The Sea is Full of Stars

didn’t come back.

They seemed satisfied, whoever they were, and then she heard them walking away, talking softly, although she couldn’t understand a word. She tried to call them back, so they could tell her where she was and what was going on, but only meaningless gurgling sounds emerged, which hurt her throat.

After a while the pain subsided further, becoming a dull burning. Angel then became aware of the tubes attached to her, which she guessed was some kind of intravenous feed, and concluded it was why she felt neither hungry nor dehydrated. She worked her head around in increasing circles, flexing her neck. It was painful at first but soon felt very good. She could control her head, and to some extent her shoulders, and began to concentrate as her teachers had instructed and to try and feel all her body.

Her skin seemed to have been mildly burned, apparently from the cryo units in the lifeboat. Well, that might be expected; those units were intended for emergency only, and not for use in deep space. It was likely that only the Mallegestors and maybe Tann Nakitt hadn’t been burned, the former because nothing could penetrate that hide, the latter because of his fat and fur layering. If that was all that this was, she knew it would pass.

The same severe conditions might also have caused her blindness, she reflected, if she’d been in shock from her tightly tied arms and legs and her suspension, and then gone under with her eyes not completely shut. Could be; they’d never gotten their emergency lecture! If that were the case, though, would she remain blind unless given new eyes or lenses or whatever, or would vision slowly return? It frightened her, but she fell back on her faith and her prayers and calmed down.

She was definitely sitting up, not lying down, but she had no idea what the support might be. She was on something, some kind of device or prosthetic, since she could feel a rubbery form and seal that covered her crotch area and went back to near the top of her buttocks. It wasn’t the only support because it wasn’t wide enough, but it certainly had a utilitarian purpose. It caught, washed off, and flushed waste.

Angel began to chant softly, attempting to hum, and after some false tries she managed it. She was so pleased to get a steady tone, she tried shaping some words while still keeping the monotone hum, in effect singing or chanting them. “Hmmmm… Is anybody else here?” she managed, her voice sounding unnaturally low but giving a fair Gregorian chant sound.

Someone else was there! She was right! The other tried to respond, but had the same kind of gargling noise she’d tried. Slowly, Angel attempted to teach the other to hum from the diaphragm, then up and out, form the words, keep singing. She had no idea why this worked, but felt her voice growing stronger and her command of it returning the more she did it.

The other used a different sort of tonal scale but managed eventually to raise a steady tone, then a series of tones. The other’s voice, too, sounded unnaturally low, but was definitely another woman.

“Just answer me simply,” Angel chanted. “I am Angel. Who are you?”

“Ming,” the other managed to sing back, keeping the tone going, except for breathing in to help retrain the larynx.

Ming! “Can you see at all?” Angel sang to her.

“Light and dark. No shapes,” Ming came back, increasingly getting the hang of it.

“Better than I am,” Angel told her. “All is gray to me. Can you move at all?”

“No, I cannot,” the other sang back. “I cannot feel my arms and legs.”

There was the sound of a door opening at the other end of the room and of footsteps approaching. The person walked very close to them, then stopped.

“Well, I see you are both awake.” It was Ari’s voice. He sounded pleasant, even friendly, his old self. Ming hated him most for that, and Angel tried hard not to. To her, God had for some reason delivered her to the devil and was testing her. She did not know why, but it was still God’s will.

“I heard what sounded like singing. That’s actually a fair method of getting vocal chords working again after cryo paralysis, which is itself very common. The Kharkovs also had problems with it. Feel free to keep doing it as long as it is comfortable. I don’t mind. It’s actually kind of pleasant.”

“I cannot sing the words I have for you,” Ming responded, doing just enough of a chant as she could.

“Umph. I know how you must feel. I didn’t want this, Ming. You weren’t supposed to be here. You were supposed to be on the first lifeboat.”

“I did not know your depths,” Ming managed.

“Hey, I didn’t know you were a cop, either! All this time, and we find out we have our nasty secrets. You were more undercover than I was. All my standard work was for companies owned or controlled by Wallinchky, most of them legit. There is just this occasional job that requires me to get on the unpleasant side of his works. It’s not like I have much of a choice. I’m the third generation to work for him, and he’s been my patron, sponsor, and employer for all my life.”

“Where are we and what has happened to us?” Angel asked him, attempting a sentence without singing it and pleased to get it basically out.

He turned. “Well, hello! Bad luck for you, too, but you were born and raised to do what you do, too, right? By the way—the one or sometimes two octave drop in voices generally goes away over time.”

“Can you answer her question?” Ming managed.

“Okay. You’re in the Grabant System, on the fourth planet from the sun, a chilly ball of rock with an atmosphere so thin you’d asphyxiate before you’d freeze if you ran outside, but outside’s a real interesting place. It’s one of those ancient worlds with those weird remains of the Ancient Ones all over. You’re in the infirmary in Wallinchky’s getaway and museum here, which doesn’t impact the ruins. The infirmary is entirely computer run, including surgery, but it’s first rate. Right now you’ve both been—well, operated on and placed in recuperative mounts, but once things heal 1 think you’ll find that the intent is to regenerate.”

“Regenerate! Then—” Ming gasped.

“That’s right. Don’t panic, though. There’s nothing here that can’t be restored. Still, at the moment, you both are basically just heads and torsos. Really great-looking torsos, I might add, but that’s about it. Wallinchky will be in to see you sometime today or tomorrow. When he does, he’ll— well, outline the options. Believe me, though—I’ve seen worse than you in here, and they looked fine when all was said and done.”

“You mean like Wallinchky’s two lethal airheads?” Ming asked.

“No, only some here-and-there stuff had to be done to them. Hell, I’ve had an arm replaced here, and another time a toe.”

There was a buzzing sound from Ari’s direction. Then they heard a clicking, and a moment later he said, “Yes, sir?”

The muffled rush of conversation was too scrambled to be overheard, obviously through a communicator, and Ari responded, “Yes, sir. Right away. Yes, they’re both awake. Yes, I’ll be right there.”

A moment later he was speaking to them again: “I’ll have the medlab give you whatever functions you may feel better having, but I have to go.”

“Yes, don’t forget to wag your tail when you lick your master’s ass,” Ming responded acidly. “As to what we want, how about a nice, big bomb?”

Ari sighed, and they could hear him walking out.

Almost immediately robotics within the infirmary started to click and whir into action. Angel felt something come over her head, a helmet, it seemed, with clicking and whirring sounds inside. A membrane that came across her face briefly, let up before it caused any real discomfort, then rose back up again, freeing her.

“What was that?” Ming wanted to know, but in a short while the same thing happened to her. After it was over, they could only compare notes and some feelings about Citizen Martinez. Ming was far less charitable; she’d never been all that religious.

It didn’t take long to discover what was happening. The machinery snapped back into action again, and Angel felt something being placed over her eyes and held by a band on her head. They were more like goggles than glasses, and extended out a bit, but after a bit of disorientation they snapped on, and for the first time since coming to she could more or less see. Her vision was limited to straight ahead, and it had little color, but the detail was quite sharp. She was able to look over and see Ming for the first time, and watch a similar but not identical procedure, employing artificial hands and thin prehensile tendrils from above. Ming’s eyewear resembled a rectangular dark piece of plastic or glass in a welder’s frame, with an elastic strap to hold it to her head.

Ming was set in a metallic box about a meter square, and appeared to emerge from it about at the navel. Her naked form was apparent the rest of the way, but her arms had been cleanly amputated just below the shoulders