Crossways (61 page)

*Where have you been?*
Gen was practically screaming when Cara brought them all into the link.

*Searching the Folds,*
Ben said.

*For fifty-six hours? I thought you were lost.*

*Thirty-seven minutes and forty seconds,*
Hilde said.

Ben worked it out, a ratio of one to a hundred and ten. “I've never been in the Folds for nearly forty minutes before.” Except maybe when he'd had that first head-to-head with the void dragon, and he hadn't been counting then.

*Is everyone all right?*
Gen asked.

*Take it easy,*
Max chipped in.
*It was hardly any time at all for us. I'm sorry you were worried. We were fine.*

*Not even a void dragon,*
Ben said.
*Which, in retrospect, is odd. We'll take a break, then try again.*

*Call as you set off and as soon as you get back out. Now, can I talk to Max alone?*

*Sure.*
Ben pulled out of the conversation and felt Hilde do the same.

Ben waited until Max and Gen had finished and Cara had closed the link. “Sleep first,” he said, “then we try again.”

They tried again and again, each time with the same disappointing result and each time losing between one and four days in foldspace, depending on elapsed subjective time, but Ben wouldn't give up.

“We haven't seen the otter-things or the void dragon since we began,” Ben said after the eighth try in what was four days to them, but twenty-four days in elapsed time. “Given the frequency of its appearance previously, how unlikely is that?”

“Perhaps it's simply lost interest,” Cara said.

“Maybe, or maybe it didn't like being asked to help.”

“You asked it to help?” Lowenbrun said. “How did you do that?”

“Asked might be too strong a word,” Ben said. “It's so alien that there's no real common ground, but it does have a little common language, mind-to-mind. It's curious about us. I wish I understood why.”

“If it's so alien, how come it looks like one of our mythical nightmares?”

“Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't,” Cara said. “Is that how it manifests because it picked up some deep-seated human fear during an early encounter?”

Ben shrugged. “We don't even know whether the big one is the same being every time we see it, or whether it's an avatar of some strange interdimensional intelligence. Whatever it is, we need to attract its attention. It showed me an image of a ship entering and leaving the Folds. If it can recognize ships passing through, surely it can identify ones that enter and never leave again.”

“And how do you propose we attract its attention?” Cara asked. “Wave at it through the window?”

“Almost. Next time we go in I'm going to take a walk outside in the Folds.”

“And what, precisely, would you like us to inscribe on your memorial stone?”

He saw the look on her face. “All suited up, of course.”

In truth he didn't know whether the suit would make a difference. As if to remind him what happened last time, his wrist began to ache as it had done intermittently since he'd ditched the case and begun exercising it.

“If you're going outside, I'm coming with you,” Cara said.

He swallowed the kneejerk refusal and bit down hard on his back teeth. Her decision. She was as capable as he was.

She nodded as if she'd known what his first reaction would be and was pleased he'd overridden it.

Cara suited up in
Solar Wind
's locker room, carefully checking all the seals, connecting her buddysuit into the EVA suit's circuitry and running through all the standard procedures. She felt heavy and stiff in normal gravity.

*It doesn't matter how many times I do this, it still gives
me the shivers,*
she said privately as Hilde double-checked everything from the outside and gave her a thumbs-up.

*Don't tell him that.*
Hilde jerked her head in Ben's direction.
*I've seen that look in his eyes. Save me from overprotective people who want to save me.*
She grinned.

*Gwala?*
Cara let her eyes rest on the big merc who was checking Ben's suit.

*No. Gwala would let me storm the gates of hell, though I guess he'd be right behind me if I asked him. Manny and I go way back. It's my mom.*

Somehow Cara had never considered that Hilde might still have a mother around to fuss over her. She was glad the suit helmet covered up her surprise.

*Mom was a captain in the Militaire before she met my dad, but somehow she figured she'd be able to turn me into a society miss. Didn't work.*

*Good practice for when you need to dress up.*
Cara remembered how natural Hilde had looked in expensive, well-cut clothes.

*I clean up well.*
Hilde laughed and drew Gwala's attention.

“You talking about me?”

“Don't flatter yourself.”

*Ready?*
Ben asked.

*Ready,*
Cara confirmed.

*Prepare for transit,*
Jake said from the flight deck.

*Good luck,*
Max added.

Cara and Ben grabbed handholds while Hilde and Gwala clipped their own harnesses to safety loops on the wall.

Solar Wind
transits into the Folds.

Cara sees Hilde pull at her earlobe as if the cabin pressure has changed, but insulated by the suit she feels nothing.

Gwala opens the internal air lock hatch and Hilde clips a line onto each one of them, then she secures a second shorter line between them.
*Don't stay out too late, kids.*

The air lock closes behind them and begins to cycle.

When the air lock opens, Cara feels her jaw drop. Black and starless, the Folds assault her optic nerves with every color
at once, like the iridescence on a crow's feather. It's not exactly like seeing, not at first. Gradually her brain gets used to it. There's an aurora hanging above them, below them, and all around them, but instead of curtains of light, it's curtains of darkness.

*It's . . . beautiful. Breathtaking,*
she tells Ben.

*What can you see?*

*Colors, all of them black. An aurora, black again.*

*You can't see the void dragon?*

*No, can you?*

*Link closer. See what I see.*

Cara gasps and jerks backward into the protection of her helmet. The void dragon, or a void dragon, is up close, its eye on a level with Ben's faceplate. It looks at her. Recognition. It doesn't use words, but its meaning is clear.

*I know you, too,*
she responds.

That seems to please it.

Ben puts the thought of the ark uppermost in his mind as a picture and a question. Cara reinforces it.
*Lost,*
Ben says.
*Find.*

The void dragon produces an image of Ben's family farm on Chenon and for a brief instant ceases to be a dragon and becomes a giant cow.

“I guess that tells us a lot about what these guys look like, or rather what they don't look like,” Ben says over the suit comm. “They're appearing as something they think we might recognize. Or it is. I'm still not sure if we're dealing with one or many.”

*No, they haven't gone home,*
Ben says.
*They're still here, somewhere.*
He pictures the ark, pot-bellied, hanging against the black of foldspace, unmoving.

This time the void creature pictures it back at him.

Agreement.

There's a shift and suddenly
Solar Wind
vanishes to black nothingness. Below them, hanging in foldspace, is a different ship.

*Cara!*

*Yes. I'm okay.*
Cara feels the tug on the line that still couples her to Ben.
*
Solar Wind
?*

*Gone.*

*Gone where?*

*You tell me.*

*Is that the ark?*

*Same bulbous belly shape but . . . might be a trick of perspective . . . I think it's smaller.*

Cara reaches out to the
Solar Wind
's crew.
*Can you hear me?*

*Gods and little fishes! Where the hell are you guys?*
Lowenbrun answers first.
*You fucking disappeared!*

*Good question, but we've found a ship, or rather our guide has. He's skipped town, though, so we're on our own. Max, can you get a fix on us?*

*I don't think . . . Yes, I can. It's a bit wobbly but it's there.*

*Share it with Lowenbrun, see if he can follow your lead.*

*I . . . Owww! Ease off, Jake. That's my head.*

*Sorry, bro. Yeah, okay, got it. Not sure how long this will take. Are you going to board the ship?*

*Are we?*
Cara asks Ben.

*Well, we don't seem to have anywhere else to go right now.*

*True.*

Ben uses the jet pack on his suit and tows Cara, as there's no sense in wasting propellant. As they approach the ship it becomes obvious that this is not their ark, but rather a cargo vessel. The shape is similar, but it's tiny in comparison.

*There might be someone alive on board,*
Cara says.

*Or it might have been here a hundred years or more.*

Ben reaches for the emergency activation on the upper access hatch set just behind the forward crew compartment. It's likely that the cargo hold will be depressurized, since there's no reason for the flight crew to access it in transit.

The seal pops and the hatch cover opens outward. The air lock is only big enough for one at a time, so Ben goes first and reopens the hatch for Cara with the shipboard controls once the air lock has cycled.

Emergency lighting partly illuminates the narrow corridor.

“Breathable air?” Cara asks.

“No. Still partial pressure, but it's mostly nitrogen. There's not enough oxygen and it's cold as the grave. How long has she been here, I wonder?”