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The alien shuttle lifted smoothly, accelerating without the heavy G forces Skull expected. He kept a close eye on Raphaela as she manipulated controls, making note of what she did and what resulted, hoping to learn enough that he could fly the thing if he had to.
Raphaela sat calmly in her seat; like his, hers had extruded itself from the floor when she had first begun piloting.
Skull noticed the chairs had slowed but not stopped in their forming, subtly shifting shape beneath them until they were very comfortable. He suspected they conformed to their individual bodies. “Can you make some kind of viewscreen? A big one in the front, like on Star Trek?”
Raphaela nodded silently, touched several controls, still incomprehensible to him – perhaps she saw colors he couldn’t – and granted his request.
A giant screen manifested itself slowly in front of the control room, smaller displays and instruments moving smoothly out of the way, as if they floated on the surface of the wall. The display flickered to life, showing a blazing but immobile star field.
Skull smiled, tired but pleased. “Damn. I wish I’d have asked about that sooner, when we were still in the atmosphere. You know what, I flew in the cockpit of a C-17 coming back from Iraq. After a stopover in Naples, the plane was mostly empty of passengers and the flyboys let me sit up front as we were going over the Alps toward Ramstein. We could see airplanes above and below and to the side of us in the air corridor, some going in our direction, some flying the opposite way. It was amazing. Like an IMAX movie, but real.”
Still Raphaela said nothing.
He lapsed into distracted wonder, gazing at the starfield for some minutes more, finally asking, “Shouldn’t we see some movement? Is that a still picture?”
She waited, then finally spoke. “It’s a hyper-accurate representation of the human-visual view from the front of this shuttle. We are still accelerating at one gravity, but interplanetary space is vast enough that any apparent motion is very slow.” Her voice was flat, dull.
Skull didn’t notice her lack of affect. “Can we see something? The Earth, the Moon?”
Obliging but stone-faced, Raphaela touched controls and the view careened wildly until it settled on the Earth, a small cyan disc. It jumped to hugeness as she raised the magnification, and now his mind filled with wonder once again at the blue beach ball floating in the black. It’s been a long time, he thought, since I was amazed by anything.
“How about the Moon now?” He kept her moving the pickup around, finding the planets and looking at them at the best magnification the ship could give them. Skull became so engrossed that he forgot to closely watch how she was manipulating the camera, or whatever passed for one in a Meme ship. For long hours he also forgot her silence, and the anger smoldering beneath her compliant exterior. Eventually he simply stared at the screen and the blanket of bright pinpricks in the ocean of night, drifting.
Suddenly he shook himself, looking sharply at Raphaela. Skull couldn’t afford to sleep; not yet, not until it was impractical to turn around and get back to Earth. He looked at his Patek chronometer. Eleven hours. Add to that the uneasy time aboard the B2 stealth bomber and he hadn’t really slept in at least a day. Have to keep awake.
“Do you want to talk?” he asked.
“Huh,” she grunted, and said nothing further.
“So...” he trailed off. Skull really had no idea what to say to her. He’d never taken a hostage or kidnapped anyone in his life. It wasn’t his way. Normally he just killed people. He just didn’t know how to relate to someone in his custody. Finally he said, “How long did you say this would take?”
“To reach the Watcher station will take about a week.” Neither her head nor eyes had moved from their frozen observation of the instruments in front of her, and her voice remained flat.
He wondered if she had decided to try to punish him for her situation. Some sort of psychological tactic, flattening emotional responses? Or simple sulking pique? He could only guess; he was no expert in psychological warfare. Trying to remember his counter-interrogation classes, he attempted to recall what techniques would be used to break down resistance or disturb a stable psyche, but it had been too long. Damn it, Skull, he berated himself, you’ve become a one-trick pony over the last ten years as a sniper. Running his hands over his shaven pate he detected the bit of stubble growing. I should probably just minimize my interaction with her for a while, until I can get some sleep.
He found himself staring at Raphaela, idly wondering what she would be like in bed, and then he scolded himself for such thoughts. Having lived so long as a celibate warrior monk, might all that pent-up energy be finally shaking itself free? Or was it the effects of the self-replicating nanobots swirling through his bloodstream, supercharging his five-decade-old body?
He shook his head. If there was one thing he really hated, it was too much change, unless he was driving and controlling it. Present circumstances were of his making, he had to admit in the privacy of his own head, but now he found himself far less comfortable than he’d expected.
“Maybe you ought to get some sleep. Can you put this thing on autopilot?” he asked. Even to himself he sounded whiny. It must be the lack of rest. Up for thirty hours and his body seemed as awake as ever thanks to the nanobots, but his mind was another story. Remembering from the briefings that the nanos did not – should not – cross the blood-brain barrier, theoretically this meant they would not directly affect his mind.
Theoretically. Did those things get in?
Her response to his question was calm, hypnotic, lulling. “There is no autopilot. Meme do not sleep. This ship was not made to be piloted by a Blend. I can sleep in the chair. You can also sleep in the chair. It is all right to sleep in the chair...”
“Uh huh.” Skull found himself drifting into a light and pleasant trance. Can’t go to sleep yet, but this is okay. Have to travel far enough out into space so we can’t go back.... He sat up abruptly, shaking his head as he shifted his hands on his drooping assault rifle.
She stared at him now with apparent amusement. “Warrant Officer Denham –”
Wryly. “Call me Skull, please. It’s not like you have a rank, after all.”
“Oh, but I do. It’s Captain, Free Communities Armed Forces.”
Skull laughed. “Is that what she told you? The woman you ate?”
Raphaela’s rich contralto voice suddenly resonated and penetrated his nervous system, and he had to clamp down hard to quash the desire rising in him.
“I didn’t eat Captain Sophia Ilona. I am her, all of her and all of Raphael, and now I am Raphaela. And I very much enjoy being Raphaela, and being a woman. And I’ll call you Alan.” She rose from her seat, languid, her curves showing through her gown as she sashayed – he could describe it no other way – toward him.
...and his head dropped back limp and hit the panel behind, jarring him awake. For a moment two scenes shared his mind, the false one of fantasy and the true one of waking. Abruptly it resolved into the conscious one, the real one where Raphaela stared at him from her seat, expressionless.
It didn’t happen. Did I want it to? Anger surged through him, at himself for drifting off and dreaming what he dreamed and at her for that insufferable amusement and condescension – but that was in the dream... He snarled and gripped his assault rifle harder. “Shut up, you.”
She blinked at him, eyes narrowing, puzzled, then turned away, hunching. “I didn’t say anything.”
An idea struck him, a fearful one. “You’re...” Skull closed his mouth, determined to try an experiment. He formed a thought of leaping to his feet and bashing Raphaela violently with the butt of his weapon, bludgeoning her repeatedly until in his imagination she became a mass of blood and torn flesh.
She blinked once, slowly, staring at the new viewscreen.
“So I guess you’re not a telepath? Or perhaps you’re a very good one.”
She turned back to him, raised an eyebrow, sarcastic. “Oh, I can talk now?” She folded her hands in her lap. “And how would you know if I was?”
He smiled thinly. “I suppose I wouldn’t, not for certain.”
“Well, I’m not. And by the way, I actually am human no matter what you think, and I’m getting tired of being on the wrong end of that gun, and I’m just plain tired. This is about as perfect a body as Raphael could build but it’s not invincible. Meme don’t sleep, but I’m not a Meme anymore so I’m going to bed for a while. Maybe you should get some rest too.” She rose from her seat, no sashaying this time, but her barefoot pace across the naked floor was elegant and lovely. An opening in the bulkhead appeared before her and she stepped through.
Anxiety roused him, almost panic, at her leaving his presence. Before the opening could close he leaped across the control room to stand in the doorway. After a moment he realized that he might have done a very stupid thing. If the iris should close with enough force it could chop him in half, but it didn’t. Instead he watched as Raphaela lay down on a cushioned half-circle dais that extruded from the floor. She faced away from him. A pillow rose from the bed to support her head, and she seemed to fall asleep instantly.
Skull wondered now what he should do, whether he should go forward or back. Forward, he decided; he could always compel her to let him out of the room, but he might not be able to get back in. As soon as he did, the wall sealed itself behind him, silently, cleanly. He half-turned to examine the surface but could find no hint of a seam or hinge or flaw.
“Alan...”
He regarded her looking at him with that contemptuous amused catlike expression – am I dreaming again? – and so he took two quick strides and slapped her hard across the face, hating the look, hating himself and his own violent desire, the anger within him.
Raphaela didn’t throw her hand to her face in shock. She didn’t shriek or scream or even flinch. She just took the blow and turned back to him, tears forming. “Alan...you don’t need to abuse me or threaten me. I told you I’d do what you wanted.” She was very near now, and she sat up straighter on the bed, closer to him, and he felt her presence like furnace heat on his face, upon his body.
I don’t care if it is a dream. The dams of his control burst. His lips sought hers and she responded eagerly and his world became nothing but her and him and him and her for a space and a time, until he lay wrung out, twisted, gasping, with nothing left but to drift off into a long-forgotten sleep of peace.
