by J. S. Morin
# # #
Compared to the homey comfort of the pilot’s seat, the co-pilot’s side of the Mobius felt weird. Tanny hated having Carl there while she flew, and Mriy wasn’t much of a conversationalist. The only times he sat in the cockpit were the few occasions when he got to fly. There was a perspective shift that made everything look wrong, like trying to fire a blaster left-handed or sitting on the wrong side of a holovid field.
Of course, the lack of holovid entertainment was the main reason Carl was up front in the first place. The nav computer wasn’t much of a pastime, but it beat sitting in a quiet common room with a dead holo-projector.
“This is pointless,” Tanny griped. “It’s not like anything we plot will be worth a damn once Mort brings us up. The course will change depending on our depth.”
Carl rubbed his eyes with his fingers. “I just wanted an idea how long this trip was going to be. If you’d rather just sit here and talk, though, fine.”
Tanny cast Carl a narrow glance, then returned her attention to the computer. “If he brings us down to anything around ten astral units, you can figure on a week and a half to get there.”
“What about fifteen?” Carl asked.
“Jesus, how deep do you think we are?”
“Can’t say for certain. All I know is we’re in a …” he reached for a button on the console.
“Not again! Just—”
“Purple haze, all around …” the computer managed before Tanny could squelch the audio playback. Carl giggled.
“You just don’t get tired of that joke? How is it that your shitty old music has something for every occasion? We’re lost at the deep end of astral space, and some fucker 600 years ago wrote a song, just in case.”
“Esper said it got red for a few seconds before Mort settled us in,” Carl replied. “If it had stayed red, I didn’t have a song for that.”
Tanny snorted. “You’d have forced something to fit.”
“Hey, how often do you find yourself in a …”
This time, Tanny caught Carl by the wrist as he reached for the audio controls.
“Purple haze?” Carl sang the line himself.
“I wish Mort had fried the song library,” Tanny muttered.
“Hey, at least you had your holovids stored in the ship’s computer. Me and Roddy lost everything.”
“What a shame,” Tanny deadpanned.
“Hey, I’m just trying to keep a rosy outlook here, but …” Purple haze, the ship supplied, “is actually freaking me out a little. Is that what you wanted to hear? Mort can’t wake up too soon to fix this, far as I’m concerned.”
“You warned the fare?”
“Yeah, Bryce got the standard warning. I don’t think he’d dare go near Mort at this point, let alone startle him awake.”
# # #
Sybil and the Sunspots blared a tinny melody from the built-in speakers on Esper’s datapad. She kept the volume low so that no one would hear through the walls with the eerie quiet that lingered throughout the ship. It had been years since she’d listened to the group, one of her favorites growing up. It seemed naive and immature now, but when she was twelve it had been profound. Still, it was a comfort, something familiar like the deep black that usually filled the window of her quarters. Esper mouthed along with the words, not quite daring to ask her questionable singing voice to follow the melody out loud.
Every sky is a blue sky,
If you raise yourself above the clouds,
If you want your soul to fly,
Just sing and raise your voice up loud.
Esper swayed as she lip-synced, remembering the concert her friend Novembra’s mother had taken them to on Phobos. It had been her first trip off Mars, and she could still remember feeling queasy in the unfamiliar gravity until the music started. Sybil and the Sunspots had been on the downside of their popularity by then, but it hadn’t mattered; the whole day had been magical, one new experience after another. The little datapad sitting in Esper’s lap was struggling to compete with those fond memories, failing to wash away the constant reminder outside her window that all was decidedly not right in the universe just then.
The purple radiance in the deepest reaches of astral space was hypnotic. As much as she tried to push it from her mind, she found herself staring into it once more, as if some great mystery would unfold before her eyes and make sense of the cosmos. There was motion within the radiance, not objects trapped within the deep astral but a movement of the colors themselves. Light and dark hues swirled like oil droplets in water, never mixing to form a uniform shade of violet. Esper’s childhood perception tests had placed her within half a standard deviation from the mean on color identification—she had no artist’s eye for colors. But staring into the astral depths, she began to note an overall brightening, and perhaps a hint of too much red creeping in.
Her stomach churned as she watched, wondering if she was the only one paying attention to the ship’s plight as it teetered on the edge of astral space so deep they might never return. She moved to stand, to run and shout throughout the ship that they were dropping deeper, but forced herself to sit. It was just her imagination, she convinced herself. Mort went to take a well-deserved rest, and he never would have left them in such peril.
But what if he didn’t realize?
Esper clasped her hands in her lap, her grip growing ever more desperate as she watched out the window. Doing nothing might get them all killed. She had to go wake Mort. He could be angry with her all he liked, but the time for peaceful napping was over, wizard or not.
She tore open the door to her quarters and rushed across the empty common room to Mort’s. It was doubly odd: once for the emptiness and quiet instead of the every-present holovids, twice for the purple illumination from the domed ceiling. She didn’t bother knocking, just opened the door and peeked inside. Mort snored softly, sleeping fully dressed atop his blankets. He had the look of a vagrant with his stained, worn clothes and unshaven face, mouth hanging agape. He stirred at the opening of the door, but did not wake.
“Mort?” Esper whispered, seeking a gentle waking. “Mort …” she tried once more, in a normal tone of voice. The snoring carried on uninterrupted. With a glance behind her for gossiping eyes, she slipped into the room and closed the door behind her. Tiptoeing across the room for reasons she would struggle to explain if asked, she crept to Mort’s bedside. “Mort,” she crooned, in her best imitation of her mother’s summonses from dreamland when she was a girl. “Time to—”
Mort’s hand shot up and caught her by the upper arm. “Who are you? What … how did you get in here?”
Esper’s whole body tensed. “It’s me, Esper,” she replied. “I came in by—”
“You can’t fool me,” Mort said, sitting up but not relinquishing his grip. His fingers dug into Esper’s bicep and triceps, and she gritted her teeth. She was only thankful he didn’t have Tanny’s strength or Mriy’s claws. “Esper is in the reliquary. I left her there not ten minutes ago. Now speak, or I’ll tear the secrets from your mind.” With his free hand, Mort took hold of Esper’s chin and tried to look into her eyes, but she averted her gaze in time.
With a leverage technique she had learned from Tanny, Esper wrenched herself free of Mort’s grasp. “It is me,” she insisted. “You were dreaming. This is the Mobius. We need your help. We’re slipping deeper into the astral plane.”
“Mobius …” Mort repeated, then nodded slowly. He looked around the room for the first time since waking. “Of course it is …” He cleared his throat and blinked several times. “Sorry about that. Didn’t anyone mention never to wake me when—”
Esper pointed out the window. “There’s no time.”
Mort followed her finger’s indication and looked out upon the purple void. After a moment’s inspection, he asked, “How can you tell?”
“Can’t you see it? The color is changing?”
Mort gave a twitch of a shrug and a tilt of his head. “Not really, no.”
<
br /> “It’s getting darker and redder,” Esper said, shaking her pointing finger at the purple. “I’d tell you just to keep watching, but if we are drifting, that seems like a bad idea.”
“Well, your supposition would be correct if the color were changing,” Mort said. “I just don’t see it, though.”
Esper’s eyes went wide. “No! You have to believe me.”
Mort shrank back and furrowed his brow. “What?” he asked. “I never said I didn’t believe you. Best to bring us back up, before it gets worse. Half a nap’s better than none.”
Esper folded her hands together and closed her eyes. As she began a silent prayer of thanks, a gentle tug separated her hands. “Don’t go giving Him the credit. It’s my help you asked for. If you wanted a miracle, you should have asked for one. But you wanted magic, so it’s me you came to. If you want to be useful, just tell Him to keep out of the way and let me do my job.” As Mort stepped around Esper on his way to the door, he paused and leaned close. “And if I fuck this up, then you can pray for help.”
# # #
When Esper and Mort entered the common room, they discovered that they weren’t the only ones there. Carl and Tanny stood with backs turned, staring at the door to Tanny’s quarters. A thump issued from the door, and the sound of a muffled growl.
“What’s going on?” Esper asked.
Carl twisted around, frowning at the open door to Mort’s quarters and the two of them standing just outside it. “Were you two just—? Never mind. Something’s wrong with Kubu. He’s flipping out in there.”
“It’s OK, Kubu,” Tanny called through the door. “Just … calm down, and I’ll open the door and let you out.” She looked over her shoulder. “You guys might want to keep back, just in case.”
“If he’s gone all zoological, I can—”
“No!” Tanny and Carl shouted in unison, then exchanged a frowning glance.
“Sorry, Mort,” Carl replied. “Mobius is just a little fragile right now. You zorched the holovid and gave the engines the hiccups. Roddy’s pulling his fur out down in the engine room as it is. Aside from bringing us up to a traversable depth, I think you might want to ease off the magic for a while.”
“No holovid?” Mort asked.
Carl shook his head.
Mort folded his arms and let out a disgusted sigh. “Blast and be bothered. Was the fridge affected?”
“Beer’s fine,” Carl confirmed.
“Well, there’s that at least.”
There was a howl from inside Tanny’s quarters. “If you ladies wouldn’t mind, get behind cover.”
Carl scurried over to join Mort and Esper behind the couch. “Were you two just … alone?” he asked as he hunkered down.
“Limit your filthy mind to its own affairs,” Mort warned. “Esper noticed we’re still drifting deeper and came to find me.”
“What do you mean, we’re—”
Carl’s question was cut short by an ear-splitting howl as Tanny opened the door. Kubu bounded from Tanny’s quarters like a canine avalanche, bowling Tanny over as if she were a child. She fell back, struck her head on the steel floor, and lay still. Kubu ignored her and headed straight for the refrigerator. “Hungry, hungry, hungry, hungry,” he said. Jaws like a hydraulic clamp latched onto the door handle and yanked the fridge open before the handle broke loose and Kubu spat it onto the floor.
Kubu’s single-minded assault targeted foodstuffs indiscriminately. He gobbled down leftover meals from the food processor and a half wheel of cheese that had gone so moldy that no one wanted to touch it. Carl let out a quiet yelp as Kubu bit into can after can of beer, sucking out the fizzing spray of liquid before chewing and swallowing the cans themselves.
Esper moved to approach the canine, but Carl put a hand on her shoulder. “He’s hurting himself,” Esper said. “Look, his gums are bleeding from the cans.”
“What do you think those teeth would do to you?” Carl asked.
The door to Mriy’s quarters opened, and the azrin emerged, yawning and rubbing an eye with the back of one paw. “What’s all the—” She looked toward Kubu.
“Watch out!” Carl shouted across the room. Kubu turned from the fridge and looked right at him. The eyes were vacant, bloodshot, and glassy. A froth of saliva, beer, and blood dripped from the corners of his mouth and from the tip of his lolling tongue. His chest heaved for breath, but his head remained motionless, fixed on the shouted challenge. A bass growl rumbled in Kubu’s throat.
The languorous vestiges of slumber evaporated from Mriy as she sprang forward. Before Kubu could leap at Carl, she had her arms around his neck. Kubu thrashed in her grasp, trying to twist loose, but Mriy bore him to the floor under her weight. As the canine struggled to regain his feet, Mriy used her elbows to knock his legs out from under him.
In the momentary reprieve, Esper rushed to Tanny’s side. Putting a finger to her throat, Esper felt a pulse. A small puddle of blood was forming beneath Tanny’s head. Esper opened one of Tanny’s eyelids with her thumb, and found wide pupils and no sign of reflexive response. Esper was no doctor—she hadn’t even taken an emergency aid class. All she had to rely on were the scenes from the holovids she had seen countless times. Tanny either had a concussion, a brain aneurysm, or had seen a nebula demon—and they weren’t in any sort of nebula, plus she had seen Kubu knock Tanny to the ground. Odds were, she would recover in time, possibly with amnesia or a weird speech condition. In any event, she had to do something.
Esper placed her hands on either side of Tanny’s face, putting Mriy’s struggles with Kubu from her mind. The skin was already cool to the touch; there was no time to waste. Her lips moved, but she gave no voice to the little rhyme she and her friends had learned to work the spell of healing. “Cuts close, bruises fade; three weeks healing done today; bones knit, pains ease; cleanse the body of disease.” She repeated it over and over, and felt Tanny’s skin warm feverishly beneath her palms.
Tanny sat up suddenly with a gasp, clutching her stomach. She grunted in pain. “What did you do to me, Esper?”
Esper let out a sigh of relief. “Good, no amnesia. Kubu knocked you out cold. Your head was bleeding, and you weren’t waking up.”
“But my stomach is on fire,” Tanny replied with a grimace. “And what’s Mriy doing to Kubu?” She tried to stand, lurching for the wrestling match by the refrigerator, but doubled over instead.
“You need food,” Esper replied. “The healing takes a lot out of you.”
“And here I thought Carl … was being a baby about the hunger pangs … that time you healed him.”
“Is it safe to get in there?” Esper called across to Mriy.
“I can hold him away from the food long enough for you to get in,” Mriy answered. For all Kubu’s compact strength and frenzied struggles, Mriy was nearly twice his mass. She kept him pinned to the floor as he tried to squirm loose and reach the open fridge and what little remained untouched within.
Esper hurried past the struggling pair, tiptoeing around a splatter of ketchup from a ruptured bottle and a small lake of spilled beer. The shelves inside the fridge were in shambles, and not much was left inside that was either edible or potable. Esper grabbed whatever she could lay hands on and returned to Tanny.
“Here,” she said, dumping the armload beside Tanny and beginning an inventory. She found the first filling-looking thing in the pile and pressed an eggplant casserole E-Z-Meal into Tanny’s hands.
“Who the hell bought this?” Tanny asked accusingly as she tore open the package.
“That would be me,” Esper replied. “It was our first stop after I joined the crew. I … I hadn’t remembered how good bacon cheeseburgers were, and I just never got around to—”
“Fine,” Tanny replied. “Whatever …” she muttered as she shoveled the self-warming pasta into her mouth with her fingers. Her head lifted at a canine yelp and subsequent whine. “Mriy, get off Kubu! What do you think you’re doing?” At least, that was what Esper imagined s
he said through a mouthful of eggplant, cheese, and pasta.
“He fights!” Mriy replied. “You were already defeated when I came out.”
Tanny cast a suspicious eye into her quarters and the shambles inside. Esper pressed a bottle of peach liquor into her hands and Tanny popped the top with her thumb and sucked half of it down in a few continuous chugs. All the while, she drifted cautiously into the wreckage left in her room. “Shit,” she said, wiping her mouth on the sleeve of her jacket. “Esper, where’d the med kit from the conference room end up?”
“It’s down in the—”
“Go grab it. Quick. We need to tranq him.”
Esper nodded and edged past Mriy and Kubu, still struggling on the floor. Mriy had the canine under control, but that didn’t stop his constant efforts to get free. He seemed wild, too far past rational thought even to put words to his frustrations any longer. He snapped at Esper’s ankle as she came near, but Mriy got a paw under his jaw and held it shut.
“Should we do anything?” Mort whispered from the corner.
“Hell no,” Carl replied in kind, peering over the arm of the couch. “They’ve got it under control. Plus it’s like a full-room holo-projector. Best thing I’ve watched all day.”
# # #
Esper knocked on the door of the guest quarters, using the butt of her fist. It was a sturdy door, and any other knock would be either too quiet, or hurt her hand. The door’s thickness, and perhaps some trick of its design as a conference room door, prevented her hearing the telltale noises of someone coming to answer.
“Is it safe to come out?” Bryce asked as he opened the door a crack.
“All clear,” Esper confirmed, trying to sound as perky as possible. No one else seemed inclined to look after their paying customer’s happiness, so it had fallen to her.
The door opened all the way, and Bryce slumped against the opening. “I don’t know what the deal is with you people, but astral space just was purple for the last three hours, and I thought I heard a wild animal out there.”
