Price of Ransom (22 page)

“To Penetrate a Fortress.” “To Look at the Sky.” “Flying Swallow.” “Half Moon.” “Ten Hands.”

Hours could well have gone by. Thirst burned the back of her throat; fatigue pulled against each muscle, each strike, each block, each slow elaboration that transformed into a quick thrust. Bach’s ceaseless accompaniment seemed so integral to what she was doing, balancing each sequence, that without thinking it consciously she knew she could not be so deeply focused if he was not with her.

“Crane on a Rock.” Balanced with perfect stability on one leg; poised as on the axis of the universe.

They went through.

Something about the walls had changed. They held texture not just in space but in time. She could see a pattern, a long fugue of melody out of the past, across to the present, into the future.

Experimentally, holding that vision of the walls, she lowered her right leg. It was possible to stand, although the floor had no complete material substance as she knew it.

And then she realized there was someone else in the room.

First, briefly, she knew it was Kyosti, but his presence was an echo, a faint trace
—
like a scrap of phrase of an earlier melody bound into a new theme. She turned, and saw the other woman.

She seemed somehow familiar to Lily: copper haired but with a reddish-toned complexion and high, square cheekbones
—
proud and courageous and cynical. The woman turned her head, a movement both impossibly slow and fast, without being measurable as either. And saw Lily.

Green eyes. The recollection of Master Heredes’s eyes, with that same unusual and unusually vital shade of iris
—
Heredes, Gwyn, Taliesin: his names began to tumble and weave back in among themselves, like Bach’s counterpoint, until they formed a seamless whole
—
the recollection jolted her. Just as the woman stepped forward and seemed to speak
—

They came out.

Lily collapsed onto her knees at the foot of the bed, her breath ragged. Her hands were dry. She got caught in a fit of trembling, just sat there and shook, exhausted and exhilarated and terrified all at the same time. Bach abandoned his music and drifted over to nudge against her, singing a soft aria.

Schlafe, mein Liebster, geniesse der Ruh

Wache nach diesem vor alter Gedeihen!

Labe die Brust,

Empfinde die Lust,

Wo wir unser Herz erfreuen!

“Sleep, my Dearest, enjoy Thy rest,

from henceforth watch over the well being of all.

Refresh Thy breast,

experience the joy,

there where we gladden our hearts.”

She curled up on the floor and fell asleep.

The chime of the com woke her.

“Captain Ransome,” said Windsor, his voice a little fuzzy over the com. “Three windows to Turfan. Please don’t be stubborn. Fred and Stanford have things well in hand at com-tac, so don’t bother to try to storm them there. Your bridge crew is remaining polite, but still—numbers aren’t everything. Just surrender into my custody and we won’t have any trouble.” The com clicked over, crackling expectantly.

Lily did not bother to answer. “Persistent bastard,” she muttered to herself as she went into the cubicle to wash up and drink. She changed into a fresh tunic, the stiffest, heaviest one she possessed. Then she went back to the space between the bed and the door, whistled a few instructions to Bach, and started kata again.

Now she could focus her mind quickly and sharply on her center, could bring herself back with the accompaniment of Bach to the clean detachment of her previous meditation. Hunger and a low edge of thirst worked for her as well.

“To Penetrate a Fortress.” “Jion.” “Ten No Kata.” “Crane on a Rock.”

They went through.

Time unfolds along an infinite stream, layered back in on itself. Her left hand twisted; she lowered her right leg—but she had not moved at all. What she had done before was still present. The copper-haired woman turned to speak, but Lily lost track of her as she caught—not a glimpse, but the presence, of Kyosti in the room with her. She felt for a moment that he registered her, took her in, but any other communication vanished as swiftly as the echoing shadow of her previous movements.

She took one step forward. A second. The door receded, as if space, too, had become infinite and she could never reach it, only see its unfolded textures.

Bach,
she said.

And that was the strangest thing of all. The contrapuntal music he sang, a continuous interweaving of voices, was the only thing that seemed to her to possess stability, as if it so perfectly reflected the stream itself.

We follow you,
Bach replied.

Out of the infinity of textures of the door, she chose the one that seemed most solid to her, concentrated on it without losing the shadings of the rest. Walked to it and pressing her hand to the panel, found that it still acted to open: the clearest gesture she had seen, as if it had few reflections or echoing voices from other windows.

In the outer room Jenny and the Ridani guards had an almost gossamer quality, as if they scarcely existed. The copper-haired woman stared up at Lily from the couch. She seemed unaware of any presence but her own.

Lily wove her way through the crowd, careful not to touch them, afraid of what they might feel like or what dream her touch might give them. They faded out and yet again gained solidity even as she passed. Their stillness seemed ominous to her, not even for their sake, but for her own, because the texture of their being, seeming so light and transitory, made her begin to fear returning to their state.

Each step she took, through the room, out into the corridor and along to the bridge, trailed repercussions in time behind her, as if her presence here inside a window was now imprinted forever, another countermelody weaving in to the whole, necessary, unique, and yet utterly bound into the others.

Came out onto the bridge.

Someone else sat in the captain’s chair. More than one occupant sat in each chair at each console, but their substance altered as she gazed: the wispy figures of her crew and the textured, multifaceted forms of unfamiliar faces. The captain turned.

It was the copper-haired woman, and that she was the captain was without question. She began to speak, but Lily had already discerned the shade of Windsor, seated with a strange man
—
coexistent and yet separate
—
at the com-console.

Bach,
she said,
when we come out, stun him.

In triple canon, in six parts, he replied, and drifted across the vast and tiny space of the bridge to hover at Windsor’s back, never ceasing from his music.

And she waited.

But the stream stretched on. The countersubject did not end. The copper-haired woman rose and walked to each station in turn. The walls held their texture of infinite layers. The longer Lily stared the deeper her comprehension of their layers, until she caught herself lost in contemplation of their infinite variety, as if they represented in another form the infinite variety of kata, each one done again and again, always the same and yet never the same.

There was no end to it
—
no way to escape. She could no longer conceive of the wall as a single entity, flat, without any dimension but that of gross matter. The copper-haired woman returned to the captains chair and spoke, but to her crew—and Lily knew finally who they were:

The
Forlorn Hope’s
previous crew, caught somehow like her inside a window. Caught forever, and yet for no time at all. As she was. Trapped, and unable to get out.

Bach,
she cried.
Stop singing.

Bach ceased in the middle of the fugue.

A
ND CAME OUT.

There was a flash of light. Windsor slumped in his chair. The gun looped at his shoulder clattered to the floor.

“Lily!”

“Captain!”

The exclamations came all at once. She slumped down against the back of the captain’s chair, unable to sustain her own weight. Someone took hold of her and pulled her up.

“Captain!” His voice sounded flat, one-dimensional. “How the Hells did you get here?”

“I’m never doing that again,” she said. “Never.” She tried to balance on her feet, but let the man continue to hold her up. “Get Windsor to my cabin.” Each word was an effort. “Fleet Brother to comp on bridge. Lock yourselves in here. No females. Now.” And laughed a little, wondering if “now” meant anything.

“Trey, call Nguyen up to replace you. Then get the captain back to her cabin. Mule, call the je’jiri quarters. I’ll carry Windsor. Move it.”

Somehow Lily was transferred to another set of strong arms and helped back to her cabin. A dark woman came forward immediately. After a moment Lily recognized her as Jenny.

“Lily!” Jenny exclaimed.

The door opened again. “Yehoshua, what in Hells—”

“Don’t ask me,” he said brusquely.

“Inner room,” Lily gasped, pulling herself that way as well. “Put him in—” She began to find a form and content for words. “Put him in the inner room, with me. Search him. Tie him up. Jenny.” Looking up, she met Jenny’s gaze and found that she could actually register her expression. “Keep guards set up in here.” But the outpouring of words confused her, and she let Trey help her into the inner room and sit her on the bed. Watched as Yehoshua dumped Windsor on the floor and Jenny tied him up as securely as only a former Immortal could. Bach floated in and hovered protectively beside her.

“Yehoshua,” Lily said as Jenny finished, finding that she could recall his name now. “Back to the bridge. Lock yourselves in. Get the je’jiri male to start unraveling what Stanford did—send his mate down to iron deck comp—to Main Computer—to start from that end. Bach, you start at my terminal. Now move. I don’t know if the Ardakians expect some signal from Windsor. They’re too close to us as it is.”

“But will you be all right?” Jenny asked, at the same time as Yehoshua said, “But Captain, you need medical attention.”

“Trey can stay here,” Lily conceded, aware that to argue would be to waste time. “Go.”

They went. And anyway, how could she explain to them that she was terrified of having to go through the next window? And not because the engines might blow—or precisely that, if it meant stranding them inside the window, like the
Hope
’s original crew.

For a long while she just sat. Eventually she gathered up enough courage to look at her hands, but they seemed normal and boringly solid, like hands always were and were meant to be. Finally convinced of this fact, she looked up. Bach had already plugged himself in to the terminal and he sang softly to himself as he investigated Stanford’s sabotage.

“Bach,” she said sharply. “Stop singing.”

With a brief, but unmistakably flat, cadence, he stopped.

Trey sat cross-legged in front of the door, relaxed but alert, carefully examining a thin com-slate rather than looking at Lily.

“What is that?” Lily asked. The room stayed so reassuringly monotone in texture that she felt she could afford to relax as well.

Trey looked up. “Ship’s manifest of the Akan casualties. Handed over to First Officer Yehoshua by min Belsonn. I took it from there. I’m trying to figure out how the bounty hunter”—she nodded toward Windsor’s still form—“how Windsor falsified the alien’s record to get it about. That’s how it all started.”

“Yes. The Ardakians.” Lily rose carefully to her feet, testing her balance but keeping one hand on the bed. The floor seemed stable enough, and her legs strong enough. She let go of the bed. It wasn’t so hard to stand. “I’d better talk to them before they get worried. Carry on with what you’re doing. It might be worthwhile to know.” She took a tentative step, a second, and then walked with new confidence over to the com-panel beside the door. Touching it, she coded in to com-tac.

“Hey, boss,” answered a low voice that she recognized as Fred’s more by vocabulary than by any ability on her part to distinguish his voice from Stanford’s. “Stan’s got the changeover keyed in but he says he can’t—”

“Frederick,” a second voice cut in. “Have you ascertained that you are indeed speaking with Korrigan?”

“Uh, boss,” said Fred. “Is that you?”

“No,” replied Lily. “It’s Captain Ransome, Fred. I’ve got your boss under my wing. I suggest that you and Stanford change the codes and then prepare to disembark quietly at Turfan Link, at which time I will deliver min Windsor to you.”

“You realize,” replied Stanford, “that the vector drive will explode without my override?”

“Yes, but do you realize that if the engines go, you go with us?”

There was a short silence.

“Stan,” said Fred. “I
told
you and the boss that you don’t set explosives if you can’t get outta the blast zone.”

“Even if I correct the engines,” said Stanford, ignoring this sally, “I’ve also reconfigured components in this operating system that will make it dangerous for you to operate this ship without my cooperation.”

“That may also be, and while in the interests of goodwill and fair play it would be polite of you to restore normal operations, I have my experts working on it in any event.”

“They won’t find anything.”

“That may be, but it won’t stop them working. And I don’t suggest you try a direct assault. Even if you did succeed, the attempt would be bloody and violent and a large number of people would get hurt or killed.”

“How do we know you got the boss, anyway?” Fred demanded. “You could be bluffing.”

“I could,” Lily began, but the question was answered for her by a groan and a muffled expletive from the corner.

“My fucking head,” Windsor said, his voice raspy. “What’d I get hit with?”

“How’d you get the jump on him?” Fred asked, sounding amazed.

Lily cut the connection.

“Can I get a drink?” Windsor asked. She turned in time to see him carefully testing his bonds. His face looked pale against the dull gold sheen of the wall against which he lay. As she watched, he pulled himself up to a sitting position and tilted his head back to rest against the wall. The dark stubble on his jaw and chin set off his pallor even more.