Virgil dreamily traced patterns on his chest. As through a thick haze, he watched the gray and blue form sputter away from him.
So soft. To awaken without screaming because the death was so good. The dead man inside me botched it. I could have changed things, but I stayed to watch. He died so softly, now I float so softly. A tender airflow cools me. This is the quest’s end. No cocoon of gauze to keep me from flying. Naked and adrift.
“Virgil?”
It’s the brave that die a thousand times. They know the quest is worth it. To lie unfettered, free.
“Virgil.”
All yearning past, no shield to seek, I drift uncaring. Gentle white and scent of steel.
“Virgil.”
Sent of steel. Cent stealing. Centuries stolen from me.
“Where am I?” He twisted about. Something blue-gray and tubular vanished through a hatchway. His arm hit a padded handhold and he grabbed tight.
“You are safe, Virgil, but you must get to the medical bay. Delia Trine is in the final stages of resuscitation-”
Delia?
Virgil ran a hand over his bristly scalp. “I saw the vultures close in. I saw what the dead man inside me did. I died with him.”
“Please proceed to the medical bay. You are currently in the recovery room.”
Virgil looked around him. The soft white walls, thickly padded, seemed totally enclosed. A door hissed and opened inward. Virgil kicked off to fly into the next room, the computer bringing him up to date.
“As I transferred an anti-matter pod into the warship to destroy it, the fighters attacked, so I had to transfer out. I left behind a lifeboat with orders to grab any small ship that was not a psychfighter.”
Virgil entered the clean room of the medical bay, where a spray of disinfectant clung to his flesh. Toweling off, he waited for the sensor check. “The psychefighter dropped down on me,” he said. “It would’ve thrown a field around me and transferred out. Back to beyond Pluto.”
“I transferred the lifeboat in between the two of you, grappled the escape ship and transferred out here. I matched velocities and brought you onboard. You were nearing brain death.”
Yanked back again. And I thought it had ended. What do you want from me, Master Snoop? Why not let Nightsheet have his way? Why keep me alive? What code must I break?
The inner doors cycled open. She lay before him inside the opened glasteel capsule.
Death Angel!
Step forward. No! Get away. No. He leaned back against the doors, his arms hanging weightlessly away from him. The hands twitched, as though trying to explain something to the still body before him.
She doesn’t move. The lights shine off a head balder than mine and wires grow from her chest and temples. Tubes worm in and out of her nose and groin. She is as I was once: a prisoner of Master Snoop. He moved forward one handhold.
Naked and trapped she floats in her glass coffin nestled in funereal foil. Skin so white and pure-soap smooth-
“She’s in a state of coma vigil. When the psychfighters downed your escape boat, they transferred a Valli into either engine pod. The one in the port side demolished the control circuitry and she began to thaw. I sent a robot to her as soon as I determined the situation and initiated normal resuscitation procedures. I do not know if she can be brought out of the coma. I took the liberty of injecting picotechs into her carotid artery in an effort to preserve her mental matrix against degeneration.”
“Coma vigil?”
“Random brain activity. Spontaneous breathing. Periods of semiconsciousness. Delirium. It may be due to the transfer out here.”
“Out where?”
“Tau Ceti.”
“Were we followed?” He moved closer to the capsule.
“They had no idea where we were going. And even if one could have tagged along, there is a practical limit to psychfighter distances. I suspect that a twelve year wait to re-establish contact when the fighter appears is stretching anyone’s patience.”
We’re alone, then. Death Angel and I.
“Wake up!” he whispered to her. No movement disturbed her perfect stillness. Virgil bent over the capsule, locked his feet under the table, and gazed at her closely. An uncontrollable anger welled up inside him.
Death Angel’s mask doesn’t fool me. Like a helmet, she hides behind it, as aware as I am when the dead man inside me takes control.
The layers of metalized Mylar insulation, bent back, crackled like fire under his waist. He leaned closer and raised his hand.
Her head swung sideways with the force of his slap. Saliva flew from her lips, scattering across the room, adhering to whatever the globules hit. One eyelid swung open. An enlarged pupil stared sightlessly.
“Death Angel, you wake up and tell me!” A red image of his hand appeared on her cheek. “You tell me why! Why you made me die die die die!” Another slap punctuated his words. Her head rolled back.
“Stop it,” she mumbled.
“Death Angel?” His fingers tightened around her shoulders and shook.
“Stop it. He’s just different from all… you. Can’t help…”
“Death Angel wake up and tell me!” He floated above the capsule now, his feet anchored under machinery braces, his arms shaking hers.
You make me scream, Death Angel, make me die inside a thousand times more than out. Hurt. Hurt.
“Why do that? He’s not… hurting you…” She coughed and fell silent, closing her eyes.
“Death Angel wake up!” he shouted next to her ear.
“Brain activity is depressed, Virgil. You will not get anything out of her until she is in semiconsciousness again.”
He hovered directly over her for the next hour, watching, listening, speaking to her in a rambling monotone, apologizing, begging her to return. The computer suggested that he receive an injection of nourishment. He snapped the plastic tube into his wrist port to accept the trickle of dextrose and vitamins. After a while, the computer made a buzzing sound.
“Brain activity resuming.”
Death Angel, you make it hard. Harder than it’s ever been. So hard and you can’t be reached.
He pulled closer to her bare, pallid skin. The oxygen cannula under her nose hissed with quiet regularity. He floated horizontally over her, arms grasping the lips of the capsule.
“Wake up, Delia,” he whispered in her ear, pulling even closer. You make it so hard. He touched her. “I want to-”
“Free for-” she muttered. “Thrive. Sick heaven, hate. Trine. Men.”
“Delia.”
“Ate mine then. Mind. Denned. Dead. Dead. Frozen dead died.” Her head rolled about, loose as a rag doll’s. Wires rattled against the capsule. Her eyes opened. “Virgil. Killed me. Virgil. I died for Virgil.”
“You’re not dead.”
“Waited until I died. Cold dead.”
Closer he drew, pulling in, touching the flesh of his body to hers. “You’re not dead, Delia,” he said, his voice a low murmur. “Feel. Life is feeling. You’ve only died once, just once. Believe in me: you can die again and again with me forever.”
Slowly, reverently, he slid into her, feeling the cool touch of her thighs against his. For a moment, she murmured peacefully, beginning to move with his rhythm. Then her eyelids snapped open like a mechanical doll’s. Her pupils irised down into tight, black points of terror.
She screamed. A powerful shove pushed Virgil out, spinning him against a bulkhead. The food tube popped out of his wrist and snaked about, leaking fluid.
“No!” she shrieked. “Died enough. I’m dead!” She thrashed her arms about, tangling them in wires and pulling off the electrogel contacts. With a shriek of animal fury, she ripped the waste tubes from her. Blood smeared the catheter that snaked loosely about in the weightless chamber. Blood and urine sailed about in pulsating globules, adhering like living, hungry microbes to anything they touched.
Virgil kicked back toward her, whipping about to grasp at her thigh. Overcome by nausea, she doubled up, pulling in her legs. Virgil sailed past her, grabbing at air, and hit the opposite bulkhead.
“Delia. You’re safe here. I’m Virgil. Just keep calm.”
She dry heaved in small, rapid spasms. Coughing, she looked wildly about.
Adult fetus, hanging over me, her arms cradling her stomach, her eyes so scared. Death Angel so unprotected, so far from Nightsheet, so hungry for him. Hold still. Please.
“Hold still, Delia. I’ll bring you down.” He climbed over to her and reached out. Seizing one foot, he received a powerful kick in the face from the other. He hit one bulkhead and she the opposite.
“Damn you!” he shouted, covering his nose and eyes. “You’re alive. Thank me, damn you. I died and died to find you!” Gave up my body to get the dead man’s help. I boiled and froze.
Somewhere, a hatchway hissed open and shut. “She has left the room, Virgil.”
“What?” He uncovered his eyes to look about. “Well, stop her! Seal all hatches.”
“Done. However, I cannot keep a hatch sealed against a direct command unless there exists a pressure differential-”
“Then change programming.” He kicked toward the exit hatch and bumped his shoulder passing through.
“This is not programming, this is the construction of the hatch locks themselves.”
“It’ll slow her down, at least. Where is she?”
“Ring One, Level Five, Two O’Clock, going to One-Five-One. She is moving aimlessly, no apparent goal.”
Sniffing back a small puddle of blood building up in his nose, Virgil dragged through the passages, listening to the speakers for Delia’s location, keeping track of his own, and closing in.
And then, “Virgil-she has removed a wedgecutter from one of the emergency sealant cabinets in One-One-Twelve. Get there fast.”
“Send a robot!”
“None in the vicinity. Hurry.”
“I’m almost there!” he shouted, speeding through a passageway.
“Hurry. She has severed her aorta and superior vena cava. Respiration zero. Brain death in six minutes-”
He propelled through the hatch into the compartment and looked above him. She hung suspended in a carnelian haze. The wedgecutter stuck out of her chest, the jagged, meat-raw wound still voiding blood.
A billion ruby suns orbit around her, a crimson galaxy. I had you so shortly, Death Angel, and you brought Nightsheet to you. Stupid.
He moved through the floating droplets of blood to take her body in his arms.
“Get her to the medical bay,” the computer said. “We might be able to revive her prior to brain death.”
Virgil ran along the curving corridors in his own version of artificial gravity, then he sailed through the straightaways, taking the fastest path back. Her body drifted limply in his grasp, the wedgecutter grating against a rib. A red line flowed behind him, droplets of blood breaking loose and drifting until air resistance slowed them.
“Put her in the boxdoc.”
Virgil pushed her into the unit. Sealing the lid, he watched as mechanical hands and tools immediately dug into her chest. One hand withdrew the wedgecutter while a pair of heavy clippers crunched into flesh just above her left breast. After three powerful cuts, the clippers withdrew, pulling back the broken sections of rib.
They’ll cut you up, Death Angel, the Master Snoop’s revenge for joining Nightsheet. And you won’t come back to me, will you?
The boxdoc continued its efforts. A series of tubes plunged into the exposed arteries and veins. Pure oxygen pumped into the container. Two small extensions covered with a farrago of stainless-steel instruments performed the operation.
“Can you bring her back?” She won’t come back. Not from this.
“She has entered only the first stage of brain death. The medical parameters indicate that we can save her. Her heart will have to be replaced temporarily until a new one can be cloned. Ceramic braces will be cast to replace her ribs. She will probably suffer from diminished mental capacity-”
“Shut up!” He leaned over the unit, watching a thick red fluid pump into her chest. The blood on his arms and chest had dried into brown freckles and streaks that flaked when he moved.
Death Angel I can’t have you like that.
Her eyes fluttered open for a moment and her gaze met his. Her mouth opened as though to speak and her head shook weakly before she lapsed back into anesthesia.
No. Not like that.
He pulled out the boxdoc operations manual and signaled the first page. Scanning the table of contents, he asked, “Has her memory RNA degenerated?”
“Not to any significant degree, in all probability. Her electrochemical matrix, though, has been disrupted by the cerebral swelling.”
“Have the picotechs had time to copy her matrix?”
“Yes.”
Virgil signaled the page he wanted and watched it appear on the scrim. “Initiate leeching process See-One-Two-Oh-Four, and prepare the cloning unit to be cast off.”
“Please explain your requests.”
Virgil laughed and shook his head. “Don’t you see? Just like you did this”-he waved his left hand at the vidcam-“you’re going to do her.”
“Clone her?”
“Yes! Clone all of her! I know you can’t force grow her because the brain has to develop normally, so if we set the unit adrift and transfer out and back a dozen light years each way…”
“Full clones grown at normal rates are very difficult to maintain correctly. Add to that the unit’s being run on automatic-”
“If it doesn’t work the first time, we try again and again.
With the transfer, we could do it a hundred times in a day.”
“If none of them take, or if we lose the cloning tank, you will have lost Delia forever.”
Like a child scolded, he looked up at the vid and softly said, “All right. I won’t have her leeched until we get a good clone.” Death Angel you’ve become so much meat for me to grind when I please. Sorry, but I have to.
“Do you consider it necessary?” the computer asked.
“Yes. Do you consider it possible?”
“There is a probability of success.”
Virgil smiled. Your crowning theft, Nightsheet, and I take it back. “Let’s go.”
Virgil conveyed the cloning tank once more to the lifeship and secured it. He worked quickly, his hands and muscles straining with effort.
“When have you eaten last?” the computer asked.
He tightened the last strap and leaned against the humming machine. “I don’t recall. Don’t you have a record in your memory?”
“My last record shows that you have gone fourteen hours, twelve minutes subjective, not counting dextrose supplements. You did not dine while on Mercury?”
Virgil smiled. “Not that I know of.”
“Food is being prepared in the galley. You should eat and rest before we transfer. You will probably have a lot to do when we recover the tank.”
Taking one last look at the shuttle, he said, “Straight. Can you add on the spare generator yourself?’’
“I will have a robot do it.”
“Straight.” Have them come out of the walls when my back turns. Let them go about their wiry business. I can hear them in there, making their plans.
When he pushed the last piece of meat into his mouth, the computer buzzed once and said, “Lifeship cast off. All systems functioning. Beacon set to activate in twenty-four years. Photosynth accumulator locked on Tau Ceti, recycler on standby. All lab units show green.”
Virgil wiped his mouth on his arm and picked some of the larger crumbs and debris out of the air. “Find the emptiest piece of space twelve light years from here and let’s go.” He thought for a moment, then said, “How are you able to handle the transfer effect? You don’t seem to be bothered anymore.”
“If you had several hours, I could explain the method of selectively re-routing neural paths and delaying the firing of certain neurons by thousandths of a nanosecond to compensate for transfer lag.”
“Don’t bother on my account.”
“I believe I could duplicate the process on an organic entity such as you by the removal of the pineal gland and a rebundling of synaptic-”
“Forget it. I can handle death. Let’s… just go.” I can handle it. Just a little bit longer. Die a few more times.
Inside the prow ellipsoid, Virgil sat staring out while the computer plotted coordinates. It suddenly spoke.
“According to estimates from orbital data, the cloning tank will be on the opposite side of Tau Ceti in twenty-four years. One hundred sixty-eight degrees. We shall have to match velocities with it to-”
“Just do it.” Virgil strapped in and chewed at his thumbnail. The transfer button glowed. He pushed it and watched.
Every time it takes longer. Every time the gate comes closer. It
opens just a crack before me. Something howls, low and mad, from behind it. Get back! I don’t care, Death Angel. I know what lurks and I won’t go. It grows stronger every time, but so do I. Your soothing won’t work. I’m going back this time, and the next. See me there? That smile? That’s because I know that I can die again and again and-
Again I try to push past and-
Again. Something pushes me back. Blackness all around before me, punctured by stars.
“Prepare to transfer.”
Virgil pushed the button once more.
In control over death, I can sit while my blood freezes in its motion, while air stops in my throat, while darkness and then light smear together, wrap around me and twist and push and shove until I feel pushed into-
The body I need to survive.
– the door, but I slam it just in time. Something howls after it shuts and I run down the corridor, the door bending in toward me stretching to almost bursting and I run and run and-
The kick of the engine array thundering into power shoved against Virgil’s back.
Back again! Nightsheet, I’ll keep winning-
“Beacon information shows that my calculations were accurate to seventeen hours in twenty-four years. Prepare to rendezvous with cloning tank. Telemetry reports all systems functioning; the clone is healthy.”
Virgil let go a sigh and sank back in the acceleration padding. I’m a father.