Sergei Lukyanenko - The Genome

“It’s me…”

The rainbow brightened, and every color of the spectrum turned painfully vivid and distinct. The six colors that naturals saw in rainbows turned into the seven colors scientists had thought up. Then split apart into strips of turquoise and threads of carrot-orange, veins of crimson and belts of canary-yellow, shadows of gray and filaments of sand.

“Take me in…”

A warm touch. Whispering foliage. Sunlight. A mother’s embrace. A gentle sea wave. Soft breeze. Sweetness and tranquility. Restrained passion. Intoxicating lightness. Giddy excitement. Restful contentment. Quiet exultation.

No ordinary human could ever experience it. All of this at once. All of life’s pleasures, all this happiness accumulated bit by tiny bit. Alex, a small boy of five, racing toward the edge of the sea, seeing it for the first time in his life. Running and laughing, overflowing with joy, into his mother’s open arms, into a rolling wave… Alex, overcome with delight, holding Pawlie, his dog, warm and real, and Pawlie enthusiastically licking his face. Alex, celebrating his thirteenth birthday, the cake in front of him twinkling with multicolored candles, and his father, so young, brimming with pride, saying that his son would become a pilot next year, would be a person destined for nothing but happiness… Alex, already a student learning to use his new abilities, in a city park, kissing a girl-natural, his first real lover, inexperienced, but burning with desire to gain that experience with his help… Alex, wearing his pilot’s uniform for the first time, standing on parade square, and the legendary master-pilot Diego Alvarez attaching badges to the young pilots’ uniforms, finding a special word of encouragement for each of the graduates… Alex, sweaty and worn out, sliding out of the pilot’s chair, barely able to walk… but the throat of the channel, which had suddenly narrowed, is already behind them, passed, and he passed it, an inexperienced third pilot, none of his five hundred passengers realizing how close death had come… Alex, barely out of the hospital, alone and lost on a strange planet, saving a girl-spesh, helping her get through the most difficult time in her life…

This was something new. He didn’t realize just how happy and proud he had felt about rescuing Kim. But memory lives by its own rules, so now that night would always be with him, as well as the quiet exaltation of a man who had done some good…

Suddenly, something pricked him. Almost imperceptibly, and immediately washed away by a warm wave of iridescent light. And yet it did prick him, before it vanished…

Before he became one with the ship.

And the crew became a part of his own self.

Alex sent out an order, without so much as a thought, and not in any verbal form. The white lightning flashed brighter, giving off energy. The emerald spiral lifted Mirror off the concrete blocks, then folded in the supports, checked all the equipment one last time. The bluish light opened like a fan, displaying hundreds of take-off trajectories. The white vortex and the red flame, his two fists, tensed up, ready for a personal battle with the entire planet of Quicksilver Pit, with the entire galaxy….

Now that Alex was in complete confluence with the ship, all of them became one whole, connected by his will.

Exactly the way it all should be.

Alex got up from his pilot’s chair and stretched. Everything around him still seemed irregular, unreal. The bridge looked too small after the boundlessness of space. The co-pilot getting out of his chair was no longer an emerald spiral. His own beating heart had replaced the silent stream of energy.

“Seven minutes, thirty point five seconds,” murmured Xang. “Do you think that’s enough for the first training session, Captain?”

“Quite enough.”

Alex felt that the tone of his voice had changed, but he couldn’t do anything about it. And why should he? Now he really had become the captain.

That was the whole point of the training session—to get a feel for every crewmember and to place his own image into their psyches. That was the goal, not the synchronization of all their actions, which was unavoidable anyway.

“Captain?”

He looked at Morrison.

“Do you wonder what you look like from the outside?”

Alex reflected a moment and nodded. “I do.”

“A white star. So bright it hurts to look at it… even in virtual reality. A tiny white star. And when you had your confluence with the ship, the rainbow seemed to explode from within.”

“Was it beautiful?” inquired Alex.

Morrison hesitated a little before he answered. “Don’t know. Impressive, bright… beautiful, perhaps.”

But he didn’t sound all that sure.

“Thank you, Xang. You’re an excellent pilot. I think we will split our bridge duty time equally.”

The co-plot looked suddenly perplexed. “Captain?”

“Is that all right with you?”

“Hell, yes!” Xang got up. “But why?”

“Because you’re a good pilot,” said Alex. He couldn’t see the Demon, but knew that it had a spiteful smile on its face.

Piloting was any pilot’s supreme pleasure. To merge with the ship completely, to become a metal bird soaring among the stars—what could ever be better than that?

Only one thing was better—to be the ship’s captain. And Morrison had no idea of this little secret. He was only a pilot, just like Alex had been so recently.

“Thank you, Captain.” Xang’s voice quivered. “Damn… it’s so unexpected.”

“It’s all right, Xang.” Alex left the bridge and stopped outside in the hall, looking down its length. The engineer stuck his head out from the door of his engine room at the end of the hall, saluting the captain with a wave of his hand, and then dived right back in to be with his beloved gluon streams. It was as if he didn’t even need any comments about his recent performance. Then Janet and Kim simultaneously rushed out of the narrow passageways leading to the battle stations. Roaring with laughter, they gave each other high-fives, then a hug, and only after that, both turned to Alex. He smiled back. Somehow outer space always increased women’s longing for same-sex love, and Alex would have gotten jealous… had he felt more than just a friendly attraction to Kim. Jealousy was a mere derivative of the main function unavailable to him.

Then a door closest to the bridge opened, and Generalov came out into the hall. He was still in his spacesuit, though with the helmet folded down.

“Good,” said Alex. “Really good.”

Puck grinned a crooked grin. The slight tension vanished from his eyes.

“The route to Dorian was remarkable,” Alex said with sincere praise. “I never had any plans to go there, but the route you plotted was great. I never should have doubted your abilities.”

The navigator reveled in this, like a young girl upon hearing her first compliment. It occurred to Alex that the analogy was to some extent true, and he hastened to add, now in a more formal tone of voice:

“But the track toward Zodiac, which you plotted earlier today, is far from optimal.”

“Now, wait a minute, Captain!” Puck cried out in dismay. “The optimal route would require going through the tunnel in the Monica-3 system!”

“Yes. And what’s wrong with that?”

“That region is not recommended for small ships, Captain.”

“But neither is it forbidden, right?”

“No. But any pilot would prefer to avoid the Bronins’ ritual zone.”

“Puck, please keep in mind that I’m not just any pilot.”

“And neither am I,” added Morrison, appearing suddenly behind his back. “I’ve had occasion to use the Monica-3 tunnels.”

“And what were your impressions?” said Puck with curiosity.