As the human phrase goes, a chill went down my spine. In fact, it felt more as if the chill moved upward from my stomach to my shoulders and thence to my face, but perhaps chills behave non-traditionally in artificial gravity.
"Uh-oh," muttered Uclod. "I hate to say it, missy," he told Bell, "but it sounds like you’re getting jammed."
"Jammed?" Aarhus repeated. "Oh crap."
"Quick!" Festina said. "We need a long-range scan right now!"
"No, we don’t," Nimbus answered quietly.
He waved a foggy arm, pointing behind our backs. We all whirled to look through the glass bulkhead.
There, looming across half the sky, was the stick-ship.
Big Bully
"Damn, that’s a big sucker," Festina whispered.
The Shaddill had appeared alongside Royal Hemlock, a vast brown forest beside a single white tree. Every stick in the Shaddill ship seemed larger than the entire Hemlock: longer and wider, like oaks crowding in on a paper birch. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of the brown sticks, one of which telescoped lazily toward the dwarfed navy vessel.
"What are the odds," Uclod asked, "those bastards will just grab Hemlock and fly away?"
"They don’t want to fly away," Festina said. "They want to capture everyone who knows too much. You. Oar. Anybody you might have talked to."
"Which means the whole damned crusade."
"Right. They want to nab every last ship."
"How the hell will they do that?" Uclod asked. "We’ve got dozens of little ships. If we scatter in different directions—"
"They won’t let us," Festina said. With sudden urgency, she rolled to her feet. "Lady Bell, is there any way to opaque this ship’s hull?"
"Why would I want to do that?" the lady asked.
A flash of blue brilliance burst upon us like lightning. For a moment, Festina’s face was reduced to pure black and white: white eyes, black pupils, white skin, black birthmark, white anger, black "I knew this would happen" expression. Then her body crumpled limply to the floor.
Everyone else was already lying down.
Another Ship Bites The Dust
I am such a one as thrives on bright light. I did not feel invigorated by this particular light, but I did not slump over unconscious either. Perhaps, as the Pollisand had joked, many types of light just pass right through my body. At any rate, I am not so weak as opaque persons, so it takes more than a garish flash to subdue me.
The others, alas, were unconscious… everyone but Nimbus, who still hovered mistlike above the unmoving bodies. It annoyed me that he too had remained awake; one enjoys being special, or at least more special than an entity made of fog. Nevertheless, I could guess why he had not succumbed: a creature consisting of tiny floaty bits might not be affected by Sinister Weapon Beams in the same manner as creatures made from meat… and of course he was nearly as transparent as I, not to mention he too had been designed by the Shaddill.
Perhaps we had both been constructed immune to Shaddill weaponry. If so, the stick-people were greatly foolish — if I were designing artificial beings, I would make them especially susceptible to my favorite weapons, so I could quell rebellions with dispatch. But then, the Shaddill were villains; and if I had learned anything from the fictional writings of my people, it was that Villains Always Make Mistakes.
"What shall we do now?" I whispered to Nimbus. "If the Shaddill think we are unconscious, this is an excellent time to take them by surprise."
"Don’t be too hasty," the cloud man replied. "They know you’re here, right? Catching you seems to be a priority for them. And they must suspect their stun-beam doesn’t work on you — it didn’t work when you were in Starbiter, so why should it work now?" He drifted across the floor a short distance, then drifted back again: the cloudish equivalent of pacing. "Maybe they’re hoping you’ll do something noticeable so they can tell where you are."
"Ahh," I said. "That is astute reasoning." I looked up at the glass roof. "Of course, they will see me as soon as they look in this direction. I am harder to notice than opaque persons, but I am not invisible."
"Don’t worry about that," Nimbus told me. "In a Cashling ship like this, the hull is only transparent one way; you can see out, but no one can see in. The Shaddill won’t spot you that easily."
Which meant that with so many ships in the crusade, the Shaddill faced great difficulty determining where I was. Our trying to flee or attack would be a mistake, since it would catch the Shaddill’s attention… but then, I doubted that we could flee or attack. Unfettered Destiny would almost certainly refuse to take commands except from the Cashlings themselves. Indeed, I did not know if I could even leave the studio — without Lady Bell’s or Lord Rye’s permission, the ship’s security systems might not open the door for me.
That is often the way with mechanical devices — they are most exceedingly mulish. Back in my village on Melaquin, many buildings contained shiny equipment with display screens showing excellent three-dimensional curve-graphs in bold fluorescent colors. The village’s maintenance robots kept these devices free of rust, and presumably in perfect running order; however, no one knew what the machinery did. According to tales from my mother (who received the tales from her mother and so on back through the centuries), the equipment would only respond to commands spoken in the ancient language my ancestors used more than four thousand years ago. That language was not the tongue we had learned from the village’s teaching machines; therefore, my sister and I could only stare at the waves of color constantly painting themselves on the monitors, and dream of what excellent deeds we might do if only we learned the correct words to say.
Was I not in the same position now?
Reflecting gloomily on my inability to control the Cashling ship, it struck me that once again I had boarded a vessel, only to find it rendered inoperable shortly after my arrival. This was not an amusing pattern of starship behavior. Moreover, the trend was accelerating. I had lasted seven hours on Starbiter, before she ripped herself apart; then an hour on Royal Hemlock before the dreadful act of sabotage; and finally, only ten minutes on Unfettered Destiny before the attack on the Cashlings made it impossible to command the ship to do anything.
Perhaps I should endeavor to board the Shaddill craft. If I managed to do that, the stick-ship might explode instantly into a cloud of radioactive dust.
Hah!
The Fate Of The Hemlock
Thinking about the stick-ship, I raised my head to the glass ceiling and stared at the alien vessel. A hollow tubelike stick now extended from the Shaddill ship’s belly: reaching out slowly like a snake slithering up to its prey, the stick thwacked against the Hemlock’s hull. Of course I heard no sound through the vacuum of space; but the navy craft shuddered and shook silently with the impact. The collision must have been forceful enough to knock people in Hemlock off their feet — if any of them were still standing after the beam weapon’s attack.
For a moment, the pair of ships just floated there, as if the white navy cruiser were impaled on the big brown stick. Then a thousand tiny vines sprung from the end of the stick, some circling the Hemlock widthwise while others streamed out along the ship’s length, and still more wrapped around the hull in long weaving spirals. In places, the vines crisscrossed each other; in others, they sprouted side tendrils that intertwined and appeared to fuse together. Considering how far we were from the two vessels, the vines must have been quite thick — perhaps as wide around as my entire body; otherwise, I would not have been able to see them at such a distance. But they moved with the speed and flexibility of much smaller strands, until they had completely bound the Hemlock in their great sinister web.
The telescoping stick began to retract: back into the body of the Shaddill ship, dragging with it the trussed-up Hemlock. Two nearby sticks snaked out of the woodpile as if they were interested in having a closer look at the captured prize. They drifted lazily outward, skimming their heads along the length of the navy ship in opposite directions
; then they struck simultaneously, jamming their open mouths onto either end of the cruiser. Once the Hemlock had been capped fore and aft in this fashion, it was quickly pulled down into the weaving brown forest. I lost sight of it as dozens more sticks slithered up and over the ship, like a mass of brown snakes squirming onto a single white one.
So that is the end of the Hemlock, I thought. And how long before the Shaddill gather up the crusade ships as well? Even as the words crossed my mind, a new stick telescoped from the Shaddill vessel, reaching for one of the crusade’s smaller craft.
Our own ship had pulled a goodly distance away from Hemlock; therefore, if the Shaddill began scooping up the nearest crusade ships, they would not get to us for a few minutes. However, it was only a matter of time before they swallowed us all.
A Gargantuan Sneeze
I turned to say something to Nimbus — I do not know what it was going to be, I simply wanted to speak and hear his voice in return — but the cloud man had vanished. I blinked and peered around the room. There was no sign of him, not even a little bit. I was about to cry out in anger and fear when I noticed baby Starbiter resting in the pit of Festina’s stomach.
That was a strange place indeed for an infant Zarett.
I moved nearer for a better look. Festina had fallen into a twisted three-quarters position, her bottom half lying sideways on her right hip, but her top half slumped over so her chest and arms lay almost flat on the floor. This left a covered nestlike area under the shelter of her belly, a dark little cave where a small Zarett person could rest safely. Nimbus must have placed Starbiter there in the shadow of my friend’s body, where the little girl would be protected while her father was busy with other activities.
But what was the foolish man doing? Where had he gone?
I looked around frantically. The recording studio possessed numerous air vents in its floor and ceiling; a creature made of bits could have left through any one of them. Perhaps he planned to seek Unfettered Destiny’s bridge, hoping to take control of the ship. Nimbus might well speak the Cashling tongue — he had, after all, served on ships owned by Cashlings, and had demonstrated an ability to learn languages quickly. If he could give orders to this ship in Cashlingese, he might… he might… I did not know what he might do, since we had already agreed not to draw unwanted attention. But the bridge was the only place I could imagine the cloud man might go…
…until I saw wisps of mist dribbling out of Festina’s nose.
"Nimbus!" I cried. "Are you inside my Faithful Sidekick? It is very very wrong to enter a woman when she is unconscious and helpless!"
The cloud man did not reply; but Festina made a choked "Uhh" noise that sounded as if her entire head was congested with mucous. One arm moved and her body shifted. Seeing the potential for a horrible occurrence, I snatched up little Starbiter and clutched her to my breast there moments before Festina groaned and rolled over. (Festina rolled onto her back, so she would not have crushed the baby after all. Still, I felt heroic for my lightning-quick reaction. With heroism, it is the thought that counts.)
As for my friend, she ended spread-eagled face up on the jet black carpet. The carpet sank beneath her, molding itself into a Festina-shaped hollow… as if she had struck the floor after falling from a great height. Festina lay in this personalized gully for nearly a minute, all the time making loud congested grunts and wheezes that were most undignified. I knelt beside her, cradling her head and offering words of encouraging comfort: "Stop those ugly sounds at once, you foolish one! You must not be ill or dying, because that is not how a proper sidekick behaves."
As I held her, more mist trickled out of her nose. The bits did not stay outside; whenever she inhaled, all the mist went back in again. After one exhalation, I waved my hand through the fog around her face in an effort to disperse it… but the tiny particles simply swirled past my fingers and returned inside with the next breath. Of course, I could have prevented this by squeezing Festina’s nostrils shut. However, I did not wish to asphyxiate my friend, so I stayed my hand.
Suddenly, Festina let loose a colossal sneeze. The sneeze was remarkable in several regards: volume of sound, volume of air, and volume of sputum discharged into my face. I wiped off the moisture with great dispatch (or more precisely, with the sleeve of my jacket); and as I was doing so, a burst of fog exploded from my friend, streaming out her nose and mouth, and even little wisps from her ears. In seconds, Nimbus floated before me… while in my arms, Festina opened her eyes and said, "Christ, I feel like shit."
"That is because you had a cloud man in your head," I told her. "It seems he saw you unconscious and succumbed to penetrative urges."
Festina stared at me a moment, then closed her eyes, murmuring, "This is all a dream, this is all a dream, this is all a dream." She opened her eyes, looked at me, and said, "Damn. So much for that theory."
The Cloud Man Gets Huffy
I helped my friend sit up — which was not as easy as it sounds. First, I still held the gooey infant Starbiter in one hand and was attempting not to hurt her (or get too much of her ickyness on me). Second, the floor kept shifting, trying to reshape itself to Festina’s body the moment she moved in any direction. It made me wonder how many people died because of these foolish floors; one could easily sink into a customized crater and starve to death because one could not get out.
Starvation was a subject much on my mind.
When Festina finally reached the vertical, she shook her head as if trying to clear her wits. Then with a groan she said, "Shit… what’s happened since I went down?"
"Very little. The Shaddill have seized the Hemlock and have begun to capture smaller ships."
"That’s all they’ve done in six hours?"
"It has not been six hours," I told her. "It has been less than five minutes."
"But I thought… the first time the Shaddill flashed you, Uclod and Lajoolie were unconscious for… I shouldn’t be awake yet."
Nimbus drifted closer — which is to say, closer to Festina. His tiny bits avoided me, as if his whole body were leaning back from my presence. "I thought it advisable to wake you," he told my friend. "Stimulate your glands and nervous system; get some adrenaline pumping; counteract the effects of the beam."
"You can do that?" Festina asked.
"Apparently," he said. "I haven’t had much practical experience with Homo sapiens, but my medical training covered first aid on familiar alien species. Apologies if my methods lacked finesse; how are you feeling?"
"Like crap, but I’ll live. Thanks."
Nimbus fluttered, temporarily losing his human shape. "Then I’ll move on to someone else. The more of us who are conscious, the better we can deal with the Shaddill when they arrive." He swirled above the other bodies as if looking them over one by one; then he coalesced next to Lajoolie. "This one next," he said. "We may need muscle."
"I have muscle," I told him. "I am excellent at feats of strength."
He did not answer. In fact, his body tightened at the sound of my voice. Perhaps he was simply compressing his components in preparation for flying up Lajoolie’s nose; but it occurred to me, he might be upset at certain insinuations I had made about his behavior: specifically, my remarks about penetrative urges. He was, after all, a creature who burned with shame over something as simple as tickling his daughter or seeing through her eyes. Perhaps he felt equally guilty about entering Festina’s body and forcibly rousing her to consciousness. It was much the same, was it not? Invading a woman’s anatomy without permission, even though the act was justified. And a man in such a state of guilt might be sensitive to allegations that he was acting from base motives.
He might be very hurt indeed.
As Nimbus flowed up Lajoolie’s nostrils, I called to him, "I am sorry I suggested you behaved improperly when you entered Festina. I was foolish to jump to such a mistaken conclusion. But it is amusing, is it not, how misjudgments occur? And it is also most traditional. You and I, we are son and daughter of the Shaddil
l; and as siblings, it is common to fall into ill-founded petty disagreements…"
I stopped speaking because he had disappeared — completely ignoring my words. Pretending I did not exist, because he was fiercely angry at me.
Sometimes it is hard to have a brother. Especially when you both make each other feel bad.
More Arousals
I do not know if Divians are easier to wake than humans, or if Nimbus had simply gained experience in rousing persons from this type of unconsciousness. Whatever the explanation, the cloud man did not take nearly so long to bring Lajoolie around as he had with Festina. As soon as her eyes flickered open, he proceeded immediately into Uclod’s sinuses, not giving me the tiniest opportunity to apologize again.
Watching Nimbus work on the two Divians, I wondered why he had not woken them the previous time they had been shot with the Shaddill’s beam. The probable answer was that invading other people’s bodies truly filled him with abhorrence. On the previous occasion, I had been doing an excellent job of piloting Starbiter so there was no need to rouse the two Divians; now, however, our predicament was so dire that it called for Extreme Resuscitation.
Of course, extreme resuscitation is not pleasant, and neither Festina nor Lajoolie looked to be enjoying their newly regained consciousness. Lajoolie showed a marked preference for lying in a fetal position, occasionally whimpering with pain. Festina remained sitting up, but drooped her head between her knees and muttered unintelligible phrases conspicuously featuring the word "hangover."
In an attempt to divert them from brooding on their pain, I said, "Come, we will soon face the villainous Shaddill, so we must make plans for a fight." But this did not rally their spirits. Lajoolie just groaned and Festina mumbled, "If there is a battle, pray God I get shot."
When Uclod regained consciousness, he was no more eager to spring into action than the other two. Nimbus still would not talk — he went directly into Sergeant Aarhus without an instant’s pause. From Aarhus he moved on to Lady Bell, splitting himself into a dozen small fog patches and seeping into her body through a variety of orifices.
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