Nimbus

by Jacey Bedford

  The void dragon slides through the bulkhead, sees Liv, and immediately shrinks its body to the size of a large dog, though its tail snakes around the floor. The wildly waving prehensile beard, complete with claws retracts into its jaw, and it takes on the rounded shape of her toy.

  Liv shrieks in delight, wriggles away from her mother’s embrace, and flings herself at its neck. It rubs its scaly jaw across the top of her head. She giggles.

  OLIVIA MAY MARLING, it says.

  Gen pushes herself upright and starts forward, but Cara holds her back. Max looks around as if trying to pinpoint the void dragon by everyone else’s position. He steps forward slowly, kneels behind Liv, and puts one arm around her tiny waist.

  MAAAXXX, the void dragon says.

  It looks at Gen and nods.

  “That’s Mom,” Liv says.

  MOMMM.

  Ben shakes himself free from Gwala and Hilde who have moved to either side of him. He kneels where he is, barely a couple of meters away from the child and the dragon.

  “Can you understand it, Liv?”

  She frowns. “Sort of.”

  The void dragon changes shape again. It sits on its haunches and rears up, stretching its back, elongating its front legs to arms and its back legs to . . .

  Human. It suddenly appears human in shape though the skin on its back and legs still looks like dragon scales while the skin on its front looks like a buddysuit. It’s possible it doesn’t understand the difference between clothing and skin. There’s no reason it should.

  Liv reaches out her baby arms.

  The void creature, hardly a dragon now, takes her into its arms as it has seen her mother do.

  Ben starts forward, a little quicker off the mark than everyone else, but the void creature is faster than thought. It pops out of existence, taking Liv with it.

  Ben crashes into Ronan who has started forward from the opposite side. They rebound off each other and exchange a look that says the worst thing that could happen has happened.

  Gen makes a sound as unlike a scream as it can be, but it means the same thing. Her baby is gone.

  Simply gone.

  Max is silent, white with shock.

  Cara . . . Ben didn’t dare look at Cara. I-told-you-so would be the kindest thing she could say.

  And Liv . . .

  Is gone.

  Ben doesn’t even think. He launches upward, through the skin of the ship into the foldspace, searching for the void creature, but there’s nothing there except an absence of light. He’s carried forward away from the Solar Wind.

  As long as he believes he can, he knows he can breathe out here—he’s done it before—but he’s not sure how he can maneuver without a line or a jet-pack. He angles his body as if he were in water. He’s turning, or at least he thinks he is. It’s difficult to tell in this void.

  Isn’t he supposed to be the one who knows which way is up?

  He searches mentally for the right heading to take him to the ship, hoping he can follow it.

  A beam of light cuts the blackness.

  Another beam sweeps side to side, up and down, or maybe it’s the other way around.

  *Ben!*

  *Cara.*

  *Hold on, we can see you. We’re coming.*

  One of the light beams catches a space-suited figure. Both light sources converge on him.

  *Got you.* Cara grabs his arm with her gloved hand and follows up with every expletive in her vocabulary, most of them vulgar. He gets the idea.

  The second figure takes his other arm. *What she said.* Ronan can hold his curses as well as he can hold his liquor. *What were you hoping to achieve?*

  *I thought I might be able to follow if I could make it out here fast enough—*

  *And . . .*

  *Not a thing in sight.*

  *Got him,* Cara beams a thought to the Solar Wind and all her external docking lights come on at once.

  Ben isn’t as far away as he feared. He’s managed the turn and he’s been drifting toward the ship. Would he have been able to make it under his own steam? He’s not even going to guess at the possibility. There’s a thought in the back of his brain, and it’s repeating over and over again.

  She came for me. Cara came for me. Maybe she’s only going to deliver him to the Free Company for a hearing, but she hasn’t washed her hands of him completely.

  They reach the hatch and Ronan swings him toward the grab rail by the main airlock. There’s room for all three of them. The airlock outer door closes behind them. He breathes shallowly while it cycles.

  Cara and Ronan remove their helmets.

  Who’s going to speak first?

  There’s a long silence.

  “Thank you,” he says to both of them.

  Cara grunts at him and gets on with the business of peeling herself out of her suit. She and Ronan help each other with the tricky bits. Ben doesn’t offer and she doesn’t ask for his help.

  They troop up to the flight deck, Ronan, himself, and Cara in order, not speaking.

  Gen looks up, suddenly hopeful as they emerge. Ben doesn’t meet her eyes.

  “Nothing,” Ronan says.

  Max curses softly.

  Ben has no words of comfort. No words of hope.

  They sit staring at nothing, hoping against hope the void dragon will return with Liv safe.

  How could he have misread the situation so badly? Ben had been sure the void dragon wanted to talk to Liv. If he’d thought for one moment that she’d be taken, he’d have spaced himself rather than bring the child out here.

  There’s a susurration, a rustling like a gentle wind through leaves. From somewhere far off he can hear two voices, one of them deep and the other girlish, though not as young as Liv.

  The void creature appears again and this time it has an older child in its almost-human arms. The girl is about ten or eleven years old. She has Gen’s almond eyes, but Max’s smile, and already she’s beautiful in that half-formed way of prepubescent girls.

  Ben stares open-mouthed.

  Gen makes the first move. She reaches toward the child. “Liv?”

  “Hello, Ma. Goodness, you look young.” She turns to Max. “Dad! I never thought . . .” She flings herself into his arms. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Haven’t you missed your mother?”

  “I only left her a few minutes ago. Well, an older version of her, anyway.”

  “And not me?”

  Her face clouds.

  The void creature makes a sound like clearing its throat.

  She nods. “I’m here as a translator.”

  “Where’s my baby?” Gen asks. “Baby Liv.”

  “Both of us can’t be here at the same time,” Liv says. “You’re looking after her. The other you, the older you, that is. The one I’ve just left.”

  “Time travel?”

  Liv shakes her head. “No. Everything is happening at once in the Folds. There is no time.”

  “There’s a future me in the Folds?”

  The void creature makes a sound again.

  “I’m sorry; I can’t say anything more without complicating your timeline. You told me not to do that.”

  “I did?”

  “The other you.”

  Ben edges forward. “Liv, what does your friend want to tell us?”

  “Oh, you must be Ben Benjamin.” She swivels round. “And you’re Cara, and you’re Doctor Ronan.”

  Ben wonders what happens in the future that Liv doesn’t recognize them, but he bottles up the question and sticks to the pressing issue. “Does your friend have a name?”

  “Yes, of course.” She tries to put her mouth into a shape, and then frowns. “It’s pretty unpronounceable.”

  “Never mind. Can you ask it a question?”

 
She nods. “It can hear you through my thoughts.”

  “Can it understand what I say?”

  She blinked. “Sort of. It can understand what you mean but might not know every word.”

  Right keep it simple. “What’s the black cloud, the thing we call the Nimbus?”

  “It’s bad.”

  Well, at least the void dragon agrees with them.

  “Though it’s only trying to protect itself,” Liv says.

  “It’s hurting people,” Ben says.

  Liv frowns and shakes her head. “People are hurting it.”

  Now it’s Ben’s turn to frown. “How are people hurting it?”

  “Not people. Their ships.” She trails one hand through the air. “Platinum residue.”

  “Platinum?” Cara says behind him. “The platinum lost in the Folds. It’s a pollutant.”

  “Does platinum hurt the dragon?” Ben asks.

  Liv shakes her head. “Dragons are different.”

  Ben notices she says dragons. They’ve always wondered whether it’s one dragon or if there are a number of them.

  “What about the otter-kind—the little creatures?”

  She hesitates as though waiting for an answer from the void dragon. “They’re a different species,” she says at length. “The platinum doesn’t hurt them, either.”

  “Do dragons hurt people?” Gen cuts into the conversation.

  “No. They’re curious about us, and about space outside the Folds, but they can’t cross over into realspace.”

  “Does the Nimbus hurt people?” Ben asks.

  “It makes them into weapons to hurt each other.” She claps her hands together. “It thinks that if there are no more people, there will be no more platinum.”

  “Does it know how many people are out there in realspace?” Cara asks.

  Liv shrugs. “It learns from the people it takes and uses them as puppets.” There’s a pause as if she’s talking to the void dragon. “It can sense the platinum and it’s drawn to where the largest concentrations are. It’s like a dog that bites at a flea. It’s a reaction, not a plan. At least that’s how it begins. But then it discovers people. Organic life.” She pauses again. “It’s still learning.”

  “I bet it is,” Cara says. “Humanity—all that’s good and all that’s bad. What will it learn from a psychopath?”

  “It’s taken a few military ships, too,” Ben says. “That means it has people with a skill set it can use against us.”

  “How long has this been going on?” Ben asks. “Damn, that’s the wrong question if time doesn’t exist in the Folds.”

  Cara leans forward. “Why now, Liv?” She turns to Ben. “People have been passing through the Folds for three hundred years. What’s changed?”

  “Platinum,” Liv says after a pause. “There’s more than there was. I’m not sure how to translate this.” She looks at the void creature as if listening intently. “I think there’s a tipping point.” She looks at Gen. “That’s what you said, Ma, or what you will say. It reaches critical mass.”

  “It’s building up,” Cara says. “Our platinum is building up, so the Nimbus is reacting to the level of pollution.”

  Liv nods. “At first it took ships randomly, but then it learned that some humans had more knowledge than others. Knowledge that was useful for its own purpose—stopping the platinum.”

  “It’s taken some military vessels,” Ben says. “Is that deliberate?”

  “It has all of foldspace to pick from, from the very first ships to the last.”

  “What happens to the humans the Nimbus takes?” Ben asks.

  Liv frowns. “Nothing. There’s no time for anything to happen. They’re here until they’re not, but there’s no time happening for them.”

  “That explains a lot,” Ronan says, “but not how it gets inside people’s heads, turns them into something they’re not.”

  There’s a pause while Liv talks to the void dragon. “We can’t tell you because we don’t know. The void dragons are frightened of the Nimbus. They leave it alone and it leaves them alone.”

  “If it’s drawn by the concentration of platinum,” Ben says, “maybe that’s why most of the ships that have been lost have been between gates. Very few jumpships have gone missing.”

  “So it’s using humans against humans,” Ronan says. “If humans are a virus, it’s fighting the virus with more of the same—sending altered bugs to kill off the bugs that are hurting it. Biocontrol. It’s a logical move. It has no concept of the value of life. Humans are simply a virus it needs to destroy, any way it can.”

  Liv is staring from one adult to the other, trying to follow the conversation.

  “Hold on, we’re going too fast,” Ben says. He speaks directly to Liv again. “Ask the dragon. Is there one Nimbus or lots.”

  “Lots,” she says, “but they’re all part of the one.” She frowns. “Is that right?”

  “Maybe it has a hive-mind,” Cara says.

  “Can the dragon talk to the Nimbus?” Ben asks.

  “Yes, in a way, but it doesn’t.” She shakes her head again.

  “How can we stop it?” Ronan asks the adults, but the dragon chooses to answer through Liv.

  “It won’t stop.”

  “Then what can we do?” Cara asks.

  “Stop ships coming through the jump gates,” Liv says.

  “How the hell are we supposed to do that?” Ronan asks.

  Ben wonders what Liv herself knows. “Time travel or not, she’s from the future. Is it a version of the future? Can it be changed, or is it fixed?”

  “Is it possible, Liv? Are there still jump gates?”

  “I’ve never seen one.”

  “How do you get into foldspace?”

  “The Dixie, of course.”

  “The Dixie, right.” In Liv’s future Gen flies the Dixie, but Liv doesn’t know Ben or Cara or Ronan. Are they all dead? He does and doesn’t want to ask—both at the same time. Would knowing the future change it?

  “Oh, it’s time to go,” Liv says. “Good-bye, Daddy. I love y—”

  The void dragon folds itself around her and they both disappear.

  “Wait—” Gen calls out and reaches toward the older version of her daughter.

  Max wraps his arms around Gen. “It’ll bring her back. It’s as good as said that both versions of Liv can’t be in the same place.”

  “Why should it care?”

  “If the older version of Liv is with you, she has to have grown up with you.” He shakes his head. “I’m not sure what happens to me, though. She acted as if she hadn’t seen me for a while? You’re not planning to divorce me, are you?”

  “I haven’t married you yet.”

  “That’s my Gen.” He wipes the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. “Ever practical. So you see, the void dragon is bound to bring her back. Any moment now.” He glances across at Ben. “Please.”

  The tension is palpable. Ben glances around, absently rubbing his throbbing jaw. If hoping can make it happen, the whole flight deck is wishing the void dragon and baby Liv into existence for Gen and Max.

  Then, as quickly as they vanished, the void dragon and baby Liv are back in their midst. Gen and Max fall on their daughter and draw her into the safety of their arms. None the worse for her experience, baby Liv reaches for the creature, who has now morphed into its dragon-shape again, or rather the shape of Liv’s toy.

  It nuzzles her hand and pulls away from Liv, growing to the size of a small horse.

  “No, don’t go.” Tears well in Liv’s eyes. “I don’t want it to go. It’s my friend.”

  Gen pushes the stuffed toy into Liv’s hand. “Here’s your dragon. You can talk to the other one again, when you’re older.”

  “Promise?”

  Ben sees Gen swallo
w hard. “Promise. I know you will. Now, say good-bye.”

  The void dragon whirls around the flight deck and, as Liv waves, it winks out of existence.

  Liv begins to cry inconsolably.

  Gen glares at Ben. “Now look what you’ve done.”

  They move off the flight deck, Gwala leading the way, leaving Yan in charge and Naomi piloting Solar Wind safely to Crossways. Cara heads toward Solar Wind’s mess.

  Gen immediately takes herself into a corner with Liv, now alternately crying and hiccupping. She rocks her gently, trying to lull her to sleep.

  They strap in as Lynda broadcasts, *Realspace in three, two, one.*

  • • •

  “We’re a hundred klicks from Crossways,” Ben said. “With the docking tailback, we have an hour at least to work out what happened.”

  “Are you still here?” Cara said. “I thought Gwala and Hilde were locking you up.”

  She saw him wince and pushed home her advantage. “What’s the Free Company going to say? Will there even be a Free Company this time tomorrow?”

  He cleared his throat. “Wenna will keep it together. You and she—”

  “Don’t count on me for anything. Not after today.”

  “I’m sorry. I take full responsibility.”

  “Do you think that makes it better?” Would she have been happier if he’d tried to wriggle out of it? Probably not.

  “You might not like what I did—hell, I don’t like what I did—but it worked. Let’s not lose the advantage it’s given us.”

  “Ben’s right.” Ronan bent over to examine Max’s hand, which was ballooning into a purple mess. “The end may not justify the means, but we can’t ignore what we’ve discovered. That won’t help anyone. Does that hurt?”

  “Oww!” Max tried to drag his hand away, but Ronan kept hold of it. “Fourth metacarpal,” he said. “Bar room fracture. Hold still, I’ll get some ice.”

  “It’s a numbers game,” Ben said, massaging his jaw again. “Every time we send a ship through a jump gate, we’re sending more recruits for the Nimbus army. It’s been taking increasingly more. We don’t know how many. I’m pretty sure the megacorps are hiding the real figures.”

  Though reluctant to join in with a conversation Ben was leading, Cara felt obliged to offer: “There are rumors on the tel-net. People talking. It’s not easy to quantify, but I’d say the losses were way higher than the megacorps are admitting to.”