He brought the brain over to her roller, flipped up the control panel, and dug for the entry point for the brain.
“But he’s like you. Wouldn’t he know that?”
Roan shook that suggestion off like a bison twitching off a horsefly. “Fuck him,” he muttered.
“I did,” Kal said, without triumph.
Roan, busy getting the brain in, didn’t react. He snapped the panel shut. “Go.”
She willed the roller forward again, full speed ahead. They careened to the edge like adrenalin junkies, launching off the side with a stomach-lurching arc, bypassing the wall entirely. They landed on the tips of grasses reaching to the sky, sinking down and through with a lightness testament to the roller’s design.
“Why have we wasted so much time being careful?” Her voice was lifted to carry over the whirr of the roller and the flattening of grasses as they spun forward at full throttle.
“Not anymore,” Roan said. “Let’s get ‘em.”
They couldn’t see ahead while they were in the tunnel, here where the grasses were taller than a person. It was only dark gold and shadows, the keening crunch of grass under wheels, their hurrying spirits pushing them forward to some unknown.
Kal wanted to ask Roan a million questions, but disappointment in herself kept her quiet. All it had taken was some deep looks and conviction and she’d thrown Roan over for his dupe, who had convinced her of something she didn’t remember, by mere suggestion and certainty. I’m a mark, Kal thought. And I deserve it.
Light began to peep through the top of the roller. They were emerging from the deepest grasses to the lower heights as they neared the camp. She hoped they weren’t too far behind.
“Who should we find first?” Roan was scanning the camp, looking for anyone who might be out.
“Sasha.”
He nodded. They exchanged a glance of satisfaction that they’d foiled Sif’s sabotage of the rollers and gotten here so quickly.
A bloom of glare, so bright Kal couldn’t see, threw her head to the side. The ground leaped beneath her. Roan’s hands over his eyes. Waves of heat crinkled Kal’s skin, every point of nerve alive to the spike in temperature, nerve endings like needles pointing up and through her skin, driving deep inside. The gasp of air into her lungs hot and dry and full of weapons.
The roller wheeled away to one side without Kal’s conscious direction and came to a stop.
The slow reaction of blankness, emergent then and now, Kal turned her head back to the bright, her eyes closing and opening like shutters clicking in time, she saw the gold and red and blue of flame.
An explosion. Something had bloomed into being at the same moment they arrived.
They were too late.
Again, like in a play she had to act out more than once, Kal reached for the cubes, pressed them to Roan’s face, pressed them to her own. She found the burn cubes, crushing them, the gel of relief and preservation. Roan was slumped but conscious. She left him with more cubes in his lap, opened the door to hell.
She got back in the roller, closed the door, crawled in the back. Dug out the hazard suit. Shoved her body in it, her bubbling skin peeling at contact. Yanked the fire retardant and med kit out of their slots, sticking them to her suit. Crawled forward to Roan to patch his neck with morfa. Patched herself. Out the back hatch, closing it fast to preserve the biosphere within the roller as best she could, she stumbled and leaned her way toward the warmth. Toward the light and heat and screams.
Every cell in her body wanted to go back. This was nothing humans could endure. Everything about it was wrong. There was no silo to launch herself from, no evil captain to land on, like Chance Talon. She had to go toward the heat.
That was where the people would be.
She tripped over something, fell flat on her face, landing on the thing she’d tripped on.
A person.
She crawled back to see, her vision hindered by the biohazard suit.
She felt her way to the head.
It was Roan. It was Aata. It was the person she’d found in the rooms next to hers, on the Land.
She wanted to touch him. His eyes looked at her. His expression was one of shock, of non-understanding.
“Where’s Sif? What did she do?”
She slipped a morfa patch from her kit and put it on the back of his neck.
“C…c…c…” he tried to say a word, failing.
She took two burn cubes from one of the suit’s pouches, pierced them over his face, letting the gel drip down on him. She did the same for his neck, his hands, his feet. It took seconds.
She moved on, searching.
Searing.
Heat like pain. Heat like a lie that couldn’t be true.
The comm building was on fire. It had been close to where her and Roan’s roller came in to camp. Dark grass, shapes scorched outward, giant black leaves radiating from the structure.
A line of fire in the grass, leading to the biohab.
Secondary explosion?
She pressed forward.
Calling out, she tried to find someone, anyone.
Sounds from the biohab.
The biohazard suit offered her some protection. She couldn’t feel her body anymore anyway. Her patch had done its job.
Opening the front door of the biohab would give air to any fire within, but it couldn’t be helped. She let herself in.
Smoke billowed like it was being pushed toward her by giant fans.
She was grateful for her suit.
Clambering forward, hoping she wouldn’t add to the rescues needed with her own body, she couldn’t see anything. She felt her way into the eating area, past the food dispensers, into the hallway which led to Captain Cooley’s quarters, where she’d never been.
In the hallway she found people, all wearing a heavier sort of hazmat suit than she wore, unrecognizable in their identical suits. People were yelling at her. She couldn’t understand what they were saying. She looked for the shape that could be Sasha. None of them looked right. She barged her way through, into what must be Cooley’s room.
The first person she saw was Sasha. She knew it, despite the suit. Sasha held a hose which sprayed foam at the hole in the biohab, still on fire. Half of Cooley’s room was gone. What caught Kal’s eye was on the floor, half under Cooley’s bed, half splayed out from under it.
Rubyglass.
Cooley was stashing rubyglass in her room.
Where was Cooley?
Sasha had it well under control. She hadn’t even looked at Kal.
Blundering her way back through the suited figures, Kal remembered suddenly they all thought she was safely locked up. No wonder they were shouting.
Anyone who got in her way she pushed aside.
Had Sif blown herself up?
She would never.
Why wasn’t an emergency procedure being enacted? Where was a team to look for injured?
Kal crashed her way back outside, the one-woman med team, apparently.
As she stood on the doorstep of the biohab, scanning the grounds, she saw it wasn’t true.
Flicker was kneeling over the fake Roan, as Kal thought of him now, with Murph on his other side.
Where was Sif?
Kal ran in a counterclockwise loop, circumnavigating the camp. The suit slowed her down. She checked every structure, coding herself in with her captain’s hand, looking in places she’d never even been. A hydroponics room. A separate medbay. Kal searched each one. A room of weapons. Kal stayed in there longer, looking around in awe. She hadn’t known there were that many weapons, some she didn’t even recognize. She wondered about the security lapse which allowed her to still enter such a room. Let alone the one that had allowed her to talk her way out of her own cell. As she stumbled over to the next structure, she realized it almost hurt to be so underestimated.
A room with a pool. A pool? Kal was stupefied by that one. At first she thought it must be for experiments but when she looked in she found evidence it wa
s used for people. Flippers propped neatly on the side. Kal shook her head. There were secrets to the biohabbers she hadn’t even begun to uncover, clearly.
Heavy equipment bay. No Sif. No one was in any of the structures as she made her painstaking way around.
Until she came all the way to the captain’s meeting room.
When she stepped into the place she’d had council with Cooley and Sasha, two people were already there, seated in two of the three chairs.
Cooley.
And Sif.
Kal stepped forward. “You show up in the strangest places,” she said to Sif.
Cooley’s face was stiff and flat. “What are you doing?”
Kal took off her headpiece. She shrugged off the rest of the biohazard gear. Sat down in her chair. The stretchy prison outfit from the Land didn’t do her any favors in looking the part, but she didn’t care. There was more to being a captain than the clothes to prove it. “If this is a council, I think I should be part of it. Since Captain Sarno is busy saving your cabin. And all your rubyglass.”
Cooley’s eyes burned now, trying to communicate something to Kal she didn’t understand and didn’t try to. Kal turned back to Sif. “Where’s your head, Sif? What’s the game?”
Sif’s new mobile expressions she’d displayed on the tableland were still in use. “You’re paranoid, Kal. It’s a problem.”
“I’m not paranoid enough to miss what’s going on with you. You set off an explosion to destroy comm? Right? What end does that serve? Let us mere humans in on the greater wisdom of it.”
“You’re no longer a mere human, Kal. We should work together.”
“I’m too paranoid for that.”
Sif smiled. “No matter what you think, I do like you, Kal. You’re sincere. There’s no duplicity in you. You’re not ambitious, or frankly, clever enough to lie. You don’t think ahead. You live purely in the moment. It’s a beautiful quality. One that would make us perfect together. My foresight. Your transparency. We’d be unstoppable.”
“For who? Against who?”
Sif creaked forward, a small figure in the large chair. “There’s a lot you don’t know. Captain Cooley likes to keep things to herself. Don’t you, Rev?”
Kal hadn’t heard Cooley’s first name in so long she had almost forgotten it. They both looked at Cooley.
Cooley looked trapped. Her mouth was pressed and firm, as if she defied anyone to make her speak.
“Rubyglass,” Sif said, stretching the word out like a butterscotch on her tongue. “It serves a purpose here.”
Cooley’s eyes still burned, but the blood seemed to have seeped from her skin.
“A conductor and an insulator, at the same time. A source of energy. A multi-use material, depending on its temperature and who has it, what they use it for. Cooley knows why we’re here. Cooley knows why Physis didn’t work. Cooley knows almost everything.”
Kal’s eyes darted back and forth between the two of them. “What does the rubyglass have to do with Physis?” Physis was the portal where the Carys had gone wrong.
“Nothing, in itself.” Sif leaned back. “You’re missing the point, Kal, as you have before.” Sif ran her fingers through her hair, molding it as if it were putty to be shaped by her hands. “Rubyglass in itself isn’t the thing. It’s what it’s for. Or rather…” she caught Cooley’s eye again. “Who it’s for.”
Kal felt the weariness of a battle of wits with Sif. Like trying to catch an eel with utility gloves on. “I’ll bite. Who is it for, Sif?”
“Ask Cooley.” Sif nodded toward her. “See if she’ll tell you.”
Cooley rose up as if she were pulled by puppet’s strings from above. She loomed over Sif. Sif smiled up at her, eyes glittering and black, full of pupils expanded into the iris.
Before Kal could react, before she could even move, Cooley’s hands were around Sif’s neck. Before she got a good grip Kal heard Sif laugh in surprise and Kal thought, almost pleasure.
Cooley was much bigger than Sif. But Kal knew, through bitter experience, exactly how strong Sif was.
Her first instinct was to stop Cooley. Kal had half-risen from her chair. As she watched them grappling, she sank back down. Why interfere? Sif was Sif. She could defend herself.
Kal heard a thud as Sif got her legs up and kicked Cooley in the gut. Cooley made an oof sound but only squeezed tighter.
To Kal’s mild surprise, Cooley had the advantage. Sif’s face had turned pale, then red. The smile was still on her face, her eyes mocking Cooley as Cooley tried to kill her.
Kal got to her feet with a regretful sigh, picked up a chair and whacked Cooley sharply in the lower leg, aiming for the Achilles. Cooley dropped.
Sif, whose hand shook, rubbed at her neck, which was a flaming color in some spots, dark and deep blood red in others. “Thanks,” she said, her voice hoarse.
She stood up, looking down at Cooley, who writhed in pain on the floor. Sif glanced at Kal. She jerked her head and led the way out of the structure. Kal followed. Sif staggered a little but soon found her balance out on the grasses. Smoke still poured from the comm and biohab, but Kal couldn’t see any flames. It looked like the fires were out.
She coughed, remembering she’d stripped off her suit. Her feet were bare again.
Sif walked away from the camp. Kal followed, her feet feeling the grass with a numbness she couldn’t understand until she remembered the morfa.
They walked a long while, single file, away from the smoke, the people, south between the two far distant ships in another direction Kal hadn’t explored.
They had passed by the invisible line that could be drawn between the ships and gone beyond.
Kal’s feet and hands were cold now, the wind, even though a gentle one, scraping at her face.
In the middle of nowhere, Sif stopped. She sat down, right there into the grasses. Kal sat too and found relief from the blowing wind, here sheltered by the grasses. The grasses reached above their heads as they sat. She and Sif were invisible.
Sif’s cockiness was swept away. It might have done her good to feel a taste of her own medicine, Kal thought, rubbing her own neck where Sif had choked her when they were left together on the Ocean.
“It’s not just for fun, Kal, the things I do.”
Kal dropped her hand from where it had rested on her own neck. She didn’t say anything.
“Cooley.” Sif pursed her lips. “More to Cooley than first appears. I’m reaching out to you. If you knew more, maybe you’d support my endeavors.”
Kal waited.
“It’s not just us out here. The reason ships get through the portal—it’s not arbitrary. Do you understand?”
Kal searched Sif’s face, looking for signs of mockery. There were none. She shook her head.
Sif sighed. “Even the reason you got through. And the reason I didn’t.”
Kal cocked her head and leaned toward Sif. “You mean, the reason I got through this portal and you didn’t get through the other one?”
Sif nodded.
“But you got through this one.”
“I’m still not sure if I was supposed to or not. If it was an accident, or your ability was so strong it got me through. Or if it’s all part of the plan.”
“What plan?”
“Their plan.”
“Aldortok?”
“No, Kal. Not Aldortok.” Sif looked like a teacher with an unpromising student, disappointed.
“Am I supposed to understand something?” Kal said loudly. “Because you’ve said a whole lot of nothing.”
“Sorry, sorry,” Sif said, in a hasty, quiet voice. It was the most human Kal had ever seen her, since she’d known about the Carys. “I can’t tell you everything, Kal. Some things have to be found out, not told. I’ll give you some pieces. You’re an investigator. Right?”
Kal was sick of being led down the garden path by what felt like everyone. “I’m the only straight shooter in this whole damn system,” Kal said, her frustration burst
ing out.
“You’re right. That’s why I’m telling you.”
Even though words from Sif—the hybrid, as the other captains called her—should not have pacified her, they did. She waited for Sif to continue.
“It wasn’t an accident you got through Wóhpe.”
The portal they’d come through to get to Demeter. Kal nodded.
“Someone, somewhere, decides. They smoothed the way. You can believe it or not. It’s what I’m telling you.”
Kal blinked but didn’t interrupt.
Sif closed her eyes briefly. “The way they communicate involves the rubyglass. The thing is, Kal, we don’t want them to know what we’re doing. So I was shutting it down. As much as I could.”
“By destroying comm?”
“Yes. And as much of the rubyglass as I knew about. Cooley had more stashed than I thought.”
“How do you even know about all this? About the rubyglass?”
“It’s not the first time I’ve seen it.”
Kal thought about what Sif had said. “How do you know it’s bad, if there’s someone or something managing it behind the scenes? Why does that mean it’s bad? If they helped us get here?”
Sif leaned in and whispered. “But why, Kal? Why?”
Kal thought of the cave-full of rubyglass in the mountains. “You won’t be able to destroy it all. Even if you could, it wouldn’t keep anyone from coming here, would it?”
“You still don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Without it, they could never come here.”
Kal rocked her body back and forth like a child, trying to think. “You’re sure it would be bad?”
“We’ve sent out messages, Kal, for over a century. Not knowing who they were going to, or if we really wanted to communicate with who was out there. We did it, or our great-grandparents did, without thinking whether we should.”
Call of Worlds Page 23
