by mikel evins
I gestured toward the tube. “Go!”
Mai looked into my cameras with her head and tail down. She licked her lips. Finally, she jetted over to the opening and allowed Jaemon to take hold of her. Angier muttered something muffled. Jaemon grabbed Mai and pulled her into the cramped space inside the tube. She looked at me again, white showing all around her eyes.
“Remind me never to volunteer for anything again,” Angier said. Jaemon’s lower back was pressed against his face and he spoke out of the side of his mouth. I slid the hatch closed, pausing for a moment to take one more look at my friends and crewmates.
“Thanks, Buddy,” Jaemon said to me. His eyes glistened. I thought of the day that he mustered out of the Guard and stopped by to tell me farewell and invite me to visit him on Callisto.
“I’ll see you aboard Kestrel,” Jaemon said. I nodded.
I snapped the hatch down and sealed it.
I pointed Angier’s sidearm at Doctor Yaug. After I had sealed the hatch, I checked it over, tuning my spotlight through the spectrum, tapping the seal, probing through the Fabric. Everything looked just as Doctor Yaug had described it.
“Good?” said Yaug.
I nodded.
“Now we wait,” he said.
I nodded again, still pointing the pistol at him.
25.
We didn’t have long to wait. The rhythmic tapping at the hatches had grown stronger and stronger until it merged into a continuous low rumble of white noise. Soon we started to hear higher-pitched pops and cracks through the metal.
“Soon,” I said.
“Yes,” said Yaug. “They’ll begin to come through the hatches in seconds.”
“Now?”
“Not yet,” he said.
I gestured suggestively with my sidearm.
“Patience,” he said. “I want to make sure that there’s no opportunity for them to redirect their efforts once the tube is free. In a moment I’ll blow the tube. Shortly after that, I’ll detonate the gases.”
I nodded, but still I kept my sidearm pointed at him.
There were a few more pops and cracks, and I saw movement at the edge of one camera’s view. I turned my head and caught sight of a black liquid pouring into the bay from the edge of one hatch.
“Doctor,” I said, my speakers sputtering with noise.
“I see them,” Yaug said. “Farewell, Ixion-11-Chrysotile, and good luck. I hope I will see you again soon.”
The tube that had held Yaug’s archive creche shifted suddenly. Over our Fabric link I heard Angier, Jaemon, and Mai cry out. Their cries became suddenly louder and then were squeezed to silence as the tube suddenly left the derelict at high speed, shooting into space. I felt a slight ‘pop!’ as the tenuous trace of remaining atmosphere in the hulk was released.
I felt six distinct pops through my feet, and the deck shifted under me. It slowly fell away from the derelict, rotating slightly as it went. My feet gripped the deck tightly, and I saw Yaug’s walking legs grasping at it.
The volatiles Yaug had spoken of suddenly ignited. There was a huge, bright flash and a fireball that swelled to fill the whole world. It pushed at the piece of deck under us, accelerating its drift away from the remains of Autolycus. Atmospheric pressure suddenly rose from zero to pressure-cooker levels. Yaug shrieked and thrashed, released his grip on the deck and tumbled away. Bathed in flame, he crumpled in on himself, blackening and whipping his limbs before shattering into fragments and turning to ash. I watched my gauges go mad and then my cameras began to cut in and out. There was a rising rush of white noise on my audio channels.
I saw another explosion blossom silently as I fell away from the burning derelict. It swelled and brightened, then swept over me all at once. The world turned hot and white and the white noise overwhelmed me.
Then there was nothing.
26.
I woke up in my archive creche in the ship’s infirmary aboard Kestrel. Everything that had happened came to me in a rush. I saw the white and orange fireball bursting out of Autolycus through the escape port, then rupturing the ship all along its hull, then bursting it open. I saw tiny motes of fire swirling outward, cinders in a momentary stormwind.
Was it a real memory? Was it my systems constructing a dream of what must have happened at the end? I didn’t know. I rested for a few minutes in my creche, allowing my head to clear and my understanding to catch up with me.
A mech’s creche can be much more compact and efficient than a biological’s. There is none of the messy and complicated wet chemistry that biology always entails. After I was sure of where I was and was confident of my composure, I simply opened my eyes and stepped out of the creche. It was scarcely different from how I had traveled from Mars to Callisto after I mustered out of the Jovian Diplomatic Guard.
Esgar Rayleigh and Chief Officer Verge were waiting for me in the infirmary as I stepped from the creche. Chief Engineer Burrell and several able spacers were in the companionway, gathered around the hatch looking in. They all wore expressions of relief.
“Captain,” I said, “forgive me, but we must move quickly. Since I am waking up here, the pilot of the derelict must have ignited an explosion that will tear his craft to pieces. Jaemon, Angier, and Mai are sheltering in a metal tube designed as an escape vessel of last resort. It has been thrown clear of the derelict, but they are still in danger. We must—”
“Easy, Lev,” said Captain Rayleigh.
The Captain and the chief engineer approached me, laying calming hands on my arms and shoulders.
“Captain,” I said.
“We know, Lev, we know,” said the Captain. “We got your stream. Thank you for that. We’re already in position, and the escape pod is already in Kestrel’s outside manipulators. We have crew on watch, keeping an eye out for Titans. We thought you might like to come down to Cargo Bay Three and watch us take the tube aboard.”
I looked from one face to the next. They were all filled with emotion, all those that could be. Verge was projecting a glyph of approval that only I could see.
“I—I would like that very much,” I said
27.
I never heard anyone say that we were going to decant Doctor Yaug’s archive. Everyone simply acted as if it was understood. I did hear Jaemon and Esgar talking about the problem of Yaug’s appearance.
“I say we confront them head-on,” said Jaemon. He was sitting in a chair in the groundside office of the Lord Chairman of Rayleigh Shipping. Esgar was the Lord Chairman now, but both of them still called it “Dad’s Office.” Jaemon was bent forward, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasping one another in between animated gestures. I was standing next to him, feeling out of place.
Esgar was behind the chairman’s huge wooden desk in a big chair that was turned to one side and thrown back so that he could rest both boots on top of the desk. He had his arms crossed behind his head, and was leaning so far back that the poor chair must have been working overtime to prevent being turned over backward.
“Confront it how?” Esgar said.
Jaemon spread his hands wide.
“Call an all-hands meeting. Show them pictures of him. Tell them what’s coming out of the creche.”
“Half of them will probably scream and run away.”
“Maybe those are the ones we don’t need,” Jaemon said.
Esgar shook his head and looked away.
“Have you seen our retention rates? Ever since Dad died—”
Jaemon threw up his hands.
“Okay,” he said, “What do you suggest? That we try to hide it? You know better than that. It would never work. This company is like a small town. Everybody here knows everything about everybody. You can’t hide anything from them. Heck, most of them probably already know. Angier was on that hulk, remember?”
Esgar sighed and put his feet on the floor. He shook his head again.
“You’re right, as usual,” he said. “I should just bite the bullet and get it over with.”
“Excuse me?” I said. Both of them looked at me. I felt even more out of place. “I think you both may be underestimating your employees.”
Esgar raised his eyebrows and gestured for me to continue.
“I don’t know anything about your recent retention rates,” I said. “What I do know is that I’ve seen most of your remaining employees in my capacity as medical officer. Their loyalty to the company is remarkable. Not everyone is happy with every decision. If you asked them what they thought at this ‘all-hands’ meeting, you’s likely hear some bitter complaints. But there’s no missing their loyalty to the company and to both of you personally. The people here eat, sleep, and breathe Rayleigh Shipping. It’s who they are. It’s all they want to be. My guess is that everyone you’re going to lose already left some time ago.”
They looked at each other, then back at me again, then back at each other.
“We have Lev’s stream,” Esgar said.
“That’s pretty good,” Jaemon said.
“Yeah, it is,” Esgar said. “You can see what Yaug did for us.”
Jaemon said, “You can even see Angier not shooting him.”
They looked at me. Both of them started to speak, then stopped.
“Go ahead,” Jaemon said.
Esgar nodded and said, “Lev, may we use the record of your stream? To show everyone what Yaug did for us aboard Autolycus?”
“Of course,” I said. “What do you have in mind?”
Jaemon said, “We all would have died aboard that ship if not for him. He’s a Titan, sure—or he looks like one. But everything he did was to help us, to save our lives and get us out of there in one piece.”
“He did act in his own interest, too,” I said. “To ensure that his data survived.”
“Yeah,” said Jaemon. “But for what? To get the data back to the Strategic Service. So the League would have better information about the Titans. So they could better protect every League citizen. For that, and to save our lives, he put himself in harms way and he put his future in our hands.”
Esgar said, “After what he did, I don’t care if he looks like an epidemic of cholera, he’s all right in my book. Personally, I’m gonna treat him that way. Anyone who disagrees can go hang.”
“You should say that in your ‘all-hands’ meeting,” I said. “If anyone fails to support you, I will be very surprised.”
“You don’t know how much people hate and fear the Titans,” Esgar said.
“Maybe not,” I said, “Or maybe you don’t know how much they love Rayleigh Shipping.”
They looked at each other again.
28.
Yaug came out of his creche in the main infirmary groundside at Port Rayleigh. It was a full-sized wet-chemistry creche with all the bells and whistles. It had a full-length viewport kept transparent all day every day. Esgar and Jaemon encouraged employees to go and see Doctor Yaug as he was being restored. I visited him regularly myself, and, to my utter astonishment, I saw Angier there several times, often with other employees.
Once he was with a couple of men and a mech from the maintenance shop. One of them, a burly older man that I didn’t know, said, “Well, he looks like a bug.”
Angier wheeled on him and said, “Shut up, Maury! You pull my ass out of the fire like he did and then you can say something about me if you want to. But you’ll show Doctor Yaug a little respect when you’re around me, if you know what’s good for you.”
Maury scoffed, but I could see him taking a second look at Yaug.
Yaug was conscious after the first few days and we visited him often. Rayleigh employees could visit him and talk with him about his story. Some were clearly frightened or repulsed at first, but a surprising number became regular visitors, enough so that I had to impose a schedule to ensure that Yaug could get the rest he needed.
It was just as he had said: he had no memory of events aboard Autolycus. We were all new to him. We had to tell him about what had happened, console him about the loss of his ship, and help him adjust all over again to the fact of his hundred-year sleep.
We couldn’t offer him his own memories of our adventures aboard his vessel. Those were lost. I could, however, offer him my memories, streamed back to my archive in our final moments aboard Autolycus, and I did. It was important to me that he should know what his previous incarnation had done, so that he could better understand how we all saw him.
His regrowth and recovery were busy. He made many friends at Rayleigh. Using the Fabric he acquainted himself with how things had changed during his long sleep. He contacted his former employers and saw to his dormant financial accounts.
Eventually, the time came for him to step out among us.
We made the crowd of employees wait outside in the infirmary’s lobby. The only people present in the room with the creche were Jaemon, Angier, Mai, and me, the same people who had been through the ordeal on Autolycus with him.
I popped the seal on the creche and lifted the hatch. I held out my hand and he reached out with one segmented leg and took it. I helped him pull himself free of the pseudamnion bath. I guided him to his feet and daubed at him with a soft towel, reaching out a hand to steady him on his new legs.
“You look a fright, Doc,” said Jaemon, picking up a second towel.
“I feel that way,” he said. “Thank you all for coming.”
“Wouldn’t have missed it, Doc,” said Angier. I looked at him and had to shake my head.
“What?” he said, glaring at me.
“Nothing,” I said, “You’re full of surprises, you know that?”
He glared at me, but he seemed pleased with himself.
Mai barked and jumped forward, lowering her forequarters to the floor of the examination room and wagging her tail fiercely.
“I’m pleased to see you, too, Mai,” said Yaug. “I’m sorry that I don’t remember everything that happened, but I know we shared a remarkable experience. I’m grateful to all of you for being here.”
“Come on, Doc,” said Angier. “Everybody’s here to meet you.”
Yaug paused.
“‘Everybody?’” he said hesitantly.
Jaemon said, “Esgar’s out in the lobby with the whole company.”
“Oh, dear,” said Yaug.
“Don’t worry. They’ve all seen what happened aboard Autolycus, and you’ve met almost all of them already. I won’t lie. You still scare a lot of them, and make the rest queasy.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“But they’re all here because they want to be. Because they know what you did for us, and they want to be here to welcome and support you. We didn’t tell anyone they had to come. We just told them we would be bringing you out to meet anyone who wanted to see you.”
“I—I see. Well, I hope you’re right.”
“Of course I’m right!” Jaemon grinned. “You worry too much!”
Yaug was a little shaky on his new legs, but he regained his footing quickly as we led him out of the room and down the corridor toward the lobby.
Jaemon and Yaug and I stepped through the doors together. The lobby of the infirmary was open to the building’s roof, four floors above us. Its front wall was all windows. It was Callisto’s night. We could see the glory of Jupiter in the black sky, and the faint hexagonal traces of the Port Rayleigh environment shield.
There was an unmistakable gasp as we came through the doors with Yaug skittering along between us, but the gasp quickly changed to a cheer and a round of applause went up. Yaug stood between us, turning this way and that, looking about as shy and bewildered as a giant obsidian spider can look.
I scanned around the crowd, and I could see signs of phobia everywhere. People averted their eyes, covered them with their hands, turned away and back again. No one turned and walked out, though. No one made a threatening gesture or offered a hostile word. I caught Esgar’s eye and he wiped one hand across his forehead in a gesture of relief. Then he grinned and nodded at me.
�
��Thank you, my new friends,” said Yaug, once the noise had quieted down. “I hardly know what to say about this, how to express my gratitude. It’s a hard thing to wake up and realize that everything you knew is gone. But it’s much easier when you have the support of so many new friends.”
Someone in the back raised a cheer and the gathered employees exploded in applause again. There was a slightly desperate note to the celebration. I thought. People were overcompensating a little, but it was all to the good.
Angier had disappeared somewhere, and now he reappeared with a dark bundle under one arm.
“Doc,” he said, “It’s like the XO said, you look a fright.”
The crowd laughed. Doctor Yaug dipped his orb a little.
“I know,” he said. “I’m sorry, I—”
“So we all got together and got you a present.”
“You...a present?” Yaug’s hesitation was comical.
“Take a look!” Angier said. He lifted the bundle and shook it. It unfolded into a big, heavy black blanket. He made to throw it over Yaug, who flinched away from him and lifted his dangling mouth parts. There were some gasps.
“Easy, Doc,” said Angier, flinching back despite himself. “It’s just a blanket. Why not try it on?”
Yaug recovered himself and lowered his orb a little. Angier draped the blanket over him in a single motion, then, with a few tentative tugs at the blanket, centered and adjusted it.
“There,” he said at last. “Problem solved.”
There was a tense hush. Yaug was motionless. Then he rose slowly. He turned this way and that, making the lower edge of the blanket swirl back and forth. He dipped and rose, then glided a bit from side to side.
Finally, with exaggerated good humor, he said, “It’s lovely. You shouldn’t have!”
The whole crowd erupted in nervous laughter and then applause. Someone at the back began a chant of “Yaug! Yaug! Yaug!” and everyone took it up.
“Please,” Yaug said after a moment, “Please, you’re embarrassing me. I’m blushing.”
The crowd laughed at that.
