This Alien Shore (65 page)

A pause, then. ARE YOU SURE? his brainware questioned. Amber words, bright, like his icon.

He hesitated only an instant.
YES,
he flashed back.
I'M SURE.

For a few seconds, he knew, he would feel nothing. His long fingers played over the controls of the console, preparing a sheet of plastex for a new composition. His hands, he saw, were trembling. Was it starting now? Could he feel it? The controls under his fingers were like the switches of a transport ship—he had designed them that way, deliberately—and for a moment he forgot just where he was. He looked up and imagined the vast reaches of safespace before him, and the slender fault that was an ainniq ... out here it did not matter if he had no color sense, for the sky surrounding him was black as jet, the stars a shimmering silver, the ainniq a pale strand almost too faint to see; he would have to get closer before its appearance changed, much closer. He would have to maneuver the ship into the crack of light just so, slipping into a wound that was made back when the universe was born, waves of compression from that vast explosion ripping flaws into the very substance of space....

He gasped, his hands clutching the controls. Random patterns of black and gray splattered across the plastex sheet before him, responding to the emotions welling up in his brain, expressing his fevered grip in patterns of light and dark. He wasn't controlling the artform program the way he should, he knew that, but his hands seemed strangely divorced from him now, and it was hard for him to control them. In his chest his heart was pounding a feverish rhythm, and his wellseeker was scrolling up warnings in the corner of his vision. The words were gibberish, a language he had never learned; what were they doing in his head? Who had put them there? All that mattered was the ainniq, he had to get to the ainniq ... only there could he be safe.

Passing his hands across controls that he could sense but not see, he maneuvered his vessel into position. Terror was building inside his head, but it was still confined by the outpilot programs embedded in his brain; not until he passed into the ainniq itself would the full force of his Syndrome be unleashed.

He hungered for it. He feared it. He knew it for what it was in truth, a disease so devastating that even Gueran society, normally tolerant of any mental variance, beat it down with drugs and programs until it crouched in the brain like a wild beast, subdued but never tamed. And only subdued for a while. There would come a moment when the ainniq gaped wide before him, the vast worldwound that shimmered with unnatural light ... and he would see that secret universe in all its glory, and in response the transition programs would kick in—the Syndrome would roar to life within his brain, swallowing his sanity, filling his veins with its hot red terror....

He gasped, leaning back in his chair for support. What could they know of that moment, the fools who ran the Guild? What could they know of that primal instant when the Syndrome took hold, when civilized thought gave way to raw survival instinct—when the universe roared with a thousand voices and cymbal-clashes of light, as he slipped into the ainniq itself, like a surgeon slipping laser-scalpel into flesh....

I need it,
he thought. Sweat had broken out on his brow, hot beads that trickled down his face as he trembled.

It had been years since his last transition ... or had it? Suddenly he wasn't so sure. Wasn't there a freight convoy just last E-week that he had outpiloted to safety? The memory was a strange thing, oddly distant; he couldn't pin it down. And then a string of passenger pods the E-month before that.... Why were his hands shaking? Why did he feel such a terrible need to immerse himself in the Syndrome now, quickly, lest someone or something stop him?

A roaring had filled his ears, like a thousand voices all screaming at once. He knew the sound well, knew the change that it presaged. Where was the ainniq? He scanned space with a wary eye, anxious to catch sight of the precious conduit. In the distance the artform program caught up his emotions, translated them into digital format, and splattered them across his chosen canvas. Hot gray, ice gray, the gray of flowing blood....

EMERGENCY
—his wellseeker scrolled—
SAFESPACE MAINTENANCE PROGRAM COMPROMISED—EMERGENCY—SAFESPACE MAINTENANCE PROGRAM COMPROMISED—

There it was. Like a flaw in crystal, shattered planes of space meeting with luminous friction. You couldn't really see it until you were right on top of it, but then suddenly it was spread out before you, a veil of light only visible from one special angle—

Suddenly it was hard to breathe. He gasped as his small ship swung into position for entrance into the ainniq. There was a band about his chest, squeezing. Spots before his eyes....

And safespace cracked open before him. Monsters poured forth with a roar that shook the stars, dragons of the ainniq universe now set free in this world, bellowing their fury and their hunger in colors no human eye could see. He could feel their hunger as the sana raced toward him, as frigid and consuming as space itself. Thousands upon thousands of them, pouring out of the worldwound like demons from hell, their bodies mutating even as they flew toward him, different each moment than the last—

Suddenly there were no controls under his fingers. There was no headset on his head. He was naked in the darkness, with no air to breathe, and the ice-cold vacuum of space scouring his lungs. In terror he struggled to comprehend what was happening, but his thoughts would not gather into coherent patterns. Crystals were forming on his lips, in his hair, and the moisture of his breath was a rain of stars as it froze. And the sana were gathering about him. Not merely hungry now, but malevolent beyond any human measure; they circled him, taunting him, exacting their vengeance for the years in which he had defied them.
Where's your ship, little human? Go flee to your pods, why don't you.
Flee? How could you flee something you couldn't see? Without vision one was helpless.

Then the first one touched him and he felt it tearing into his flesh as he fought to breathe—no, not his flesh, the creature had hold of his very soul—crushing, rending, tearing open the boundaries of his being until the very life within him bled out into the darkness. And they began to feed—

On his soul—

J
AMISIA AWOKE in a laboratory. Gleaming dials overhead, scrolling holos, painted faces ... it took her a moment to gain real control of her body, and for a moment she thought one of the Others would claim it. But this wasn't the time to be changing souls, and she told them so. Not when the faces blurring in and out of her field of vision were wearing Guild markings.

Guild markings? Startled by her own thought, she turned inward for a moment.
How did I know that?

You don't,
Raven told her.
I do. Found a tutorial on kaja that must have been inloaded on Earth. I'll go over it with you when you're up to it.

Thank God parts of her were still functioning anyway. God knows the
Jamisia Shido
part wasn't.

“Kandra?” It was one of the painted faces, a woman's. “Kandra, we need you to talk to us. Let us know you're okay.”

For a moment she thought the woman was talking to someone else. Then she remembered the false name she had adopted back on Paradise, the name that hadn't fooled Phoenix for a minute. Apparently he had given it to them instead of her real one. Smart boy.

“I ...” The act of speech made her suddenly dizzy; for a moment it was all she could do not to throw up. “I'm okay,” she gasped.

It was hard to read the expression on that painted face, but she thought she saw relief. “All right, the speech center is functional.” She felt something mechanical let go of her arms, her feet, her torso. A large half-cylinder hummed as it withdrew from over her body, to rest on its tracks somewhere below her feet. “Looking good so far. I think we have a no-damage situation.”

She saw Phoenix's face swimming in fog and managed to get out, “What?”

“Neural poison.” His expression was grim. “Meant to take you out permanently, leaving only enough gray matter to question and enough working flesh to keep that alive. That's the guess, anyway.”

“They might have fine-tuned it,” the Gueran woman corrected him. “It's impossible to tell from what's in your bloodstream whether they intended permanent paralysis or just some temporary stasis.” The reassurance rang false, and she guessed that Phoenix's version was much closer to the truth. The concept of it made her even sicker than she already was. What better way to get at the secrets in someone's head, than when it had no working body to run away with? The only thought worse than being caught by your enemies, was being caught by your enemies and stuck in a box somewhere, fed by tubes, until they wanted to talk to you.

“Here, girl.” Strong hands grasped her by the shoulders; an arm slipped behind her from the other side. “Try to sit up. We'll help you.”

She did so, and the room swam dizzily around her. She lowered her face into her hands, ready to vomit; seconds later a bag was there, which she grabbed and quickly filled.

“Okay, okay, there. It's only to be expected. You should be all right now.” Another hand offered her a damp towel and she used it to wipe off her face. She did feel marginally better now, as if somehow emptying out her stomach had drawn the poison from her soul as well. “You really lucked out. Another fraction of an inch deeper into your flesh and it would have dumped more poison than your system could handle.”

“Thanks,” she managed. And then added, with a somewhat dry smile, “I guess I'm ... lucky.” There were at least half a dozen Guerans in the room, she saw, which seemed to be some kind of medical station. The bed she'd been lying on was overhung with an array of equipment like—

“What is it?” It was Phoenix. “What's wrong?”

She managed to gasp something incoherent. The medic came back to her and put something cold over her head. Sparks began to play in her field of vision, all the more frightening for the ghostlike images behind them.

I need the memories
—
I need the fear
—
Try it again
—

“Kandra? Kandra?” It was the woman again. Whose name was she calling? Nobody in here by that name. Many, many names, but not that one. “Kandra, I need you to look at the light. It's right in front of your eyes. Focus on the light.”

“I'm reading a seizure,” a man's voice said. “Right mnemonic complex—”

Something hissed at the side of her neck. She felt another wave of dizziness and then a sharp pain coursed through her neck and head; light filled her eyes and blinded her.

“Oh, God.” The screaming voices faded from her head, but she could still hear them faintly, a whispered echo of pain. “What was that?”

“Stable now,” a man's voice said.

The woman told her, “You need to stay here for a while. Make sure there's no recurrence.”

“No.” She looked up at the medical equipment. That's what triggered it, some deep-seated memory with an image like that in it, front and center. She had to get out of here or it would happen again. “No. I can't stay here.”

In her ears she could hear wailing. She knew whose it was. The pain had woken
him
up.

Phoenix helped her get down from the table. The meds were still arguing with her to get her to stay, but she shut them out of her brain. Zusu was crying, saying something about how bad men were going to come and get them now. Mental admonitions to please be quiet accomplished nothing. Finally she just whispered “Stop it!” loud enough that everyone in the room looked at her in surprise. Even Phoenix. Tears started to come to her eyes, of fear and frustration and horrible isolation. There was no one she could trust with the truth, not even him. There never would be. She was alone forever in the real world, and never, never alone in her head. The combination was getting to be more than she could handle. She just wasn't that strong....