Элизабет Бир - Machine

Well, I was effecting it now.

Remember what I said about the lack of pain clearing my head out? As I struggled, the systers in my head more or less went silent. In the absence of their opinions and demands, I realized that I had most of the information I needed to figure out who was behind the sabotage attempts. I could see the edge of the answer, and the little pattern-matching neurons in my brain were so happy with their success that I felt a kind of faith in the emergent idea. That belief made me doubt my realization rather than confirming it, because our brains really love to find those patterns.

But I was suddenly full of ideas regarding what the sabotage was about, and where Afar had come from, and why Big Rock Candy Mountain had been where it had been. I knew. Or I suspected, anyway. At least, I knew who to ask for proof, and where to go for more information.

The answer wasn’t really a clear shape in my head yet. More of a murky outline. But I hated what I suspected thoroughly enough to really hope that I was wrong.

It had to be somebody with access to Sally, and with access to Sally’s personality core. I’d been convinced it couldn’t have been Sally’s crew. Now I was less convinced. And it had to have been somebody who could have gotten hold of the gravity generator technology, so that Helen could integrate it into her amorphous machine—and then burn it out again.

I was very concerned, based on something he’d let slip, that that might mean the person I was looking for was Tsosie.

Maybe putting Afar and his crew into comas had been a mistake, and not more ruthlessness. I really, really hoped so. I hoped the people who had been hurt or who had died… I hoped that had been an accident.

Maybe it had been. But the saboteurs hadn’t stopped after the first attempt.

I burst through the containing fabric—whatever it was—like I was tearing myself from a chrysalis… except nothing had actually changed. It was only me, same as I had always been, battered a bit but not remade in any better form, struggling in the dark.

My suit lights came up, and I could see again as I shredded loops and swags of iridescent, oily-looking material that flowed apart into bulky particles and flowed together again. I’d seen that stuff before. The machine, like graphite powder with a malevolent will. Some of those shards were like broken glass, around the edges. I’d broken some of the bots. But I was wearing armor now.

There, there was the hatchway. It was sealed; I was inside the walker. I dragged myself toward it through the drifting particles.

My glove landed on something human.

I dragged Calliope out of the mass by her ankle. Straps restrained her; I cut them. Her suit was still sealed. She was coming with me if I had to—

Blow a hole in the shell of the walker?

Concussions in small spaces are a bad idea unless those spaces contain vacuum. I had a Judiciary emergency pack. It had a couple of demo charges in it, along with the other essentials (like the flags and the rescue hook knife). But I wasn’t sure those could penetrate the weird glassy shell of the machine, even working from the inside out.

It didn’t come to that. On the inside , the walker had a big shiny override button right beside the hatch.

Because I had Calliope in my arms by then, I smashed it with my heel. I shoved us both at the irising hatch before it was half-open, struggling through fatigue and pain as thick as sloshing tendrils of the machine.

To the door, and through the door. Drifting out the other side. Get a line on something, don’t go sailing off into space to suffocate—

I had a brief glimpse of Cheeirilaq throwing a line of silk around us as I failed to get my own tackle deployed.

Then I fainted.

WHEN I BLINKED AWAKE, I was looking into a distorting mirror. My eyes seemed huge, brown and wide, their hazel-gold flecks and paler striations emphasized. My nose was too narrow. My lips seemed stretched and strange, and the shape of my chin was too pointed.

The goblin version of my face jerked back, shrinking as it fled. I blinked at Helen.

Helen did not blink back.

“I’m so happy that you’re back!” she blurted.

I remembered everything I’d figured out right before I got myself knocked out again and flinched. I needed to make sure I was right before I accused anybody.

I said, “How long was I gone?”

Helen settled her heels and folded her arms under the molded bosom. “Long enough.”

You never come back from a trip to good news. Just never.

“Calliope?” I asked.

Under sedation. Rilriltok’s familiar buzz.

I looked around. Head turned smoothly, no more than the usual amount of pain. I propped myself on my elbows and discovered that I was in a trauma treatment room. “Hey. The gravity is working.”

“Mechanical got spin back about a standard ago,” she agreed. “It was an impressive engineering accomplishment, spinning up without further disordering all the environments.”

“I bet.” I stretched, curling my toes. Could be worse. “What happened to the quarantine?”

I hadn’t been aware that a person like Helen had the ability to generate such dire laughter. “That ship has lifted.”

I noticed O’Mara in the treatment room, standing a little behind Helen. And there was Rilriltok, hovering over their left shoulder.

The breeze of its wings was exceptionally pleasant.

I said, “Somebody please get me a drink.”

O’Mara looked at me. It was obvious, I suppose, that I didn’t mean club soda and lime.

Dr. Jens! Rilriltok was mad at me, because it called me Doctor rather than Friend Far be it from this individual to question the medical judgments of an esteemed colleague, but I really think—

It must have taken an extraordinarily large bolus of courage for the little Rashaqin to stand up to me like that. Conflict avoidance was the hallmark of its species and sex. I felt terrible for it when O’Mara interrupted, holding out a flask I hadn’t known they carried.

It had a Judiciary seal on it. I knew it had been given to them as a retirement gift, because I owned one like it. I didn’t carry my keepsake in my pocket, however.

When I first reached for it I reached too fast, too far—a lunge—as my exo overcompensated. I almost knocked the flask to the floor. Fortunately, it was closed, and O’Mara caught it before it dented on the deck. Good reflexes for an old person.

Ha. I wondered what they say about me. The gravity definitely seemed to be working again, anyway. And so did my exo’s reflexes.

I closed aching fingers around the flask. My exoskeleton clicked faintly against the metal. The sound startled me, but at least my grip was firm by then.

“Medicinal purposes,” said I.

“Medicinal purposes,” they agreed.

To my shipmates , I thought. Please don’t let any of them be criminals. I unscrewed the lid and drank, wiping my lips after.

Tequila.

I obviously hadn’t eaten anything in quite some time, because the warmth of the liquor raced through me. Capillary flush scorched my face; at least I had the comfort that my complexion would hide it. Though I supposed O’Mara thinking I was a cheap drunk was the least of my worries.

I handed the flask back. “You were obviously expecting me. Medical coma?”

“Just a nice nap while we fused your sternum for you,” O’Mara said. My hand didn’t sting, which told me they’d fixed the holes in my skin, also. “Your own crew insisted on operating on you. I think you’re going to be fine.”

They were Sally’s crew, not mine—not as long as I was seconded to O’Mara and Core General. That made me feel almost weepily touched by their loyalty.