BY JENNIFER FOEHNER WELLS
Ei’Pio was alone.
She could still hear the screams echoing back through the tunnel of memory. It had been madness, pure chaos, followed by the darkest, deepest silence she had ever known.
A plague had rioted through the Oblignatus, affecting everyone but her, presumably because she was the only crewmember aboard who wasn’t sectilian. Every last one of her colleagues had been damaged so severely that that their thoughts and mental patterns were no longer recognizable to her—then they’d met dusk wherever they happened to be.
She didn’t like to think about it, yet she couldn’t stop. There was nothing else to occupy her mind. Her water-filled enclosure traversed the core of the city-sized ship. For days, she’d jetted from one end to the other attempting—repeatedly, thoroughly—to reach out mind to mind, searching, but had found only empty silence. In a ship meant to house ten thousand sectilians, only one individual in the ship community had survived.
Her.
What she wanted above all else was to return to Sectilius, to her people, but that was impossible. The infernal yoke kept her from moving the ship, no matter how hard she railed against it. There wasn’t an officer left to issue the command to release it. In all her long life as a devoted fleet officer—completely above reproach—this had never been a concern, but now it maddened her.
The yoke wasn’t a physical restraint. It was a combination of code and electronic devices embedded in a secret location within the ship. It kept her, or any other kuboderan navigator, from moving the ship without authorization. Apparently the ship’s designers had never considered the current scenario.
The ship was too deep in the Kirik Nebula for a message to penetrate to any nearby colonies. They’d been on a research and exploration mission and had come across a red giant in its final stages before supernova. The Quasador Dux had decided it was a rare opportunity to observe the phenomenon. They would leave probes in orbit while they conducted other research at a safer distance.
The last maneuver they’d performed had taken them on a close approach to the red giant. They’d intended to remain in the danger zone just long enough make the drop, but the plague had hit at the worst possible time, effectively stranding them in the orbit intended for the probes.
Even if someone came looking, the Oblignatus was nowhere near its designated research coordinates. After a few weeks, the possibility of rescue seemed remote.
Ei’Pio watched the data closely. The star had burned through all of its hydrogen and helium and was at the end of the carbon-fusion stage. Carbon levels inside it were diminishing steadily. She calculated that she would have thirteen to fourteen years to wait before the core collapsed and the star went supernova.
Eventually she’d come to contemplate suicide. It was an unspeakable act, but the taboo against suicide was predicated upon one’s usefulness to society—one’s duty to others. So what did it matter now? Who would censure her or threaten her with reconditioning if she dared have such dark thoughts?
Her anxiety had become a palpable thing. Why live on, waiting for the inevitable, living in a perpetual countdown? What life was there for her without anyone to serve, without anyone with whom to commune?
She lost herself in a fugue, her mind wandering from one treasured memory to another, each one given to her by those who were forever gone to her. She neglected her duties. Why care for a ship full of the dead?
She drifted in the depths of unrelenting stillness. Not eating. Not caring. Limbs heavy with depression. Brains aching from pain that went well beyond physical. Barely moving, except wherever the swirling, artificial current carried her.
Then something in her digital ocular implant caught her attention. It was just the smallest inconsistency. She’d almost missed it. Curiosity stirred within her.
Her senses slowly sharpened as she focused on this irregularity. When she realized what she was actually looking at, the morbid sluggishness vanished. She jetted restlessly from one end of her enclosure to the other, checking and double-checking the sensor readings. There was a single life sign, but it was minuscule and muted. It was no wonder she’d missed it in the early days of anguish.
Her limbs quivered. She pulsed water through her mantle erratically. She couldn’t help but hope, though she knew it was probably just a shambling zombie that’d had a delayed reaction to the disease and hadn’t yet expired.
She would do whatever she could to save them, though she had no idea what the plague vector had been. Her people had simply transformed into violent beasts and then suddenly stopped functioning altogether, until they perished of thirst and hunger.
Just one survivor could change everything.
Ei’Pio fluttered tentatively against the mind of this individual, braced for crazed thoughts, dull thoughts, or the barest semblance of thought. Braced for another senseless death.
But to her surprise, this person was intact, whole, and…starving.
Even at the surface level of anipraxia, misery flooded Ei’Pio’s senses. There were fragmented impressions of gnawing hunger, disbelief, abject terror—and then a bout of all-consuming sobbing that led to the unconscious oblivion of sleep.
This person had suffered the same level of loss that she had herself—perhaps even more, if that was possible. She or he desperately needed Ei’Pio’s help.
She discerned something else in this shallow contact. Strangely, this individual had not developed a capacity for anipraxic communication. That was exceedingly rare in any ship community. Occasionally an objector served in the fleet, but Ei’Pio knew there weren’t any objectors aboard the mission to the Kirik Nebula. She had no idea who this person was.
Ei’Pio scoured internal sensor readings and camera coverage and soon discovered that the individual was inside a suit of sectilian power armor. That explained the faintness of the bio-signature. The suits were shielded. Had the suit isolated the survivor from the plague the same way she had been spared?
Once Ei’Pio realized this, her primary objective was to communicate with this person, to let them know they weren’t alone—that he or she could take command of the ship and return them to Sectilius space.
As the only surviving member of the quorum, Ei’Pio could appoint the survivor as the Quasador Dux of the Oblignatus and download the command-and-control engram set into his or her brain. That would allow the ship’s computer to recognize them as the highest-ranking officer—then she or he had only to issue the command to return to Sectilius and the yoke would be released.
They would be able to move the ship.
They could go home.
She didn’t yet know anything about this person—name, gender, or occupation, but it seemed wrong to continue to refer to him or her in the abstract. It would take time to establish communication and learn those important details. In the interim, she would refer to the stranger as male, an entirely random gender assignment, and give him the name Suparo, which meant survivor.
Establishing communication between herself and Suparo wasn’t as simple as one sectilian opening his or her mouth and speaking to another sectilian. Ei’Pio was unable to communicate that way. A small portion of this untouched brain had to be stimulated in a very concentrated and specific way to encourage the development of the set of dormant structures that allowed anipraxic communication. Ei’Pio had done this many times in the past, whenever new crewmembers had come aboard.
This time was different.
Normally when she inducted someone into the circle of anipraxia, there was resistance. The changes could be painful, though Ei’Pio did her best to minimize that, and often an individual had an inner level of reluctance that was an additional barrier to the process, even though they had chosen this lifestyle.
Suparo was sleeping deeply when she began the process but soon awoke. He did not resist at all—he seemed very receptive to the alteration, seemed quite inquisitive about it, in fact. Suparo seemed to recognize that someone was there to help, that someone was communicating somehow. That was unusual.
Something about his mind didn’t follow a typical pattern. It felt open, malleable. It was easy to precipitate the conversion that would facilitate anipraxia. Ei’Pio began to sift through his surface memories while she waited for the changes to manifest. She wanted to figure out who this was. His childhood memories were unusually pronounced and extraordinarily vivid, but also jumbled and formless—running and laughter and being cradled in another’s arms…
Suddenly Suparo pulled Ei’Pio’s tendrils of thought deeper, as though he recognized her. Then he reciprocated—sending his own tendrils of thought along the connection between them… seeking to find her… pushing their minds closer… pressing against Ei’Pio’s own mind… seeking to get inside her thoughts. This was without precedent.
Ei’Pio was suddenly afraid. She pulled back, her limbs trembling. What if he wasn’t sectilian? What if these memories were implants, lures… a trap to ensnare her? What if he was an alien, an infiltrator, who had orchestrated the destruction of her people? Was this an elaborate plot to hijack the ship?
But then she wondered if it actually mattered. He was another living being.
For good or ill, she was no longer alone.
• • •
Suparo didn’t speak Mensententia—that was immediately clear—but Ei’Pio recognized the thought-language as sectilian, and that reassured her. Over the years Ei’Pio had experienced enough sectilian memories to be able to speak a pidgin version of the language. This new individual’s own language skills seemed to be very limited as well, which was perplexing.
An image consistently overlaid Suparo’s thoughts. He longed for a woman’s face—a sectilian woman with warm brown eyes and a long sharp nose. Ei’Pio recognized the woman: Biochemistro Palset Benald Teruvah, a lovely woman, a good friend to Ei’Pio and many others on board. Such a terrible loss.
Ei’Pio froze. Her mantle filled reflexively and her limbs bunched up as though she were poised to flee a predator.
Now Ei’Pio knew who this was. Not a him or a her, but an ium.
Slowly, she calmed herself—carefully, so that she wouldn’t transmit her anxiety to this person who needed her so badly.
Ei’Pio kept her mental voice soft and soothing, like a sectilian mother’s buss on a child’s forehead. “Carindi?”
The stranger’s emotions swung wildly toward bewilderment, hope, and trepidation. A tiny voice answered, speaking aloud because the child didn’t yet understand. “Mama?”
Carindi was a child of five standard years.
Ei’Pio cringed with guilt and shame. Carindi had been wandering alone in the ship, seeking help for weeks.
• • •
“What did you learn today, Carindi?” Ei’Pio asked when the child took a break from ius daily studies. At the moment the child was somersaulting along the corridor outside the study chamber. The black armor had taken years of this without a scratch. The same could not be said for the deck plates.
The child chattered a stream of thoughts at her, as was often the way. Their language difficulties were long in the past. “I’m learning about the mechanics of propulsion. Oh, and scientific classification systems for plants and animals. Also, the use of honorifics. One day soon I will be an engineer and you will call me Machinutorus Carindi Palset Teruvah!”
“Very good. A full day of learning. It is nearly time for your rest period.”
Though Ei’Pio had never had contact with sectilian children except through the childhood memories of her former colleagues, she sensed that Carindi was an exceedingly intelligent child and full of curiosity. The child would make a fine Quasador Dux when iad was old enough to assume that role.
It had been five years since Carindi’s mother had observed the earliest signs of the plague among the crew and placed her precious offspring inside an obsidian suit of power armor. Carindi’s mother had hoped to protect the child from the unknown disease, not realizing the child was already infected. It proved to be a brilliant gambit anyway, because the suit was designed to suit a diverse range of body types and to provide extensive medical support in battle. It allowed the child to grow and remain mobile, feeding ium intravenously and keeping the disease and the suit in a constant state of homeostasis, always just barely at bay.
It allowed Carindi to survive.
Ei’Pio had experienced enough sectilian memories to know that sectilian children needed to be nurtured. They were supposed to be held and cuddled. But Ei’Pio had never touched the child, had never seen the child’s face except through glass. Ei’Pio longed to give the child that kind of security. She wanted to give Carindi anything and everything iad might need to thrive. The child was all she had left and was her only hope for a future.
But all Ei’Pio could give Carindi was the mental touch of a loving voice and warm feelings. Ei’Pio breathed water. Carindi breathed air. Water and glass and battle armor stood between them.
Ei’Pio sighed. The problem would resolve itself in just a few years. They would be able to go home. They would rejoin their people.
“I’m not tired yet,” Carindi complained. “There’s time for more studies before rest cycle. Ei’Pio? Why do we use all these names?”
“What names?” Ei’Pio asked. The child’s mind zigged and zagged just like her haphazard somersaulting.
“Honorifics and all that stuff.”
“There are many reasons. To differentiate between individuals, primarily. When speaking of others, it makes it easier to note whom one is referring to. It is also a manner of respect. Some names are earned.”
“No—I mean, why do you and I use them? We know who we’re talking about, right? I know what Ei’ means. It’s the intermediate rank among kuboderan officers, yes? You know I respect you without having to say it. You can feel my emotions.”
“This is true.”
“May I call you Pio? As a special endearment? Between only us two?”
Ei’Pio’s heart contracted. The water around her suddenly felt cold. No one had called her Pio since she’d been brought to the planet Sectilia as an infant. That was so long ago. “Yes, child.”
“Do my names have any meaning?”
“Oh, yes! Carindi means ‘little dear one.’ Palset was, of course, your mother’s given name and means ‘sharp as a spear.’ Teruvah was the name of the enclave on Atielle where your mother was born and spent her childhood. The name means ‘rubbing the fruit.’ I am given to understand the people there are famous for cultivating fruits for making fermented beverages.”
“When I get big will you call me Carindissimo?”
Ei’Pio’s limbs trembled with laughter. “If you wish.”
• • •
When the child slept, Ei’Pio spent her time testing the confines and parameters of the yoke—always looking for a way to circumvent it, work around it or break it—so that they wouldn’t have to wait for Carindi to mature. Ei’Pio found she missed the child during ius sleep cycles. Then the child woke, and it was like coming around the dark side of a planet and bathing in the bright light of a blazing star.
“Good morning, Pio. Are you feeling well?”
Ei’Pio let warmth suffuse her mental voice. “Good morning, Machinutorus Carindi Palset Teruvah. I am very fine, thank you. And you?”
Ei’Pio felt the child rise from bed and go through a morning waking routine as the suit ran its daily diagnostic. Iad moved each limb in turn, to see if any part would be hindered by the infectious agent this day, so that a routine could be planned accordingly.
After a moment, the data from the suit diagnostic spooled over Ei’Pio’s ocular implant.
There was blood in the child’s urine.
Ei’Pio felt a familiar squeeze of panic, then calmed. The suit had limitations. She knew that.
“First stop is the medical facility today, Carindi.”
“Pio! I wanted to—”
“Health first. Always. No arguments.”
There was an adolescent grumble of discontent, but Carindi dutifully marched to the deck transport, and from there to the nearest medical facility.
Sometimes the suit couldn’t handle everything. Ei’Pio had nearly lost Carindi on several occasions when the suit malfunctioned or needed an upgrade, but they had managed to make it through those terrifying moments. On a regular schedule, and as needed, Carindi visited the diagnostic platform they had modified together—Ei’Pio’s mind guiding Carindi’s nimble fingers inside the power armor—so that the diagnostic equipment would accept Carindi inside the suit and the medical bots would deliver medications and IV nutrition to the suit’s ports. This required writing new macros to force the suit to do things it was never meant to do. And that meant Ei’Pio had to learn new skills. Ship navigators were not ordinarily in the practice of creating code for power armor suits.
Nor were they ordinarily medical practitioners. Yet Ei’Pio personally oversaw everything, from screening medications to be sure they were free of viral, bacterial, or unknown nanoscale agents to optimizing the child’s liquid diet for every life stage.
And she was always looking for another way to get them home. Carindi deserved better than this. Engineers and Medical Masters on Sectilia, Atielle, or any of the colonies would be better equipped to cure Carindi of the affliction so that the child could have a better quality of life than Ei’Pio and Oblignatus could provide.
• • •
The child giggled. “No, Pio, not Olonus Septua. That’s a gravid planet, not a barren one.”
“You aren’t supposed to give me hints, child!”
Carindi gasped for breath, wheezing with mirth. “Well, you’re terrible at this game. You need the help!”
“Am I really?” Ei’Pio pretended to be affronted. She’d figured out the correct answer three questions before, but Carindi enjoyed it when she drew these games out—and truth be told, Ei’Pio loved the feeling of the child’s laughter. It was infectious. It lifted her ever-present worry for a short time.
Children were easy to please and such a joy. A small part of her resented that she had never known children before now. In some ways, this felt like a golden time in her life, despite the bomb ticking inside the star they orbited.
Carindi was wandering the empty corridors of the ship aimlessly, drumming the fingers of ius suit against the dark walls. “Guess again, Pio.”
“The moon of Columnus Quince?”
The child roared with laughter until it turned into coughing. The coughing went on too long.
Ei’Pio sobered.
When the coughing fit eased, Carindi slumped to the decking and asked, “Pio, when we break free of the star, where would you like to go? Assume that you could go anywhere in the universe.”
She’d heard this question often. It meant that Carindi was feeling lonely and restless. Ei’Pio sent a soothing blanket of thought over the child’s mind.
“I would take you home to Atielle, of course.” That’s what she always told the child. “Where would you like to go, Carindi? To Valetria? To see the Parida Quasar? Or Sieden’s Rings?” These were all astronomical sights the child had studied recently.
“I would like to go to your home world, Pio.”
That was a new answer. She found it puzzling. “Why would you want that?”
“You are my family now. I want to meet your family. I want you to be free to swim in an ocean.”
Ei’Pio’s mantle pulsed nervously, out of rhythm. Carindi spoke of something forbidden. “You know that can never happen.”
“Why not? I know the location of your home world is supposed to be a big secret, but we can figure it out. We can find it. I know we can.”
“That isn’t the point. I’m sectilian now. My people wouldn’t recognize me as one of their own. I don’t even speak their language.”
They wouldn’t recognize her as being the same species, either. In this artificial and optimized environment, Ei’Pio had grown far larger than any wild kuboderan could ever dream of. Her body was augmented with multiple cybernetic implants that would look alien to them. They would more than likely kill her on sight. The sectilian kuboderans had always been told that the kuboderans of their home world were not only wild, but savage.
“But they speak Mensententia, surely.”
Ei’Pio faltered. “Yes, I’m sure they do.”
“Do you remember it? What it was like?”
Ei’Pio gifted the child with a memory of floating free in a vast watery world. The bright warm shallows and the cool dark depths. Then, on a whim, she showed Carindi her memory of being born. She could still see the cave where her mother had kept them clean and blown water across them gently with her funnel to keep them well oxygenated, though the earliest memories were all softly tinted by the nearly transparent membrane of an egg sac.
It had been quiet and safe there. The moment when her egg sac became fragile and her first tentacle burst out into the larger world, everything changed forever.
There was the last sight of her mother, still tending to the unhatched. The swarms of age-mates from many mothers mixing indiscriminately as they stretched out their limbs for the very first time, bobbing, floating—winking their distress in bright flashes of color—and scattering, swept away in the current without any control.
“This is what life is like sometimes, Carindi. Sometimes we have no control over our circumstances.” She stopped the flow of the memory before it could reach the point when she would watch in horror as some of her age-mates were consumed by larger predators. There was no sense in upsetting the child.
Belatedly, she realized that hiding the ugliness might have been a mistake. Carindi was enraptured. “What a beautiful world!”
“You couldn’t survive there. You breathe air.”
“Don’t be silly, Pio. I’ll be in the suit. It’s made for surviving in space. Underwater would be a cinch.”
Another terrible reminder that Carindi might never leave the suit. Ei’Pio’s mantle squeezed painfully. It was so unnatural. So wrong. She should have figured out how to free ium by now. She had failed.
Carindi caught the tail of the thought, though Ei’Pio had tried to hide it.
“I don’t hate the suit. I love the suit. It keeps me alive. I love you too, Pio. If you don’t want to go to your home world, we can go to another water world.”
It wasn’t true, she knew. The child detested the suit and wanted freedom more than anything else. But it was kind of ium to say.
“I love you too, child.”
• • •
When the red dwarf exhausted its supply of carbon, Ei’Pio noted the beginning of neon fusion with no small amount of dread. Based on her calculations, there was less than a year left before neon, oxygen, and silicon fusion would be complete. Without any other fuel sources, the star would begin to fuse iron, which would take mere minutes to exhaust. Once the iron core reached a specific mass, it would crash in on itself and send out a cosmic shockwave that would obliterate the ship as the star went supernova.
Ei’Pio still had not found a way around the yoke.
Carindi had to be an adult in order to receive the command-and-control engram set and take control of the ship. The computer would not install it in a child. Iad had to be confirmed as an adult documented citizen, which could only be done by automated systems in the medical facility and only upon full puberty.
Ei’Pio could find no way around it.
Most sectilian children underwent puberty and declared their gender to their community in the eleventh or twelfth year. But it was Carindi’s seventeenth standard year, and there was still no sign of pubescent change in the child.
Ei’Pio began to devote all of her free time to studying sectilian anatomy and physiology, focusing specifically on endocrinology. She reached Medical Master levels of knowledge, but she was no closer to solving the mystery of Carindi’s delayed biological development. What was missing from Carindi’s daily macro- and micro-biotic intake that was precluding puberty?
Ei’Pio insisted on more extensive scanning and analysis, but the only conclusion she could draw was that Carindi was underweight. So she changed Carindi’s liquid diet to be more calorically rich.
She also judiciously implemented a regimen of exogenous hormone therapy. Such artificial interventions were frowned upon among sectilians, so there were no precedents to follow. She had no way of knowing how much to apply to the child’s system. She started with tiny amounts of bio-identical hormones tailored for the child’s congenital sex for simplicity’s sake, because Carindi had never developed a gender preference.
Carindi herself was indifferent to these experiments. Iad didn’t seem to be interested in choosing a gender, and to some extent that made sense. The child retained few memories of gendered sectilians. Gender was a remote concept to ium.
From a biological standpoint, there was no reason for the child’s body to change. There was no counterpart with whom to mate or share a life.
Did a sectilian child need adults or age-mates within their environment to trigger puberty? Perhaps it was that absence that was the true problem.
Ei’Pio gradually increased the dosage of the exogenous hormone infusion until the child began to endure negative side effects. The hormones made the child’s moods more volatile and triggered massive headaches and constant fatigue. Carindi didn’t like taking them.
Despite this, Carindi still displayed no signs of impending puberty. Eventually Ei’Pio accepted that it was unlikely that puberty could be induced in this manner and stepped the dose back down to a level that was more tolerable to ium.
Carindi had chosen another tactic to deal with their situation. From the age of eight standard years, the child had become a voracious consumer of educational materials, leaping far and away ahead of most children of the same age. Studying and testing filled ius every waking hour, and iad achieved a mechanical engineering degree by the age of twelve standard years. Then iad went on to study computer languages and electrical engineering. Carindi was determined to subvert the yoke and give direct control of the ship to Ei’Pio.
The sectilian ship designers had believed that the yoke should be deeply hidden. They alleged that the Kubodera, though an extremely intelligent people, could often be headstrong and arrogant, so they imposed restraints, checks, and balances upon the navigators to keep the sectilian population of the ship safe. Mutiny would not be tolerated in the fleet. The designers were well aware that it would be easy to transfer total control of the ship to new hands if one could convince a kuboderan to do it. Therefore they purportedly placed the yoke in a secret location for the safety and security of every individual on board.
“Stop worrying, Pio,” Carindi said one day on the engineering deck, from deep in the bowels of yet another ship system. “I’ve got this under control. I’m going to find it any day now.” Carindi said things like this frequently.
Ei’Pio acknowledged the thought but wouldn’t stop worrying. They had been alone together for thirteen standard years. The star had recently begun burning the oxygen layer. Less than half a standard sectilian year remained. Ei’Pio knew the teenager might find the circuits that controlled the yoke, but iad also might not. The yoke could be disguised as something Carindi would never recognize. The designers had been too clever.
“I may have to break through the yoke myself,” Ei’Pio said softly. If she couldn’t work around it, she would have to force her way through it. She wouldn’t do it if it was just her, but she would for Carindi. She had been trying for so long, but the pain was great and she was a coward.
“No! Promise me you won’t even try, Pio! I will find it.”
“The rumors may not be true, little one. Perhaps they were started to keep us complaisent.”
They were true. She knew they were. A kuboderan who attempted to defeat the yoke would be driven mad from the pain as punishment for that crime. It kept the navigators in their place very effectively.
Over a monitor, Ei’Pio watched Carindi pulling herself out of a gap in the deck plating. The child’s voice was stiff with anger. “You can’t lie to me anymore, Pio. I can see right through it. I know the rumors are true and I won’t let you risk it. What good would you be to me mad? I’d rather die than watch you do that to yourself. It nearly killed you to watch the sectilians die. What do you think it will do to me to watch you go insane?”
Ei’Pio didn’t know what to say. The thought that she might become unreachable if she accomplished her goal—that she might leave the child alone—chilled her. Carindi needed her.
But what other course was there for her?
Carindi continued. “My people were wrong to shackle you this way—like some kind of pack animal. You aren’t a suesupus! You’re a person. When we get to Sectilius I will demand that this form of slavery be abolished. By the Cunabula, I will make them listen to me.”
Ei’Pio was silent. Carindi flared with the passion of youth and spoke uncomfortable truths. But it had always been this way, and change would not come easily to Sectilius.
Ei’Pio did not mention it again, but she still pushed herself to attempt to punch through the yoke and its realm of pain when Carindi slept.
• • •
Ei’Pio woke from a brief doze knowing instantly that something was wrong. Carindi’s signature was faint. She jetted to the other end of the ship, seeking, triangulating, calling out ius name.
The child was on the other side of the escutcheon—outside the ship. Ei’Pio’s limbs thrashed in agitation as she cycled through camera transmissions until she finally located ium indulging in an untethered spacewalk. A compartment on the outside of the ship was open, and the teenager was shoulder deep in a propulsion nacelle.
Ei’Pio throttled the klaxon control so that it transmitted a warning at full volume into Carindi’s helmet. She watched with a small amount of parental satisfaction as the child jerked in response. The tiny figure stood up on the hull and waved, then deliberately punched the button on the shoulder of the power armor to silence the alarm and went back to work.
Ei’Pio ground her beak with worry, her suction cups kneading anything that happened to be nearby, until the child was safely back inside the ship. As soon as Carindi cleared the dampening field of the escutcheon, Ei’Pio launched into an outraged lecture about safety protocols and safe radiation exposure levels—which the child had nearly exceeded.
When Ei’Pio noted Carindi’s dispirited mental state, she went silent.
The child said nothing.
Ei’Pio accessed a corridor camera and watched the child walk slowly for a few feet and then slump to the floor. Iad was sobbing.
Ei’Pio dove deep into the child’s mind with intent to soothe, but Carindi pushed her right back out. Ei’Pio would have to wait. There was nothing else to do when the adolescent got so worked up.
It hurt to watch ium go through this. She had never cared more deeply about another person’s well-being than she did for Carindi’s. This child belonged to her, was her soul-child. She wanted to spare ium any pain.
“I thought I had it. I was so sure,” Carindi finally said.
Ei’Pio didn’t have to ask what the child was talking about.
“There is time, Carindi.”
Iad didn’t reply. The silence between them was dark and sullen.
Ei’Pio hummed to ium as she knew sectilian mothers did to reassure their children.
“Stop it! I’m not a baby. I know what you’ve been doing when I’m sleeping. I can feel the echoes of your pain. It’s killing you. You have to stop. You’re driving both of us crazy. Don’t try to do it anymore, Pio.”
Ei’Pio was contrite. “I won’t. Rest now.”
Of course Carindi knew it was a lie. Iad cried and fretted and raged for hours, finally collapsing of exhaustion where iad was.
But Ei’Pio didn’t dare stop. Once she was certain Carindi was deeply asleep, she thrashed against the yoke until pain made it impossible to breathe, until her mind was virtually shredded.
There wasn’t time anymore.
The oxygen reserve inside the star was nearly depleted.
• • •
On the day the star began to fuse silicon, Carindi leaned against the smooth curve of Ei’Pio’s enclosure, arms and legs outstretched, as though it were possible to reach through the glass to embrace Ei’Pio and keep her safe.
There were less than two standard days left.
The child hadn’t slept for days, having figured out long before how to order the suit to inject stimulants into ius body. Iad was determined to watch Ei’Pio and keep her from trying to break through the yoke.
“Do you wish you’d had the opportunity to mate?” Carindi asked after a long silence.
It was a painful question and one that Ei’Pio privately contemplated frequently. If she could have raised her own children as she’d raised Carindi…
She sighed. “No. It is a tremendous expenditure, and unlike sectilian mothers, I would not be able to watch my children grow.”
“If you could, though, here? We could keep them all safe, here, inside. We would keep you alive as you’ve kept me alive. I would make a door so I could come inside the enclosure and help you care for them.”
Such a tantalizing fantasy.
Carindi went on. “We could raise them together, you and I. Show me again, the day of your birth. Please, Pio. I want to imagine your babies.”
Ei’Pio’s mantle throbbed unsteadily. It had become easier to daydream than to focus on the awful present. She showed the child again.
Afterward, she thought perhaps the child had fallen into a light sleep. She prepared herself to break the yoke. This time it would work, no matter the cost. She would not allow Carindi to die in the supernova.
But then the child spoke again. “I’m not sure what gender I was meant to be, genetically, but I want to be a girl like you.”
Ei’Pio pressed her suction cups to the glass as though to caress the young face. It was Carindi’s first declaration of gender preference. In Ei’Pio’s eyes that made her an adult. Ei’Pio could now let go of the gender neutrality she’d carefully maintained, like all sectilian adults did, in order not to bias a child’s preferences.
“You are a woman, my dear Carindi.”
Carindi’s brows pulled together. “I used to think that perhaps it would have been better if I’d died in the plague.”
Ei’Pio said softly, “I remember.”
“I want you to know that I’m glad I didn’t. I’m glad I was able to keep you company, Pio.”
Ei’Pio held the girl’s earnest expression. “I know.” After a moment passed, she continued. “This time has been a great gift.”
“Borrowed time,” Carindi murmured. Suddenly the girl broke the tension with a grin. “I want to swim with you, Pio.”
Ei’Pio’s limbs twitched with fatigue and the lingering pain she couldn’t seem to shed. “You’ve never swum before.”
“There must always be a first time,” Carindi said with a smirk, mimicking Ei’Pio’s mental voice.
“So I’ve said to you many times, my dear girl. How will you deal with the problem of access?”
“I’ll just cut a hole at one end of your enclosure. Just enough to fit through. The ship will flood, but what difference does it make now?” Even through the suit, Ei’Pio could see the girl shrug.
Ei’Pio sighed. “It doesn’t.”
“It’s settled then. I’ll go fetch a laser cutting arc and cut through on Deck 1-C. You stay here where you’re safe.”
“I will,” she promised.
The young woman walked away, footsteps slow and shuffling, the shoulders of the suit hunched. Just as Carindi was about to stride out of sight, Ei’Pio saw the girl halt and heard Carindi’s mental voice muttering, “Swimming, cutting… access, draining. Wait a minute. Wait… a… minute. Praise the Cunabula!”
The girl was running.
She bounded to the nearest deck transport and slammed into the control, cracking the plastic the symbol was made from. She was breathing so hard she was nearly hyperventilating. “Don’t get your hopes up, Pio. We’ve been disappointed before, but I’ve got an idea!” Her mental voice was euphoric.
Ei’Pio followed Carindi, inside and outside of her mind. Through cameras as well as the girl’s eyes, she watched the teenager bounding from place to place on the engineering deck, gathering tools.
The girl’s momentum never stopped. Her energy had been renewed. She opened one of many engineering bays and slid the mechanicals out as far as they would go, then stuck an arm in behind them, up to her shoulder. She began to wiggle and push, grunting and straining.
Ei’Pio asked her repeatedly for more information but was met with silence. Carindi’s attention was focused elsewhere.
Abruptly, the girl raged, “I cannot believe this. What if all the engineers on the ship had sectilian body types and there were no atellan engineers aboard? Then what would they do if they needed to get in there?”
“Get in where?” Ei’Pio begged.
“I’ve found it, damn them,” Carindi spat. “The control panel for the yoke. But I can’t fit in there with the suit. Only an exceedingly thin atellan could fit.”
The young woman paced up and down that small section of the engineering compartment. Ei’Pio could feel her mind buzzing with conflicting thoughts and ideas. It was impossible to keep up. The girl was forming a conclusion, but keeping Ei’Pio at the surface of her thoughts so she couldn’t see what it was.
Ei’Pio began to feel an overwhelming sense of dread. “Slow down, Carindi. Let’s work through this. We’ll do it together. There has to be a way.”
“I can’t slow down, Pio. You know I can’t.”
Ei’Pio commanded the camera she’d accessed to zoom in on the girl. She watched Carindi pace and flail her arms around. She searched for something reassuring to say.
The girl stopped her pacing.
“I always knew this day would come,” Carindi said softly. Her voice was unsteady. Then she sounded more certain. “Helmet retract.”
Ei’Pio contracted into a ball, crying, “No, Carindi!”
But it was too late.
The helmet was slipping back into the shoulders of the suit, revealing a mass of matted hair curling around Carindi’s head and neck. The skin on the girl’s face was so pale as to be nearly translucent, stretched tight over the bony prominences of her cheeks. Her eyes were large and brown and luminous.
Carindi smiled at the camera through which, she knew, Ei’Pio was watching. “I’ll be fine. It’s just a few minutes. I’ll put it right back on.”
Ei’Pio watched in horror as the front of the suit split open and fell away from the skeletal shoulders of a teenaged girl who was only three quarters of the size she should have been, had she been free to eat, exercise, and grow normally.
Carindi stepped out of the suit and staggered, falling to her knees, catching herself with her hands on the mechanicals. She stifled a cry of pain, then said, “I don’t seem to have much in the way of muscle mass.”
Ei’Pio quickly moved to adjust the gravity to something Carindi could tolerate, all the while begging the child to put the suit back on immediately.
Her pleas were ignored.
Carindi pushed her tools into the tiny crevice and eased herself in after them. The camera picked up the sounds of power tools, clattering metal and plastic, and the girl’s grunts of effort, but all Ei’Pio could see were two impossibly fragile alabaster legs sticking out into the room. Carindi’s thoughts were doggedly full of electronics—circuits, relays, networks, and arrays.
“This. Is it. I’ve done it!” Carindi crowed. “Move the ship, Pio, with my blessing.”
“First the suit,” Ei’Pio insisted.
Carindi’s mental voice ground hard. “Move it. I want to feel it move. Now.”
“You won’t feel anything. Inertial dampening fields—”
“Now, Pio,” the girl commanded.
But Ei’Pio was motionless. She couldn’t take her eyes from her girl.
Carindi eased out of the tiny compartment and slumped against the housing. Streaks of dark blood ran down from her narrow nose over her pale grey lips. Her eyes were bloodshot and brimming with tears. She coughed weakly.
“Carindi, my dear one… please.” She couldn’t say more. Her mind had turned to black static. Her limbs were cold and numb.
The girl struggled toward the disarticulated suit on hands and knees. When she reached it, she sprawled forward against it, panting. She leaned her head against the suit and turned her face to the camera, chin tucked low. “I was never meant to live, but you were, Pio. You are my dear subidia, my surrogate mother. I want you to live free.”
Ei’Pio’s limbs shook violently with emotion. She whispered, “What am I without you?”
“You are free. Free… to find your own way.”
Those were the last thoughts of the girl, Machinutorus Carindi Palset Teruvah.
Her beloved Pio was alone again.