Entangled (8 page)

Cade ran her fingers across the frets and over the strings. Tightened a peg. Touched the hollow body.

Parting with Cherry-Red would be the worst thing Cade had to do since she decided to leave Andana. It would be harder than making nice with the spacesicks. It would hurt more than pulling her own teeth. That guitar was the one thing that had kept her from losing herself in the wilds of the Noise. If she wanted to find Xan, she had to leave it behind.

Far above her head, a chip of the spaceport's glass dome opened up into the dark. The ship—Renna—blinked all of her little black eyes open.

Cade snapped the case shut. Opened it again. Took in that deep red like a drink. No. Like a blood transfusion.

A scream reached across the spaceport and found Cade. The sort of wild scream that went straight past the higher functions of her brain and buried itself in the ancient parts.

Had the Unmakers caught up? Would they attack her? Here?

Cade's body was a chant.

Heart, muscle, blood.

No, no, no.

And she started transmitting to Xan without meaning to. It was the second time that had happened. When her emotions ramped up and her heart ran fast and tight, the connection snapped on—like a built-in failsafe. Cade sent everything she was feeling, thinking, seeing, straight to him.

She ran up the walkway. The scream died down and she was a step from the door, thinking the sound had been some mistake, thinking she had made it.

A hand clamped tight over her mouth, and another slid around her waist. Three more arms on her, in different places. Over a shoulder, around a thigh. Then she heard the voice, thick and slurping.

“You can't leave, girlie. You'd miss me too much.”

 

 

CHAPTER 6

ENTANGLED QUANTUM SYSTEMS: Cannot be fully described without considering both systems

Cade put an elbow to Mr. Smithjoneswhite's soft middle. A few of his hands trickled off like dirty water, but he stuffed a set of fingers into her mouth just as she was about to call for Lee. Pain shot from the root of Cade's gone-tooth and came out as the crudest form of sound. Mr. Smithjoneswhite's hand soaked up the screams.

“This is a nice skin,” he said, breathing warm down the neck of her Saea outfit. “You look almost like a woman. Doesn't matter to me what flavor so long as it's not human.” More fingers on her. More breath. “Too bad I know the truth. One scream from you and everyone in the spaceport will know it, too.”

Cade bit his hand and when he snatched it back, her teeth went into her own lip—puffed it up with the bright taste of blood.

“You won't do that,” Cade said. “Get me arrested. You want me to come back to the club.” She'd figured it out by this point. He must have put a tracer on her, or had one of the bouncers do it, or the bartender.

“It's cute, girlie, watching you try to figure me out. Maybe I just want to see you pinned for breach of contract.”

Cade scrabbled back against Mr. Smithjoneswhite, pressed her heels down, but got no purchase. “It's not Saturday. I never missed a show.”

“But I have you booked,” he said. “Every Saturday for the rest of your life.”

Cade's voice rose against the spaceport's din. “You wrote that contract and signed it for me.”

“Yes.” Mr. Smithjoneswhite let out a low, blurry chuckle. “And if I remember right, you thanked me.”

Renna started to shiver, then shake. She rose an inch above the ground and blinked one eye, right in front of Cade. The ship was waiting to take off. The gap in the glass dome wouldn't be open for long.

Now that Cade knew Xan needed her, she couldn't get stuck on Andana. Mattering to someone was like having a favorite song. If you'd never heard it, you wouldn't be able to miss it. But once you knew it was out there, there was no distance you wouldn't travel to hear it again.

“Let me go,” she whispered.

Fingers tightened on her neck, ridged her arms, pressed their prints white and all over.

“You don't want me to.”

Cade felt a rush coming from the edges of her mind to the center; from the warm underside of her skin, flooding in. She'd always been strong, but now she had another person's strength, too, underlining her arms, crashing down her legs, pumping through her heart and double-beating.

She stomped back on Mr. Smithjoneswhite's feet, and spun around to crack a fist into his face. As he staggered, Cade grabbed the guitar case and clamped her other hand, one nail-blacked finger at a time, around his neck.

Xan sent more strength, enough to wring and knock out Mr. Smithjoneswhite. Cade sent a flash of her view—the Andanan at the end of her arm, his skin hurtling past deep red to purple—to let Xan know she had the situation under control.

“You think I care about the club? You think I need you? Cute,” Cade said. “Watching you try to figure me out.”

She raised the case over her head and tossed it. The fake brass latch clattered open in the air and the guitar did Einstein proud, stretching its two-second dive into forever.

Mr. Smithjoneswhite looked back at Cherry-Red and its sickly snapped neck, long enough for Cade to pound the walkway as it curled and tucked itself, pink and scratchy, into the mouth of the ship.

And then Cade was up. Gone. The guitar and Mr. Smithjoneswhite and the spaceport smeared into one bright memory.

 

The world shook and then Cade remembered it wasn't the world, it was Renna. Gaining speed.

Cade ran for the cargo hold, the upward pull confusing her forward-moving feet.

I'm coming, Xan. I'm coming, Xan. I'm coming . . .

Cade chanted it soft, under her breath and in her head, over and over. She told herself that Xan needed to know, but she also had to remind herself why she was onboard an enormous floating burr, headed for the unknown of space.

I'm coming, Xan. I'm coming, Xan. I'm coming . . .

Cade made it to the cargo hold just in time for Lee to toss her a thick cloth strap to latch on to—otherwise, she might have smacked into the floor and spent the rest of liftoff unpasting herself.

Cade didn't want to spend too much time nursing the quease in her stomach, so instead she watched Lee. She had her hand wrapped expertly around a strap and she modulated her breath to match the thinning-out of the atmosphere. Nothing to indicate that she was worried about bursting off Andana. But her freckles leached pale.

“You all right?” Lee asked.

Cade knew that however bad Lee looked, she must have looked ten times worse.

“Sure.”

She remembered the facts from the filmstrip. She was entangled. She was supposed to prance around in space like it was her job. A sloppy minute or two at liftoff was one thing. She would snap into the beat of it soon.

Cade pitched forward and almost cracked foreheads with Lee as the ship lurched out of the atmosphere.

“So this is what delight and ease feels like . . .” Cade muttered. She tilted her face so she was looking at Lee's forehead instead of the ground. “I've never heard of a cargo-ready orbital.”

“Well, you've never met Rennik,” Lee said. “He's not the average Hatchum.”

“What does that have to do with Renna being a spaceship?”

Lee's voice drummed tight—defensive.

“Everything.”

Cade hung there, motionless at the end of the strap, her nose at a sharp angle to the floor, as they hit the smooth emptiness of space. The change of pressure in the tender inner shell of Cade's ear reminded her of her old friend the Noise.

“Hey,” she said, laboring to stand. “You think I can get another guitar on . . . what's the planet that comes after this?”

“Highlea.”

“Right. Highlea. Do they have guitars there?”

“Guitars?” Lee said, perking up noticeably. “There are planets that don't even have
music.
On Mann, the nonhumans are deaf and communicate using this intricate form of sonar. They think music is a form of chaos and use it as an actual weapon. On Wex 9, it's a snugging
crime
to create music. Sound waves are a class of being, and each death is mourned. Back before music was outlawed, the Wexians didn't get much done, they were too busy sobbing over dead melodies.”

Cade thought all of that was interesting. “But . . .”

“Your guitar,” Lee said. “Right. Your mind just runs on one track and explodes when it meets something coming from another direction, doesn't it?” Cade didn't answer. She was too busy thinking about guitars.

“You might find something on Highlea. Not an exact replica of that model you had, but the Highleans do make music. Then again, if it runs electric, you won't be able to stash it onboard. And you did give me most of your money. And exchange rates are terrible right now.”

“Perfect,” Cade muttered.

The smile snuck back onto Lee's face. “You'll figure something out. Humans get first-class creative when they have to.”

Cade nodded. The film of the Saea costume shifted against the back of her neck. She tested to make sure that she could stand and then detached from the takeoff strap, shook off the costume, and grabbed her old clothes from the pack. She was just pulling down her shirt when Rennik swung into the cargo hold. He swept the room once with his gray-brown eyes, taking in the crates, the packages, Lee and Cade.

“I didn't think you'd make it,” he said.

His voice was flatter than a day-old sandcake. He didn't seem the least bit surprised to find out she was human.

“Since you're new, how about a tour?” Rennik asked. It sounded like some kind of welcome, until he added, “Renna doesn't like passengers who aren't . . . familiar.”

Cade nodded. The last thing she needed was a hostile, furry ship that didn't want her onboard.

As she unwound her hand from the cloth strap, she saw that she'd mangled a hatch of raw lines into her skin. It would make a nice set with the bruises that had sprouted in all the places Mr. Smithjoneswhite had grabbed her. Cade rubbed her arms and tried to look tough. When that failed, she tried to look entangled.

Strong. Stable. At home in her enhanced skin.

“Cade, if your stomach needs to do the gravity ballet, there's a bucket I can show you,” Lee said.

Rennik held out his hand, not that it could have reached Cade where she was. Not that she would have taken it if she could. His offer of a tour seemed halfhearted—and Cade was being generous with her fractions.

She picked her way around the crates, Lee close behind.

“Not you,” Rennik said to Lee with a smile curved so deep and cool, it made Cade think of water. Maybe he was never going to smile at her, but it was nice to know he could manage it.

He waved Lee back. “You're not new.”

“Hey, I'm as new as she is! I just got here! I'm as mint as a new coin!”

Rennik led Cade into the main cabin. Lee was still shouting at them from the cargo hold.

“There's the mess,” he said, pointing at one of the rooms that spoked out from the round space, “and a common area. I have a small cabin down here, too.”

Cade was well past curious about the Hatchum's cabin—all she could imagine for him were neat-cornered sheets and bare walls. She lingered outside the door, but he kept moving.

At the center of the main cabin a chute twisted up to another floor. It slanted at just the right angle so that Rennik and Cade could walk without slipping. But every step reminded Cade that she was planting her feet on someone else's innards. It was a slippery sort of feeling.

“Renna has a knack for false gravity,” Rennik said. He lowered his voice and leaned in. “Some people tell me it's like taking a long walk in deep pudding. But don't repeat that. It will make her sad and we'll drift for days.”

As they climbed the chute, he pointed to the stubby, white-sheeted beds bunked along its sides.

“She's not much of a passenger ship, but I do like to keep these here in case we have guests.”

“Like Lee?” Cade asked.

He laughed—such a rich sound that Cade could imagine it being something you drank, in mugs. “Lee is like family.” His trademark flatness swapped out for something much more alive, the way it did when he talked about Renna. “Hatchums have big families, you know. I think the closest word for her is . . .
cousin.
”

“Don't have those,” Cade said. All she had was Xan, and there was no word for what he meant to her.

“She's the one who turns up twice a year or so, tells you her stories, eats all the rations, and leaves with a smile.”

It sounded like an accurate picture of Lee. “She's started in on the stories,” Cade said. “Guess that means I should watch my plate.”

Rennik stopped in front of a panel just behind a stretch of the chute. He stretched out his four-knuckled fingers, and the white chip of wall slid to one side and revealed an empty space. A short, square tunnel opened up into a little room with four more bunks.

“I have to ask the human passengers to sleep in here,” Rennik said.

Cade's heartbeat scratched, like bad feedback. She had known it was too good to be true—a Hatchum who respected humans.

“What,” she said, “in case we go spacesick on you?”

He turned his wide-open-skies look on Cade. “No,” he said. “In case we're boarded.”

She slogged the last steps up the chute behind Rennik, wondering how bad she should feel about the misunderstanding. And then the second floor sprang into view, and she was too crammed full of wonder to feel anything else.

“This is the control room.”

Cade had never been in a control room, but Rennik didn't have to tell her what it was. There were dials and knobs and levers on almost every surface. Every surface that wasn't the glass.

Straight ahead and looming in front of Cade, a stretch of glass that at first she thought was a window. But as she stepped closer, she could see that it was more—a full picture of space outside the ship. Renna's little black eyes, all of those compound bits of blinking, drinking-in, fed into this one glass.