“Are you guys seeing this?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Chiraine said. “It’s incredible.”
The ship’s power flickered and everything went dark.
“Not again!” Ana-Zhi said.
But then aux power kicked in and the screens faded back on. The image on the viewport got stranger and stranger.
Swirls of colored fog shot through with bolts of lightning seemed to envelop us, drawing us ever closer to the collapsing station.
“Engine status?” I barked.
“Who the hell knows?” Ana-Zhi said. “I’ve got the pedal to the metal and we’re still not moving. Correction. We’re still being pulled backwards. At a rate of one point five kilometers an hour.”
The grinding sound was back, louder than ever.
“Is that the engine?” I asked.
Ana-Zhi shook her head. “I’ve never heard anything like that before.”
“The good news is that there’s no sign of the Mayir,” Narcissa said.
“Where did they go?” I asked.
“No idea. They’re no longer on any of our scopes.”
My heart wouldn’t stop pounding through my chest. “What the hell is happening here?”
A voice from behind me said, “What’s happening here is that I finally got the goddamn Levirion to work.”
My father actually sounded happy.
“What does that even—”
Before I could even finish my sentence, the ship heaved, moving faster than I had thought possible. It was way worse than when the cthulian got us.
Suddenly, up was down and down was up.
I was deafened by the sound of metal on metal, a deep, intense ripping sound. It was the sound of the ship tearing itself apart.
Then everything went dark.
17
Some time later, my body jolted and I gasped for air. I felt my heart pounding in my chest and I tried to open my eyes, but all I could perceive was blackness. I couldn’t see anything. I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t feel anything.
I was disconnected. Disconnected from everything.
I couldn’t even think straight. I didn’t know who I was, or where I was, or even when I was. Panic welled up inside of me.
What was happening?
The only thing that I recognized was the infinite blackness surrounding me.
I kept waiting for my eyes to adjust, so I could see something. Anything.
But there was just blackness.
I had no sense of time, so I didn’t know if I was floating there for an hour, or a day, or a week, or a year, or even my whole life.
But eventually I became aware of something other than the blackness.
This other was like the blackness, but a little different. Like a hazy gauze over the black—a slightest, barely noticeable blot of almost-black.
As I fixed upon this mote, it seemed to pulse. And then, over hours (or days or weeks or years), it brightened.
It was a pinpoint of light now. Far away. Impossibly far away. Farther than any star.
But as I stared at it, the light grew larger—like I was being pulled into it.
Again, slowly at first. Then I had the sensation of moving—of flying. Right towards it.
The light was an asteroid, and then a moon, and then a planet, and then a sun.
And then my whole world.
For a time I felt warm, enveloped in the embrace of healing light. I curled up, pulling my knees to my chest, and fell asleep.
When I awoke, some time later, I opened my eyes to see my bedroom. I blinked in disbelief. It couldn’t be.
I bunched up a handful of bedclothes. They felt like my sheets. Fine weave Palanese cotton. I brought the fabric up to my nose and inhaled the scent of sweet perfume. Lirala’s perfume.
Was she here?
I sat up and looked around the room. Everything was as I had last left it. My jacket—the one I had worn to my birthday party concert at the Wardley O2—was thrown over a chair.
“Lir?” I called.
No response.
“Lirala?”
A noise came from the bathroom.
I crawled out of the big circular bed and stood up. “Anyone there?”
“Just me, sir.” Mr. Jeris, my medical bot, wheeled out of the bathroom. “How are you feeling this morning, sir?”
“Feeling?”
“You indulged quite a bit last night, if I may say so. Even more than usual. However, it was your birthday, so I have been instructed to make allowances.”
“Wait a minute, what day is it?”
“Why, it’s July 2nd.”
“And the year?”
“2358.”
“And we’re in New Torino?”
“Of course, sir.” He wheeled closer. “Why are you asking those questions, Mr. Beck?”
I shook my head. “I’m not really sure.”
“I think it’s best if we run some tests.”
“I don’t want to run tests. Just give me some hydria and I’ll be fine.”
“I’m afraid I will have to insist,” the bot said. “Company orders, after all.”
I knew better than to argue with Mr. Jeris. A BoDyn 9250 was more than capable of overpowering me and administering any test it wanted. But more to the point, the medical bot had been placed with me to monitor my health and well-being by Beck Salvage as part of my employment contract.
I lay back on my bed while Mr. Jeris pressed one of his sensors into the crook of my elbow and another one against my neck.
“Just taking a quick blood sample,” he said.
Fifteen minutes later, after a brain scan, and a dozen other tests, he pronounced me completely healthy, other than some slight dehydration.
I got my hydria and also some B-stim. That and a cup of fresh-brewed Ardovan moxa got me thinking clearly.
But that was the problem. I remembered everything that had happened over the past eleven days—everything except how I got back home, and what actually happened to those eleven days.
Mr. Jeris said it was July 2nd. But I knew it was really July 13th.
Where had those eleven days gone?
I walked out to my balcony overlooking the Arden and just stood there, drinking my moxa and wracking my brain.
After nearly an hour I came up with a few possibilities about what had happened to me.
Number one: it was all a dream—an incredibly elaborate, incredibly detailed dream.
As weird as it sounded, this
