Beholder's Eye (30 page)

Thus I became the only member of my Web besides Ersh to see the universe without the blur of atmosphere.

I clung to the ship’s hull like a Quebit waiting to vent plasma, spellbound by the limitless spectacle in front of me. To my web senses, space wasn’t a black void, it spread before me like a surging ocean, tossed by solar wind, lit by radiations, and rich with spinning hydrogen.
A perfect place.
I couldn’t understand why Ersh had hidden this from us.

I longed to soar through that golden darkness, to taste it against my outer surface, to feel its harmonies in my soul. It was a longing I resisted only because I had no idea of the kind of wings to use.
Something to definitely ask Ersh,
I decided firmly. This was an advantage all to my enemy’s benefit; it was a lack in me I felt as physical pain. Then my attention fixed on the colony.

The
Rigus
was tethered to the grapelike cluster of broken spheres by several cables, including a set of three the crew used to travel back and forth. Those cables were my route to the colony as well, given I could avoid the attention of the sensors and whoever was currently monitoring them.

Web-flesh wasn’t quite as amorphous as that of the Ycl, but I had no trouble thinning at one end until I was partially a cable myself. It took innumerable attempts, but at last I was able to hook one end of myself around a real cable. Grabbing it for an anchor, I spun myself out and away from the ship. Anyone looking out could see one of the cables growing oddly thicker than the others for a moment, but I doubted they’d notice.
I hardly believed what I was doing—how could one of the crew imagine it?

Then I was on the colony’s shattered structure, feeling lost away from the ship in spite of my growing confidence in my abilities. I had a completely new perspective on the courage it took for true air-breathers to don a suit and step out here.

Maybe it was easier when your destination wasn’t an open grave, loosely held together by the tatters of what had been the ultimate in modern technology. The crew did its best on every shift to collect the former inhabitants of Portula Colony, catching and bagging anything that appeared organic for later identification. In web-form I could taste what they’d missed. There wasn’t true vacuum within the colony. Its gravity generator, tucked into the core sphere, no longer functioned, but there was sufficient mass here to lure homeward the scattered molecules of sculptors, painters, and musicians.

I oozed my way among the debris, so angry I felt my outer surface throbbing. All of this had been incidental. The Enemy had destroyed the colony and its life in its search for Lesy. I had no proof of this; I had no doubt either.

But had it found her?
I had several advantages over the
Rigus
in examining the wreckage for clues. I knew the former structure of the place. And I knew where Lesy would run.

Think of it as a puzzle to solve, a game,
I calmed myself, at all times aware of the direction of the hum of gravity and life that was the ship. It was hide and seek with the Rigus’ sensors, just as it must have been hide and seek for Lesy during the colony’s destruction. I could play both.

It didn’t take long to find Lesy’s quarters, or what remained of them. The pillows she draped herself over when the colony upped the gravity for visitors were gone, perhaps lingering in orbit around the wreckage, but the patterned carpeting with its whimsical motif of feather and scales looked brand new.
Here.
I detected the first traces of web-flesh. Again I thinned myself to a cord’s width to ease across the opening, preferring to be paranoid than be detected by the
Rigus
.

There.
A lump of life, stuck half within a door panel. I rushed to it, forming a mouth and consuming the flesh before even thinking the intention. I should have.

It wasn’t Lesy.

 

...
Seething appetite.
How dare you lock me out! I am what matters. Give me your flesh . . .

 

I flung myself out of memory, finding myself huddled against the comforting mass of splintered bulkhead. I hastily excised every molecule of my Enemy from me, but the memories of its flesh were impossible to vomit. I was only grateful they weren’t worse.

Pouring my way past what remained of the door, I navigated through the apartment suites and studios of this portion of the main sphere, keeping my mass as tightly to myself as possible. At least I was out of sight of the
Rigus’
sensors now and could move freely.
Move freely?
I was alive and comfortable in an environment that welcomed nothing else to my knowledge.
Why had Ersh named space “out there” and “no life” to us? Why had she kept us from this?

I ducked under the swollen torso of a Dokecian, its lovely arms stretched to their maximum length as if to beg some meaning from the cold, ever-changing Nebula overhead, my thoughts traveling down so many paths at once I hardly noticed the poor creature. Ersh hadn’t shared our abilities in a vacuum, a selfishness that suddenly seemed a great deal more reasonable to me than most of Ersh’s Rules. It kept us to ships, to travel no faster and no more conveniently than ephemerals. It kept us under control.

I sighed mentally. Now, it left us at the mercy of the Enemy, a web-being completely at home in space and capable of translight.

I humped my way down an exposed conduit pipe. Not much time left before I’d have to be back on the
Rigus,
not having my Enemy’s independence.

There.
Another sparkle of blue, this time a broad smear along a wall with an unhealthy tinge to the edges. There were streaks missing from the middle section. I could imagine Sas banging his helmet against it. I settled myself near enough to touch the smear with a pseudopod if I chose, and tried to decide what to do. It could be more of the Enemy.
Or it could be,
I shuddered,
all I had of Lesy
.

The surrounding wreckage showed no signs of scorching. Whatever strategy Mixs had used to defend herself, Lesy hadn’t had the time to try. Or maybe not the will, since such an explosion could have shattered any remaining integrity of the sphere. Had Lesy hesitated, knowing the kind of damage and death the Enemy had inflicted on the colony in its rampant searching, aware that her defense might take the last hope from any survivors?
I’d never know.

Unless I tasted for myself.

I had no tongue or its equivalent. To ingest the web-flesh from the bulkhead, I had to enlarge my mouth and consume the nonliving metal as well. I took an instant to worry if the teeth marks on the wall would be detected by the next shift of searchers. Then . . .

 

...
Fear. Resignation.

 

This was Lesy. I relaxed my guard, assimilating memory as quickly as possible, excising the metal from my form at the same moment.

 

... Under the emotion, a last sequence of clear thought.
It knows my name. Mixs and not Mixs. It
hungers
for more. Ansky and Skalet. Esen. Ersh, save us . . .

 

The names were wails of despair, the plea a hopeless one.
Lesy.
I opened my senses to the pulse of the Nebula, concentrating on the wild flavor of its energy, feeling suitably the smallest and least in a universe conspiring against all that was mine.

 

I made my way wearily back through the lock, ingesting the flesh I’d left behind automatically. The outer door whooshed closed and locked, its safety mechanism fooled by the apparent loss of vacuum as I expanded to fill the interior. The inner door irised open as I moved toward it, air from the ship’s corridor rushing in, tasting of living things and warmth.

The lights were still night-dim in the hall. I cycled into Ket as I poured myself through the Quebit’s’ portal.

“Here,” said Ragem, holding out my hoobit and skirt.

RAGEM almost died in that instant. My grief and fear overwhelmed me. I wanted to cycle into something capable of violence, to shred flesh and spray blood until I could find nothing left to destroy. The need was so great, so impossible to ignore, I smacked my newly healed hands against the wall until the agony roaring up my arms drove away the rage.

Ragem, perhaps belatedly aware of his risk, had stayed absolutely still during my tantrum. When I stopped, finally, settling into stillness myself, he reached out as if to touch my hand. I flinched, feeling my sanity and sense returning from wherever they’d fled, grateful to have won the battle.
And so tired.

“You don’t give up, do you, Ragem?” I said, drained of all anger, aware on some level of relief. Whether it was because I hadn’t killed him or because I could stop pretending, I wasn’t sure.

A shrug lifted his shoulders. “It hadn’t occurred to me.” I noticed he was dressed only in a robe. He smiled and held out the hoobit. “Welcome back.”

Welcome back?
“You are crazy,” I concluded, letting him help me tie on the skirt. From the feel of my hands, I’d rebroken at least one finger and possibly cracked a bone in the palm. At least there was no blood on the wall. Neither of us had come equipped to clean it.

“I’m crazy?” Ragem echoed mildly enough. “I suggest we debate relative mental states after you’ve been back in the med unit for those hands.”

He was right. I could feel this body shaking, both from what I’d done to it and with it. In fact, unless I cycled, I wasn’t certain I could walk that far. “Agreed. Ragem?” At his nod, I continued: “I think I’ll need your help to get there.”

Ragem wrapped one arm around my waist and I gratefully, if somewhat awkwardly, leaned over him until I could put my arm over his shoulder and let him share some of my battle with gravity. As Ket, I wasn’t heavy, but I certainly wasn’t strong either; I could do little more to help Ragem support me. I could tell he had to strain to hold me, and my hand throbbed intolerably where it dangled against his chest, but this was a distinct improvement over collapsing on the deck. Until I realized how we might appear to anyone we met, my Ketself draped languidly over the compact Human like some drought-stricken tree, and my fingers twitched involuntarily.

“What’s so funny?” Ragem wheezed between slow steps forward.

“I hope you’ve got a story to satisfy anyone we encounter on the way, because I certainly don’t.”
A typical Human fantasy wouldn’t do,
I thought to myself with even more amusement. It was common knowledge that Ket away from their homeworld were completely uninterested in sex with their own kind or any other—a biological quirk that occasionally disconcerted those new to the sensuous pleasures of a Ket massage.

“I’ll think of something,” he said, then made a warm, oddly contented sound like a sigh. “But at least I don’t have to worry I’m losing my mind any longer. You came close to convincing me, Madame Ket.”

Better if I had,
I thought, grateful for the transportation if not the responsibility.

 

Ragem’s inventiveness did not need to be tested; we met only Quebits on the way back to his and Tomas’ cabin. Once there, he helped me on the med unit and activated the box before sitting on the other bed and rubbing his shoulders. His voice carried easily through the clear walls. “You’re a pretty substantial ghost, Es,” he complained good-naturedly.

I sighed, but otherwise remained motionless to allow the unit’s sensors to diagnose the latest damage I’d dealt this perfectly healthy body of mine. I could almost hear the machine’s disapproval. I disagreed.
Far better a sore hand than having to wash off Ragem’s blood.
“Please don’t surprise me again, Ragem,” I said firmly. “I’m not always—safe.”

Ragem tilted his head, his gray eyes shadowed in the night lighting of the room. “Noted.”

“How did you find me?”
Ah.
The unit did something to relax my nerves and stop the jangling pain from shooting from finger to shoulder.

“I saw your face when we were watching the crew outside. I knew you wanted to go to the colony—to look for yourself. So I followed you.”

So much for my skills at espionage,
I thought wryly, more amused than dismayed by how little all my precautions had mattered.

“I won’t ask how you managed it,” he went on. “But did you find any sign of Martha?”

Martha?
I remembered the name I’d given instead of revealing Lesy’s. Ignoring the objection of my hands, I pushed up the box lid to better see him. “Come here, Paul,” I said, suddenly desperate. “Please.”

Ragem stood and then knelt beside the bed so I could look directly into his face. It held the expression I remembered best: calm, accepting, the face of my first ephemeral friend, lit by concern and never-ending curiosity. “Be sure of me, Esen,” he said gently, before I could speak. “I know why you ran from me on Rigel II. I’ve cursed myself every day since. I thought I was too well-trained, too experienced to react on a purely instinctive level. I was wrong. And I understand how I hurt you.”

I touched his face with one of my better fingers. “Well, to be fair, I’m supposedly too well-trained to have put you in that situation.”
Not necessarily too experienced,
I added to myself. I traced a cheekbone, too near the surface of his skin. “You paid for my mistake, Paul.” I encountered a hint of beard and my Ket senses were pleased by the texture. But it was the not-Ket part of me that said: “Remind me never to drink spurl again, Christmas or no Christmas.”