Sunborn (35 page)

    This was different, though.
We’re in n-space. Are those dimensional layers? Is this a view of where we’re going...or no, where we’ve been!
He forced himself to move closer and look out, though he was nearly sick with vertigo. Yes, he could see faint traceries of...well, it was almost like a wake, behind and a little overhead, as though they were descending through the strata as they moved forward. Whatever was creating this bubble must be translating information visually and—

   
What is that?

   
Something was moving out there, moving beneath the surface...not really a
surface,
but that was how it looked, like something following underwater...

    Like something rising from the depths.

    He opened his mouth and tried to speak, and he couldn’t. Shaking, he leaned out even farther to get a better view—and yes, indeed, a quick and shimmering shape was pursuing them, and was definitely moving upward toward them. And that wasn’t the only thing that terrified him.

   
The bubble he was standing in was starting to peel from the side of the ship. It was rocking and swaying, and he could see the place where it attached to the hull beginning to pull away. Very soon it would rip all the way to the door he had stumbled through. He was about to lose his escape route.

    He glanced back at the thing in the depths and shouted,
“Ik—Bandicut—anybody—if you can hear me, there’s something coming after us!”
 Then he dove through the doorway, rolling as he made it back into the main body of the ship. He sprang up and looked back to see the opening silver over just as the bubble beyond ripped away.

    Gasping, he tried to repeat his warning call. “Can anyone hear me?” He had to get back to the bridge!
“Napoleon! Copernicus!”

    Faintly, as though echoing down the rippling corridor, he heard the voice of Copernicus answering,
“Li-Jared, if you can hear me, follow my voice! I need your help!”

   
You need mine?
 Li-Jared thought in astonishment. But he sprinted down the corridor toward the sound of the robot’s voice.

*

   
The quarx was trying to get Bandicut’s attention, which didn’t make him happy while he was trying to fly.

   
/// Charlene-echo seems to be saying,

   
they’re sensing Delilah’s presence somewhere

   
in the wreckage...///

   
That took him a few moments to absorb. If it was true, that meant...

   
/// I don’t know what it means, John. ///

   
/Is Antares sensing it?/

   
/// I don’t know. ///

   
He didn’t have time to think about it. They were speeding through fractal-shaped patterns of n-space distortion, and he had to keep flying. Napoleon called out a warning, “Cap’n, in five seconds, break left hard and—”

    “Break left and
what,
Napoleon?” No answer. He hazarded a glance sideways.
“Napoleon?”

    The robot’s LEDs were flickering rapidly. Was he overloaded? Or worse, shorting out? Had the AI gotten to him? Oh shit. Five seconds...

    Bandicut frantically scanned ahead, through the lines representing descending dimensions of n-space. There were some patches of darkness in the web, off to the left. Was that where Nappy wanted him to break? Through the gaps in the fishnet?
Five seconds...

    Drawing a deep breath, he selected a patch of darkness, counted one more second...and, blood pounding, steered hard over. The opening loomed abruptly.

   
At the same moment, in the other direction, the sullen red aura of the Mindaru object became brighter. The spiny structure grew visibly—and he felt a sharp tilt of the n-space field, trying to reel them back in toward the Mindaru object. For a moment, he couldn’t tell whose strength was greater; he thought they might tumble straight back into the graveyard of ships between them and the Mindaru. A shattered alien hulk sailed by on the right, and another was dead ahead. Terrified, he cut harder to the left and swerved into the gap of darkness.

    The draw of the n-space field suddenly diminished. The Mindaru and the wrecked ships drifted away to the right as
The Long View
 dropped into the gap.

    /By God,/ he said to Charli, and then shouted, “We’re going to make it! We’re going to make it!”

    Ik and Antares began to answer, but Jeaves spoke first, urgently: “I’m making connections with several of these wrecked ships. Some of their intelligence systems are still active and full of information about the Mindaru. Can you keep us close to the ships just a little longer, while I download?”

    Bandicut had no time to wonder at what Jeaves was saying.
No,
he couldn’t keep the ship close to the graveyard, for God’s sake! He was trying to get them
away,
and they were dropping like a stone now through the opening that Napoleon had found for them. At least he hoped it was the right opening to get them away from this web of power...

*

   
Li-Jared hurried through what he assumed was the power section. Clear walls flanked him on either side. Behind the walls, curtains of plasma glowed and moved in intermittent eruptions of turbulence. He shivered at the sensation of raw power surrounding him, and wondered what lethal radiations were pouring into him. But he had no time to worry about that.

    “Copernicus!” he shouted at the top of his lungs.

   
“Yes, Li-Jared, yes—”

   
“Copernicus, you have to warn them! Something following!”

   
“Li-Jared, I can’t hear you very well, but I need you to throw a switch for me!”

   
“Copernicus, did you hear me? There’s—”

   
“Li-Jared, please run into the next section and look to your right for an opening.”

   
Li-Jared was practically jumping out of his skin as he ran. “What are you talking—?” The floor was pitching up and down beneath his feet. He was about to have two simultaneous heart attacks.
“Copernicus?”

   
“Do you see a narrow opening on your right? Can you slip through it?”

   
Crouching, Li-Jared found an opening half his height. A white light flickered from inside it.
“Hurry,”
 Copernicus said. Li-Jared squeezed through. He felt a tingle as he slid through the opening. He was now in a very low chamber, whose walls appeared lined with platinum inlays and thin, translucent filigreed strips flickering with the white light.

    Copernicus’s voice now seemed to come from close by his ear.
“Look for switches or breakers. I’m going to make the cables visible...”

    The walls quivered, and suddenly opened to expose a cluster of fine silver and gold ribbons snaking along the walls above the platinum inlays. Li-Jared was stunned. Somehow, he hadn’t expected a ship like this to have something as straightforward as
wiring
.

   
“I’m trying to make several of them visible,”
Copernicus said—and as he did so, three of them flickered.
“I can’t shut them off remotely. The AI infection is controlling them. These are control circuits for changing the shape of the ship. Can you see if they lead to any sort of switches or junctions?”

    Li-Jared peered, breathless. “Not that I can see. Copernicus, can you hear me?”

   
“Now I can, yes.”

   
“I don’t know what this is about, but you’ve got to tell them on the bridge—”

   
“I have already passed that on, but if we don’t cut these circuits, the ship will twist itself to pieces. Please look hard for switches. Anything.”

   
“
Anything?
 If we break these circuits the ship will stop tearing itself apart?”

   
“I hope so. It’s the only—”

   
“Well, frickin’ moon and stars, why didn’t you say so?” Li-Jared leaped at the wall and grabbed the ribbons in his hands. He felt a pulsing throb, but not too much to bear. Bracing his feet against the wall, he yanked with all of his strength. The ribbons pulled loose from somewhere. With a burst of molten light, Li-Jared flew backward across the chamber, and a great shudder passed through the floor and walls. A quarter of the lights in the chamber went dark.

    But the floor was no longer pitching.

*

   
“John Bandicut! Cap’n, pull up! Now!”

   
Bandicut blinked, twitched the joystick, and raised the nose of the ship just in time to keep from veering into another piece of space wreckage. After he was past it, he dropped the nose again.
I thought we were past this stuff.
 And then he had time to react. “You’re back! What happened?”

    “I was attacked,” said Napoleon. “If you hadn’t distracted it by diving through that opening, I might still be fighting.”

    “That’s great. But you know something? I’m not sure we’ve actually escaped anywhere.” It seemed their dive through the gap in the web had only taken them in a detour around the largest cluster of ancient, disabled spacecraft. He could still see the ominous fire-glow of the Mindaru object away to the right. “Nappy, are we getting away from this thing or just circling around it?”

    “Cap’n, I thought we were escaping. Now I’m not so sure. It seems this maze of dimensional shifts we’re in is just bringing us back around again.”

    Bandicut hissed out a tight breath and veered past another piece of spaceship debris. Then he heard a sudden declaration from Charli:

   
/// I feel Delilah’s presence.

   
It’s very strong in this sector. ///

   
Bandicut knew he should be happy, but.../Charli, we can’t stop and look for her, you know. Even if we had any clue how to do that. Can you communicate with her?/

   
/// Not so far.

   
But John, I’m picking up sensations of pain,

   
great pain from her encounter

   
with the Mindaru. ///

   
Antares was suddenly back at Bandicut’s side. “John, what’s happening?”

    “I’m trying to fly. But Charli says she can feel Delilah.”

    “
Yes!
I can feel her, too! As if she’s crying out. John, can she still be
alive
? Is she in that thing out there?”

    “How the hell would
I
know? I don’t know what kept her alive
here.
 Napoleon, I have no idea where to go! Do you see a way out?”

    “Working on it, Cap’n. I’m not really sure, either.”

    Charli wasn’t finished talking about Delilah.

   
/// She feels alive right now.

   
But I’m getting all kinds of echoes:

   
sensations of being pulled in, colliding with something,

   
torn apart by an energy field, maybe.

   
Some of this happened a while ago.

   
I can’t separate the replays from the present. ///

   
/You and Antares need to talk. I need to fly./ Jerking his head around, he said to Antares, “Can you grab my arm and talk to Charli? Napoleon, did you say something?”

    “Cap’n, Copernicus reports something following us. Something Li-Jared spotted.” As the robot spoke, a sudden jolt passed through the deck. “That would be Li-Jared, helping Copernicus regain control of the ship’s structure.”

    Bandicut squinted up at the display that showed the ship’s exterior; it appeared to be holding together. “What about the thing following? Any sign of it on the display?”

    “Not yet...”

    As they spoke, Bandicut could feel Antares’s probing touch, and the quarx moving to speak to her. But then Jeaves suddenly spoke up, as though continuing a conversation with Napoleon. “Are you getting the download from the wrecked ships, Napoleon? This second one is responding very strongly, lots of information. Grab it fast, or we’re going to lose it...”

   
Information from wrecked ships?

   
Bandicut’s head was spinning. Napoleon seemed preoccupied with the information from dead ships, and Bandicut saw another gap, a place where he might slip through with the ship. He angled that way and snapped over...

*

   
Delilah, or what survived of her, somewhere in the matrix of the Mindbody’s outer circles, was trying to call out to the struggling spaceship. She could see or at least track the spacecraft, see that it was caught in a maze of interdimensional pathways that would only lead it back, over and over, to the waiting Mindaru mind-complex. She could see the shadowy thing that was pursuing her people, and knew that if the ship got caught, there would be no escape, ever. But Delilah also saw a way out for the ship—if only she could communicate it to those on the ship.

    But Delilah did not know how to make herself heard. The scout was shattered; and Delilah, broken and bruised, was no longer there in any case. She was now a part of the outer layers of the Mindaru, the Mindbody. A part of, but not a part of. Delilah did not fully grasp the situation; she felt confusing, overlapping perceptions, like two different kinds of music overlaid and clashing. The Mindbody was not in control of her, not yet. But it had her isolated. And that isolation was what she needed to break.