Entanglement Bound: An Epic Space Opera Series (Entangled Universe Book 1)
Page 29
"So, you're sure the Merlin Particle..." Clarity didn't know what to ask, but she wanted to hear something happier. "You're sure?"
"Yes," Am-lei said. "I saw it."
"You saw what?" Clarity asked.
"A corona of new particles. They exploded out of the event horizon—well, both directions, really. Into and out of. But we could only see the ones exploding outward. The fire along the event horizon turned blue and sparkly. It was all around."
"I saw that..." Clarity whispered, awed by the memory. "I thought I was dreaming." She'd certainly dreamed part of it; the part where Irohann became a star, waltzing with her. "You're sure that was the particle? You're sure it was good? It wasn't the start of the universe ending?"
Am-lei straightened her legs—four of them at the moment—and stood taller, projecting a certain seriousness. Suddenly, she was scientist, being asked to report on her project. "The Doraspian vessel was on the right course; the proper angular velocity for the particle to re-enter the Devil's Radio and rejoin with its entangled particle."
"What would have happened if it re-entered at the wrong angular velocity?" Clarity asked. "How do you know it didn't get off course, even just a little?"
"If the Merlin Particle and its entangled particle had been traveling at incompatible velocities," Am-lei said, as if she were reciting an introductory lecture for a particularly tedious beginning student, "they could have entered a stable orbit around the Devil's Radio's center of mass, never colliding, never rejoining, and rapidly tearing the universe apart. We'd already be dead if that had happened. Alternately, if they'd had compatible velocities—but only barely compatible—they might have taken thousands of years for their orbits to coincide, causing them to rejoin. Then they'd have spent thousands of years tearing the universe up, before finally leaving it alone. Our galaxy wouldn't have lasted more than a few years."
"And how do you know that didn't happen?" Clarity pressed.
The tips of Am-lei's antennae twisted into little curlicues. "It wouldn't have looked blue and sparkly."
"Fair enough," Clarity said, feeling properly chastised for not trusting Am-lei's scientific knowledge. She tried to imagine thousands of years worth of the crack in space-time ripping up the universe. It wasn't a pretty picture. "Well, I'm glad that didn't happen," she said. And yet, the more she thought about it, the more unsure Clarity felt. She simply couldn't believe the danger was over.
Am-lei seemed confident, but the stakes were so high.
"Still, the blue sparkly stuff..." Clarity said. "What if that was something else?" She remembered how everything had been floating and then been chaotically blown out of the Doraspian vessel's bridge when the viewscreen had exploded. "What if the box with the device fell out of the Doraspian vessel before Cassie threw it across the event horizon? Couldn't the particle have escaped?"
"No, the sparkly blue corona of expelled particles couldn't have been anything else," Am-lei said testily. "When Cassie's computers flickered on briefly, I was able to take readings, and they were amazing—if I ever have a chance to write a paper on them, it'll change the entire field of gravitational research!" She shifted her weight from one pair of legs to the other, rocking her abdomen to the side. "That's not important right now. The important thing is the gravity flexion was exactly as I predicted. Exactly as it had to be if—and only if—we succeeded. The universe truly is safe from the meddling of the Merlin particle."
Clarity felt like she should cheer, but she knew it would come out half-hearted. Saving the universe was a big deal. But it felt a lot smaller when she wasn't sure she'd get to see the rest of the universe ever again.
"Well," she said, "we did good then."
"We did good," Am-lei agreed hollowly. Her antennae drooped forward, and her faceted eyes looked dim. Now that her student had accepted the results of her lecture, she no longer had the tide of righteous explanation carrying her on. She had nothing carrying her on at all.
Clarity could never have imagined saving the universe would feel so sad. Yet on her hand, a few of Mazillion's bodies finally twitched into motion, crawling up to the golden droplets of liquid. They injected proboscises like Am-lei's—except as fine as a single strand of hair—into the liquid and began drinking. Rationally, Clarity knew saving the universe was a bigger deal than a couple of Mazillion's bodies rallying. But she couldn't see the people across the universe, living their lives, continuing on from one day to the next on each of their planets, because she'd saved them. And she was too tired to imagine anything so large right now.
But she saw Mazillion, and their bodies were taking on a shinier luster as their tiny proboscises sucked up Cassie's milk. Clarity wanted to clap her hands with joy, but she held perfectly still, not daring to disturb the tiny bodies as they rejuvenated.
Clarity wanted out of this moment in time, out of this depressing conversation, out of this gravity well, and out of this corner of the universe. She was done with this mission. But for any of that, she needed Cassie.
"If Cassie's... so exhausted," Clarity said, "how did you come for us?"
"I don't know," Am-lei said. "I stayed in the cockpit, even though I couldn't see anything and wasn't doing any good, until Roscoe told me you were in the airlock. Cassie must have mustered enough energy to rescue you, in spite of whatever injuries she has. I think it might have been the last energy she had."
Clarity didn't say anything. It sounded like Cassie might have sacrificed herself—meaning Am-lei and Roscoe too—in order to come for her and Irohann. That was true love. And foolishness. Clarity had loved a spaceship before, but this was the first time a spaceship had loved her back.
"The Merlin Particle's gone," Am-lei said, "so I know that's not why the computers and synthesizers are down. I'm worried Cassie injured herself attacking the Doraspian vessel."
"We need a spaceship doctor," Clarity said. "Do we even know what Cassie eats?"
"Space dust," Am-lei said. "It's thick in nebulas. There's none here. The Devil's Radio has swept this swathe of space clean. Everything this close to the event horizon has already been sucked in."
"That's not going to make it easier for Cassie to recover," Clarity mumbled. In spite of the direness of the situation, Clarity's heart jumped realizing what Am-lei had said: "So we're outside of the event horizon?" she asked. "We could still be rescued? If we stay alive long enough?"
"Rescued?" Am-lei said the word with scorn, a squealing note from an instrument played by a beginner. "Who would rescue us? With Cassie unresponsive, we can't contact anyone. Who would even know we're here?"
"Jeko?" Clarity said hopefully.
"Jeko and I could barely afford the trip to Leionaia," Am-lei said. Clarity could see the lepidopteran struggling with bitter thoughts about how she could have stayed home, celebrated Lee-a-lei's Wing Day on Crossroads Station, and had a few more years with her family before the Merlin Particle destroyed everything. "That's why I got mixed up in all of this, remember?"
"More Doraspians..." Clarity suggested bleakly. "It'd be better than dying, right? At least, for all of us except Iroh."
From the far side of the scullery, another voice said, deep and growly, "You've forgotten an option."
Clarity looked over to see Irohann leaned heavily against the open membrane of the door. He looked about as wretched as Clarity felt. His spacesuit was down around his waist as well, and the thick orange fur covering his chest and shoulders was clumped up in greasy folds.
"What option?" Am-lei asked. "Roscoe's family? I don't think they're any better off than Jeko and I, and they don't have any clue where we are."
"Half true," Irohann said. His ears were tilted outward, too tired to stand up straight.
"Which half?" Clarity asked. "Roscoe's family are secret billionaires? Their homeworld paid reparations to them for their enslavement, and now they own Crossroads Station? And they've sent a fleet of vessels out searching for their missing grandpa?"
Irohann's ears splayed farther. "What? No...
I mean, not as far as I know. But they know where we are. I was just in the cockpit, and Roscoe was talking to them."
Clarity and Am-lei looked at each other, and there was a sparkle of hope in those silver disco balls again.
The human saw herself reflected a hundred-fold in the lepidopteran's eyes, reminding her of how she'd been reflected across the crack in space-time caused by the Merlin particle. But seeing herself reflected in the eyes of a friend was safe and comforting, rather than insufferably, unthinkably madness-inducing.
"He's probably just babbling to himself," Am-lei said, tamping down her rising hopes.
Irohann shrugged. "Doesn't matter to me. Irohann's dead whether we get out of here or not, now that the Doraspians know who I am." He staggered in and slumped down onto one of the scullery benches, splaying his upper body over the table. "If we do survive... I guess someone else might spring out of his ashes. Someone with antlers this time, I think. I wonder what I should name myself?" He stared glassy-eyed at Clarity. "I suppose, whatever I pick, I shouldn't tell you." He buried his head under his forepaws and whimpered. A little lost puppy hiding from the world.
Clarity would have to deal with him later. Right now, she needed to get to the cockpit. She put her hand covered by Mazillion's bodies—who were still guzzling up golden nectar—against the flesh of Cassie's wall. She brushed her other hand lightly across her palm and fingers, shepherding the small bodies, guiding them to twitch and limp and skitter their way off of her hand and onto the wall. A few of them were strong enough to fly up to the tip of the udder and drink directly from the golden nectar dripping out there.
"Be strong," Clarity whispered. She put her sticky fingertips to her mouth and tentatively touched the tip of her tongue to the golden residue. It was sweet, like apricots and cantaloupe. Then she turned to Am-lei and asked, "Coming?"
33 Full Circle
The bank of screens in Cassie's cockpit were dark, but Roscoe was babbling away, full speed, in his mother tongue.
Clarity wasn't sure at first how Irohann had concluded that the lapine man was talking to his family, but she recognized the solanese compound word, "grandbunnies," mixed in with the unfamiliar sounds and syllables. He said it over and over again. He sounded unhinged. A man who knew he'd never see his family again; maybe a man who'd felt the mind of a starwhal dying while joined with his own. Even if Cassie's body hadn't stopped working yet, she could have been driven mad by her short flight through subspace with the Merlin Particle. What would that even be like? Could subspace crack open the way the normal fabric of space-time had been doing?
Clarity still had trouble facing her memories of space-time cracking around her. She shuddered, physically, involuntarily, every time the thought of all of those reflections of her—each one slightly out of sync, yet still completely and totally her—came unbidden to her mind.
Then she imagined each of those other versions of herself in a staggered, syncopated, stuttering shudder lasting forever, spiraling outward into a universe entirely made of reflections of herself. Clarity closed her eyes, drew in a deep breath, and imagined herself putting the memory and the thoughts it inspired inside a box—just like the Merlin Box—and launching it into the black hole. Gone forever, hidden behind the fiery wall of the event horizon.
"I think he's gone mad," Clarity said, still standing in the mouth of the vein-like hall.
Am-lei had advanced up to Roscoe's side, and she examined him gently with her talons. She lifted one of his long ears from where it drooped over the side of his face; she took one of his paws in one of her middle talons. Suddenly, Roscoe's eyes—which had been staring blankly ahead—focused on Am-lei, and his ears perked up. His words changed from unfamiliar to Solanese: "They're here," he said, nose twitching furiously. "They're all here. Well, not all of them. Not the little ones. But my three oldest daughters, my youngest son, two nephews..."
"He's imagining things," Clarity said.
"I don't care," Am-lei said at Clarity. "He can imagine all he wants." She turned her focus back to Roscoe. "Can they send a message? To Leionaia or Crossroads? Or Wespirtech? Anyone who might come rescue us?"
"You don't understand," Roscoe said. He pointed at the bank of blank screens. "They're already here!"
Clarity stepped all the way into the cockpit finally. She walked up to the scoop of a bowl chair holding Roscoe and laid a hand gently on the purple flesh of its lip. She was tempted to reach up and tenderly touch the tendrils of cord attached to the sucker disks kissed onto Roscoe's scalp. But she restrained herself. She wasn't Cassie's pilot.
"Cassie," Clarity said. "Thank you for coming for me. Thank you for saving me and... bringing me home."
Clarity wondered what she could do to make their deaths on a dying spaceship easier. She didn't relish the idea of a slow death, watching Roscoe drive Am-lei mad with him. Irohann was already lost to despair. As Cassie starved around them, their air would grow stale. She almost thought it would have been better to have died in her spacesuit, floating free and staring at the stars.
But she would never have known that those blue fireworks meant they'd saved the universe.
She couldn't regret that knowledge.
She needed to distract Am-lei and Roscoe, find some way to keep them occupied that didn't involve devolving into hysterics at the thought of family members from whom they were forever torn asunder. At least she would die with her best friend. In her new home.
An image appeared on the middle-most screen; all the other screens stayed blank, but in the middle, a face like Roscoe's flickered into place. The fur was a richer shade of gray, darker and glossier, younger looking. The ears stood tall. But the nose twitched exactly as rapidly as Roscoe's right now.
"See?" he said. "My daughter, Genby."
"Is there audio?" Am-lei said, scurrying up to the dark computer console in the corner of the screens.
"Where is the signal coming from?" Clarity asked. She wasn't completely convinced they weren't looking at one of Roscoe's memories, pulled up from his subconscious by Cassie to comfort him.
Even so, Cassie had turned on one of her screens. A good sign. A very good sign.
"Right outside," Roscoe said.
"That doesn't seem likely." Am-lei crossed both pairs of upper limbs across her thorax. She looked frustrated that her tapping at the computer console hadn't done anything. "Can you show us an external view?"
"I... can't," Roscoe said. And it sounded an awful lot like an admission that there wasn't one.
Am-lei's disco ball eyes glittered brightly. If the lepidopteran were physically capable of it, Clarity would have thought she were crying.
"I'm too tired..." Roscoe continued. The sucker disks against his scalp puckered and withdrew, their tendril cords coiling upward. The lapine man kicked his legs forward, like he was trying to climb out of the bowl chair, but he toppled over the edge and collapsed on the floor beside it. He looked like he'd been run over by a cargo-lift. Or maybe stretched through subspace like a piece of taffy and ground up by a fracture in space-time.
"Can you drive?" Roscoe asked, looking up at Clarity from the floor. She helped him back onto his feet.
"Drive?" Clarity asked. "Can Cassie fly right now? She can't seem to even power up the computer console..." Clarity was reluctant to hook her brain up to the brain of a starwhal who might have lost her mind. But if there were any chance it would save them, get them back to a civilized corner of the galaxy, she had to try.
Clarity climbed into the bowl chair and sat cross-legged. The sucker disks coiled back down and kissed her lightly on each temple, burrowed into the photosynthetic hair atop her head, and blurred out her consciousness from the singular point of one mind into the overlapping wave of two.
Her body expanded outward and ached all over. A hunger larger than her human body could ever contain wracked her belly; Clarity was surprised she hadn't felt the contortions of Cassie's hunger pangs rippling down the hall as she'd walked through it to the cockpit.
Clarity didn't like the sensation of floating in space near a black hole. She wanted to blast her tube-organs and jet away from here as fast as possible. But the hunger. The overriding hunger wouldn't let her move.
"Clarity, Clarity, Clarity," she heard in her mind. The childlike chanting was Cassie talking to her. "Focus, focus, focus."
In spite of Clarity's fears, Cassie seemed emotionally unfazed by her close encounter with the Merlin Particle. Mostly, she seemed happy to be rejoined with Clarity.
Cassie was used to the sensation of gravity pulling her toward the Devil's Radio by now, and the massive hunger pangs were a background roar to her. Clarity had to work to push those overriding sensations to the back of her mind. When she did, then she found the communication line with the bronze spaceship—open and waiting for her to speak.
"This is Clarity of The Cassiopeia," she said. "We need help."
"Uncle Roscoe told us," a lapine woman replied, apparently a different one than the daughter he'd named before. "We have nutrient rich space dust ready for you in the cargo hold of our ship, The Warren. Also, we can tow you with a force beam to a safer location. Can you wait for the space dust until we're farther away from the black hole's gravitational pull? I tried asking Uncle Roscoe... but he wasn't making much sense."
Clarity wanted to scream, "No!" She'd never handled a hunger as large as Cassie's before. But Cassie answered for her, "Yes, tow." The young starwhal had far greater restraint than Clarity right now.