As she emerged from the city, Cat called. “The ship isn’t responding to hails, which makes me think it’s not Fleet. It’s squawking an ident from Port Trivane. I sent out our distress call. Don’t know if it got through because now the commsat’s dead again.”
Trivane…the science station O’Mara had mentioned. Probably the nearest port to Prisca, and the logical place for Natesa to contract a ship to bring her to Scarabaeus.
Cat winced as Edie pulled apart the med-teck unit.
“We have another one in the other lifepod,” Edie reminded her.
“You mean our backup. Now we have no backup.”
“This is important. I need to keep in contact with Scarabaeus and I don’t want to spend all my time out there in its lair.”
She reached into the guts of the unit and pulled out a wafer of biocyph matrix—a slice of plaz the size of a small belt buckle. Before Cat could protest again, she took it into the other pod, where Finn fiddled with a commlink and a receiver taken from the pod’s console. He’d pried open the receiver to make use of its port and power traces.
Beside him, Galeon sat on the floor intent on his own project. Finn had shown him how to make a new set of Pegasaw pegs from wire and pieces of colored food wrapping. The pair of them were fast friends again.
Edie handed Finn the biocyph wafer. “Do your Saeth magic.”
The intention was to convert a commlink into a biocyph conduit. The idea of a remote biocyph communication interface was nothing new, but in this case they had to create one from salvaged parts.
“Any news on that ship?” Finn said as he got to work.
“The commsat’s still down.”
“But it’s Natesa, right?”
“I think so.” It had to be. Any other ship would’ve responded to their hails and reassured them that rescue was near. Natesa was acting outside the Crib’s jurisdiction, running silent, formulating her plan to take back the children—or Pris, at least.
“We need the commsat back up,” Finn said. “There’s a chance the Saeth could make it here before the Crib.”
A slim chance. Scarabaeus was nearer to the Fringe than it was to Crib Central, but Central must’ve been aware of something wrong on Scarabaeus for several days now, ever since the
Plantagenet
went down. It had a head start.
“If the Saeth do get here first,” Edie said, “we can still save the children from Natesa.”
“You still want to take them—without a supply of neuroxin?”
She shook her head miserably. “No, you’re right. We can’t risk their lives.”
What about her life? Would she take the chance and escape, knowing she’d have to steal neuroxin again in a few months or return to Talasi herself, tail between her legs, and beg for it?
She left Finn working on the devices and went back to the other pod to organize a meal.
“It’s my turn to do that.” Pris had joined her.
“Let’s both do it.”
As they sorted through packets of pro-bars and freeze-dried fruit, Pris kept looking through the open hatch to watch Finn work.
“Is he still sick?”
“He’s almost better. He’ll be fine.”
“He’s not fine. My m—Natesa did something to him, didn’t she?”
Edie kept her eyes focused on the food. She didn’t want to be responsible for causing any disillusionment in Pris. “Why do you say that?”
“I told you, I heard her talking. She said he was a bad man. Galeon told us the stories he told him. I don’t think he’s so bad.”
“He’s not. He’s a good man.” She managed a smile. “What stories?”
“About when he was a little boy. The big house he grew up in, in the middle of fields of barleat, with trees to climb and a river. Did you know he had a dog who could fish?”
“Yes, I heard about that.” Edie’s throat tightened.
“So why does Natesa want to kill him?” Pris asked quietly.
Disillusionment be damned. Edie couldn’t invent a comforting lie. “It’s not because of who Finn is. It’s because of who Natesa is. Finn is important to me, so she knows she can use him to control me. Ever since I was your age, she’s controlled my life—or tried to.”
“Isn’t that what parents do?”
“I don’t know.” Edie shook her head. “Like you, I never had parents. Maybe she tried to be my mother, but implanting things in my body, isolating me, training me for one purpose, using me to further her career…I don’t think that’s what real mothers do.”
Pris helped in silence for a while.
“Natesa used to tell me about you,” she said at last.
“She did?”
“She said you were talented, the very best, and she was proud of you. But that you didn’t believe in what you were doing. She tried to make you believe, but you wouldn’t. She said you wanted something else—she didn’t know what. The Talasi were cruel to you. She rescued you, but it wasn’t enough.”
“She’s right. It wasn’t enough. What I wanted was the chance to choose which way to go.” Edie looked at Pris, at the wan face and troubled eyes she recognized so well. Her younger self. “What do
you
want, Pris?”
Pris shrugged, then thought about it for a moment. “I think I want that house. The trees and fields and the river with flat guppy. Someone to show me how to do stuff, like Finn is showing Galeon how to make that game.”
That all sounded pretty good to Edie, too. Normal kid stuff. Something these children would never have as Crib wards and invaluable cyphertecks.
“What about Natesa? She wants to adopt you. We think she’s on that ship in orbit, coming for you.”
“I still prefer a house and a dog. And real parents for all of us.”
Edie stared at the creature on her pillow. Spindly legs, curled antennae poking out from a spiral head. A polished carapace, turquoise and black, gleaming under the habitat’s night lights. Its head was tilted whimsically to one side.
She rubbed her eyes and took it between her fingers. It was hard and cold, made of plazalloy wires and bits of paper wrap.
Finn had made this, a gift for her. A parting gift? In a panic, she threw off her blanket and got up. The pod murmured with the children’s light breathing. She rushed to the other pod, where Cat and Corinth dozed on bunks, and hit the scopes to search for him.
“He walked out about an hour ago,” Corinth said from his bunk. He hadn’t been sleeping after all.
“But why?”
“Said he wanted to take a look around. He took a commlink.”
Edie hit the comm switch on the driver’s console. No response. She checked the scopes. A green dot that represented Finn’s body heat moved slowly and apparently randomly across an area on the near side of the city. He had no
boots…Why would he go out there in bare feet? What the hell was he doing?
A warm breeze lifted Edie’s hair as she clambered over moss-covered rocks, feeling her way in the diffuse violet light coming from the nearby city where the spires were lit with spiraling phosphorescent channels. She retraced her steps from the day before, over the ridge leading to the oasis. It was where the scope had shown Finn’s last position.
The rippling water gleamed with reflected light. Edie heard the occasional scuffle of creatures moving about in the dense greenery draped over the banks. Otherwise it was silent and perfectly serene. Irresistibly inviting. Exquisite, the way all of Scarabaeus was supposed to be.
A few meters from the bank, the water’s surface broke and Finn emerged, swimming away from her. His arms flashed silver with each slow, powerful stroke. Edie noticed his pants lying crumpled on the bank, the commlink clipped to the belt. So that was why he hadn’t answered. She sat and watched Finn turn at the far bank and swim back.
When he was halfway, he saw her. He stopped and stood up. His skin glistened in the strange light. The water lapped against his shoulders as he regarded her, motionless.
Her fingers had already worked her boots loose. She wriggled out of her pants, then got to her feet, her toes curling in the cool moss. Finn had started to wade toward her. When she stepped out of her underpants and pulled her tee over her head, he was still again, watching her.
Cautiously negotiating the steep bank, she walked to the edge and slipped into the water. The lake bed was gritty under her feet. A couple of steps in, the water was already up to her waist—cool, but not unpleasantly so. Warmth from the previous day’s sunshine lingered, taking the edge off.
Finn waited for her as she waded out. The water crept up her rib cage and under her breasts, tickling like a lover’s fingers. She stopped a couple of meters in front of him.
“You don’t have an e-shield,” she said, noticing the lack of a shield’s aura around him.
“The slaters dispersed so I figured it was safe enough.” By now, something must have sampled his DNA—the brush of a plant frond, the bite of an insect—and the planet knew who he was. “I decided to check out the lay of the land,” he said. “Following my instincts, I guess. You didn’t mention this place.”
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” She was looking at him when she said it.
Finn slapped the water. “It’s good to get dirtside for a change. Too much time on stations and ships—you can forget what living is supposed to be.”
Natesa could send death at any moment. A pointless death, on her whim. Involuntarily, Edie looked up at the night sky, as if she might see it coming. Finn followed her gaze for a moment, then sank back in the water.
“I couldn’t die in that tin can.”
So he really thought this was the end. His certainty forced her to face it, too.
“I didn’t want you to die alone,” she said, almost choking on the words. Then she grew angry. Facing it didn’t mean accepting it. “There’s still a chance…If she would just talk to us, I could make her stop. I’ll do whatever it takes, whatever she wants. I’ll tell her that I’ll go to CCU and plead with them to give Ardra another chance. That’s all she really wants—to leave her mark on the Reach. If she lets you live, I’ll help her do that. I’ll figure out how to make Ardra work eventually, no matter how many worlds it ruins along the way.”
“You’d destroy the galaxy to save me?”
She smiled at him through her tears. He made it all sound so tragically romantic. To her it was just unbearably tragic.
“I would. Even if you left me behind. You
should
leave me behind. Everything you want is out there—your home and family, the Saeth, the Fringers you swore to help. That’s where you should be. Not tangled up in my life.”
“Maybe that’s true. It doesn’t matter now.” He moved closer to push strands of damp hair off her forehead. “You were the first person I trusted in a long time. I know I tested you. You never wavered. You were always on my side—I don’t know why. But I love you for it.”
Why did those words that should have made her joyful sound like a deathbed confession? She couldn’t bear to remember that he was a condemned man. That this would soon be over. Natesa would take the children. Edie would go back to the Crib. They’d send more men to this planet to probe it, abuse it, most likely destroy it. There was no one left on her side.
And Finn would die here, in her arms.
“I wish I could take you home with me,” he said. “Just…
home
. Someplace where you don’t feel used or hunted, where you don’t feel you have to save the galaxy, or someone else’s kids, or even me. I want to know who you are when it’s just you and me.”
His intensity made it hard for her to breathe. She slid into his arms and his finger trailed down her cheek and across her lips.
“Now I don’t have time,” he said.
“Pretend that you do.”
Finn kissed her and the bad thoughts fled. His lips were confident, demanding. His hands were tentative, as if he feared he might be dragged away from her at any moment. Edie wrapped herself around him, melding skin to skin. Everywhere they touched, his heat soaked into her. Everywhere else, cool water.
Weightless, they glided through the water. Lifting her onto the sloping bank, Finn slid his weight over her in a single smooth movement. She still sensed his hesitation. Before he could change his mind, she wrestled him onto his back and drew him inside her as she straddled his hips. In the ethereal light, her hands looked unnaturally pale, his darker skin richly luminous and shimmering with violet-tinged water drops. With her palms pressed to the hard muscle of
his chest, she felt his heart beating—racing, as if to outrun its fate.
This world had killed so many. Lying on the lake’s bank with Finn, their limbs loosely tangled, her thoughts turned morbid. He, too, waited to die here, this time through someone else’s murderous intent.
She imagined the slaters finding his body and ripping apart the flesh, as they had no doubt done to the bodies from the crash sites, and as their smaller ancestors had done to the rover team that died here a year ago…Zeke, the cheerful op-teck injured by Rackham’s flash bomb, and five serfs, all devoured by slaters when their e-shields failed. The hapless Kristos, buried alive and crushed by a particularly persistent carnivorous plant.
And Haller, the
Hoi
’s unstable, sleazy XO. There was a man she avoided thinking about when at all possible. Unlike the others, he’d been entombed by the slithering vines of the jungle and taken apart, piece by piece. Under the control of retroviruses, the vines had performed the delicate task of vivisecting Haller over the course of several hours, until she’d killed him out of mercy with her neuroxin implant.
What else was this world capable of?
—I can feel it inside me, thinking my thoughts…
She shuddered as Haller’s dying words came back to her. Finn’s arms closed tighter around her, his hand stroking her back as if he thought she might be cold. She wasn’t cold. She was unnerved by the memory of Haller’s slow, messy death as the biocyph invaded his brain.
Invaded him, cracked open his skull…
—I’m thinking its thoughts…
Edie bolted upright, her blood turned to ice.
Haller was here.
He wasn’t dead at all. His consciousness had been absorbed into the biocyph as it invaded his brain.
It made sense. Everything she’d seen here had the unnatural touch of a human about it, too much high-level order and not enough basic organisms. The creepy, impossible conversation
through the biocyph link. It knew her name. It knew what a human being was, a ship, a commsat. It knew she had created Scarabaeus with the kill-code. She’d been talking to Haller, what was left of him—or rather, what he had become.