Nova (29 page)

Easily he held it at arm's length as the fingers grasped from the raging star. "Stop!" he bellowed. At the same time he willed the sensory input off all over the ship.

The screens went gray.

The sensory input had always been clamped off on all six of the ship's cyborg studs.

The fires went out in his eyes.

"What in heaven are you trying to do, Lorq?"

"Dive into hell and fish Illyrion out with my bare hands!"

"He's insane!" the corpse shrieked. "Ruby, he's insane! He's killing us, Ruby! That's all he wants to do, kill us!"

"Yes! I'm killing you!" Lorq tossed the hand away. It grasped at the cable hanging from his wrist to jerk the plug. Lorq caught the arm again; the ship lurched.

"For God's sake, pull us out, Lorq!" the corpse cried. "Pull us out of here!"

The ship jerked again. The artificial gravity slipped long enough for liquid to streak on the tank face, then bead the glass as gravity righted.

"It's too late," Lorq whispered. "We're caught in gravity spin!"

"Why are you doing this?"

"Just to kill you, Prince." Lorq's face raged till laughter spilled it. "That's all, Prince! That's all I want to do now."

"I don't want to die again!" the corpse shrieked. "I don't want to flash out like an insect burning!"

"Flash?" Lorq's face twisted about the scar. "Oh no! It'll be slow, slower than before. Ten, twenty minutes at least. It's already getting warm, isn't it? But it won't be unbearable for another five." Below the gold blaze Lorq's face darkened. Spittle flecked his lips with each consonant. "You'll boil in your jar like a fish— " He stopped to rub his stomach beneath his vest. He looked around the chamber. "What can burn in here? The drapes? Is your desk real wood? And all those papers?"

The mechanical hand yanked from Lorq's. The arm swung across the room. The fingers seized Ruby's hand. "No, Ruby! Stop him! Don't let him kill us!"

"You're in liquid, Prince, so you'll see them afire before you go. Ruby, the places where you're already burned won't be able to sweat. So you'll die first. He'll be able to watch you a few moments before his own fluids begin to boil, the rubber runs, the plastic melts— "

"No!" The hand jerked from Ruby's, swung across the room, and smashed into the tank face. "Criminal! Thief! Pirate! Murderer! Murderer! No— !"

The hand was weaker than it had been at Taafite.

So was the glass.

The glass broke.

Nutrient fluids splashed Lorq as he danced back on flooded sandals. The corpse crumpled in the tank, netted in tubes and wires.

The cameras swung wildly out of focus.

The hand clattered to the wet tile.

As the fingers stilled, Ruby screamed, and screamed again. She flung herself across the floor, scrambled over the ragged hem of glass, caught up the corpse, hugged it to her, kissed it, and screamed, and kissed it again, rocking back and forth. Her cloak darkened in the puddle.

Then her scream choked. She dropped the body, hurled herself back against the tank wall, and clutched her neck. Her face flushed deeply beneath burns and wrecked makeup.

She slid slowly down the wall. Her eyes were closed when she reached the bottom.

"Ruby ...?" Whether or not she had cut herself climbing over the glass, it didn't matter. The kiss would have done it. So soon after severe burns, even with what the medico could do, she must have been in a hyperallergic state. The alien proteins in Prince's nutrient fluid had entered her system, causing a massive histamine reaction. She had succumbed in seconds to anaphylactic shock.

And Lorq laughed.

It started like a rearrangement of boulders in his chest. Then it opened to a full sound, ringing on the high walls of the flooded chamber. Triumph was laughable and terrible and his.

He took a deep breath. The ship surged at his fingertips. Still blind, he urged The Black Cockatoo into the bursting sun.

Somewhere in the ship one of the cyborg studs was crying

Outer Colonies (Roc transit), 3172

"The 'star!" the Mouse cried. "She's blown nova!"

Tyy's voice shot through the master circuit: "Out of here we go! Now!"

"But the captain!" Katin shouted. "Look at The Black Cockatoo!"

"The Cockatoo, my God, it's— "

"— Lord, it's falling toward— "

"— falling into the— "

"— the sun!"

"All right, everybody, vanes spread. Katin, I your vanes spread said!"

"My God ..." Katin breathed. "Oh, no ..."

"It too bright is," Tyy decided. "Off sensory we go!"

The Roc began to pull away.

"Oh my God! They— they really are, they're really falling! It's so bright! They'll die! They'll burn up like— they're falling! Oh, Lord, stop them! Somebody do something! The captain's on there. You've got to do something!"

"Katin!" the Mouse shouted. "Get the hell off sensory! Are you crazy?"

"They're going down! No! It's like a bright hole in the middle of everything! And they're falling into it. Oh, they're falling. They're falling— "

"Katin!" the Mouse shrieked. "Katin, don't look at it!"

"It's growing, it's so bright ... bright ... brighter! I can hardly see them!"

"Katin!" Suddenly it came to him, and the Mouse cried out: "Don't you remember Dan? Turn your sensory input off!"

"No! No, I've got to see it! It's roaring now. It's shaking the whole night apart! You can smell it burning, burning up the darkness. I can't see them any more— no, there they are!"

"Katin, stop it!" The Mouse twisted beneath Olga. "Tyy, cut off his input!"

"I can't. I this ship against gravity must fly. Katin! Off sensory, I you order!"

"Down ... down ... I've lost them again! I can't see them any more, The light's turning all red now ... I can't— "

The Mouse felt the ship lurch as Katin's vane suddenly flailed wild.

Then Katin screamed. "I can't see!" The scream became a sob. "I can't see anything!"

The Mouse balled up on the couch with his hands over his eyes, shaking.

"Mouse!" Tyy shouted. "Damn it, we one vane have lost. Down you sweep!"

The Mouse swept blindly down. Tears of terror squeezed between his lids as he listened to Katin's sobs.

The Roc rose from and The Black Cockatoo fell into it.

And it was nova.

Sprung from pirates, reeling blind in fire, I am called pirate, murderer, thief.

I bear it.

I will gather my prizes in a moment and become the man who pushed Draco over the edge of tomorrow. That it was to save the Pleiades does not diminish such a crime. Those with the greatest power must ultimately commit the greatest felonies. Here on The Black Cockatoo I am a flame away from forever. I told her once that we had not been fit for meaning. Neither for meaningful deaths. (There is a death whose only meaning is that it was died to defend chaos. And they are dead ... ) Such lives and deaths preclude significance, keep guilt from the murderer, elation from the socially beneficent hero. How do other criminals support their crimes? The hollow worlds cast up their hollow children, raised only to play or fight. Is that sufficient for winning? I have struck down one third the cosmos to raise up another and let one more go staggering; and I feel no sin on me. Then it must be that I am free and evil. Well, then, I am free, mourning her with my laughter. Mouse, Katin, you who can speak out of the net, which one of you is the blinder for not having watched me win under this sun? I can feel fire churn by me. Like you, dead Dan, I will grasp at dawn and evening, but I will win the noon.

Outer Colonies, New Brazillia II, 3172

Darkness.

Silence.

Nothing.

Then thought shivers:

I think ... therefore I ... I am Katin Crawford? He fought away from that. But the thought was him; he was the thought. There was no place in here to anchor.

A flicker.

A tinkle.

The scent of caraway.

It was beginning.

No! He clawed back down into darkness. The mind's ear recalled someone shrieking, "Remember Dan ..." and the mind's eye pictured the staggering derelict.

Another sound, smell, flicker beyond his lids.

He fought for unconsciousness in terror of the torrent. But terror quickened his heart, and the increased pulse drove him upward, upward, where the magnificence of the dying star lay in wait for him.

Sleep was killed in him.

He held his breath and opened his eyes— Pastels pearled before him. High chords rang softly on one another. Then caraway, mint, sesame, anise— And behind the colors, a figure.

"Mouse?" Katin whispered, and was surprised how clearly he heard himself.

The Mouse took his hands from the syrynx ...

Color, smell, and music ceased.

"You awake?" The Mouse sat on the window sill, shoulders and the left side of his face lit with copper. The sky behind him was purple.

Katin closed his eyes, pushed his bead' back into the pillow, and smiled. The smile got broader, and broader, split over his teeth, and suddenly verged against tears. "Yes." He relaxed, and opened his eyes again. "Yes. I'm awake." He pushed himself up. "Where are we? Is this the Alkane's manned station?" But there was landscape through the window.

The Mouse shoved down from the sill. "Moon of a planet called New Brazillia."

Katin got up from the hammock and went to the window. Beyond the atmosphere-trap, over the few low buildings, a black and gray rock-scape carpeted toward a lunar-close horizon. He pulled in a cool, ozone-tainted breath, then looked back at the Mouse. "What happened, Mouse? Oh, Mouse, I thought I was going to wake up like..

"Dan caught his on the way into the sun. You caught yours while we were pulling out. All the frequencies were dopplering down the red shift. It's the ultraviolets that detach retinas and do things like happened to Dan. Tyy finally got a moment to shut your sensory input off from the master controls. You really were blind for a while, you know. We got you into the medico as soon as we were safe."

Katin frowned. "Then what are we doing here? What happened then?"

"We stayed out by the manned stations and watched the fireworks from a safe distance. It took a little over three hours to reach peak intensity. We were talking with the Alkane's crew when we got the captain's signal from The Black Cockatoo. So we scooted on around, picked him up, and let all the Cockatoo's cyborg studs loose."

"Picked him up! You mean he did get out?"

"Yeah. He's in another room. He wants to talk to you."

"He wasn't fooling us about ships going into a nova and coming out the other side?" They started toward the door.

Outside they passed down a corridor with a glass wall that looked across broken moon. Katin had lost himself in marvelous contemplation of the rubble when the Mouse said, "Here."

They opened the door,

A crack of light struck in across Lorq's face. "Who's there?"

Katin asked, "Captain?"

"What?"

"Captain Von Ray?"

“... Katin?" His fingers clawed the chair arms. Yellow eyes stared, jumped; jumped, stared.

"Captain, what ...?" Katin's face furrowed. He fought down panic, forced his face to relax.

"I told Mouse to bring you to see me when you were up and around. You're ... you're all right. Good." Agony spread the ruptured flesh, then faltered. And for a moment there was agony.

Katin stopped breathing.

"You tried to look too. I'm glad. I always thought you would be the one to understand."

"You ... fell into the sun, Captain?"

Lorq nodded.

"But how did you get out?"

Lorq pressed his head against the back of the chair. Dark skin, red hair shot with yellow, his unfocused eyes, were the only colors in the room. "What? Got out, you say?" He barked a laugh. "It's an open secret now. How did I get out?" A muscle quivered on the wrack of his jaw. "A sun— " Lorq held up one hand, the fingers curved to support an imaginary sphere "— it rotates, like a world, like some moons. With something the mass of a star, rotation means incredible centripetal force pushing out at the equator. At the end of the build-up of heavy materials at the surface, when the star actually novas, it all falls inward toward the center." His fingers began to quiver. "Because of the rotation, the material at the poles falls faster than the material at the equator." He clutched the arm of the chair again. "Within seconds after the nova begins you don't have a sphere any more, but a ...

"A torus!"

Lines scored Lorq's face. And his head jerked to the side, as if trying to avoid a great light. Then the scarred lineaments came back to face them. "Did you say torus? A torus? Yes. That sun became a doughnut with a hole big enough for two Jupiters to fit through, side by side."

"But the Alcane's been studying novas up close for nearly a century! Why didn't they know?"

"The matter displacement is all toward the center of the sun. The energy displacement is all outwards. The gravity shift will funnel everything toward the hole; the energy displacement keeps the temperature as cool inside the hole as the surface of some red giant star— well under five hundred degrees."

Though the room was cool, Katin saw sweat starting in the ridges of Lorq's forehead.

"The topological extension of a torus of that dimension— the corona which is all the Alkane's stations can see— is almost identical to a sphere. Large as the hole is, compared to the size of the energy-ball, that hole would be pretty hard to find unless you knew where it was— or fell into it by accident." On the chair arm the fingers suddenly stretched, quivered. "The Illyrion— "