To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

by Christopher Paolini

  “Are we friends?” Kira said in a challenging tone. She cocked her head.

  Falconi regarded her for a moment, as if debating. “Anyone I’d trust to watch my back in a firefight is a friend of mine. As far as I’m concerned, yeah, we’re friends. Unless you feel differently.”

  “No,” said Kira, pausing just as long as he had. “We’re friends.”

  A sharp gleam reappeared in his eyes. “Well, I’m glad to have that cleared up. Again, my apologies. The drink got the better of me. You have my word it won’t happen again.”

  “That’s … Fine. Good.”

  “I’d better put this into stasis,” he said, reaching for the bonsai. “And then I should get myself into cryo before we heat up the Wallfish too much. And you, what are you going to do?”

  “The usual,” she said. “I think I’m just going to hole up in my cabin this time, if that’s okay.”

  He nodded. “See you starside, Kira.”

  “You too, Salvo.”

  3.

  Back in her cabin, Kira washed her face with a damp towel and then hung floating in front of the sink while she looked at herself in the mirror. Even though she hadn’t initiated the kiss, she still felt guilty about it. She’d never even looked at another man—not in that way—while she and Alan were together. Falconi’s sudden forwardness had more than caught her by surprise; it had forced her to consider what she was going to do in the future, if she had a future.

  The worst thing was, the kiss had felt good.

  Alan … Alan had been dead for over nine months. Not for her, not with all the time she’d spent in hibernation, but for the rest of the universe, that was the reality. It was a hard truth to swallow.

  Did she even like Falconi? Kira had to think about that one for a while. In the end she decided she did. He was attractive in a rather solid, dark, hairy way. But that didn’t mean anything in and of itself. She was in no shape to be getting in a relationship with anyone, much less the captain of the ship. That way always led to trouble.

  It was selfish, but Kira was glad Gregorovich hadn’t been around to see the awkwardness. He would have made endless fun of her and Falconi in his own weird way.

  Perhaps it would be best to talk with Falconi again, make it very clear that nothing else was going to happen between them. Hell, he was just lucky that the Soft Blade hadn’t overreacted out of a misplaced urge to protect her.… He’d been either very brave or very foolish.

  “You did well,” she whispered, looking down at the Soft Blade. And Kira thought, just for an instant, that she felt a sense of pride from the xeno. But it was a fleeting thing that might as well have been a figment of her imagination.

  “Morven,” she said. “Is Falconi still out of cryo?”

  “No, Ms. Navárez,” said the pseudo-intelligence. “He just received his first round of injections. He is no longer able to communicate.”

  Kira made a dissatisfied sound. Fine. It probably wasn’t necessary to talk to him again, but if it were, she could always do so when they reached their destination.

  The idea wasn’t to fly all the way to the rendezvous point Tschetter’s Jellies had proposed. Rather, the Wallfish would drop out of FTL some distance away but still close enough to send a warning in time to keep the Knot of Minds from being ambushed and, in doing so, perhaps forestall an even greater catastrophe than the current war between humans and Jellies. Then, the requirements of honor and duty satisfied, they could head back to settled space.

  However, Kira had a suspicion that Itari would want to rejoin its compatriots, which would necessitate a meeting of some kind.

  “That’s what we are,” she muttered as she pulled herself over to the bed, “a glorified shuttle service.” It reminded her of something her grandfather—on her father’s side—had been prone to saying, which was that “… the meaning of life, Kira, is moving things from point a to point b. That’s it. That’s all we really do.”

  “But what about when we talk?” she had said, not entirely understanding.

  “That’s just moving an idea from in here,” and he tapped her on the forehead, “out into the real world.”

  Kira had never forgotten. She’d also never forgotten that he’d described everything outside her head as the real world. Ever since, she continued to wonder if that was true or not. How much reality did the contents of one’s mind actually possess?… When she dreamed, were the dreams mere shadows or was there a truth to them?

  She thought Gregorovich might have something to say on the matter.

  As Kira made a web of struts from the Soft Blade to hold herself upon the mattress, she kept thinking about the bonsai tree. The memory made her smile. Life. She’d spent so long on spaceships and space stations and cold, rocky asteroids, she’d almost forgotten the joy that came from growing things.

  She recalled each and every one of the sensations she’d felt from the Soft Blade during the healing process. And she compared them to the similar sensations from Orsted. There was something in them worth investigating, she thought. As they traveled through FTL, she would continue to work on her control of the xeno—always that—and on improving the ease of communication between her and the organism so that it could better carry out her wishes without her having to worry about micromanaging it so much. But more than any of that, Kira wanted to explore the urge she’d felt from the Soft Blade—only in fleeting snatches before, now more strongly—the urge to build and create.

  It stirred her interest, and for the first time, it was something Kira wanted to do with the xeno.

  So she set her weekly alarm, as she had done during each trip since 61 Cygni, and then she once again began to work with the Soft Blade.

  It was a curious experience. Kira was determined to keep the xeno from damaging the Wallfish, as it had Orsted, but at the same time, she wanted to experiment. In certain controlled ways, she wanted to remove all restrictions and let the Soft Blade do what it so obviously wanted.

  She started with the handhold by the side of her bed. It was a nonessential part of the ship; if the xeno destroyed it, Hwa-jung could easily print a replacement, although Falconi might not be too pleased about it.…

  Go, she whispered in her mind.

  From her palm, soft fibrils extended, black and seeking. They fused with the composite grip, and again, Kira felt the delicious, addictive sensation of making something. What, she didn’t know, but there was a satisfaction to the feeling that reminded her of the joy she so often found in solving a difficult problem.

  She let out a sigh, her breath a pale wraith twining in the chilled air.

  When the fibers from the Soft Blade had completely covered the grip, and when she felt from it a sense of completion and—more—a desire to move past the hold and extend deeper into the hull, she stopped it and withdrew the xeno, curious to see what it had wrought.

  She saw, but she didn’t understand.

  There, where the curved, cylindrical handhold had been, she saw … something. A length of patterned material that reminded Kira of a cellular structure or an intricate sculpture, one covered with a repeating pattern of subdivided triangles. The surface was slightly metallic and had a greenish iridescence to it, and there were small round nodules of palest chartreuse nestled within the triangles.

  She touched the transformed grip. It was warm.

  Kira traced the pattern on the surface, overcome by a sense of wonder. Whatever the Soft Blade had made, she thought it was beautiful, and she had a sense from it that the material was somehow alive. Or had the potential for life.

  Kira wanted to do more. But she knew, this—this—she had be careful with, even more than the deadly stabbing spikes that the xeno was so fond of. Life was the most dangerous thing there was.

  Still, she couldn’t help but wonder if she could guide or control the Soft Blade’s creative output. The Maw could, so why not her? Careful now. There was a reason biowarfare was banned by every member of the League (and Shin-Zar also). But she wasn’t trying to
create a weapon. Nor servants to fight for her as the Maw had done.

  Like this, she thought, grasping the rail alongside her bed and picturing the coiled shapes of an oros fern: her favorite plant from Eidolon.

  At first the xeno failed to respond. Then, just as she’d started to give up, it flowed from her hand and across the railing. As if by magic, the delicate stems of oros ferns sprouted from the railing. They were imperfect replicas, both in shape and substance, but recognizable, and as Kira withdrew the Soft Blade, she caught a whiff of fragrance from the fronds.

  The plants weren’t just sculptures. They were actual living things: organic and precious because of it.

  Kira let out a small gasp, shocked despite herself. She touched each of the ferns, and tears blurred her vision. She blinked them back and half laughed, half cried. If only her parents could have seen this.… If only Alan could have.…

  Kira knew it would be reckless to try anything more ambitious at the moment. She was content with what she’d achieved. What they’d achieved.

  And for all the uncertainty the future held, she felt a spark of hope that had long been absent. The Soft Blade wasn’t just a force for destruction. She didn’t know how, but a certainty grew within her that the xeno might be able to stop the Maw, if only she could figure out how to harness its abilities.

  A sense of lightness filled Kira’s body (and it wasn’t the zero-g). She smiled, and the smile stayed as she prepared for the long sleep ahead. Perchance to dream, she thought, and she laughed longer and louder than she would around other people. At least while sober.

  Still pondering, she closed her eyes and willed the Soft Blade to relax, to rest, to protect her against the cold and the dark. And soon it was—far sooner than ever before—awareness faded and the soft wings of slumber wrapped around her.

  4.

  Once each week, Kira woke and trained with the Soft Blade. This time, she stayed in her cabin for the duration of the trip; she didn’t need to lift weights or otherwise stress her body in order to work with the xeno. Not anymore.

  Once each week, and on each occasion she allowed the Soft Blade to spread farther across the interior of her cabin and to build and grow more. Sometimes she contributed, but for the most part, Kira gave the xeno the space to do what it wanted, and she watched with increasing wonder. Some limits she set—the display on her desk was not to be touched—but everything else in the cabin was there for the xeno to use.

  Once each week and no more. And when not training, she floated still and quiet, hibernating in the sleep that was akin to death, where all was cold and grey, and sounds filtered in as if from a great distance.

  In that dusty neverwhere, a dream came to her:

  She saw herself—her actual self, shorn of the suit and naked as the day she was born—standing in blackest darkness. At first the void was empty save for her, and a stillness surrounded her, as if she existed in a time before time itself.

  Then in front of her flowered a profusion of blue lines: fractal tracery that coiled and scrolled like vines as it spread. The lines formed a dome of intersecting shapes with her at the center, a shell of endlessly repeating curves and spikes—a universe of detail in each point of space.

  And she knew, somehow she knew, that she was seeing the Soft Blade as it truly was. She reached out and touched one of the lines. An electric chill poured through her, and in that instant, she beheld a thousand stars born and died, each with their own planets, species, and civilizations.

  If she could have gasped, she would have.

  She took her hand away from the line and stepped back. Wonder overcame her, and she felt small and humbled. The fractal lines continued to shift and turn with a sound like sliding silk, but they grew no closer, no brighter. She sat and watched, and from the glowing matrix above, a sense of watchful protectiveness emanated.

  Yet she felt no comfort. For outside the tracery, she could sense—as if with ancient instinct—a looming menace. Hunger without end spreading cancer-like in the surrounding blackness, and with it, a twisting of nature that resulted in the straightness of right angles. Without the Soft Blade, she would have been exposed, vulnerable, helpless before the menace.

  Fear overtook her, and she huddled down, feeling as if the fractal dome were a candle flickering in the void, threatened on all sides by a hostile wind. She was, she knew, the focus of the menace—she and the Soft Blade alike—and the weight of its malignant craving was so great, so all-encompassing, so cruel and alien, that she felt helpless before it. Insignificant. Barren of hope.

  Thus she stayed, alone and scared, with a sense of imminent doom so strong that any change—even death itself—would have been a welcome relief.

  PART FIVE

  MALIGNITATEM

  And as a twig is bent, it grows.

  —MARION TINSLEY

  CHAPTER I

  ARRIVAL

  1.

  Kira woke.

  At first she couldn’t tell where she was. Blackness surrounded her, a black so profound there was no difference between her eyes closed and her eyes open. Where the emergency lights should have been, only an inky darkness pervaded. The air was warmer than normal for a trip in FTL—moister too—and no breath of wind stirred the womb-like space.

  “Morven, raise lights,” she murmured, still groggy from her long inactivity. Her voice sounded curiously muffled in the stilled air.

  No lights brightened the space, nor was there any response from the pseudo-intelligence.

  Frustrated, Kira tried something else. Light, she told the Soft Blade. She didn’t know if the xeno could help, but she figured it was worth a try.

  To her satisfaction, a soft green illumination gave shape to her surroundings. She was still in her cabin, but it in no way resembled the room as it had been upon departing Sol. Ribs of organic black material lined the walls, and fibrous cross-weaves matted the floor and ceiling. The newborn light came from pulsing, fruit-like orbs that hung upon growths of twisted vines that had crawled up along the corners of the room. The vines had leaves, and in them, she saw the shape of the oros fern repeated and elaborated upon in ornate, rococo flourishes. And everything—vines, orbs, ribs, and mats—was covered with tiny, textural patterns, as if an obsessive artist had been determined to decorate every square millimeter with fractal adornment.

  Kira looked with a sense of wonder. She had done this. She and the Soft Blade. It was a far better thing than fighting and killing, she thought.

  Not only could she see the results of their efforts, she could feel them, like extensions of her body, although there was a difference between the material of the suit itself and the plantlike creations. Those felt more distant, and she could tell that she couldn’t move or manipulate them the way she could with the actual fibers of the Soft Blade. They were, in a sense, independent of her and the xeno; self-sustaining life-forms that could live on without them, as long as the plants had proper nourishment.

  Even disregarding the plants, the Soft Blade had grown during the trip. It had produced far more material than was required to cover her body. What to do with it? She considered having the xeno dispose of the material, as she had with unneeded tendrils on Orsted, but Kira hated to tear down what they had built. Besides, it might be unwise to get rid of the mass when there was a chance—unpleasant to consider but not outside the realm of likelihood—that she might need it in the near future.

  Could she leave the extra material in the cabin, though? Only one way to find out.

  As she prepared to free herself from the struts holding her in place on the bed, Kira looked down at her body. Her right hand—the one she’d lost at Bughunt—had melted into the mattress, dissolved into a web of snarled lines that ran the length of the bed and into the casing on the walls.

  A momentary surge of panic caused the material to ripple and stir and extrude rows of barbed spikes.

  No! she thought. The spikes subsided, and Kira took a steadying breath.

  First, she concentrated o
n re-forming her missing hand. The snarled lines twisted and flowed back over the bed, once more giving shape to her wrist, palm, and fingers. Then, Kira willed the Soft Blade to release her from the bed.

  With a sticky sound, she broke free. Surprised, Kira realized that she didn’t have any physical connection to the black growths on the walls, though she could still feel them as part of herself. It was the first time she had managed to consciously separate herself from a part of the Soft Blade. Apparently the xeno didn’t mind, not so long as it still covered her body.

  It was an encouraging development.

  Still somewhat disoriented, she pulled herself along the wall to where the door ought to be. As she approached, some combination of the xeno’s awareness and her own intent caused that section of the gleaming black material to retract with a slight sliding sound.

  Beneath was the desired pressure door.

  It opened, and Kira was relieved to see the normal brown paneling covering the walls of the hallway outside. Her efforts to constrain the Soft Blade’s growth had been a success; it hadn’t spread to the rest of the ship.

  Looking back, she said, “Stay,” same as she would to a pet.

  Then she exited into the hallway. The mass of black fibers inside her cabin remained behind.

  As an experiment, Kira closed the pressure door. She could still feel the xeno on the other side. And again, it didn’t try to follow her.

  She wondered how the different parts of the Soft Blade communicated. Radio? FTL? Something else? How far away could they safely be? Could the signal be jammed? It might be an issue in combat. Something she’d have to watch for.

  But for the present, Kira was content to leave the growths in her cabin. If she needed them, a single thought would be enough to summon the rest of the xeno to her side. Hopefully without damaging the Wallfish.