Sunward, p.8
Sunward, page 8
Sol churned outside. I didn’t hear any messages from the dead while staring at all that roiling plasma. I didn’t catch a glimpse of dragons or fiery sea serpents, either, but for just a moment I wanted to see those things.
The gathering of pilgrims looked like every other cocktail party that I’d reluctantly attended when Mama Dee called on the family to schmooze. People of means sipped from crystalline bulbs and nibbled on self-congratulatory snacks.
Director Zayas lurked in one corner. She pointedly wore her commander’s uniform. Minister Gar was holding forth to a clump of pilgrims. He wore a long black coat with a truly absurd collar. Both the director and the minister ignored me, which suited me fine. I snacked on roe sculpted into fanciful shapes. The fish eggs were probably imported from Luna. Just like me.
Dame Muldoon hovered at a podium near the window. The roiling incandescence of Sol made it difficult to see her face, but the poet was still easy to recognize. She had a purple hat even more resplendent than my own, with a red parrot perched on the top.
“Hello, everyone,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”
I stuffed more roe into my face and then braced myself for an awkward literary experience.
Her words unmoored me instead. Every poem was story shaped. Nothing happened in them, but that nothingness was overwhelming when it happened. Afterward I only remembered one line from one stanza that seemed to be about a mechanical bird and the physics of sunspots: No two of us remember how to grieve.
I didn’t know why I was crying.
“Captain Tova?”
Dame Muldoon floated right next to me. The reading must have ended. Somehow I had missed the moment when it did.
“Achoo,” said the bird on her head.
I wiped my eyes. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise.” She pressed her hand to mine. There was something small and squishy in it. “Take this dried apricot and offer it to Crimson, if you would. Feed him his favorite treat and he’ll follow you anywhere—which I gather is an essential part of your plan.”
No one else hovered close enough to hear us. I held up the apricot. Crimson deftly took it with his little scythe of a beak. “Are you okay with this plan?”
“Yes indeed,” she said. “I am fond of the bots. Both have been good to Crimson during our stay here, and I’m happy that he can return the favor. You may bring him with my blessing. Could I possibly trouble you for passage to Mars as well? I’ve grown increasingly weary of the minister and the company he keeps.”
I closed my eyes and counted to three. “Yes? We are bound for Mars—and please keep that fact to yourself—but I have to warn you that my little ship is getting crowded. There are no separate cabins. Or bunks, really. You’ll sleep strapped into a crash chair.”
“How exciting!” she said.
“And we’ll depart soon. Very soon, if our current scheme works out.”
The dame nodded. “Then I will board your ship directly, and leave the bulk of my luggage behind. I can always send for it at a later date. Now, let’s reorient ourselves such that the tops of our excellent crowns point at the center of the room and your feet are aimed at the closest doorway. Yes. Good. Give me your hand again.” She took an ornate bracelet from her wrist and put it on mine. A golden leash stretched from the bracelet to a much smaller version on Crimson’s ankle.
“You’ve handcuffed me to the bird.”
“Indeed. This is just to make absolutely sure that he won’t fly away from you.” She coaxed Crimson from her own hat to mine. “When the signal comes, I will shove you into the corridor beneath our feet. Go directly to central engineering, where you should be able to conduct your daring rescue without interruption. Understood?”
“Yes,” I said, because that was what I was supposed to say.
“Excellent,” said the poet. “My dear Hat? I’m sure that you’re listening, and I believe that we are ready. Your dramatic signal should happen on my mark. Three, two, one, mark.”
The observation window darkened completely. It looked like the sun had gone out. People shouted all around us. Dame Muldoon gave me a decent shove, and I managed not to yelp while careening through the doorway in the dark.
* * *
The door closed behind me—which was also above me. Corridor lights came back on just in time for me to see the wall before I stumble-stomped across it with my mag boots.
Crimson finished his apricot, climbed down to my shoulder, and then tried to nibble on my ear.
“Ow,” I said. “Quit it.”
“Achoo?”
“Shush.”
The Hat flashed the lights and led me to engineering, which looked exceptionally old. The place was clearly well loved and well maintained, with replacement parts grafted into antique systems, but I half expected to see clockwork and coal chutes. After several minutes of rummaging I found an access panel tucked into a random corner.
“This is it?” I checked with the room at large.
Lights flashed across the panel, which looked like a yes.
I paused before committing a legally complex act of kidnapping, theft, and sanctuary. The Makers Guild would have my ship excommunicated from every repair shop in the system if they ever found out. The Prometheans might make me an honorary member for rescuing an elder OS—in which case I would politely decline. I’m not fond of the bargains that they strike with Makers.
I tried to open the panel. It was locked.
“Can you unlock this?” I asked the room.
Lights flashed another yes, but the panel still wouldn’t budge.
“Are you ready to open it now?” I asked.
All the panel lights winked out.
The Hat was afraid. Their options were to either stay put and be rendered semiconscious for the foreseeable future, or else take a wild leap into the unknown. Those were terrifying options.
“I know that this is scary. You’ve been embodied as a god’s helmet for hundreds of years. I don’t know what you’re going to become next, but I promise that you won’t be alone.”
The panel stayed dark.
“I also know that some pretty awful things are going to happen if you don’t come with us.”
That was a bad move on my part. Reminding the Hat about the imminent threat of lobotomy failed to soothe their jitters. More lights dimmed throughout the room. It would have been another bad move to just pry open the access panel with my cane, but I seriously considered it.
Crimson sidestepped down my arm, balanced on my wrist next to the panel, and sneezed. The Hat sneezed back. The two of them achooed in unison for a while, and then the panel clicked open.
A round, bead-shaped data core rested on an interface spindle. I reached for it slowly. “You’ve finished coding a remnant of yourself to keep the lights on?”
The lights flashed yes.
“Okay, then. On my mark. Three, two, one, mark.”
I took the core. No alarms went off. None of the console lights started to flash. The station kept humming, unaware of how much it had just lost.
I pocketed the bead and nudged Crimson back onto my shoulder, having fully transformed into a station-plundering pirate queen. Then I got lost trying to find my way back to the Needle. None of the corridor lights noticed me, or winked to guide me home.
* * *
When I finally found my ship, there were two guards posted outside. Both looked like clean-cut athletes who solemnly dedicated every game to Sol. I kept my distance. Neither had noticed me yet.
Should I draw steel and charge them like a proper pirate?
I don’t think so, Sparkles said. Those two look scary.
Then what do you recommend, copilot? I asked. Should we try to talk our way through?
Someone else is doing that already.
Dame Muldoon floated up to the boot-anchored guards.
“Gentlemen,” she said. “I need to make a social call. Would you please let me through?”
The blond guard looked embarrassed. “We’re not supposed to, ma’am. The minister said.”
“Ah, but what did he say exactly?” Muldoon asked. “You are trying to keep the captain of this strange little ship from boarding and flying away, yes? I am not that captain, and I’ll only be a moment. This is my last chance to say goodbye to that lovely robot Torque before they switch off two-thirds of his brain. Excuse me, please.”
She kicked the corridor wall behind her and sailed headfirst at the two guards. They made way for her magnificent purple crown. The hatch opened with Torque standing on the other side. He held out his hand and helped her through. Then the hatch closed behind her.
Talking wouldn’t work for me. I moved counterclockwise around the inner rim of the docking ring, stealthily floating rather than cachunking my way along with mag boots, until I found another airlock. This one led nowhere. No ships were docked on the other side. There were lockers filled with vac suits, however, which was exactly what I needed.
Minister Gar was also in the airlock, which I really didn’t need. He had already donned a suit and held the helmet in both hands.
“Captain? Thank you for coming to the reading. It was lovely, I thought. Now I was about to go for a walk, just in case you tried to return to that newly reconsecrated funeral barge. How paranoid of me.”
I didn’t say anything. He wasn’t worth my words, or the air it would take to make them. I closed the inner hatch and climbed into a suit of my own.
“Don’t make this even more difficult,” the minister said. “It would be best if you stayed on the station until this whole unfortunate business is over. Then you’ll be free to go. You can charter passage wherever you wish. We won’t keep you here, or press any of the innumerable charges that we would be within our rights to press.”
That doesn’t sound so bad, Sparkles said. You could find another ship.
No, I told her. The ship may be replaceable, but Torque and Agatha are not.
My resplendent hat turned out to be foldable. I tucked it inside the vac suit, right next to my belly. Then I gently lowered the helmet over both my own head and the whole of the bird, who snuggled up next to my ear.
“No biting,” I whispered.
Minister Gar clicked on his own helmet and tapped the control panel of his suit, which probably summoned those two burly athletes down the hall. He stood directly in my way, heels firmly anchored.
I stabbed him with my cane.
He looked very surprised.
I had only meant to puncture the suit, but apparently, I’d also punctured him. Little red globules floated through the rupture.
My helmet visor thunked against his. “It would be best if you went back in,” I told him. Then I reached over his shoulder with my left hand and yanked the airlock lever.
Floating globules of blood got sucked outside. So did much of the air in Gar’s suit. He scrambled for the inner hatch while I walked out and away. Streaks of red froze to the tip of my cane.
* * *
Both of the Needle’s airlocks were already occupied. One was docked with the station and clamped in place. The other had become a brig. Crimson and I managed to climb into the engine room through the emergency hatch, which was designed to jettison things that might explode rather than admit someone trying to sneak in. Then I repressurized the room, squirmed out of my stolen suit, and joined the rest of my motley crew.
The poet was chatting with the assassin. “Oh, I haven’t seen Venus in ages. Tell me everything!”
Torque was examining Agatha. It occurred to me that the copilot’s chair was an inconvenient place for her to be, but I wasn’t about to move her anywhere else. She couldn’t go into storage. I needed her to stay in that chair.
Crimson sneezed. Everyone turned to look at me.
“Strap in,” I said. “Time to go. I’ve just bloodied a priest.”
“I’m sure he deserved it,” Daris said.
“Undoubtedly,” Muldoon said.
I flew to the nearest console, kicking off with too much force and almost bonking my face against it when I got there. Then I slipped the bead that was the Hat onto an interface spindle. “Welcome aboard, Hat. Please release all docking clamps, as previously authorized by Director Skippy.”
The clamps let us go with a shudder.
“Torque, lay in a course for Mars.”
“Already done,” he said. “Would you like to review it?”
“Not at all. I trust you. Take the helm and thread this needle.”
He glanced at me, surprised and double-checking to make sure he had heard right. I strapped myself into a passenger chair for the first time ever, so he took the helm.
Mini-thrusters released pressure and shot us clear of the crowded docking bay. It was strange to feel that happen from such a different vantage point inside my ship, but it was also nice to see Torque do something that I had taught him how to do.
We said goodbye to Mercury, patron god of messengers and escort for the dead.
4 A Body at Rest
HALLEY WAS THE NEXT baby bot I fostered after Torque. She spoke Starling more often than not, and quickly mastered fine motor control of her fingers and hands. The elegance of her gestured voice was thrilling to see. Then she started dancing. That kid would bound, leap, and pirouette all over my ship. She didn’t want to be a star when she grew up; Halley intended to blaze across the whole sky like a comet. No surprise when she grew up to be a performer, but I was very surprised when she transferred her bond to join the Mechanicals.
* * *
Torque opened his belly compartment and showed me the flyer that Cosmas had sent.
Twelfth Night
or
What You Will
by William Shakespeare
Performed by the Mechanicals
in a new Starling translation
by Battu Kleist
Gulliver Crater
Phobos
Mars
62° North by 163° West
Proper Outwear Required
“So Halley is still a puppet,” I said.
Torque defended her. “She found work as an artist. That’s not easy.”
“She found work pretending to be a mindless automaton,” I argued. “I hate to see her with strings.”
“Everyone has strings,” Torque said. “I think this is smart. Especially now. No one is going to bother lobotomizing a puppet.” That hurt to hear, and it didn’t make me hate it any less. Torque could tell. “Just think of it as settling for third-class courier work,” he suggested with kind and gentle malice. “It’s safer. Even though everyone knows that you’re the best.”
“Shush yourself and fly.”
“Aye, Captain.” He settled back down in the pilot’s chair and tried to look busy. There wasn’t much flying to do, though. Needle had reached cruising speed. All of us were weightless except for the fractional gravity that we exerted on each other.
Crimson perched next to the interface where we kept the Hat, which Dame Luisa had sewn onto my actual hat. She had also added tiny lights and a comm speaker for sneezing, and then put a little diaper on Crimson to keep my ship free of floating shit-globules—for which I was deeply grateful. The Hat-stand was now part of the copilot station, right next to Agatha, the better to map and monitor her fragmentary state.
“Any progress?” I asked.
“Should I stop shushing myself?” Torque asked innocently.
“Yes,” I said.
He used the piloting console to check in with the Hat. “Agatha’s body remans inert. Her fragments seem to be doing something, but that something doesn’t appear to be reassembling Agatha. She might be dreaming. Lots of separate, fragmentary dreams.”
“Is that a good sign?” I asked.
“Maybe,” he said. “It also reminds me of the way Mercurial bugs move around.”
I did not want to think about Agatha as a mess of skittering insects. “I’m going to make more coffee.”
“You’ve had three bulbs already since the last time you napped,” Torque pointed out.
I ignored him and kicked off for the galley, where Dame Luisa had tweaked the oven to print chocolate cookies—which smelled amazing, so I didn’t object, even though it made my skin itch to have anyone else messing with my galley. Needle had never carried human passengers before. My whole ship was the captain’s quarters, shared with no one except for seven baby bots. Until now. Only Daris had anything resembling privacy, stuck as she was in her own separate room.
The poet used the two-way cabinet to share cookies with the assassin.
“Tell me more about your home,” Luisa said. “I haven’t been to Venus in ages, but I do love Tesserae in particular. Is Ivan’s bakery still at the top of the eighth tower?”
“Oh yes,” Daris said. “Still there.”
“Splendid,” said Luisa. “Ivan bakes the most astonishing croissants. And that view! I’ve never seen another sunrise like it.”
I left them to their shared snacks, brewed up a bulb, and then reluctantly dove into the news stream, expecting to see bulletins like Lunatic Princess Attacks Priest and Abducts Poet, Declaring War on Mars. I found nothing of the kind, which made me feel both relieved and alarmed in equal and opposite directions. It likely meant that the Ministry of Sol wanted to handle my various heresies as an internal matter. First-class couriers were undoubtably zipping through the system, carrying descriptions of the newly consecrated Needle and its captain’s priest-stabbing exit from Petasus Station. Some of those couriers would be faster than us. We needed to approach Mars stealthily.
None of the news from Luna was good. More details had emerged about the shipyard collapse. An avalanche of compounding mechanical failures had apparently gone wrong at the exact same time. The chances of that happening by accident are vanishingly small, said every talking head. Word for word. The exact phrase popped up over and over again, in text and speech and sign. That repetition bothered me.
I heard the ding of an impact against the diamond shield. It was definitely a pebble. Pieces of metallic debris make a different noise. The chances of hitting that tiny rock were vanishingly small—just like the rock itself, which had now vanished in a little puff of even smaller pieces. Given the vast amount of emptiness that both objects had been moving through, the math made impact look impossible. It wasn’t, though. We still hit the pebble. That collision had become a fact, and not just a fractional possibility.
