Summerhill (7 page)

The lifeboat was a metal capsule that had enough sitting room for at least two dozen individuals of Katherine or Summerhill’s size. There were footlockers stowed underneath the seats, viewing ports along the walls, and two tall cabinets in the back, labeled with wordless symbols indicating that they were stocked with medical supplies and food stores, respectively.

A large, red handle hung from the ceiling near the hatch. Katherine grabbed hold of it and pulled down on it with all her weight. Another buzzing, one-note warning alarm sounded through the lifeboat before the entire capsule shook, then shot away from the
Nusquam
at impressive speed. For a moment, the artificial gravity in the lifeboat didn’t know which direction to pull them in.

Gravity soon normalized, and Katherine let out a sigh of relief before smiling apologetically at Summerhill, her curly hair still damp from the fire sprinklers. “Thank you,” she said. “I don’t know what you did back there, with the door and the flowers, but... thank you.”

“It’s the least I could do. You
did
bring me food.”

The hostess sighed again. “I didn’t mean for you to get caught up in this. Wherever we end up, it’ll be a long, long time before those guys are able to track us. If we split up from there, you should be home free.”

Home free.
That was an ironic way of putting it. “I’ll also be alone again. And probably lost,” Summerhill said. “If we’re not in any immediate danger of being found, maybe we’ll be safer together.”

Katherine looked back at him. “I put you in the brig,” she reminded him. “Now you’re suddenly willing to trust me?”

“The way I see it, we’re both on the run, now.”

That earned a self-deprecating laugh. “Guess so,” she conceded. Then, outside the viewing port, the surrounding nothingness was washed out by a pale green light that gradually became brighter and brighter. “Well, Mr. Summerhill, it looks like we’re about to see where we end up.”

“What do you mean?” Summerhill asked. “This thing doesn’t have a preset destination?”

Katherine shook her head. “Not exactly. The on-board computer system does a scan of all the occupants, and then it runs calculations based on their quantum and temporal signatures in order to—”

The light flared up, filling the cabin of the lifeboat, so bright that Summerhill couldn’t even see. There was an unpleasant sound of metal-against-metal, and then the sensation of the artificial gravity pulling in the wrong direction as the lifeboat pitched down. The light then vanished, but the falling sensation remained, only to come to a jarring stop seconds later.

The lifeboat’s hatch came open with the brief hiss of pressure equalizing. Gravity was pulling the right way down again. There wasn’t a sound coming from the outside.

“Katherine,” Summerhill asked. “What just happened?”

Bracing both of her hands to either side of the viewing port, Katherine looked outside. “I think we just crashed.”

Six

Marooned

Outside the lifeboat window, the view was as bizarre as it was spectacular.

The lifeboat had crashed onto what appeared to be the surface of an enormous coral reef. Giant polyps sported a rainbow of tentacles of varying sizes. Conical sponges formed miniature forests, anchored to the reef’s calcium exoskeleton at narrow points that looked like they might break off with even the slightest nudge. Blazing red tendrils fanned out like massive antlers that belonged on the head of a great hoofed animal.

None of it moved, though. The reef didn’t look dead—far from it, in fact—but it was like a still snapshot of a living ecosystem. If it weren’t for the fact that Summerhill could turn his head and see that the view held depth and perspective, he might have mistaken it for a photograph.

“Okay,” Summerhill said, drawing a deep breath to calm himself, “if we just crashed, then
where
did we crash?”

Katherine stared out the window for a while longer, transfixed by the view outside. Her hair was still wet from the
Nusquam
’s sprinkler system. Summerhill thought at first that she’d been distracted and she hadn’t heard him, but when he was about to repeat himself, she turned to look at him and said, “I think we’ve struck a nevereef.”

Summerhill raised an eyebrow. “Should I know what that is?”

“I’m sketchy on most of the details myself,” Katherine said. “I mean, some of the sailors mention them from time to time. They’re some kind of navigational hazard that the ship has to avoid when sailing the gulf between realities, but I don’t know much about them beyond that.” She nodded towards the viewing port. “I’m actually kind of surprised that it even looks like a reef, to be honest.”

“Are you sure that’s what this is, then?”

“No,” she admitted. “But it’s my best guess. Either way, we’re still stuck here.”

Stuck. Trapped. Well, at the least the scenery was a change of pace from the World of the Pale Gray Sky. And Summerhill wasn’t alone this time. Even so, it was hard to see the situation as a huge improvement.

Summerhill got up and walked to the food cabinet. “So, now that we’re on the run together, can I ask what the deal is with those people who were chasing you?” he asked.

Katherine slumped in her seat, then undid the top button of her damp blouse and sighed. “It’s kind of a long story.”

“Well, we have plenty of time.” The cabinet was well stocked, to Summerhill’s relief, and it was larger than he’d initially surmised. “You hungry?” he asked Katherine as he rummaged through the stores for something that looked appetizing.

“Not particularly, but I should probably still eat.” Katherine turned and lay on her back, hands covering her face. A droplet of water fell from one of her prism-like earrings.

Summerhill took a step back as one of the cabinet shelves automatically slid forward. He took two of the sealed meal packs from the shelf, then watched as it slid itself back into place. Assuming he and Katherine were stuck here for the long-term, he’d ask her how all this worked, but in the meantime, there were more pressing concerns.

“They said that they didn’t want to hurt you,” he said as he peeled one of the packs open. Inside was a small tray of processed food that automatically began to reconstitute itself upon being being removed from the packaging. “But they weren’t shy about firing that energy rifle of theirs, either.”

Katherine rubbed the heels of her hands against her eyes. “Which goes to show where their real priorities are,” she said. “I don’t know. They probably at least want to try to take me alive if they can.”

Summerhill sat back down next to Katherine and set one of the trays of food down for her, complete with the tiny fork that accompanied it. “What do they need you alive for?” he asked as he looked at his own food. There were cubes of meat of some sort, but he couldn’t tell exactly what kind. It was slathered in some type of sauce that also defied easy identification. Whatever it was at least smelled edible.

“I stole something,” Katherine said as she slowly sat back up. “And they’re coming to get it back.”

The sauce-laden cubes of meat were quite tasty, though Summerhill was no closer to determining what he was actually eating. “So give it back to them,” he said. “Whatever it is can’t be worth getting shot over.”

“You’d be surprised.” Katherine poked her fork at her food, but didn’t eat just yet. “And anyhow, I can’t give them back something I don’t have.”

“But you just admitted you stole it.”

Katherine jabbed the fork into one of the cubes of meat and let it sit there. “I stole it, yes, but that doesn’t mean I still have it.”

“What did you take?”

Pushing the tray away from her, Katherine shut her eyes and set her head back against the wall of the lifeboat. “Something that’s worth shooting me over,” she muttered. “It doesn’t matter anymore. It’s gone, I can’t give it back, and when they find that out, they’ll probably kill me as a matter of principle. So the plan stays the same: I keep running.”

Summerhill took a few more bites of his food. “Can you at least tell me who you’re running from?”

Katherine opened up one eye. “Now how’s that for an ironic question?”

“Hey, at least now I know you can empathize with me.”

“Yeah. Maybe.” She closed her eye again and took a deep breath. “Honestly, I thought I’d already outrun them for good. Guess what they say is true after all: the past always has a way of catching up with you.”

Summerhill looked out the viewing port at the strange reef—this nevereef, frozen in a state of pseudo-lifelessness. “And why is the past trying to catch up with a cruise hostess?” he said.

“I wasn’t always a cruise hostess,” Katherine replied with a faint laugh. “Really, I wasn’t much of anything, aside from a girl who’d stolen something.” With an expression of reluctance on her face, she reached out and dragged her tray back over to her, taking hold of the fork and finally trying a bite of the emergency rations. “You know, if all we have to survive on is this, we could be doing a lot worse.”

“Who are you running from?” Summerhill asked again. “I’m guessing you at least know.”

Chewing slowly, Katherine nodded, then swallowed. “They call themselves the Consortium,” she said. “They’re a sort of interdimensional police agency. That’s my understanding, at any rate.”

“You’re on the run from the law?”

“I’m not going to pretend I understand how their jurisdiction works—or what the legitimacy of it is. What I do know is that, where I come from, we’ve certainly never heard of them and probably wouldn’t recognize their authority even if we had.”

Summerhill entertained the possibility that the World of the Pale Gray Sky could be some sort of dimensional prison, and that at some point in the past, he’d run afoul of this Consortium and been sentenced to that dreary oblivion. “Where are you from?” he asked Katherine, trying not to jump to any one conclusion too soon.

A wistful look overtook Katherine’s face as she set her tiny fork down and leaned back again. She rested both hands in her lap as her eyes went distant. “New Zealand,” she said, and then she made eye contact with Summerhill. “It’s a small island country on a planet called Earth.” She took a deep breath and then spaced out again. “Honestly, I’d given up hope of ever seeing it again years ago.”

Tears had formed in her eyes. Small ones, nothing that required her to sob and damage her dignity. She reached in below the neckline of her blouse and drew out a thin, leather cord necklace bearing a simple rectangular pendant made of a semitransparent blue and orange material. Her fingers traced over its edges slowly as she tried to blink her eyes dry.

“Tell me about New Zealand,” Summerhill asked.

The faint curl of a smile appeared at the corner of Katherine’s mouth. She released the pendant and lolled her head to the side as she looked back at Summerhill. “I’m sure it’s not all that impressive by your standards,” she said. “Anyone who can walk between dimensions has surely seen far more amazing things.”

“Actually, I’m not sure what I have or haven’t seen,” Summerhill replied. “And anyway, I bet your home is way more interesting than mine.”

“I’ll take that bet.”

Summerhill smiled. “Where I come from is just a big, endless city,” he explained. His smile faded as he brought more vivid memories to the fore. “But it’s a city where there are no people. The sky is always gray, there’s no day or night—nothing ever happens.” His fur stood on end to talk about it. As far as he’d come, the shadow of that world still loomed over him, chillingly close.

Katherine hummed to herself. “You mentioned on the
Nusquam
that you thought that someone had trapped you there,” she said. “So you’re not from there.”

“Well,” Summerhill started, and then had to think about what he actually meant. “No, I don’t think so, no. I mean, it’s all just conjecture on my part, because I’m not really sure, but—”

“If you’re not really from there, then it’s not really your home.” Katherine grinned as she interrupted him. “So for all you know, your real home is nothing like that.”

Summerhill’s muzzle broke into a big, bright smile. It was such a simple thought that it hadn’t even occurred to him since he’d rediscovered his own self-awareness back in the World of the Pale Gray Sky. After the disappointment with the Chief, he’d resigned himself to maybe never finding the truth. He still might not ever find it, but Katherine had put into his head the beautiful possibility that he came from someplace amazing.