Stoneskin

by K. B. Spangler

  She looked at what she had done…

  …and fled.

  A rooftop beneath her feet. Hub, long and low, its edges broken by buildings and light, below.

  “You haven’t done that in a long time.”

  Moto.

  “How long have you been there?” she asked, using the filthy sleeve of her robe to wipe away the blood and tears.

  “Not too long,” he said. “I had to make sure the paramedics knew where to find him.”

  “Oh, gods.” Tembi buried her face in her hands.

  “He’s fine,” Moto said, as he came to sit beside her. “They popped a Medkit and he was as good as new in fifteen minutes. But—”

  “—I can’t go around hurting people,” she finished for him without bothering to look up. “I know.”

  “You don’t,” he said. “If you did, you wouldn’t be doing this.”

  She broke into tears again.

  It was almost a replay of how they had first met. Tembi, rolling other kids in the alleys; Moto, called in by the Deep to clean up after her when a fight had turned too serious.

  She was never sure why the Deep had chosen Moto—she assumed it was because they were relatively close in age and from the same planet—but he had been kind when she needed it, and put her on the sparring mat to channel her aggression when she needed that. He had always made the time to help.

  And here he was today.

  Moto took one of her hands away from her face to inspect her skin. “Oh, Tembi,” he sighed.

  She collapsed against him and wept.

  He let her cry herself out, but he wasn’t willing to be gentle. “You have to manage your stress,” he said, as he rubbed her back. “It’s not an option for you, or me, or anyone from Adhama. Our tempers run too hot—we’re the best in the galaxy in a crisis, but long-term stress? That’s our weakness. We might be made of stone, but stone can crack.”

  Tembi sat up and opened her mouth, but he slammed his hand down on the rooftop between them. “Listen to me!” he shouted. “I know what I’m talking about! Before I learned to keep from breaking, I nearly killed someone.”

  She squirmed away from him. “What? You?!”

  Moto nodded. “That’s how Domino found me,” he said. “I was eighteen, and had just come to Lancaster. Classes were too hard. I lost control. I was fighting, and I…” He shook his head. “The Deep had to intervene, and it grabbed a trained Witch to move the other kid to the hospital.

  “They had to keep it quiet,” he said. “Lancaster’s sterling reputation, you know. But Domino heard, and she decided she wanted to meet the boy from Adhama who…”

  His voice trailed off.

  Tembi nearly asked what he had done during that fight to catch Domino’s interest, and then just as quickly decided she could live a long and happy life without knowing the details.

  “So, from now on, we’re sparring,” he said. “You and me, four times a week, until Matindi is out of the hospital and Matthew is out of his cell. We’re going to beat ourselves bloody, so you don’t find yourself doing that to anybody else.” Moto took her hand in his; she noticed his skin was softer than it had been at the Solstice party. “Deal?”

  He wasn’t giving her a choice, but…

  Tembi nodded.

  “Good,” he said, her hand still resting in his. “Let me jump you to Lancaster.”

  The Deep wrapped around them. Tembi felt the Deep’s sadness, mostly directed at her, a little towards a general world-weariness that she had never sensed in it before tonight, and then they were standing on one of the garden paths which led to the Pavilion.

  “I’m supposed to be with Domino at a party,” he said. “I said I wanted to take a walk, so…” He nodded towards the white arcs of the building.

  “Moto—” she began, but stopped, unsure of what to say.

  He smiled at her before he headed down the path.

  Tembi went home and showered, and felt a little better.

  (And then she caught sight of herself in the mirror and remembered that she had beaten a man’s head against a dumpster! and then had run away and left him there! and didn’t.)

  She fed the cat.

  She cleaned the kitchen and the bathroom.

  (…blood flying, the sound of screaming…)

  She tried to read, but more tears started to fall and the pages of Rowland’s book began to turn into a blurry mess.

  A soft *whump* of displaced air, and Bayle was standing beside her.

  “Tembi, what—”

  “I’m a terrible person!” she cried, and fell against Bayle.

  Her friend heard her out, and still managed to say the right things. No, she wasn’t a terrible person. No, she probably shouldn’t have beaten up—Wait, hold on, you beat somebody up? How big was he? Whoa!—that man, but he shouldn’t have tried to do whatever it was that he wanted to do to her anyhow, so he wasn’t worth her tears. And wasn’t everything okay now, with no real harm done?

  “Consider it a learning experience,” Bayle said, as she pushed a handkerchief towards Tembi.

  “…maybe…” Tembi sniffed.

  “Come on,” Bayle said. She moved into the kitchen and began to go through the cupboards. “You know I’m right. When was the last time you had something to eat?”

  “I had some leftovers at Matthew’s—”

  “Not good enough.” Bayle slammed the cupboard doors. “Want to go into Hub for tumbarranchos?”

  “No,” Tembi said, squeezing her eyes against the image of the man and the dumpster.

  “Okay. Pavilion leftovers it is,” Bayle said.

  “But—”

  “I don’t want to eat cafeteria chow, and the coffee shop is closed. If we go to the Pavilion, nobody except the caterers and the other scrub Witches’ll see us,” Bayle assured her. “Moto won’t even notice you’re there.”

  Tembi went to clean up (again), and made sure she avoided looking at her own reflection this time. When she entered the common room, Bayle was wearing a different change of clothes.

  “Um…”

  “Well, Moto might notice I’m there,” Bayle said.

  Tembi laughed, and felt slightly better about everything.

  The Pavilion turned out to be a good choice. A large number of the untrained Witches had come to scavenge, and while that meant the food was scarce, they had also begun dancing behind the building. Tembi lost herself in the music, and the Deep, and for a while her life was nothing but Witches twisting in the night sky.

  Around midnight, a loud cheer came from within the building. Tembi peeked inside to check out the cause, and nearly bumped straight into Moto.

  “I’m not here!” she said quickly.

  He didn’t notice. Instead, he picked her up and swung her around and around, laughing.

  “They’ve agreed to help!” he said, lifting her high into the air. “Lancaster’s agreed to a treaty to move Sabenta refugees out of the war zone!”

  “What?” Tembi could barely hear him over the noise. The Witches appeared to be evenly divided between celebration and disgust, and both sides were making their opinions known.

  “It’ll get better from here,” he said, as he hugged her. “I mean, we’re still looking at months of negotiations, but this was the biggest hurdle, and we’re—”

  “Moto.” Domino, barely a meter away, spoke softly but that single word cut through the ruckus in the room like a knife.

  “Right. Yes, Ma’am.” He set Tembi down, but couldn’t resist giving her a quick hug on the way. “It’ll get better from here,” he whispered. “We’ll make it work. I promise.”

  After that, it became a celebration. The older Witches who objected to a treaty left, noses in the air and all but chanting prophecies of doom; their numbers were replaced by the young Witches who snuck into the Pavilion to join in the festivities. Long after midnight, the music finally stopped. The older Witches jumped away; the young Witches began walking, or pushed off the ground in long leaping bounds
towards the dormitories. Tembi and Bayle decided to take the slow way home, and meandered through the gardens towards Matindi’s house, singing.

  “I still don’t know why the Deep said you need to learn how to sing,” Tembi said. “You’ve got an amazing voice!”

  Bayle did something that was close to a bow, but involved pulling her robes to the sides and a good deal of exposed ankle. “Thank you!”

  “We’ve got to figure out what the Deep meant,” Tembi said. “If it’s not singing, then what?”

  “Can we just pretend it actually just meant singing, and I’ve already mastered it?” Bayle asked with a sigh.

  Tembi was about to reply when a loud noise somewhere between a snap and a bang! tore through the gardens.

  “Wha—” Bayle began, but Tembi had grabbed her and yanked her behind the nearest rock wall, one hand over her friend’s mouth.

  “Popstick,” Tembi whispered.

  Bayle stared at her, confused, then nodded slowly. Tembi pulled her hand away from her mouth, and the two of them sat, as silent as shipmice.

  “The Deep says there are two people in the clearing ahead,” Bayle whispered. “One of them is on the ground.”

  “Scheisse,” Tembi muttered. Popsticks were designed to be nonlethal, but if they had a full charge and if the person using it went for the back of the neck… “We have to go see if they’re okay.”

  “But Tembi—”

  “I already left one person on the ground today,” she replied. “I’m not leaving another.”

  “Good for you,” Bayle said, and gripped the back of Tembi’s robes to keep her from jumping up and running towards the clearing. “But we’re staying here until that other person leaves, okay?”

  “Okay,” Tembi agreed. “Can you ask the Deep to get help? There’s got to be someone from the Council nearby.”

  “Yeah…” Bayle’s head tilted to the side, and then she gasped. “The Deep says it can’t. It’s promised to keep this a secret.”

  Tembi swore again. “That means the other person is a Witch!”

  “A powerful Witch,” Bayle said, nodding. “But they just left.”

  “Jumped or walked?”

  “Jumped.” Bayle paused. “The Deep is really anxious about this. It’s howling, and there’s a terrible smell.”

  “That’s not good,” Tembi muttered. She could smell it herself—sewage and rotting fish—and her body felt as if the Deep was trying to hold her in place. She began creeping towards the turn in the path. “Deep, ease off so I can move. We go this way?”

  Her friend nodded.

  The two of them kept low and moved as quietly as possible. They rounded the bend in the path and—

  Nothing.

  No body.

  No popstick.

  No villain.

  “Um…” Bayle began, standing.

  “Yeah.” Tembi rose to her feet beside her. “Something isn’t right. This feels like a—”

  Something hit her.

  She felt herself fall.

  The nothing swallowed her whole.

  _________________________________

  look past

  the stars

  look past

  Excerpt from “Notes from the Deep,” 01 December 2714 CE

  _________________________________

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  “Tembi!”

  Her head was in open rebellion. She wondered what would happen if she opened her eyes—

  —blinding pain—

  —she closed her eyes again.

  “Tembi!”

  Bayle’s voice. Whispering. Insistent.

  “Tembi! Wake up!”

  “No.” Oh gods, just saying that word set the pounding in her head to a new level of pain.

  “C’mon, Tembi, if you’ve got a concussion, you can’t let yourself go to sleep.” Bayle was shaking her now, very gently, but Tembi was sure her brain was leaking out her ears.

  “I hate you,” she said.

  “Keep talking,” Bayle answered. Tembi heard the rattle of metal doors opening and closing. “Where do you think we are?”

  “Ask the Deep.”

  “I did. It’s panicking. It wants to bring us both back to Lancaster but I don’t want to move you yet.” Another door slammed shut. “Where are the Medkits?!” A pop, followed by a small rush of displaced air. “Thank you, Deep.”

  Tembi heard the hiss of a nanopack as it was activated, and then a blessed burst of cold against her temples.

  “Oh gods, yeah, that’s a bad concussion,” Bayle said as she read the nanopack’s diagnostic display. “Lie still and let the ’bots work. And keep talking.”

  “That feels amazing,” Tembi said.

  “Good. I’ve got it cranked up as cold as it can go,” Bayle said. “Will the cold hurt you?”

  “No,” Tembi said. She could practically feel the millions of submicroscopic ’bots knit the broken pieces of her head back together. “Where are we?”

  “Give me a second,” Bayle said, and fell silent as she spoke with the Deep. Then, quietly: “Oh.”

  “A ship bound for Sagittarius,” Tembi guessed. “Using faster-than-light travel.”

  “How’d you know?”

  “Seemed like the worst-case scenario.” She opened her eyes. The pain wasn’t as bad this time, but now Bayle was looming over her, her dark hair clumped with blood. “Oh, Bayle!”

  “It’s not mine,” she said, and pointed to Tembi’s head.

  Tembi told her fingers to move. They responded, with complaints; she touched her head under the nanopack and found it sticky with blood. “How long have I been out?”

  “I don’t know. I just woke up.” Bayle cocked her head, listening. “Stasis? We were in stasis?!”

  Stasis with an open wound…

  “Do you feel cold?” she asked Bayle. “Not counting the nanopack, does anything in the room feel cold to you?”

  Bayle instantly understood what she meant. “No!”

  Tembi tried to puzzle this through. If Bayle didn’t feel cold, that meant the stasis field hadn’t been antiseptic. Normal stasis fields weren’t recommended for humans, and it definitely wasn’t recommended for humans with serious injuries. It didn’t suspend the body’s condition; it merely slowed it down. The injuries would persist for as long as the person remained in stasis, and an open wound would be exposed to microbes, bacteria, viruses… These had a much faster lifespan than humans, and would replicate in spite of the stasis field. With the body’s immune system slowed to a crawl…

  She realized she had been lucky to wake up at all.

  But she had, and she was here, and it was getting easier to think as the ’bots put her back together.

  “Does the diagnostic say anything about infection or disease?” she asked Bayle.

  The older girl had already been scrolling through the diagnostic. “Nothing serious,” Bayle said. “Just the usual stuff. You’re clear.”

  “Check yourself,” Tembi said.

  Bayle grabbed a second nanopack, and scooted across the room so the ’bots in her pack wouldn’t conflict with the ones in Tembi’s. She twisted the pack and it activated with another loud hiss! and set it against her lower arm so she could read its diagnostic. “I’m clear, too,” she said.

  Tembi stared at the ceiling. That made no sense. Not unless someone had gone to a lot of extra effort to…

  …to what? She wasn’t a doctor. All she knew was the channels said to never go into normal stasis if you could avoid it, because if you did, you’d turn into a giant raging plague monster. Maybe she shouldn’t watch so much science fiction.

  “The Deep wants to know if it can take us home,” Bayle said. “It’s frantic.”

  “I’m fine, Deep,” Tembi assured it. “But we need to learn what’s happening before you jump us. If we don’t learn, this might happen again. Understand?”

  A long pause, and then Bayle nodded. “It understands. It’s not happy, but it understands.”
>
  Tembi was sure the Deep was curled up around her, singing its multidimensional heart out to try and make her feel better. She started humming, an old lullaby from Adhama. It had twelve verses about pear trees and golden rings, and by the time she was finished, the anxiety in the room had dropped away.

  “Thank you,” Bayle said. “It’s quiet again.”

  Tembi’s nanopack beeped. She sat up, very cautiously: her skull felt fine. Her fingers explored the area where her head wound had been, and found tender too-new skin that threatened to split open again.

  She looked around the room. Painted metal, with stripes of plass to denote different spaces. Two bunks, placed near the ceiling; below these, desks and chairs, both fastened to the floor. The walls seemed to be made entirely of cabinets, and there were no loose objects. None at all. Even the mattresses on the bunks were strapped into place.

  Oddly, several heavy plass coffee mugs had been strung together with twine and hung from a hook in the ceiling. They looked unused. Tembi reached out to poke them. The mugs dangled and clinked, like ordinary plass coffee mugs strung together with twine.

  She had never been on a spaceship before. Was this normal?

  Was any of this normal?

  “What did you find in the cabinets?” she asked Bayle, as she (carefully) lowered herself to the metal floor.

  “Not much,” Bayle said. “Extra storage, mostly. Looks like this room isn’t used.”

  “Okay.” Walking didn’t hurt. Turning her head didn’t hurt. The ‘bots had either fixed her or loaded her up with painkillers. She was hoping it was a full repair: she’d start hurting again if the painkillers wore off. “We’ve got to figure out what’s going on.”

  “The Deep says it was told to put us aboard the ship.”

  Oh. Oh. That was information Tembi couldn’t take standing up. She swung one of the chairs out on its rotator bar and sat down. “Can it say who gave it those instructions?”

  “It doesn’t want to,” Bayle said. “No. Wait. It says it can’t. It promised it would keep it a secret.