Pirate Sun (21 page)

It was Telen. She hung in the air, perfectly still, her face absolutely expressionless. Her eyes were on the door to the shack.

She was unbound.

Antaea stared at her, looking for some clue about what to do. As she did Telen’s stillness began to seem odd. Unnatural, even.

—No, she couldn’t be dead—Antaea saw her blink, and relaxed a bit. She waited for her to blink again, just to confirm what she’d seen. The seconds dragged on.

Fully twenty seconds passed before Telen blinked again. This time Antaea counted, and it was exactly twenty seconds again when she blinked the third time.

It was a motion as slow and precise as the advance of a clock’s hour hand. A prickle moved up Antaea’s neck. It was over a minute since she had looked in the window yet Telen hadn’t moved at all. Nonetheless, she was awake, her gaze fixed on the door Antaea was supposed to come through.

Antaea backed away into the shadows. What
was
this? Was Telen drugged? That seemed like the best explanation at first, but if she’d been drugged she would have curled up into the fetal position, as most sleepers did in freefall. It was how Telen slept when weightless, Antaea knew that much. Her muscles were keeping her erect. She was awake.

A kind of supernatural dread had taken hold of Antaea. She realized she was continuing to back away, into the darkened plain that clove Rush asteroid in two.

She had to be missing something, some clue as to what was going on. Antaea pinched her forearms fiercely. “Think, idiot!” she hissed at herself. What would Chaison Fanning, military tactician, do in this situation?

He would put himself in the enemy’s mind. So, what had Gonlin been doing just now? Throwing her off balance, of course, and quite deliberately. He couldn’t have Antaea forced or compelled to come here because she was still one of his people; it would be bad for morale for her former friends to see her abused. And he’d wanted her to come straight to this place, rather than going…where? There was nowhere else for Antaea to go.

Unless there was, and it was so obvious and compelling that Gonlin felt he needed an emotional gut-punch to keep Antaea from thinking of it. He couldn’t let her think about it because it worried him—and all his men. Had them frightened, in fact, and…bottled up?

She hissed again, this time in angry surprise. Antaea turned away from the mining shacks and began to feel her way along the narrowing rock crevasse. A few minutes later she pulled herself out of a thin crack beneath the roots of a maple tree.

She looked back. Telen was still in there. If that really was her; yet if it was, surely Gonlin would be willing to let her go now that he had the admiral. Antaea held onto that thought, and looked around herself.

She hovered in a strange twilight world of bark shafts, ceilinged with thick leaves. The long ropelike trunks of the trees sprang hundreds of feet up from the surface of the asteroid before subdividing into branch and leaf. With Slipstream’s sun in its maintenance phase, the only light came from the glow of distant windows and little of that made its way through the foliage. It proved easiest to climb along one of the trunks to the tree’s crown where at least she could see something. Then she hopped from branch to branch, circling back to the giant suspended stone.

From the lip of the crater she could just make out the furz of green that was the precipice moth’s disguise. It was hunkered down among some big black silhouetted boulders. She could see several of Gonlin’s people among the lit huts. They weren’t taking their eyes off the moth, but unless there was a watcher in the dark on this side, they were unlikely to see her approach. Not that she had the luxury of time; any minute now someone would realize she hadn’t kept her appointment with Telen. She only hoped her sister wouldn’t suffer for it.

She glided down the dark slope and fetched up behind the boulders. From there it was a simple matter to sidle around the rocks and under the body of the moth. It knew she was there since it had eyes all over its body. Antaea was counting on the fact that it knew who she was.

A quick hop up to its flank and she was next to one of the access hatches. “Let me in,” she whispered. For a tense few seconds she thought it wouldn’t obey, then the hatch slid to one side. Red light shone from the interior, but she was on the far side of the moth from Gonlin’s watchers. There were no shouts of alarm as she climbed inside.

The hatch shut behind her. Antaea wormed her way around a tight corner—the insides of these creatures were claustrophobic in the extreme—and pulled herself into one of the two command chairs in the moth’s cockpit.

They were called command chairs, and it was called a cockpit, but you didn’t exactly command a precipice moth. The things had minds of their own, and these tiny cabins were more like protected bunkers for their occasional human passengers. There were view screens and control pads here, but all were currently dark; Antaea doubted she could call them to life this close to Candesce. If what she’d been told about the moths was true, only its pseudobiological systems could be active this close to the sun of suns. Even the red lights were probably biochemical rather than electrical. Still, its brain would be active, and she could talk to it here in private.

The problem was, which of a hundred questions to ask it first.

“Are you my sister’s moth?” The sound of her own voice was surprising in this cramped, dead space.

The voice that replied was even more unnerving—loud and clear, easily understood, but lacking in any human inflection.—Not because the moth couldn’t mimic human tones, but because its emotions, if it had any, could not be compacted down into human speech.

“For the duration of the present emergency, I am assigned to work with Telen Argyre,” said the moth.

“What are you doing here? I thought your kind only patrolled the skin of Virga?”

“I am in pursuit of an intruder.”

“A
what
?”

“An entity from beyond Virga has penetrated to this level of the interior. I have it pinned down inside Rush asteroid. I am instructed to wait here until reinforcements arrive or until it moves again.”

“Instructed…by who? Gonlin?”

“No, by Distributed Consensus.” That was the name of the moth’s command-and-control organization, Antaea remembered.

“Are Gonlin’s people—are you working with the home guard people inside this asteroid?”

“No. I instructed them to bring me the intruder. They have not done so.”

Antaea hugged herself. She tried to think of what to ask next—something, anything other than the obvious next question. The seconds dragged on, until she realized what she was doing and gave in. “What does this intruder look like?”

But she already knew the answer.

“It has the appearance of Telen Argyre.”

THE FAMILY RESEMBLANCE
was obvious. Everyone turned to look as Telen Argyre entered the tiny hut and it was not just because she was as exotic as her sister. She was shorter, her face more heart-shaped than the inverted teardrop of Antaea’s, but she had the same fine narrow nose and wideset, large eyes. She wore plain traveler’s clothes that did nothing to hide her figure.

She was so beautiful that it took a moment before Chaison realized that the sudden alertness among her torturers signaled something quite different than admiration.

Chaison’s throat was raw from screaming into the rag they had stuffed between his teeth. His eyes could barely focus, he was shivering but covered in sweat, and his heart felt like it was about to burst out of his chest. After his time in Falcon’s prison he had believed he knew all the ways a man could be tortured, but Gonlin’s team had hurt him in ways he’d never imagined you could hurt.

Still…“He’s given us nothing,” said the one who’d introduced himself as Gonlin. He was a pallid, froglike man with darting eyes, not the sort you’d picture as a great revolutionary. The others deferred to him anyway—or they had, until Telen Argyre entered the room.

She lifted her fine-pointed chin now and narrowed her eyes, examining Chaison with serpentine detachment. Then her head turned—almost as if it were an object separate from the rest of her body—and she blinked at Gonlin. “Where is the other one?” she asked. “The sister?”

Gonlin opened his mouth. “I thought…she was with you—” He whirled on his men, face darkening. “Didn’t I ask her to be escorted? Where is Erik?”

Chaison tried to chuckle ironically, but nothing came out. Telen Argyre seemed to hear anyway; her head snapped back and her eyes focused on his. “Why have you not told them what they want to know?” She seemed more puzzled than angry.

He spat blood at her. She ducked it and turned again to Gonlin. “Bring me water. His throat is dry.” Past her, Chaison could make out blurred forms of men and women jumping in and out of the hut. They were shouting to each other and the people outside. He tried his best to laugh.

Somebody brought a wine flask and he sipped some water. Licking his lips, he grinned up at Gonlin and Argyre. “W-What if I gave it t-to Antaea?”

Shock washed over Gonlin’s face, but Antaea’s sister merely shook her head. “You did not. But why haven’t you revealed the location of the key? You could die very soon from what they are doing to you.”

“What
you
are doing to me.” She didn’t even shrug, just kept staring at him. Finally he stammered out, “I was tortured for m-months in Falcon. T-they asked me questions they knew I c-couldn’t answer. It was g-good practice for today.”

He wouldn’t tell them the rest: that he had given up on himself dozens of times during that torture, or later in the black emptiness of his cell. He had consigned himself to death, let go of everything except one slender thread that still connected him to life. He had not forgotten Venera.

She was the one unfinished piece of his life, and he had seized the opportunity of his escape because he might see her again. Returning Darius to his home had been a convenient cover story, something he could use to prop up his determination in darker moments—and he really did care for the boy. But it was the hope of seeing Venera again that had kept him going.

To have lost that chance, once and for all, was to be already dead. If he was going to die without seeing her then it didn’t matter how much they hurt him; in fact, the pain was so shocking and immediate that he had embraced it almost with joy. It was the most real thing in his life now and as long as it continued he had something to fight, to dread, and to remind himself that he had lived.

Knowing that he was invulnerable, he smiled into Telen Argyre’s eyes.

Somebody burst through the doorway. “Erik swears he saw her go into the box. She must have ducked into a shadow or something. She’s gotten away.”

Gonlin swore. “She hasn’t gotten away. She’s with the moth!”

Chaison was able to focus well enough to see the look of raw fear that came over Erik’s face at the mention of the tree-covered monster. He drifted out the door, eyes wide. “Get out there!” Gonlin screamed at him.

Then Gonlin turned to Telen Argyre. “We may be out of time here,” he said. “It wasn’t supposed to work out like this.” His tone was almost pleading.

She pulled herself over to Chaison, taking up her dispassionate examination of his condition. “He is not responding to pain,” she said. “I will try something else.” She raised her hand.

In the dim lantern light it seemed to be sprouting cobwebs. Gonlin looked as startled as Chaison felt at the sight of her fingers fading behind a sudden halo of pale gray.

“That…works here?” Gonlin seemed awed by what he was seeing.

“The asteroid shields me from Candesce’s influence,” said Argyre. “I told you that.”

“Well, yes, but I didn’t realize that…” Gonlin swallowed, watching as Argyre reached up to lay her hand on the top of Chaison’s head. He felt the pressure for a moment, then a deep coldness like ice water spreading across his skull. Suddenly, all the pain went away, leaving him blinking in surprise.

Argyre tilted her head, bringing her face close to his. “The monofilaments have penetrated your skin and bone, and I am shutting down your pain response,” she said. “The filaments will interface with your neurons and learn the emergent language of your brain. In order to do this they must become part of that system for a time. So, for some minutes you and I will not be separable cognitive entities.”

Gonlin cleared his throat. “I doubt your sis—Antaea Argyre will be able to convince the moth to try and break in here. But what if she goes to the local authorities? Tells them that we’ve got the admiral that everybody’s looking for?”

Telen Argyre glanced at him coolly. “This will only take a minute. When I’m done, we will give the admiral to Slipstream’s pilot.”

“Ah,” said Gonlin. “And the moth—?”

“It will pursue us,” said Argyre. “We will use the city’s people as our shield.”

Gonlin looked decidedly unhappy about that idea, but Argyre had already turned her attention back to Chaison. “So,” she said.

Chaison found himself clearing his throat. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said.

That was odd. Why had he spoken?

“It commonly terrifies them,” he heard himself say, “when the illusion of individual identity is stripped away.” Gonlin was staring at him in horror. Chaison felt his own lips moving again, heard his own voice reverberate through his flesh as he said, “This fear is a side effect of the process. We do not really need it because the subject’s emotions are no longer a factor.”

The terrible truth of what was happening came to Chaison then.

He gave in to panic.

QUARTET THREE, CYLINDER
two loomed ahead, a half–black arc and half-cup of glittering city lights. The spring-driven snap of her wings drove spikes of pain into her back, and Antaea’s thighs were quivering from pushing down on the stirrups—but she was nearly there. Outrider buildings were sailing majestically past now, lights blinking, and ahead a vortex of ropes led to the giant town-wheel’s axis. Police cruisers and civilian vessels were always in sight. Gonlin’s people wouldn’t get away with it if they tried something here.

Unless of course they just used a rifle, and shot her from a mile away. Her only hope was to lose herself in the streets below.

She took one more glance over her shoulder at the dark blot of Rush asteroid. It was a leave-taking look—she recognized the odd trembling sensation in her heart from a similar moment on the day she’d left Pacquaea to join the guard. She had thought she understood these moments by now, she’d had enough of them in her life. This agony of mind, though—there was nothing to compare it to, though she deserved every second of it. She had trusted the wrong people—no, even worse, she had trusted
herself,
and the result was that she had betrayed everything she’d ever believed in and the only two people in the world she really cared about.

Her tears trembled in the meager headwind of her flight, and tumbled behind her like tiny signposts leading back to the precipice moth.

A traffic cop waved at her and she obediently moved into a channel of air defined by a trio of ropes. The cop was dressed in bioluminescent clothing and had fan-driven lanterns on his head, wrists, and ankles; if Antaea had been prepared to notice she might have delighted in his fantastical shape, like some underwater creature waving its arms to incoming travelers. Instead her eyes were fixed on nothing, her motions automatic as she followed the landing lights in to a platform high above the circling streets of Rush.

The moth had been plain: there was nothing left of Telen Argyre in the body that moved and talked like her. It was some sort of an infection, said the moth, a nanotechnological fever that had overwhelmed her nervous and immune systems. The moth had seen it before, centuries ago. Those who succumbed didn’t just lose their minds. Every nerve in their bodies died, withering out of the way of hard replacements that reported back to an iron-cold processor nestling where the brain should be.

Antaea couldn’t stop thinking that Telen might have still been alive when she’d left to find Chaison Fanning. She could have stayed. She could have tried to find Telen instead of this foreign admiral. Why hadn’t she done that?

And then, when she began to realize just how deeply she could trust Chaison Fanning, why hadn’t she told him about Telen? He had felt so betrayed by her actions; and he was right to feel that way. She
had
betrayed him.

She moved like a sleepwalker along a ramp with a dozen or so other late-night travelers. Only when she bumped into someone who’d stopped abruptly did Antaea become aware of her surroundings again. The formally dressed man she’d collided with barely noticed her in turn—he was pointing something out to his perfumed and gowned lady companion.

“That’s it there,” he said. “Can you believe they’re still bottled up? It defies all reason.”

The lady shivered. “The mob,” she murmured. “It’s like a circling shark, waiting to…”

Antaea tuned out the woman’s vacuous dramatism. On the other hand, the thing they were looking at…

It was the
Severance
, pinned by spotlights to an area of clear air out past the other end of this cylinder. Now that Antaea was in the town-wheel’s microgravity it looked like it was the
Severance
turning grandly in the distance; the apparent motion belied the stillness of the scene. The ship’s portholes glittered now and then from reflected light, but were otherwise dark. There was no exhaust from its engines. It might have been adrift, yet starting about three hundred feet away from it was a diffuse globe of men and weapons, all aimed at the cruiser. It was like an owl surrounded by sparrows—or a still snapshot of same.

Beyond the
Severance
, the pilot’s palace wheeled grandly. That particular town-wheel was entirely lit, as if the
Severance
was keeping the government awake. Which was probably true.

“I’m sure cooler heads will prevail,” said the man doubtfully. Antaea slipped past them and found her way to a half-empty express elevator. As the elevator operator dragged the telescoping cage door shut she looked again through wrought-iron filigree at the tiny, toylike
Severance
.

Bottled up. Everything good had become trapped, like bees in a jar. The
Severance
was trapped, Chaison was trapped, Aerie’s former citizens locked under martial law and curfews; and the whole home guard had been duped and outmaneuvered by Gonlin and his gang. Only she was free, but probably nobody cared. Antaea had done her damage, she was useless now.

Of course, the monster that had eaten Telen was also trapped. There was just one creature in the whole damned world still capable of acting: the precipice moth. And it was too fearful of causing collateral damage to do anything but wait for the monster to poke its head up.

Maybe all it needed was a good push…

When they touched down and the doors opened, Antaea found her feet carrying her in a definite direction. Perhaps she’d had this plan in her subconscious all along, else why had she chosen this particular cylinder? She padded between the curfew ropes that blocked off side streets, moving obediently with the rest of the crowd to the designated taxi stands and hostel quarter. As the watching policemen’s eyes tracked the other way for an instant she ducked and dove into a darkened alley, racing along on her toes so that her heel-spikes didn’t click on the iron street. For a few seconds she was sure she’d gotten away.

Then the sound of shouting caught up to her.

BEHOLD CANDESCE, THE
sun of suns. Not so much a thing or even a place, but a region where light and heat swallowed material reality. Candesce dissolved in flame every morning, taking everything within a hundred miles with it. It was as though the sun of suns cried an invocation to the gods of fire and was sacrificed, consumed utterly by their brief entry into the world, to be born again as a physical object at day’s end.

Nations consigned their dead to this heat in daily spiraling flights of coffins; legend said that whole nations had in fact been driven into Candesce by warring neighbors, every town-wheel, building, farm, and lake disappearing into that widening whiteness. Countless millions lived their lives knowing only its light. Yet in this moment, Chaison Fanning found himself gazing upon something whose size and grandeur eclipsed Candesce as much as the sun of suns would drown a single candle’s flame.

Was this him remembering the star Vega? It couldn’t be; he must be experiencing some memory of that thing that had taken the form of Telen Argyre. And yet he was so sure he had seen it—had been there himself.

Virga and Vega. Surely he had known that the one was a toy version of the other, a model at million-billionth scale. Everyone knew that; Virga was the joke of the Vega system. It was a tiny balloon of carbon fiber discarded at the very edge of Vega’s gravitational influence. It hovered on the edge of interstellar space, where no one ever went. Everything of interest happened somewhere else.