Not very well, he suspects.
“There must be a way of killing it,” says Sadira. “There must be a weapon around here somewhere.”
“No.” The craggy, gray-haired man shakes his head. “Once we hurt any of these organisms, they might turn on us—even if we are disguised. It’s too risky.”
“Tuddor’s right,” Quenby agrees. “We have to think of something else.”
“What about the overhead ducts?” Arkwright turns to Rufus. “They’re big enough for a small person. And there’s a vent in every room.” He gestures at a hatch cover in the ceiling directly above him.
But Quenby isn’t persuaded. “Oh, no,” she protests. “No, we’re not letting kids like Haemon and Merrit use those air ducts. We don’t know what might be up there.”
“Whatever’s up there won’t bother anyone who’s wearing Rufus’s socks,” Yestin reminds her. “All we have to do is send the socks through and—”
“Your friends will become invisible,” Rufus finishes. He folds his arms and surveys the assembled crowd. “Good thinking. Okay, so who’s our lucky sock bearer?”
It’s Quenby who volunteers. With Tuddor’s help, she removes the hatch cover and climbs up through the vent, which looks like a lipless mouth or a gaping wound. Noble doesn’t envy her. The air duct is narrow, slimy, and dark, and it drools all over her as she wriggles her way in. Its walls are so elastic that Noble can follow her progress by watching the slow movement of a large bulge in the ceiling.
He wonders what will happen if she’s attacked up there. Will he be able to spot an approaching bulge before it’s too late?
“The minute she stops moving,” Rufus remarks, “we should slash that duct open and let her out. Just in case she’s stuck, or something.”
“How?” asks Noble. “Do you have a knife?”
“No,” Rufus admits.
They both stand for a moment, chins tilted. Everyone else is doing the same thing. Finally, the bulge disappears behind a vertical wall.
Noble puts his mouth to Rufus’s ear and says, “There are too many children on this ship.”
“Yeah. I know. It’s a kids’ game,” Rufus reveals.
“But why put them in such danger?” Noble doesn’t understand. “If you and I hadn’t come here, some of them might have been killed.”
“Correction. Some of them would have been killed. That’s the way it works.” Seeing Noble’s bewildered expression, Rufus tries to explain. “See, you choose your character, and then he—or she—leads the rest of ’em to the bridge while they’re being picked off one by one. The more crew you’re left with, the higher your points score.” He nods at the purple blob on the door, then continues quietly, “That’s why there are pockets of people along the way. Like those two in there. You can lose a few, but you can collect a few as well. Which would add to your overall score.”
Noble swallows. “That’s monstrous,” he says.
“I know.”
“What’s monstrous?” Yestin butts in.
“This place.” Noble speaks hoarsely. “This place is monstrous.”
“I told you they’d be begging to leave,” Rufus reminds him.
“But how can such evil exist?” Noble demands, forgetting to keep his voice down. “Why doesn’t somebody do something?”
“I am doing something. I’m setting these poor suckers free.” Rufus waves a hand at the nearby throng. “It’s why I’m here, remember? To fight injustice.”
“And cruelty,” Noble adds.
“That, too.”
“Is it the Colonel’s handiwork?” asks Noble, struck by a sudden thought. “Is he the one responsible for slaughtering innocent children?”
Rufus hesitates. “Let’s just say the Colonel’s involved,” he says at last.
“Then we must act now. We must put an end to his tyranny.”
Rufus grunts, but doesn’t reply. Instead, he nods at the roof and says, “Looks like they’re taking the long way back.”
Following his gaze, Noble sees a procession of bulges squirming toward the air-duct vent overhead. Soon Quenby appears, followed by a smooth-faced teenage girl and a very dark, very cute little boy who’s even younger than Yestin. Each of the newcomers has a sock pulled over one hand. As Noble watches the flurry of hugging and kissing that greets the children’s arrival, it occurs to him that he might be witnessing some kind of family reunion.
He doesn’t know much about families, but he understands that they’re very important. He’s aware that people raise families when they’re secure and healthy and well fed. Back in Thanehaven, his quest to overthrow Lord Harrowmage was always nourished by a vague desire for the kind of peaceful, prosperous world where families could thrive and expand.
It’s becoming clear to him, however, that peace and prosperity are still a long way off, despite his truce with Lord Harrowmage. As long as the Colonel is in charge, Princess Lorellina will stay a prisoner in Thanehaven, while children elsewhere in this world will continue to be consumed by ravenous beasts.
Rufus is right. It’s sheer injustice.
“Next stop: the Biolab,” Rufus announces, once the noisy reunion has run its course. “Where is the Biolab, anyway? Can someone please tell me?”
“It’s on B Deck,” Tuddor replies. So they all head for B Deck, using the nearest flight of stairs. It’s a circular staircase like the one in Lord Harrowmage’s fortress, but it isn’t made of stone. From the top, it looks like a central spine attached to a series of bony ribs, which are slick with goop. Some of the crew actually lose their footing on the way down. Luckily, however, they land on a cushion of spongy tissue at the foot of the stairs and don’t hurt themselves.
Noble is waiting on the top step when a hatch in the wall of the stair shaft slaps open with a wet plop. To his astonishment, a young child’s tearstained face appears, framed in matted curls. There’s a shriek from the teenage girl, who’s midway through her clumsy descent. Below her, the redhead cries, “Look! It’s Inaret! Look, everyone! There she is, up there!”
Rufus and Noble exchange glances.
“I’m out of socks,” mutters Rufus.
“You’re wearing more than I am,” Noble retorts.
“Oh, man.” Rufus’s tone is gloomy. “I didn’t sign up for a game of strip poker.”
In the end, though, he keeps his pants on. Because once the newcomer has been wiped down, comforted, and questioned, Arkwright offers to hide her under the cloak that he’s borrowed from Noble. “You can hardly see her if I wrap it around her like this,” he says, demonstrating. It’s true. With a fold of Noble’s cloak draped across her like a bird’s wing, Inaret is invisible from the knees on up.
“Great!” Rufus bestows a nod of approval on Arkwright. “And there’s room for one more on your other side as well, in case we run into any other survivors.”
But they don’t run into anyone else—not until they reach the Biolab. They see a lot of monsters and a huge number of colored blobs, and they have to sidle past several dead bodies. Their route is dotted with steaming, gaping holes where acid attacks have eaten through walls and hatches. It’s only when they arrive at their destination, however, that they finally stumble across someone who’s actually alive.
Outside the Biolab, the air is thick with diving, weaving, drifting shapes, each about the size of a man’s fist. Several much bigger shapes are also hovering close by—including a flat gray thing like a pancake that’s rippling up walls and across ceilings, circling round and round. Two purple blobs are pressed against the Biolab’s slowly dissolving door, while something yellow is feeding off a corpse near the opposite junction.
“Oh, my God,” Quenby croaks. Even Noble winces.
“Hello?” Tuddor booms. “Is anyone in there?” Though the question seems awfully loud, there’s no reaction at all from the teeming mass of creatures—only from the unseen woman behind the disintegrating door.
“Tuddor? Is that you?”
“Ottilie!” Tuddor excl
aims. “Are you alone, Ottilie?”
“Yes.”
“Can you make it out through the air duct?” It’s Arkwright speaking. “We can’t use the door. It’s obstructed.”
Quenby, meanwhile, is scanning the greasy-looking surface above her. Spotting a vent, she offers to climb up and give a spare sock to Ottilie. Dygall reminds her that Rufus’s socks are both taken. Somebody mentions the cloak that Arkwright’s wearing, but Yestin points out that Ottilie won’t fit under the cloak.
Noble is growing impatient. “Why don’t you put the youngest boy under the cloak and give his sock to that woman in there?” he growls, irritated by all the endless talking. He can’t understand these people. No one seems to be in command. No one’s giving orders. It’s such a waste of time. “Hurry,” he says, seizing Quenby and hoisting her toward the air vent. “Hide the child and hand me that sock.”
Soon, Quenby has returned from the Biolab with Ottilie in tow. Noble is disappointed to see that Ottilie is yet another gray-haired elder, small and frail, with legs like sticks. He can’t picture her rescuing Lorellina from the Colonel’s forces of tyranny. He can’t picture her doing anything much.
“Right,” says Rufus, once Ottilie is on solid ground. “Let’s go, then. Next stop: the airlock.”
“The airlock?” Ottilie repeats, as wheezy as a broken bellows. “Why are we going there?”
“Because it’s the only way out,” Rufus replies.
Seeing Ottilie’s stunned expression, Arkwright hastens to reassure her. “It’s odd, I know, but there doesn’t seem to be any alternative. You see, Rufus claims that we’re not on a spaceship at all.…”
His explanation is so complex and long—so riddled with detours and interruptions from other crew members—that it lasts all the way back to the airlock. Noble quickly tunes out. He’s not interested in the airlock. He’s interested in what lies beyond it.
Unfortunately, Rufus can’t provide him with any helpful insights. “I dunno,” is all he can say. “We’ll have to see.”
“But the airlock leads to Thanehaven. That’s what you told me,” Noble argues. He and Rufus are walking together, as the rest of the group loudly debate whether or not they’re all computer subprograms. “We came straight from there to here. Why shouldn’t we go straight back?”
“It’s not that simple. It’s hard to explain.” Before Noble can question him further, Rufus suddenly stops beside a familiar slab of muscle. “This is it. Do you recognize this?”
“I think so.…”
“Arkright?” Rufus raises his voice. “Is the airlock through here?”
“There’s an airlock through there. Across the loading dock,” says Arkwright, who’s at the rear of the procession. Rufus takes this as a “yes”—and with Noble’s help, he begins to push apart the gluey door panels.
The room beyond the door contains an array of metal bins and a rack of white spacesuits. Rufus gives a happy little yelp and darts inside, leaving Noble to hold the door. It’s a thankless job. By the time every last straggler has squeezed past him, Noble is plastered with slime and trembling with fatigue. Finally, however, he’s able to remove his shoulder from the door panel, which snaps shut behind him as he stumbles into the loading dock.
The airlock hatch is already sliding open. Peering across a row of heads, Noble can see the smooth, dry, inorganic surface of the hatch disappearing swiftly and cleanly into the sticky pink wall. He also catches a glimpse of the airlock behind the hatchway. It’s white and glossy and surpringly small—though not, apparently, small enough.
“Oh, nuts!” Rufus exclaims. He’s standing on the threshold of the airlock, but swings around suddenly to address the people behind him. “There’s no way we’re going to fill up that space!” he cries, his face reddening. “We must have missed someone! There’s got to be more! Who’s not here? Who did we leave behind? Where on earth is the rest of the crew?”
CHAPTER NINE
There’s a brief, taut silence. At last, Tuddor rumbles, “The rest of the crew are dead. You saw them.”
“No.” Rufus shakes his head furiously. He flings an arm at the airlock, which contains nothing but a few built-in cupboards, several large, silver cylinders, and a closed hatch positioned directly opposite the one that’s standing open. “See this?” he exclaims. “This is the airlock. It’s like a holding pen. If every single one of you got wiped out in a really disastrous game, your replacements for the next game would arrive through here.”
Noble nods slowly. He can easily picture people using this access point—people like the false Noble and the false Lorellina. Copies of the people who are now standing beside him.
“So what I should be able to do,” Rufus continues, “is pack you all in here until the room’s full. It should be crammed so full that if Noble and I were already inside—”
“You’d create a buffer overflow,” Arkwright concludes with a nod.
“Right. We’d be too much for the field to hold. With any luck, we’d force open that other door and find ourselves in a different memory location.” Rufus scowls. Then he turns away from his audience and steps into the airlock, hands on his narrow hips, his bony back radiating disappointment. “But look at this!” he complains. “It’s way too big for sixteen people! We must have left a bunch of you behind!”
“We did,” says Quenby, her voice creaking with suppressed outrage. “Didn’t you see them? They were killed.”
“Wrong.” Rufus flings this retort over his shoulder like a chewed bone. “The dead bodies were wallpaper. They weren’t killed—they were created dead. I’m talking about characters who are still living and breathing. People who can die. People like you. Understand?”
Some of the crew shift and grunt. Others exchange troubled glances. Sadira says, “Why don’t you just open the other door yourself?”
“I can’t,” Rufus snaps.
“Have you tried?” asks Quenby.
Rufus heaves an impatient sigh, then marches to the other side of the airlock and slaps at a red button that’s sitting next to the hatch.
Nothing happens.
“See?” he barks. “We can’t get through. Not without a key, a password, or a buffer overflow.”
“What about the man-eating monsters?” Yestin inquires.
“What about them?”
“Well—what if those monsters have to be replaced as well?” The little boy speaks hesitantly, edging closer to Noble as if to shield himself from Rufus’s glare. “Maybe this airlock will only fill up if all the monsters are in here with the crew.”
“Oh, dear,” says Quenby.
Noble is appalled. “Are you suggesting we share this room with a herd of carnivorous beasts?” he growls, turning to Rufus. “We can’t do that! There’d be a massacre!”
“I know,” Rufus agrees. “It wouldn’t be smart. Which is why I don’t think it’s the monsters that are missing.” He taps his chin thoughtfully, his narrowed eyes flitting around the airlock. “There must be another level to this game,” he muses. “A higher skill level. Once you reach the Biolab, you must have to go somewhere else. Someplace that’s got people in it.” His tone sharpens. “Come on, guys! You must have some ideas! Don’t you even know your own ship?”
“What about …?” Yestin begins, before trailing off.
“What about what?” Rufus demands.
“What about B Crew?”
Rufus looks surprised. “B Crew?” he echoes.
Yestin glances beseechingly at Arkwright, who clears his throat and says, “B Crew are in the Stasis Banks.” Since this means absolutely nothing to either Rufus or Noble, Arkwright goes on to explain that there are two crews on board, each of which spends alternating four-year shifts in suspended animation, or cytopic stasis. According to Arkwright, there’s an entire second crew tucked away in a stack of sleeping pods on B Deck. “Normally, they’re comatose,” he relates, “but they might have woken up.”
“No. They haven’t.” It’s the teenage girl Me
rrit speaking. Her voice is high and thin and hoarse. “They won’t wake up. They can’t. They’re part of the ship now.”
Everyone turns to stare at her.
“I was in the Vaults with Haemon. Before you found us,” she quavers. “We saw B Crew and they were … they were being absorbed.”
“Absorbed?” yelps Dygall.
“All the tubes in their arms and the ‘trodes on their heads—those things were growing into them. Burrowing into them,” she croaks.
Merrit croaks, “Like pink spiders.”
“You mean B Crew are dissolving?” Tuddor asks her.
She spreads her hands helplessly. “I don’t know. I couldn’t tell,” she replies.
“I bet they’re turning into zombies.” Rufus sounds brisk and confident, as if he’s been expecting zombies. “I bet that’s what you have to deal with on the next skill level. Spaceship games are always full of zombies.” He breaks off suddenly, an expression of alarm on his face. “Did you hear that?” he says.
A red light starts to flash above the closed hatch just behind him. There’s a clunk, followed by a soft whining noise as the door panel begins its slow, grinding ascent into the wall.
“Quick! Run! Hide!” cries Rufus.
Noble is taken aback. For a moment, he just stands and gapes. Then Yestin seizes his hand and pulls him toward Rufus, who’s now plastered against the shiny white wall to the left of the rising door panel. It’s not much of a hiding place. If a dozen soldiers pour through the hatchway and turn their heads, Rufus won’t stand a chance.
Perhaps that’s why only Yestin has decided to run into the airlock. Everyone else is bolting in the opposite direction, scattering like cockroaches. Yestin hurls himself straight at the corner where Rufus is cowering. It’s a narrow wedge of space between two silver cylinders, just wide enough to fit Noble, Rufus, and Yestin if they squeeze together very tightly.
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