To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

Kira watched, impressed, as the cat soared along the ladder, turning slightly as it flew, a long furry missile armed with teeth and claws. The cat glared at her as it passed by, venomous hatred flashing from its emerald eyes.

  “That’s our ship cat, Mr. Fuzzypants,” said Trig.

  The cat looked more like a murderous little demon than a Mr. Fuzzypants, but Kira took him at his word.

  A second later, she heard another noise at the back of the room: this one a metallic-like clatter that reminded her of … hooves?

  Then a brown and pink mass rushed through the doorway and bounced off the ladder. It squealed and kicked its stubby legs until it caught one hoof on the ladder. The hoof stuck, and the creature—the pig—jumped after the cat.

  The sight of the pig was so surreal, it left Kira flabbergasted. As always, life continued to surprise her with the depths of its weirdness.

  The cat landed at the other end of the room and promptly sprang away through another open doorway. A moment later, the pig followed suit.

  “What was that?” Kira said, finding her voice.

  “That’s our ship pig, Runcible.”

  “Your ship pig.”

  “Yup. We put some gecko pads on his hooves so he can move around in free fall.”

  “But why a ship pig?!”

  “’Cause that way we can always bring home the bacon.” Trig cackled, and Kira winced. Eighty-eight days in FTL just to be subjected to bad puns? Where was the justice in that?

  Gregorovich’s watery voice sounded above them, again the voice of an uncertain god: “Prepare for resumption of thrust in one minute and twenty-four seconds.”

  “So what makes your ship mind so special?” Kira asked.

  Trig shrugged. It was an odd motion in free fall. “He’s really, really big.” He eyed her. “Big enough for a capital ship.”

  “How’d you manage that?” she said. From what she’d seen of the Wallfish, no mind with more than two or three years of growth should have wanted to serve on board.

  “We rescued him.”

  “You rescued—”

  “He was installed on an ore freighter. The company was mining iridium out around Cygni B, then hauling it back here. A meteoroid hit the freighter, and it crashed on one of the moons.”

  “Ouch.”

  “Yeah. And the crash knocked out the comms, so there was no way to signal for help.”

  The alert sounded again, and Kira’s feet settled back on the metal decking as her weight returned. Once more she marveled at how well her muscles worked after so long in zero-g.

  “So?” she said, frowning. “The freighter’s thermal signature should have been easy enough to spot.”

  “Should have,” said Trig, and started to climb down the ladder. “Problem was, the moon is volcanic. All the background heat hid the ship. The company thought it was destroyed.”

  “Shit,” said Kira, following him.

  “Yeah.”

  “How long were they stranded there?” she asked, as they arrived at the bottom of the shaft.

  “Over five years.”

  “Wow. That’s a long time to be stuck in cryo.”

  Trig halted and stared at her with a serious expression. “They weren’t. The ship was too damaged. All the cryo tubes were broken.”

  “Thule.” Her own trip had been brutally long. Kira couldn’t even imagine five years of it. “What happened to the crew?”

  “Died in the crash or starved to death.”

  “And Gregorovich couldn’t go into cryo either?”

  “Nope.”

  “So he was alone for most of that time?”

  Trig nodded. “He might have been there for decades if we hadn’t spotted the crash. It was pure chance; we just happened to look at the screens at the right moment. Up until then, we didn’t even have a ship mind. Just a pseudo-intelligence. Wasn’t that good, either. The captain had Gregorovich transferred over and that was that.”

  “You just kept him? What did he have to say about it?”

  “Not much.” Trig stopped her with a look before she could object further. “I just mean he wasn’t very conversational-like, you know? Sheesh. We’re not stupid enough to fly with a mind that doesn’t want to be with us. What do you think, we have a death wish?”

  “The mining company didn’t have a problem with that?”

  They filed out of the central shaft and down another anonymous corridor.

  “Wasn’t up to ’em,” said Trig. “They’d already terminated Gregorovich’s contract, listed him as dead, so he was free to sign onto any ship he wanted. ’Sides, even if they tried to get him back, Gregorovich didn’t want to leave the Wallfish. He wouldn’t even let the techs pull him for a proper medscan back at Stewart’s World. I think he didn’t want to be alone again.”

  That Kira understood. Minds were human (barely), but they were so much bigger than ordinary brains, they needed stimulation in order to keep from going completely insane. For a mind to be trapped by itself for five years … She wondered how safe she really was on the Wallfish.

  Trig stopped by a set of large pressure doors, one on each side of the corridor. “Wait here.” He opened the leftmost door and slipped inside. Kira briefly saw a large cargo hold with racks of equipment and a short, blond-haired woman wrapping padding around large sections of consoles that looked suspiciously like the ones from the Valkyrie. Next to her, on the deck, was a pile of UMC blasters.…

  Kira frowned. Had the crew of the Wallfish stripped the shuttle? Somehow she doubted that was entirely legal.

  “None of my business,” she murmured.

  Trig returned carrying a blanket, a set of gecko pads, and a shrink-wrapped ration pack. “Here,” he said, handing them over. “Control and engineering are off-limits ’less one of us is with you or the captain gives you permission.” He jerked his thumb toward the room he’d just exited. “Same for the port hold. You’re in the starboard. Chemical toilets are at the back. Find a spot wherever you can. Think you can handle yourself from here?”

  “I think so.”

  “’K. I gotta get back up to Control. If there’s a problem, just ask Gregorovich and he’ll let us know.”

  Then the kid hurried off back the way they’d come.

  Kira took a breath and then pulled open the door to the starboard cargo hold.

  CHAPTER II

  WALLFISH

  1.

  The smell was the first thing Kira noticed: the stench of unwashed bodies, urine, vomit, and moldy food. The ventilation fans were running at full speed—she could feel a faint breeze moving through the hold—but even that wasn’t enough to disperse the smell.

  Next was the sound: a constant babble of conversation, loud and overwhelming. Children crying, men arguing, music playing; after so long in the silence of the Valkyrie, the noise was overwhelming.

  The starboard hold was a large, curving space that, she assumed, mirrored the port hold, like half a donut nestled around the core of the Wallfish. Thick support ribs arced along the outer wall, and D-rings and other hard points studded the deck and ceiling. Numerous crates were bolted to the deck, and between and among them were the passengers.

  Refugees was a more appropriate term, Kira decided. There were between two and three hundred people crammed in the hold. It was a motley collection—young and old, dressed in a bizarre assortment of outfits: everything from skinsuits to glittering gowns and light-bending evening suits. Spread across the decking were blankets and sleeping bags anchored with gecko pads and, in some cases, rope. Along with the bedding, clothing and scraps of trash littered the hold, although a few people had chosen to clean their areas—tiny fiefdoms of order amid the general chaos.

  The place, she realized, must have turned to shambles when the ship cut its engines.

  Some of the refugees glanced at her; the rest either ignored her or didn’t notice.

  Stepping carefully, Kira made her way toward the back of the hold. Behind the nearest crate, she saw a half-dozen people
strapped to the deck in sleeping bags. They appeared to be injured; several of the men had scabbed-over burns on their hands, and they all wore bandages of varying sizes.

  Past them, a couple with yellow Mohawks were trying to calm a pair of young girls who were shouting and running in circles, waving streamers of foil torn from ration packs.

  There were other couples as well, most without children. An old man sat against the inner wall and strummed a small harp-like instrument, singing in a low voice to three glum-looking teenagers. Kira caught only a few lines, but she recognized them from an old spacer poem:

  —to search and seek among the outer bounds,

  And when we land upon a distant shore,

  To seek another yet farther still.—

  Near the back of the hold, a group of seven people huddled around a small bronze device, listening intently to the voice that emanated from within: “—two, one, one, three, nine, five, four—” And so forth and so on, counting in a calm, even drone that neither hastened nor slackened. The group seemed transfixed by the voice; several of them stood with their eyes half-closed, swaying back and forth as if listening to music, while the others stared at the floor, oblivious to the rest of the world, or else looked at their companions with obvious emotion.

  Kira had no idea what was so important about the numbers.

  Close to the group of seven, she spotted a pair of robed Entropists—one man, one woman—sitting facing each other, eyes closed. Surprised, Kira paused, studying them.

  It had been a long time since she’d seen an Entropist. For all their fame, there really weren’t that many of them. Maybe a few tens of thousands. No more. Rarer still was to see them traveling on a regular commercial ship. They must have lost their own vessel.

  Kira still remembered when one of the Entropists had come to Weyland when she was a kid, bringing seed stock and gene banks and useful bits of equipment that made colonizing a planet easier. After the Entropist had finished his dealings with the adults, he had walked out into the main street of Highstone, and there in the fading dusk, he’d delighted her and the other children with the sparkling shapes he somehow drew in the air with his bare hands—an impromptu fireworks display that remained one of Kira’s favorite memories.

  It had almost been enough to make her believe in magic.

  Secular though the Entropists were, a tinge of mysticism hung about them. Kira didn’t mind. She enjoyed having a sense of wonder in the universe, and the Entropists helped with that.

  She watched the man and the woman for a moment more and then continued on her way. It was difficult to find a free spot with any privacy, but in the end Kira located a narrow wedge of space between a pair of crates. She laid out her blanket—sticking it to the deck with the gecko pads—sat, and for a few minutes, did nothing but rest and gather her thoughts.…

  “So, another bedraggled stray Falconi scooped up.”

  Across from her, Kira saw a short, curly-haired woman sitting with her back against a crate, knitting away at a long, striped scarf. The sight of the woman’s curls sparked a palpable sense of envy and loss.

  “I suppose so,” Kira said. She didn’t much feel like talking.

  The woman nodded. Next to her a piled blanket stirred, and a large, tawny cat with black-tipped ears lifted its head and eyed her with an indifferent expression. It yawned, showing impressively long teeth, and then snuggled down again.

  Kira wondered what Mr. Fuzzypants thought of the intruder. “That’s a pretty cat.”

  “He is, isn’t he?”

  “What’s his name?”

  “He has many names,” said the woman, pulling more yarn free. “At the moment, he goes by Hlustandi, which means listener.”

  “That’s … quite the name.”

  The woman paused her knitting to unravel a snarl. “Indeed. Now tell me: how much are Captain Falconi and his merry band of rogues charging you for the privilege of transport?”

  “They aren’t charging me anything,” said Kira, slightly confused.

  “Is that so?” The woman raised an eyebrow. “Of course, you’re a member of the UMC. It wouldn’t do to try to extort a member of the armed forces. No, not at all.”

  Kira looked around the hold at the other passengers. “Wait, you mean they’re charging people for rescuing them? That’s illegal!” And immoral too. Anyone stranded in space was entitled to rescue without having to pay beforehand. Restitution might be required later, depending on the situation, but not in the moment.

  The woman shrugged. “Try telling that to Falconi. He’s charging thirty-four thousand bits per person for the trip to Ruslan.”

  Kira opened her mouth, stopped, and closed it. Thirty-four thousand bits was twice the normal price for an interplanetary trip, and nearly as much as an interstellar ticket. She frowned as she realized that the crew of the Wallfish was essentially blackmailing the refugees: pay up or we’ll leave you floating in space.

  “You don’t seem particularly upset by it,” she said.

  The woman eyed Kira with a strangely amused look. “The path to our goal is rarely straight. It tends to turn and twist, which makes the journey far more enjoyable than it would otherwise be.”

  “Really? Extortion is your idea of fun?”

  “I’m not sure I’d go that far,” the woman said in a dry tone. Next to her, Hlustandi opened one eye to reveal a slitted pupil and then closed it again. The tip of his tail twitched. “However it beats sitting alone in a room counting pigeons.” She gave Kira a stern look. “To be clear, I own no pigeons.”

  Kira couldn’t tell if the woman was joking or serious. In an attempt to change the subject, she said, “So how did you end up here?”

  The woman tilted her head, the needles in her hands clacking at a furious rate. She didn’t seem to need to look at them; her fingers flicked and twisted the yarn with hypnotic regularity, never slowing, never faltering. “How did any of us get here? Hmm? And is it even that important? One could argue that all that really matters is that we learn to deal with where we are at any given moment, not where we were.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Not a very satisfying answer, I know. Suffice it to say, I came to Sixty-One Cygni to meet with an old friend when the ship I was on was attacked. It’s a common enough story. Also”—and she winked at Kira—“I like to be wherever interesting things are happening. It’s a terribly bad habit of mine.”

  “Ah. What’s your name, by the way? You never told me.”

  “And you never told me yours,” said the woman, peering over her nose at Kira.

  “Uh … Ellen. Ellen Kaminski.”

  “Very nice to meet you, Ellen Kaminski. Names are powerful things; you should be careful whom you share yours with. You never know when a person might turn your name against you. In any case, you may call me Inarë. Because Inarë is who I am.”

  “But it’s not your name?” said Kira, half joking.

  Inarë cocked her head. “Oh, you’re a clever one, aren’t you?” She looked down at the cat and murmured, “Why are the most interesting people always found hiding behind crates? Why?”

  The cat flicked his ears but didn’t answer.

  2.

  When it became clear Inarë was no longer interested in talking, Kira ripped open the meal pack and devoured the rather tasteless contents. With each bite, she felt more normal, more grounded.

  Food finished, she took the container Vishal had given her and put in the contact lenses. Please don’t remove or disable them, she thought, trying to impress her intention on the Soft Blade. Please.

  At first, Kira wasn’t sure if the xeno understood. But then a startup screen flickered to life before her eyes, and she released a sigh of relief.

  Without her implants, the functionality of the contact lenses was limited, but it was enough for Kira to create a guest profile and log into the ship’s mainframe.

  She pulled up a map of the binary system and checked on the locations of the Jellies. There were now ten alien
ships in and around 61 Cygni. Two of the vessels had intercepted a cargo tug near Karelin—Cygni A’s second planet—and were currently grappling with it. Three more Jellies were accelerating toward the ore-processing facilities in the far asteroid belt (which would also place them within relatively close proximity of the Chelomey hab-ring), while a pair of the larger Jelly ships were busy chasing mining drones out by Cygni B, over eighty-six AU away.

  The three newcomers had arrived at the far side of Cygni A (high above the orbital plane), at varying distances around the outer asteroid belt.

  So far at least, none of the alien ships appeared to be an immediate threat to the Wallfish.

  If she concentrated, Kira could feel the same compulsion as she had during the attack on the Extenuating Circumstances—a summons drawing her toward each of the different alien ships. It was a weak sensation, though: faint as faded regret. Which told her that the Jellies were broadcasting but not receiving. Otherwise they would have known exactly where she (and the Soft Blade) were.

  A small relief, that.

  But it made her wonder. First the how. No one else in the system had noticed the signal. Which meant … it was either incredibly hard to detect or it was using some sort of unfamiliar technology.

  That left the why. The Jellies had no reason to think she’d survived the destruction of the Extenuating Circumstances. So why were they still broadcasting the compulsion? Was it to find another xeno like the Soft Blade? Or were they really still looking for her?

  Kira shivered. There was no knowing for sure. Not unless she was willing to ask the Jellies in person, and that was one experience she’d rather forego.

  She felt a small amount of guilt at ignoring the compulsion, at ignoring the duty it represented. The guilt wasn’t her own but the Soft Blade’s, and it surprised her, given the xeno’s aversion to the graspers.

  “What did they do to you?” she whispered. A shimmer passed over the surface of the xeno, a shimmer and nothing more.

  Satisfied that she didn’t have to worry about being blown up by the Jellies in the next few hours, Kira left the map and started to search for news about Weyland. She had to know what was happening back home.