Best of Beyond the Stars

by Patrice Fitzgerald

  “Am I really?” Ei’Pio pretended to be affronted. She’d figured out the correct answer three questions before, but Carindi enjoyed it when she drew these games out‌—‌and truth be told, Ei’Pio loved the feeling of the child’s laughter. It was infectious. It lifted her ever-present worry for a short time.

  Children were easy to please and such a joy. A small part of her resented that she had never known children before now. In some ways, this felt like a golden time in her life, despite the bomb ticking inside the star they orbited.

  Carindi was wandering the empty corridors of the ship aimlessly, drumming the fingers of ius suit against the dark walls. “Guess again, Pio.”

  “The moon of Columnus Quince?”

  The child roared with laughter until it became coughing. The coughing went on too long.

  Ei’Pio sobered.

  When the coughing fit eased, Carindi slumped to the decking and asked, “Pio, when we break free of the star, where would you like to go? Assume that you could go anywhere in the universe.”

  She’d heard this question many times. It meant that Carindi was feeling lonely and restless. Ei’Pio sent a soothing blanket of thought over the child’s mind.

  “I would take you home to Atielle, of course.” That’s what she always told the child. “Where would you like to go, Carindi? To Valetria? To see the Parida Quasar? Or Sieden’s Rings?” These were all astronomical sights the child had studied recently.

  “I would like to go to your homeworld, Pio.”

  That was a new answer. She found it puzzling. “Why would you want that?”

  “You are my family now. I want to meet your family. I want you to be free to swim in an ocean.”

  Ei’Pio’s mantle pulsed nervously, out of rhythm. Carindi spoke of something forbidden. “You know that can never happen.”

  “Why not? I know the location of your homeworld is supposed to be a big secret, but we can figure it out. We can find it. I know we can.”

  “That isn’t the point. I’m sectilian now. My people wouldn’t recognize me as one of their own. I don’t even speak their language.”

  They wouldn’t recognize her as being the same species, either. In this artificial and optimized environment, Ei’Pio had grown far larger than any wild kuboderan could ever dream of. Her body was augmented with multiple cybernetic implants that would look alien to them. They would more than likely kill her on sight. The sectilian kuboderans had always been told that the kuboderans of their home world were not only wild, but savage.

  “But they speak Mensententia, surely.”

  Ei’Pio faltered. “Yes, I’m sure they do.”

  “Do you remember it? What it was like?”

  Ei’Pio gifted the child with a memory of floating free in a vast watery world. The bright warm shallows and the cool dark depths. Then, on a whim, she showed Carindi her memory of being born. She could still see the cave where her mother had kept them clean and gently blown water across them with her funnel to keep them well oxygenated, though the earliest memories were all softly tinted by the nearly transparent membrane of an egg sac.

  It had been quiet and safe there. The moment when her egg sac became fragile and her first tentacle burst out into the larger world, everything changed forever.

  There was the last sight of her mother, still tending to the unhatched. The swarms of age-mates (from many mothers mixing indiscriminately as they stretched out their limbs for the very first time) bobbing, floating‌—‌winking their distress in bright flashes of color‌—‌and scattering, swept away in the current without any control.

  “This is what life is like sometimes, Carindi. Sometimes we have no control over our circumstances.” She stopped the flow of the memory before it could reach the point when she would watch in horror as some of her age-mates were consumed by larger predators. There was no sense in upsetting the child.

  Belatedly, she realized that hiding the ugliness might have been a mistake. Carindi was enraptured. “What a beautiful world!”

  “You couldn’t survive there. You breathe air.”

  “Don’t be silly, Pio. I’ll be in the suit. It’s made for surviving in space. Underwater would be a cinch.”

  Another terrible reminder that Carindi might never leave the suit. Ei’Pio’s mantle squeezed painfully. It was so unnatural. So wrong. She should have figured out how to free ium by now. She had failed.

  Carindi caught the tail of the thought, though Ei’Pio had tried to hide it.

  “I don’t hate the suit. I love the suit. It keeps me alive. I love you too, Pio. If you don’t want to go to your home world, we can go to another water world.”

  It wasn’t true, she knew. The child detested the suit and wanted freedom more than anything else. But it was kind of ium to say.

  “I love you too, child.”

  * * *

  When the red dwarf exhausted its supply of carbon, Ei’Pio noted the beginning of neon fusion with no small amount of dread. Based on her calculations, there was less than a year left before neon, oxygen, and silicon fusion would be complete. Without any other fuel sources, the star would begin to fuse iron, which would take mere minutes to exhaust. Once the iron core reached a specific mass, it would crash in on itself and send out a cosmic shockwave that would obliterate the ship as the star went supernova.

  Ei’Pio still had not found a way around the yoke.

  Carindi had to be an adult in order to receive the command-and-control engram set and take control of the ship. The computer would not install it in a child. Iad had to be confirmed as an adult documented citizen, which could only be done by automated systems in the medical facility and only upon full puberty.

  Ei’Pio could find no way around it.

  Most sectilian children underwent puberty and declared their gender to their community in the eleventh or twelfth year. But it was Carindi’s seventeenth standard year, and there was still no sign of pubescent change in the child.

  Ei’Pio began to devote all of her free time to studying sectilian anatomy and physiology, focusing specifically on endocrinology. She reached Medical Master levels of knowledge, but she was no closer to solving the mystery of Carindi’s delayed biological development. What was missing from Carindi’s daily macro and microbiotic intake that was precluding puberty?

  Ei’Pio insisted on more extensive scanning and analysis, but the only conclusion she could draw was that Carindi was underweight. So she changed Carindi’s liquid diet to be calorically richer.

  She also judiciously implemented a regimen of exogenous hormone therapy. Such artificial interventions were frowned upon among sectilians, so there were no precedents to follow. She had no way of knowing how much to apply to the child’s system. She started with tiny amounts of bio-identical hormones tailored for the child’s congenital sex for simplicity’s sake, because Carindi had never developed a gender preference.

  Carindi was indifferent to these experiments. Iad didn’t seem to be interested in choosing a gender, and to some extent that made sense. The child retained few memories of gendered sectilians. Gender was a remote concept to ium.

  From a biological standpoint, there was no reason for the child’s body to change. There was no counterpart with whom to mate or share a life.

  Did a sectilian child need adults or age-mates within their environment to trigger puberty? Perhaps it was that absence that was the true problem.

  Ei’Pio gradually increased the dosage of the exogenous hormone infusion until the child began to endure negative side effects. The hormones made the child’s moods more volatile and triggered massive headaches and constant fatigue. Carindi didn’t like taking them.

  Despite this, Carindi still displayed no signs of impending puberty. Eventually Ei’Pio accepted that it was unlikely that puberty could be induced in this manner and stepped the dose back down to a level that was more tolerable to ium.

  Carindi had chosen another tactic to deal with their situation. From the age of eight standard years, t
he child had become a voracious consumer of educational materials, leaping far and away ahead of most children of the same age. Studying and testing filled ius every waking hour, and iad achieved a mechanical engineering degree by the age of twelve standard years. Then iad went on to study computer languages and electrical engineering. Carindi was determined to subvert the yoke and give direct control of the ship to Ei’Pio.

  The sectilian ship designers had believed that the yoke should be deeply hidden. They alleged that the Kubodera, though an extremely intelligent people, could often be headstrong and arrogant, so they imposed restraints, checks, and balances upon the navigators to keep the sectilian population of the ship safe. Mutiny would not be tolerated in the fleet. The designers were well aware that it would be easy to transfer total control of the ship to new hands if one could convince a kuboderan to do it. Therefore they purportedly placed the yoke in a secret location for the safety and security of every individual on board.

  “Stop worrying, Pio,” Carindi said one day on the engineering deck, from deep in the bowels of yet another ship system. “I’ve got this under control. I’m going to find it any day now.” Carindi said things like this frequently.

  Ei’Pio acknowledged the thought but wouldn’t stop worrying. They had been alone together for thirteen standard years. The star had recently begun burning the oxygen layer. Less than half a standard sectilian year remained. Ei’Pio knew the teenager might find the circuits that controlled the yoke, but iad also might not. The yoke could be disguised as something Carindi would never recognize. The designers had been too clever.

  “I may have to break through the yoke myself,” Ei’Pio said softly. If she couldn’t work around it, she would have to force her way through it. She wouldn’t do it if it was just her, but she would for Carindi. She had been trying for so long, but the pain was great and she was a coward.

  “No! Promise me you won’t even try, Pio! I will find it.”

  “The rumors may not be true, little one. Perhaps they were started to keep us aquiescent.”

  They were true. She knew they were. A kuboderan who attempted to defeat the yoke would be driven mad from the pain as punishment for that crime. It kept the navigators in their place very effectively.

  Over a monitor, Ei’Pio watched Carindi pulling herself out of a gap in the deck plating. The child’s voice was stiff with anger. “You can’t lie to me anymore, Pio. I can see right through it. I know the rumors are true and I won’t let you risk it. What good would you be to me mad? I’d rather die than watch you do that to yourself. It nearly killed you to watch the sectilians die. What do you think it will do to me to watch you go insane?”

  Ei’Pio didn’t know what to say. The thought that she might become unreachable if she accomplished her goal‌—‌that she might leave the child alone‌—‌chilled her. Carindi needed her.

  But what other course was there for her?

  Carindi continued. “My people were wrong to shackle you this way‌—‌like some kind of pack animal. You aren’t a suesupus! You’re a person. When we get to Sectilius I will demand that this form of slavery be abolished. By the Cunabula, I will make them listen to me.”

  Ei’Pio was silent. Carindi flared with the passion of youth and spoke uncomfortable truths. But it had always been this way, and change would not come easily to Sectilius.

  Ei’Pio did not mention it again, but she still pushed herself to attempt to punch through the yoke and its realm of pain when Carindi slept.

  * * *

  Ei’Pio woke from a brief doze knowing instantly that something was wrong. Carindi’s signature was faint. She jetted to the other end of the ship, seeking, triangulating, calling out ius name.

  The child was on the other side of the escutcheon‌—‌outside the ship. Ei’Pio’s limbs thrashed in agitation as she cycled through camera transmissions until she finally located ium indulging in an untethered spacewalk. A compartment on the outside of the ship was open, and the teenager was shoulder deep in a propulsion nacelle.

  Ei’Pio throttled the klaxon control so that it transmitted a warning at full volume into Carindi’s helmet. She watched with a small amount of parental satisfaction as the child jerked in response. The tiny figure stood up on the hull and waved, then deliberately punched the button on the shoulder of the power armor to silence the alarm and went back to work.

  Ei’Pio ground her beak with worry, her suction cups kneading anything that happened to be nearby,until the child was safely back inside the ship. As soon as Carindi cleared the dampening field of the escutcheon, Ei’Pio launched into an outraged lecture about safety protocols and safe radiation exposure levels‌—‌which the child had nearly exceeded.

  When Ei’Pio noted Carindi’s dispirited mental state, she went silent.

  The child said nothing.

  Ei’Pio accessed a corridor camera and watched the child walk slowly for a few feet and then slump to the floor. Iad was sobbing.

  Ei’Pio dove deep into the child’s mind with intent to soothe, but Carindi pushed her right back out. Ei’Pio would have to wait. There was nothing else to do when the adolescent got so worked up.

  It hurt to watch ium go through this. She had never cared more deeply about another person’s well-being than she did for Carindi’s. This child belonged to her, was her soul-child. She wanted to spare ium any pain.

  “I thought I had it. I was so sure,” Carindi finally said.

  Ei’Pio didn’t have to ask what the child was talking about.

  “There is time, Carindi.”

  Iad didn’t reply. The silence between them was dark and sullen.

  Ei’Pio hummed to ium as she knew sectilian mothers did to reassure their children.

  “Stop it! I’m not a baby. I know what you’ve been doing when I’m sleeping. I can feel the echoes of your pain. It’s killing you. You have to stop. You’re driving both of us crazy. Don’t try to do it anymore, Pio.”

  Ei’Pio was contrite. “I won’t. Rest now.”

  Of course Carindi knew it was a lie. Iad cried and fretted and raged for hours, finally collapsing of exhaustion where iad was.

  But Ei’Pio didn’t dare stop. Once she was certain Carindi was deeply asleep, she thrashed against the yoke until pain made it impossible to breathe, until her mind was virtually shredded.

  There wasn’t time anymore.

  The oxygen reserve inside the star was nearly depleted.

  * * *

  On the day the star began to fuse silicon, Carindi leaned against the smooth curve of Ei’Pio’s enclosure, arms and legs outstretched, as though it were possible to reach through the glass to embrace Ei’Pio and keep her safe.

  There were less than two standard days left.

  The child hadn’t slept for days, having figured out long before how to order the suit to inject stimulants into ius body. Iad was determined to watch Ei’Pio and keep her from trying to break through the yoke.

  “Do you wish you’d had the opportunity to mate?” Carindi asked after a long silence.

  It was a painful question and one that Ei’Pio privately contemplated frequently. If she could have raised her own children as she’d raised Carindi...

  She sighed. “No. It is a tremendous expenditure, and unlike sectilian mothers, I would not be able to watch my children grow.”

  “If you could, though, here? We could keep them all safe, here, inside. We would keep you alive as you’ve kept me alive. I would make a door so I could come inside the enclosure and help you care for them.”

  Such a tantalizing fantasy.

  Carindi went on. “We could raise them together, you and I. Show me again, the day of your birth. Please, Pio. I want to imagine your babies.”

  Ei’Pio’s mantle throbbed unsteadily. It had become easier to daydream than to focus on the awful present. She showed the child again.

  Afterward, she thought perhaps the child had fallen into a light sleep. She prepared herself to break the yoke. This time it would work, no matt
er the cost. She would not allow Carindi to die in the supernova.

  But then the child spoke again. “I’m not sure what gender I was meant to be, genetically, but I want to be a girl like you.”

  Ei’Pio pressed her suction cups to the glass as though to caress the young face. It was Carindi’s first declaration of gender preference. In Ei’Pio’s eyes that made her an adult. Ei’Pio could now let go of the gender neutrality she’d carefully maintained, like all sectilian adults did, in order not to bias a child’s preferences.

  “You are a woman, my dear Carindi.”

  Carindi’s brows pulled together. “I used to think that perhaps it would have been better if I’d died in the plague.”

  Ei’Pio said softly, “I remember.”

  “I want you to know that I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad I was able to keep you company, Pio.”

  Ei’Pio held the girl’s earnest expression. “I know.” After a moment passed, she continued. “This time has been a great gift.”

  “Borrowed time,” Carindi murmured. The girl broke the tension with a grin. “I want to swim with you, Pio.”

  Ei’Pio’s limbs twitched with fatigue and the lingering pain she couldn’t seem to shed. “You’ve never swum before.”

  “There must always be a first time,” Carindi said with a smirk, mimicking Ei’Pio’s mental voice.

  “So I’ve said to you many times, my dear girl. How will you deal with the problem of access?”

  “I’ll just cut a hole at one end of your enclosure. Just enough to fit through. The ship will flood, but what difference does it make now?” Even through the suit, Ei’Pio could see the girl shrug.

  Ei’Pio sighed. “It doesn’t.”

  “It’s settled then. I’ll go fetch a laser cutting arc and cut through on Deck 1-C. You stay here where you’re safe.”

  “I will,” she promised.

  The young woman walked away, footsteps slow and shuffling, the shoulders of the suit hunched. Just as Carindi was about to move out of sight, Ei’Pio saw the girl halt and heard Carindi’s mental voice muttering, “Swimming, cutting... access, draining. Wait a minute. Wait... a... minute. Praise the Cunabula!”