Summerhill (27 page)

Summerhill couldn’t keep his snout from curling up into a snarl. “Why should I tell you anything? Are you going to suddenly believe the things I tell you now that you’re the one licking your wounds?”

If the Admiral was perturbed by that barb, he made no show of it. “Not to quote our six-eyed friend, here, but I don’t think you’re in the position to be picky, Summerhill. That’s your name?”

“And I don’t think you’re in the position to be snide. What do you want me to do? Get Katherine back for you so you can finish putting her on trial yourself?”

The Admiral locked eyes with him. He wasn’t in the mood to joke, but neither was Summerhill in the mood to back down just because some naval officer thought he could retain control of a situation he’d already lost control of.

“You know Tinsley,” the Admiral said. “From before this, somehow. I’m not sure how, or what that means, or even if you’re an entity capable of having feelings for individuals who aren’t of your own kind. But she seemed to want you to try to help her. She’d want you to cooperate with me.”

“Oh, don’t act like you guys were best friends all of a sudden.” Summerhill was glad that he was incapable of punching the tube. “You clearly didn’t know her very well, and if the last few minutes are any indication, you didn’t trust her, either.”

The Admiral shot to his feet. “As of a few minutes ago, the Kentaurus-Procyon Hegemony is at war with this Consortium, as far as I’m concerned. My men have been murdered, and an officer under my command was abducted from aboard my own flagship.” Anger smoldered in his eyes. “You have some connection to all this, and so help me God, I am both very capable and very willing to hurt you if you think you can toy with me, dog.”

“I don’t have anything to do with this!” Summerhill cried. “I’m just...” He bit his lip so hard that he thought he might bite it off. “I’m just a dog who wanted to save one of my friends. Because that’s what Katherine is to me. That’s why I came here.” He locked eyes with the too-proud Admiral, trying to see if he could appeal to his sense of... Mercy? Understanding? He wasn’t even sure what he should want right now. “And maybe if you’d listened to me earlier instead of showboating, I could have done something.”

On some sick, twisted level, this whole venture made sense in retrospect. He’d asked Shoön where he was supposed to be, and when she told him that was his choice, he’d thought only about getting back to Katherine, to save her from the Consortium. It had been his fault that he hadn’t been more specific, hadn’t thought about the real where and when he wanted to go. Because here he was, at a different where and when, and Katherine had needed saving from the Consortium. And Summerhill had failed.

“I’m sorry,” he said to the Admiral. “And I know you probably think that this is somehow my fault, but I don’t even care. I just want you to know that you’re not the only one here who’s kicking himself for just standing here without doing anything.”

The look that crossed the Admiral’s face was hard for Summerhill to read in the handful of seconds he had to see it. It looked as though the Admiral was going to say something, but before he could, one of the doors—the same one that the guards had brought Katherine in through—opened, and a peculiar creature walked into the room.

Shorter than a human by about a third, it looked like some strange cross between avian and mammal, with a body covered in something that looked like something partway between feathers and fur, blue and soft. Its face featured a prominent beak-like protrusion in front, as well as large, intelligent eyes, and its head looked too big for its small body. It too wore the uniform of the fleet, modified to fit its inhuman body.

“Navigator Royeyri,” the Admiral said with some surprise. “What brings you down here?”

The creature did not respond right away, but instead took its time to assess the state of things. No, not ‘it’—one of the ensigns had referred to Royeyri as male. Without so much as moving his body, Royeyri craned his head in unnatural ways that made Summerhill’s neck hurt just to watch it, the birdlike creature apparently capable of turning his head almost completely around. He silently snapped his beak, peered into Summerhill’s eyes, then turned his attention back to the Admiral.

“Commotion. Calamity.” He clucked a narrow, dark tongue against the edge of his beak. “Royeyri thought Admiral Choi needed checking up on, lah.”

Again, with the rest of his body staying stock still, Royeyri turned his head around to look at Summerhill. “Also, powerful creature here, Royeyri felt. Powerful,
dangerous
creature, yes.”

Royeyri’s voice was definitely the same one Summerhill had heard in his head while time halted. His diction was somewhat off, but that may have been a result of his speaking the human tongue despite not having a human mouth. Earlier, Royeyri had said that Summerhill could trust him.

But trust wasn’t something that Summerhill was feeling much of right now. Telling the superior officer present that he was “powerful and dangerous” didn’t do a lot to sell him on the idea that Royeyri was on his side.

The Admiral turned one eye to Summerhill, but resolutely refused to show any fear despite Royeyri’s warning. “What about the ship that attacked us? Have the Syorii run across vessels of that type before?”

Royeyri shook his head with sharp jerks. “No, no. Very unfamiliar, that one was. Unfamiliar, scary, too powerful. Best avoided, yes.” He lifted a limb, some sort of cross between a wing and a true arm. An accusing finger indicated Summerhill. “This one, though, Royeyri knows, lah.”

“The dog-creature?” the Admiral asked. “He and Tinsley seem to know each other. Somehow.”

Royeyri’s beak-like snout curled into a semblance of a wicked smile. “
Really?
” he cooed, drawing the word out for several seconds, clicking his tongue in rapid succession at the end. “So, so very curious, that is! Lots to learn from this one, yes. Capture it, study it. So much to find out, Royeyri is sure!”

Once more, Summerhill tried to pound on the tube, but only succeeded in bumping his elbow painfully as he tried to wind his arm up. He muffled his bark of discomfort as best he could, then growled out, “I don’t know what he’s talking about, Admiral. I swear to you that I am not here to threaten you or your fleet. All I want is to save Katherine—”

“Lies and trickery, lah, that’s what this one’s good at. Trust Royeyri, Admiral. Trust Syorii knowledge and wisdom. Best to rid yourself of the risk, especially now, yes?”

The Admiral was looking weary. He sighed, rubbed at his forehead, then turned his head so that he could keep an eye on both Summerhill and Royeyri at the same time. “What do you propose we do with him, then? Stun him and eject him out the nearest airlock?”

The clattering of Royeyri’s beak was probably his species’ equivalent of a cackling giggle. “Oh, such a waste that would be!” he crooned (really, Summerhill thought the bird-creature was enjoying the situation far too much). “Like Royeyri said, capture it, study it, learn about it.”

A rough snort came from the Admiral. “I don’t think he’ll be particularly cooperative on that account, really.”

Royeyri waggled his fingers and twirled his wrist. “Oh, leave that to Royeyri, lah. No problem. No problem at all.”

Twenty-Five

Stop

The next moment hung there indefinitely.

There was the vaguest sense of blue—not the hopeful blue Summerhill had seen in his other self’s eyes so very long ago, but a nauseating, unkind blue. It wasn’t visual—nothing was visual anymore—but it was
there
, present, oppressive, like the edges of a too-small universe ready to collapse in on itself

Nothing at all was clear. Nothing was happening, at least not completely. There was no Royeyri anymore, no Admiral and only kind of a Summerhill. The dog felt a wave rising up through his torso, rising and rising and rising upward, but never cresting, only getting higher and higher and higher. At the same time, he had taken a breath, and the air was stuck in his lungs with no way for him to exhale it.

Thought was no longer a conscious thing for him. His mind was locked into a hazy state between asleep and awake. Perception was only ever half-real. He couldn’t hear words, only remember the impression that someone had spoken; he couldn’t see images, only sense movement out of the corner of his eye, always colored in that same shade of blue, always frozen, never actually happening.

In his half-sleep, Summerhill had half-dreams, nothing strong enough to feel real. Half-images, a pocket watch that tracked time that never passed, engraved with words that didn’t exist. Half-people, an otter he didn’t remember, a girl forever on the run from a crime that hadn’t occurred. Half-reality, where nothing was clear enough to bleed into what now passed for his thoughts.

And to Summerhill, poor Summerhill, a creature who had only just come to realize how connected he was to the stream of time, it was pure agony to be trapped in a state where time itself no longer existed. He needed so badly to feel the next moment, just as badly as if he were dying of thirst and needed a drink of water. It was always almost right there, the refreshing coolness of it so near his tongue.

Never there. Always almost there. One moment, then the next. That’s all he needed, that simplest of things. It was like listening to a record skip, hitting the same few words over and over and over without moving on to the next line of the song.

Royeyri had spoken to the Admiral, right before...

Royeyri had spoken to the Admiral, right before...

Royeyri had spoken to the Admiral, right before...

Summerhill was only ever at right before. Blue. Immobile. Indefinite. Right there in his pocket, and yet simultaneously a thousand realities away, an antique pocket watch had stopped, the absence of its ticking a heartbreaking thing.

Then, some time later, at some later point that was impossible to define or describe, the blue faded away with alarming gentleness, and the next moment finally came.

Twenty-Six

Redress

Royeyri was the first thing Summerhill noticed when the world finally started up again. It took a few bleary seconds before he realized that Royeyri was the only thing still there from before his sense of time had gone awry.

Gone were the Admiral, his men, the confinement tube, and the
Achilles
. Instead, there was a sparsely decorated living room. The lights were turned down low, but the furniture itself—low tables and round chairs without backs—had an ambient glow of its own. The floor beneath Summerhill’s feet vibrated, and a quick look around revealed two windows, one to either side, both showing nothing but a field of stars and empty space.

Even looking around like that made Summerhill quite dizzy, and Royeyri was quick to move, stepping forward, catching hold of one of the dog’s hands and helping to set him down on one of the cushioned chairs before he fell. “Easy, lah, easy,” Royeyri said, voice soft and hushed.

Once Summerhill was safely seated, Royeyri’s chuckled through the large nostrils in his wide beak. He shook out his winglike arms, then paced in a wobbling circle around the chair. “That’s it, Summerhill. Nice and calm, yes. Royeyri knows what he’s doing, yes, see?”

The act of sitting down made Summerhill feel less lightheaded, but now his stomach felt queasy. He doubled over with pangs like those of hunger, and his ears folded back to block out even the barely audible hum of the ship’s idling systems. The symptoms of weakness and oversensitivity then began to abate, if slowly.

“What happened? Where am I? Where did everyone go?”