Context (87 page)

It was a Veralik, the intruder—brown,
squat, and cuboid—and it stumped into the room on short legs, thumping its
vox-box into life.

‘THE FEMALE.’
With a wave of its thick stubby
pseudoarm in Ro’s direction:
‘HOLD HER.’

Ro stared at it, then at Zoë, who
shrugged.

‘Why are you—’

But, from the corridor outside, a
gasping voice, half unheard beneath the sirens: ‘The centrifuge hab ... fail...’
A wheeze, then: ‘Energy drain ...’

It was Piotr, leaning against the
twisted doorjamb.

Behind Ro and Zoë, the Zajinet
ambassador had withdrawn into a tighter form.

‘HOLD THE FEMALE. IT WILL ATTEMPT
TO TAKE HER.’

Ro circled away from the Veralik,
using aikido footwork, knowing that to close with the blocky creature would be
deadly.

‘ZAJINET, THE RENEGADE. IT
STOPPED ROTATION. ENERGY—‘

Avoiding, Ro changed direction.

And stopped.

Blinked.

For a moment, she thought she had
seen another Zajinet, but different: whorls, hexagonal convection cells, an
hypnotic study in blue-grey movement.

‘STOP HER.’

Unbelievably complex, that flow.
Enthralling, as the room began to fade.

‘Ro!’ Zoë’s distant voice. ‘What’s
happening?’

Strange perspectives, twisting.

A ghostly grasp on her sleeve.

Slipping...

‘Ro, take my hand!’

Slipping away.

Transparency,
a shrinking in all directions, a turning inside out: it was all of these, and
more. Implode/explode, twist and elongate and shrink simultaneously: the world
commanded, tore her apart,
pulled
her.

Help me...

Spacetime’s unbraiding, the freezing-burning
explosion/transition, the ripping apart of all she was.

Please...

Obliteration.

A
moment of lucidity.

Chamber: ovoid, glistening blue.
A Zajinet with her.

Its outer form, a thousand rocks
and grains, slipped to the floor. Only a floating network of scintillating
light remained.

Scarlet light.

Sparking—

Blackness.

Aching
stiffness clasped every limb, tightened around her ribs, as she squinted
against blue-tinged light, waking on a cold hard floor.

‘You’re awake.’ A woman’s voice. ‘Jared,
call Lee. Our visitor’s waking up.’

‘Ugh.’ Ro sat up, pain clenching
her back.

‘You’ll be all right, I think.’

The woman had cropped royal-blue
hair, was dressed in black and burgundy.

‘Where...?’

The blueish corridor, round in
cross-section and shining like glass, looped to the left. Two men were hurrying
into view. Everything seemed different from XenoMir.

Like a giant artery.

Ro shook the thought away, trying
to focus despite a pounding headache.

‘She needs the ‘doc.’ The woman.

‘No way, Lila.’ One of the men
stopped, hands on hips. ‘Not till we ... Just where the devil have you been
hiding, young woman?’

‘I don’t—’

Help me...

She remembered the strangely
twisting maelstrom which had enveloped her.

‘For God’s sake, Josef. Look at
the state of her.’

‘Until we find out what’s going—’

A large hand grabbed her wrist,
and Ro reacted as she had been taught. She rose to her knees, twisting, as the
big man rotated and thumped heavily to the floor.

She stood up and backed away.

‘Who the hell are you people? How
did I get here?’

Danger...

They stared at her, at each
other; even the man who was on the ground was watching wordlessly.

‘Are you saying’—the woman, Lila,
spoke slowly as though to a child—‘that you’ve only just arrived here?’

‘Here? I don’t know where on
Earth I am.’

‘In the Central Bone,’ Lila
began. ‘Downslope from—’

But the big man, climbing
painfully to his feet, suddenly laughed.

‘Hardly on Earth.’

Someone said: ‘But “where on BD3”
sounds terrible.’

Laughter fading.

Ro began to shake.

Help. . .

‘What’—with teeth chattering—‘is
BD3?’

‘My God. She really doesn’t…’

A pause, then Lila softly spoke:

‘Beta Draconis III, my young
friend. You’re on the Zajinet homeworld.’

The strange, metallic blue
surroundings seemed to spin around her.

<>

~ * ~

46

NULAPEIRON
AD 3421

The
long shapes hung like stripped carcasses amid the gloom, eerie and threatening.
Odd echoes of sound—plashing waves, from the canal outside—dissipated among the
shadows.

There was a soft footstep.

Holoflash ... A virtual tricon
was beamed into Tom’s eyes. Silently, he clenched his fist, and the steel ring
on his middle finger sparked back the countersign.

‘We can use lights.’ A
square-chinned man, older than Tom, stepped into an area of lesser gloom amid
the hanging shapes. ‘I’ve watchers posted.’

Glowglimmers drifted up from his
hands, casting eerie, demonic highlights across his face.

‘You’re Tyentro. I’m—’

‘Honoured, sir.’

Canoes...

Now that he could make out the
shapes, hanging vertically in the glowglimmers’ friendly illumination, they
were no longer threatening.

‘How many watchers?’

‘Five. My main team, Stilvan in
charge.’

From the dossiers, Tom had
thought this Stilvan too gung-ho, likely to jeopardize too much for too little
gain; but Tyentro’s tone was approving.

He’s survived here.

All of them had developed
instincts to live amid the occupying regime without detection. Tom could learn
from them.

‘We can sit down at the rear.’
Tyentro pointed.