Michael Flynn: Up Jim River

“Not a beat too soon,” Number Two said. “Wrathrock is bad hurt, but we secured the shuttle and we are now outside the ship. What are those things?”

“Proctors,” Méarana told him. “The ship is delusional. Her internal clock is disrupted; her sensors scrambled. She thinks we are wakened sleepers—and you are boarders.”

“Can’t gainsay her on that account,” said the officer. “We are a boarding party.”

As they resumed their flight, Donovan began to run on his own. It was a peculiar and intensely focused sort of running and when Méarana and Bridget ban let go, he jogged ahead for a few steps, then turned and awaited direction.

“Is that you, Brute?” the harper asked; and the man nodded dumbly.

“Did Silky revive you? She’s got all the glands, right?” Again a nod.

“Are the others okay?”

The Brute placed his hand about three feet off the ground, palm flat and level to the ground. Then he spread his hands and shrugged.

“Inner Child is awake, but you don’t know about the others?” Another nod.

“Another day,” said Bridget ban just before leading them off again, “if there is another day, you will have to explain that, if there is an explanation.”

They had reached the edge of yet another block when the Brute paused, crouched, and held his hand up. Bridget ban went to her knees in an instant; Méarana, a moment later. The metallic jingling had waxed and around the corner of the catwalk came a monster.

It was a machine, like the Attendant and the Proctor, but unlike any machine Méarana had seen before. A centipede of metal hoops, each self-powered, yet all marching forward in rough uniformity. The lead ring bore the seeming of a face. Partly that was the spotlight eyes and the grill where a mouth might be; partly too, the fringe of antennae and sensors that so resembled a bristling mane.

As it passed each intersection, rings scattered clattering and clinging down the four intersecting catwalks—left, right, up, and down. At the same time, other rings, scattered at the previous intersection, rejoined the main body. The whole seemed in a continual state of dissolution, on the verge always of breaking apart, and yet, despite the comings and goings of its constituent rings, maintaining its identity.

Bridget ban consulted her beacon. “This way,” she whispered, pointing forward and to the right. “Yon beastie does nae yet stand’ tween us and my ship.”

Méarana tugged the Brute on the sleeve, held a finger to her lips, and pointed. The Brute nodded and slipped off in silence.

“Will the rest of him e’er come back?” Bridget ban murmured.

“That may depend on how the umbra affected the cortex. Had the muzzle twisted the other way…” The harper shivered. “Did you see the way he looked at you?”

“I had a dog that used to look at me that way,” Bridget ban answered.

“When did you ever have a dog? What happened to him?”

“He went rabid and I shot him.”

It was a mad race in three dimensions. They stayed atop the pod blocks, but in places the extensible bridge connecting one block to the next failed, and they slipped down to the regular catwalks. Without Bridget ban’s locator beacon they would quickly have gotten lost.

It was while on the catwalks that one of Slinky-Chinky’s scouts found them. It rounded the corner just ahead of them and instantly, lights began to flash on its circumference and the sounds of activity came from below. Through the gaps in the catwalks they saw the main snake two levels below them turn abruptly and head up the next intersection.

The Brute meanwhile had taken his dazer, which Bridget ban had restored to him, and fired at anything that might have been a brain-case on the ring that had found them. The ring went dark, and the three of them retreated around the corner and scrambled like monkeys atop the tanks. There, they lay prone underneath the maintenance track, in the V where the cylinders nestled together.

In less than a minute the sound of clinking rings was all around them, as segments ran up and down the catwalks, joining and splitting and rejoining. It’s as if the tanks themselves are invisible to them , Méarana thought. A flaw in their instructions? A malfunction from age or from damage? Not my department?

Finally, the sounds of pursuit faded into another sector, and they crawled from under the maintenance track and raced for the vestibule. There, they paused to activate their helmets before cycling through the air lock.

Orienting themselves on Bridget ban’s locator, they quickly made their way through an open landing bay to the hull and Bridget ban’s wrecked field office. There, they called for the Blankets and Beads’ shuttle.

Wild Bill brought the boat in low, with the outer lock door already open and came to a hover only a few strides away. Méarana and Bridget ban hustled Donovan inside and Wild Bill was pulling away even before the lock had closed.

“Close call,” said Méarana as they found seats in the cabin.

Wild Bill did not turn around. “Still is.”

The shuttle bucked and twisted as the pilot used the gravity impellers to hopscotch across the Prabhakaran’s hull. Franq sat in the copilot’s seat and the two able spacers were in the back. One of them, badly injured, lay across a bench while the other treated him.

“Watch it, Bill,” Franq said. “Those portals are opening.”

“That can’t be good,” Donovan muttered. Then he shook himself and looked around.

Méarana noticed, and said, “Fudir? Are ye back wi’ us?” And at the scarred man’s uncertain nod, threw her arms around his neck. He winced.

“Silky must have put us in some sort of overdrive. I’m weak as a kitten.” He looked around and saw Bridget ban and for a moment he did not speak. The red hair seemed lighter than when he had last known her, or the golden skin darker. “Billy?”

“Coagulated,” the Hound said. “What did you do, push your dazer right up against him? That’s a fool thing to try. The backlash of the umbra…”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. That dazer was going to be pointed somewhere. I preferred him to me. We debated the issue some.”

The shuttle swerved suddenly. The deckhand—DeRoche—cursed.

“Something behind those portals. Weapons, I think,” Franq said. “I think we woke something up.”

“The Artificial Intelligence,” said Donovan.

“Father, if that Attendant was artificially intelligent, the concept has been quite oversold.”

“No, Lucia,” Donovan answered. “Peacharoo was no more intelligent than my little finger.” The which he held up in illustration. “But you do have to ask what was wiggling it.”

Lights in the craft flared and went dark. Wild Bill expressed his dissatisfaction with this and his hands danced in command. Emergency lighting returned. “Missed us,” he said. DeRoche, tending to his mate, muttered, “I’d hate to see a hit, then.”

“Barnsey’s bringing the BB to meet us,” the pilot announced. “Hangar deck is open to vacuum. Locking in—mark.”

“Is that wise?” Bridget ban wondered. “To bring a larger target into range?”

“ Prabhakaran’s clock is malfing,” Donovan said. “It thinks it’s still activating the terraformation packages. When the clocks resets, it loops around and does it all over again.”

Wild Bill, having locked in on his landing target, turned in his seat. “That’s nice, Donovan. But how does that make her a poor shot?”

“Velocity is distance over time. If her timing is off, so is her estimate of velocity. Otherwise, she’d have hit us more than once by now.”

“Which means,” said Wild Bill, swinging back to his panel, “she could aim at our nose and hit our engines instead. Either way, we’re soup.”