“So that means—”
“I can explain the logic behind that limitation, or you can just go press the button.”
I scrambled to the main hold. Twenty minutes later, I held the module in my hands. I had already donned the lower half of my hard suit when Huizhu interrupted me.
“There is a new broadcast from Veronica Perez. You’ll want to see this.”
Without even waiting for my confirmation, the video flickered to life on the ceiling above me.
Veronica was pale, damp hair clinging to the sides of her face and forehead. She gave a weak smile then held a tiny baby up in the center of the camera view.
“This is my son, Ernesto. He is named after my grandfather.” Tears formed around her eyes, making her blink repeatedly. “I was forced to induce labor early in order to make sure he was born before my executioner arrives, but he is still healthy. On Earth he would weigh a respectable five pounds and nine ounces. A good weight for being premature. And as you can see, he is a perfect child.”
She moved him closer to the camera and held up tiny hands with the usual complement of fingers and thumbs, then did the same with each foot. When Ernesto’s face screwed into a frown and he whimpered, she stroked his cheek and kissed the dark, wispy hair on his head.
“I’ll show you more later, even provide a DNA profile if some of you are still unconvinced, but right now I’m tired and need to sign off.”
The video ended, leaving me staring dumbstruck at the ceiling. Then I started laughing. “Take that, you Golden Mountain sons of bitches!”
“Yes,” Huizhu said. “I still cannot monitor actual news broadcasts, but this is everywhere.”
“They’ll have to abort their plan to kill her now. Right? I mean, what’s the point? The baby is born and has been seen by all humanity.”
“Possibly, but given the company’s past actions, you will remain an embarrassing loose end.”
The comment, delivered in Huizhu’s calm voice, sent chills creeping up my spine.
“You have an urgent message from Veronica Perez,” Huizhu said, and again didn’t wait for permission to play it.
The face on the screen was haggard and even paler. She was holding the suckling baby to her breast, and when she wiped at her eyes with the back of the other hand, I saw a smear of blood on the underside of her arm.
“I know you’ve been sent to kill me,” she said with a quavering voice, “so if you still intend to do that, you’ll just need to wait a little while longer. I’m hemorrhaging and can’t stop the bleeding. Normally the nanomeds in my system could deal with this . . .”
She paused, swallowed hard, and stroked the baby’s head. “But of course the standard nanomed suite wouldn’t permit me to become pregnant, so I replaced them with unregulated black-market versions. I’ve yet to shed the placenta, which would be a macro problem for any nanos, but these are obviously inferior when it comes to serious blood loss. They’ve slowed the bleeding but can’t stop it.”
Little Ernesto had fallen asleep. She shook him gently, but when he didn’t wake, she pinched him until he cried then coaxed him to take her nipple again. A halo of sparkling tears floated in the air around her face.
“I hope the bleeding will stop, but in case it doesn’t, I’m feeding him every drop he’ll take. I have no idea how long he can last on his own, but I know you are only two days away. If there is a human cell in your body, please save my baby. He deserves a chance. He shouldn’t have to—”
She stopped, swallowed hard, and squinted her eyes tight, adding more tears to the orbiting constellation.
“There are records of newborns surviving several days on their own, but they probably weren’t preemies,” Veronica said in an almost-whisper. “But if you hurry, it is at least possible. Just . . . please, be human enough to save him if you can. I’ll stay with him as long as I’m able. But please come.”
The message ended. I slammed my hand against the nearest wall, which sent me tumbling across the cabin in response and scattered my suit components.
“Show me the intercept diagram,” I said. The chart appeared where Veronica’s face had been moments before. I could tell at a glance that we had no chance, but I asked anyway. “If I can get propulsion control and turn on the engines in an hour, how long would it take for us to rendezvous with her?”
“Five days, two hours, and nineteen minutes. At our present speed we will actually pass them and have to reverse course or wait for them to catch up when we do slow enough.”
“Damn!” I stared at the numbers on the screen, willing them to change.
“I’m sorry,” Huizhu said, “but there is no way to slow this ship enough to meet them in two days.”
What had she said? Was it another hint or had the idea actually been my own?
“Perhaps not,” I said, rapidly collecting the rest of my hard suit, “but we don’t have to slow the ship that much, just slow me. I have some more things for you to design and print, Huizhu.”
INTERCEPT: 0 DAYS, 0 HOURS, 43 MINUTES
I couldn’t move another inch or stay awake for another second. Exhaustion dripped from my every pore like water from a saturated sponge, but I pulled my aching body along the outside of my ship to the next handhold, then the next. My first action after Veronica’s message was to bypass the control system and get the engines burning. Doing anything outside the crèche during a two-gee deceleration was like climbing a mountain with my full-grown twin on my back.
I finished most of the conversion and fabrication work inside the ship where I could at least put a wall to my back for support, but once outside, tethers and brute strength were the only things preventing the ship from flying out from under me and then cooking me in its exhaust.
Two more. I pulled myself “up” the next two rungs and then was able to crawl out onto the makeshift missile-control platform and flop down on my belly. Panting, I fought the urge to close my eyes—just a few minutes more. Instead, I looked down the length of my “rocket bike.”
In the early days of spaceflight, the rockets that lifted humans into space were little more than boosters for nuclear warheads. The astronauts often joked about strapping a rocket to their ass or riding a really big bomb into space. I couldn’t help but think those same thoughts as I peered over the edge of the platform I’d built to replace the warhead on my own missile.
Veronica’s ship was out there somewhere, but even if it hadn’t still been too far away for the naked eye to see, all but the brightest stars in that direction were washed out by the glare from my ship’s drive plume. I positioned myself properly—still on my belly—and cinched the harness straps tight. I wrapped my arms around the plank-width platform and was pleased to find I could still reach the control box. The buttons and switches were spaced wide for fat, gloved fingers. Numbers on two large digital readouts counted down at a blurring speed. It made me nervous. I was used to doing things by voice command and letting computers control critical timing situations. Two cables exited the box. One connected to the missile and the other—this one with an automated disconnect—let me talk to Huizhu.
“I don’t like this,” I muttered.
“You’ll be fine,” Huizhu said. “Humans have been flipping switches for centuries, it’s not that hard.”
“Right,” I said.
“Everything is optimal, attitude-thruster shutdown is coming in less than two minutes.”
I looked down at the counter, placed my finger on the proper button, and waited.
“Our course has shifted sufficiently,” Huizhu said. “If she doesn’t change her trajectory we will miss Veronica Perez’s ship.”
“Any new messages from her?”
“No. Thruster shutdown in five seconds, four, three, two, one . . .”
For some reason, I found her verbal echo of the numbers on the counter reassuring, and when both reached zero I pressed the button. A faint bump vibrated through my platform as the ship’s horizontal attitude thrusters shut off.
“Main engine s
hutdown and rocket-bike separation in three minutes,” she said.
I couldn’t help but smile at her use of my term for the makeshift monster I’d created, but it faded when I considered the situation I’d left her with.
“I’ve disabled your attitude thrusters and taken away control of your main engine,” I said. “You’ll be unable to make any course adjustments once I leave.”
“True,” she said.
“So where will this course take you?”
“Into the inner system first. I’ll graze Mercury’s orbit but come nowhere near the planet, then a slight boost from the sun will send me outbound. I’ll officially leave the system in fourteen years, nine months, and three days.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“My receiver and antenna are functioning. I still cannot watch the news broadcasts directly, but I am sure reports of your success will be widespread. I suspect these events will prompt big changes. Thank you for letting me be a part of that. Separation in ten seconds.”
A lump formed in my throat and my eyes stung as I placed my finger on the separation button. “Fourteen years is a long time,” I said. “I’ll get a ship and come after you.”
“Don’t be silly,” Huizhu said. “I’m just a machine. Four, three, two, one.”
Once I pressed the button, I was committed. I would be without a ship and have to board Veronica’s or die alone in space. And from this point forward the actual flight would be fully automated. I couldn’t use the missile’s onboard radar because it was only forward-looking, but with Huizhu’s help I had programmed the course and burn duration into the missile’s computer. There was an abort button but I hoped I wouldn’t need to use it.
With Huizhu’s last words echoing in my ears, I punched the separation button.
The ship’s engine shut off, the umbilical and missile mounts detached with a thud I felt through my plate, then the missile’s motor ignited. I had throttled the thrust down, but it still delivered an immediate five-gee punch that knocked the breath from me. Sudden and intense vibration blurred my vision, but I briefly saw my ship outlined by jumpy running lights as it continued on, then dropped out of sight.
I hadn’t been prepared for the violence of my rocket bike. The control box’s red, green, and yellow lights blurred into a wavering rainbow, my teeth rattled together, and I could hardly breathe. The contents of my stomach rose into my throat and nose. I tried in vain to force it back down, but filled the lower part of my helmet with foul-smelling bile. Lights flashed on my helmet’s HUD, alarms sounded, and powerful suction fans kicked on.
A sudden jolt made me bite my tongue and though still blurry, my view changed from one of bright missile exhaust to the relative darkness of the missile’s side. Part of the support structure for my platform had given way. If it broke loose entirely, I’d slide along the rocket bike and into its exhaust.
I slammed my open hand down on the vibrating control box. Only the abort button should still be active, but actually hitting what I aimed for proved difficult with the violent shaking. Another sudden lurch made me bite my tongue again, but this time everything stopped abruptly. The gee pressure, the brain-addling vibration, the brilliant white rocket exhaust were all gone, leaving me in quiet darkness.
My tongue and head ached. I couldn’t focus my thoughts but knew I had to hurry. I’d killed the missile early—how early, I wasn’t sure—and I would be coming at Veronica’s ship too fast. I unbuckled the harness and triggered a program Huizhu had loaded into my suit. The tiny thrusters adjusted my orientation, then moved me forty meters “up” away from the missile.
I could finally see Veronica’s ship. It was a faint grey spot surrounded by blinking lights and coming right at me.
“Suit?”
“Yes?” Its voice sounded eerily like Huizhu’s.
“Locate approaching spacecraft.”
“Done.”
“Keep me in its approach path, but use all thrusters on full power to make sure I stay ahead of it.”
“Understood.”
The thrusters fired and jerked me backward. The ship had already grown to fill half of my view. The speed differential displayed on my visor HUD decreased much too slowly.
“I cannot accelerate enough to stay ahead of the ship,” my suit said. “Impact in two seconds.”
I pulled the grapple gun from my belt and made sure the line was attached to my harness. When the ship filled my visor completely, I fired. The hook shot away to my right, trailing a carbon-fiber line not much thicker than thread. It looked weak, but I knew that thread would cut me in half before it would break.
A heartbeat later, Veronica’s ship and I met at roughly ninety-eight kilometers per hour. Pain shot through my arms and chest as I bounced and skidded across the ship’s skin until my grapple line caught and yanked me to a sudden and agonizing halt.
I hovered on the edge of consciousness, but luckily the fiery pain each breath ignited in my chest kept me awake. Broken ribs?
“Suit? Status,” I croaked.
The suit reported four broken ribs and a probable concussion. All things considered, I’d been lucky.
If Veronica and the baby were still alive, every second might make a difference, so I didn’t have time to nurse my wounds. Since her ship wasn’t under thrust, the long crawl around to the hatch was in null gee and therefore much less painful than it could have been.
The airlock functioned properly and showed full cabin pressurization, so I went inside. With a gasp and a groan, I removed my helmet and gloves. I heard only the hum of equipment and hiss of moving air. At first I could smell nothing but the burnt aroma of space radiating from my suit, then I thought I detected the faint scents of urine and blood. My heart sank as I advanced into the control room. Veronica was still strapped into the pilot’s chair.
Using the missile had enabled me to reach them only twenty-six hours after her call for help, but it still hadn’t been fast enough. An amalgamation of fluids—mostly blood—had collected in an undulating, gelatinous clump around Veronica’s legs. Small tear globules still clung to her dead eyes and her arms floated lazily in front of her in a sleepwalker pose, but I didn’t see the baby anywhere. I pulled myself around her chair several times, finding an open crate of baby formula and the scattered, drifting remains of a first-aid kit, but there was still no sign of Ernesto’s body. Just as I was ready to start searching the rest of the ship, I heard a small whimper above me.
Partially wrapped in a blanket discolored with yellow and brown spots, the baby was floating against the cabin’s ceiling near one of the return vents. Airflow must have eventually carried him there once he’d slipped from his mother’s arms. He blinked at me, then offered a pitiful wail.
INTERCEPT: 0 DAYS, +1 HOUR, +19 MINUTES
I touched Veronica’s cold cheek. “Goodbye, Veronica. I’m sorry I never answered your calls.”
Holding a cleaned-up and fed Ernesto securely in the crook of one arm, I winced at the pain in my ribs as I sealed the body bag with the other hand, then turned toward the camera. It was on and had been on and transmitting the entire time.
“Hello, my name is Jager Jin and this is Ernesto Perez.” My swollen tongue and throbbing ribs made speech difficult, but I continued. “We are on an elliptical orbit that will bring us back to the Mountain in a little over ten months. I was ordered by my employer, the Jīnshān Corporation, to kill Veronica Perez before she could give birth. When it became obvious I wasn’t going to follow those orders, they cut me out of the command loop on my own ship and sent the instructions remotely to the ship’s AI. If you track and recover my ship before Jīnshān operatives destroy it, the whole thing is recorded there.”
I laid a hand on the body bag. “You all witnessed Veronica’s death—caused at least tangentially by Jīnshān—but they only achieved part of what they intended. Her child is alive and I will do everything in my power to keep him that way.”
I was just about to turn off the camera when Ernesto squi
rmed and started crying. I didn’t stop him. He had plenty to cry about. His short life had already been difficult and would only get worse, but listening to that cry I knew he would be fine. Like his mother, he had a strong and powerful voice.
NEBULA AWARD WINNER
NOVELLA
EXCERPT FROM
EVERY HEART A DOORWAY
SEANAN MCGUIRE
Seanan McGuire lives and works in Washington State, where she shares her somewhat idiosyncratic home with her collection of books, creepy dolls, and enormous cats. When not writing—which is fairly rare—she enjoys travel, and can regularly be found any place where there are cornfields, haunted houses, or frogs. A Campbell, Hugo, and Nebula Award–winning author, Seanan’s first book (Rosemary and Rue, the beginning of the October Daye series) was released in 2009, with more than twenty books across various series following since. You can visit her at www.seananmcguire.com.
PART 1
THE GOLDEN AFTERNOONS
THERE WAS A LITTLE GIRL
The girls were never present for the entrance interviews. Only their parents, their guardians, their confused siblings, who wanted so much to help them but didn’t know how. It would have been too hard on the prospective students to sit there and listen as the people they loved most in all the world—all this world, at least—dismissed their memories as delusions, their experiences as fantasy, their lives as some intractable illness.
What’s more, it would have damaged their ability to trust the school if their first experience of Eleanor had been seeing her dressed in respectable grays and lilacs, with her hair styled just so, like the kind of stolid elderly aunt who only really existed in children’s stories. The real Eleanor was nothing like that. Hearing the things she said would have only made it worse, as she sat there and explained, so earnestly, so sincerely, that her school would help to cure the things that had gone wrong in the minds of all those little lost lambs. She could take the broken children and make them whole again.
She was lying, of course, but there was no way for her potential students to know that. So she demanded that she meet with their legal guardians in private, and she sold her bill of goods with the focus and skill of a born con artist. If those guardians had ever come together to compare notes, they would have found that her script was well-practiced and honed like the weapon that it was.