Ascending

21: WHEREIN I MAKE A VAIN ATTEMPT TO BECOME A RECORDING STAR

Reaching The Studio

"Oar? Oar? Oar!"

Someone was tugging on my arm — Festina, gripping me tightly in Unfettered Destiny’s corridor.

"What is wrong?" I asked.

"We’re here. At the studio. You walked straight past it." She stared at me keenly. "Are you all right?"

"I am fine, Festina. I was simply lost in thought."

"Really." She did not let go of my arm. "You’re sure you’re okay? Sergeant Aarhus told me you passed out in Nimbus’s room… and I noticed you acting strangely in Hemlock’s transport bay."

"There is nothing wrong with me," I said, detaching myself from her grasp. "If you think my brain has become faulty, you are quite mistaken." The look of concern on her face did not lessen. "Truly," I told her, "I am perfectly well… though I have not eaten in four years, and therefore would benefit from the intake of appropriate nourishment."

"We’ll get you some food, don’t worry," Festina said. "Come into the studio and sit down; I’ll ask Lady Bell… no, I’ll ask Lord Rye to bring you something from the galley."

She attempted to take me by the arm and guide me through a nearby door. I did not wish to be guided — I was not some frail muddle-head whose brain might go blank at any moment, I had simply been distracted by the notion of becoming a prophet. There is nothing sinister about a momentary preoccupation; it was most annoying for Festina to Show Undue Concern. Therefore, I shrugged off her efforts to baby me, and surged boldly through the door myself.

I had never visited a broadcast studio before, but I expected such a place to contain ostentatious banks of Technology. Instead, the room was just a large empty space with jet-black carpet on the floor. The walls were glass, but with a fuzzy feathered texture; this had the effect of suppressing echoes, for the room was extremely quiet, as if some Uncanny Force were muting every sound we made. The very air seemed to press against my eardrums, stifling noises before they reached me: a most eerie and disturbing effect. Compared to the clutter in the rest of the ship, an area with no knickknacks or dead animals should have cheered my heart… but the atmosphere made me most edgy, as if I were cut off from important auditory input that might warn me of danger. Lady Bell, on the other hand, was clearly glad to reach the place after fretting through so much delay. No sooner had she entered than she threw herself down on the carpet… and the woolly black surface reshaped itself beneath her, the floor acquiring bumps and hollows molded perfectly to the lady’s body. I had to admit she looked striking, the frost green of her skin almost fluorescent against the heavy black background. This might have been why the floor was so dark; she would not have stood out as well against the ship’s clear glass.

"Sit down, sit down," she said with expansive cheer, gesturing to the floor beside her. "Make yourself comfortable. Can my darling husband get you anything? Accelerants? Placations? Our synthesizers have complete pharmaceutical indices for Earthlings and Divians; it’ll only take a second to whip up your favorite stimulant."

"How about food?" Festina said, making no effort to seat herself. "Something humans can digest." She glanced in my direction. "Preferably transparent."

I lowered my head, trying not to show shame. It is mortifying when your Faithful Sidekick believes you are crazed with hunger and she makes a scene to ensure you are properly fed. I knew I could not the from starvation, but I was not so certain about embarrassment.

Fortunately, Lady Bell was not such a one as could feel urgency about someone else’s problem. She therefore did not make a fuss: Oh yes, we must quickly bring sustenance for the poor dear and make her lie down in the meantime. She merely told Rye, "See to that, darling!" and puckered several of her cranial orifices at him. He muttered something in the universal language of unappreciated persons and slunk out of the studio.

"Now everyone just sit down!" Lady Bell said brightly. "I don’t want you pacing during the show. Pacing will upset the audience — not to mention that the lights and cameras will have a hard time following you. Shadows on one’s face can completely ruin credibility. Sit down, sit down!"

"Where are the cameras?" I asked, looking around the blank room.

"Built into the walls, dear."

"But the walls are clear glass. They do not contain cameras."

"You’re clear glass, and you contain all kinds of things: lungs, kidneys, a heart… pity you only have one of those, but let’s pray it holds out till the recording is over. And your heart will last ten times longer if you just sit down."

Grudgingly, I lowered myself to the floor. I do not enjoy anyone offering advice about my health; and I knew I would not enjoy the floor either. Sure enough, the moment my bottom touched the carpet, it began to squirm beneath me. (The carpet, I mean, not my bottom.) A sizable gully sank down to accommodate my feet, while a woolly black hump rose to support my back. I grant that the seat was comfortable — like reclining on a mound of dead sheep whose bones have been softened with hammers. The problem was I did not wish to be comfortable. I did not wish to be soothed because…

…I worried I would not retain consciousness.

There. I have said it. Though I told Festina I was fine and resented her suggesting otherwise, I feared my mind would go blank if I allowed myself to relax. Perhaps it would happen even if I did not relax. Nomatter how hard I fought the Tiredness, I still was most terrified I would sink into the cozy carpet and my brain would cease to function. Mental emptiness had swallowed me too often in the past few hours; it seemed as if I could not spend an idle minute without slipping away from the world. Being forced to sit in a comfy place was almost a sentence of execution… but of course I could not say that for fear of being called a coward.

So I sat and cringed and shivered.

"Excellent," Lady Bell said as the others also claimed sections of carpet. Festina sat right beside me, probably wishing to be within reach in case my brain dribbled out my ears: a gesture which infuriated me greatly.

"Now," said Bell, "we’ll record everything before we broadcast, so we can edit out slips of the tongue, and perhaps passages of testimony that don’t work… though I don’t want anyone to be self-conscious, just say whatever you want and let me decide whether you’re being tedious and pedantic. By the way, I hope you can all take direction. And perhaps it would be best to do vocal warm-ups right now: run through some tongue-twisters, practice speaking from the diaphragm. You all have diaphragms, correct? Except for you, cloud man, I don’t know what you have. Why don’t you practice holding a nice solid shape rather than wavering about. Try to look like a person instead of a pukka -ball. And make your arms bulgy to suggest muscles. Viewers like muscles. Taut lean muscles gleaming with sweat. Perforated with tight puckered orifices and preferably highlighted in at least two of the primary colors. Umm, well… work on that, do your best. Meanwhile, I’ll call a newsbroker I know on Jalmut — have him put out the word that we’ll soon have some hydrogen-hot footage for sale."

She raised her voice slightly and said something in Cashlingese. I did not know whom she was addressing; but a moment later, a gusty voice whooshed and fribbled an answer from the ceiling. Either the words came from another person elsewhere in the ship, or it was the voice of Unfettered Destiny itself: what humans call the "ship-soul." I have been told that in the Technocracy navy, the ship-soul is intentionally given a mechanical-sounding voice so it can be distinguished from humans. On Unfettered Destiny, the voice sounded more windy than Bell or Rye, as if it were powered by huge ship-sized lungs instead of the many little lung-ettes of real Cashlings.

The ship-soul spoke briefly, then fell silent. Lady Bell seemed waiting for more; I suppose she had instructed the ship to contact her newsbroker and was now expecting a reply.

In the meantime, I squirmed in my too-comfy seat. Uclod and Lajoolie still appeared bleary after their nausea in the receiving bay; Nimbus hovered near them while Festina whispered to Aarhus in confidential tones. I disliked my friend speaking in a manner I could not overhear… but it seemed a great deal of trouble to move into a position where I could eavesdrop, especially when she and the sergeant were probably just discussing tiresome navy topics.

It was all too much bother to pay attention. In fact, everything in the world seemed excessively complicated. I remember thinking, Why can’t I just sleep for a while? Then I snuggled into the soft woolly floor.

Enough To Wake Me Up

Lady Bell said something sharp in Cashlingese. I sat up abruptly, unsure how much time had passed since my last conscious thought. As far as I could tell, no one had changed position at all. Perhaps it had only been a few seconds.

But I did not know how long I had blanked out, and that terrified me.

"Is something wrong?" Festina asked. I opened my mouth to say, I am very very scared… but she was looking at Bell, not me.

I pushed myself up to look at Bell too. Even though the Cashling woman had no face, it was clear she was most upset. In fact, his. Prophet was wheezing indignantly from a dozen orifices at once.

"This stupid ship!" Lady Bell said. "The most important day of my life, and wouldn’t you know, the communication system breaks down. We can’t raise a peep from Jalmut; no trans-light communications at all."

As the human phrase goes, a chill went down my spine. In fact, it felt more as if the chill moved upward from my stomach to my shoulders and thence to my face, but perhaps chills behave non-traditionally in artificial gravity.

"Uh-oh," muttered Uclod. "I hate to say it, missy," he told Bell, "but it sounds like you’re getting jammed."

"Jammed?" Aarhus repeated. "Oh crap."

"Quick!" Festina said. "We need a long-range scan right now!"

"No, we don’t," Nimbus answered quietly.

He waved a foggy arm, pointing behind our backs. We all whirled to look through the glass bulkhead.

There, looming across half the sky, was the stick-ship.

Big Bully

"Damn, that’s a big sucker," Festina whispered.

The Shaddill had appeared alongside Royal Hemlock, a vast brown forest beside a single white tree. Every stick in the Shaddill ship seemed larger than the entire Hemlock: longer and wider, like oaks crowding in on a paper birch. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of the brown sticks, one of which telescoped lazily toward the dwarfed navy vessel.

"What are the odds," Uclod asked, "those bastards will just grab Hemlock and fly away?"

"They don’t want to fly away," Festina said. "They want to capture everyone who knows too much. You. Oar. Anybody you might have talked to."

"Which means the whole damned crusade."

"Right. They want to nab every last ship."

"How the hell will they do that?" Uclod asked. "We’ve got dozens of little ships. If we scatter in different directions—"

"They won’t let us," Festina said. With sudden urgency, she rolled to her feet. "Lady Bell, is there any way to opaque this ship’s hull?"

"Why would I want to do that?" the lady asked.

A flash of blue brilliance burst upon us like lightning. For a moment, Festina’s face was reduced to pure black and white: white eyes, black pupils, white skin, black birthmark, white anger, black "I knew this would happen" expression. Then her body crumpled limply to the floor.

Everyone else was already lying down.

Another Ship Bites The Dust

I am such a one as thrives on bright light. I did not feel invigorated by this particular light, but I did not slump over unconscious either. Perhaps, as the Pollisand had joked, many types of light just pass right through my body. At any rate, I am not so weak as opaque persons, so it takes more than a garish flash to subdue me.

The others, alas, were unconscious… everyone but Nimbus, who still hovered mistlike above the unmoving bodies. It annoyed me that he too had remained awake; one enjoys being special, or at least more special than an entity made of fog. Nevertheless, I could guess why he had not succumbed: a creature consisting of tiny floaty bits might not be affected by Sinister Weapon Beams in the same manner as creatures made from meat… and of course he was nearly as transparent as I, not to mention he too had been designed by the Shaddill.

Perhaps we had both been constructed immune to Shaddill weaponry. If so, the stick-people were greatly foolish — if I were designing artificial beings, I would make them especially susceptible to my favorite weapons, so I could quell rebellions with dispatch. But then, the Shaddill were villains; and if I had learned anything from the fictional writings of my people, it was that Villains Always Make Mistakes.

"What shall we do now?" I whispered to Nimbus. "If the Shaddill think we are unconscious, this is an excellent time to take them by surprise."

"Don’t be too hasty," the cloud man replied. "They know you’re here, right? Catching you seems to be a priority for them. And they must suspect their stun-beam doesn’t work on you — it didn’t work when you were in Starbiter, so why should it work now?" He drifted across the floor a short distance, then drifted back again: the cloudish equivalent of pacing. "Maybe they’re hoping you’ll do something noticeable so they can tell where you are."

"Ahh," I said. "That is astute reasoning." I looked up at the glass roof. "Of course, they will see me as soon as they look in this direction. I am harder to notice than opaque persons, but I am not invisible."

"Don’t worry about that," Nimbus told me. "In a Cashling ship like this, the hull is only transparent one way; you can see out, but no one can see in. The Shaddill won’t spot you that easily."

Which meant that with so many ships in the crusade, the Shaddill faced great difficulty determining where I was. Our trying to flee or attack would be a mistake, since it would catch the Shaddill’s attention… but then, I doubted that we could flee or attack. Unfettered Destiny would almost certainly refuse to take commands except from the Cashlings themselves. Indeed, I did not know if I could even leave the studio — without Lady Bell’s or Lord Rye’s permission, the ship’s security systems might not open the door for me.

That is often the way with mechanical devices — they are most exceedingly mulish. Back in my village on Melaquin, many buildings contained shiny equipment with display screens showing excellent three-dimensional curve-graphs in bold fluorescent colors. The village’s maintenance robots kept these devices free of rust, and presumably in perfect running order; however, no one knew what the machinery did. According to tales from my mother (who received the tales from her mother and so on back through the centuries), the equipment would only respond to commands spoken in the ancient language my ancestors used more than four thousand years ago. That language was not the tongue we had learned from the village’s teaching machines; therefore, my sister and I could only stare at the waves of color constantly painting themselves on the monitors, and dream of what excellent deeds we might do if only we learned the correct words to say.

Was I not in the same position now?

Reflecting gloomily on my inability to control the Cashling ship, it struck me that once again I had boarded a vessel, only to find it rendered inoperable shortly after my arrival. This was not an amusing pattern of starship behavior. Moreover, the trend was accelerating. I had lasted seven hours on Starbiter, before she ripped herself apart; then an hour on Royal Hemlock before the dreadful act of sabotage; and finally, only ten minutes on Unfettered Destiny before the attack on the Cashlings made it impossible to command the ship to do anything.

Perhaps I should endeavor to board the Shaddill craft. If I managed to do that, the stick-ship might explode instantly into a cloud of radioactive dust.

Hah!

The Fate Of The Hemlock

Thinking about the stick-ship, I raised my head to the glass ceiling and stared at the alien vessel. A hollow tubelike stick now extended from the Shaddill ship’s belly: reaching out slowly like a snake slithering up to its prey, the stick thwacked against the Hemlock’s hull. Of course I heard no sound through the vacuum of space; but the navy craft shuddered and shook silently with the impact. The collision must have been forceful enough to knock people in Hemlock off their feet — if any of them were still standing after the beam weapon’s attack.

For a moment, the pair of ships just floated there, as if the white navy cruiser were impaled on the big brown stick. Then a thousand tiny vines sprung from the end of the stick, some circling the Hemlock widthwise while others streamed out along the ship’s length, and still more wrapped around the hull in long weaving spirals. In places, the vines crisscrossed each other; in others, they sprouted side tendrils that intertwined and appeared to fuse together. Considering how far we were from the two vessels, the vines must have been quite thick — perhaps as wide around as my entire body; otherwise, I would not have been able to see them at such a distance. But they moved with the speed and flexibility of much smaller strands, until they had completely bound the Hemlock in their great sinister web.

The telescoping stick began to retract: back into the body of the Shaddill ship, dragging with it the trussed-up Hemlock. Two nearby sticks snaked out of the woodpile as if they were interested in having a closer look at the captured prize. They drifted lazily outward, skimming their heads along the length of the navy ship in opposite directions; then they struck simultaneously, jamming their open mouths onto either end of the cruiser. Once the Hemlock had been capped fore and aft in this fashion, it was quickly pulled down into the weaving brown forest. I lost sight of it as dozens more sticks slithered up and over the ship, like a mass of brown snakes squirming onto a single white one.

So that is the end of the Hemlock, I thought. And how long before the Shaddill gather up the crusade ships as well? Even as the words crossed my mind, a new stick telescoped from the Shaddill vessel, reaching for one of the crusade’s smaller craft.

Our own ship had pulled a goodly distance away from Hemlock; therefore, if the Shaddill began scooping up the nearest crusade ships, they would not get to us for a few minutes. However, it was only a matter of time before they swallowed us all.

A Gargantuan Sneeze

I turned to say something to Nimbus — I do not know what it was going to be, I simply wanted to speak and hear his voice in return — but the cloud man had vanished. I blinked and peered around the room. There was no sign of him, not even a little bit. I was about to cry out in anger and fear when I noticed baby Starbiter resting in the pit of Festina’s stomach.

That was a strange place indeed for an infant Zarett.

I moved nearer for a better look. Festina had fallen into a twisted three-quarters position, her bottom half lying sideways on her right hip, but her top half slumped over so her chest and arms lay almost flat on the floor. This left a covered nestlike area under the shelter of her belly, a dark little cave where a small Zarett person could rest safely. Nimbus must have placed Starbiter there in the shadow of my friend’s body, where the little girl would be protected while her father was busy with other activities.

But what was the foolish man doing? Where had he gone?

I looked around frantically. The recording studio possessed numerous air vents in its floor and ceiling; a creature made of bits could have left through any one of them. Perhaps he planned to seek Unfettered Destiny’s bridge, hoping to take control of the ship. Nimbus might well speak the Cashling tongue — he had, after all, served on ships owned by Cashlings, and had demonstrated an ability to learn languages quickly. If he could give orders to this ship in Cashlingese, he might… he might… I did not know what he might do, since we had already agreed not to draw unwanted attention. But the bridge was the only place I could imagine the cloud man might go…

…until I saw wisps of mist dribbling out of Festina’s nose.

"Nimbus!" I cried. "Are you inside my Faithful Sidekick? It is very very wrong to enter a woman when she is unconscious and helpless!"

The cloud man did not reply; but Festina made a choked "Uhh" noise that sounded as if her entire head was congested with mucous. One arm moved and her body shifted. Seeing the potential for a horrible occurrence, I snatched up little Starbiter and clutched her to my breast there moments before Festina groaned and rolled over. (Festina rolled onto her back, so she would not have crushed the baby after all. Still, I felt heroic for my lightning-quick reaction. With heroism, it is the thought that counts.)

As for my friend, she ended spread-eagled face up on the jet black carpet. The carpet sank beneath her, molding itself into a Festina-shaped hollow… as if she had struck the floor after falling from a great height. Festina lay in this personalized gully for nearly a minute, all the time making loud congested grunts and wheezes that were most undignified. I knelt beside her, cradling her head and offering words of encouraging comfort: "Stop those ugly sounds at once, you foolish one! You must not be ill or dying, because that is not how a proper sidekick behaves."

As I held her, more mist trickled out of her nose. The bits did not stay outside; whenever she inhaled, all the mist went back in again. After one exhalation, I waved my hand through the fog around her face in an effort to disperse it… but the tiny particles simply swirled past my fingers and returned inside with the next breath. Of course, I could have prevented this by squeezing Festina’s nostrils shut. However, I did not wish to asphyxiate my friend, so I stayed my hand.

Suddenly, Festina let loose a colossal sneeze. The sneeze was remarkable in several regards: volume of sound, volume of air, and volume of sputum discharged into my face. I wiped off the moisture with great dispatch (or more precisely, with the sleeve of my jacket); and as I was doing so, a burst of fog exploded from my friend, streaming out her nose and mouth, and even little wisps from her ears. In seconds, Nimbus floated before me… while in my arms, Festina opened her eyes and said, "Christ, I feel like shit."

"That is because you had a cloud man in your head," I told her. "It seems he saw you unconscious and succumbed to penetrative urges."

Festina stared at me a moment, then closed her eyes, murmuring, "This is all a dream, this is all a dream, this is all a dream." She opened her eyes, looked at me, and said, "Damn. So much for that theory."

The Cloud Man Gets Huffy

I helped my friend sit up — which was not as easy as it sounds. First, I still held the gooey infant Starbiter in one hand and was attempting not to hurt her (or get too much of her ickyness on me). Second, the floor kept shifting, trying to reshape itself to Festina’s body the moment she moved in any direction. It made me wonder how many people died because of these foolish floors; one could easily sink into a customized crater and starve to death because one could not get out.

Starvation was a subject much on my mind.

When Festina finally reached the vertical, she shook her head as if trying to clear her wits. Then with a groan she said, "Shit… what’s happened since I went down?"

"Very little. The Shaddill have seized the Hemlock and have begun to capture smaller ships."

"That’s all they’ve done in six hours?"

"It has not been six hours," I told her. "It has been less than five minutes."

"But I thought… the first time the Shaddill flashed you, Uclod and Lajoolie were unconscious for… I shouldn’t be awake yet."

Nimbus drifted closer — which is to say, closer to Festina. His tiny bits avoided me, as if his whole body were leaning back from my presence. "I thought it advisable to wake you," he told my friend. "Stimulate your glands and nervous system; get some adrenaline pumping; counteract the effects of the beam."

"You can do that?" Festina asked.

"Apparently," he said. "I haven’t had much practical experience with Homo sapiens, but my medical training covered first aid on familiar alien species. Apologies if my methods lacked finesse; how are you feeling?"

"Like crap, but I’ll live. Thanks."

Nimbus fluttered, temporarily losing his human shape. "Then I’ll move on to someone else. The more of us who are conscious, the better we can deal with the Shaddill when they arrive." He swirled above the other bodies as if looking them over one by one; then he coalesced next to Lajoolie. "This one next," he said. "We may need muscle."

"I have muscle," I told him. "I am excellent at feats of strength."

He did not answer. In fact, his body tightened at the sound of my voice. Perhaps he was simply compressing his components in preparation for flying up Lajoolie’s nose; but it occurred to me, he might be upset at certain insinuations I had made about his behavior: specifically, my remarks about penetrative urges. He was, after all, a creature who burned with shame over something as simple as tickling his daughter or seeing through her eyes. Perhaps he felt equally guilty about entering Festina’s body and forcibly rousing her to consciousness. It was much the same, was it not? Invading a woman’s anatomy without permission, even though the act was justified. And a man in such a state of guilt might be sensitive to allegations that he was acting from base motives.

He might be very hurt indeed.

As Nimbus flowed up Lajoolie’s nostrils, I called to him, "I am sorry I suggested you behaved improperly when you entered Festina. I was foolish to jump to such a mistaken conclusion. But it is amusing, is it not, how misjudgments occur? And it is also most traditional. You and I, we are son and daughter of the Shaddill; and as siblings, it is common to fall into ill-founded petty disagreements…"

I stopped speaking because he had disappeared — completely ignoring my words. Pretending I did not exist, because he was fiercely angry at me.

Sometimes it is hard to have a brother. Especially when you both make each other feel bad.

More Arousals

I do not know if Divians are easier to wake than humans, or if Nimbus had simply gained experience in rousing persons from this type of unconsciousness. Whatever the explanation, the cloud man did not take nearly so long to bring Lajoolie around as he had with Festina. As soon as her eyes flickered open, he proceeded immediately into Uclod’s sinuses, not giving me the tiniest opportunity to apologize again.

Watching Nimbus work on the two Divians, I wondered why he had not woken them the previous time they had been shot with the Shaddill’s beam. The probable answer was that invading other people’s bodies truly filled him with abhorrence. On the previous occasion, I had been doing an excellent job of piloting Starbiter so there was no need to rouse the two Divians; now, however, our predicament was so dire that it called for Extreme Resuscitation.

Of course, extreme resuscitation is not pleasant, and neither Festina nor Lajoolie looked to be enjoying their newly regained consciousness. Lajoolie showed a marked preference for lying in a fetal position, occasionally whimpering with pain. Festina remained sitting up, but drooped her head between her knees and muttered unintelligible phrases conspicuously featuring the word "hangover."

In an attempt to divert them from brooding on their pain, I said, "Come, we will soon face the villainous Shaddill, so we must make plans for a fight." But this did not rally their spirits. Lajoolie just groaned and Festina mumbled, "If there is a battle, pray God I get shot."

When Uclod regained consciousness, he was no more eager to spring into action than the other two. Nimbus still would not talk — he went directly into Sergeant Aarhus without an instant’s pause. From Aarhus he moved on to Lady Bell, splitting himself into a dozen small fog patches and seeping into her body through a variety of orifices.

I do not know how he could tell which openings led into lungs, which into stomachs, and so on. However, the cloud man had the lady awake in under a minute… after which she howled most piteously. I opened my mouth to ask why she made such an appalling racket; but I closed it again when her head sank into her body as if being sucked down the neckhole. The skull fit exactly into her tiny torso.

This was something one did not see every day.

The now-headless Bell shifted her position on the floor to lie flat on her spine. Immediately her legs lifted up from the hips, slanting back and arching above her body until her toes touched the carpet near her shoulders — her legs completely covering her torso like two logs laid lengthwise down her chest. Reaching up, she wrapped her arms tight around her thighs, then bent her knees so that her calves were on top of her arms, on top of her upper legs, on top of her headless body. She held that tucked-up position for a brief moment; then the whole stack of Bell crushed in on itself with a sound like knuckles cracking. In a moment, she had reduced herself to a tight little basket of a person, a bundled-up woman who lay on the ground in a heap that reminded me of a discarded turtle shell.

This was the Cashling defense configuration I had seen in pictures. It may have been quite excellent for protecting vital organs under a thick arrangement of bones… but I did not think it clever to reduce oneself to a form that practically demanded other persons use you as a kickball.

Our Turn Next

All this time, the Shaddill ship had been snatching crusade vessels out of the sky. It did this with an extendible tube-stick, a big hose that reached toward one little craft after another and slowly sucked them in. None of the ships tried to flee or dodge the hose — the Cashlings on board must have been unconscious, everyone brought low by the blue-white flash.

Though I despised the Shaddill, I had to admit they built excellent weapons.

Each time a ship was captured, the mouth of the hose-stick squeezed shut for a few minutes. I suppose it took that long to swallow what had been eaten, to clear the stick’s mouth so it could gobble up more. In my imagination, I pictured a huge stomach inside the stick-ship, where little crusade craft bobbed listlessly amidst foul digestive juices. Well, I thought, I shall give those great poop-heads a tummy-ache to remember.

No sooner had those words passed through my mind than the great sucking hose turned its mouth toward us.

"Uh-oh," I said. "Uh-oh."

Blacking Out Destiny

"We must now be very brave," I announced to my comrades.

Festina lifted her head, saw the oncoming hose-stick, and staggered to her feet. She required a moment to steady herself once she became wholly upright; then she tottered her way to Lady Bell, who was still closed up tight in her basket configuration. "Hey," my friend said, nudging the Cashling woman with her toe. "Open up."

"Go away," muttered a mouth in the lady’s back.

"No," Festina said. "Not till you talk to your ship-soul."

I told Festina, "It would be unwise for Unfettered Destiny to take evasive maneuvers. We would only give away that we were conscious."

"I know; but we still have things to do." Festina gave Bell another nudge with her toe… though perhaps it was less a nudge and more of a kick.

"Leave me alone!" the lady hissed… which is to say, a small number of her mouths spoke the words while the rest did the hissing.

Festina took no notice. "I won’t leave you alone till you do what I want. It’s in your best interests too. If they take you prisoner, you’ll never be seen again. Do you want to go down in history as the prophet who lost an entire crusade?"

Lady Bell made a barking wheeze. I suspect this was a rude word in the Cashling tongue. However, as Festina prepared to deliver a kick that showed every promise of being full strength, Bell said, "All right, all right." An eye opened in the middle of her back. "What do you want?"

"Tell the ship-soul to opaque the hull. As thick as possible so we can’t see out."

"Why?" Lady Bell asked sullenly.

"In case the Shaddill flash us again."

"They’ve already flashed us once. What’s the point of a second shot?"

"Insurance," Festina said. "If I were the Shaddill, I’d keep shooting the whole damned crusade every five minutes, just to avoid surprises. They haven’t done that, so maybe the weapon draws too much power to let them bang away indiscriminately. Even so, they might have a smaller version of the weapon inside, and they’ll zap us just before they board our ship."

"You think blacking out the hull will protect us?" The lady’s voice sounded most sneerful. "I bet that beam isn’t real light at all — it’ll affect us even if we can’t see it."

"You’re probably right," Festina said. "But I’d feel stupid if we could save ourselves with simple measures and never bothered to try. Do it."

Lady Bell muttered something in Cashlingese. I thought it might be an insolent retort, but it must have been a command to the ship; a moment later, the glass roof went completely black. "There," Bell said. "Happy?"

"Ecstatic," Festina replied.

I myself was not so cheered by the change — without the see-through ceiling, the recording studio felt confined and glowery. It did not help that the floor was black… and the muted silence of the room added to the air of oppression that encompassed me.

"Let us go a different place," I said to Festina. "It is not pleasant here."

"I don’t like it much myself," she replied, "but the place is soundproof. That might be important."

"You think the Shaddill are listening for us?" I asked. "How can that be? We are surrounded by the silence of space."

"Yes… but if we weren’t soundproofed, any noise we made would be conducted throughout the ship, eventually making tiny vibrations in the hull. If the Shaddill bounce a laser off the ship’s outer skin, they’ll be able to detect those vibrations. They’ll know we’re in here talking."

Lady Bell made a disgusted whoosh. "Are you always this paranoid?"

Festina glared at her. "Usually I’m more paranoid, but right now I’m still hungover."

The ship gave a sudden lurch. "What was that?" Lajoolie cried out.

"I think we’ve just been swallowed," Festina answered.

"Do not worry," I said, patting her shoulder. "This happens to me all the time."

My Plan

"All right," Festina said, "we need a plan."

"To do what?" Lady Bell asked.

"To escape. Or at least, to survive."

I said, "The villains will come through the receiving bay, will they not? So we should lie in wait behind the boxes cluttered in that area. When the Shaddill arrive, we shall leap from concealment and punch them in the nose." I paused. "Provided they are such creatures as possess noses. If we leap from concealment and do not see nose-like facial features, we shall have to improvise."

"Sounds good to me, missy," Uclod said. "Of course, if the Shaddill do have noses, they’ll probably pass out the second they get a whiff of this place."

"Watch your tongue!" Bell snapped.

Sergeant Aarhus cleared his throat. All this time, he had been sitting on the carpet, no doubt gathering strength after being unconscious. Now he rose and told Festina, "I hate to admit it, Admiral, but Oar’s plan sounds as good as we’ll get. We sure can’t stay in the studio here — it’s got see-through walls and nowhere to hide. We’ll be sitting ducks."

"I know." Festina made a face. "All right — an ambush in the receiving bay. Everyone ready to fight?"

Uclod, Lajoolie, Aarhus, and I all chorused yes. Nimbus floated delicately forward. "I won’t be much use in a scuffle… and I have to protect my daughter."

"Understandable," Festina said. She glanced at me; I still held the little Zarett girl in one hand, and gooey though the infant was, I did not mind the feel of her so much. She was very most delicately soft, a small light person who seemed so fragile and breakable that Deep Adult Instincts made me want to take care of her. To be honest, I wanted to snuggle her a little while longer… but time was short, and I could not throw punches with a child in my fist.

"Here she is," I said, cupping her in both hands and holding her out to her father. Nimbus swirled forward, and for a moment, I felt his cool dryness playing around my fingers. It might have been a nudge of forgiveness; one cannot tell with fog, but I do believe it was more than just the bare minimum of contact required to take the girl. Then he was gone, and baby Starbiter was gone too, wrapped in a thick ball of mist.

"All right," Festina said, "now what about you, Lady Bell? Are you up for some fisticuffs?"

"I’ve heard," Aarhus put in, "that Cashlings are excellent fighters. Stunningly powerful kicks."

He said this so unctuously, even naive baby Starbiter must have recognized his words as purposeful flattery. Lady Bell, however, was not so perceptive; she loosened slightly from her wrapped-up form, with orifices fluttering all over her green skin. It looked like the Cashling form of simpering. "I can handle myself quite well," she answered in a creamily smug tone of voice. "If it’s absolutely necessary…"

"It is," Festina said. "Now let’s get down to the airlock. And once we’re outside the studio, no talking. The engines make enough background noise to cover our footsteps, but let’s not get sloppy."

"Sloppy!" Lady Bell said, continuing to unfold back to her more person-like configuration. "I am never sloppy."

Sergeant Aarhus opened the door and the odor outside assailed my nostrils. I believe we all wished to take exception to Lady Bell’s last statement; but it was too late for cutting remarks.

Silently, we headed for the receiving bay.