Take Back the Sky Page 12

  Joe and DJ try to separate their strands so they won’t keep spinning around each other. I’m lucky enough to be untangled, my leash beginning with Ulyanova, right next to Bird Girl, then stretching back to Tak and Jacobi—all in a row. We’re pretty good at using our parachute training to tug here and there and keep separate.

  How long is this going to take? I don’t like fucking big ships. I remember watching science fiction movies way back when I was ten or eleven, when my mother, between boyfriends, would make me watch with her, and even then marveling at how engineers could shove gigantic spaceships across the cosmos, even then wondering where they got all that energy, doubting the efficiencies, all those cathedral spaces being dragged around wherever you went, like driving a car the size of a city. Even as a kid, I doubted those movies made sense. Boy, was I wrong. The Gurus prove me wrong. Sure, all our transports leaving Earth and going to Mars are small enough, in the beginning, and efficient enough, given spent-matter drives.

  But Spook and Box and now this …

  Once I nerd out, I can amuse myself for hours. But over time, and especially now, as I search for the open holes left by the melted and fused bombs, and not finding them—so are they still there?—the nerd impulses turn sour. I’m not a naturally cheerful and optimistic fellow. Had that beat out of me a long time ago, either at home or on the playground.

  Maybe this isn’t a spaceship at all. Maybe we’ve crossed over through the gate to another dimension, a dimension not of sight, but of mind—a distributed hell-space with no boundaries, no walls. Those specks of light up ahead—the decayed ghosts of previous visitors.

  Maybe if I felt cheerful I’d know I was no longer me. I’ve gotten used to this poor battered kid-self. Not that I wouldn’t like to be set free every now and then. With Joe’s help, I veered from drugs and moderated my intake of booze. I could have easily sunk fast and not climbed out. I watched my mother go into that pit a couple of times. The last time, Joe and I helped her out. Got her into a program. I watched most of her boyfriends dive into dope and booze and never rise again. And not just the guy who taught me how to use guns, the guy I shot, but the bank robber she dated for a few weeks. He spent his whole life planning and doing jobs and then getting high. When my mother refused to get high with him, he beat her, he beat me—and then he left. Cops got him outside Barstow. He ended up minus a hand in Chino.

  “We need to get somewhere!” DJ shouts to the Antags.

  Amen, whatever he means. But they’re still drafting. They still have hope.

  And as for me …

  I get metaphysical, inspired by all the weirdness. I’ve long since believed in God, but have never quite figured out what belief means, what God is, what God’s plan is—what’s in store, ultimately. What would it be like to actually cross over into a good dimension, into heaven itself? What would heaven be like? Would God be waiting to greet you, or would it be Grandma? My aunts? Former squad members? Veterans in full dress uniform, with their ribbons and medals and all? I’d like that, actually.

  How terrific to know it’s over, that I can stop sucking in my guts and relax. No more killing, no more strategy and tactics, no more awful grief and mind-bending shock—no more war. Death itself is behind me, over and done with. What would that be like? I’d be a fish out of water. Where in this other dimensional afterlife could I get an assignment, get a job? Who the hell would want to work with me? Maybe I’m not cut out for heaven. But it would be fun to give it a try. Nature’s long, long vacation. Anything’s better than staring ahead at the armored butts and pulsing wings of a bunch of Antags.

  “Where the hell are we?” Tak asks.

  “Forward of the tail,” DJ says.

  “That big bulge, maybe,” Jacobi says.

  Ahead, the elf-lights outline another thicket, leafless but dense, a weave of long sticks or canes that surrounds our forward view.

  I’m not getting any help from my Antag channel, probably because Bird Girl is intent on drafting this awkward crowd several dozen meters ahead. If the “searchers” and “slaves” Bird Girl mentioned are the squid we saw tending to the Antag transports, the double-hulled catamaran creature we saw through the walls of our tank … would this gym set of interlaced sticks allow them to traverse the larger spaces? Monkey bars for squid. They’d do better than us, certainly better than the Antags.

  “Squid playground,” DJ says, squinting ahead.

  I slap his shoulder for stealing my comparison. Borden looks irritated at both of us but Joe says, “Let ’em yak. They’re balance to the real crazy.”

  By which he probably means Ulyanova.

  “Starting to close in,” Ishida says. And she’s right—the thicket is narrowing.

  “Searchers!” Bird Girl calls over the translator.

  Emerging from the thicket come nine catamaran squid, grappling around the outer reaches. We hear booming and clicking, answered by Antag music and chirps from Bird Girl and her commanders, who rein in our leashes and gather us into a dense, weightless cluster.

  The booms grow louder. In the flickering, come-and-go clouds of moonlight flakes, dozens of squid fill the forward spaces, crowding and bumping as they compete for a view. Each is about three meters across, with arms on both outboard bodies that can stretch an additional three meters. On each “hull” they display two amazing eyes, each the size of a human head, gold-flecked sclera almost obscured by large, figure-eight pupils. Again, four eyes—does that mean they’re related to the Antags? Other than the eyes, they could not be more different.

  Then the sounds stop. The squid gather around us in silence. I have to think they’re not happy. Their arms quiver and dart back as they reach out to touch Bird Girl, the armored commanders, and then—me, DJ, Borden. It’s here that we all realize that the squid, the searchers, are pushing us gently aside, their attention centered on one individual in our bouquet of humans. Ulyanova.

  Bird Girl drafts between us and the searchers and hovers, wings beating slowly. “These are the ones we hoped to find, the ones we need,” she says through the translator. “Keepers use searchers as drivers.”

  “Are they friendly?” DJ asks.

  “To us, yes,” Bird Girl says.

  “What do they eat?”

  “Not you.”

  DJ grins. Maybe he and the squid will get along.

  Ulyanova pushes past us. “They think I am Guru.” She smiles as if they aren’t wrong. “They will take my orders!” The searchers part, then brush her with their tentacles as she passes through them, spreading her arms and pirouetting. Her self-assurance is startling. She seems to pass inspection. Dealing with Gurus, maybe you get used to all kinds of shapes.

  I catch a closer look as we’re cabled up again, matched in pairs and quads. Searcher skin seems to be covered with soft plates, like armadillos—a kind of exoskeleton. The plates interlock to stiffen an arm or part of the squid’s body.

  The Antags urge us forward, into a deeper and thicker forest of canes. Within the thicket, scattered through the spiral, lie shiny dark spheres, each maybe thirty meters wide. More hamster cages? I don’t think so. More like living quarters. Searchers come and go, pulling and twisting around the spheres and through the canes.

  Bird Girl decides it’s time for details. “These searchers cannot fight. They uniquely serve,” she says to DJ and me through our link. I get some of that—peaceable monsters—but what use are they to Gurus or Keepers?

  “For Keepers, they know how to work this ship,” she says. “And for us, they swim on Titan and access archives.”

  “But none came through the gate,” I say. “Have these been here all along?”

  “They are from Sun-Planet,” she says, attached to an impression of wonder, hope, loss—and sadness. “They have been here for much time. But they remember our home, as well.” Bird Girl and the Antags really do feel a relation, an indebtedness, to the searchers, not at all like owners to pets. The relation seems to have overtones of a blood debt. Obviously, when there�
�s time, more needs to be asked and explored.

  “Where are they taking us?” Jacobi asks DJ.

  “Someplace where we can get a shave and a shower,” he says, almost as if he believes it.

  RUNNING ON EMPTY

  Putting one’s self in the arms of a squid requires a courage not expected or taught in basic. We all do it, however, because it’s hard to imagine getting through the canebrake without searcher help—and because the Antags have submitted as well and are even now ahead of us. We don’t talk much. We’re scared, scared to our very guts, in that way that exhaustion makes worse.

  It’s dark, it’s weird, it’s Guru—and there are squid.

  But nobody gets hurt, and in half an hour we’re escorted through the brake, and what’s on the other side is more what you might expect within a gigantic spaceship—genuine, monumental architecture.

  We’re taken across a hollow big enough to hold an apartment high-rise, but filled instead by a wide, undulating coral reef of spun and accreted metal. Judging from the occupants coming and going, like bees flying in and out of a hive, this is another low-g housing tract for searchers. Helping them get around are rope ladders and twisted cane bridges, but more open, with, at the center, a large concave blister that seems to reveal space, or at least blackness and stars. No sign of Titan or Saturn or any moons. About ten searchers are stationed inside the curve of the blister, paying no attention to what’s behind them. They’re on driver duty, I presume.

  We’re brought up short on our leashes and again arranged into a bouquet, keeping our distance with outstretched arms and gripping hands, pajamas hiding very little, while Bird Girl takes hold of Ulyanova’s leash and leads her into a searcher congregation behind the starry blister. There, our prize pupil creates a minor sensation of movement, investigation, rearrangement.

  “It’s like an aquarium,” Jacobi says.

  “I thought squid are mollusks that live in water,” Ishida says.

  “We’ve eaten enough of those,” Tak says, and Ishikawa looks unhappy.

  “Don’t tell them that,” she says.

  “But Bird Girl can read Vinnie like a book, can’t she?” Ishida says.

  “Never liked sushi,” I say. “More a teriyaki kind of guy.”

  “What’s she thinking?” Joe asks DJ and me.

  “Who, Bird Girl or Guru Girl?” DJ asks.

  “Either one,” Joe says.

  “Bird Girl is feeling pretty good,” I say. “No specifics, but she’s where she wants to be—a slow carrier wave of accomplishment, of good feeling.”

  “She’s at the end point of a long strategy,” Kumar says. We’ve all either ignored or tried to stay apart from him after his interlude, including me, hypocrite that I am.

  “Maybe she really likes squid,” Ishida says. “Old friends from home?”

  “She’s never been home,” I say.

  With Vera at her side, Ulyanova’s submitting to a more thorough searcher examination, and maybe already being put to use. She’s the only one of us that seems to have a real purpose. Yet Bird Girl hasn’t stated to me, or to DJ, any change of heart regarding our starshina once her usefulness has ended. I hope it doesn’t come to that. She’s still human, still one of ours—until proven otherwise.

  Like me.

  Bird Girl leaves her surrounded by searchers to return and address us all. “We will find quarters,” she says. “Will be better than hamster cage. And there is food.”

  “Good to know,” DJ says. We look quizzically at each other, since we don’t remember passing that comparison—the hamster cage—on to any of the Antags. Didn’t go through my head. Maybe the bats were listening.

  Where are the bats now? I’d forgotten about them. Bats. Birds. Squid. I’d like to shove a few of our DIs into this present situation. They’d go nuts. Serve them right.

  “We bring others around, outside, from tail forward,” Bird Girl says, and her eyes do not waver from mine.

  “You trust this ship?” Joe asks.

  “With searchers, yes,” she says. “The one named Ulyanova outranks all of you, for the time. Are there mating pairs or other considerations?”

  Borden asserts herself. “If possible, we’d like to be kept close—but no mating arrangements. Kumarji will explain ranks, if you set time aside.”

  “We do not like him,” Bird Girl says. “We are not sure of him.”

  “Neither are we,” Ishida says, but Borden gives her an elbow.

  “We’d like a decent service and arrangements for the dead we found,” Joe says.

  “They will be incinerated, along with our dead.”

  “Dead from Titan?” Joe asks.

  Bird Girl blinks all four eyes. “We are told by our searchers that games were arranged for us as well as you. These provoke feelings of guilt in searchers. Arrangements will be made.”

  “Thank you,” Joe says. “I understand.”

  “Do you?” Bird Girl asks. “I have insight into two of you, and our searchers are, in your eyes, horrible.”

  Borden says quickly, “We hope to revise our opinions.”

  “Searchers always important, and these have been to our home, piloting this ship. I wish to learn from them and prepare for the journey. We have work to do, and all may be useful.”

  She drafts and pulls herself back to the concave, star-filled dish.

  “That isn’t the nose of the ship,” DJ says in an aside to me. “Not a direct view.”

  “I got that,” I say.

  “Ship goes way beyond. Wonder what’s up there—what they all used it for?”

  “Kumar, come here,” Borden says.

  Kumar climbs forward.

  “What’s the chance that Ulyanova can remain independent while channeling a Guru?”

  “Zero,” he says. “I’m pitiful, and all I did was look at them, work with them. She has one in her head.”

  “Great to hear,” Joe says.

  DJ hunches his shoulders. “You know what I’d give anything for right now?”

  “A blow job,” Ishida says with rich sarcasm.

  “Fuck no. That can wait. A tent on Mars, with some of those Russian food packs, those sausages, those little reindeer ones.”

  “Yeah,” Tak says.

  “Those were the best, weren’t they?”

  The Russians agree. “Blow job would be good, as well,” Bilyk adds. He looks hopefully at Jacobi and Litvinov cuffs him.

  INTO THE WEIRD

  The arrangements for quarters are interesting. Beyond the starry dish there is indeed more ship. We get drafted through the centerline on our leashes, this time by two searchers, who brachiate like long-armed gibbons from one jutting cluster of canes to the next. I feel like Jane in Tarzan’s arms, only a lot more arms. The canes seem to be arranged in a tube around the centerline, and the searchers move alternately on the outside of one tube, then cross to the inside of the next, deftly avoiding other squid on other tube highways coming and going toward the ship’s unknown and distant prow.

  In some places, the tubes are thin and we can see almost all the way to an outer wall, which in this segment has transparencies like very large windows, giving us glimpses of the outboard cylinders, which have their own transparencies. We’re uninvolved enough in our transport that I try to peer through the canes and both transparencies. The outboard cylinders are filled with other screw gardens, lots of them, bigger than the one in the tail. Important. Nonsensically important.

  The searchers smoothly shuttle us through an immense cavern. At first, I can only make out blurry patches shot through with flashes of that fairy light—but then I get a real sense of scale. We’re being shuttled over a major e-ticket ride. Guru tech is on full display as we smoothly pass over what amounts to an immense four-leaf clover, the leaves pointing aft, the node, connecting the leaves, about two klicks forward of the trailing edges—the whole arrangement maybe two klicks across. Each leaf’s inner surface is mapped by canals and geographies of walled-off rivers, along with w
hat could pass for a lake, all teeming with hundreds of searchers going about their business, whatever that might be. Makes more sense than the screw gardens—they’re the ship’s drivers, right? They need a place for R&R.

  Gravity is not apparent, but the water flowing along the rivers and lake doesn’t drift away. The giant clover doesn’t spin or do anything obvious, but the surfaces of the leaves seem to have their own sticky properties. The searchers in charge of our bouquet make no comments on these wonders, not that we’d understand if they did. DJ and I did not share tea with them and know nothing about their inner thoughts.

  Near the node where the leaves come together, we’re taken to a lumpy neighborhood of gray-brown mushrooms, spotted with holes, as if worms have been busy, and for all we know, they have. But we haven’t met any—yet.

  The searchers deliver us and deftly, silently move way, tail first, keeping their eyes on us like servants or guards in a royal palace.

  “Our bunks,” Borden says.

  We untangle from the leashes and explore. The spaces within the holes are equipped with mats and net-bundles of cakes, along with succulent gluey beads about the size of grapes, but bright yellow-green. We’re ravenous and try them all. Not terrible. Almost good.

  The walls are spongy, soft, reasonably warm and comfortable—and glow with a soft, bluish sunset light. Best accommodations yet, but what I need most, what all of us need most, is sleep. So we divide along rank and friendship, crawl through different wormholes, wrap up in blankets, and rest easy. It’s an instinct Skyrines have, sort of Greek battlefield wisdom—know what you can change, accept what you can’t, and make do with whatever’s handed to you.

  But as I drift into a much-needed and reasonably sound slumber, I can’t stop thinking about those impossible rivers, flowing along the huge, angled cloverleaves—searchers swimming, breaching, refreshing, enjoying themselves—all the while doing something apparently essential to this ship.

  A little residual from Bug Karnak stirs and decides to take shape in my foggy thoughts. The searchers are familiar to the bugs—in reverse. Like the Antags, they were designed and assigned. “What’s that even mean?” I murmur, with my hands reaching out as if to grasp these facts. “Bugs never met them, never knew them.”