Entanglement Bound: An Epic Space Opera Series (Entangled Universe Book 1)

by Mary E. Lowd

  Trillions of other people out there—of all sorts of species—had lived through today without seeing the space-time continuum split open in front of them. They'd gone through their normal day, living in their homes which hadn’t been shredded before their very eyes.

  As the old adage goes, life isn't fair. But damn, Clarity wished it could be less obvious about it sometimes. I mean, at least try to pretend like you don't have a favorite child. And another child who makes you unaccountably angry, and all you want to do is take her toys away and torture her.

  The universe was a terrible parent. Clarity hated it.

  The buzzing all around Clarity's face, like a crown of laurels that had actually been made from itchy poison ivy, changed pitches again, growing deeper and pulsing. Words resolved: "Spaceship comes?"

  "I think so," Clarity said, hearing the words as a question. But she saw the purple flickering light of Merlin wink in the distance off a long spear shape. Cassie's spiraling horn. "Oh god," Clarity breathed in relief. She hadn't thought Cassie was coming. She truly hadn't, and she wasn't prepared for how relieved she'd be to see the little living spaceship.

  Cassie's tube organs on her side swelled and tightened, carefully jetting the starwhal into place, hovering perfectly still in front of Clarity and her containment crate. Then a patch of Cassie's dark purple skin, slightly mottled with shades of fuchsia and speckles of mud brown, slid open like an eyelid, showing the dull pink glow of her bioluminescent interior. Clarity hadn't seen Cassie's airlock open from the outside before; there was a raw, wound-like look to the open airlock, like a gash in her side. Clarity felt like a virus or bacteria flying into the airlock, some sort of intrusive, parasitic organism.

  As soon as the airlock sealed behind Clarity and the containment crate, she unzipped the side of her spacesuit, unable to wait for the airlock to completely re-pressurize. The air in her suit blasted out through the hole, pulling many of Mazillion along with it. But then the air in the airlock caught up, and Mazillion was able to fly, clustering together into a mouth orb. They said, "Thank you."

  The inner valve of the airlock slid open, and Mazillion buzzed away into the belly of the beast. Clarity was left staring at a containment crate still much too heavy for her to carry, and the spongey quality of Cassie's flesh would make it difficult to roll the crate even if she had a dolly for it. Which she did not.

  Clarity decided to leave the containment crate in the airlock. That was probably where it would need to be for blasting it into the heart of a black hole anyway. That could not happen soon enough.

  Clarity stripped out of her spacesuit and wadded the smart-cloth up inside her duffle bag, waiting for her where she'd discarded it in the hall earlier. Well, a couple feet lower now that the gravity was back. Clarity slung the duffle bag over her shoulder and headed to Cassie's cockpit, warring inside herself all the way. Half of her felt so relieved to have made it back to Cassie alive; she wanted to hug the fleshy walls of her vein-like halls and promise never to leave her again.

  The other half wanted to get out of here, see if she could pick up a bartending gig at the nearest interesting space station, spend a few months listening to the problems of strangers while ignoring her own, and start raising money to buy a new Solar III class vessel. Or maybe a smaller vessel. Perhaps a starhopper. She didn't know if she'd need all that space. She might not be traveling with Irohann anymore after this. She was getting ahead of herself, and it reminded her of the split in the universe where she watched her own face grimace in horror faster than she could feel the grimace on her own face.

  Clarity shivered, although the air inside Cassie's belly was warm. Yes, she definitely wanted to focus on someone else's life and problems for a while. She didn't want to think about her own life at all.

  Finally, Clarity reached the cockpit and stopped short at what she saw. Roscoe still hadn't taken the helm. There were no bunnies in sight, sentient or otherwise, even on Cassie's bank of screens. Now the bank of screens showed pictures and videos of foxes, wolves, and various breeds of dog. All grinning, all wagging their tails, or otherwise cheerful. And in the middle of the room, Irohann sat in the dimpled captain's chair; he was a little large for it, his crossed legs and fluffy tail spilling over the edge.

  Images of Clarity, standing in the mouth of the vein-like hall, appeared in the middle of the bank of screens, and she saw, even though Irohann was facing mostly away from her, his muzzle split in a wide grin. He turned to face her, and the cords leading from the spikes above down to the sucker disks buried in his long fur twisted around him. His tail wagged, thumping against the flesh of the bowl chair.

  The sight of Irohann smiling always melted right into Clarity's heart, but this time, he couldn't melt all the way through her heart with just a smile. There was too much jagged ice, deep inside from his betrayal. She'd never trusted anyone like she'd trusted Irohann, and if she couldn't trust him, she couldn't trust anyone. He'd broken her universe as surely as the Merlin Box had been trying to break the entire universe.

  Irohann pulled the sucker disks off his head and out of his fur. All the while, his tail kept thumping, and he kept grinning. "Your little spaceship here tried to run away without you," Irohann said, as if one act of heroism could erase his betrayal.

  "She's not—" Clarity still wasn't sure how much speech Cassie could understand when she wasn't hooked up to a pilot. But she decided to play it safe and not finish her sentence by saying 'mine.'

  "She's not what?" Irohann asked, climbing awkwardly out of the too-small captain's seat. If they could ever convince Roscoe to get in there, he'd fit much better.

  "Never mind," Clarity said. "Mazillion and I got the Merlin Box. We need to get to the Devil's Radio and dump that thing as soon as possible."

  Irohann and Clarity stared at each other, each waiting for the other to volunteer to pilot Cassie. Neither of them did. Clarity knew Irohann would claim she was more qualified, having experienced an interstellar jump communing with Cassie already. And that was true. But she didn't want to do it again. She didn't want her brain all muddled up with a starwhal's. She was still confused enough from staring into her own eyes through breaks in the fabric of time. She did not need an overeager starwhal rifling through those recent memories.

  Besides, the last thing she needed right now was to feel the full weight of Cassie's childlike naivety depending on her. "Maybe Cassie needs more of a break before another big jump anyway," Clarity said. "You've been bonded to her more recently... What do you think?"

  Irohann glanced over his shoulder at the bank of screens, now showing a mix of bunnies, foxes, and the live feed of Irohann and Clarity in the cockpit. His triangular ears folded. "I think if I was worried about us getting too attached to an inanimate spaceship that we've moved entirely in the wrong direction by moving onto one who seems to have fallen in love with both of us. I wasn't looking to adopt a starwhal."

  "Right," Clarity agreed. "Obviously, we weren't planning to get swept up in saving the universe." It was hard to keep the anger out of her voice. She didn't want to be arguing about Cassie with Irohann; there were still a whole slew of other arguments to be had about finances and The Serendipity. But she couldn't deal with any of that now. Not until this was over. "I'm just asking whether you could tell if she's healed enough for another interstellar flight yet."

  Irohann put a paw to his head. "I'm not sure. The whole thing was so... intense. So many... bunnies."

  Clarity took a risk—she gestured at the dangling sucker disks and said, "Well, maybe you could..."

  Irohann held up both paws. "Whoa, no, no. I don't think Cassie picked up on..." He tilted his head to the side meaningfully. "...who I am. But it's hard to be sure." His ears flattened farther, and he shook his head. "It's kind of hard to keep secrets when you're mind melded. I think it's better not to risk doing it again."

  "Well, I don't think Cassie would exactly run off to turn you in..."

  "Regardless," Irohann said.

  "Fin
e," Clarity said. "Let's find Roscoe."

  As Clarity headed off down one of the vein-like hallways, she realized Irohann was trying to follow her. She stopped and swung an arm out to point back at the mouths to the other two halls. "Not the same way," she said. "We're splitting up. Go anywhere else, anywhere that's not near me."

  Irohann's grin faded, and his shoulders under his thick orange mane slumped. He looked like she'd slugged him in the gut. And it was killing her. But she couldn't rely on him anymore. And she couldn't let herself forget that. She couldn't let him erase his betrayal with grins and wags and the fluffy hug she craved so much but would never accept. Never. Maybe never again.

  Clarity felt like she'd slugged herself in the gut.

  Irohann's tail did not wag as he walked away.

  21 Negotiations and Shuffling of Responsibilities

  When Clarity found Roscoe, he was in the room Jeko and Am-lei had claimed. Jeko was sitting on the floor beside the bio-matter crate with her broad back against the wall. The cylindrical crate was open, showing the chrysalis hanging inside. Jeko kept gently stroking the surface of the translucent chrysalis with the prehensile tip of her long nose. The blue and purple veins beneath the crystalline surface seemed to pulse lightly in response to their mother's touch.

  Am-lei was sitting in the middle of the bed with her twiggy limbs crossed. The bed was covered with a strangely old-fashioned patchwork quilt like the bed in the room where Clarity had slept.

  Roscoe was sitting on the foot of the bed, and as soon as he saw Clarity, his tall ears drooped until their tips rested on his shoulders. His whiskers turned down too. It looked like he might have darted for it if there'd been any way out of the ventricle room other than the valve-like door Clarity was already standing in.

  "You said you'd pilot this ship," Clarity said. "Instead, you've been playing hide and seek like a baby."

  "I said I'd pilot a ship," Roscoe said, one ear lifting to a bent half mast. "This is not a ship."

  Clarity held her hands out, gesturing all around. "We're in deep space, and we're breathing. We're light-years from where we began. Cassie may be many things—she may be much more than you bargained for—but she is definitely a ship, and she needs a pilot."

  "You do it." Roscoe swung one of his long feet petulantly. Long feet, long ears, and short stature. He did look like a bunny, but right now, Clarity couldn't see the cuteness at all. He was too much of a grumpy, old grandfather. He grumbled something in a language Clarity didn't know. She wouldn't have been at all surprised if she'd learned he'd been calling her a "young whippersnapper."

  "Yes, we've all talked it over," Am-lei said, uncoiling her proboscis. "And we think it would be best if you dropped us off at the nearest planet. Any planet will do."

  "You've already gone over this with Wisper," Clarity said. "I was there."

  "Yes, but Wisper is gone now," Am-lei said. Her disco ball eyes glinted in a knowing way.

  Clarity realized Wisper's inanimate robot body should have been in the cockpit. That was where Clarity had left her when the gravity and all the computers were out, but the only one in the cockpit when Clarity returned was Irohann in the captain's seat. Why hadn't Wisper been there? Had she woken up? Had she been wrong about the EM waves killing her? Or had the others moved her? "What did you do to Wisper?" Clarity asked.

  "Nothing," Jeko said. "We found her in the cockpit, dead as a statue."

  "A creepy statue," Am-lei said.

  "Your friend, the Heffen," Roscoe said. "He moved her into a sort of closet just off of the bridge. Said he couldn't stand her staring at him with those dead glass eyes. It was bad enough he had to hook his brain up to a starwhal to rescue you, he could at least do it without a dead robot staring at him."

  That did sound like Irohann. He'd never liked her dolls staring at him either. Which reminded her... "Did she—" Clarity's voice caught in her throat, remembering the sight of an interstellar-spanning AI clutching her little Woaoo doll for comfort as she died. She had to start the sentence over. "Did she, I mean, she was holding one of my..." She still couldn't make it through the thought.

  "Oh, that," Roscoe said. He pulled the Woaoo doll out of one of the pockets in his brown coverall. It was small, gray, and fluffy like him. He tossed it to Clarity.

  Clarity caught the doll and clutched it close to her chest, the way Wisper had done. "Thanks," she said. "You know, that robot died for this mission. This mission you're both making so much harder."

  "Am-lei never agreed to a life-threatening mission," Jeko said. "And neither did I."

  "As far as I can tell," Am-lei said, "none of us agreed to this mission. Wisper misled us all."

  Clarity thought about the moment in The Serendipity's cockpit when she realized they'd been tricked into helping break into a corralled starwhal ranch to help steal a genetically modified research subject. She'd been furious. She still was. And none of it mattered next to the size of the schism in space-time that had surrounded her inside the Merlin Base. "I can't argue with that," Clarity said. "Wisper lied to me too."

  "So why are you defending her?" Roscoe asked. "Trying to hold us to contracts based on lies?"

  "Because I saw it!" Clarity yelled. "She told me the universe would swallow itself inside out or some craziness like that, but it's not craziness. I went into that science base and..."

  Clarity saw her own eyes staring back at her in her memory. She felt a cold breeze wash over her, although everywhere in Cassie's belly was warm. The cold breeze was nothing more than fear. Terror, really.

  "I saw a metal room twisted up like a whirlpool and..." She trailed off again. If she told them what she'd seen, they wouldn't believe her. "Mazillion almost died. The space station was crumpling around us until we contained the entangled particle. It's in Cassie's airlock now, inside a containment crate."

  "All the more reason to get off of this ship," Am-lei said.

  Clarity could tell she was making no headway with Am-lei or Roscoe. But Jeko looked worried now; she'd edged closer to the cylindrical bio-matter crate, and her nose had wrapped around the middle of her daughter's hanging chrysalis. Clarity took a step farther into the room and locked eyes with the elephantine woman. "Time itself was coming apart inside the Merlin Base." Clarity spoke the words slowly, carefully, putting every ounce of her belief into them. "If we don't return the entangled particle in the Merlin Box to the Devil's Radio, there isn't going to be a place or time in the universe where your daughter is safe."

  Jeko got up and closed the bio-matter crate around the hanging chrysalis of her daughter. She locked it shut, as if the walls of the cylindrical cargo crate could protect her daughter from the universe ending. Or maybe, she simply didn't want her daughter listening to their conversation anymore. Can a butterfly inside of a chrysalis hear? Clarity supposed they probably could.

  "You can't destroy this particle without Am-lei," Jeko said, speaking the words softly like a tuba playing a lullaby.

  "I cannot," Clarity said. She pulled her pocket computer out of her pants pocket, turned it back on, and watched data stream over the screen. It was all nonsense to her. She turned the small screen toward Jeko and said, "I know nothing about physics. I have no idea what any of this means, but Wisper said it was what Am-lei would need to know to dispose of the Merlin Box safely."

  Jeko looked at Am-lei. The giant insectoid woman was impassive, her proboscis tightly coiled and her antennae vibrating subtly.

  "The question you have to ask yourselves," Clarity said, this time looking pointedly at Am-lei, "is whether you'd rather dispose of the Merlin Box yourself, with all your knowledge, or wait on some random planet, hoping the universe doesn't suddenly blink out of existence around you, because I messed it up."

  From the way Jeko's lower lip twisted and the broad base of her nose wrinkled, a clear expression of horror, Clarity could tell she'd won this argument.

  "Fine," Am-lei said, obviously aware now that Jeko wouldn't stand for anything less than her best att
empts to save the universe for their daughter. "Let me see the information Wisper left for me." She held out a talon, and Clarity handed her the pocket computer. After reading the screen for a while, streaming data reflecting in the many facets of her disco ball eyes, Am-lei fluted, "You're right. You need me for this. I'll come with you to the Devil's Radio and help you dispose of the Merlin Box on one condition. We're dropping my wife and daughter off at Leionaia first."

  "Is that safe? Taking extra time?" Clarity asked. With how badly broken the space-time continuum had been inside of the Merlin Base, she'd thought every moment might be of the essence.

  "Based on this information—" Am-lei pointed at the pocket computer screen with a second talon. "A few days won't make a difference, as long as you have it properly sealed in the containment crate. You should double check that. Maybe triple check it."

  Clarity wasn't sure how all of this had become primarily her responsibility—at least theoretically, she wasn't needed anymore. According to Wisper's original plan, she'd be long gone by now. She'd done more than her part. So had Mazillion. "Maybe you should check it," Clarity said. She reached out, took her pocket computer back from Am-lei, and stuffed it back in her pocket. "In fact, I'm not sure I'm really helpful here anymore. So, why don't we all get off at Leionaia? Except for you two." She pointed at Am-lei and then Roscoe. "At this point, the two of you should be able to handle this."

  Before Roscoe could react, Irohann burst into the room with the long orange fur of his mane flying and a wild look in his eyes. He pointed his long muzzle at Roscoe and then said, "There you are!"

  "Yeah," Clarity said, completely forgetting her goal to avoid falling into sarcasm. "We've been talking for a while here. Where have you been?"

  "I went back to the cockpit," Irohann said, "after passing by the giant screen in the scullery and getting worried by how close we're getting to the pulsar."