by Alex Oliver
"I think I do too," Lt Vasto put in. “I know what it's like to wake up and suddenly you're all wrong. There must be other gender-fluid humans on-board? What happens with them?"
Ruari reached up to un-plait a section of his hair and re-plait it again, awkward. "It is a known thing," he said, looking embarrassed. "But any doubt about gender is considered a perversion and it is not polite to talk about it."
"What happens to your perverts?" Sasara asked, her hood shading her face so all that was visible was the occasional glint from the stars on her cheek.
"Some are taken into Freya's personal service," Ruari said. "They become priestesses and magicians and their strangeness is considered a source of power."
"That's not so bad."
"But most are left to the mercies of their community. Then it depends on how well they are liked, whether they are tolerated or stoned to death. You should not keep changing, Vasto Mari. You should keep silent."
"Yeah, I'm getting that." Vasto retreated into the darkness, looking wounded.
"Why wouldn't they bring it to Freya?" Harcrow's frown also had edges of personal hurt. "She wouldn't let that go on if she knew."
Ruari looked like he might argue for a moment, but then he gave a strained smile, capitulating to the reality of brainwashing. "She might be a goddess, but she is only one person. She cannot be everywhere."
"And your people?" Desultory brought the conversation round to him once more, the spacesuit's flat voice as mechanical as the doctor's but somehow even more disturbing. "What of those who didn't agree to remain in a single form, forever?"
"The Oses... tried to live in peace with it, let me put it that way." Ruari gave a mirthless laugh. "But they consigned the dark alfr into the category of evil. They treated them like monsters, and so monsters they became. War has sharpened them to a form that I would not wish to join. But if I was given that first choice again, I too might refuse to alter my whole self, even though it meant death at the hands of those more powerful than myself."
He flung the re-made braid over his shoulder and rose. "But I am disturbing your evening. Forgive me. I will go and prepare beds for those who want them tonight."
Those who want them, Yas thought. Was that Ruari's way of saying that those who didn't want them should make a break for it tonight? It was a stretch, but this conversation had at least shattered his acceptance and despair. A world in which the Ocuilin were either enslaved or destroyed was a world he refused to live in. But how to get the whole crew out too?
If he asked them to come as they were, they would refuse, determined to stay with their beloved goddess. So the first step had to be the doctor's pheromone antidote.
"On an entirely different subject," he began. "Captain, the doctor and I started some scientific sensor sweeps and organic analysis samples running before we caught up with you here. We can get there and back by the morning. Since we're right above the gate, do we have your permission to go to the ship to send that data back to NXA Science Headquarters. They should have finished by now."
He hoped the man wouldn't think to ask Freya. After all, the entire crew had been between gates, out of contact of superior officers for years. Harcrow must surely have got out of the habit of asking for permission.
Yas focused on seeming innocent, respectfully avoiding eye contact and biting the inside of his cheek to stop himself from displaying nerves.
Harcrow shrugged. "Sure, why not? As long as you're back whenever she needs us next."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Back to the Raggy
Desultory insisted on coming with them for the chance to spend an hour or so in the ship with the spacesuit off, and though Yas felt the Ocuilin would slow them down considerably, he didn't have the heart or the authority to insist otherwise.
The trip back to where they had left Raggy was routine now, though in the dark it was interesting to see the houses lit by their fire-pits, and mutual neighborhood cook-outs going on in the streets. They slid through the music of several performers—someone on the harp, someone else on a whistle or recorder made of bone, a choir singing oddly atonal music in their throats, and a storyteller whose out-flung arm drew the onlookers' gazes to their carriage. They could see a brief glimpse of dropped mouths as they sped past.
Raggy should at least have had her running lights on—a spotlight picking out her name and strips of warning lights delineating her slumbering engines and her two cannons. And these they should have been able to see, floating in the air above the city of the wheel. But the sky was utterly black, without a star, and certainly without a looming spaceship.
Yas stood on the platform and cursed. Who had taken her? Where had they put her? "God damn it!"
"Do not waste your energy on complaints," snapped the doctor, his bedside manner as abrupt as always. "I am connected to the mainframe and the connection has not faltered. Wherever they have taken the ship, it is not end-of-the-rainbow, deep, outlying, far."
"Can you feel it? Do you have a tracker?"
"I have a tracker," Desultory offered. "The suit is tagged in case of tether failure during EVA. It has a homing device installed. Give me a moment."
He extended the suit's left glove and rotated in place. Yas followed the gesture and was not at all surprised when the pointing fist came to rest directed at a mountain about five miles away. Not a mountain, he corrected on second glance, but an artificial mound, like the mounds that had been built before the first colonizers came to the Americas—smooth sided, perfectly circular and with a small flat top. If it was visible from here, it must be huge.
"Fine," he sighed. "We are just so discrete walking around like this. We're going to have a crowd after us."
"A specific human skill is indicated," said the doctor.
"Yeah? What?"
"Lying. State emphatically that we have Freya's permission to get to our ship. For the natives here, it is unthinkable that we would act against Freya’s will. Therefore let us rely on our interlocutors not to think it."
Yas laughed. He guessed the guy had a point, but it was funny being lectured about how human assumptions worked by a non-human. That was one of the nice things about the Alliance. You saw yourself more clearly if you had lots of different points of view to compare with. "Lead on then."
They did attract a crowd, almost instantly. But when Yas explained—with artificial enthusiasm and a big smile—that they were going to their ship on Freya's behalf, they were allowed to walk on unimpeded, except for the children who followed him chanting "Earth brother!" and "Giantkiller!"
It must be quite something for them, Yas thought again, getting to see the planet from which their forefathers had been taken all those generations ago. If he let himself, he could have felt bad for not really being everything they wished. He pushed the feeling away.
"D'you have a name?" he said instead. "Doctor? You must have a name. I'm sorry I didn't ask."
"I do not have a name." The android turned its head toward him and flicked a red exclamation mark up on its faceplate, replacing its face for a moment. "I do not want or need a name."
"Everyone needs a name," Yas disagreed. He had learned this in his very first orientation session when he had entered the academy. "It's part of how you individuate yourself. Part of your identity. People have names, objects don't."
The doctor added a second exclamation mark. Yas had the impression he was being sarcastic. "I am perfectly well aware of who I am, with or without some arbitrary noise attached, and 'doctor' serves if you need to attract my attention, but if it disturbs you so much, you may choose one for me."
This was a great honor. Yas ducked his head to hide his smile. "If you’re sure? I’ll have to think about it to get it right."
"You may do what you please," the doctor opened up his stride a little as they reached the end of the houses and came out onto what seemed to be a large plaza with the mound in its center. "Be aware that my designation is Technation MA43 SDU."
Technation were a large
corporation specializing in artificial intelligence and also in the interface between human brains and technology. With them involved it was possible there were human stem cells or neurons somewhere in the wiring of the doctor's personality. All the more reason for him to have a name.
"On my world, if you do a heroic thing you can be named after that," Yas offered, touched again by the doctor sharing with him his private designation. “I could call you Strides Without Legs from crawling all the way up that corridor to free me.”
A third exclamation point joined the others on the doctor's face. But he gave a flashing, wiry shrug and said, "I will answer to that, if that is what you choose. But now we should be circumspect."
Away from the lights, it had not been clear that people were sleeping on the plaza. Not just people—these were warriors, lying on the hard brass of the ground, wrapped in their cloaks, with their chain-mail still on, their swords and spears beside them, helmets placed by their heads and shields at their feet. They were sleeping in rows, twenty to a row. Five rows of them. A scorched mark beneath a cauldron showed where they had cooked their dinner, and on the other side of the row the plain had been marked out with incised lines in what looked like a running track, a boxing ring and an arena for armed combat. This was a training camp for the guards.
They tiptoed between the sleepers, thankful for the soft crepe soles of the spacesuit and the doctor's rubber tires, and arrived at the mound. The entrance was even darker than the outside, leading in and down—towards the base of the chariot. It was a long time of tramping steadily on before they came upon the beginning of a glow and saw that the inner door was guarded by a pair of the feather-cloaked Valkyries.
Inside Yas glimpsed a hangar large enough to fit a small space station. They were down at the axle, he guessed, close to the vent from the execution room. Raggy rested on her side barely three hundred meters away, and all around her the fake horses were stacked, looking more like witch's brooms with their illusions turned off.
"Confidence," the doctor repeated and strode out, past the guards—or tried. They snapped out their spears and there was a gong-like reverberation as he ran into them.
"Excuse me," Yas interrupted, pushing forward too until one of them had to take a step back. "We have permission to board our ship, and no one told us it had been moved, so now we're late."
"The three freaks making a break for it," said one, just as the other said, "Permission from whom?"
"Permission from our captain," Yas shoved again, and the doctor took a step forward, pushing the whole tangle of bodies away from the wall. As soon as a space opened up, Desultory was past, bounding determinedly in the direction of the hatch. "You can take it up with him."
The older of the two swung her spear down, but the doctor's hand rose to meet it. Faster than the eye could follow he snipped the head off the weapon. It fell jangling by her feet as his left hand shot out to do the same to the other. Yas laughed, astonished himself. He had forgotten that 'forbidden to harm organics' didn't mean 'forbidden to disarm them.' He took advantage of the Valkyries' confusion to wrest the spear shaft from one's hand and plant himself between them and the doctor.
"Go on, Doctor. You do your thing. I'll hold them off."
The doctor shoved his way between the two Valkyries, using all his weight and piston-powered strength to throw them aside, and ran for the hatch. As the Valkyries tried to get their feet back under them, Yas swept his spear-shaft out beneath the feet of the closest, twisting it between her ankles. She stumbled and went down hard on one knee, and he whipped the spear back and around, trying to clout the other one on the side of her head.
She ducked and at the same time threw her spear-shaft over Yas's head. He tried to reverse the direction of his stick to knock the flying weapon out of the air, but it was ungainly. He couldn't move fast enough, and the second woman leaped up and caught it just as the first drew her sword.
Oh hells, Yas thought. The sword didn't look like a beam weapon, but that was little comfort when it was a two-foot long length of steel with razor sharp edges. He wanted it nowhere near him. He backed towards the woman with the staff instead, darting sideways to try to get her between him and the blade. She lunged for him with the spear shaft, the tip of it barely visible, it was moving so fast.
Yas's instincts took over and moved his body to the side, pivoting on one foot and swinging his staff around to try to hit her in the back. At least with the flailing spear-shafts involved in this fight, the swords-woman was holding back. But the spear-woman was stocky, middle-aged. She looked like someone who'd been doing this all her life—probably graduated from that silent school outside, been training and sleeping on the bare ground for years. Yas's three years of weekly military PT were not going to cut it in comparison.
Even as he realized this, the woman's spear-shaft appeared out of nowhere and nearly took his knees out from under him. He fell over backwards but managed to tuck and roll with it, momentum getting him back up on his feet.
She had really committed to that swing. Now it was she who would not be able to haul the weapon back in time. Feeling a surge of triumph, Yas lunged the tip of the shaft into her breastbone with such strength that it knocked her over. She went sprawling at the feet of the other Valkyrie, who stepped over her to get to him.
Some time in this fight he remembered hearing the noise of Raggy's hatch opening and closing. He realized with relief that Desultory and the doctor must be inside. Now it was just a matter of buying them time.
He dropped the spear and raced into the ranks of parked vehicles, trying to get behind Raggy and hidden before the women had time to recover.
He got three ranks in past the racks of deactivated horses, close to the engine mounts that studded Raggy's stubby wings. That gave him an idea, and he ducked into the shade of the scout ship. From here she was enormous, generating her own valleys and shadows. He grabbed the EVA traversing hand-grip on her side and began to clamber up and over the exercise and hydroponics hab, flattening himself between the sensor arrays when he thought the valkyrie was looking. He could hear her footsteps run around the end of the ship and pause as she surveyed the rest of the hangar.
The footsteps grew fainter for a moment as she drew away, checking something on the other side of the ship. He couldn't see what from here and he didn't want to move out of the sensor shadow in case she saw or heard him. His hand was growing slippery on the rungs and he wiped it on the hateful yellow trousers, wishing for his uniform.
Then he heard her walking back. Voices. She must be talking to the other woman—there was coughing and then an unexpected deep alto laugh. Footsteps in a different gait. He wondered if he could slip just a rung or two down to see what was going on, wondered how fast the doctor could get his antidote brewed, and how he was going to get it out of here without having it detected and confiscated.
The horn blast startled him so much he almost let go and fell. The sound of it echoed around the hangar like a T-Rex yowling, its deep harmonics shaking in his flesh and in the metal beneath him. When he'd recovered from the shock he wondered what the hell that was about... until he heard the distant thundering of all those sleeping warriors running down the entry passage, summoned.
An urgent conversation at the door was audible only as a rumbling from here. Then he heard what sounded like hundreds of pairs of feet and the thud of things being moved, tossed aside.
Yas hastily ran through what he remembered of Raggy's schematics. He hadn't studied them because he'd thought he would have years to discover it all, but wasn't there an emergency airlock down the corridor from the engine room? Maybe he could make it there and disappear inside...
The wall to which he was clinging vibrated. Oh hell. He went cold all over and scrambled up higher—someone else had discovered and was climbing the hand-grips. But his movement had given him away.
"There!" someone shouted. "On the side of the behemoth!"
There was no going inside now. It would only lead Yas’s pu
rsuers to the doctor, maybe interrupt him before he was done. Yas crawled up the wall to sit on the very apex of the curve of the ship and saw the hangar fairly bristling with keen young swordsmen, watching him with avid expressions.
The urge to jump hit him, but he wrestled it back. He was playing for time, remember? He held up his empty hands.
"Guys! I don't know why you're doing this to me. I've got permission to be here. Did you check? You valkyries—did you check? D'you know how pissed the goddess is going to be if you disrupt me in the pursuit of my duties? Do you want to disappoint her by killing one of the first humans you've met for centuries? I thought you were supposed to protect us?"
"You are not supposed to be here," the younger Valkyrie called up. "If you were, I would have heard."
"Things are changing for everyone, lady," Yas called, watching as the head of one of the Viking trainees appeared up the starboard ladder. The man was gripping with only one hand, the other holding his ax. Yas whipped his foot out, as if going to kick the guy in the face. Automatically, he raised his free hand to defend himself, letting go of the ladder, and slipped, scrabbling back down the side. "Look, I'll come down and you can escort me to Freya yourself if you like. We'll check with her if it's okay. All right? Just let me get down and I'll give myself up. No tricks. I just don't want to be sliced and diced."
You spent long enough ignoring the doctor and Desultory yesterday, he thought in what would have been a prayer if he had not been feeling jaded with the whole concept of gods right now. You can forget they were with me this time too.
The guy he had kicked looked down and must have got a nod. His mouth twisted in disappointment and he backed away.
"You will not be harmed if you come now."
Breathing out a deep sigh of mingled resignation and relief, Yas reversed his way down the side, moving as slowly as he could get away with. When he reached the ground it was to step into a ring of spearheads, all very shiny and new. Very sharp. He swallowed and put his hands behind his head. "Okay," he said, "you've got me. Let's go ask my captain and the goddess what they think about this."
