by C. Gockel
She closed her eyes. She was being silly. Alaric was away now. By the time he came back, they’d have their own house; and, come Hell or high water, she’d find her own maid. A human maid, over fifty, with real gray hair. At that thought, footsteps to her left made her freeze.
Alaric’s voice filled the foyer. “There you are.”
Alexis spun, clutching Markus with one hand, her package in the other. “What are you doing here?” Only after she said the words did she realize how accusatory and vaguely guilty they sounded. And she had nothing to be guilty about—except using his name to lie. She clutched the package with the books more tightly.
Alaric stopped a pace away from her. His lips parted slightly, then his mouth snapped shut, and a muscle in his jaw jumped.
Markus started to cry. Setting her package down on the foyer’s side table, Alexis began unwinding him from the sling. Thank you, Markus, for giving me an excuse to have some time alone. She’d need to feed him, and a lady could request privacy for that. She freed him, lifted him, and was about to say He’s hungry when his crying ceased. He wiggled in her arms, eyes fixated on Alaric, spit bubbles on his lips.
Gaze riveted to Markus, Alaric raised his hands. He spoke, and his fingers danced in the air. “My ship is docked for emergency repairs. I was given leave to see my family and my new son. Hello, Markus...”
It was only in the last gestures that Alexis realized that he’d been signing his answer to their son. “Did I get it right?” he said, signing what she presumed were those words, too.
She shook her head helplessly. “I think so. I’m not an expert at it myself…yet. But I’m learning. Mental delay is not a given with deaf children if they receive adequate stimulation of their other senses.”
“So you told me in your letter,” Alaric said, signing the words again. “I believe you.”
Alexis stared at him, dumbstruck, for a moment, remembering her mother’s response to Markus’s deafness. Well, you have two good healthy boys and you’ll have more children. She’d condemned Markus to a wasted life before he was even a week old.
“He’s perfect, Alexis,” Alaric whispered, stepping closer, hands flowing through the air.
Markus was perfect. Even now he was following Alaric’s signs and shadow with a bright, curious gaze.
“I’m your father, Markus. I am the captain of a spaceship,” Alaric continued, seemingly as entranced by Markus as the infant was with him.
It struck her that Alaric knew more sign language than she did. She knew “Are you hungry?”, “Are you tired?”, “Did you wet your nappy?” “I’m your mommy,” the banal things one said to a newborn in a silly, high-pitched voice. She felt jealous and a bit angry of his display.
That wasn’t what she should be thinking, of course. She should be thinking about how generous a gesture this was on her husband’s part. The women’s magazines said you should always find something good in your husband, no matter how imperfect. And here was something good, something wonderful. He’d learned sign language for their son. He hadn’t given up on Markus.
“I fly in the stars,” Alaric said and signed.
He stopped, and with a slightly guilty smile, said and signed, “That’s all I know. I memorized that for him.”
Alexis exhaled in relief. She wasn’t stupid, but Alaric could make her feel so. Don’t wish for a husband smarter than you, her mother had always said. It’s better to always be one step ahead of them and to only let them think they’re smarter.
The women’s magazines said you should praise your husband. She should praise him; she should say something. Markus started to fuss, tried to tug at the front of her dress, and she said, “He’s hungry.”
“Ah, can’t help you with that, my man,” said Alaric, backing up. Tapping his thigh, his eyes went to the nearest window. “Maybe I can practice my sign language with Solomon,” he joked, referring to the wild werfle that hung around the house. His hand stilled, and he met Alexis’s eyes. “When are the boys out of school? I’ll bring them home.”
Alexis’s heart rate picked up. They needed to go out and run after school or they would be impossible. “No, you can’t—” Alexis was interrupted by Markus’s fuss turning to a cry.
“I am capable of picking up my sons,” Alaric said, voice cool.
Markus’s cry turned to an ear-splitting wail. “Fine,” Alexis said, her voice harsher than she meant it to be. Somehow Markus must have felt her unease, because he wailed louder. Her milk let down hard and fast, and she flushed, knowing it was probably staining her front despite the pads she wore.
Alaric turned on his heel but stopped as Merta emerged from the kitchen. He let her pass—did his eyes linger too long?—and then he went out the door. Alexis stood feeling bereft. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet somehow everything was wrong.
She dropped the button that allowed her to open the front of her dress—it had been stained; Alaric had to have noticed—and her bra. Markus latched on immediately. His eyes rolled back like an addict on root, and he was blissfully quiet.
From the road Alexis heard voices break out in the song “For God and Home-world” and the sound of a bus engine. Another recruitment bus. Every family, even those in wealthy neighborhoods like this one, were sending boys into the Guard now. She thought of something Alaric had said to his uncle: “It is the evil we’ve been preparing for since Luddeccea was founded, and we don’t understand it at all.”
Between humans was a chasm of misunderstanding wide as the Xenshii Gorge. How were they going to fight a war against an enemy they didn’t understand, when they didn’t even understand each other?
5
Crossing the Chasm
The Alien Vessel
6T9 was holding breath he didn’t need. An alien drone was 10.53 seconds from colliding with Sundancer’s keel, and they were 3.23 seconds from colliding with the ominous, hulking, blimp-like shape that was the alien spaceship. Putting his hand on Volka’s shoulder, he pulled her close and blinked...and an iris opening had appeared in the side of the hulk. Beyond it was a dark, ovoid corridor just wide enough for Sundancer’s wingspan. Their little craft streaked inside, velocity never decreasing, and as she did, warm orange-red lights came on from every side. His lips parted. The lights were not just warm looking—they were hot. “Picking up massive amounts of infrared from the external sensors,” he said, numbers overlaying his vision.
“The door closed behind us, but some of the drones are inside too,” Carl squeaked. “Seconds to impact.”
“What are those dark spots in the walls?” Volka murmured.
The “spots” were circular and oddly “fuzzy” to the external cameras and other sensors. The readouts from the external sensors filling 6T9’s mind became confusing. With a thought, he sent them to the other android. “James, were these the sort of readings you were getting for the controlled singularity pulse—”
Before he’d finished the words, the drones that had followed them into the corridor streaked toward the “fuzzy” spots’ darkness, crumpling like pieces of paper and disappearing as though they’d never been. Sundancer’s velocity decreased. Bits of her armor and some of her external sensors tore off and were carried into the darkness like leaves caught in a whirlwind.
“—weapon?” 6T9 finished.
“Yes,” said James. Before the word was finished, the “fuzzy” spots solidified and appeared in the holo as neat circular projections from the walls, perhaps twenty centimeters deep. Freed from their pull, Sundancer shot forward. The infrared light outside Sundancer dimmed and was replaced by something cooler.
Focusing on adjusting the external armor to cover the exposed surfaces on Sundancer’s hull, 6T9 almost missed the change in the corridor. “The radiation outside Sundancer is now within limits acceptable for human habitation.”
“The singularity weapon cleared it away,” James whispered.
Ahead, the corridor ended in a bare faced wall. Sundancer didn’t slow, but this time 6T9 wasn’t surprised when th
e wall opened, and the ship slipped through. The opening closed behind them, and the ship halted. And then his sensors detected a huge influx of nitrogen and oxygen and trace amounts of carbon dioxide and argon.
“It’s an airlock,” 6T9 said, riveted by the data playing before his eyes and the image in the holo. “There’s no gravity, but Volka and Carl…you could breathe out there.”
The walls began to glow, another opening appeared, the ship slipped through, and they were once more in absolute darkness. And then, 4.2 kilometers in the distance, an ovoid light appeared with the color spectrum of a yellow sun. More lights appeared at 4 kilometers, then 3.8 kilometers, 3.6 kilometers, and on and on.
He’d had a hand on Volka’s shoulder the whole journey into the ship, and they’d drifted closer in the first moments before impact with the exterior hull. Now she pulled away, just slightly...and yet, relative to how close they had been it was like a gulf had opened up. He let his hand drop.
Volka whispered, “It’s like the automatic lights that come on in the house on the asteroid when you enter a room.”
“I think it is exactly like that,” James said.
In the holo projected from Bracelet, the lights revealed they were in an immense ovoid chamber kilometers across. Sundancer’s forward momentum came to an end. The ship hovered in the air.
6T9 noted aloud, “Breathable atmosphere, acceptable pressure, safe radiation levels, still no gravity.”
Bouncing on his shoulder, Carl’s whiskers twitched. “Sixty, the heat in the corridor we just came through, would it have been enough to destroy the organism that is responsible for the Dark?”
6T9 nodded. “Yes.”
“Was the corridor made for her?” Volka asked. “It was exactly the right size, it sucked away the drones, and both times she was infected by the Dark it took a heat bath to destroy it.”
Sixty looked out at the immense chamber around them. It was as large as Copernicus City but except for the lights, which he now saw hovered a hundred meters above a barren surface, empty.
James said, “Building this craft was an immense undertaking. I don’t think they would have built an airlock just for her.”
“Maybe it wasn’t just for her,” Volka said. “She’s alive, a living thing, not a machine…if she is a living thing, didn’t she come from other living things? Maybe there were more of her kind?”
6T9’s eyes left the holo and went up to the ceiling of the darkened chamber they were now in. He was a machine. The ship didn’t respond to him, and didn’t—or couldn’t—share her emotions with him. Did she think he was alive?
“I don’t mean you’re not alive, Sixty,” Volka said hastily. “But biological life, well, I thought it creates copies of itself.” Her hand touched his arm, sending sparks along his sensory receptors. Just as quickly, her fingers withdrew, but the programs that read emotions told him that her expression was earnest. He was alive to Volka. Sundancer could sense her emotions. Did her emotions make him real to the ship?
“It is possible that she isn’t—or wasn’t—the only one,” Carl said.
6T9’s Q-comm sparked and he returned to the present. “She entered as though she’s been here before, and it was precisely the right size, and the infrared was enough to destroy an infection by the Dark had she had one. That entrance had to have been built for her and other ships like her.”
As though hearing her name, Sundancer trembled, and Volka’s nostrils flared. She growled, and then winced. “Sundancer’s transmitting emotions again.”
Slinking to the floor, Carl hissed, “Let the ship take off the damn armor. We’re safe in here, and Sundancer hates it.”
“We don’t really know that it is safe,” James protested.
6T9 agreed with the other android.
Volka growled louder, lips curling to reveal teeth.
6T9 blinked.
Carl hissed, “James, you’re like a pet to me, but right now I wish my venom worked on you.”
James inclined his head toward the werfle, in a movement too sharp to be human. Carl’s eyes got wide, and he smacked a paw over his “necklace.”
Stamping a foot, Volka said, “Sundancer’s anger is infecting us!”
6T9’s eyes met James’s in unspoken question. Rubbing his chin, James looked away. His expression became thoughtful. “Take it off…but leave one of the armor drones out there. Maybe we can collect some data.”
There was logic in James’s capitulation, even if it made 6T9 unhappy. They couldn’t go anywhere without a happy ship. Right now that meant taking off her armor.
“I’m on it.” 6T9’s mind connected with the drones that latched to the external armor—those that hadn’t been sucked into the singularity beams—and activated the routine to “undress” the ship. The holo changed and became difficult to follow as the drones showed too many shifting views, but after a few minutes, a green light came on saying the disrobing was over. Sundancer could make her hull and interior walls transparent, and almost immediately the walls, floors, and ceiling around them appeared to vanish. Below them, the armor was spilled out like a split condom—or, as Volka had said, a “sweater.”
With a thought, 6T9 set the drones in action again and they coalesced the armor into a smooth ball. Sundancer lowered herself onto it and scooped it up onto her bridge. The ship then hovered placidly.
“We may be safe here…for now,” James said, gazing up through the ceiling, “but why are we here?”
Bowing her head, Volka’s ears flattened. “She’s determined…”
Carl’s necklace crackled. “There’s something here she needs us to see. I’m almost sure of it.”
6T9 gazed at the vast interior, empty except for lights. The size of the ship was impressive, that it had maintained pressure and air for a millennium was noteworthy, but zooming and scanning the interior he didn’t see much of anything else. Maybe if there was an access tunnel into the walls of the vessel, they could glimpse how the whole thing worked? But if there was danger of vacuum or cold, James and 6T9 couldn’t do it. Their bodies weren’t designed for either. If exploration of this place was Sundancer’s goal, the other ‘bots would have been better equipped. Had Sundancer not known that? Had their capabilities been lost in the communication gap between the ship and the team?
Carl gave a shrill squeak and fell from his back two paw pairs to all ten little legs. Volka stumbled, and 6T9 caught her.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
Volka turned toward him. Her eyes were open, staring at a spot just below his own. “We see—”
“What?” James asked, lifting the werfle and turning Carl’s bewhiskered snout toward him. But Carl and Volka both turned their heads to a spot in the distance.
Feeling helpless, 6T9 met James’s eyes. The other android uttered a curse.
Carl’s voice echoed in the ether. “We see what was or what was meant to be.”
Volka’s lips moved but made no sound.
Volka had been in Sundancer’s daydreams before, so she wasn’t frightened, nor did she think she was going crazy. She was overwhelmed. Sundancer was projecting a furious determination that filled her chest and spread to all her limbs. Her hands balled into fists, and her muscles flexed. But more than that, Volka had never been in a dream of Sundancer’s that was so elaborate. She was standing on a shaded walkway of polished, circular stones, each set about half a handspan apart. Small, purple, succulent plants crowded between each step. There was nothing amorphous about it. “She must be painting us a picture, like Sixty painted her a picture,” Volka said, awed.
Standing beside her, Carl looked up at her, and his whiskers twitched. She felt his awe in the pit of her stomach. “I do believe you’re right,” he said, his voice—or thoughts—hushed and reverent. “It’s important…deathly important…But what is it she wants us to see exactly?”
Volka shrugged helplessly. Together, they turned to face a wall of what to her looked like “green” foliage. Green was a hue that, as a colorb
lind weere, she wasn’t supposed to see, but painted “too brightly” in paintings. The wall reached perhaps fifty meters high and was made of a plant with leaves as large as two hands spread. It seemed to be some sort of vine because it had pale yellow sprouts that clung to a thick-barked, deep navy-blue tree that had black globules instead of leaves. Orange gourd-like fruit dangled from the vines, and light trickled from the other side of the green wall in a delicate lace-like pattern.
Stepping back, she looked down the length of the wall. She and Carl appeared to be in a valley with slopes on either side, too regular to be natural. Here and there blue humanoid aliens, like the cadavers they’d seen in the World Sphere, were gathering the orange fruit from the vines. Only here, their faces weren’t contorted, and their skin was smooth. In the brighter light, the hair on their heads was clearly supple, flexible feathers.
To Carl, she said, “This is something Sundancer is showing us. Are we inside the World Sphere or the ship?”
“The ship, I think,” Carl replied, gazing upward. Volka did too but saw only diffuse light.
Volka turned in place. Sixty was in the daydream, standing as he had a moment ago aboard Sundancer…but he had no feet. He was clearer than the last time she’d seen him in Sundancer’s dreams, but still ghostly. James was next to him, but his image was blurrier.
Carl said, “She only feels them through us.”
Behind Sixty and James were four-story buildings made of blue wood that were just barely visible between more climbing vines. Other than the strange wood and the carpet of plants on the walls, structurally they looked very much like the row-houses of New Prime. However, they had no glass on their windows, and here and there fabric that looked to be curtains billowed outward. A small blue person with long, silky, purple feathers trailing from his or her head tore from one of the buildings and went running into the vines a few meters away. Volka’s ears twitched. The dream-alien’s movements hadn’t made a sound. She sniffed the air and smelled water, but the scents of flowers and earth that she expected were extremely muted. Even Sundancer’s dreams weren’t perfect, she supposed.