Ancestral Night

by Elizabeth Bear

  It turned out I needn’t have wasted my time playing liar-by-omission, anyway, because apparently the Ativahika already knew more about Farweather than they’d been letting on. As I found out when the ancient one said to me, And would you send your shipmate to face our justice? The one like you, not the shipmind.

  “I won’t argue that she doesn’t deserve whatever justice you have in mind for her,” I said. “But what do you mean by ‘send’ her?”

  Its catfishy face hung against a night scattered with only a few dim stars. Tendrils and fronds writhed around a long, lipless mouth designed to gnaw water and minerals from space debris, under conditions where water was a stone. It was so close beside our motionless ship that I could have touched it, or nearly, if there had not been windows and the hull in the way. I could not take it all in at once. I could glance at an eye, the fronds, the smoothly shaded aquamarine skin. But it was too big and too close for me to see it as all of a thing.

  We can crush your ship, if you prefer.

  Not exactly my ship, but there are times to split hairs. And times to do something else, instead.

  “I know that,” I said. My stomach felt like it was boiling.

  And yet you protect that creature.

  I didn’t have an answer. “I don’t want to protect her, exactly. She doesn’t need or want my protection, I imagine. But I don’t want to be complicit in her death.”

  Do you think it—she—would protect you?

  I felt it correcting itself, trying to understand the concepts I was expressing and searching its own referents for an analogy. I don’t think it had any idea what he or she or it referred to. Just that they were arbitrary categories of some kind that were important to me, for whatever reason, so it would try to abide by them.

  “No,” I said. “Actually, I’m confident that she’d hang me out a window the second you asked, if our positions were reversed.”

  You did not lie for it.

  “I did not.” I guess it could tell if I was being truthful, after all.

  It’s always a good idea to play it safe when you can. Well, unless you’re Connla. He has—had?—a knack for getting away with things.

  Hope was a terrible thing, I reminded myself. I could not afford to feel it.

  You did not volunteer information either.

  “I was pretty sure that if I did tell you—I mean, you, the Ativahika—everything I knew about Farweather, well. You lot would probably insist on me dragging her to an airlock and turning her over to you, space suit or no space suit, and I didn’t really want to be a party to that.”

  Why does it not speak for itself?

  I looked over at Farweather. Her eyes were dilated, and she had dropped down to a crouch, resting her palms against the deck.

  I said, “Perhaps she does not know what to say.”

  There was a fairly long silence then. Well, obviously, the Ativahika’s entire part of the conversation was silent because it was in my head. But it stopped . . . speaking? Sending impressions? And I fell still.

  Inside the ship I could hear the tick of metal, the sounds that temperature control and life support made, the shuffle of Farweather’s foot. Outside there was silence, as there is and has been and always should be. The perfect silence of the spheres.

  I wanted her punished. But I didn’t think it was my place to be judge and jury and all of Justice, to pass sentence on her and hand her over to alien laws. It was petty and unworthy of me, but I wished suddenly that she would just turn herself over to them and save me all the bother and the damned wrestling with my damned ethics.

  And . . . that also would have involved me dragging her to the airlock, and I was trying to avoid killing anybody todia. Out of cowardice or queasiness, probably, because it wasn’t as if she didn’t deserve a good airlocking, and my fox was still turned off, but I still couldn’t quite bring myself to frog-march her down there and kick her out the door into space for the Ativahika to do whatever Ativahika do to alien murderers.

  I was a damned piece of work my own self, wasn’t I?

  The ancient one had been silent for a long time, and I was finding it really unsettling. My palms itched. I couldn’t hear Farweather shifting anymore, or even breathing, but I also hadn’t heard her run out or collapse to the floor and Singer hadn’t said anything to warn me, so I figured she was still frozen in the same place. There was enough light outside now—the bioluminescence of the Ativahika—that picking out her reflection behind me had gotten challenging.

  Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I had counted on Singer to watch my back.

  You will seek your own kind’s justice upon her.

  Now I really wanted to glance over at her. To wink, as if to reassure her. But I knew that wink would be a lie, and I knew the Ativahika would know it.

  It’s curiously impossible to contemplate an outright lie, even to a third party, with a wise, weird face of a truth-detecting alien hanging over you.

  I sighed in self-disgust and said, “I am. I mean, I am doing that. As much as is in my power. Yes.”

  Singer was so quiet I wondered if he’d crashed. I heard Farweather’s intake of breath, though. Fight-or-flight reflex, preparing herself to run.

  Then you have made pact with us. See that this justice is served, and with you we have no further quarrel.

  “You’re just going to let us go?”

  It didn’t echo my sigh, of course, since its respiration was an entirely internal exchange between it and its blue-green algae symbiotes. But I still got a sense of parental weariness across our connection. You and the other intelligence on your ship are innocent. I will not destroy two innocents to punish one guilty one. That would not be justice. That would merely be blood.

  That was the moment when Singer’s silence was explained. He must have finished his check on my fox, because my emotional regulation suddenly came online.

  I reeled. Warn a girl! I snapped, reflexively—

  —and wonder of wonders, Singer heard me. Sorry, he said. I wasn’t sure of that working.

  Well, it worked all right, I suppose. And now I’m on the floor, and where is Farweather?

  I shoved to my hands and my knees, though that was as far as I felt safe going. Everything whirled, as if I had just gotten off a spinning trajectory or punctured an eardrum in a sudden pressure drop.

  Haimey, get up! Singer yelled.

  CHAPTER 24

  READER, I TRIED.

  I shoved at the deck, hard enough that if we had been under microgravity I would have launched myself. But there was the problem: a lifetime of limited exposure to g-forces and my own reflexes betrayed me.

  I levered myself right off the floor and right into the arc of Farweather’s weapon. It struck me with full force and follow-through. She’d been aiming to do murder.

  The good news was that because Singer had yelled, and I had shoved myself upright, it hit me squarely between the shoulder blades and not on the occiput. The bad news was that when that’s your good news, you’d better be prepared to be a hurting unit.

  I sprawled back down to the deck, breath whooping out of me, this time with no intention of moving. If Singer bellowed another warning, I might just let that pirate asshole kill me.

  She didn’t take another swing, though. The next thing I heard, other than the sound of my own agonized exhalation, was the thumping of her feet on the deck plates as she legged it for the hatch. She must have still been able to override Singer on some things, too, because she got through it.

  “What did she hit me with?” I wheezed eventually.

  “The wrench,” Singer said resignedly. “The one you clipped to the chain earlier.”

  “Of course she did,” I answered. “Fuck. I guess I was distracted.”

  I lay there for a little while. When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see the Ativahikas were still outside, and still performing their firefly dances.

  One more thing, said the ancient one. Those anomalies you noticed. The ‘pinpricks i
n the universe.’ I see the memory within you.

  I saw it too, the image called up either by association or by the Ativahika manipulating my visual cortex somehow. Back when I’d first started exploring my new senses. I’d thought it had looked like a kitten had left claw holes in some fabric shading a light source.

  You should follow them.

  I gritted my teeth and managed to squeeze out a few more words. “I beg your pardon?”

  Someone on the other end requires your help, it said.

  “But I don’t know how to get there! I don’t know how to follow them!”

  I can see the coordinates in your mind, the Ativahika said peaceably. We presume one of you fragile ones must have derived them from a map in a probe left behind by the Before. We have found such objects in our wanderings.

  I tried to push myself into a crouch. The world went a little swirly. I don’t understand what you mean, my systers—

  The Ativahika eddied and churned, their unceasing dance altering and opening. Like children playing follow-the-leader in a zero-g park, they made a sudden flocking whirlpool, and then the whole parliament of them streamed away in a fluid formation. The ancient one remained behind a moment more, its eyes still on me.

  Remember your commitment, it said.

  But then, with a flash of its filaments like an old queen swirling a ragged cloak that had once been fine, it too whirled and was gone.

  I shoved myself up. This time I didn’t fall over. I regretted it, but at least I had a better view of the departing Ativahikas.

  “Like I could forget!” I yelled after it.

  “I overheard that last bit,” Singer said. “What are you going to do now?”

  I sighed. “Bring Farweather to custody, I suppose.”

  “If you can catch her.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Singer,” I said, and eased myself back down onto the deck plates to wait for the universe to stop spinning. A futile hope; it’s been whirling around out there for a very long time, and as far as I know, nobody really expects it to stop doing so anytime soon.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I was lucky my skull wasn’t shattered. I was equally lucky my spine seemed to be intact, because this far from decent medical attention, that was nearly as likely to serve as a fatal injury, no matter what sort of clever things the clever people at Core General could do with stem cells and grafts and spliced or replicated DNA these diar.

  I was also winded, sore, bruised, befuddled, and angry. Angry mostly at myself, because I was the idiot who had left Farweather in possession of that wrench. Which sounds like a euphemism, but in this case was just an honest appraisal of my own somewhat crucial capacity for error.

  Singer fiddled with that anger a little. I felt it start to drain away and said, “No, leave me alone.”

  “Are you thinking clearly?”

  It was a fair question, and I had to consider it. But the thing was, my thought process felt absolutely crystalline. I was so mad that I had gone through it and come right back out the other side of muddled thinking into a kind of clarity I was pretty sure I had never experienced before.

  “I think I’m fine,” I told him, and set about assessing how much damage had been done. “How come you didn’t catch her on the way out the door?”

  “Oh.” A pause, either because he was assessing or because he thought that pausing would reveal his embarrassment. Possibly both. “Well, my control over the ship’s functions and sensors is . . . not entirely complete. Yet.”

  “Of course not.”

  “I’m working on it.”

  I sat on the floor and stretched myself upright. “Can you at least locate her?”

  “Unfortunately, she appears to be employing countermeasures.”

  “Well, that’s ideal.”

  Although really, considering the state of my back, I didn’t think I had lot of latitude for criticism.

  “Do you have her locked out of your systems?”

  “Tight as I can make them. She might try sabotage.”

  “Lock her out of all the places I have gear stored, too, if you can.” I thought about role reversal for a moment, and how we’d swapped places since we came on board. Now I had her stuff, and she was hiding out and would probably be eating algae as soon as she found the algae tanks.

  I wasn’t going to go pursuing her through the blind alleys of this very large ship, however. I had her weapons . . . but she had a wrench. And was, pretty obviously, the much more skilled fighter of the two of us, for all I’d gotten the drop on her the first time.

  “Just get us moving back toward the Core as soon as you can, please? I want to make contact with the Interceptor, also. I’m available for wrench and blowtorch work whenever you need it. Assuming we can find another wrench, I mean.”

  I went back to stretching.

  A few moments passed while I mused on security and how to keep Farweather from repirating the ship Singer and I—with help from the Ativahikas—had just depirated.

  “Haimey,” Singer said, somewhat hesitantly.

  “Deep time, what is it now?” I had lain down on my face and was trying a few cobra stretches to loosen my spasming, brutalized muscles.

  “I hate to break this to you now. But apparently, we have company.”

  As I levered myself upright, I groaned. My first few steps were stumbling torture. By the time I reached the windows, though, I was loosening up just a little. I used the frame to push myself up straight and heard my spine pop.

  Where the Ativahika had vanished, we could see the outline of the Synarche Interceptor that had been stopped inside our white rings. There was a sparkling bubble of a shuttlecraft detaching itself from the Interceptor and moving toward us.

  “If we’re lucky, that might be the cavalry. I’ve still got questions about how they found us and matched our bubble in white space, though. How’d they know when to stop?”

  “They must have been following our white space scar.”

  “At speed? Is that possible?”

  “Well, you sensed them back there. So I’d say it’s possible and probable both, since the hypothesis fits the facts as we’re aware of them,” Singer said. “I mean, based on the part where we’re here. And so are they.”

  It was probably time to admit he had me beat. “All right. Possibly Justice has tech they don’t share,” I agreed. “Singer, do you have any idea what the remaining range of this vessel is? How are we doing for food and stores?”

  “There’s a lot of room in here,” he said. “In this ship’s computing core, I mean. And plenty of supplies, if I’m reading this manifest right. But I’m afraid I can’t support making a run for it to elude a duly appointed governmental representative of the Synarche authority, Haimey,” Singer said.

  His tone was dry. I snorted in appreciation. “Actually, I was wondering how much help we need to ask for in order to get home.”

  “That’s an interesting question,” he responded. “Because this ship seems to be violating the laws of physics as currently conceived, at least where it comes to energy consumption. It’s impossibly efficient, and we seem to have enough left for a few laps around the Milky Way.”

  “I guess we can still learn a few things from the Koregoi engineers.”

  “We’re in quite good shape, unless I’m missing something.”

  “Can you figure out how to hail that Synarche ship?”

  “Hailing,” he answered. Whatever he was saying must have been working, because they weren’t training their fairly impressive suite of weapons on us.

  Because Singer multitasked pretty well even back in his old, smaller digs, I didn’t scruple to ask, “I had a paper book, on your old hull.”

  “Wilson,” he said. “Was it important?”

  I told him about the numbers. The possibility that it might have been a book code.

  He asked, “Do you remember the numbers? Your fox—”

  “I know,” I said. He’d rebooted it, but the old machine memories
were gone, wiped. It was as smooth and clean and new as an infant right out of the tank farms. “I remember them.”

  “How?”

  I grinned. “Koregoi senso. They seemed like they might be important, so I encoded them in a microgravitic function in the structure of the Prize’s hull.”

  If he were a human, I think he would have been gawping at me. “That’s brilliant.”

  I shrugged. “If I didn’t live, I figured my corpse had very little chance of making it to a download station, so—”

  I sighed.

  “But we don’t have the book.”

  “Oh, that,” Singer said. “Um.”

  “Singer?”

  “I scanned it,” he admitted.

  “You what?”

  “I couldn’t help myself,” he said. “It was novel data!”

  I stopped.

  He stopped.

  “Gautama and nine little bodhisattvas on a tricycle,” I said. “Who taught you to pun like that?”

  “Welcome home, Haimey,” he said.

  ♦ ♦ ♦

  I made sure I hadn’t left anything interesting lying around, and started back toward the cabin where Farweather had been bunking. All the food and tools where there, and I didn’t really want to leave it unguarded. With luck, though, maybe I could use some of the constables who were likely to be staffing that Interceptor to help me quarter the ship, and take Farweather into custody.

  That would be great! Promise to the Ativahika kept!

  Except they were likely to take me into custody too. Well, you couldn’t have everything.

  In the meantime, I could get started cracking that book code.

  “Haimey,” Singer said cautiously, as I was trying to figure out some means of dogging the hatch behind me. If it were a normal, Synarche metal door, I would even have considered spot-welding it to keep Farweather out, on the theory that I could always break the weld later. Or maybe settled for just barring it with a piece of alien equipment of questionable provenance.