A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe

by Alex White

  “Welcome to Wilson Fields,” boomed the race announcer, “and thanks for logging in for this—the seventy-third Taitu Grand Prix!”

  Nilah watched through Kristof’s eyes as he scanned the crowd, lingering on the vast patches of purple in the sea of team colors. The commentators called out the hue: it was the purple of Taitutian lilacs, to symbolize Nilah’s innocence.

  Kristof reached down and took hold of something, bringing it in view of the camera—a violet silk scarf, clutched in a quivering fist. He held it high, like a conqueror’s flag.

  The crowd went insane.

  Kristof could’ve tried to make a pariah of her, rallying everyone to his cause with ease. He could’ve wooed her personal sponsors, adding a big bump to his earnings. Maybe she would’ve beat the charges and triumphantly returned to racing, but no one would’ve faulted him for accusing her of murder.

  The gesture complete, one of the paddock crew approached to take the scarf, but Kristof waved him away, tying it around his left wrist. Once again, he thrust his fist skyward.

  The pride she felt looking upon that scarf melted into the waters, as did her shame; she still hoped he failed to finish the race, keeping her shot at the title completely secure.

  “Right, let’s start him up,” came the voice of Gertrude Schack, Kristof’s race engineer.

  He traced his glyph and gripped the steering wheel, and the car sang a metal opera in Kristof’s capable hands. All those systems falling into sync at the same time still thrilled Nilah’s tuner heart, even though she was only watching. She could almost feel the pulsing veins of the engine, its power flowing through the chassis and into her back. They took a formation lap, then reassembled at the pole.

  The lights cut out and Kristof launched from the line toward a desperate skirmish in the first turn complex.

  “What do you think?” asked Vayle, and Nilah tore her eyes away from the glorious image overhead. “This is the way to watch a race, no? Every detail comes to us in perfect scale, magnified a hundred times. It’s larger than life.”

  “It’s bloody brilliant.”

  “Better than being there?”

  She shook her head. “There’s nothing better than being there.”

  “Why don’t you have a look at this, then?”

  Vayle called out the drivers’ names in turn, and the image snapped to each of their cockpits. He raised his hand, and a luminescent pane of glass materialized in his palm. It held the figures for car telemetry, charge levels, lateral forces, tire temperatures, and brake biases—most of the critical stats watched by the pit crews. The stats weren’t dumbed down for public consumption, either. These were raw engineering figures.

  Nilah stared at them in disbelief. These were basic data feeds from the track, the same things her bosses would pore over for weeks after a race. “I knew you liked racing, but you actually understand those? The majority of analysts have advanced engineering degrees.”

  “Most of it. That’s the reason I fell in love with your driving. The public thinks you’re boring, but I know better. I see all the little ways you adjust your drive to become one with the car. You don’t take chances, but you play that car like a maestro with a prized instrument. Once you fall into the beat of the track, you’re inexorable—a rising tide to swallow the competition.”

  Vayle looked down his nose, not gloating, but beaming with pride. “I have unedited feeds from every driver in every race for the past five years. Track owners get that.”

  Nilah stood straight out of the water. “You what?”

  The ripples of her sudden ascent reached Malik, who grumbled and turned away like a sleepy child not wanting to leave bed.

  The cool air felt like sandpaper on her skin after soaking in the Prokarthic baths. “You’ve got my drive from last week? You’ve got Clowe’s?”

  Vayle put up a hand. “It cuts out when you reach the tunnel. The authorities claim your spells interfered with it.”

  That’s probably because the authorities, the Fixers, and the PGRF have all probably decided that I need to go. “Oh,” she said, sinking back down.

  She cycled through the drivers until she arrived at Cyril Clowe’s teammate, Uziah Lesinski. Both Hambleys were jokes of cars: poorly tuned, driven by second-rate racers who’d been good in the lower leagues but couldn’t hack it in the big time. Journalists never interviewed them, sponsors regularly dropped them, and they were essentially speed bumps for the better drivers. Nilah wondered just how bad Uziah’s line would be—probably a waffling fool with an oversteering problem.

  Instead, she found a controlled, almost robotic driver. He took it easy on the revs, and she couldn’t imagine his gearbox, discs, or tires were ever in any danger. If he’d push his car twice as hard, he’d be competitive. The Hambley might’ve been a garbage ride, but Uziah clearly had the skill he needed to get more out of it.

  Aside from his slow speed, his only flaw was that he fired his Arclight Booster at seemingly random times. Nilah had lapped the Hambleys on track after track, and she remembered clear annoyance every time one appeared in her view. Riding along in his cockpit, she watched Uziah execute a full burn on the booster around a hairpin without ever using the engine to supplement his acceleration.

  He’d boost, but keep the same speed, almost like he enjoyed spraying magic all over the track. Again, his fingers flickered over the controls of his steering wheel, mechanical and knowing.

  Every lap, Uziah did the same thing: charge up his Arclight and either give it a ten-second burn or two five-second burns. He always let off the throttle to keep his speed consistent, even if he’d gain an advantage by accelerating, as on the straights. He boosted through curves and occasionally took escape lanes, even when he wasn’t about to overshoot a turn. Every time she felt as though she grasped his purpose, it slipped away.

  “What are you doing?” she thought out loud.

  “Sleeping,” muttered Malik. “I love this bath.”

  “Not you. Uziah Lesinski, one of the drivers.”

  Malik creaked open his eyes and sat up. “What do you mean?”

  She explained what she was looking at, but he didn’t seem to follow. Nilah couldn’t fault him for that. The data points were a bit much for non-racers to understand, especially those who’d never seen raw telemetry.

  “I’ve got no answers,” he said, “but if you’re looking for patterns, one option is to flatten out.”

  She gave him a quizzical look. “Flatten out?”

  “Yes. Change your waking brain waves to look more like your sleeping brain waves. A weak hibernation spell can do that.”

  “Won’t that just make me go to sleep?”

  “Almost. That’s what makes the spell much better. I can calibrate what stage of sleep you’re in. Most people think that sleep is only three stages, but it’s actually fourteen, including several that take place while you’re still awake. With arcane stimulation of neural—”

  “Do it.”

  Malik stretched and wiped the water from his face, standing up out of the pool with glistening skin. She found it hard to believe he was Captain Lamarr’s age. If beauty sleep kept him looking that young, Nilah needed to consider hiring a hibernation specialist for herself.

  Malik traced a purple glyph and placed his palms against her temples. Aside from the focus skewing in her eyes, she felt no different. He spun her to face the hovering telemetry display, her vision smearing into streaks of light as she turned.

  Her mind held no questions, only queer clarity.

  “Relax,” he whispered into her ear, his low voice like the drawing of a cello string—smooth and harmonic.

  With that word, her legs gave way and she melted into the water. Malik caught her, and she was vaguely aware of his naked body pressed against her back, but she couldn’t tear her eyes from the glowing telemetry readouts.

  She focused on the outputs from Uziah Lesinski’s Arclight Booster, placing each firing on the track map. Over fifteen laps, a pattern emerged: c
louds of magic from the Arclight laid one over another. They became distinct curving strokes, slicing around the back double apex, the three-four-five complex, and the long sweeper at turn eleven.

  The strokes meant nothing to her, and normally, her lack of information would’ve been frustrating. However, in the thrall of the spell and the water, Nilah felt nothing—less than nothing—like an observer on the outside of the universe. Her mind dilated, and she leaned back against Malik, taking in everything in the room: the scents of steam and the men who accompanied her, wet drops on the rocky shore refracting the chaos of racing above, Kristof’s long, polychromatic burn of his Arclight up the central straight.

  Uziah was spraying magic through the turns where no one else would. The other racers laid down clouds of it on the obvious straights. Between the two groups, a shape began to form in her mind—

  A glyph.

  Chapter Twelve

  Foxhole

  Carré’s southern snowstorms were legendary. Boots and Didier watched pale blue light filter in through the blinds of their hotel room, reflections of a sign outside which beckoned travelers out of the storm.

  Boots rolled over onto her stomach, away from Didier’s hot, sticky skin. They’d had sex three times that night, and her joints were sore from the effort. She’d always thought of herself as tough and salty, but she wasn’t as young as she used to be. As she popped her hip joint, she decided that she regretted nothing.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d climaxed so hard. The chef’s hands, calloused though they were, had been the perfect mix of gentle and unyielding, like they were carved from wood. For the first two times, her medical compress still obscured her vision, and he’d taken advantage of that with expert ministrations to her blindfolded body. When it had come time to take off the bandages, the sight of her lover sent her into a frenzy, and they coupled once more. Now they lay spent, sweat-slicked, and happy.

  He caressed her lower back, fingers tickling the base of her spine, but she was too tired to laugh or even shiver.

  “I’m so glad this was an overnight trip,” he sighed.

  “Me too,” she grunted. “Me too.”

  “So are we going to talk about that recording? I’m concerned, man.”

  She thought about it. The prophecy that directly mentioned her as the downfall of Jean Prejean was nothing more than a frightful mystery at this point: all questions, no answers. She tried to place it on a timeline between the ravaging of Prejean’s lair and the burning of her office, but all analysis came up short. Antiquity was full of myths about people who’d been singled out by prophecy; too many of those stories were tragedies.

  It couldn’t be real; there had to be a trick. Scientists had long made it clear that the amount of magic required to produce a prophet was inconceivable, even with modern technology. It couldn’t be done, and so prophetic visions were relegated to the realms of myth and wacky conspiracy theories.

  There was no comfort to be had in the discussion—not now.

  “Not really,” she said. “I’d rather use the bed we paid for.”

  “The bed I paid for.”

  “That’s the one,” she said, closing her eyes.

  “All right, then. I’m hungry, though.”

  “What?”

  “It’s almost breakfast time,” he said.

  “I’m not getting up with you.”

  “I didn’t ask you to. I figured I could go get us some food from the place across the street. I’ll bring it back here and we can catch a few winks before heading back.”

  “Well, now,” she said, “you’re speaking my language.”

  Didier’s clothes lay in a convenient pile, but hers had been removed haphazardly, strewn about the room. After he’d found his way into his clothes, he winked at her and left.

  Boots hated the little flutter her heart did as he exited the hotel room. She wasn’t the type to have a crush, and she didn’t plan to start now. The men in her life hadn’t been anything to rely on. Cordell had gone AWOL and Kin had up and died. She wrestled the sheets over her body, but they stuck to her at odd angles.

  Boots finally kicked them off and fetched Kin’s cube from her traveling bag, running a thumb over the shiny data contacts. She socketed him into the room.

  “Good morning, Lizzie. My, there’s a lot of interesting network traffic in this hotel. I’m a little concerned about viruses.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Kin. You’re military-grade. Do you think you can safely use Carré networks to relay our findings to the Capricious?”

  “Not really, no. If anyone is looking for you, a meta-analysis of the data could provide strong indications of your location.”

  “I just wish we could send our location to Cordell.”

  “Understandable, but you’ll recall he gave you two days to complete your mission, so constant updates will not be necessary unless you’re in danger.”

  “I know,” she sighed.

  “I’m sure you do. That’s why I have to wonder what else I can do for you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a fighter pilot. More than anyone else, you understand emergency protocols in the event of a separation. I may be endowed with your memories of Kinnard, but I also possess your memories of you. There’s a reason you plugged me in, and I doubt it has anything to do with calling the Capricious.”

  She felt a redness welling in her cheeks. “What do you know?”

  “I know you’re worried about something, and that you often plug me in when you just want to talk. Data aggregation of voice patterns and breathing over the last two minutes yields—”

  “Okay, fine. I’m upset.”

  “About what?”

  She slicked back her hair and sat on the edge of the bed, her skin folding in places she’d rather it didn’t. “I think I’m being stupid.”

  “Help me understand how.”

  “I don’t think I ought to be sleeping with people. I’m not sure that I deserve it. I mean, I’m no good for anyone. You know that.”

  “You’ll recall that you had sex with my human inspiration before your final mission.”

  “Yeah, and I disappointed you immediately after.” Boots shook her head and leaned forward onto her knees. “Kin, I need you to do something …” Her face prickled with heat. Was she embarrassed? Angry? “When you talk about Kinnard, the dead one, I want you to talk as if it’s you.”

  “That would be exceedingly unhealthy. Perhaps when operational security calms down, I can contact a therapy center on your behalf.”

  “That’s an order, Kin.”

  She could almost hear his processor cycles trying to sort out the conflicting priorities. “Okay.”

  “Now say what you were going to say.”

  “You’ll recall that we made love before your deployment.”

  She swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “So how was that different from now? You’re saying you can’t sleep with someone if you’re going to disappoint them, but you left me.”

  “Yeah. I guess that makes me a hypocrite.”

  She regretted plugging him in. Her computer, just like the real Kin, was always right; it hadn’t been what she wanted to hear.

  “I think you’re talking to me because you want absolution,” he said.

  “Shut up.” She clenched her teeth. “I … I don’t need to be touched … I mean, I do. I just don’t deserve it.”

  Tears remained hidden inside her. She sat in silence, fuming at the carpet, not daring to look up for fear of finding Didier standing over her.

  “Kin?”

  “You told me not to speak.”

  “I think maybe I did love you a little. Maybe that’s why I never really bothered with any other guys.”

  The whirr of high-speed data processing filled Kinnard’s crystalline structure. “When you first created me, the death of Clarkesfall and the destruction of Arca were fresh on your mind. The mnemonimancer imprinted your memories of that day upon
my schema, a filter through which all memories of my human form could flow. I have often revisited your memories of my last transmission.”

  She could hear his fragmented words in her flight helmet at the mention of it.

  Kinnard continued. “I believe I’ve pieced together the things I said that day. I would like to play them for you.”

  “Why haven’t you played them before?”

  “Because you haven’t told me to treat myself as Kin before. If I were still alive, I’d want you to hear this.”

  “Play it.”

  The sound of her breath in a spacesuit transported her back to that day, twenty years ago, when she lost him.

  His voice became hoarse, tinged with fear. “You were right when you said the warships wouldn’t work. The grid didn’t hold. If you’re still alive, I want you to take your ship and go.”

  She could clearly see the battle, the shattered pieces of canopy, floating corpses, and the blossoms of fire as they obliterated her home country.

  “There were lots of things I never got to say to you. I’m glad you can go on without me.”

  She should’ve been there for him in the days before they bombed him. She should’ve made him happy.

  And there he was, telling her to go AWOL, just like Cordell. His dying wish had been for her to find a way out of Clarkesfall, out of the ADF and the whole Famine War. He’d only wanted her to move onward. When the Defense Force collapsed, her instincts were to stay and give up. Were there any willing surrenders, or had she been the only one to offer herself up to the consequences of war?

  Move on.

  “Thanks, Kin.”

  Boots rearranged her clothes into a neat pile, placing her slinger holster on the nightstand. It wouldn’t do to step on it in the middle of the night and blow off a leg. She pulled on her skivvies and crawled up onto the bed. The sheets had dried out a little, so she could tolerate slipping into them.

  “Lights?” she called, and the hotel’s ambient lighting dimmed to a cool blue. Glass polarized and blocked out Carré’s rising sun. “Kin, play me something sweet from home.”