'Don't!' Subtwo cried as Mischa shifted. 'We made a bargain. You aren't to kill him.'
'I said if he didn't make me.'
'She will,' Subtwo said to Subone. 'She is determined.'
'What will happen to you, if I die?' Subone swayed before him like a snake. 'Your blood will boil like mine, and your brains explode in your skull.' He came closer, until Subtwo could smell his musky sweat and see the minute pale flecks of color in the black irises of his eyes. Subone's hypnotic voice droned on, until Subtwo could well believe they would die together.
'I gave my word.'
'What's your word, to thieves and murderers?'
Subone's dark gaze leached the meaning from Subtwo's unvoiced protest.
'We have no choice,' Subtwo said finally. Sadness overwhelmed him, that he had almost deserted the person closest to him in the universe, almost abandoned him here on a forsaken dying world. what might have happened, had they parted? He could imagine space-time's collapse to a single dimension, to a dimensionless point.
'Yes, refuse them!' Subone said. 'They can't kill you.'
'I can,' Mischa said. 'If you won't keep your promise, I have nothing to lose.'
Subone laughed: a real laugh, not the acceptable response the pseudosibs had learned by rote. But it was ugly. 'You still have your life,' Subone snarled. 'Go back where you came from, and I'll let you keep it.'
Subtwo wanted to turn to Mischa and apologize to her, explain what he must do, make clear that some obligations stretched beyond mere promises. But he continued to stare at Subone, rediscovering beauty.
'He's buying you too cheaply,' Jan Hikaru said in his quiet way, as a statement of fact, not as an argument or persuasion.
Subone glared, his teeth glinting bright as a beast's. 'I haven't given you your life.'
But Jan's words caught in Subtwo's thoughts. 'I'm not a slave. I own myself,' he said.
'He owns you more than he could own any slave. He owns your soul.'
Subtwo stepped back involuntarily and grasped the edge of a counter that pressed against his thighs. 'No, I want—' But he did not want what Subone wanted. He squeezed his eyelids shut, searching for a moment of peace in which to disentangle his confusion.
He heard footsteps and opened his eyes again. Subone grinned triumphantly. 'Our raiders are coming,' he said. 'Free and rearmed.' He turned, smiling, toward the entranceway, but suddenly, paling, faced Subtwo again.
'They'll have to find the slave-ways first,' Madame said.
Subtwo pushed past his pseudosib, ignoring his stricken expression. Madame walked slowly out of the dimness, moving carefully as though on an unsteady deck. Running from a terrible gash just below her temple, blood marked the line of her jaw and stained the silver embroidery of her bodice. Subtwo reached to steady her, but abruptly hesitated.
Madame took his hand and clasped it tightly. 'I'm free.' Her fingers were smooth and strong.
Subtwo gently touched her blood-matted hair. 'How did this—'
'Never mind.' But she glanced past him and saw Subone again; her pain-contracted pupils shrank to pinpoints.
'She—she tried to kill me! I had to defend myself!'
Subtwo felt a great wrench of betrayal, for this time he knew without question or doubt that his pseudosib lied, gratuitously, selfishly, viciously. He spun in a fury and struck out.
'No!' Subone cried, and crumpled with the blow, for it was totally unexpected and unprepared for. When his pseudosib lay moaning at his feet, Subtwo cradled his aching hand, thinking that he had done an impossible, perhaps unforgivable, but necessary thing.
'We must hurry,' Madame said slowly, rational but vague. 'I broke the alice tube, and the slave-ways are concealed, but the raiders will find them.' As destroying a mechanism in order to slow pursuit was an idea Subtwo would never have conceived, he was overcome with admiration.
He turned away from his pseudosib and steadied Madame again, touching her bruised face gently, causing necessary pain from which she did not flinch. 'The bone is not broken,' he said with relief, and moved quickly to find her a suit.
Afraid that Subone would recover himself and interfere again, Mischa watched him until Madame was safely suited. He had only begun to stir, to push himself up, when Mischa opened the door of the blockhouse.
The sand squealed in the tracks, but afterward was only silence. That was what had been so strange inside, this time: the absence of the scratch and howl of wind-blown sand. As the door closed behind her, Mischa blinked in the glittery light. Sand yielded beneath her feet. She looked down from the plateau of the landing field across endless iridescent black sand dunes, like a glass sea frozen in midswell. The wind had died, only briefly, Mischa thought, for the clouds still hung and shifted, low and dark, here and there breaking as they moved, revealing glints of blue-gray sky. Near the horizon, the sun glowed scarlet, rayed about with orange, vermilion, purple. Beside her, Jan whistled softly in awe. Mischa unfastened her helmet, threw it back, and breathed the fresh dusty air for the first time in months. A breeze scattered particles of sand that pattered against the blockhouse, against Mischa's suit. She glanced at Jan, also bareheaded, and he looked down at her. Suddenly she grinned, and felt laughter springing up from where it had long lain hidden. Jan smiled, the beautiful smile, untinged by irony, that Mischa had not seen in so long. The tiny lines at the corners of his eyes were deeper; only the ends of his golden hair were sunbleached white; his mustache made him look older. He was older. They both were older. 'Let's go.'
Cradled in the acceleration couch, Mischa forgot her scrapes and scratches and fatigue, and tried to memorize the control room all at once. Jan was in the couch beside her, eyes closed. On a third couch, Madame lay wrapped closely in a blanket; she was groggy from concussion, but she would be all right. Subtwo, his dirty hair tied carefully back, was embraced in the navigation frame, almost every part of his body attached to a separate control system. The ship shuddered as the engines started. The acceleration began, pressing Mischa gently down.
The ship battered its way upward, into the roiling clouds. It began to vibrate on a second frequency, and the harmonic beats rose and fell. Mischa urged the ship along, feeling joyful terror when the wind pummeled and tipped them, victorious gaiety when the craft fought free. Sometimes it seemed impossible they would survive, for the force of the wind seemed beyond the ability of the ship to withstand. They crept into the sky, battered, but when they broke through the storm, the transition was instantaneous. It sounded like silence, but was merely the cessation of the wind. The engines thundered. Mischa laughed aloud, half-intoxicated. Delighted, she turned toward Jan, but his golden skin was gray-pale, and his hands were clenched white-knuckled on the arms of his couch.
'What's wrong?'
'I expected a takeoff, not ride-the-meteor in an amusement park.'
She had no idea what he was talking about, though it was obvious he objected to the quality of the ride. Subtwo disengaged himself from the controls. He, too, was pale. 'The winds are less steady—' It was the first time she had ever heard him make an excuse. He went to Madame's side.
'I liked it,' Mischa said.
Jan laughed and lay back in the acceleration couch.
And Mischa did not know what to do. She had no idea where to go. In all the time she and Chris had talked about leaving earth, the aftermath of their escape had been a nebulous, tantalizing mystery. They had discussed how to get away, and what the Sphere would be like when they got there, but now that she thought of it, they had avoided talking about how they themselves would fit into a new society. Perhaps they had known, unconsciously, that they would not.
'What are you going to do?'
She started: Subtwo had never before showed the least talent for empathy or even intuition.
'Will you still leave me my ship?' So his concern was still his own future.
No, Mischa thought, no, it's more than that now, it's his and Madame's. 'Yes,' she said. 'You can have your ship back, and then we'll be even.' And then, 'I'm. I'm sorry I didn't let you call her.'
'Where may I take you?'
'You.' She did not know the nearest Sphere world, but she would ask for it: she had made her way in Center; she could make her way anywhere.
'To Koen,' Jan said, 'The coordinates—'
'I know them,' Subtwo said, highly insulted.
