Alternate Realities (23 page)

And Modred looked back at us then. “It’s shown us our way out,” he said. “We’ve got to open our forward hatch and go to it.”

“O dear God,” Dela said with a shake of the head.

“No,” Lynette said. “I don’t think that’s a thing to do that quickly.”

“You persist,” Modred said, “against the evidence.”

“Which can be read other ways,” Griffin said. “No.”

“Lady Dela,” Modred said. Patiently, stone-faced as ever, but his voice was hoarse. “It’s a question of profitability. Some of those ships on the ring didn’t change. At some points that intrusion failed. And others directly next to them changed. So some do drive it off. There’s the tubes, and separately—the wheel itself. It’s made an access out to the point where we touch the wheel. We’re very close to an oxygen section. Very close to where we should have docked. It can let us through where we have to go.”

“Has it occurred to anyone,” Vivien asked out of turn, “that however complicated—however attractive and rational and difficult the logical jump it’s put us through to reach it—that the thing might
lie
?”

A chill went through me. We looked at one another and for a moment no one had anything to say.

“It’s a born-man,” Percy said in his soft voice. “Or creature. And so it might lie.”

I felt myself paralyzed. And Modred stood there for a moment with a confusion in his eyes, because he was never set up to understand such things—lies, and structures of untruth.

Then he turned and walked toward the main board, just a natural kind of movement, but suddenly everyone seemed to think of it and the crew grabbed for him as Lance and Griffin moved all in the same moment

Modred lunged, too near to be stopped: his hand hit a control and there was a sound of hydraulics forward before Lance reached past Gawain and Percy and Lynn who pinned Modred to the counter. Lance hauled Modred out and swung him about and hit him hard before Griffin could hinder his arm. Modred hit the floor and slid over under the edge of Gawain’s vacant seat, lying sprawled and limp, but Lance would have gone after him, if not for Griffin—And meanwhile Lynette was working frantically at the board, but there had not been a sound of the hydraulics working again.

Our lock was open. Modred had opened us up. The realization got through to Dela and she flew across the deck to Griffin and Lance and the rest of them. “Close it—for God’s sake, close it,” Dela cried, and I just stood there with my hands to my mouth because it was clear it was not happening.

“It’s not working,” Lynn said. “Lady Dela, there’s something in the doorway and the safety’s on—”

“Override,” Griffin said.

“There might be some
one
in the way—”

Lynn jabbed the button; and all my nerves flinched from the sound that should have come, maybe cutting some living thing in half—But it failed.

“They’ve got it braced wide open,” Gawain said. “Percy—get cameras down there—”

Percy swung about, and reached the keyboard. All of a sudden we had picture and sound, this hideous babble, this conglomeration of serpent bodies in clear focus—serpents and other things as unlovely, a heaving mass within the
Maid
’s airlock. The second door still held firm, and there was our barrier beyond—there was still that.

“We’ve got to get down there,” Griffin said.

“They can’t get through so quickly,” Dela said. Her teeth were chattering.

“They don’t have to be delicate now they’ve got that outer lock braced open.” Griffin was distraught, his hands on Dela’s shoulders. He looked around at all of us. “Suit up. Now. We don’t know what they may do. Dela, get to the dining hall and just stay there. And get him out of here—” The latter for Modred, who lay unmoving. “Get him out, locked up, out of our way.”

Lance bent down and dragged Modred up. I started to help, took Modred’s arm, which was totally limp, as if that great blow had broken him—as if all the fire and drive had just burned him out and Lance’s blow had shattered him. For that moment I pitied him, for he never meant to betray us, but he was Modred, made that way and named for it. “Let me,” Percivale said, who was much stronger, and who would treat him gently. So I surrendered him to Percivale, to take away, to lock up where he could do us no more harm.

“He’d fight for us,” I said to Griffin, thinking that we could hardly spare Modred’s wit and his strength, whatever there was left to do now.

“We can’t rely on that,” Griffin said. He laid his hand on my shoulder, with Dela right there in his other arm. “Elaine—all of you. We do what we planned. All right?”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and Gawain the same. A silence from Vivien.

“Come on,” Griffin said.

So we went, and now over com we could hear the sound of what had gotten into the ship. I imagined them calling for cutters in their hisses and their squeals, and scaly dragon bodies pressing forward—oh, it could happen quickly now, and my skin drew as if there had been a cold wind blowing.

No sound of trumpets. No brave charge. We had armor, but it was all too fragile, and swords, but they had lasers, all too likely; and all the history of this place was theirs, not ours.

W
e had put the suits all in the dining room, all piled in the corner like so many bodies; and the breathing units were by them in a stack; and the helmets by those.... “Shouldn’t we,” I said, taking my lady’s suit from Percy, who was distributing pieces. I turned to my lady. “—shouldn’t we take Modred’s to him—in case?”

“No,” Griffin said behind me, and firmly. “He’ll be safe enough only so he stays put.”

I doubted that. I doubted it for all of us, and it seemed cruel to me. But I helped my lady with her suit, which she had never put on before, and which I had never tried. Lance was helping Griffin with his; but Lynn and Gawain had to intervene with both of us to help because they knew the fittings and where things should go and we did not.

Griffin was first done, knowing himself something about suits and getting into them. He had his helmet in his hand and waved off assistance from Gawain. “Dela,” he said then, “you stay here. You can’t help down there, you hear me?”

“I hear you,” she said, “but I’m coming down there anyway.”

“Dela—”

“I’ll stay back,” she said, “but I’ll be behind you.”

Griffin looked distraught. He wanted to say no again, that was sure; but he turned then and took one of the swords in hand, his helmet tucked under his arm. “There’ll be no using the beam cutters or the explosives,” he said. “If that’s methane out there. Modred did us that much service. So the swords and spears are all we’ve got. Dela—” Maybe he had something more to say and changed his mind. He lost it, whatever it had been, and walked off and out the door while we worked frantically at my lady’s fastenings.

“Hurry,” Dela insisted, and Lynette got the last clip fastened.

“Done,” Lynn said, and my lady, moving carefully in the weight, took her helmet from my hands and tucked that up, then gathered up several of the spears.

“Vivien,” my lady said sharply, and fixed Viv with her eye, because Viv was standing against the wall with never a move to do anything. “You want to wait here until they come slithering up the halls, Vivien?”

“No, lady,” Vivien said, and went and took the suit that Percy offered her.

“Help me,” Viv said to us. She meant it as an order. But my lady was already headed out the door, and Lance and I were in no frame of mind to wait on Vivien.

“Get us ready,” I said to Lynn and Gawain. “Hurry. Hurry. They’re alone down there.”

But Percivale delayed his own suiting to attend to Vivien, who was all but shivering with fright. I heard the lift work a second time and knew my lady had gone without us ... and still we had that sound everywhere. Lynn batted my overanxious hands from the fastenings and did them the way they should be done, and settled the weight of the lifesupport on me so that I felt my knees buckle; and fastened that with snaps of catches. “Go,” she said then, and I bent gingerly to get my helmet and took another several of the spears. But Lance took a sword the same as Griffin’s, and a spear besides. He moved as if that great weight of the suit were nothing to him. He strode out and down the corridor, and I followed after him as best I could, panting and trying not to catch a spearpoint on the lighting fixtures of the walls.

I had no intention that he should wait; if he could get to the lift and get down there the faster, so much the better, but he held the lift for me and shouted at me to hurry, so I came, with the shuffling haste I could manage, and I got myself and my unwieldly load into the lift and leaned against the wall as he hit the button with his gloved knuckles. It dropped us down that two deck distance and the door opened on a hideous din of thumps and bangs, but remoter than I had feared.

My lady was there, and Griffin. They stood hand in hand in front of the welded barrier, their weapons set aside, and they looked glad to see us as we came.

“Elaine,” Griffin said right off, “your job is to protect your lady, you understand. You stay beside her whatever happens.”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“And Lance,” he said, “I need you.”

“Yes, sir,” Lance said without quibble, because it meant being up front beyond a doubt, with all our hopes in defense of all of us.

“They’re not through the airlock yet,” Dela said. “They’re working at it.”

“When our atmospheres mix,” Griffin said, “we’re in danger of blowing everything. At least they know. I imagine they’ll use some kind of a pressure gate and do the cut in an oxygen mix. If they’ve got suits, and I’m betting they do.”

“We could set up a defense on next level,” Lance said.

“Same danger there; they convert this level to their own atmosphere, then we’ve got it all over again. Our whole lifesupport bled out into all that methane would diffuse too much for any danger; but if they let all that methane in here—it could blow the ship apart. A quick way out. There’s that. We could always touch it off ourselves.”

“Griffin,” Dela said.

“If we had to.”

I felt cold, that was all, cold all the way inside, despite that carrying the suit made me sweat.

The lift worked. Vivien came, alone, walking with difficulty, and she had gotten herself one of the spears, carrying that in one hand, and her helmet under the other arm. She joined us.

And the lift went up and came down again with Gawain and Lynn and Percy, who moved better with their suits than the rest of us. They had swords and spears, and some of the knives with them.

“We wait,” Griffin said.

So we got down on our knees, that being the only way to sit down in the suits, and I only hoped we should have a great deal of warning, when the attack came, because even the strongest of us were clumsy, down on one knee and then the other, and then sitting more or less sideways. I was all but panting, and I felt sweat run under the suit, but my legs felt the relief, and finding a way to rest the corner of the lifesupport unit against the deck gave me delirious relief from the weight.

Bang. Thump.

Be careful, Beast
, I thought at it, imagining all its minions and ourselves blown to atoms, to drift and swirl out there amongst the chaos-stuff. In one part of my mind—I think it was listening to the wrong kind of tapes—I was glad of a chance like that, that we might do some terrible damage to our attackers and maybe put a hole in the side of the wheel that they would remember ... all, all those scaly bodies going hurtling out amongst our fragments.

But in the saner part of my mind I did not want to die.

And oh, if they should get their hands on us. ... Hands. If they had hands at all. If they thought anything close to what we thought.

If, if, and if. Bang. Thump. Griffin and my lady told stories—recollected a day at Brahmani Dali, and smiled at each other. “I love you,” Griffin said then to Dela, a sober, afterthinking kind of voice, meaning it. I knew. I focused beyond them at Lance, and his face looked only troubled as all our faces did. It was no news to him, not now.

So we sat, and shifted our weight because the waiting grew long.

“They could take days about it,” Dela said.

“I doubt it,” Griffin said.

“They’ll suit up,” Gawain said. “They’ll have that weight to carry, just like us.”

“I wish they’d get on about it.” That plaintive voice from Vivien. Her eyes were very large in the dim light of the corridor, where the makeshift bulkhead had cut off some of the lighting. “What can they be doing out there?”

“Likely assuring their own safety.”

“They can’t come at us with firearms,” Lynn said. “If we can’t use them, they daren’t.”

“That’s so,” Dela breathed.

“Not at close range,” Griffin said. He laughed. “Maybe they’re hunting up weapons like ours.”

That would be a wonder
, I thought. I was encouraged by the thought—until I reckoned that the odds were still likely theirs and not ours. And then the realization settled on me darker and heavier than before, for that little breath of hope, that we really had no hope at all, and that we only did this for—