To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  “Ms. Navárez…” Tschetter made a minuscule adjustment to the position of the tablet in front of her. “The xeno currently occupying your body is of the highest possible interest to the League, tactically, politically, and scientifically. We were never going to leave it on Adrasteia, regardless of the risk to this ship or this crew.”

  “That’s—”

  “Furthermore, the chamber you are currently in is completely isolated from the rest of the ship. Should the xeno attempt to damage the Extenuating Circumstances as it did your base, or should it display other hostile actions, the entire pod can be jettisoned into space. Do you understand?”

  Kira’s jaw clenched despite herself. “Yes.” She couldn’t blame them for the precautions. They made sense. Didn’t mean she had to like them.

  “Let me be perfectly clear, Ms. Navárez. The League won’t let any of us return home—including your friends—until we have a reliable means of detection. Let me repeat that: no one on this ship will be permitted within ten light-years of a human-settled planet unless we can figure this out. The League would blow us out of the sky before they would let us land, and rightly so.”

  Kira felt sorry for Marie-Élise and the others, but at least they wouldn’t be aware of the time passing. She squared her shoulders. “Okay. So what do you need from me?”

  Tschetter smiled without humor. “Your willing cooperation. Do I have it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent. Then—”

  “Just one thing; I want to record a few messages for my friends and family, in case I don’t make it. Also a message for Alan’s brother, Sam. Nothing classified, but he deserves to hear from me.”

  The major paused for a second, eyes darting as she read something in front of her. “That can be arranged. It may be some time before any communications are allowed, though. We’re running silent until we receive orders from Command.”

  “I understand. Oh, and—”

  “Ms. Navárez, we’re operating under a very tight deadline.”

  Kira held up a hand. “Can you turn my implants back on? I’m going to go crazy in here without my overlays.” She nearly laughed. “I might be going crazy anyway.”

  “Can’t,” said Tschetter.

  Kira’s defenses shot back up. “Can’t or won’t?”

  “Can’t. The xeno destroyed your implants. I’m sorry. There’s nothing left to turn back on.”

  Kira groaned, feeling as if another someone had died. All her memories … She’d had her system set to automatically back up to the server at HQ at the end of each day. If the server had survived, then so had her personal archives, although everything that had happened to her since would be lost, existing only in the fragile and fallible tissues of her brain. If she had to choose, she would have rather lost an arm than her implants. With her overlays, she had a world within a world—a whole universe of content to explore, both real and invented. Without, all she was left with were her thoughts, thin and insubstantial, and the echoing darkness beyond. What’s more, her senses had been blunted; she couldn’t see UV or infrared, couldn’t feel the magnetic fields around her, couldn’t interface with machines, and worst of all, couldn’t look up whatever she didn’t know.

  She was diminished. The thing had reduced her to the level of an animal, to nothing more than meat. Primitive, unenhanced meat. And in order to do that, it must have worked its way into her brain, severed the nanowire leads that joined the implants to her neurons.

  What else had it severed?

  For a minute Kira stood still and silent, breathing heavy. The suit felt as hard as steel plate around her torso. Tschetter had the sense not to interrupt. At last Kira said, “Then let me have a tablet. Or some holo-glasses. Something.”

  Tschetter shook her head. “We can’t allow the xeno to access our computer system. Not at the moment. It’s too dangerous.”

  A huff of air escaped Kira, but she knew better than to argue. The major was right. “Dammit,” she said. “Okay. Let’s get started.”

  Tschetter picked up her tablet and stood. “One last question, Navárez: Do you still feel like yourself?”

  The question struck an unpleasant chord. Kira knew what the major was asking. Was she, Kira, still in control of her mind? Regardless of the truth, there was only one answer she could give if she were to ever walk free.

  “Yes.”

  “That’s good. That’s what we want to hear.” But Tschetter didn’t look happy. “Alright. Doctor Carr will be with you shortly.”

  As Tschetter started to walk away, Kira asked a question of her own: “Have you found any other artifacts like this?” The words fell out of her in a breathless jumble. “Like the xeno?”

  The major glanced back at her. “No, Ms. Navárez. We haven’t.”

  The holo winked out of existence.

  4.

  Kira sat by the pressure door, still mulling over the major’s final question. How could she be sure her thoughts, actions, or emotions were still her own? Plenty of parasites modified the behavior of their hosts. Maybe the xeno was doing the same to her.

  If so, she might not even notice.

  Some things Kira felt sure an alien wouldn’t be able to successfully manipulate, no matter how smart the creature was. Thoughts, memories, language, culture—all of those were too complex and context-dependent for an alien to fully understand. Hell, even humans had difficulty going from one human culture to another. However, big emotions, urges, actions, those would be vulnerable to tampering. For all she knew, her anger might be coming from the organism. It didn’t feel like it, but then it wouldn’t.

  Have to try and stay calm, Kira thought. Whatever the xeno was doing to her was out of her control, but she could still watch herself for unusual behavior.

  A spotlight snapped on overhead, pinning her beneath its harsh glare. In the darkness beyond, there was a stir of movement as the robotic arms descended toward her.

  Halfway up the cylindrical wall, the two-way mirror blurred transparent. Through it, she saw a short, hunched man in a UMC uniform standing at a console. He had a brown mustache and deep-set eyes that stared at her with feverish intensity.

  A speaker clicked on overhead, and she heard the man’s gravelly voice: “Ms. Navárez, this is Doctor Carr. We met before, although you wouldn’t remember.”

  “So you’re the one who got most of my team killed.”

  The doctor tilted his head to the side. “No, that would be you, Ms. Navárez.”

  In that instant, Kira’s anger curdled into hate. “Oh fuck you. Fuck you! How could you have missed the xeno? Look at the size of it.”

  Carr shrugged, tapping buttons on a display she couldn’t see. “That’s what we’re here to find out.” He peered down at her, his face round and owlish. “Now stop wasting time. Drink.” One of the robotic arms presented her with a pouch of orange liquid. “It’ll keep you on your feet until there’s time for a solid meal. I don’t want you passing out on me.”

  Biting back an obscenity, Kira took the pouch and downed it in a single, sustained gulp.

  Then the hatch set within the airlock popped open, and at the doctor’s order, she dropped the pouch inside. The hatch closed, and a loud thud sounded as the airlock vented into space.

  From that point on, Carr subjected her to an unrelenting series of examinations. Ultrasounds. Spectrographs. X-rays. PET scans (prior to those she had to drink a cup of milky-white liquid). Cultures. Reactant tests … Carr tried them all and more.

  The robots—he called them S-PACs—acted as his assistants. Blood, saliva, skin, tissue: if she could part with it, they took it. Urine samples weren’t possible, given how the suit covered her, and no matter how much Kira drank, she never felt the need to relieve herself, for which she was grateful. Peeing in a bucket while Carr watched wasn’t something she wanted to do.

  Despite her anger—and her fear—Kira also felt a strong, almost irresistible curiosity. The chance to study a xeno like this was what she’d hoped for
her whole career.

  If only the chance hadn’t come at such a terrible price.

  She paid close attention to which experiments the doctor was running and in which order, hoping to glean some hint of what he was learning about the organism. To her immense frustration, he refused to tell her the results of his tests. Every time she asked, Carr was evasive or outright refused to answer, which did nothing to improve Kira’s mood.

  Despite his lack of communication, Kira could tell from the doctor’s scowls and muttered expletives that the thing was proving remarkably resistant to scrutiny.

  Kira had theories of her own. Microbiology was more her specialty than macro, but she knew enough about both to deduce a couple of things. First, given its properties, there was no way the xeno could have evolved naturally. It was either a highly advanced nanomachine or some form of gene-hacked life-form. Second, the xeno possessed at least a rudimentary awareness. She could feel it reacting to the tests: a slight stiffening along her arm; a soap-bubble shimmer across her chest, so faint as to be nearly invisible; a subtle flexing of the fibers. Whether it was sentient or not, though, she didn’t think even Carr knew.

  “Hold still,” said the doctor. “We’re going to try something different.”

  Kira stiffened as one of the S-PACs produced a blunt-tipped scalpel from within its casing and lowered the knife toward her left arm. She held her breath as the blade touched. She could feel the edge pressing against her, sharp as glass.

  The suit dimpled beneath the blade as the S-PAC scraped it sideways across her forearm, but the fibers refused to part. The robot repeated the motion with increasing force, until at last it gave up scraping and attempted a short draw cut.

  As Kira watched, she saw the fibers underneath the blade fuse and harden. It looked as if the scalpel were skating across a surface of molded obsidian. The blade produced a tiny shriek.

  “Any pain?” the doctor asked.

  Kira shook her head, never taking her eyes off the knife.

  The robot withdrew several millimeters and then brought the round tip of the scalpel down upon her forearm in a swift, plunging movement.

  The blade snapped with a bell-like ping, and a piece of metal spun past her face.

  Carr frowned. He turned to speak to someone (or someones) she couldn’t see, and then turned back to her. “Okay. Again, don’t move.”

  She obeyed, and the S-PACs moved around her in a blur, jabbing every centimeter of skin covered by the xeno. At each spot, the organism hardened, forming a small patch of adamantine armor. Carr even had her lift her feet so the robots could stab at the soles. That made her flinch; she couldn’t help it.

  So the xeno could defend itself. Great. Freeing her would be that much harder. On the plus side, she didn’t have to worry about being stabbed. Not that it had been a problem before.

  The way the thing had emerged on Adra, spikes bristling, tendrils writhing … Why wasn’t it acting like that now? If anything might have been expected to provoke an aggressive response, it should have been this. Had the xeno lost the ability to move after bonding with her skin?

  Kira didn’t know, and the suit wasn’t telling.

  When the machines finished, the doctor stood, one cheek sucked in as he chewed on it.

  “Well?” said Kira. “What did you find? Chemical composition? Cell structure? DNA? Anything.”

  Carr smoothed his mustache. “That’s classified.”

  “Oh come on.”

  “Hands on your head.”

  “Who am I going to tell, huh? I can help you. Talk to me!”

  “Hands on your head.”

  Biting back a curse, Kira obeyed.

  5.

  The next round of tests was far more strenuous, invasive even. Crush tests. Shear tests. Endurance tests. Tubes down her throat, injections, exposures to extremes of heat and cold (the parasite proved to be an excellent insulator). Carr seemed driven to the point of distraction; he yelled at her if she was slow to move, and several times, Kira saw him berating his assistant—a hapless ensign by the name of Kaminski—as well as throwing cups and papers at the rest of his staff. It was clear the experiments weren’t telling Carr what he wanted, and time was fast running out for the crew.

  The first deadline came and went without incident. Twelve hours, and so far as Kira could tell, the xeno hadn’t emerged from anyone on the Extenuating Circumstances. Not that she trusted Carr to inform her if it had. But she could see a change in his demeanor: a renewed sense of focus and determination. The doctor had his second wind. They were working against the longer deadline now. Another thirty-six hours before the rest of the crew would have to enter cryo.

  Ship-night came, and still they continued to work.

  Uniformed crew brought the doctor mug after mug of what Kira assumed was coffee, and as the night wore on, she saw him toss back several pills. StimWare or some other form of sleep-replacement meds.

  Kira was increasingly tired herself. “Mind giving me some?” she said, gesturing toward the doctor.

  Carr shook his head. “It’ll mess with your brain chemistry.”

  “So will sleep deprivation.”

  That gave him a moment’s pause, but then the doctor just shook his head again and returned his attention to the instrument panels in front of him.

  “Bastard,” Kira muttered.

  Acids and bases had no effect on the xeno. Electrical charges passed harmlessly across the skin of the organism (it seemed to form a natural Faraday cage). When Carr raised the voltage, there was an actinic flash at the end of the S-PAC and the arm flew back as if it had been thrown. As the smell of ozone filled the air, Kira saw that the S-PAC’s manipulators had fused together and were glowing red hot.

  The doctor paced about the observation bay, tugging at the corner of his mustache with what looked like painful force. His cheeks were red, and he seemed angry, dangerously so.

  Then he stopped.

  A moment later, there was a clatter as something dropped into the delivery box outside the cell. Curious, Kira opened it and found a pair of dark glasses: eye protection against lasers.

  A worm of unease twisted inside her.

  “Put them on,” said Carr. “Left arm out.”

  Kira obeyed, but slowly. The glasses gave the cell a yellowish cast.

  The manipulator mounted on the end of the undamaged S-PAC flowered open to reveal a small, glossy lens. Kira’s unease sharpened, but she held her position. If there was any chance of getting rid of the thing, she’d take it, no matter how much it hurt. Otherwise she knew she’d end up spending the rest of her life stuck in quarantine.

  The S-PAC positioned itself above and just to the left of her forearm. With a snap, a purplish-blue beam shot from the lens to a point on the deck near her feet. Flecks of dust gleamed and glittered in the bar of collated light, and the grating below began to glow cherry red.

  Moving sideways, the robot brought the beam into contact with her forearm.

  Kira tensed.

  There was a brief flash, and a wisp of smoke curled upward, and then … and then to her astonishment, the laser beam curved around her arm, like water flowing around a stone. Once past her arm, the laser regained its geometric precision and continued straight down to the deck, where it traced a ruddy line across the grating.

  The robot never paused its sideways slide. At a certain point, the laser flipped sides and arced around the inside of her forearm.

  Kira felt no heat; it was as if the laser didn’t exist.

  What the xeno was doing wasn’t impossible. It was just very difficult. Plenty of materials could bend light. They were used in numerous applications. The invisibility cloak she and her friends had played with when they were kids was a perfect example. However, to detect the exact wavelength of the laser and then manufacture a coating that could redirect it, and all in a tiny fraction of a second, was no mean feat. Not even the League’s most advanced assemblers could pull that off.

  Once again Kira revised up
ward her estimate of the xeno’s abilities.

  The beam vanished. Carr scowled and scratched his mustache. A young man—an ensign, she thought—approached the doctor, said something. The doctor turned and seemed to shout at him; the ensign flinched and then saluted and gave a quick answer.

  Kira started to lower her arm.

  “Stay,” said the doctor.

  She resumed her position.

  The robot settled over a spot a few centimeters below her elbow.

  A pop rang out, nearly as loud as a gunshot, and Kira yelped. It felt as if she’d been jabbed with a red-hot spike. She yanked her arm back and clapped a hand over the wound. Between her fingers, she saw a hole as big around as her pinkie.

  The sight shocked her. Out of everything they’d tried, the laser blast was the first to actually hurt the suit.

  Her astonishment was nearly enough to override the pain. She bent over, grimacing as she waited for the initial surge to wear off.

  After a few seconds, she glanced back at her arm; the suit was flowing into the hole, the fibers reaching out and grasping each other, tentacle-like. They closed over the wound, and within moments, her arm looked and felt the same as before. So the organism could still move.

  Kira let out her breath in a ragged flow. Had it been the suit’s pain she felt or her own?

  “Again,” Carr said.

  Setting her jaw, Kira held out her arm, hand clenched in a fist. If they could cut through the suit, perhaps they could force it to retreat.

  “Do it,” she said.

  Pop.

  A spark and a small puff of vapor erupted from the wall as a pin-sized hole appeared in the metal plating. She frowned. The suit had already adapted to the laser’s frequency.

  With hardly any pause:

  Pop.

  More pain. “Dammit!” She grabbed her arm and pressed it against her stomach, lips pulled tight against her teeth.