Authors: Paul Hughes
Jade coughed from across the room, poured a glass of water. Cough, sip. Cough.
Waves in that solid expanse: she was between worlds, held just close enough to reality to see the council, to see God in the form of Judith. Maire: Nude form floating, hair lazy and dark. Eyes. Her eyes were
“There is a place for you.”
Both nacelles were shattered at the hubs as the fighters strafed Task’s vessel. The lifting body of the slither flipped end-over-end at the planetship.
“They don’t want to talk.” Task wrestled with the controls, used maneuver jets to stay on-course.
“New plan.” Berlin spoke through teeth clenched, his lacerated jaw now tacky with blood.
The fighters strafed again. The slither body held, but the gelatin shield was starting to fail.
“Head for the launch tube.”
“The what?”
“On the top of the ship. There’s a liquidspace launch tube.”
“That’s new.”
“It’s meant for Maire.”
“Exile through liquidspace?”
“Sending her far, far away.”
Flashes of forcefire. Gelatin scraped away. They were losing speed.
“Position the vessel in front of the pipe.”
“But we’ll—”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to—”
“Just do it.”
when
and when
and when and
called upon again to
wake
and wake
and wake and
be
with my children
again
Judith
God
reached out, touched that fury mind of frozen silver. Maire looked at them without emotion. Maire looked at them with
She saw that day again clearly: the vessel in the sky, blue sky. Cities below: people laughed and walked and sat on green grass of a pathetic excuse for a forest (park) and on blankets they ate sandwiches and apples (from trees) and there was music (do you remember music?) and underneath shade they fucked, fluids (liquid) exchanged in (final) bliss.
She saw that day again: the vessel in the sky, dissemination ports opening with ratchet and squeal, scream of machines. Cities below: men in black suits walked between buildings, weapons on their belts. Sound in the sky made them look up: black object where there should have been none. Hands went to weapons on their belts; nothing would save them. Nothing could save them.
She saw that day: the vessel in the sky, snap crackle and pop of phase waking the silver. Cities below: fighters roaring from defense facility, weapons ports opening: futile. Futile. Screams of children and mothers, children and fathers. She would end them.
She saw that: the lurch of the ship and it began. Cities below: the shadow of their end expanding. A quiet before
She saw: ring of metal, piercing the light, blue turns to gray to silver to. Cities below: suffocation and
Judith sobbed. God’s inner embrace was not enough. Such pain. And something.
“Do you have any defense?”
Maire’s lips remained closed, not from nearsolid prison but from
[you know why i did it.]
They all felt it this time; several members of the Council jolted in their chairs.
Something.
“The evidence speaks for itself. For your crime, you are sentenced to—”
Maire’s hands clenched to fists and it began.
suffocation and the world became solid. air of metal, skin replaced with, eyes bursting, screams cut off before, final glances: fighters caught in mid-flight, sun fading to gray, grass of metal blades, inhalation impossible, exhalation a reflex suicide. universe of silver: machines within, machines replace, machines of dust and the places between the stars where no one dared
Judith saw it from the corner of her eye. The host body beside her stood with force enough to topple his chair, innocent bald old man with too-few hearts and too much iron in his bloodstream. He screamed a human scream with a deity voice as he tore the flux interface from his chest.
“No—”
All of God, all of God within her, slamming home, replacing Judith with and overflowing and drowning, sudden, yet not without uncertainty or a measure of peace.
The host’s eyes opened and they were
“Get her out of here!” Hannon and the council dove into action. “Activate the launch sequence!”
Jade was the first to fall: matron.
The host’s body cleaved into two: emerging light, burning light, silver hidden within unsuspecting flawed body. Halves of red stinking biology splashed to the floor as silver escaped its delivery vessel. Maire’s lips curved into a smile.
“Activate the fucking launch sequence!”
Her smile became forever as her prison solidified. Hannon and Corr went to Jade, but it was too late: silver replacing flesh, flesh turning to dust, mercury dust, silver pile. Corr fell under the invasion of his own flesh. Hannon looked down and saw the lace of his death begin. Palm to chestplate, body enveloped in a sea of protective gel
is it too late?
Maire’s prison was a cylinder of glass within steel, steel within phase. The tube dropped away before her as the planetship aligned itself with God’s vision, as launch doors opened, as universes dissembled within the pipe and
“Just do it” and the doors below them opened, throwing forth light that was metal, metal that was light: Maire asleep, Maire imprisoned.
Task had no time to react. Maire’s prison vessel tore through and through them and
Judith couldn’t stop screaming, couldn’t breath, couldn’t
Palm to chestplate. That was God’s touch: gelatin enveloped, then steel, then the floor dropped away as they were purged from
Council, dead. Council, dust: silver all at once, silver hidden within a flawed host body. Maire had known. Maire had planned it that way.
Is it too late?
but the lace had stopped spreading under the pressure of glass. Gravity was gone. Hannon was being pulled into the tube. He sloshed to an escape port, waited for steel enclosure, dropped away from that room and into space.
The planetship imploded with the force of the reaction.
Hannon spun, saw JudithGod’s escape bubble spinning away, saw the halo link to the homeworld.
Oh my God—
A line of silver and fire: as Maire’s exile vessel lit into the night, the halo comm flared with something
something
We were connected.
To the homeworld, to all the planets of the system. They’d all been connected by that halo, and now it was silver.
Maire was gone. The planetship was nothing. Hannon and Judith
God
floated alone above a dead world.
Please don’t let it spread. Please don’t let it get home.
God was in a metal bubble. There was no one to answer prayers in that void. If the silver traced the halo back to the homeworld, if the silver spread to the other planets in the system...
A loss so dear...
Hannon began to shake. His hands were cold.
and this heart, for you
There are silences beyond silence.
he is knowing...
and this heart
i contain
for you
i have come again to
zam zam?
rupture rend rive split cleave
Please don’t let it—
Is it too late?
He knew what she couldn’t believe.
my lips remember the echoes of that night
How the body is weak, how fragile biology bursts upon cool metal, how the final crack of the spine signals an end.
His blood was tacky on the black surface. His body was broken under the tons. Boys, not men, not boys watched.
“We have to get him out of there.”
“Let him stay.” Hunter wiped the blood from his cheek with the back of gloved hand.
“We can’t just—”
“Do it yourself, then.”
The chamber door cycled open. She came in, snapping of static, sloshing of shield. His eyes studied the floor as he walked by. She reached out.
“Don’t.”
“Hunter—”
“Just don’t.” He pulled away, left the chamber.
She found him later, as she always found him, on the empty bridge, thermals off, freezing away the emotions of the deep. She made certain that the bridge door was sealed and deactivated her phase shield. It splashed to the floor and dissipated in tendrils of mist. A shake of curly hair and she was dry.
How the heart is weak, how fragile emotion wells under too-old eyes, how the lock of a glance sends lovers into abandon.
“Come here?”
She crawled into the vacuum chair with him, a lithe and feline move. He inhaled and there was nothing. Exhaled and he could still breathe. Would it last? Their arms tangled, she shifted position and her lips found his jawline, rested there for a moment. She shivered in more than the cold of space.
Even in the cold, the lace of the silver began to bristle in fine patterns across his skin, a disconcerting screen door gooseflesh. It danced, disappeared only to re-emerge in another place. It was searching for a foothold.
“How much longer?”
He shook his head against the meeting place of neck and shoulder.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
He looked into the eyes of the little girl who, almost two decades ago, had waved at him each day from behind a wrought-iron gate.
They cage us, in so many ways, in so many ways.