* * *
Kara strode into the control room and shouted “Salome!” Then stumbled as the SUT lurched to her left, then back again. “What the fuck?”
<< Apparently you call them boojums, come to say hello. Or destroy us. Not always easy to tell.
> I thought Wild ships were never touched? It seemed a good time for clarity.
<< Very rarely, Salome corrected. << But have more faith in the hull than trusting a netherspace entity to behave nicely. We’re surrounded by a charged plasma field that keeps the entities away. It seems to hurt them. But always a chance that we’ll meet one that doesn’t care about the pain.
Without thinking Kara reached for the little box Greenaway had given her. It felt good in her hand, as if touching an old friend. Why hadn’t he, or Cleo, mentioned that the boojums might, just might attack?
Because it could have affected her behaviour.
Her life was marked by deceit.
8
Kara had once seen a boojum. A huge tentacle that seemed to flick at a spacer who’d spent too long in the Up, and wanted to retire to netherspace. Just for a second and then she’d looked away. Look too long at the insane colours and movement and you go mad. And yet it holds a terrible attraction. Over time you begin to yearn for it. Over time it seems to yearn for you. That spacer wasn’t the only human who’d ever given in and walked naked into chaos.
She sat frozen in the control chair as the SUT rocked from side to side. As with the first and last time she’d experienced boojums, she could sense them.
Sense them.
Use your empathy. Yes, even for something you can’t see and don’t understand. Her military training took over: First, know your enemy as yourself. Or at least well enough to kill the bastard – or prevent it killing you.
> I want an outside view.
< It will drive you mad, from Ishmael.
> Only after ten minutes. Tell Salome. Transparent hull. Now.
Kara stared at the beginning of everything she knew. All around her. She felt nausea and a rising terror. Fought them both back down. The colours talked to her. Nonsense talk but so seductive.
What the hell was I thinking? There’s nothing...
But maybe there was, amidst the riot of colour that made her eyes ache.
Like a test for colour blindness. A myriad of coloured dots camouflaging an outline that some can’t recognise. All you can do is join the dots.
< Seven minutes left.
> Switch off at nine point five one. No more chat.
It was difficult, damn near impossible, but if she squinted, and made the occasional jump, she could just about make out a shape. Shapes. There was more than one. And seeing, Kara could try to empathise.
Oh, that is so... so weird... oh, that hurts... oh.
They were aware of her as Kara, as someone interested in them.
She feels her sister’s arms around her and knows LOVE. Smells the acrid scent of explosion, tastes blood EXHILARATION. Sees the tortured body of a comrade HATE. Images, scents, tastes, sounds, sensations fill her mind.
The pain is deep in her gut, where the emotions live.
TERROR SADNESS CONTENTMENT LUST CONCERN SYMPATHY
No, no, too strong... I can’t...
The screens snapped off. The empathy link faded.
> Thanks Ishmael.
< That was extreme.
< A bad ten minutes.
< Only three point three.
It had felt like a lifetime. She knew why humans had gone mad in netherspace. Your past life and all the emotions associated with every action raised to an insane level and swirling ever faster inside your head... until you’re dragged down into the maelstrom of your own mind... oh, the pain... until your synapses fry and a merciful darkness descends to leave you drooling or dead.
How the hell had Marc survived?
“We got visitors.”
She spun round and saw Marc leaning against the wall. “They woke you?”
He nodded. “We have a relationship.”
The SUT lurched again. Kara thought about horses rubbing against a fence. Elephants against a tree. “You attract them.”
He sighed. “I guess. These are pretty much okay. Some aren’t. You know what they are?”
She did. “They have awareness but that’s all. They’re missing a mind, they want to belong, much like a dog needs a home. Except some just want to destroy. Others are alien. And some are made of many emotions, some conflicting. Foam keeps them out. Foam keeps us in. Except, maybe, the tiniest hole, smallest tear. Say an SUT comes out of n-space to take a star reading,” talking faster as the pieces fit together, “and this tiny little bit of rock, too small to be detected, hits at a huge speed and makes a hole. Back in n-space the things” – she’d stopped thinking of them as boojums, they were too dangerous, too weird – “now have a way inside...”
Marc walked across and touched her arm. “Not just a smart-ass killer.”
“I had it explained. True?”
He shrugged. “Pretty much. There’s a link, relationship between them and the fields of pure intelligence around some planets and suns.” And wondered how he knew it. Something gleaned from netherspace? Or more likely from the entity in Scotland.
“This is a Wild SUT. Doesn’t need foam. But can you get them to go away?”
“They seem to be interested in you as well. That empathy working hard?”
“Better go Up.” She meant normal space.
< There’s a slight problem. Salome has been affected by those things. She is in a continual loop, while humming the first three bars of an old song called “Stand By Your Man”. Doubtless she will recover. Or I can handle this SUT. Except there are a few padlocks, mathematical, I have to figure out...
> For fuck’s sake! Where is Salome, physically?
< Not sure I
