by Kate Moretti
But now, she planned on sneaking somewhere else entirely. Past Observation was one of the starship’s residential areas. Along with security, Viala had also hacked Maintenance’s records and found Dr. Purmell’s apartment.
The hallway was deserted, and as Viala reached for the keypad, she prayed it would stay that way. She punched in the code and was soon inside a pitch-black room. She stood with the door pressed hard to her back, trying—and failing—not to imagine unseen hands reaching for her.
A nudge came at her neck as Cika offered comfort with his rounded nose.
“Okay,” she murmured, needing to hear something beside the static quiet of the dark. “We need light.” She wasn’t surprised when the light switch beside the door didn’t work; an unoccupied apartment would have the power cut until a new resident moved in. “Cika? You’re up, buddy.” She plucked him from his perch on her shoulder. Turning him over in her hand, she ran a finger down his belly, stopping where there was a slight indentation. She pressed, and an icy-blue light flared from between his scales and from his eyes in twin flashlight beams. Viala directed them around the room. It all looked familiar: a living area with couch and chairs and a small kitchen off to the side. Moving carefully, she explored the single bedroom and bath.
She took a turn about the kitchen, and it was only then that she saw a door hidden in the shadow of a long pantry. She knew as soon as she entered the room that this was where she needed to be. A long metal table supported scientific equipment and assorted beakers and implements. Past that was a desk with a computer and a row of bookcases. A greenish glow from a holograph rotating over the desk lit the room. Viala titled her head, considering it. It was a planet… but not Neris.
Then, as the answer came to her, she pressed a finger to the side of her temple, where her dull headache still resided after having used NARP. The planet was Earth, a place she had never seen but had heard much about. In ten years, another starship was scheduled to dock, and only then would Starship A25 be relieved to return. She would be fifty-six when she finally reached the place where her parents had been born.
She turned on the computer and quickly bypassed the security measures. Though there were many interesting files she could have gotten lost in for hours—such as reports on engine thrust and propulsion theory—there was nothing that might explain why someone would want Dr. Purmell dead.
She gathered several files and dumped them into the bottom of the drawer. Then she picked them up and did it again, listening. Something sounded off. She lowered her hand, with Cika sitting on it, into the drawer. All looked normal in the blue glow until she got to the back, where a slight gap existed. After wedging the tips of her fingers into the crack, she tugged, gritting her teeth. With a rasp, the fake bottom came up.
More files. She lifted the top folder to see a familiar face—her father’s. It was a report detailing experiment times and results for Dr. Chesney. She read voraciously, eyes flying to the next sentence before she’d barely comprehended the one before it.
…patient’s IQ has steadily risen, solving within minutes complex mathematical algorithms that previously would have taken much calculation. His rate and quality of invention has also risen.
Patient increasingly irritable, lapsing into extreme displays of anger.
…perhaps dosage should be decreased? But we are so close to completing Einstein’s Bridge. It is worth the risk.
Viala put the false bottom and all the files back, except for her father’s. She drifted out of the office and across the apartment. She felt Cika scuffling about on her shoulder, and she reached up to click his light off, her thoughts at once racing and slow, too loud and muffled for her to pay him much attention.
Something had been done to her father.
She was almost at the door when a sharp prick at the back of her neck sent her to the floor and turned the world black.
Viala woke abruptly. Asleep and then not asleep. She was lying on the floor, and the chill on her skin told her she had been there for several hours at least. At the sight of bars, she sat up and gripped them tightly, the feel of the unyielding metal helping to ground her. Beyond the bars, silver high-tech equipment blinked with red and blue lights. Another lab, but this one much more well-stocked than Dr. Purmell’s.
“Hello?” she called. Her head felt light, and her mouth was as dry as moon sand. She reached into her hair with cold fingers, and relief swirled through her when she found Cika curled up in her bun. She hadn’t lost him. She brought him out and sat him on the floor. As he turned tight circles, her lips thinned as she noticed her right wrist. Someone had taken her watch.
There would be no turning Cika invisible then, but it couldn’t be helped.
“Recon,” she said in a clear voice. He took off like a shot, scurrying between the bars and out into the jungle-like maze of equipment, table legs, and cords. It didn’t take him long to return, which, in itself, gave her a piece of vital information: the lab wasn’t very big. Now it was time to see all of it. Taking Cika in hand, she placed him several feet away from the wall. She pressed on either side of his round belly, just behind his front legs, and said, “Activate replay.”
As it had in Dr. Purmell’s apartment, light streamed from the lizard’s eyes. But this time, images played in the blue stream. Viala watched the video intently, searching for a clue as to where she might be. Nothing looked familiar. Neither did she see a door or even one of the numeric signs that labeled the starship’s twelve labs. “Where in black holes am I?” she muttered.
When the few minutes’ worth of feed was done, Viala scooped Cika up and cupped him in her hands. She stared at the wall as she held him, and then, like a falling star, the answer suddenly blazed through her mind.
She reached out and touched a line in the wall. Standing, she stretched up onto her tiptoes until she found a rivet. From there, she traced right and then down until she’d completed a square, the same shape and size of the loose one in her room. Just as she had done with her secret lab, someone had found the empty passageways and exploited them for their own use.
She heard a noise then—something different from the soft whir of the equipment sitting beyond the bars. Like the low rasp of metal on metal and now footsteps. She stuffed Cika back into her hair just as a man rounded one of the silver machines. It took only a split second for recognition to take hold; a gasp burst from Viala’s lips, and her jaw worked soundlessly. The man pulled out a nearby stool and settled down on it, his lips twisted in amusement.
“But… I don’t… I don’t understand.” Viala moved closer to the bars. “They had a funeral, and—”
“They never recovered my body,” said Dr. Purmell. “When it wasn’t found with the pilot, it was assumed I’d been thrown from the shooter. And everyone knows what the toxins on Neris do. They consume and devour and let nothing live that isn’t of itself.”
Viala shut her eyes and took two deep breaths, trying to clear her mind. Dr. Purmell was alive.
She opened her eyes. “How did you make it off planet without the toxins harming you? And in the crash, the pilot was badly injured. How were you not?”
“I was never in the shooter. I intentionally scheduled our run for a time I knew the bay would be empty. I injected a hallucinogenic serum into the pilot, programmed with nanites to make him see what I wanted him to. When the boy wakes up—if he does—he’ll not remember anything. Many victims of traumatic injuries do not.”
Viala didn’t dare mention Tanis’s name or give any inclination that what Dr. Purmell was saying wasn’t entirely true. Tanis had remembered enough for his subconscious to tell him something hadn’t been right.
“Why would you fake your own death? What do you have to gain by it?” Viala asked.
“Time,” Dr. Purmell said as he adjusted his glasses. “I have a secret project that needs all my focus and effort if I’ll eve
r see it finished. It’s a project I think you’ll be able to help me with, too.”
“So that’s why you drugged me. And this lab we’re in, it’s behind the walls of your apartment, isn’t it?”
He smiled. “Smart girl. When I checked the hidden security cameras and saw you in my study, so superbly hacking my computer, I knew there was more to you than what you wanted people to believe.” Dr. Purmell stood and pulled a key from his pocket. Before opening the door, he held up a Taser and tapped his finger next to the red light, warning her it was set to full strength. It was a pointless action, as Viala had no plans to fight or run. She wanted to know what exactly he had done to her father and why, as well as his intentions for her.
Without protest, she put on the handcuffs he gave her and stepped out of the cage, the tip of the Taser prodding her gently along. They passed the humming equipment and into an area that widened considerably. Mounted in the middle of the floor was what looked like a large gun. At one end was a conglomeration of golden metal hoops. They revolved slowly around each other in an intricate dance, and there was something about them that Viala did not like. Dr. Purmell let her study it in silence, but when she heard a click, she realized his silence hadn’t meant he’d been idle. Her handcuffs were now attached to a ring anchored to the wall.
He indicated the machine with a tilt of his head. “That is your father’s greatest invention. The Einstein Bridge.”
Recognition flared. “That name was mentioned in the files I found.”
There was hunger in Dr. Purmell’s eyes, which, like the revolving rings, she didn’t trust. “Yes, the Einstein Bridge. Our way home.”
Viala didn’t understand immediately. “Home” to her had always been the starship, hovering at the edge of space. But then as she stared at the fevered glint in the scientist’s eyes, the answer occurred to her: “Earth? The Einstein Bridge is a way to Earth?”
“Yes. Earth—home. Tell me, Viala,”—he turned abruptly on his heel to face her—“do you know how old I’ll be when we finally arrive there?”
She shook her head, knowing the answer couldn’t be good.
“I will be eighty-six. And quite possibly not even alive. Just another frozen body to be taken from the morgue and buried. I want to go home and live now, while I can still enjoy it. There is nothing for us here. Nothing. Neris will never be colonized. It’s time to be thankful for what we have and not try to claim more than one planet to live on in this galaxy.”
The hunger in his eyes was now a blazing light.
She glanced away. “So the Einstein Bridge will take us home faster? How?”
“Think, Viala.” Dr. Purmell’s hand flew out, and a finger rapped against her skull. “What was one of Einstein’s most radical theories? That involved space and time and the bending of it?”
“Wormholes,” she answered automatically.
He smiled. “Wormholes.”
“Wormholes,” she repeated, unable to help herself. “But that’s… that’s impossible.”
“No, it isn’t.” He walked past the Einstein Bridge to where the opposite wall was taken up by floor-to-ceiling screens and monitors. He picked up a tablet and tapped rapidly; the screens blinked to life. More tapping and then an image of the Einstein Bridge floating in space appeared. Farther above it hung the starship, outlined against the stars.
As Viala watched, the hoops were suddenly launched from the end of the gun. They sped toward the planet, something red blazing in their midst. And even though she knew it wasn’t real, her breath caught in her chest as Neris began to collapse in on itself. Then, in a sudden reversal, the planet exploded outward, and Viala flinched as a brilliant beam of light shot into the sky.
It connected with the Einstein Bridge and then flared past it, speeding toward the starship. The light connected with a sonic shock wave, and the starship simply disappeared.
Viala and Dr. Purmell regarded one another.
“What was the red matter you shot onto Neris?” she asked.
“What you saw was a plasma invented by your father. Let me show you.” His fingers danced across the tablet, and a panel in the middle of the gun slid open. She could just make out the top of what looked like a ball of red lightning.
“That has the power to blow up Neris?”
“Only when it’s mixed with this.” His fingers did more dancing, and Viala’s eyes widened as the revolving metal hoops began to change, slowly going transparent. Inside was a blue, gel-like light. She strained against her cuffs to see better, thinking she was wrong—but no, floating in the light were strange symbols that constantly fluxed and changed into yet more unknown shapes.
“When the blue and red plasmas combine, they create a detonation unlike anyone has ever seen. But only when the symbols are accessed and put into sequence through a program your father also created.”
Dr. Purmell’s face gave away none of his discontent, and yet Viala could still sense it.
“It’s not working correctly?”
He smiled thinly. “It’s not finished.”
Unable to resist needling him, she asked, “What’s the hold-up?”
“Your father’s death.” His smile was entirely unpleasant now, letting her know his answer was payback for her flippancy.
She stared at the Einstein Bridge, determined not to let him see her upset. “Why haven’t you been able to finish it?”
He chuckled dryly. “As much as it pains me to admit it, I’m simply not smart enough.”
“And my father was smart enough because of the experiments you were doing on him?”
“Yes.” Dr. Purmell’s tone was slightly wistful.
Anger and revulsion warred in her. This man had destroyed so many lives and didn’t seem repentant or bothered at all by his actions.
“Then why don’t you—”
“Just give myself the serum I developed? I have, but there is something… a certain composition in the chemistry of the body that is required for the serum to work. Despite my best efforts over the years to isolate and fix this defect, I’ve not been successful. Your father was the only subject the serum bonded with. And now, hopefully, with you being his daughter and sharing his blood and the high IQ required, it will bond with you, as well.”
“Why do you think I’ll help you?” Viala demanded, unable to contain her anger any longer. “You’re the reason my father is dead!”
“Actually, that was the starship’s law enforcement’s doing.”
Viala bit the inside of her cheek as she remembered hearing the whispers of her schoolmates over the years: Bullet to the head—that’s what took him out. Him and those killer robots of his.
“I am not going to help you. I will not risk the lives of everyone on this ship just so you can get back your life on Earth.”
The scientist brushed his fingers against a passing golden circle. “Oh, you will help me, Viala. Because if you don’t, your dear, sweet mother will pay the price. Which is beside the point—once the serum takes effect, you’ll be dying to use all your expanded brain power on something worthy of you.”
“Have you… have you already given it to me?”
“Not yet but soon.” He turned to the screens and began to type, opening up spreadsheets and pulling up graphs.
Viala could see they were meant to track the progress of an experiment—her. For one horrible moment, panic threatened to overwhelm her, but she pushed it back. As she had hundreds of times with NARP, she focused on the task at hand: the Einstein Bridge. Its existence threatened everyone onboard the starship. It needed to be destroyed, just as her father’s robots had been. She had an idea, one that had started in the back of her mind when she had first glimpsed the blue gel. Now, as it pushed to the forefront of her mind, she let regret wash over her.
He had been with her for a long time.
A companion when no one had wanted to be a friend of the mad scientist’s daughter.
“Hand,” she said aloud.
Dr. Purmell paused, but then, caught by information on the screens, resumed working.
Her scalp prickled as Cika wiggled out of her bun and crawled to her ear. For a second, she felt his full weight as he perched there before making the drop to her shoulder. Then he was off, racing down her side and spiraling around and around her arm until he was nestled in her cuffed hands.
“I still have a hard time believing the plasma will be able to blow up the entirety of Neris. It’s so small. I doubt it could even take out this room.”
Dr. Purmell snorted. “It could do that, at least. But as I said, it’s when the symbols in the blue plasma are activated that the real power is provided. Now be quiet.”
Viala obeyed. Silence descended on the room as the two worked on their individual problems. She stared at the blue gel as she thought back to the first time she had “seen” Cika. She had been hiding in her parent’s closet after her father’s funeral when she’d found a small electrical component in the toe of a shoe.
It had done strange things. Made computers more powerful and shone with a blue light, the same shade of blue captured in the Einstein Bridge’s revolving hoops. Building Cika around the component had kept Viala from falling into despair over the loss of her father. At first, he hadn’t been much, just an exoskeleton around the component. But as her talent for inventing expanded over the years, she had molded him until he was the shining little jewel of a lizard she now hid in her hands. As if he knew she was thinking of him, Cika’s rounded nose bumped one of her fingertips.
