Bright of the Sky (10 page)

“Eggsept iss all upgrazes,” Quinn gargled.

Helice said, “Yes, upgrades that look ordinary. We don’t want to call attention to you, in case you need local cover. You’ve got to be your own nutritionist and pharmacist. We don’t know how you got by before—maybe you won’t need any of this. But considering all the things that might kill you, we can’t have you starving to death or ingesting poisons.”

The doc withdrew the probe from Quinn’s mouth. “Even on Earth, lots of compounds can kill you. I assume where you’re going will be as chemically charged. There’ll be a lineup of alkaloids, phenolics, tannins, cyanogenic glycosides, and terpenoids—or their other-side equivalents. We’re counting on your body’s enhanced chemical knowledge to steer you to the edibles.”

Other-side equivalents
. Quinn knew there would be plenty of those, and not just plant compounds, either.

Anticipation had kept him awake for the past two nights, though he
might
have slept, dreaming that he couldn’t sleep. It was all mixed up now: OBEs, sleep, memories, projections, fantasies. Now the hour had come, and he’d get the reality. Oddly, he was calm as a statue, whether from exhaustion or a state of grace, facing death, facing the
other place
, which could be the kingdom of God, after all. If Quinn were religious—as Johanna had been— now would be a good time for a prayer. But he was hopeless when it came to religion. What was the point, when life was all you wanted? He’d asked Johanna once why she went to Mass. It was all so illogical. She’d answered, “To be captured by it.” She thought that answer enough, and offered no other. Everything she said was so deeply
her
. He was captured by her. So perhaps he did know why she went to mass.

“Okay,” the doc said. “You’re excused. Any questions?”

“Weapons.”

Helice shook her head. “No. If you need them, your mission is over anyway.”

Quinn looked into her perky face. So easy to be a pacifist when you’re twenty.

He went to the next item on his list. “My pictures.” They’d already told him no personal objects. “I want my pictures.” Johanna and Sydney were fading. The pictures were important.

Helice bit her lip and glanced at the doc.
Is he stable, do you think?

The doc patted his shoulder. “I think you remember what they look like.”

Quinn looked at the hand, which was quickly withdrawn. He jumped down from the gurney.

They led him through a side door to the sterilizing booth, where he’d lose a few nanometers of skin by the time the sonic shower was done. Nearby he could smell Helice Maki, her underarm deodorant—flowery—and a faint whiff of breakfast still on her tongue. Other smells, woman-things. He didn’t want to know what he was smelling. He didn’t want Helice in his thoughts at this moment.

“Where’s Lamar?” he asked.

“Right here,” came the voice from a side chair. Lamar stood up, came over to say his good-byes.

“Private moment,” Quinn said, eyeing Helice and the doc. They stepped aside.

Now Quinn faced Lamar, a face he knew, a man grown older than he remembered, seeming to age every week that passed. As of course, he was.

Lamar put out his hand, and Quinn shook it. The old man nodded, overcome.

“Your promise,” Quinn said.

“On my honor.”

The kids would suffer no harm. Could Lamar protect them? Was he any match for a twenty-year-old intent on controlling the world? He shuddered from the chill of the room.

“On your honor, then.” Quinn peeled off the paper robe. He looked at the door to the sterilizing booth. “I feel like I’m going to be shot out of a cannon.”

From the look of distress on Lamar’s face, he thought so too.

Lamar pasted up a manly smile, trying to put a brave face on the fact that they were sending this man into the quantum foam without a clue where he’d be and when.

“Quinn,” came Helice’s voice. When he looked at her, she said, “Godspeed.” She actually looked concerned for him. Hell, they all did.

Quinn walked into the booth naked, except for the photos taped to the soles of his feet.

The smell was pungent, earthy, heavy with ozone and antiseptics. The brew of chemicals revolted him, as the doc had said, meaning he should avoid this place.

Well, he knew that much. He was eager to be done with this side of reality.

Scoured and sore, he emerged into the main tube leading to the transition module, a modification to the space platform built for just this purpose. They called it interfacing; but he’d also heard the techs calling it
punching
through.
In the access tube he was met by two paper-suited figures who escorted him toward the transition module, as though he might bolt at the last minute. A heavy door parted before them, and they emerged into the module with its racks of electronics, cabling, and wires surrounding a small platform where an empty harness hung suspended.

It was all, at this point, unreal, with his senses hideously alert, and his mind damped down. It might have been lack of sleep, or some unguessed-at depth of terror. He found himself wondering if the pictures had survived the sonic cleansing. He wanted to have a profound thought or two, but instead he was blank and numb.

They helped him into a simple costume of plain woven wool: loose trousers and a fitted shirt. He drew on socks and boots, careful to avoid crinkling noises from the pictures. Then he stepped onto the platform, where an attendant helped him thread his arms through the sleeves of the harness, high on his shoulder, for the brief suspension. The attendants left the module. Now they would wait for a lock on that place, that place that shifted, constantly shifted. The very act of finding it tended to push it away. So when the sapient pierced it to three hundred nanometers, they would instantly lock on, and throw the power on, send him into a state frighteningly called
decoherence
.

He waited. It was cold. They would hoist him two seconds before launch. Already his arms were taut, held up at an uncomfortable angle. It was so cold in there. Mercifully they weren’t talking to him over the audio.

So quiet. He waited. Licked his lips. Dry mouth.

He stood spread-eagled, a sacrificial lamb, a sacrificial man.

He began to worry that they had already thrown the switch and he would be lost forever in this harness, waiting for the world.

Then it came.

The hoist lifted. The cannon shot.

But silently. No noise, but the
smell
. He was in a world of olfactory nonsense. Things he had no name for. The smell of the world dissolving, the smell of the quark-filled universe. He saw his own arm hanging out at his side. Saw the pulse of blood through an artery. He followed the movement of blood, traversing his upper arm with the stately pace of a glacier. At this rate, the blood would never make it back for reoxygenation in time to . . .

He couldn’t remember what blood was for.

His arms were gone.
Uh-oh
.
Floating ahead of the rest of him.
He hoped that didn’t mean a screw-up. He looked through the harness, and his torso was drifting suspended, armless, through the corridors of the Ceres Platform. Picking up speed, coming to the end of the corridor, an impossibly long corridor, where the wall up ahead was about to have a very personal interaction with his face.

Tearing through the wall, past the foam of insulation, data structures, carbon nano hull. Waiting to explode in vacuum space. Looking back at the hole in the space platform, people frozen in midstride. Better close the hole, he thought. He saw people changing positions. They weren’t frozen, they were just moving so
slowly
. It made him sick, watching how slowly they moved, when his life was speeding faster and faster. He turned around, to look where he was going.

Ahead was vast, black, capturing space. He submitted himself to it.

The universe rewarded him by knocking him senseless.

PART II
HOLD
UP
THE
BRIGHT

CHAPTER SEVEN

W
EN AN WAS OLD
, past the age when she expected to see miracles, or even the unexpected. A life of 50,000 days ensured that you had seen most everything at least twice. But looking into the eyes of the stranger, she knew that an old woman had just been given the gift of surprise. Of course, it might be a fatal one.

Now, as she led the beku down the valley, the stranger lay on the palanquin, still delirious. His head injury would heal, but he would not last long once they reached the village. So she must decide whether to cast him to his fate, or protect him. God not looking at me, she thought crossly. I haven’t asked to be surprised; I’ve never hoped to make high decisions, nor ever looked to be garroted by a bright lord.

All of these things appeared likely to happen, because of the appearance on her doorstop of an out-of-place man.

She’d found him during her walk, shortly after rising. The stranger lay at the foot of a rock outcropping, as though he had fallen from its height, though why a man should climb a rock in the far reach of a dusty minoral was incomprehensible. Lugging him by beku to her outpost, she had cleaned his head wound, attempting to analyze it for infection, but the stone well could make nothing of his blood sample. When his eyes fluttered open for a moment, she understood why.

Blue eyes. After sitting a moment digesting this discovery, she leaned forward and picked up his left eyelid to confirm the impossible. Yes, blue.

It was no absolute proof that he was from the Rose. But combined with the odd clothes she drew a scholar’s conclusion. All these years of peering through the veil at the Rose, eking out the merest snips of knowledge, and now she had a Rose specimen lying in her bed. The implications for scholarship staggered her. However, by bond law, her life was forfeit unless she turned him in. So much for scholarship.

“Heaven give us few surprises,” she muttered now as she led the beku by a rope. How had the man made the crossing? And why? He’d come with no army of invasion, nor in any brightship, to penetrate the great wall. The man groaned now and then, and the beku’s ears twitched as though the beast wasn’t used to moans in that strange tongue. She thought he spoke English, but she couldn’t be sure, her Rose studies having focused on Mandarin, Cantonese, and Latin.

In the purse tied to her belt were the lenses she’d made for his eyes. She’d worked through the ebb forming them in case she decided to save his life. Now she must decide whether to give him to the lords or exploit his knowledge. Better, far better than squinting at the Rose universe through the veil, now she might ask this man directly,
What is your world? How does it work?
How do you live?
Many scholars wished to know these things, and were allowed to study them, provided no one of the Rose ever guessed they were being looked at. This was the immutable vow of the realm: to hide, always hide, from the Rose. Some disagreed. Some wanted converse with the Rose, even a few of her own Chalin people. Wen An’s position had long been that the worlds should have discourse and learn from each other. Until now, she’d assumed she would have her grave flag before that ever happened. It was well to stay far from politics. And treason.

If she was caught, the eye lenses she’d made would condemn her to lie at the feet of the bright lords. It wasn’t too late to cast them away, to be innocent of breaking the vows. Yes, perhaps she should do that. She was too old to embark on new scholarship, to become an important personage. She was a minor scholar, of course; why else would she be stuck at this piddling, dusty reach, working alone and without decent help? She’d grown used to her routines, with her Rose gleanings filling a redstone every day, or every arc at the least. Why strive at her age? On the other hand, she might live to reach 100,000 days, and that meant she was only in the middling years of her life. Hadn’t Master Yulin’s wife Caiji just died at exactly 100,000 days? Yes, there was still time for important work. She glanced back at the unconscious man. But the fool spoke English, so again, this opportunity was not for her. It was a relief to decide this. Let those who wanted God’s notice strive for importance. She would give the stranger up and have done with it.

Who to give him to, though—the lords or Master Yulin? Yes, Yulin might take it amiss for her to deal directly with the bright lords. She had family ties to Yulin’s household; there was that as well. Yulin’s oldest wife Suzong was Wen An’s distant cousin. She knew enough of that exalted lady to suspect that Suzong did not love the Tarig, so let her grapple with the problem. People in high places had high responsibilities, and those in low didn’t. She liked the justice of it. There’s an end to it then: Let the man go to the Tarig, through the hands of Yulin, and leave her in peace.

Her feet hurt, treading on the rocky minoral floor. She sighed, feeling cowardly and also cross for having to walk six hours with the breath of a beku on her neck.

She turned to see the man stirring on the riding platform. A shame to have saved his life only to see the Tarig take it from him again. Or perhaps as with that other Rose visitor, the bright lords would keep him in a cage for their amusement, or so the story went, that a man of the Rose had been spared for the sake of the bright lady Chiron, who found him a source of amusement—though, of course, the Tarig didn’t laugh.

As the Heart of Day cast its fiery heat over the trail, Wen An plodded onward, looking for a good resting spot now that the man was stirring.

Lying blind, his head riddled with pain, Quinn probed his surroundings with his sense of smell. A complex, pollen-filled breeze, tangy and fragrant; an organic musk of an animal. Underneath all other smells lay the memory-laden scent of cloves.

He hovered on the edge of consciousness, clinging to a hard platform that rocked under the swaying plod of some beast of transport. The smells of the beast staggered him. Hundreds, maybe thousands of compounds, churning, churning.

Under an impossible sky.

He rode in an open-sided tent. Sprawled against a hard backrest, he lay staring at a woven cloth sparkling here and there with defects through which the day needled at his eyes. They had stopped.