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

by Mary E. Lowd

  Irohann didn't answer with words. He simply raised a shaking paw, gloved in white fur, and pointed at the viewscreen on the scullery wall.

  Clarity turned to look and peered at the blackness through the storm of Mazillion's bodies. All she saw on the screen was black, but maybe the flurry of tiny insects was blocking something from view. She stepped closer, walking through the scullery. Mazillion's body parted for her like the Red Sea. Not a single wasp-like body touched her as she walked through the storming room.

  When she got close enough to the viewscreen, it still looked black. Flat black. But she peered more closely and saw an imperfection, a shadow of lighter gray. She went up to the corner of the viewscreen, examined the controls, and figured out how to zoom the view in on the paler shadow.

  Multiplied ten-fold, the blur of lighter gray became identifiably another spaceship. They were not at the Devil's Radio alone. Clarity recognized the shape of the vessel—it made her think of a dandelion dander, strewn on the wind—with an oblong seedpod at one end and a brush of bristles in a ring at the other end, like a parachute made from metal. It was a shape she and Irohann had always run from. It was a Doraspian vessel.

  "You were right." Clarity mouthed the words, too breathless from shock to put any real voice into them. She felt, perversely, a huge wave of relief. Irohann hadn't lied to her for no reason at all. His fears had been well-founded, and somehow, that meant she could trust him again. He had been right, and he'd been protecting their life together.

  "They found you," Clarity said, still barely able to believe it. She corrected herself. "She found you." Clarity looked away from the viewscreen, back toward the entrance of the scullery. She was looking for Irohann, but he was no longer in the room. So, Clarity dared to say the haunted name out loud: "Queen Doripauli found you. I truly didn't believe she was still looking."

  The buzzing in the scullery, the omnipresent sound flooding all around Clarity, changed in pitch, deepening, shifting. Chuckling.

  That couldn't be right. Clarity must be imagining it. Mazillion's native language and instinctual utterances wouldn't be recognizable to Clarity on that level. She was simply feeling so paranoid, so confused right now, she was imagining the very universe laughing at her hubris. She was imagining the universe laughing with Mazillion's voice.

  How blind and proud had she been to ignore Irohann's fear?

  And callous.

  "Oh, Irohann," she said, rushing out into the vein-like hallway. "I'm so sorry." She knelt down beside her oldest friend, who had curled in on himself, crumpled up on the hallway floor like a discarded ball of paper. A deeply sad puppy. Clarity threw her arms around him and squeezed through the fluff of fur into the warm body underneath. He shook in her arms, sobbing. "I never thought she'd find you," Clarity said, stroking Irohann's mane. Soothing him. Comforting him, trying to make up for her failure to protect him. "Never in a million years. Never until the..." She stumbled over the words, realizing they were far too true. "...universe's end."

  "What do I do?" Irohann choked out. His voice was muffled since his muzzle was pressed into Clarity's shoulder. Her green hair fell over his triangular ears. She caressed his ears like he was a dog. She'd missed the feel of his soft fur under her fingers. "How did she know I was here?"

  Clarity considered the question. Someone had betrayed them. Someone who knew the Doraspians were chasing Irohann, and since they hadn't told anyone, it had to be someone who had accessed Irohann's or her mind.

  Clarity had trouble picturing the genial old grandfather rabbit-man betraying anyone. He was as kindly as Santa Claus. And yet, he'd been the only other person to bond with Cassie. And when it came to choosing between Cassie and Roscoe... No question, it was easier to picture Roscoe betraying them than Cassie. Clarity didn't think Cassie would even know how.

  "It had to be Roscoe," Clarity said, still feeling like that answer had to be wrong. "He was the only one who could have known. Right?"

  Irohann pulled away from her embrace. He looked her in the face, and his sad eyes had turned angry. "I'll throw him out the airlock." Irohann jumped up to his feet. "I'll drag him out the airlock and die with him." His tail hung limply behind him, and his ears were still lost in the fluff of his mane. But there was a resolute look in his eyes, and his muzzle was set in a determined grimace.

  Irohann dashed down the hallway back toward the cockpit before Clarity could stop him. She had to follow, running slower than he could with his longer legs. When she arrived at the mouth of the cockpit, the image on the smattering of viewscreens stopped her cold. The image had frozen Irohann in place too.

  Instead of dozens of smaller images, the viewscreens were working in concert to show one large image—a face composed of twisting green vines with flowers for eyes. The vines shifted, and the face disappeared, lost in the tumultuous greenery. But the tumbleweed-shaped alien continued to be dotted with pink flowers, blue flowers, and little purple bell-like flowers. Some of the blossoms looked like chrysanthemums, others looked like roses. The green vines were thick with leaves of varying shades of green, some dark and spade shaped, others pale and round.

  Clarity knew, from listening to Irohann describe Queen Doripauli in loving detail so many times over the years, that the differently shaped flowers and leaves served different purposes. Some absorbed light, working like eyes. Others vibrated, giving her a voice. And the twisting vines could grab like fingers.

  "This is her?" Clarity asked, stepping up closely beside Irohann. It was like looking at a character from a fairy story breathed into life. "The legend herself?"

  "Who?" Am-lei said, standing at the control console in the corner of the bank of viewscreens. She stared at the composite image of the Doraspian with her composite eyes.

  "No," Irohann said bitterly. "It's not her. Just one of her soldiers." He turned away from the screen, hurt and angry. Disappointed. In spite of all of his fear, he'd clearly hoped to see his beloved again, at least for a moment before he plunged himself into the vacuum of space to avoid her. "I don't matter enough to her," he said, "for her to come here herself. I never did."

  His words suggested he'd known this all along, but his obvious disappointment said otherwise.

  Clarity wished it mattered to Irohann that he mattered to her. She'd followed him from one end of the universe to the other. But his heart still clearly belonged to the queen he'd betrayed, the queen who didn't care enough to hunt him down herself, the queen who wanted him dead

  It was a bitter, bitter pill for Clarity realizing how completely her own life had been ruled by the whims of an alien queen to whom she was nothing, literally nothing, the companion of a fugitive the queen had probably forgotten about long ago. Even though the fugitive still loved her.

  Clarity had spent her own life running, because she was an asterisk attached to the text under Irohann's picture on a Most Wanted sign. A sign stapled onto a fence post decades ago and then promptly forgotten by the queen who'd ordered it stapled there.

  Roscoe spoke in a hollow, emotionless voice from his position at the center of the room: "The Doraspian Empire demands we turn over the Merlin Box and the fugitive Sloanee. As far as I can tell, Cassie has no weaponry, and so we have no choice."

  "We could run," Clarity said. "Cassie is fast. She jumps through hyperspace unlike any other ship I've known."

  Am-lei fluted from her position at the control panel, "It will take too long to dispose of the Merlin particle properly. We can't do it without giving them a window to destroy us."

  A growl rumbled deep in Irohann's throat, and his lips drew back from his teeth. He had deceptively sharp teeth, usually hidden by a cheerful smile. Behind his current grimace, those teeth looked deadly. "Tell Cassie to withdraw her suckers from your head, lapine traitor," Irohann growled. "I don't want to damage her tentacles when I tear your head off!"

  "Hold on," Clarity said, stepping between Irohann and Roscoe. She grabbed Irohann's furry wrist firmly, signaling to him that he'd better stay in his plac
e. He was big and angry and had lied to her, but she still implicitly trusted he would never physically hurt her. "Something isn't right."

  Roscoe spoke again in his unearthly tone: "If we give you the Merlin Box, what will you do with it?"

  "What?" Clarity asked, then realized, "Oh, you're talking to the Doraspian soldier." She turned to look at the bank of screens, and she saw the little purple flowers shaking like bells and the dark green spade-like leaves vibrating.

  "I think—" Am-lei said while fiddling with the control panel. "Yes, here." Suddenly the tinkling sound of bells flooded the cockpit. "I figured out how to turn the sound on."

  At first, the tinkling, chiming sounds meant nothing, but as Clarity continued to listen, she was able to make out Solanese words from the chorus of bell flowers, the same way she could hear words in Mazillion's buzzing.

  "...on behest of the Queen Doripauli, her highness herself, we demand..."

  "Turn that off!" Irohann snapped at Am-lei. The insectoid woman obeyed immediately, clearly fearing for the sanctity of her limbs if she didn't. The chiming bell-flower voice disappeared.

  Clarity wanted to explain that Irohann wouldn't hurt Am-lei, or anyone. Except maybe Roscoe... But she was feeling less and less sure.

  Roscoe spoke again, "They're not answering. I don't think they plan to dispose of the Merlin Box." His voice still had the strange hollow quality it took on while his mind combined with Cassie's, but there was a tinge of sadness or worry. A slight quavering.

  Irohann began to growl again. At least, Clarity thought he had, but when she looked at him, she realized the sound wasn't coming from his throat. She turned back toward the tri-fold entrance to the cockpit and saw a reflection of Irohann's shape built out of Mazillion's swarming bodies.

  "The Doraspians plan to use the Merlin particle as a weapon in their ongoing revolutionary war," Mazillion buzzed. The swarm alien's entire canine-shaped form pulsed slightly in time with the words.

  "You're the one who betrayed me!" Irohann barked. He looked like he would have ripped out Mazillion's throat, gnashing at the swarm alien with flashing white teeth, if only Mazillion had a substantial enough body for him to sink teeth into rather than a diffuse swarm that would disperse the moment he approached it. So instead, Irohann stood in one place, knees slightly bent, ready to pounce, and his tail swishing in a decidedly not happy way. "How did you know my secret?"

  "Scout bodies," Mazillion buzzed simply. "We hear many things. We are widely dispersed. But now we are... growing apart."

  "Where's the rest of you?" Clarity asked. From what she'd seen, the number of Mazillion's bodies storming through the scullery in tornadoes was far more than would fit into this shadow-shape of a Heffen.

  "The rest of myself is preparing the containment crate in the airlock," Mazillion said.

  "And I suppose you're here for me," Irohann said. The deep rumbling of his growl blended harmoniously with Mazillion's buzzing—an ironic effect in light of their conflict.

  "We are here," Mazillion said, reforming their shape until it became closer in stature and form to Clarity's, "to ask if it is true."

  "What is true?" Clarity stared at the roiling mass of insects who'd chosen to shape themselves like her.

  The buzzing mass approached her, floating forward eerily; they had no need to take steps. Mazillion halted about half a meter in front of Clarity and said, "The universe will end if the particle is not disposed of properly. And you trust us."

  "Yes," Clarity said, almost reflexively in response to the first question. In response to the second, she had to think harder and finally said, "And was I wrong to?"

  "Yes," Mazillion said. "And no. We are... divided."

  Irohann's growl rose in pitch to an outright snarl. He looked like he wanted to divide Mazillion but knew better than to attack. Clarity remembered—and Irohann surely did too—how Mazillion's bodies had completely coated his canine body when Wisper wanted to threaten them back on The Serendipity. She wondered if Mazillion's bodies could sting. They could surely bite. That many tiny bites wouldn't take long to be fatal. What a horrible way to die.

  Suddenly, Clarity felt painfully aware of every exposed inch of skin on her arms, neck, and face. She stood very still, but she summoned the fortitude to ask with a stuttering voice, "Di-divided ho-ow?

  "We have long been of Many Minds when it comes to One Bodies," Mazillion buzzed. Their multi-form shape melted through a series of forms—growing angular like Am-lei's six-legged body and then rounded like Roscoe. For a moment, Clarity even saw an echo of Wisper's skeletal robotic form. Then the collection of tiny insect bodies relaxed into an amorphous blob. "We were not sure we wanted to talk to One Bodies, but we learned how. We were not sure about living among them, so we lived in the arboretum on Crossroads Station instead of getting quarters."

  Mazillion's loose swarm tightened back up into a reflection of Clarity's shape. "We were divided, but we did not have to commit to One Way like One Bodies do. Until now. We cannot be of Many Minds. There are two, and we must choose—each piece of us must choose—between them."

  Clarity was terrified to ask, but when she glanced at the others—Roscoe, slack-jawed in the captain's chair; Am-lei twitching agitatedly by the control console; and Irohann shaking with anger—she realized she was the only one coherent enough to do it. "What are the two choices?"

  "Sell Irohann and the Merlin Box to the Doraspian Empire," Mazillion said, suddenly swarming into a roiling tornado. The tornado stilled back into a shadow of Clarity. "Or not."

  "You live in the universe," Am-lei said, stepping forward on six legs. "How can you consider selling it?"

  "How can the Doraspians?" Roscoe asked.

  They each glanced at the image of the Doraspian soldier on Cassie's bank of viewscreens. Irohann said, "Cruelty is short-sighted."

  And sometimes, Clarity thought, love lasts too long.

  "The Doraspians pay very well," Mazillion said.

  "I'm sure they do," Irohann said. "I remember Queen Doripauli being extremely generous to those in her favor."

  Irohann had told Clarity stories of sleeping on silk pillows and being fed jewel-like fruits; the sproutlings had sung choruses of praise to Queen Doripauli and her beloved amphibiod consort Sloanee. It must have been powerfully pleasurable to be an amphibioid in love with a Doraspian—the sensuous touch of each delicate flower and leaf against Sloanee's slick frog-like skin. Irohann had never recovered. All of the wonders he'd seen with Clarity had never rooted out the memory of those days from the depths of his mind. They were like a weed. Poisoning him.

  The image on Cassie's bank of viewscreens changed. One screen at a time, the Doraspian visage, green and flowered, was replaced with images of her crew—Am-lei, Roscoe, Clarity, Irohann, Jeko, even Wisper and Lee-a-lei with her brightly colored wings, pulled from Roscoe's memories down on Leionaia. And in the very middle, Mazillion.

  Roscoe said, "Cassie wants me to tell you, Mazillion, she trusts you too."

  "She is foolish," Mazillion said.

  "Yes, she is," Roscoe agreed. "She's much younger than you or I."

  Mazillion's swarm shape reconfigured into a complicated mass of tangled tubes. After peering at the shape in confusion, Clarity realized it was an interpretation of a Doraspian's twisting vines. "We already betrayed you. We cannot undo that. Most of me doesn't want to."

  "But you're here talking to us," Clarity said.

  "Some of me believes the words of One Bodies." Mazillion's tangled Doraspian form straightened out into the angular shape of Am-lei. "Some of me is worried the universe will be destroyed and wants to help save it. What can we do?"

  "Can you send the Doraspians away?" Irohann growled.

  "No," Mazillion said, maintaining the angular shape of a lepidopteran. "Nor can we stop ourselves from taking the Merlin Box to them."

  "What do you mean?" Am-lei asked.

  "Too much of myself is committed to our path," Mazillion buzzed. "More of me is preparing to ta
ke the Merlin Box than has come here to talk to you."

  "You mean, you're committed to fighting us," Am-lei said, "even if you decide you want to help us?" She groomed her antennae with her foremost talons nervously. "That makes no sense."

  "We are not one anymore. We have no control over our other selves."

  "There are two Mazillions now," Clarity said, putting the pieces together. "They've split into, well, for lack of better words—an evil Mazillion and a good one." She gestured tiredly at the buzzing swarm, who was now mimicking her human shape. "You're the good one."

  The images on Cassie's bank of viewscreens changed again. The blackness of the Devil's Radio filled most of them; a few in the upper left corner showed comforting pictures of pet bunnies dressed up in fancy clothes and wearing hats; and in the middle, there was a view of the Doraspian vessel. The metal seedpod had pulled up beside them.

  "Cassie refuses to dock with the Doraspian ship," Roscoe intoned. His ears were stiffly tall, flicking occasionally whenever the hanging tentacle-cords attached to the sucker disks brushed too closely and tickled his fur. "And she says... Pain, there's pain."

  An interior view of Cassie's airlock appeared in the bank of screens. Mazillion's evil half was a wild tornado, bashing repeatedly against the tightly closed membrane of her airlock door.

  "We will bite and sting our way through," Mazillion said. "We will tear the flesh of this vessel wide open if we must."

  "You mean, your other self?" Am-lei's question came out in a hysterically high-pitched tone.

  "We are sorry," Mazillion said. The knot of buzzing bodies lost cohesion, spreading into an amorphous cloud. "We will suffer when the universe ends too, but we cannot stop ourselves!" The cloud pulsed and swirled, tightening and swelling in turn. "We have tried. For years, this... split... has come. Even through our diminishment and regrowth, the divide has survived. Half of ourself never wanted to learn One Body language at all. Communication by sound waves is unnatural. Only dance is true communion."