicated in his toes. There was nothing he could do about it. There was nothing he could do about anything. He couldn’t even dictate to the camera.
His was a miserable existence. Yet it could have been worse. Fox had looked to his bodily functions. He didn’t have to defecate because he had no food in his intestinal tract. He didn’t have to urinate, because his genital organ recycled his urine, while the excess fluids and toxic excretions were sweated off in a thin film of ice.
After a day the engine slowed. The steering mechanism turned the vessel about. Deceleration. Nikko was a piece of baggage, badly packed. Another day passed. The engine cut off for the last time, and Nikko blacked out, a victim of exhaustion.
He woke up only when his little vessel banged against the target ship. The hull of the coffin immediately fused with the hull of Phousita’s ship. The glue would hold until he sprayed the bond with a little can of propellent stashed in the middle coffin.
Clumsily, he reached up to his chest panel to activate the camera. The gesture sent waves of cramps through his hands. His numb fingers were yanked into sudden, excruciating circles. Slowly, he exercised them, opening and closing his hands. At first his long fingers tangled with each other, but after ten or twelve repetitions, they began to remember what they were for. With the camera on, he opened the coffin lid then climbed out, craning his neck to get a look at the ship that his ghost had taken out of Castle.
It was a squat, ugly cylinder, just large enough to contain three decks. The engines were working to produce a comfortable deceleration. Recessed sensory equipment studded the hull, but there were no windows. Nikko pulled out some slack on his tether and clambered around the hull, using handy grips installed for the benefit of maintenance personnel. He found the air lock. The outer door was closed. Access was controlled by a numerical keypad affixed to the hull, minimum security for a vessel that would dock in crowded inner cities. He’d recorded the access code in his atrium notebook—but of course the notebook had been destroyed along with his atrium.
He punched experimentally at the keypad, but it rejected his attempts. He wondered if there was a doorbell. In the end, he decided to knock.
Phousita sat huddled in the living room of the little ship. A soap opera was playing, but the volume was turned down. Arif was asleep on the floor. She watched him, his handsome face so calm in sleep. What to do? What to do?
She still waited for her ghost to return from the evil sorcerer. It had been almost three days now. She�
��d begun to wonder if it had been lost. Perhaps it would never return.
What to do?
She’d thought it wise—for the time being, until she knew more—to obey the evil sorcerer. So she’d reneged on her offer to share the Maker’s talents with Arif. He’d flown into a rage. He’d hit her again. But that was the last time. She made a spell that would send him to sleep any time he moved against her—an absurd solution that did nothing to heal the deep wounds inside him. The Maker could do that. She wanted to share it with him. But she was afraid of the evil sorcerer and so she waited for the return of her ghost.
A dull, distant banging intruded on her consciousness. Her chin lifted as she listened to a barely audible pounding that seemed to roll up from the deck. She tested the air, but sensed no change aboard the ship. Arif stirred restlessly in his sleep. The pounding continued in a slowly varying rhythm. It came from the lock, she decided. From the door. She swallowed hard as an unreasonable fear gripped her. There was nothing on the other side of the door. There would be nothing, until the ship docked at Summer House.
The pounding went on.
She got slowly to her feet and walked to the lock. The door itself was only a colored outline. Its material had bonded with the inner hull of the ship. Using the terms of address Nikko had taught her, she asked it politely if it would open. The outline faded away. A thin crack appeared in the gray surface. Several seconds passed as the crack deepened, then the door slid aside, out of sight.
When Phousita had boarded the ship at Castle, there had been a short passage between double doors. Now the passage was filled with a curious, semitransparent wall. She reached out to touch it. It was cool to her hand but not cold, and it yielded to her touch, like soft flesh. She could see the hazy points of stars through its mass. So the outer door must be open too. She pushed harder and her hand sank into it. It was very broad, more than the length of her arm, but if she leaned forward, perhaps she could reach all the way outside. . . .
A bitterly cold hand grasped her arm from outside and shoved her back into the ship. She screamed in surprise and stumbled backward. A moment later she saw Nikko pulling himself through the membranous wall on a succession of handgrips. Despite all the weeks she’d spent with his ghost, she’d never actually seen him herself. But she recognized him from Sandor’s memories. He slipped out of the gel, the familiar eye-tentacle of a camera pack hovering over his shoulder.
His own eyes were occluded behind dark lenses. But the lenses cleared rapidly and in a few seconds she could see the blue of his true eyes. He towered over her, his tall blue body like a china sculpture. Beads of water condensed on him from out of the air. The living kerchief that covered his mouth, nose, and ears shivered, then unfurled until it lay like a mantle across his shoulders. The alien profile of his scent set her trembling.
He looked past her.
She followed his gaze, to see Arif crouched on the floor. Quickly she turned back to Nikko and laid a hand on his arm. His smooth skin was icy cold. She could feel the muscles quivering under her palm. His fingers were in constant, erratic motion. “Please don’t kill him, Brother Nikko,” she whispered.
“I don’t need you to defend me!” Arif shouted. He rose to his feet, his body flexed, ready. She sensed then that he would not be unhappy to die.
Nikko’s contempt was a bitter perfume on the air. But he showed no interest in fighting. He shrugged, and a wave of shimmering blue ran from his shoulders to his knees. “The police have taken control of this ship,” he said. “It’s not going to Summer House anymore. It’ll probably be brought back to Castle. If you want to dodge the cops, you’ll have to come with me.”
Phousita frowned at the gel membrane. She could sense no duplicity from Nikko. Still. . . . “How can we leave?” she asked. “Outside there’s nothing. It’s death.” She looked at him in surprise. “You have a ship?”
“You could call it that. It’ll get us back to Summer House, anyway. You still have Sandor?”
She looked down in sudden shame. She hadn’t been back to visit Sandor since Nikko had gone. She’d been too mortified to face him. But Nikko wasn’t gone. He was here. Alive and whole.
“Phousita?” His voice was worried now, riven with a hint of anger. “You still have Sandor’s pattern, don’t you?”
“Of course,” she whispered.
“And you’ll come with me?”
She gazed up at him again. She could feel tears standing in her eyes. Her chest was filled with a great sadness. “I want to go home, Brother Nikko. Can you help me go home?”
The taste of his regret flooded her senses. “I don’t know if you can ever go home again,” he said. “It depends on you, and how well you can hide from the cops.”
She nodded her understanding. “The cops haven’t called on me yet. But I have had another visitor. The evil sorcerer sent a ghost to me.” She felt his alarm, and nodded again. “He gave me his address, Brother Nikko, and he told me to visit him. I sent a spirit there, but it hasn’t come back.”
The chill in Nikko’s voice made her shiver. “Did he give you his name, Phousita?”
“He said it was Leander Bohr.”
Nikko hissed his anger. “And do you still have his address?”
“Yes, Brother Nikko.” She shared that with him, while the camera looked on.
Then abruptly the scent of Nikko’s mood changed so that his anger was leavened with something like shame. He turned to Arif. “I need your help.”
Arif stiffened. His face went hard, locked down in a stubborn expression that Phousita knew too well.
Nikko sensed it too. His kisheer went still across his shoulders. His reluctance clouded the air. “My atrium’s been destroyed,” he said. “I have no way to initiate the autopilot aboard my ship. But you can do it.”
“You need to get inside my atrium again?” Arif growled.
“No. I need you to command my ship.”
Arif was silent for a moment. And then a grin slowly spread across his face.
Nikko retrieved two pressure suits from a locker in one of the bedrooms. He shook them out, revealing two long white coveralls, much too big for either Phousita or Arif. “You’ll have to remove your clothes before you put this on,” he said.
Phousita nodded and began to strip. After a brief hesitation, Arif followed her example and a moment later they were dressed in the baggy garments. Phousita looked down at herself.
The suit covered her body from toes to neck. Even her hands were hidden inside baggy gloves at the ends of long sleeves. She found the sense of enclosure deeply disturbing. Her senses seemed to shrivel beneath the dense cloth. Then Nikko touched a panel on the breast of the suit, and it began to shrink. She gasped a little. “Don’t worry,” Nikko said. The suit pulled tight. Within seconds, it had achieved a snug fit.
Phousita held herself stiffly, repulsed by the garment. She felt violated, as if she’d taken on someone else’s skin. Her heart fluttered in her chest. She sent servants to investigate this disturbing cloth, but they quickly returned to her, unable to penetrate it without damaging it. Arif watched the process warily, then repeated the gesture with his own suit.
“This is your helmet,” Nikko said. He handed a globe to her. It was solid white plastic on one side; the other side was transparent plastic. “Goes over your head.”
Her heart thudded in dull fear. The helmet would complete her enclosure, and cut her off from the world. She watched Arif place his own helmet over his head. Nikko locked it down and turned to her. She swallowed her fear. She could not go back and she could not stay here. A path had been laid out for her, and she must follow it. She slipped the helmet over her head. Nikko locked it with his clumsy, trembling hand. A hiss of air, a sudden change in pressure. Then silence.
She drew a deep breath to calm herself. The air tasted slightly different from that of the ship. She thought of all the tiny servants that still roved the room. She couldn’t recover them now. Nikko beckoned with a long, curling finger.
<
br /> “Let’s go.” Arif’s voice growled in her ears, both ears at once, as if he stood on two sides of her, his lips but a breath away.
He took her arm and steered her toward the gel membrane, eager to be off. Nikko had taught him to speak to the new ship with his atrium. He would command it. He seemed to have drawn new life from that simple role.
Nikko spent a few seconds fussing over his old camera pack, then he shrugged his kisheer up over his face, and backed into the membrane. It closed around him as he slipped outside. Arif went next. Phousita watched him closely, then she reached into the membrane, caught a handgrip, and pulled herself through. Outside, the suit stiffened slightly. It squeezed her body ever so gently.
Nikko had waited for her. He showed her how to climb using the handgrips. He hovered close beside her as they clambered across the hull to his tiny ship. He helped her lie down in the coffin. Then he closed the lid.
Chapter
22
Kirstin headed home after Marevic’s execution, bone-tired but aglow with a sense of triumph. The Bohr Maker was hers again—not in hand yet, but under her control. Her staff had extrapolated the ship’s control codes from Marevic’s aborted testimony. They’d communicated briefly with the ship, obtaining video and auditory images that confirmed the identity of the two passengers as Phousita and Arif.
And she’d ensured the ship would never come back to Castle. Already the police ship Galapagos, routed toward Summer House, was moving into position to launch a missile at the outlaw vessel. Nikko’s desperate caper was nearly at an end.
For a moment a darker mood eclipsed her triumph. Nikko’s ghost was aboard that ship too. She had no direct proof, but every instinct told her it must be. She would have liked to visit him; let him know that he was not so clever after all; that in the end his treachery had failed.