Crossways (59 page)

Cara gave each one a mental handshake.

The door clicked open and the Kazan kids peered in, the girl almost as pale as her dad and the boy deep brown. Alia waved them over and they strapped in between their parents.

Ben frowned, but Alia shrugged. “Nothing they haven't seen before.”

“Your kids have seen void dragons?” Cara asked. “They haven't even tested for implants yet.”

“It doesn't seem to matter about the implant,” Alia said. “Either you see them or you don't. Must run in the family. Reckon they both have Navigator potential if they find someone to sponsor their implant.”

“The Free Company will see to it,” Ben said. “We need jumpship pilots.”

“Obliged to you.” Grigor nodded. “Hear that, kids?”

*Get ready,*
Gen broadcast.

The transition to foldspace takes Cara by surprise. As soon as Gen says the words, they are plunged into a darkness so absolute that she thinks she's gone blind. She feels as though she's floating, but when she checks her harness, she's still strapped in.

“Ben?”

He doesn't answer, so she reaches out with her mind.

*Ben?*

*Can you see them?*
he asks.

*See what?*

*Otters. No, not quite otters, but long and otter-like. They undulate as if they're in water.*

*I can only see blackness. Show me.*

And then she sees through his eyes. It's still black but it's as if black is a natural medium for vision. She sees the shapes, long and sinuous, playfully swimming through the cabin air, turning somersaults for the joy of it, twirling around each other in mad helical spins and then separating to explore something with their snouts. One bumps into her chest, backs off as if surprised, seems to sniff at her, then takes another run and passes through. She can't feel it.

*Oooh, that's weird. They're like children, exploring new things.*

She links to all the pilots. They can all see the squirming, rolling otter-kind.

*Childlike, yes,*
Alia says as one bumps noses with her son.
*But this one isn't.*

A creature enters the mess through the aft bulkhead. Cara can't see it when she opens her own eyes, but when she sees it through Ben's it's quite clear, black on black but with an iridescence that suggests every color of the rainbow and possibly some that she's never seen before.

She sees the image from Kennedy's plasfilm drawing: sea horse head, wings folded against its sinuous body. It's beautiful, but she suddenly understands Ben's terror. It's too familiar where familiarity should play no part in its makeup. It's a being from another dimension, it shouldn't bear any resemblance to anything earth-like, yet it does. Its form can only come from human imagination, which means that somewhere, somewhen, the creature has meshed minds with humanity.

*It's the fact that it shouldn't look like something we
recognize that disturbs me most,*
Ben said.
*I keep thinking about all those souls lost in the Folds and wonder if the last thing they saw was this.*

It swirls around the mess, taking in the Navigators. Cara almost thinks it's smiling, but only humans treat the baring of teeth as a gesture of friendliness. Is it even possible to interpret the facial expression of such an alien creature as an indicator of its emotional state?

Ben holds out a hand, palm up, fingers open. Cara can sense that he's trembling inside, but his hand is steady. The dragon lowers its snout. The prehensile beard snakes out to touch. Ben twitches as the claws connect, but doesn't jerk back.

*What are you?*
Ben asks, not in words, but in a thought, literally translated simply as
*?*

The dragon replies, again, not in words, but with a concept Ben understands simply as,
*I am,*
and asks the same
*?*
of him.

*I am,*
Ben replies, and then he reaches for Cara's hand and says,
*We are.*
He tries to say Ben and Cara by putting the essence of who they are to the front of his mind, but the creature doesn't have language. It doesn't offer a name.
I am
is the closest they're going to get.

Then . . .

*Know you,*
it says.

Words.

*Learn you. Learn your mind thing.*
It turns to her.
*And yours.*

Cara remembers something taking her implant. What had Jussaro said?

*It's learned from our implants, Ben, ours and Jussaro's. It's trying to communicate.*

*Communicate.*
The void dragon echoes.
*What is?*
The creature looks around at the interior of the flight deck.

*Ship,*
Ben says and pictures safety, air, and warmth.

*Many.*

*Many ships? Yes.*
Ben pictures ships passing in and out of the Folds.
*Must leave. Stay means die,*
Ben says.

The creature doesn't understand. It asks
*?*

*Cease to be,*
Ben says, offering the image of a person winking out to nothing.

The creature still doesn't understand. Death is a concept it has never dealt with. How old is this thing?

*Cease.*
The creature projects an image of a ship. Not the
Solar Wind
, this is smaller, a nipper class transport perhaps, or something older. It flashes into being as if it has come through a jump gate and then flashes out again.

*Through,*
Ben says.
*In and out again. From outside.*

*?*

*Elsewhere. Beyond.*

The creature has no concept of a place other than its own environment. It transmits curiosity.

Ben tries to picture life on a planet. Cara recognizes it as the farm on Chenon: Nan, Rion, cattle. He adds Ricky.

The creature doesn't get land, daylight, or cattle, but it recognizes Ricky.
*Young.*

*Yes.
*

The otter-children crowd in, sharing the void dragon's sensory experience. They recognize Ricky, too.

*Ricky said he'd seen otters,*
Cara says.

The void dragon turns to her. She forces her eyes open against the blackness and this time she sees it for herself. Its snout bumps against her face gently. Very gently for something so big. One of the talons on the end of the prehensile beard snakes up to her cheekbone. She feels a slight prick and a trickle of warm blood runs down her face like a tear. The dragon takes her blood, maybe it sniffles it up, maybe it licks it, she isn't sure.

*Know you.*
In the recognition there's an implication that it not only knows her now, but will know her again in future. Cara wonders whether she's putting her own interpretation on something so alien she doesn't have a concept for it.

*Know you, too,*
she responds.
*Now and always,*
and tries to project goodwill.

Ben pictures a variety of ships winking out. Then he projects an image of a ship, an ark ship, hanging in the middle of nowhere.

*Lost,*
Ben says.

The void dragon doesn't understand.

*Find?*
Ben projects hope.

Still no understanding.

“I suppose that would have been too easy,” Ben says. “Worth a try, I guess.”

There's an audible crash. The mess door flies open. Jake Lowenbrun, naked and wet from the shower, collides with a table, rebounds and stumbles into the lap of Chilaili Magena, or is it Tama? She grabs him by the arm and drags him down to the bench. There's no spare safety harness there, but her sister leans over and they clasp hands across him to keep him pinned down. He reaches out for the void dragon and it swirls around toward him.

Hilde appears in the open doorway. “Sorry. Too much soap, not enough grip.” She obviously doesn't see any of the creatures. She walks through the middle of the void dragon and grabs Lowenbrun by the shoulders to haul him back. Her voice is half a second behind her mouth movement.

The void dragon winks out of existence.

The otter children swirl around the mess one more time and then dive out through the forward bulkhead.

Cabin pressure changes with a pop and they emerge into realspace.

Ben took a deep breath. His wrist ached, but he thought it was more a memory of pain rather than a flare-up. He wanted to laugh and cry, both at the same time. He didn't know whether he felt relief or disappointment that the confrontation had been so strange. He'd felt that they were on the verge of communication, but that complete understanding had eluded them. He believed the void dragon had been curious. That was the first step.

Pity Lowenbrun broke the moment.

What was he going to do about the man?

Hilde had dragged him back to sick bay and Ben and Cara had followed. Now Lowenbrun sat on a chair, dressed in nothing but a light cotton coverall, his hair still damp and tousled, nursing a bowl in case his insides got the better of him again.

“He smells better than he did,” Cara said. “But I bet he has the mother of all hangovers.”

Lowenbrun looked up at her without actually raising his head and swallowed hard.

Yes, Ben knew the signs. Lowenbrun's whole posture said:
If I move I'll be sick.
“Has he had—”

“Everything we can give him and still be conscious,” Hilde said. “But he's close to sober.”

“Lowenbrun . . . Jake . . .” Ben said.

Lowenbrun grunted.

“By rights I should shove you out of the nearest air lock.”

“Do it, then.” It wasn't bravado.

“That would be too easy.”

Another grunt.

“Thirty thousand innocent settlers.”

This time a groan rather than a grunt. “I'm a dead man. I've been a dead man since I took that bastard's job.”

“Do you want to die?”

He shook his head, clutched the bowl until his knuckles whitened, then swallowed hard again. “Dree and me. All the family that's left. Need to take care of her.”

“It looked like she was taking care of you,” Cara said.

“Maybe, yeah. Wasn't always that way. D'you know . . . if you mix yahto with whisky the dreams go away.”

“I bet they don't really,” Ben said. “It's just that you can't remember them afterward.”

“Maybe. You got any yahto?”

“No.”

“Whisky?”

“No.”

“P'raps that's just as well.”

“Tell me about the ark, Jake. You went into the Folds at the Dromgoole Hub. And then what?”

“I realized as soon as we got on board that it was an ark, not a cargo ship. At first Alexandrov said there was a change of plan; we were taking the ark to a safe planet. I think I believed him. I wanted to believe him. We went in and out of the Folds again. That's not where we left it. Four more jumps using different Monitor codes to disguise the ship ident.”

“So what was your last entry gate?”

“Dromgoole to Pinch Point. Pinch Point to Stamford Haven. Stamford Haven to Terracotta. Terracotta to nowhere.”

“So if we go in via the Terracotta gate—”

“You're not seriously going to do this?” Lowenbrun raised his head and stared Ben in the face, bloodshot eye to eye.

“Not alone.” Ben glanced at Cara. “I've learned that lesson. You're coming with me.”

“And me, too,” Cara said.

“And a Finder. I've got an idea about that. Someone ideally suited, if he's willing.”