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Chapter 24

Turning inside out

Floating

Images rising like bubbles in champagne

Starbursts, and space stretching like taffy . . . and against the glow, the tall figure moving closer, closer and now it was almost near enough to see its face just a little closer was it noliHuman or Tandesko or perhaps even Auricle it was raising its hand to kill

and the face came into focus

and the face was his own

* * *

Time the catalyst that changes all things, turns worlds upside down, inside out

Floating in the mist, the dark fortress metamorphoses becoming the thing that changed and caused change both prison and prisoner

Within its corridors a killer stalking not knowing its quarry not knowing itself . . . and two animals two terrakells but were they following to protect the killer or the victim

* * *

Time too short

Uncertainties multiplying and remultiplying

Who are the victims

   who the killers

      who the changelings

* * *

Coming together the pieces

   but how much emptiness remaining

* * *

Structures emerging in space like ice crystals blossoming into snowflakes; theory and emotions melding like matter and energy

Complex of forces too difficult to map . . . too difficult too little time too many patterns emerging from Willard's memory . . . would he understand them in time to make clear where he stood

if he didn't change again

if Dax didn't fail

if Tamika trusted long enough to let him do what had to be done . . . ?

* * *

Fear and determination ringing through the mist like dissonant chords, overlying images of love

Protect him protect him protect him don't make the same mistake twice trusting in the untrustworthy

* * *

((Losing control

   losing control!))

 

* * *

 

Gravity pushed him down in his seat. He struggled to focus, to clear his thoughts, and the effort took time. There was so much bewilderment, so many thoughts in his mind that were not his own. Did crossover always do this, did it always lay open the soul? Or was it the presence of Max, or the emotional stress? He blinked repeatedly, and finally his eyes worked. Before him, the splinters of colored light were gone from the viewscreen; in their place was something that nearly blinded him, that made his eyes swim again.

There was a billowing furnace of light out there—a vast, dust-hazed, crimson-tinged sun, viewed at extreme close range. Alpha Orionis: Betelgeuse. As the computer stepped down the light intensity, great dark swimming spots, supergranules, came into view on its surface. And far off to the right, a region of brightness. The sun filled the viewscreen; they had come out close to its surface, within its extended atmosphere of gases and dust. They would be getting a lot closer. Betelgeuse. A dying giant. We're here to watch it die.

To make it die.

He remembered, and wondered: What if it went supernova right now? Would they go ahead and do it without waiting for him? Did they need him? He thought that they did. But why? That was one of the things he didn't remember. Too few pieces fit, even now.

He massaged his face with a grunt. His skin tingled with a hot flush. His head hurt. He felt an ugly surge of adrenaline, of aggression. He felt an urge to hit, to strike out at something, to kill. He took a deep breath and tried to channel the feeling back into himself. Where it had come from he didn't know, or even want to know. Control it; bury it; kill it. As he exhaled slowly, he felt a semblance of inner control reasserting itself; and only then did he turn around to look at his shipmates.

He'd forgotten that only Tamika was on the bridge, and on her face was a dazed expression as she stared at the sun. She shifted to look at him, and her expression turned to horror. "Willard, what's happened?" she whispered, her voice flat with fear.

What's happened?

He looked at his hands: they were too thick, callused. He raised them to his face. Something hadn't felt right, didn't feel right. He started to rise from his couch.

((WILLARD, DON'T MOVE!))

He froze at the sound of Dax's voice in his head. (Why? What do you know about this?)

((Something went wrong in crossover. We lost control. We're trying to fix it now.))

Something went wrong? His hands changed? "System!" he murmured huskily. "Can you put a view of the bridge on screen?"

"Mirror or straight image?" the console asked.

"I don't care! Just show it!"

"As you wish, sir."

The viewscreen blinked off and turned into a near-perfect mirror. Ruskin started, and gazed at his visage in dismay. His eyebrows were thick and bristly; his cheekbones were heavy, his skin olive and swarthy and very tough, his eyes dark and deep-set. He looked frighteningly like the man who had attacked Tamika in her apartment. As he lifted his hands again, palms up, he noticed that both index fingers were tipped with throbbing blisters—tiny lasers, charged, itching to fire. His second and third fingers had grown razors for nails; his little fingers ended with steely hooked claws. He was lucky he had not torn his own face open. "What have you done?" he whispered. "Dax, did you do this?"

He rose to a crouch and stood before the mirrored viewscreen, waiting for Dax's answer. He glared at his own image, prepared to do battle with it if necessary—as though it could step out of the screen to strike him.

He felt a sudden rush of dizziness and nausea, and feverish heat. He gritted his teeth, blinked his eyelids hard, struggled to remain standing as he determinedly faced what he had become. I will not give in to it! Suddenly the heavy, brutish features began to melt away from his face. His skin began to soften; slowly it lost its olive color and turned pale; his eyes lost their dark and desperate glint. His body was aflame with invisible heat. But the throbbing in his hands ceased, the calluses grew smooth, the nails shrank to ordinary size. Within minutes, his features had returned to normal, and the flush of heat began to subside. And through the accompanying roar in his ears, Dax was explaining:

((The crossover threw us—and it must have thrown them, too: the unfriendlies, I mean. It must have triggered an unscheduled program and set them haywire. We couldn't quite control it; but at least now we know what could be coming.))

Ruskin rubbed his face, wincing and stretching his facial muscles. (Such a damned weird sensation.) He peered at Tamika's image in the mirror, meeting her eyes as she sat almost rigid with fear; he tried to will reassurance into her gaze. But how could he, the way he felt right now? He cleared his throat; his voice was gravelly. "They . . . got a little out of hand for the ride, Dax tells me. The NAGs, I mean.

Tamika nodded, said nothing.

(Am I okay now?)

((More or less.))

He leaned forward and put his hands on the console. "Screen back to view of the sun," he said. He frowned until the image steadied again on the fiery mass. "Back it off, please." The image shrank, until a limb of darkness appeared at the edge of the screen, then all around the sun. "Keep shrinking it."

Tamika gasped. As the angle widened, the distended shape of the sun became visible, and the cause of the distention and the brightness in one area. So close to Betelgeuse it looked as though it would collide was the close companion star, Alpha Orionis B, nicknamed (he remembered now) Honey. It was a giant sun in its own right, though beside Betelgeuse it looked a midget. Surrounded by a thin accretion disk of glowing gases that it had probably captured from Betelgeuse, Honey was the source of the tidal distortion of its primary; and the bright region on Betelgeuse's surface was the effect of the smaller sun's radiance. The viewscreen blinked, and in its upper right corner a black overlay appeared, with a round, reddish star at its center: the other companion, Alpha Orionis C, Lost Love, much farther out, hanging at the edge of dusty night.

"Find me the station," Ruskin requested.

"Starmuse main station?" the console asked.

"What the hell do you think? Yes. Main station."

"As you wish, sir."

"And call them. Make sure they know we're coming. We don't want this star popping off before we get there, do we?"

"Very good, sir. No, sir."

Sighing, he rubbed his temple. He knew, as though he had always known—one more memory-bit emerging from the mists—that the Starmuse station had a complex shielding system to protect it not just from the close-range heat and radiation of the sun, but from the full fury of a supernova. Their little ship did not.

Something sparkled in the air near Max's couch. The Logothian's virtual image appeared, sitting in midair. Max had stayed in his cabin this time, expressing a desire for privacy in crossover. Maybe it had helped and maybe not. Ruskin was sure he'd tapped into at least some of Max's thoughts during those moments thick with dream and madness. He gazed at his friend's virtual image, trying to remember what he'd picked up; but it was all a jumble—each of them with more than enough worries. Only very sane people should engage in starflight, he thought—at least with a tele'eLogoth on board.

"We are there," Max observed, his image gazing at the screen.

Tamika looked at him without speaking.

"So we are," Ruskin murmured with a mixture of anticipation and fear. "So we are."

 

* * *

 

Coming out of K-space was no treat even for Ganz. But once the disorientation had passed, hir forced hirself back to full consciousness—and worked quickly to establish hir position, and Ruskin's. The red sun and its sibling were enormous, and the research station was located very close to the upper edge of the primary's photosphere, a region in which the tracking of other objects was a tricky business, to say the least. A sweep for Ruskin would require either blind luck or a wider sensor scan than Ganz could make from hir own ship. Not a believer in luck, Ganz fired off three tiny remote probes into diverging orbits far above the sun's surface.

Within an hour, Ganz had hir own position as well as the position of the station. Finding Ruskin's ship took a while longer, but eventually that was accomplished, as well. Ruskin was closer to the sun presently than Ganz, and a little closer to the station. It was now or never, if Ganz was going to take the safe course and remove Ruskin from the picture.

"Well, Jeaves-copy, what do you think?" Ganz asked the shipboard cogitative system.

The system sounded surprised. "I thought we had agreed upon forbearance."

"It was possible that you had reconsidered," Ganz said, almost wistfully. "To destroy him now would be relatively easy. Even a simple fusion charge might suffice. But once he's close to the station, it will become much harder. And once he's arrived at the station—" Ganz sighed. The system didn't answer. It didn't have to. They both knew that Ganz had ample tools for a one-on-one elimination; and this time, knowing in advance Ruskin's little defenses, Ganz wouldn't fail. But there was always that desire to guarantee hir wouldn't fail. The stigma of having failed once, even if it wasn't hir fault—hir had hir pride as a hrisi.

"Have you been able to reach your brother?" Ganz asked.

"It is too early. We must be patient," the system answered. "Communication in this medium is very difficult. All kinds of interference. Remember, I'm trying to be discreet."

"Well, don't be so discreet you forget to do your job."

The system waited through a moment of dignified silence. "You do your job, and I'll do mine," it said finally.

Ganz did not answer immediately. Hir had other thoughts to mull over. When Ganz spoke again, it was to request a com-link to the research station lost somewhere out there in the blazing mists of the sun. It took time, but finally the system established data-contact—not with the station, however, but with another ship, in a converging orbit. A message scrolled across the bottom of Ganz's viewscreen:

 

"ALLIANCE WARSHIP TO ARRIVING VESSEL: PLEASE STATE NAME, REGISTRY, ORBIT, AND PURPOSE."

 

Startled, Ganz said to the Jeaves-copy, "Reply: 'This is T. S. Unity, bringing relief Starmuse observer from Triune Science Committee. Request clearance or escort. . . .'"

 

* * *

 

((Willard, you've remembered a great deal already. You must act in faith: when you need the pieces, they will be there. The wheels are turning, Willard; the wheels are turning.))

He shivered at the image: a trillion little wheels spinning inside his skull—complex chain molecules folding and rotating and linking and separating—altering him and plotting and threatening to take whatever he thought he knew and replace it with something else. But Dax was right; if he didn't act in faith, they might as well leave right now.

"There's an approaching patrol ship asking for identification, sir," the console said.

Ruskin looked up. They would soon be within rendezvous range of the station. "Yes. Thank you. Tell them it's Willard Ruskin from Kantano's World. Uh—Associative Frontiers Institute. Tell them that, too."

"Very good, sir. But they want to know the name and registry of the ship."

Name of the ship? Ruskin realized suddenly that he had never thought to name the ship. He'd merely taken a registration number. How could he have been so forgetful? A ship ought to have a name. He looked around; his friends were watching him quietly, waiting for him to finish the communication.

"Willard, are you all there?" Tamika asked finally.

He took a breath. "Yes. Well, all here or not, we need a name, don't we? System, give our name as A. S. Enigma. And store that in permanent registry file. That's your name."

"Very good, sir," the system said. A moment later, it added, "We are cleared and will proceed under escort to the station. Would you like me to handle that part?"

Ruskin blinked, mesmerized by the view of the sun, closer and more massive-looking now than ever before. Glowing the color of lifeblood. Like the blood that pulsed in his own heart and brain, teeming with life of its own. "Yes," he said absently. "Yes, why don't you go ahead and do that?"

 

* * *

 

The station was a reflecting silver sphere against the glowing plasma of the solar photosphere. It was immersed in the light-emitting layer of the sun, which was actually its coolest part, only thousands of degrees hot; from here, the neutrino-image of the distant core blazed like a welding arc in the midst of a billowing sunset.

As they approached, flanked by two patrol vessels, they discovered that the silver sphere was not itself the station; it was a great reflective bubble, an n-space forcefield blocking the heat and radiation of the sun. In concert with the station's n-space generators, they warped Enigma through the bubble with scarcely a tremor—only to find themselves approaching a second and smaller bubble, floating in the golden watery glow of the light that had gotten through the first one. They warped through that second screen as well; and again through the third and final envelope of n-space.

The station proper floated before them now: an insect hive, a dark fortress against a hazy amber glow.

Ruskin stared at it, instinctively reached out toward it, as though he could walk toward it—if only he weren't trapped in the amber himself. He stared at it for a long time before whispering to the console, "Take us in to dock, please."

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