To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  Instead, she experimented with the xeno. First she tried to coax the suit into forming a row of spikes along the inside of her forearm. Tried and failed. The fibers stirred in response to her mental command, but they otherwise refused to obey.

  She knew the xeno could. It just didn’t want to. Or it didn’t feel sufficiently threatened. Even imagining a grasper in front of her wasn’t enough to convince the organism to produce a spike.

  Frustrated, Kira shifted her attention instead to the suit’s mask, curious if she could summon it forth on demand.

  The answer was yes, but not without difficulty. Only by forcing herself into a state of near panic, where her heart was pounding and pinpricks of cold sweat sprang up across her forehead, was Kira able to successfully communicate her intent, and only then did she feel the same creeping tingle along her scalp and neck as the suit flowed across her face. For a moment, Kira felt as if she were choking, and for that moment her fear was real. Then she mastered herself, and her pulse slowed.

  With subsequent attempts, the xeno grew more receptive, and she was able to get the same result with a sense of focused concern—easy to produce given the circumstances.

  While the mask was in place, Kira lay for a while, staring at the EM fields around her: the giant, hazy loops emanating from the Valkyrie’s fusion drive and the generator it fed. The smaller, brighter loops clustered around the interior of the shuttle and stitched one segment of paneling to another with tiny threads of energy. She found the fields strangely beautiful: the diaphanous lines reminded her of the aurora she’d once seen on Weyland, only more regular.

  In the end, the strain from her self-induced panic was too great to maintain, and she allowed the mask to retract from her face, and the fields vanished from view.

  At least she wouldn’t be entirely alone. She had Ando, and she had the suit: her silent companion, her parasitic hitchhiker, her deadly piece of living apparel. Not an alliance of friendship but of skinship.

  Before the burn cut out, Kira allowed herself to eat one of the ration packs. It would be her last chance to have a meal with any sensation of weight for a very long time, and she was determined not to waste it.

  She ate sitting next to the small galley area. When finished, she treated herself to another pouch of chell, which she nursed over the better part of an hour.

  The only sounds in the shuttle were her breathing and the dull roar of the rockets, and even that would soon disappear. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see the cryo tubes at the back of the Valkyrie, cold and motionless, with no indication of the frozen bodies within. It was strange to think she wasn’t the only person on the shuttle, even though Orso and the rest were barely more than blocks of ice at the moment.

  It wasn’t a comforting thought. Kira shivered and let her head thump back against the floor/wall.

  Pain shot through her skull, and she winced, eyes watering. “Dammit,” she muttered. She kept moving too quickly for the increase in g-forces and hurting herself as a result. Her joints ached, and her arms and legs throbbed from a dozen bumps and bruises. The xeno protected her from worse, but it seemed to ignore small, chronic discomforts.

  Kira didn’t know how the people on Shin-Zar or other high-g planets bore it. They were gene-hacked to help them survive and even thrive within a deep gravity well, but still, she had a hard time imagining how they could ever really be comfortable.

  “Warning,” said Ando. “Zero-g in T-minus five minutes.”

  Kira disposed of the drink pouch and then gathered a half-dozen thermal blankets from the shuttle’s lockers and brought them with her back to the cockpit. There, she wrapped the blankets around the pilot’s chair, creating a golden cocoon for herself. Next to the chair, she taped the rifle, a week’s worth of ration packs, wet wipes, and a few other essentials she thought she might need.

  Then a faint jolt ran through the bulkhead, and the rockets cut out, leaving her in blessed silence.

  Kira’s stomach rose within her, and the jumpsuit floated away from her skin, as if inflated. Trying to keep her lunch (such as it was) from making an encore appearance, she nestled into the foil-wrapped chair.

  “Shutting down nonessential systems,” said Ando, and across the crew compartment, the lights winked out, save for faint red strips above the control panels.

  “Ando,” she said, “lower the cabin pressure to the equivalent of twenty-four hundred meters above sea level, Earth standard.”

  “Ms. Navárez, at that level—”

  “I’m aware of the side effects, Ando. I’m counting on them. Now do as I say.”

  Behind her, Kira heard the whir of the ventilation fans increase, and she felt a slight breeze as the air started to flow toward the vents by the ceiling.

  She tabbed the comms. “Tschetter. The burn just ended. We’ll be transitioning to FTL in three hours. Over.” The time was needed to allow the fusion reactor to cool as much as possible and for the Valkyrie’s radiators to chill the rest of the shuttle to near-freezing temperatures. Even then, it was likely the shuttle would overheat two or three times while in FTL, depending on how active she was. When that happened, the Valkyrie would have to return to normal space long enough to shed its excess thermal energy before continuing onward. Otherwise, she and everything in the Valkyrie would cook in their own heat.

  The light-speed gap between the Valkyrie and Adra meant it was over three minutes before Tschetter’s reply arrived: “Roger that, Navárez. Any problems with the shuttle? Over.”

  “Negative. Green lights across the board. What about you?” The major, Kira knew, was still waiting in the escape pod for Iska to retrieve her.

  … “Situation normal. I managed to splint my leg. Should allow me to walk on it. Over.”

  Kira felt a pang of sympathetic pain. That must have hurt like hell. “How long until Iska reaches the base? Over.”

  … “Tomorrow evening, barring any problems. Over.”

  “That’s good.” Then Kira said, “Tschetter, what happened to Alan’s body?” It was a question that had been bothering her the past day.

  … “His remains were transported to the Extenuating Circumstances, along with the rest of the deceased. Over.”

  Kira closed her eyes for a moment. At least Alan had had a funeral pyre fit for a king: a flaming ship to send him off into eternity. “Understood. Over.”

  They continued to exchange messages intermittently over the next few hours—the major suggesting things Kira could do to make the trip easier, Kira giving advice about surviving on Adra. Even the major, Kira thought, was feeling the weight of circumstances.

  Then, Kira said, “Tschetter, tell me: What did Carr actually find out about the xeno? And don’t give me that classified bullshit. Over.”

  … A sigh sounded on the other end of the line. “The xeno is composed of a semi-organic material unlike anything we’ve seen before. Our working theory was that the suit is actually a collection of highly sophisticated nanoassemblers, although we weren’t able to isolate any individual units. The few samples we collected were almost impossible to study. They actively resisted examination. Put a couple of molecules on a chip-lab, and they break the lab or eat their way through the machine or short out the circuit. You get the idea.”

  “Anything else?” said Kira.

  … “No. We made very little progress. Carr was particularly obsessed with trying to identify the xeno’s source of power. It doesn’t seem to be drawing sustenance from you. Quite the opposite, in fact, which means it has to have another way of generating energy.”

  Then Ando said, “FTL transition in five minutes.”

  “Tschetter, we’re just about to hit the Markov Limit. Looks like this is it. Good luck to you and Iska. Hope you make it.” After a brief pause, Kira said, “Ando, give me aft cameras.”

  The display screen in front of her sprang to life, showing the view behind the shuttle. Zeus and its moons, including Adrasteia, were a cluster of bright dots off to the right, alone in the dar
kness.

  Alan’s face appeared in her mind, and her throat tightened.

  “Goodbye,” she whispered.

  Then she panned the camera over until the system’s star appeared on the display. She stared at it, knowing that she would likely never see it again. Sigma Draconis, the eighteenth star in the Draco constellation. When she had first spotted it listed on the company reports, she’d liked the name; it had seemed to promise adventure and excitement and perhaps a bit of danger.… Now it seemed more ominous than anything, as if it were the dragon come to eat all of humanity.

  “Give me the nose cameras.”

  The screen switched to a view of the stars ahead of the shuttle. Without her overlays, it took her a minute to find her destination: a small, reddish-orange dot near the center of the display. At that distance, the system’s two stars merged into a single point, but she knew it was the nearest star that she was heading for.

  It struck Kira then, with visceral strength, just how far away 61 Cygni was. Light-years were long beyond imagining, and even with all the benefits of modern technology it was an enormous, terrifying distance, and the shuttle no more than a mote of dust hurtling through the void.

  … “Roger that, Navárez. Safe travels. Tschetter out.”

  A faint whine sounded at the back of the shuttle as the Markov Drive began to power up.

  Kira glanced toward it. Though she couldn’t see the drive, she could picture it: a great black orb, huge and heavy, resting on the other side of the shadow shield, a malignant toad squatting in the spaces between the walls. As always, the thought of the machine gave her the creeps. Perhaps it was the radioactive death contained in its precious grams of antimatter and the fact that they could destroy her in an instant if the magnetic bottles failed. Perhaps it was what the machine did, the twisting of matter and energy to allow for entry into superluminal space. Whatever it was, the drive unsettled her and made her wonder what strange things might happen to people while they slept in FTL.

  This time, she’d get to find out.

  The whine intensified, and Ando said, “FTL transition in five … four … three … two … one.”

  The whine peaked, and the stars vanished.

  EXEUNT I

  1.

  In place of the Milky Way, a distorted reflection of the shuttle appeared—a dark, dim bulk lit solely by the faint glow from within the cockpit. Kira saw herself through the windshield: a smear of pale skin floating above the control panel, like a flayed and disembodied face.

  She’d never observed a Markov Bubble in person; she’d always been in cryo when a jump took place. She waved her hand, and her misshapen doppelgänger moved in unison.

  The perfection of the mirrored surface fascinated her. It was more than atomically smooth; it was Planck-level smooth. Nothing smoother could exist, as the bubble was made out of the warped surface of space itself. And on the other side of the bubble, on the other side of that infinitesimally thin membrane, was the strangeness of the superluminal universe, so close and yet so far away. That she would never see. No human ever could. But she knew it was there—a vast alternate realm, joined with familiar reality by only the forces of gravity and the fabric of spacetime itself.

  “Through the looking glass,” Kira muttered. It was an old expression among spacers, one whose appropriateness she hadn’t really appreciated until then.

  Unlike a normal area of spacetime, the bubble wasn’t completely impermeable. Some energy leakage occurred from inside to outside (the pressure differential was enormous). Not much, but some, and it was a good thing too, as it helped reduce the thermal buildup while in FTL. Without it, the Valkyrie, and ships in general, wouldn’t be able to stay in superluminal space for more than a few hours.

  Kira remembered a description her fourth-year physics teacher had once used: “Going faster than light is like traveling in a straight line along a right angle.” The phrase had stuck with her, and the more she’d learned of the math, the more she’d realized how accurate it was.

  She continued to watch her reflection for several more minutes. Then, with a sigh, she darkened the windshield until it was opaque. “Ando: play the complete works of J. S. Bach on a loop, starting with the Brandenburg Concertos. Volume level three.”

  As the opening chords sounded, soft and precise, Kira felt herself begin to relax. The structure of Bach had always appealed to her: the cold, clean mathematical beauty of one theme slotting into another, building, exploring, transforming. And when each piece resolved, the resolution was so immensely satisfying. No other composer gave her that feeling.

  The music was the one luxury she was allowing herself. It wouldn’t produce much heat, and since she couldn’t read or play games on her implants, she needed something else to keep her from going crazy in the days to come. If she’d still had her concertina, she could have practiced on it, but since she didn’t …

  In any case, the soothing nature of the Bach would work with the cabin’s low pressure to help her sleep, which was important. The more she could sleep, the faster the time would go by and the less food she would need.

  She lifted her right arm and held it before her face. The suit was even darker than the surrounding darkness: a shadow within shadows, visible more as an absence than an actuality.

  It should have a name. She’d been damn lucky to escape the Extenuating Circumstances. By all rights the grasper should have killed her. And if not, then the explosive decompression. The xeno had saved her life multiple times. Of course, without the xeno, she never would have been in danger in the first place.… Still, Kira felt a certain amount of gratitude toward it. Gratitude and confidence, for with it, she was safer than any Marine in their power armor.

  After everything they’d gone through, the xeno deserved a name. But what? The organism was a bundle of contradictions; it was armor, but it was also a weapon. It could be hard, or it could be soft. It could flow like water, or it could be as rigid as a metal beam. It was a machine but also somehow alive.

  There were too many variables to consider. No one word could encompass them all. Instead, Kira focused on the suit’s most obvious quality: its appearance. The surface of the material had always reminded her of obsidian, although not quite as glassy.

  “Obsidian,” she murmured. With her mind, she pressed the word toward the xeno’s presence, as if to make it understand. Obsidian.

  The xeno responded.

  A wave of disjointed images and sensations swept through her. At first she was confused—individually they seemed to mean nothing—but as the sequence repeated, and again, she began to see the relationships between the different fragments. Together they formed a language born not of words but associations. And she understood:

  The xeno already had a name.

  It was a complex name, composed of and embodied by a web of interrelated concepts that she realized would probably take her years to fully parse, if ever. However, as the concepts filtered through her mind, she couldn’t help but assign words to them. She was only human, after all; language was as much a part of her as consciousness itself. The words failed to capture the subtleties of the name—because she herself didn’t understand them—but they captured the broadest and most obvious aspects.

  The Soft Blade.

  A faint smile touched her lips. She liked it. “The Soft Blade.” She said it out loud, letting the words linger on her tongue. And from the xeno she felt a sense, if not of satisfaction, then of acceptance.

  Knowing the organism had a name (and not one she had given it) changed Kira’s view of it. Instead of thinking of the xeno just as an interloper and a potentially deadly parasite, now she saw it more as a … companion.

  It was a profound shift. And not one she had intended or anticipated. Though as she belatedly realized, names changed—and defined—all things, including relationships. The situation reminded her of naming a pet; once you did, that was that, you had to keep the animal, whether you’d planned to or not.

  The Soft Blade
…

  “And just what were you made for?” she asked, but no answer was forthcoming.

  Whatever the case, Kira knew one thing: whoever had selected the name—whether it was the xeno’s creators or the xeno itself—they possessed a sense of elegance and poetry, and they appreciated the contradiction inherent in the concepts she’d summarized as the Soft Blade.

  It was a strange universe. The more she learned, the stranger it seemed, and she doubted she would ever find the answers to all her questions.

  The Soft Blade. She closed her eyes, feeling oddly comforted. With the faint strains of Bach playing in the background, she allowed herself to drift off to sleep, knowing that—at least for the time being—she was safe.

  2.

  The sky was a field of diamonds, and her body had limbs and senses unknown to her. She glided through the quiet dusk, and she was not alone; others moved with her. Others she knew. Others she cared for.

  They arrived at a black gate, and her companions stopped, and she mourned, for they would not meet again. Alone she continued through the gate, and through it came to a secret place.

  She made her motions, and the lights of old shone down upon her in both blessing and promise. Then flesh parted from flesh, and she went to her cradle and folded in on herself, there to wait with ready anticipation.

  But the expected summons never came. One by one the lights flickered and faded, leaving the ancient reliquary cold, dark, and dead. Dust gathered. Stone shifted. And overhead, the patterns of stars slowly changed, assuming unfamiliar shapes.

  A fracture then …

  Falling. Softly falling within the blue-black reaches of the swelling sea. Past lamp and sway, through wafts of heat and chill, softly fell and softly swam. And from the folds of swirling darkness emerged a massive form, there upon the Plaintive Verge: a mound of pitted rock, and rooted atop that rock … rooted atop that rock …