Take Back the Sky Read online

  Fuck the inquiring mind. I do not want to know.

  We emerge from another tunnel into a doubly curved chamber, like being inside a big, rope-cinched eggshell. The light here has no obvious source and is orangey-peach in color. At the egg’s large end, blocking any obvious path forward, is a round black plate about six meters across, sectioned in thirds through the middle. The most grizzled-looking of the Antag commanders, whom otherwise I can’t tell apart—no visible signs of rank on their light armor—folds its wings tightly to its body, lower hands clasping. The others follow this one’s lead, including Bird Girl. She’s waiting for a decision. After several minutes, one of the Antags musics some words, which the translator picks up and returns with rough overtones as, “This is difficult place. Many reasons not all are brought here. May cause disease.”

  “Illness,” Bird Girl corrects. “We cannot go forward and take control until we pass through a puzzle. The puzzle changes. When we do not look correctly, do not solve, the gate will not let us through. If there is no going through, we stay until we die. No other place to go now.”

  “All righty!” DJ says, waving his hand and splaying his fingers as if weaving a protective spell. Not much reserve left for DJ and I doubt there’s much in either Borden or Ulyanova. How much for me?

  An Antag commander approaches the “gate.” The others hang on to its lower hands, as if it might be sucked through. At a slap of a wingtip hand, the gate opens in six parts that withdraw into the bulkhead. At first, through the gate I see only gray uncertainty. Then the gray area acquires a spiky focus. A geometric, weedy growth spirals out around the edges, bulging toward us with thorny fingers.

  I think of showering after gym class in high school, in the echoing tile washroom, sitting on a damp aluminum bench, when I tried to simulate druggy experience by pressing an index finger against the sides of my eyeballs. But that was juvenile shit. This is real. This is messing with my brain, maybe with my soul.

  The patterns inside the gate become simpler and solid, as if the puzzle has learned who and what we are, how we see, how we think, and has isolated the most effective way to entrance or confuse us.

  This pattern leaves perverted afterimages.

  And then—

  Having found our nature and our weakness, what lies beyond becomes a tortured maze of the nastiest crap I hope to never encounter again, and I’ve become part of it—trapped, strung out on machines with steel teeth that chew me open and then retreat to allow dancing steel arms with needle and thread to stitch me back together before I bleed out.

  I see all of us stuffed into big iron caskets like iron maidens, filled with sharpened spikes—not much worse than the suits we had to wear on Titan, but then …

  Yeah, they’re worse.

  DJ is twitching, neck corded, struggling to look aside, but he can’t. Ulyanova I can’t see—she’s drifting behind me and, caught in more ways than one, I refuse to turn away from the gate. Winding nests of razor-scaled serpents dart forward to grab my head. I’m dying, but I should already be dead. Somehow, even in the middle of my horror, I think: You crazy bastard, you’re pegging at around seven—can’t you ramp it up to eleven?

  Never taunt an evil genius, right?

  Gurus like it interesting.

  The puzzle gets personal. Skyrines and Antags are now personally tearing my flesh. There’s Joe, Tak, Ishida—and even Kazak, dead Kazak, teeth buried in my stomach. Pain isn’t enough. The gate plays with every human fear great and small: of being broken or isolated or eaten, a great shrieking chaos of You’ll never breathe again, you’ll never eat again, you’ll never fuck again, you’ll be lost and nobody will ever find you, and if they do, you won’t care because there’s so much pain, and worse, you’re crazier than clockwork apeshit and now you’re laughing, watching your fellow Skyrines join you in a never-ending hell—

  And if such images can have physical overtones beyond the pain and the shock, here they are: the sense that everything in one’s body is about to fail, piece by piece, causing not just pain but deep uncertainty, and maybe it’s already happening or has already happened—

  Worse than any instauration, because this one stabs in and hooks forward the socially outcast, the living who are worse than dead, who will shit their pants and soil their souls and embarrass themselves and all who know them and love them, simply by failing in form and duty.

  Combine that with the mincemeat grinders and the hooks and the flaying—

  And the overall impression that it will all go away, all be forgotten, if only we turn on one another and fight and kill! I can have everything back, my youth, my innocence, freedom from pain, a young, whole body—if only I fight.

  All will be forgiven.

  My God, that has real power. That reaches eleven. My hands form claws. Borden has curled up like a pill bug. I hear DJ growling like an angry cat, but Ulyanova keeps quiet. I’ve rotated enough to see her face, a paleness waiting to be smashed—I reach for her—

  Bird Girl jerks hard on our cable. We cannot keep our eyes on the gate. The Antags close the hatch. It’s over. They haven’t been caught up, not this time, leaving us ignorant humans to bear the brunt. Borden is still tucked up in a tight ball. DJ and I cling to each other.

  The nightmare inside the gate was completely convincing to us—but not to the starshina. She licks her lips. She’s into it. She’s ready for a change. What did the gate promise her? Life as a Russian soldier, as a Skyrine, is total misery, and now she’s seen her way clear to being special and in control. A fucking awful transformation, but I see it in her eyes. Already she’s thinking like a Guru.

  “Four of our own have tried to enter this gate,” Bird Girl says, and passes us impressions of bloody pieces being returned. “Not just illusion. Death trap. Deadly, killing puzzle.” Now she addresses Ulyanova directly. “Tell us what we must do, how we must think, to pass through.”

  The starshina wipes her forehead and inspects her palm, as if she might have mopped more than sweat. She turns to DJ and me. “There are Gurus here—I feel them! They are unhappy and weak. They believe they will die.” Her English has improved. What sort of expertise can she access now? She looks up, aside. “They do not mind dying, but are surprised and angry I see into them. They did not expect that—ever.

  “And now we must meet, no?”

  DJ looks at her in abject wonder, then at me. We’re still sweating like worms on a griddle.

  Bird Girl tugs us back from the closed gate. “We go to see Keeper,” she says, and points her wingtip at Ulyanova.

  The starshina seems to suddenly spark. Whatever’s inside her, whatever has combined with her, is making its first moves. She addresses Bird Girl in Russian. The translator hashes and wheeps back English, then Antag. “To do this, to finish it, I am in charge,” she says. “You will show me to Antagonista who looks into Gurus. All my comrades will see, and all of you will see, because gate will kill if we do not go through at once. Understood?”

  “Understood,” Bird Girl says.

  The Antags have their own Guru mimic.

  More sides to the polygon.

  GHOSTS, DEAD PEOPLE, AND THINGS THAT NEVER WERE

  Bird Girl and the ranking Antags escort us into another access pipe that extends quite a long ways aft through the ship, opening into a chamber that has the benefit, for us, of not being excessively changeable or excessively large. On one side of the chamber, outboard, maybe not too far from the first racquetball court and our hamster cage, is a makeshift hangar where three smaller vessels have been parked—not the same as the larger transports that brought us here, more like orbital fighter craft, suspended in a web of rubbery cables that keep them from bumping. A few Antags in that hangar are busy winging from ship to ship. And finally, we see a squid. Mostly the same as I remember through the foggy walls of our liquid-filled tank on the first transport up from Titan—squidlike in some aspects, but arranged like a catamaran, two grayish-pink bodies with four or five arms each linked by a kind of br
idge—but not in water, not this time, and not floppy like you’d expect from a squid on Earth. This creature slides gracefully into a fighter craft and emerges a few seconds later, arms carrying equipment wrapped in dark fabric or plastic.

  Borden ignores the squid and concentrates on what she can understand, what might be more immediately important. “Five ships,” she says. “Probably not big enough to take us home, or anywhere far from Saturn.”

  DJ stares at the squid. “Wouldn’t want to tangle with one of those.”

  The Antags around the corded fighters move into a tunnel. Three emerge a few minutes later with a bundle floating between them, an irregular squirming object wrapped in a flexible bag with a squat brown cylinder attached—some sort of pressurized sack, I’m guessing.

  The Antags are going to introduce us to some Gurus. The ones they captured on Mars and apparently kept alive? Maybe not. Maybe we have no idea where their Gurus come from. Wherever, I want to be any fucking place but here. I don’t have a home, not really, but I want to go back there, even if it’s Virginia Beach turned black glass.

  We are in the grip of an unpredictable enemy whose motivations may not add up, who have spent years trying to kill us on Mars and on Titan, and that’s bad enough—

  But what about meeting something that wants to watch us kill one another? Gurus. Keepers.

  But no choice. We’re either useful or we’re dead.

  And goddammit, even with all that, even with my brain telling me to shrink up like a penis in a Speedo swimming through a daiquiri, I can’t tamp my curiosity back into its Prince Albert can. I have to ask—what have we done with our Gurus? Did they return to Earth and get set free in time to visit me at Madigan—one of them, anyway? Did our mutual access to the influence of the tea make me a sitting duck for those implants—the instaurations?

  What about Borden? Is Borden a fucking mimic? Joe? Kumar? Mushran? Could we ever know? Shapeshifters just love frozen ice stations, according to the movies. Imagine crossing a cruel fucking movie producer with the Thing from Another World.

  That’s it for now. Having worked my way back to pop culture, I’m done with curiosity. I don’t share any of this with DJ or Ulyanova. Better to keep my poisoned imagination to myself.

  Bird Girl makes a wide spread of her wings and the others draft into a smaller side chamber with their bundle, away from the ships. I don’t even hear two more Antags come up behind us and take control of the rubbery cable. We could let go and just drift, but Bird Girl turns to look at us and I swear there’s something imploring in her four eyes, like she’s asking, begging, for help. They want to go home, too, and this is the only way for them—even if it’s only a sliver of a chance.

  Borden speaks first. “Let’s go see,” she says.

  I wish Joe was here, but she’s right. It’s time to face reality. Time to stop trying to think things through and find out what’s really in store.

  Ulyanova hand-overs along the rope. The Antags behind herd us to where the package was taken, tank and all. We’re closely watched by six other Antags who have emerged from the ships in the hangar. Several more enter furtively from another angle, I’m not sure where—can’t watch all sides at once—and now there are twelve: six smaller, batlike critters having joined the party. They all watch with far too many eyes as we enter the far room.

  Bird Girl takes hold of the cable and carefully persuades us into another curving, bean-shaped hollow with its own reddish glow. The hollow winds on around curvy corners into other hollows, other voids, spaces bean- or kidney-shaped, like we’re being scooted through Leviathan’s intestine. This place is aft of the important bits. What’s forward is protected by the mind-shit gate, the infernal combination lock with agony for tumblers. Until we find our way through, we’re stuck in the ship’s asshole, as DJ called it—where Gurus store humans they want to torment.

  On one side of a kidney void, three Antags have suspended the wrinkled package between them. It’s partly inflated, and something kicks at one end like a kitten about to be drowned. One armored Antag has extended its left wingtip hand to a clasp on the side of the bag. At a musical tweep from Bird Girl, the clasp is flipped and the bag splits along a seam, then peels up and around, revealing a grayish, glistening shape, like two or three wet, furry animals glued together, legs folded, single head tucked in …

  “Kumar wasn’t lying. It is like a dog,” DJ says.

  “A couple of dogs,” Borden says.

  “I see rabbits,” I say. I’m remembering the odd dreamlike interlude I experienced on the way down to Titan, when I either imagined or was deceived into believing that I had never left Madigan, when the guy who said he was Wait Staff but was likely a Guru told me all about Joe and how he was central to my being here, being anywhere, and how Joe had—

  Fuck that. What’s important is that I saw the Wait Staff sort of admit to the deception and convert back into being a Guru, but it didn’t look anything like this lumpy, limp bundle.

  “We need Kumar,” DJ observes.

  “They didn’t tell him to come,” Borden says. She then asks Bird Girl, straight out, “Is that supposed to be a Guru?” The translator sucks in her words and rasps out more tunes.

  “It is Keeper,” Bird Girl says.

  The damp train of rabbits or dogs unfolds a set of ears—floppy, basset hound ears. Six legs unfold as well, two ending in three-fingered hands. The whole thing is about a meter and a half long and masses in at maybe thirty kilos.

  So far, Gurus turn out to be pretty much as Kumar described them. Very little like what I was shown or imagined in my instauration. This one, whatever its real shape, looks pitiful, weak—defeated.

  Ulyanova trembles and strains against the cable, taking deep, hiccupping breaths. A seizure doesn’t seem out of the question. “Not finished,” she says, and then reverts to Russian. The translators again convert this to both Antag music and English. “Where is the other? We cannot go through the gate with just one.”

  How does she know this? Presumably because she’s channeling this poor damp creature, plugging into the way it thinks.

  Ulyanova slips her tenders’ grasping hands and gets too close to the furry bundle. Her own hands form claws. She is almost on it when one of the smaller bats pulls her back—but gently.

  Ulyanova looks beyond Borden, along the ranks of Antags. “Don’t let it die!” she says. “I want to watch it suffer.”

  DJ has a look in his eyes I haven’t seen except in the thick of desperate battle. And Borden—

  Borden has cropped her former agitation, her rage, and is studying the damp gray shape as she once studied me.

  “Can you understand Keeper?” Bird Girl asks.

  Ulyanova draws in her brows.

  “She must tell,” Bird Girl says.

  Ulyanova gives her a quick, dagger glance. “I would go back to the way I was, if I could, but I can’t. I know one thing now I did not know then. I cannot unknow it.”

  “What?” Borden asks.

  “Why Gurus are here,” Ulyanova says.

  Borden gives DJ and me a side glance that seems strangely guilty. Was this why the commander came out here in the first place? Maybe not to test me or to hear what DJ or Kazak had to say—no care or concern at all for the bug archives—but to learn what had happened to the starshina out on the Red. Gaining access to a Guru mind, tapping into a direct feed through a channel they can’t control—a channel planned by our forebears hundreds of millions of years ago, designed into the Ice Moon Tea. Bug vengeance or bug defense—ancient and with no regard for our young starshina’s mental health, or, I suspect, for her ultimate humanity.

  What would that be worth?

  Bird Girl points for us to grab the cables to again be yanked along like leashed puppies. “Take you back,” she says through the translator. “All will be brought forward.”

  I haven’t heard her interior voice for some time, but now I do:

  She (I see a distorted view of the starshina) is polluted.
When this is done, we will kill her and the Keepers with her. Then we will take back the sky.

  At that, she puts up a wall. For the time being, no more questions, no answers.

  It will be done.

  A PAIR OF ACES

  This is going south fast,” I tell DJ and Borden while we are being led aft. “Once we help break down the door, we’re no more use to any of them.”

  “Big surprise,” DJ says. “Bad hand all around.”

  Ulyanova seems dazed. I’m not sure she hears us. She’s listening to something else and I don’t like the implications of that one bit. If she has a connection to a Guru or to a couple of Gurus, what’s the guarantee they can’t delude her, too? But to tell Ulyanova that seems to be as fraught as waking a sleepwalker. She might just explode.

  We pass by the cage full of corpses. Leathery bits drift around us, as disgusting and pitiful as ever. From the corner of my eye, I see something floating near the mesh, a faint glint with a chain or wire attached. Borden, the closest, reaches out and grabs it.

  We’re taken by the railcar aft around the screw garden, then returned to the first hamster cage, where the rest of us wait. Bird Girl and two subordinate Antags escort us to the opening, unlock it, and swing it wide. We let go of the leash and pull ourselves through.

  Inside, Ulyanova kicks away, grabs a stray mat, and then kicks off again, crossing the cage to get as far as she can from the rest of the squad. She wraps herself in the mat, then peeks up briefly, staring in our direction for a second or two. Her face is stolid, numb. Litvinov and Vera cross the cage to be with her. Bilyk keeps well away.

  Borden explains to the rest where we were taken in the ship, what we saw, and the very little we were told. They learn there is at least one Guru on this ship and probably two.

  “Antags want our help, her help mostly,” Borden says. “This could be the endgame. They’ll kill us if we’re not useful, Ulyanova first. She’s the most dangerous if she gets out of their control—if somehow she gets back to Earth.”