This Alien Shore (64 page)

She smiled weakly and lied. “Sure.”

He helped her move along the narrow maintenance passage, through a labyrinth of pipes and wires and things whose purpose she couldn't even begin to guess at. He seemed to know his way, but of course he probably had maps in his head for that kind of thing. She couldn't even walk straight, much less think clearly. The numbness from the drug had spread into her shoulder, and her lungs tingled ominously each time she moved. Was it meant to kill in higher doses, or just incapacitate? Her wellseeker kept flashing her warnings and asking for instructions, but she couldn't think clearly enough to deal with it.

Then Phoenix muttered, “Shit!”

“What...”

“Nuke says they've hacked into the system and are doing a heat scan to track us. Damn! Well, at least we know they aren't Ra's people, or they wouldn't have to break into the system like that. She'd have the access codes.” He smiled grimly. “I'd rather it was her, truth be told.”

“Can you do anything?”

“Nuke is trying to block it. But he says it looks like a team effort, and it's going to be hard for him to handle alone.”

“Can you help him?”

He looked down at her with something akin to amusement. “Not while I'm running from those guys. Even I have my limits.” He hoisted her arm to a more secure position across his shoulders. “Let's just hope he remembers everything I taught him.” The emergency lights, dull orange spots set at intervals along the wall, blinked off suddenly. Then on again. Off. On. Then they held.

“Michal—”

“System's confused, that's all. Too many people fucking with it.” His words were casual, but the tone behind them was anything but. “Come on.”

He was trying to get her to run, but the best she could manage was a stumble. She could feel nothing on her right side now other than the pounding of her heart, which reverberated with the force of thunder in her flesh. She was going to pass out soon, or maybe die from this poison, and what would he do then? Maybe if he just left her behind, he would be safe. She was pretty sure she was the one they were after, and not him. If he left her behind, would she wake up in some operating theater, being dissected for her wiring? Would she wake up at all?

Phoenix stiffened suddenly. She looked up, alert for danger, but saw nothing in the passageway which could threaten anyone. Was it some kind of message he was getting? Or had someone hacked into his brain, to attack him directly? She'd read that could happen.

Then he looked looked down at her and said, “Ra's people are moving in.”

“Good or bad?” she managed

“Good. I
think.”

He hesitated, consulting his inner maps, then chose a new direction for them. “Her people caught the hacking, and they're tracing it. They know someone is in the tunnels. Nuke thinks they don't know who we are. She's just guessing that something is up and getting people into place.” Jamisia stumbled, and he had to shift position to hold her more firmly. “She's got some of the best hackers in the business on her staff, you know, the elite of the elite... anyway... she won't take kindly to a hit squad coming into her city, regardless of who and what they're going after.” He looked down at her. “We might be safe with her people. Unless you have something to hide from them, too.”

She could feel the tears coming to her eyes, and couldn't even control her body enough to blink them free. “Don't know,” she whispered. The words had no volume. “Don't know why anyone...” It was all she could say. Her legs gave out from under her for the last time, and she sagged against his side. The little orange lights were swimming in her field of vision like little glowing fish, shimmering in the water.

“Okay, girl. Here we go.” There was a thudding impact in her stomach and she bent over his shoulder; her feet were lifted off the floor and for a moment she thought the resulting vertigo was going to make her sick. Then she just lay limp where he held her, arms and torso hanging down his back, and hoped he had the strength to carry her as far as they needed to go.

Which was where?

She could feel him stumbling beneath her weight as he tried to keep up some kind of speed. She wasn't heavy, but he wasn't exactly an athlete. Maybe he'd have the intelligence to go down to the lo-G levels, where the burden would be less. Of course their pursuers would expect that, and they'd be waiting down there. She found herself fading in and out of unconsciousness as he ran, her body bouncing rythmically against his back. They'd be waiting for them everywhere....

And then Phoenix stopped. He put her down gently. She saw through blurry eyes another hatchway, larger than the one they had first come through. A complicated looking control box of some sort was next to it, which Phoenix opened. Poor boy, he was covered with sweat from the strain of carrying her, and his hands were shaking as he worked the controls. “Nuke says they're here, in this sector. If I can get us to them, maybe we can ask for sanctuary.” It seemed to her that there were footsteps resounding in the hallway behind them. Muffled voices, an occasional clanging. “We'll be safe then.”

Safe? But the Guild itself was after her. He didn't know that. She hadn't told him about the trace in her arm. She tried to get the words out now, but they just wouldn't come.

“If it's really Nuke telling me this,” he muttered. “Of course, there's always the chance they hacked that connection, too, and our friends are right out here waiting for us.” He glanced back the way they had come; clearly he could hear the voices as well. “Not like we have much of a choice.”

The door slid open. He picked her up in his arms and carried her through the hatchway, into a public corridor. Someone came running, apparently alerted by the sound of the door opening, or possibly some distant alarm. Uniformed people. A lot of them. She couldn't make out the details of their uniforms, but she could see that they all held weapons. And all the weapons were pointed at her and Phoenix.

This is safe?
She wanted to ask. But all that came out of her mouth was a moan.

She heard Phoenix say something to them, but couldn't make out his words. No sounds could get past the ringing in her ears, or the poisoned fog inside her brain.

The weapons weren't lowered. A harsh command was voiced from somewhere, and they were moving again....

Fading into darkness. The lights, the sounds, everything. She tried to hold on, to cling to the last bit of light she could see, but the drug was just too strong for her.

I
T HAD BEEN a long day. Ian Kent could feel the weight of it on his shoulders as he reached the main portal of his home. He hated the days when he had to play Governor for his node; it made him feel like a petty bureaucrat, and that in turn reminded him of what he had been before, and how much he had lost.

Security programs greeted him, scanning his body, his headset, his brain. Apparently he was himself, for the portal opened to admit him.

He wished he felt as sure.

With wearied step he walked through the entrance foyer, loosening the clasp at the neck of his long robe. The load of tranquilizers in his bloodstream had become oppressive by midday, dulling his wits, and at last he'd had to adjust the flow so that he could get some work done. He had done it hours ago... and now the pain was seeping through. So much pain. He tightened his hand on the banister as he climbed, trying to focus on the physical sensation instead of his own thoughts. Maybe if he got a neural implant instead ... but no, the mere thought of letting anyone work on his brain, even for such simple surgery, was more than he could bear. Enough damage had been done. He would risk no more. The drugs in his arm were good enough, it was the system all outpilots relied upon. If it wasn't enough to calm him, then he wouldn't be calm.

He would go to his studio tonight.

He slipped off the long outer robe that was his sign of rank and chuted it for cleaning. Beneath it he had on another layer, close-fitting, not unlike the uniforms that outpilots wore when they were working. Some days it hurt unbearably to wear such garments, but he couldn't bring himself to do otherwise; it was as much a part of him as his skin, a crucial part of his identity. He stopped in the kitchen to pick up some food—gray dough wrapped around colorless meat, he didn't even care what it was—and ate mechanically as he walked to the portal of his studio, flashing it his entry icon.

Beyond ... he entered the room and heard the door whisk shut behind him. In the center of the studio was an artist's console, a semicircular desk with embedded controls and a chair with full headset attached. Surrounding it were pictures. Abstract pictures, all worked in shades of gray. Some were jarring, jagged compositions, broken planes and shattered edges and lines whose beginnings and ends could not be traced. Some were sinuous creations, subtly threatening, coils and loops that seemed to throb against a foggy backdrop. Most were combinations of those elements, shapes and textures mixed with seemingly random purpose, to produce artwork that was strangely ominous, dissasociative ... dare one say insane? Wasn't that the ancient Earth word for it, a state in which the mind could no longer connect to the reality of one's fellows? Was he, Ian Alexander Kent, insane?

With a sigh he regarded the disturbing pictures, shaking his head in frustration. They were failures, every single one of them. That which he sought to express could never be captured in artform. That inner vision which he had lost, which no longer even had a name in his injured brain ... he hungered for the ainniq, he burned to create one little corner of the outpilot's universe in this world, wherein he might escape for a moment. But it evaded him. Other outpilots had tried, and even with color available to them they failed to capture the terrible, terrifying beauty of the ainniq; how could he succeed, who had only this crippled brain and shades of gray to work with?

For a moment he thought about killing himself. Only a moment. Words flashed in the comer of his vision, a warning from his wellseeker:
SEROTONIN LEVELS DROPPING. CORRECT?
He hesitated. Default was yes; if he did nothing, nothing at all, within ten seconds appropriate medication would be released into his bloodstream, to work its healing magic. It was all part of the complex machinery used to keep an outpilot functioning outside of the ainniq.

We are aliens,
he thought. The words had a dark taste, ominous but not unpleasing.
We wear human bodies, but it takes drugs and software to make us truly human. Only in the ainniq can we let all that go, and be ourselves.

He wanted to be himself tonight. Just for a moment.

Drawing in a deep breath, he visualized his negative icon.
NO.
The wellseeker subsided; its message faded into blackness. Let his brain do what nature intended, for once. A twinge of fear accompanied that decision, but even that was not unwelcome. Fear was part of the outpilot's world, a fear so intense that no other men could endure it ... but without that fear, no travel between the stars would be possible, and so it was valued.

He sat down in the smooth sculptured chair before the console, letting his hands rest on the controls before him. In his mind's eye he flashed the icons that would let him access his medical programs, and at last settled on a chart profiling his medication. There it was: Outpilot's Syndrome, reduced to a series of prescriptions. Feed this drug into the bloodstream, and the fear would be quelled; stimulate these neurons, and the parts of the brain that might otherwise shut down would be sustained at their normal levels. He scrolled through over a hundred instructions, drugs and programs and monitors and controls, the software and hardware and brainware of sanity.

There was one procedure that would shut it all down, initiated by an icon never used in safespace. One secret symbol, used only prior to transition. He shut his eyes so that there was only blackness before him, and visualized it in glowing amber.