Bright of the Sky Read online

  Frowning the doorman away, she opened the door herself. "Titus, I just want you to know that if you don't come back, if you decide that the other place is more to your liking than this one-wife, daughter, all that jazz well, we've got our sights on nephew Mateo. Coming up for the Standard Test in a few months, I believe. Sometimes the bureaucrats transcribe the scores inaccurately. Hate to see wasted potential, don't you?"

  His smile faded, and he turned a new look on her. She didn't back up, though it might have been wise. "I guess there's another thing people didn't tell you," he said. "I'm an expert at rigging explosives. Lots of experience, dotty as hell, you never know what I might do. Better check your yard, Helice. And learn some manners."

  She watched him leave with a mixture of resentment and envy. He was going alone, to her discovered land. She had not the slightest doubt that he would betray them all.

  CI AfTEK SIX

  AMAR GELDE PUT HIS HAND ON THE PORTAL, eclipsing the star field outside. The Ceres Platform was an industrial environment, stripped down, devoid of proper windows. Perhaps that was for the best. It gave him an ominous feeling to see black space, to think of the pitiful tin can protecting him from the void. He didn't have the constitution of an explorer. By rights, at his age, he shouldn't even be here.

  But Quinn had insisted he come along, and Minerva agreed, eager to keep the man happy while he waited here, hiding out until they were ready for him. Earth-side, agents of other companies had come sniffing around Minerva, sensing a kill. Minerva wanted no competing deals, no personnel raids. So Quinn had agreed to wait it out in the comparative isolation of the space platform. Not for long, they promised; they were almost ready.

  The problem was, Quinn wasn't doing so hot, and the platform made it worse.

  Quinn had stopped admitting to Lamar that he was having visitations from the past. The more he withdrew, though, the more Lamar guessed that he suffered from the return of his memories. The crew on the platform thought Quinn was odd, with his way of stopping in the middle of conversations and staring past a person's shoulder. Pretty soon the board would think Quinn too odd, and find another test subject. For Quinn's sake, Lamar didn't want that to happen. The man needed to go. But Minerva wasn't ready. The probes went through, never heard from again.

  Helice emerged from the lab module where the probes were staged. "Damn, we lost it," she said.

  "I have to talk to you," Lamar blurted out.

  She drew off her disposable outer suit, now wearing one of those body suits that only the young could manage.

  She led the way out of the science lab into the main corridor, bulky with cables and pipes, color-coded like an invasion of alien growths. The place was designed to be ugly, to remind the crew that they were in space, to force caution and attentive occupation. Things could go wrong. For Lamar, the point didn't need emphasis.

  They settled into her suite: a ten-by-ten cubicle alive with data structures, more like living in a machine than a room.

  "He's ready to go, Helice. We should send him. Now."

  She poured herself a glass of purified water and sipped. "Can't. We lost the latest one."

  "I think Quinn is willing to take the chance." He related the OBE events, and their effect on Quinn. He was obsessed. Anyone would be.

  Helice shook her head. "It isn't just that we lost the probe. We lost the place." She nodded at him. "Right. We don't have a fix from here anymore."

  "Then for Christ's sake let's find another one."

  "Good idea, Lamar. I never thought of that."

  Lamar would not want to be the one sitting next to Quinn during the trip home, everything canceled because the Minerva shrinks deemed Quinn unstable. The damn doctors had a distorted view of sanity. They wanted to see calm, patience, normalcy. Christ, if they'd wanted that, why had they picked Titus Quinn?

  "His memories are coming back," Lamar said. "It's enormously stressful. Keeps him awake nights. It's time."

  Helice took a swig of water and voiced the wall to show the latest probe launch.

  On-screen came a small metal arm from which wires dangled, holding a small tube suspended below. Inside the tube, Lamar knew, were living nematodes. Best to practice on worms, first.

  "What are the wires for?" Lamar asked.

  "We have better luck if the specimen isn't touching anything."

  The tube looked like it was melting. It slid sideways. Or perhaps it was backwards. It slithered. Elsewhere. It was gone. The wires didn't even stir.

  Helice grimaced. "We lost it immediately."

  "I'm no engineer, Helice, but maybe there isn't any interaction between there and here. Maybe readings aren't possible."

  "Right. But sometimes we get a four-picosecond feedback from it. A picosecond is damned short, but we've taken that time interval as an indicator. Today, the probe vanished instantly. One moment we had a fix on the other place, getting a stream of particles, and by the time the sapient kicked the launch, the place vanished."

  "Where did the probe go, then?"

  Helice shrugged. "Vacuum space. Want that to happen to Quinn?"

  Lamar sighed. In truth, it would be more humane than keeping him waiting like this. He said quietly, "If I ask him, I know what he'll say." He rose and paced in the small confines of the box. He couldn't make any demands. He wasn't on the board anymore.

  "I agree we need to go soon. Before others stake their claims."

  If others did, they'd have a jump on Minerva. They'd have a chance to break Minerva's monopoly on interstellar travel. The shortcut that was implied by Quinn's otherwise inexplicable appearance two years ago on a planet he couldn't have reached without a starship.

  "You think the Companies are going to beat us to it?" Lamar asked.

  "They're lagging behind, but who knows how far? After all, they had Luc Diets for a while."

  The youngster who stumbled on the neutrinos. "He's just a grad student."

  "Was. He died in a car accident last week."

  A few moments of silence crept in. Lamar didn't want to know more.

  Helice had the grace to avert her eyes. She murmured, "The firm that hired him is good. I know. They almost netted me." She appeared to contemplate that enormous loss for the competition. Then she said, "A few more tests, then we'll punch him through. Stake our claim."

  "For Christ's sake, Helice, don't test it to death. Remember, he went there once, and he came back. Let him try again." From the expression on Helice's face, he thought he was losing the argument. "I always believed Quinn. I practically raised him, you know."

  Helice said softly, "I believe him too. And not because of some soft fuzzy feeling."

  Lamar would never have accused Helice of soft and fuzzy.

  "It's because of this." She voiced, "Recording, Quinn."

  From the silver wall came the sounds of a man babbling. The language was unfamiliar to Lamar. Lilting and glottal. The man was distressed, speaking rapidly. And then a familiar word emerged. Sydney.

  Lamar froze. "My God. Is that Quinn speaking?" The voice continued, a rush of words, desperation, and, at times, anguish.

  Helice lowered the volume. "Yes." She shifted uncomfortably under Lamar's stare. "Yes, the Company recorded his deliriums when they first found him."

  "And never bothered to tell anyone."

  "Stefan knew. The way I heard it, you were on your way out." She shrugged. "People knew. It's just that it didn't matter. Nobody could figure out whether this was a real language or delirium from a man who'd just seen his child die."

  Lamar bit his cheek. They had known. They'd had proof ... and they'd still treated Quinn like he was a dred, without the neurons that God gave a Dalmatian.

  She stared at her glass of water. "We had our best linguists on it. We let the sapients at it. Nothing. It was gibberish."

  "That's bullshit, Helice. Minerva just didn't try very hard."

  Their eyes found each other, but she didn't waver. "Well, we're paying more attention now. We've cracked the g
rammar."

  Closing his eyes, Lamar rubbed them. Stefan's sins were many, and frankly unforgivable. "Go on."

  "He's saying, 'No. Oh my God, no. I'll kill you, come closer, I'll kill you.' Things like that. It's not in any family of languages we've ever seen. In fact, it's in a language that couldn't be Earth-based." She rolled the water in her mouth like excellent wine. "That's why I believe him."

  Lamar's voice came in a whisper. "What else does he say?"

  "He wails Sydney's name, and throws out phrases that we think are curses. He's in a rage."

  But to Lamar's ears it sounded more like weeping.

  She brought the volume up, and now it was clearly Quinn's voice, amid the sibilant consonants and deep-throated vowels. Sydney, came the moan.

  "My God," Lamar said, listening to the despair in the man's voice. The recording deteriorated into a sustained sob, one so deep-seated that Lamar hung his head, touched to his core. He finally glanced up at Helice, who looked like she, too, had been affected. He asked, "How bad is this place?"

  "It doesn't need to be nice. Just useful."

  Lamar frowned "But he's got to make it back here."

  "He will. I've chatted with him, and he's got resolve."

  "Then we'll send him? No more delays?"

  She smiled. "Tell him to pack. As soon as we get a new reading, we'll hang him from the wires."

  Lamar swallowed, hard. The recording went on, relentlessly presenting Titus Quinn's bad dreams. The dreams to which Quinn so desperately hoped to return.

  Be careful what you wish for, Lamar thought.

  "Take a deep breath," the surgeon said. "What do you smell?"

  He sat on the edge of the gurney, wearing a poly-paper gown, getting last instructions as he headed to the lab module and the harness.

  "What do you smell?" Every time Quinn opened his mouth it hurt. And brought a flood of smells.

  "Antisepsis, from that open vial on the table," Quinn replied. "Something acrid from the carpet." He shrugged, looking at the doc. "I can smell your skin."

  "What else?"

  Quinn opened his mouth a little wider, letting the air currents flow over the newly implanted Jacobson's organ in the roof of his mouth. "Something stinks over there," he said, turning to the counter.

  "Be more specific."

  Quinn closed his eyes, sniffing. "It's rotten. Mold."

  The doc smiled, lifting a towel off a small dish of mold. "Good for you. But don't close your eyes. Learn to access your heightened sense of smell without shutting down other senses. It's there for you. But you have to trust it."

  Trust the docs to modify him for survival in the other place. Trust them to have implanted the rebreather without screwing up his esophagus; trust them to give him the olfactory sense of a chimpanzee.

  "Right," he said, trying to make nice to the people who could still ground him. The docs needed to clear him-despite the fact that he'd lived for years over there without any help breathing or help selecting food that wouldn't throw him into anaphylactic shock. The dots wanted to play, and Minerva wanted him to have every advantage, and Quinn wanted to get going, just get going. He'd waited two years, but these last few minutes stretched interminably.

  The door opened, and Helice Maki sailed into the exam room, greeting him with a nod. It annoyed Quinn to have such a perky enemy. Five foot four inches tall and sporty-looking, except for the fangs. The youngster who ratcheted up the penalty for dying on the other side ... moving past the threat to Rob and going for the kid. Well, he was coming back, by God, and Helice Maki might just live to wish he hadn't. The doc acknowledged Helice, then continued, "It won't be foolproof, but let your sense of smell guide you to high nutrient content, steer you away from toxins. If you can't smell the food, put it into your mouth and suck on it for a second or two. Puncture it if you have to. That should kick in the Jacobson's, if nothing else will. When you're revolted by the smell or taste, don't imbibe." The doc gestured for Quinn to open his mouth and peered in, lighting his way with a small wand. "In a way," he said, speaking with the leisure of a dentist having a long conversation with someone whose mouth is stuffed with gauze, "in a way, we're going backward to go forward. Adopting our primate cousin's ability to forage through the chemical minefield of the plant world. Minerva doesn't want any tech on this mission, so you've got to make do with naked flesh."

  "Eggsept iss all upgrazes," Quinn gargled.

  Helice said, "Yes, upgrades that look ordinary. We don't want to call attention to you, in case you need local cover. You've got to be your own nutritionist and pharmacist. We don't know how you got by before-maybe you won't need any of this. But considering all the things that might kill you, we can't have you starving to death or ingesting poisons."

  The doc withdrew the probe from Quinn's mouth. "Even on Earth, lots of compounds can kill you. I assume where you're going will be as chemically charged. There'll be a lineup of alkaloids, phenolics, tannins, cyanogenic glycosides, and terpenoids-or their other-side equivalents. We're counting on your body's enhanced chemical knowledge to steer you to the edibles."

  Other-side equivalents. Quinn knew there would be plenty of those, and not just plant compounds, either.

  Anticipation had kept him awake for the past two nights, though he might have slept, dreaming that he couldn't sleep. It was all mixed up now: OBEs, sleep, memories, projections, fantasies. Now the hour had come, and he'd get the reality. Oddly, he was calm as a statue, whether from exhaustion or a state of grace, facing death, facing the other place, which could be the kingdom of God, after all. If Quinn were religious-as Johanna had beennow would be a good time for a prayer. But he was hopeless when it came to religion. What was the point, when life was all you wanted? He'd asked Johanna once why she went to Mass. It was all so illogical. She'd answered, "To be captured by it." She thought that answer enough, and offered no other. Everything she said was so deeply her. He was captured by her. So perhaps he did know why she went to mass.

  "Okay," the doc said. "You're excused. Any questions?"

  "Weapons."

  Helice shook her head. "No. If you need them, your mission is over anyway."

  Quinn looked into her perky face. So easy to be a pacifist when you're twenty.

  He went to the next item on his list. "My pictures." They'd already told him no personal objects. "I want my pictures." Johanna and Sydney were fading. The pictures were important.

  Helice bit her lip and glanced at the doc. Is he stable, do you think?

  The doc patted his shoulder. "I think you remember what they look like."

  Quinn looked at the hand, which was quickly withdrawn. He jumped down from the gurney.

  They led him through a side door to the sterilizing booth, where he'd lose a few nanometers of skin by the time the sonic shower was done. Nearby he could smell Helice Maki, her underarm deodorant-flowery-and a faint whiff of breakfast still on her tongue. Other smells, woman-things. He didn't want to know what he was smelling. He didn't want Helice in his thoughts at this moment.

  "Where's Lamar?" he asked.

  "Right here," came the voice from a side chair. Lamar stood up, came over to say his good-byes.

  "Private moment," Quinn said, eyeing Helice and the doc. They stepped aside.

  Now Quinn faced Lamar, a face he knew, a man grown older than he remembered, seeming to age every week that passed. As of course, he was.

  Lamar put out his hand, and Quinn shook it. The old man nodded, overcome.

  "Your promise," Quinn said.

  "On my honor."

  The kids would suffer no harm. Could Lamar protect them? Was he any match for a twenty-year-old intent on controlling the world? He shuddered from the chill of the room.

  "On your honor, then." Quinn peeled off the paper robe. He looked at the door to the sterilizing booth. "I feel like I'm going to be shot out of a cannon."

  From the look of distress on Lamar's face, he thought so too.

  Lamar pasted up a manly smile, tryin
g to put a brave face on the fact that they were sending this man into the quantum foam without a clue where he'd be and when.

  "Quinn," came Helice's voice. When he looked at her, she said, "Godspeed." She actually looked concerned for him. Hell, they all did.

  Quinn walked into the booth naked, except for the photos taped to the soles of his feet.

  The smell was pungent, earthy, heavy with ozone and antiseptics. The brew of chemicals revolted him, as the doc had said, meaning he should avoid this place.

  Well, he knew that much. He was eager to be done with this side of reality.

  Scoured and sore, he emerged into the main tube leading to the transition module, a modification to the space platform built for just this purpose. They called it interfacing; but he'd also heard the techs calling it punching through. In the access tube he was met by two paper-suited figures who escorted him toward the transition module, as though he might bolt at the last minute. A heavy door parted before them, and they emerged into the module with its racks of electronics, cabling, and wires surrounding a small platform where an empty harness hung suspended.

  It was all, at this point, unreal, with his senses hideously alert, and his mind damped down. It might have been lack of sleep, or some unguessed-at depth of terror. He found himself wondering if the pictures had survived the sonic cleansing. He wanted to have a profound thought or two, but instead he was blank and numb.

  They helped him into a simple costume of plain woven wool: loose trousers and a fitted shirt. He drew on socks and boots, careful to avoid crinkling noises from the pictures. Then he stepped onto the platform, where an attendant helped him thread his arms through the sleeves of the harness, high on his shoulder, for the brief suspension. The attendants left the module. Now they would wait for a lock on that place, that place that shifted, constantly shifted. The very act of finding it tended to push it away. So when the sapient pierced it to three hundred nanometers, they would instantly lock on, and throw the power on, send him into a state frighteningly called decoherence.