Finder

by Suzanne Palmer

  Fergus put his arms over his head and curled into a ball as kick after kick added up in relentless numbers to something devastating and unbearable and infinite. Retreating into himself, at some point he noticed that the kicks had stopped, and he heard screaming, but he didn’t care.

  “Fergus.”

  One clear, familiar voice.

  “Snap out of it, Fergus!”

  He heard it, spent an eon rolling it around in his head, trying to figure out where to put it, what to make of it. Was there something he should do? He didn’t trust the voice, thought it must be his imagination, some desperate distraction.

  “Fergus, we can’t help you until you wake the fuck up.”

  He opened his eyes.

  He was still curled up on the bay floor. His face shield was cracked, blood running down the inside, blood in his eye. The world was bright, flickering like a strobe light. He knew that if he tried to reconnect with his body it would hurt too much, so he just stayed there, peering at the outside world through one tiny crack in the door of his self.

  There were feet that were not kicking him. Someone was kneeling just out of arm’s reach. A face, bent over to look at him, was filled with concern. Yep, that’s really Mari, he thought. Shit.

  “You got away,” he said, a universe’s worth of aggravation in that last word. “Go away again before they come back.”

  “Fergus.” Mari glared at him. “Are you listening to me?”

  “Dangerous. Got to get—”

  “Are you listening to me?”

  He tried to find where to hide her voice, somewhere he couldn’t see or hear it, and gave it up as futile. “Yes,” he answered, resenting it.

  “You need to stop zapping.”

  “What?”

  “Stop. Zapping.”

  He could feel it now, a bristling cocoon around him. It leapt across his skin, through his suit, dancing in the air. He didn’t want to let it go, didn’t want everything to go quiet and violent again, but Mari had said he should. He relaxed. There were a few more flickers, and then the room sank into a monotone dark.

  “Now stay that way,” Mari said. Someone was lifting him, then carrying him. They put him in a buggy, pulled off melted bits of suit, threw a portable air pod over his mouth and nose.

  Eventually he focused, found Red Bart beside him. “I think that makes us even,” the man said.

  Fergus nodded. That seemed fair.

  Mari sat down next to Bart. “I thought you’d been killed when your comm went dead again,” she said. “Arelyn almost knocked me over coming down the stairs, and we ran for it.”

  “That was good,” he said.

  “Then you came running out of the Warrens like a damned fool. If I’d let you die saving us, I might have started feeling conflicted about my very solid and satisfying dislike for you,” she said. “So we— Are you falling asleep on me, Fergus? Don’t do that. You need to stay awake.”

  “You should get away,” he said. He closed his eyes. “Thanks for coming back, but you should get away. Not safe here. Go. I’ll be fine.”

  “Fergus . . .!”

  He lost the rest of what she had to say as he curled back up on the floor of his mind, in the dark.

  At least this time he couldn’t hear crickets.

  * * *

  —

  “Yeah, he’s coming around again,” another voice said.

  Fergus cracked open one eye, abandoning the comfortable darkness in his surprise to find a familiar face, chin scar and all. “Bale!” he said.

  Bale was sitting next to him on the bunk, looking much better than when last Fergus had seen him. Fergus tried to sit up, but a strong hand held him down. “Don’t get up,” Bale said. “You took a good beating, and you were so dehydrated you were starting to look like some kind of turd fossil.”

  They weren’t in the bay at the Warrens, nor in a buggy. The walls were clean, plain, nondescript, lined with jump-safety bunks. “Where . . .?” he asked.

  “The Ọlẹaja. Private jump ship. We just left the Mars Orbital,” Bale said. “Mari and Arelyn are up talking to the pilot, so I’m here babysitting your sorry ass.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I said, babysitting—”

  “No, here. Mars.”

  “Mr. Harcourt shipped me here, not that I remember any of it,” Bale said. “I needed surgery, and with the fighting he wasn’t sure Medusa would be safe. And he thought it wouldn’t hurt to have another person here he could trust to keep an eye on Arelyn. Only by the time I got sprung from the med center, she was already gone. I was about to start taking Ares One apart millimeter by violent millimeter when Mari and Arelyn sent a call out for help. Then we came back for you. Your friend Bart led us to you.”

  “You should have left me. It would have been simpler.”

  “No argument there. You’re a complicating guy,” Bale said. “More than that, you’re like a black hole. None of us seem able to escape you once you’ve pulled us into your orbit.”

  “Sorry. It’s not intentional. I never wanted to put any of you in danger.”

  “And that’s why we came back for you,” Bale said.

  He heard a door open and craned his neck to look. Arelyn Harcourt. “Sorry about hitting you,” she said. “The Luceatans bribed some MCA grunts to let them in and out of the University dome, so I just figured you were one of them.”

  “Suit was stolen,” he said.

  “Yep, well, not like you painted GOOD GUY in giant neon letters on it, did you? No way I could have known.”

  “No,” he said. “Good hit on the relay, by the way.”

  “Thanks. Good hit on the supply buggy.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Well,” she said. “I guess now we just need to decide what to do with you.”

  “It’s okay to leave me here,” he said. “I can find my way to safety on my own.”

  Bale snickered. “I’d like to see that.”

  Arelyn took a handpad out of her jacket, turned it on, and held it up where he could see it. “Or we could just hand you over to the Alliance and collect the reward,” she said. “Fifty thousand cred, Alliance backed.”

  “Fifty—?!” Fergus blinked. “That’s a terrible picture of me.”

  “Probably, but it’s still pretty identifiable.” She held it next to Fergus’s head. “What do you think, guys? Do we have the dangerous alien infiltrator or what? Same beady eyes.”

  “Same dirty beard,” Bale said. “I’m betting that’s where the aliens are hiding.”

  “Ha ha,” Fergus answered. “I can see why you people all get along. Just get the cred up-front and get out, okay? The MCA is notorious for suddenly deciding you’re collaborators instead of helpful citizens if it’ll save them a buck.”

  Arelyn turned off the handpad and thumped it down on his chest. He winced, stifling a groan. “Mari did warn us that you were an idiot,” she said.

  “She did,” Bale said.

  “I did,” Mari said, coming through the door Arelyn had left open. “What idiotic thing is he saying now? Oh wait, let me guess: just leave me on Mars, waaah waaah.”

  “More or less.”

  “I did not waaah,” Fergus protested.

  “So here’s the deal,” Mari said. “We’ve got six jumps back to Crossroads. Four of them are Earth Alliance worlds, and as you’ve probably noticed, you’re in shit shape to be a wanted man on the run right now. You can barely sit up on your own, much less play bug-in-the-walls with the MCA after you. That leaves Coralla or Zanzjan Minor.”

  “For what?”

  “For dropping you off,” Mari said. “You’re done.”

  “What?” he said again.

  “The cable car. Mezz Rock. Graf. The Asiig. You could have turned your back on all of us a dozen times, but you didn’t.
I saw the skunkers drag you back into the Warrens, and I figured we’d finally managed to get you killed, and yet here you are. All of us here owe you our lives. When your luck does finally run out, we don’t want to be the cause of it,” Mari said. “So you’re done.”

  “We have contacts on Coralla,” Bale said. “They can help you get back on your feet again.”

  Coralla! Fergus thought. He’d dreamt more than once about living out the rest of his life on a Corallan beach, but as a retirement, not a refuge.

  Should it matter?

  “Coralla will do,” he said at last. “But what about you? What’s happening in Cernee?” He tried to count it out, but he’d lost too much time to be sure. Seven days since they’d left? Eight? A lifetime, a blink.

  “Not that I should tell you, but I got a message from our contact on Crossroads right before we lifted,” Bale said. “The Asiig are still camped out with Gilger’s ship off the spinward perimeter. The ship circling Cernee disappeared shortly after you and Mari left for Crossroads. Inside Cernee, nothing big enough to be visible is moving independently, although our contact has seen weaponsfire deep inside the Halo. Parts of Cernee are dark.”

  “The Wheels?” Mari asked.

  “Still lit and spinning. Other than that?” Bale shrugged. “We don’t know. But if people can’t move or are restricted to movement on the lines, being cut off is an advantage for now.”

  “And communications?”

  “I sent a message back telling our guy to launch a talker,” Bale said. “It’s like a tiny missile, except it broadcasts an encrypted message on a very narrow, high-powered band. If we can get it far enough into Cernee before someone shoots it down, we might be able to get a message through to Mr. Harcourt that everyone is safe on Coralla.”

  “Everyone?” Arelyn asked.

  “Yes. All of you are getting dropped off,” Bale said. “You’re going to wait there until the situation in Cernee is resolved one way or another. This is nobody’s fight except mine.”

  “You don’t mean—” Mari started.

  “Yep, all of you. And it’s not open to discussion.” Bale stood. “We’ve got four hours until we hit the Jupiter jump point, so I suggest you all bunk down until then. The pilot has graciously invited us to make use of the ship’s kitchenette for the duration of the trip, by which I assume she’s telling the rest of you to stay the hell off the bridge.”

  Arelyn crossed her arms across her chest. “No offense—I get that he saved us, and I don’t want to seem ungrateful—but Ferguson isn’t one of us. We got him away from Mars; why can’t we just let him go his own way at Jupiter?”

  “Because we’re not stopping anywhere we don’t have to, and we’re not dropping anyone somewhere they’ll be unsafe,” Bale said. “Until we part ways, we’re all going to get along and be nice. Got it?”

  “But he’s not even human anymore!” Arelyn protested.

  “Ari . . .” Mari started.

  “What? You all know it. The Asiig got to him. He’s their thing.”

  Mari pointed at Arelyn. “You. Kitchenette.”

  “I don’t—” Arelyn started.

  “Kitchenette, now,” Mari growled. She half chased Arelyn from the cabin.

  Bale watched them go, then looked at Fergus. “No way I’m getting anywhere near that,” he said. “I’ll be in the cockpit, away from you crazy people.”

  “Nice to see you again too,” Fergus said, and he closed his eyes. He wondered if once he was standing on the beaches of Coralla for real, he would finally have outrun his need to run away.

  * * *

  —

  He breathed easier when they hit the jump point at Jupiter and left the Sol system behind. It took him several tries to get himself out of his bunk, and he had more than a little regret for having done so once he was up. The kitchenette was a tiny room with a small table and enough grippy chairs for four. It would have been the perfect number if not for the fact that Mari and Arelyn were unwilling to be in the same room at the same time.

  Bale had an ornate, hexagon-shaped deck of cards, and lacking any other options to pass the time, taught them an obtuse and suspiciously cheatable game called Venusian Monkeypoker. After his fifth losing hand in a row, Fergus got up stiffly and paced, checking cupboards for something other than the ubiquitous packages of rock-hard grain biscuits that seemed to fill every shelf. They had enough rations for the trip, but only just, and boredom had driven everyone into foraging. As such, the biscuits were a cruel disappointment; so far, no one had managed to swallow more than a bite.

  Fergus found a single teabag and sniffed it. Deciding it wasn’t entirely dead yet, he made himself a hot-water bulb to soak it in as he watched Bale and Mari finish the hand.

  “Ha!” Mari shouted, slapping down two queens and a rocket. “Venus Minor! Hand over, round to me!”

  “Not so fast,” Bale said. “I counter with my bag of moon rocks, and then I play the Monkey King.” He set down the gold-foiled card, and Mari groaned and threw down what was left of her cards.

  Arelyn came in as Bale started gathering up the cards again. She looked around the room, didn’t meet Mari’s eyes. “The pilot says we’ll be dropping out of jump at Haudernelle to refuel in about two hours.”

  Bale looked back and forth between the two women. “Okay,” he said, “I guess I have to ask. What the hell is going on between you two?”

  “You think you know people,” Arelyn said. “You think you can trust them—”

  “Yeah, trust them to be your friend,” Mari retorted.

  Arelyn turned and stomped out of the room again.

  Bale scowled at Fergus. “Is this your fault?” he asked.

  “It’s mine,” Mari said. “Whose deal?”

  “Yours,” Bale said. “Fergus, sit your ass down. Watching you wince all over the room is distracting.”

  “Har har,” Fergus said. His tea had managed a feeble tint, so he scooped the bag out and tossed it in the flash recycler before he sat.

  “When we get to Crossr—” Mari started to say.

  “Nope. Not happening,” Bale said. He put the deck in the center of the table. “Shut up and play, both of you.”

  Mari cut the deck. Then she put one finger atop a single loose card at the side of the table and slid it over to Bale. “You get the Copper Cup for being an asshole.”

  Two more days of this, Fergus thought in despair.

  “Coralla has famously beautiful beaches,” he said, speaking quietly, as Bale dealt the hand. “Pure white sand as far as the eye can see, water so perfectly warm you can hardly feel it, a sky so blue you can’t even tell where it ends and the water begins. And the food . . . I have heard such things about the food it could make you cry for want of it. It’s supposed to be one of the most peaceful places in the known universe.”

  “You saying this for my benefit?” Mari asked, eyebrows arched high.

  “No, entirely for my own,” Fergus said. “Now, can whoever has the damned Nickel Rat start the bloody hand?”

  * * *

  —

  The pilot came back to the kitchenette, a large bulb of aromatic soup in her hands. She was short, dark, middle-aged, and modded with black-market neurojacks in an arc along the right side of her skull. Bale had called her Fox, but Fergus knew that didn’t mean much: Tanduouan pilots were notoriously superstitious about giving out their real names. “We’re at the fuel exchange,” she said. “Mr. Bale, if you want to check in with your contact at Crossroads, now’s your chance. I want to be in the queue for the jump to Tanduou in twenty-five minutes.”

  Bale set his cards down and got up from the table.

  “Uh,” Mari said, looking at her. “Where’d you get the soup?”

  “Last one,” she said. “Help yourself to the biscuits, though.” She left, Bale following.

  Arelyn came i
n, took Bale’s seat, and turned it facing backwards before she sat on it, her arms across the back. Mari stood, clearly intent on leaving, but Arelyn shook her head and pointed firmly down. “Sit,” she said.

  Fergus stood to leave. “You stay too,” Arelyn said.

  “This is between you and Mari—” he began, but she glared at him until he sat back down.

  “I think what hurts me the most,” Arelyn said, her eyes completely on Mari, “is not so much that you kept this secret from me for as long as you did—that you didn’t trust me—but that this Earther jackass comes along, and within a week you’ve told him. And I don’t get that.”

  “I—” Fergus started to say.

  “Shut up,” Mari and Arelyn said simultaneously.

  “You have no idea what it’s like,” Mari said. “Growing up with all my sisters and aunts telling me that if anyone ever found out what I was, it would get us all killed. That if you knew, you wouldn’t be my friend anymore. It’s like having a part of you that’s cracked and broken and ugly and always having to keep that part out of sight because if people see it, they’ll just put you out with the garbage.”

  “You know I wouldn’t—” Arelyn started.

  “Do I?” Mari countered. “By the time I thought I did, it was already too late to tell you without you reacting just the way you are right now.”

  “But you told him?!” Arelyn waved wildly at Fergus. “A complete stranger?”

  “Because I didn’t have anything to lose,” Mari said. “More than that, because I knew he was broken too.”

  Fergus remembered that plate he had pulled from the Inland Sea as a child, and the tiny chip out of the edge, and imagined it still sitting there on the hillside where his mother had placed it, facing the setting sun and waiting to be lost again. I suppose I am, he thought.

  “So you just told him like it was nothing,” Arelyn said.

  “It’s never nothing,” Mari growled through gritted teeth. “It’s everything, because the only thing I was ever afraid of losing was you.”