"First pulse," Khym said against her ear, all indistinct. "Right. Got it."
"Got to-"
-down.
-the wide dark again.
She struggled to remember her own name. It was important to recall. She lay with an alien snuggled tight against her, his strange smooth hand holding hers ever so loosely. He had drugged himself before this, and lay helpless, as his kind had to be, in order to face the deep.
Chur, the name was. She stayed, tied by that loose grip on her essence. She could not have left him alone.
Left my son. Lost him. Never find him again, never know.
Not leave my friend out here helpless. No.
She was aware. It was not normal to be this hyper-stretched. She knew this. She had time, in this long waking of subjective days, to sort through things, not in the waking dream of time-stretch, the dim haze with which minds got through the deep, slower than bodies, but wide-awake in the twisting dark. She stretched out like the ship, and ran calculations in her head with one part of her brain, and kept the tether of that strange, fine-boned hand.
Not leave him. She thought of Tully and remembered why they were here, remembered aliens, and the ship, and the Situation, Situation, the captain would call it. She forgot about time with Geran, Geran being forever, like the stars and the movement of the worlds. But Tully came from elsewhere; was more lost than she was. Tully had period and limit. There was a time when she had not known him. There was never a time but this that she had lain so close to him. She tried to tell Geran this, explaining why she wanted Tully to stay. "Get out," it came out of her mouth. Not the way she had meant it, but speaking with her mind that full was a surreal experience. Calculations. Numbers. One could spill out too much. "Gods rot it, get. Go. I don't want you here. Him. He's enough. You got work, Gery. Get to it. You want to kill us at those boards?"
I'm sorry.
She wiped that scene. Built another. She sat in bed, propped with pillows.
"We got troubles," she said, which was what she had meant to say. "Gery, I want my place back."
"You'll get it," Geran said, gently (she knew Geran would say exactly that thing, knew the precise cant of the ears, the pained look, the soft, quiet tone). "Come on now. We got relief aboard. Tauran. I told you that. You want to go to the galley, have a sit? Something to drink?''
"All right," she said; and let herself be led there, slowly. Seated, in familiar surroundings. Tully was there. He came and laid his hand on her arm.
'' You scare me,'' he said.
"I'm sorry," she said. (Back in bed a moment. Tully lying there asleep, drugged senseless. Pretty mane he had. Prettiest thing about him. The gods could have fur like that, all sunlight. She scared him sometimes. But he snugged down against her: maybe she kept him warm. Friend, he had said just as he was going out. A little pat of his hand on her shoulder, a smoothing of her fur. Friend.)
They were all there, all the crew, at the galley table, which made no sense with things as they were, at risk. Only the captain was missing. And the kif. Someone put a cup in her hands. Geran shaped her hands around it and nudged them, helped her carry it to her mouth. It was hard to get back again. Hard. She was aware of heat in the liquid. It tasted of nothing at all. It was hard to focus small enough, to adjust her ears to hear the noise of their speech, to concentrate her mind to sort this kind of detail and not raw calculations of the sort she had been running.
She blinked at movement, at the captain's voice. Pyanfar had shown up, sitting between Haral and Tirun. Khym was meddling about in the cabinets, on galley duty again.
". . . I'm not easy about this," Pyanfar said. "Some reason, I'm just not real easy about this next jump. We're going into it close to Anuurn as we can. I don't know what we're into. But it's been too quiet, all along the way. Kura had no time to get us a message. I wish we'd come closer to the station."
Chur blinked. Blinked and found Jik there, when she had remembered only dimly why he was there at all. Their little galley table held more places than usual. Space folded itself. A lot of things fit.
"Push them out of the system," Chur said then. "That's what we have to do. Cut them to ribbons on first encounter. The han knows they're coming. The mahendo'sat have told them. Haven't you, Jik?"
"A," the mahendo'sat said, and shrugged.
"There was Banny Ayhar. Ayhar went on to Maing Tol. You gave them a message, Jik, when they shot me at Kshshti. I've figured their course home. That's where they'd have gone. Nothing would stop them. Not with what they knew. Not with what you gave them to carry. Isn't that so, Jik?"
"Good guess," Jik said, in better hani than he usually spoke. He leaned his elbows on the table. "Bad luck at Kshshti dock. How you know 'bout Maing Tol?"
''I told her,'' Geran said. ' 'Told her the message was all right. Gods, she got a hole in her gut defending it, you think I wouldn't tell her that? It was important, after all."
"Better be. I got a hole in my gut to prove it. You think I'm going to lose track of something like that? Banny Ayhar went on to Maing Tol and I know she went with something of yours. I know what I'd have done in Banny Ayhar's place. I'd have gotten out of there fast. I'd have run for home the safest, shortest way. And the Personage at Maing Tol would have a thing to say to the han about then, wouldn't he, knowing he had to arrest that whole crew or let them go. Let them go with a message. Let them go with a whole mahen company to see them home."
"I'm not at controls," Pyanfar said. "I've been thinking about something like that. I've hoped it was so. But this isn't my shift. Not my watch."
"I told you that," Geran said.
"Hey, you think I don't keep track of things? I'm better than that. I know where I am. I've known all this time. You think it's easy running calc in your head? I know where every ship could be. And how long. I know their mass and their cap. I know what their drop time is. I got gray hairs in this game. I know our competition, don't I? Not competition this time. Our help. All the help we got. Trust me, captain. I got it figured for you."
''Not my watch,'' Pyanfar said again.
And left the table. Was gone.
So did others. "I'm sorry," Jik said. "I'm not here."
Then she was alone with the crew again. Khym left. Then she did.
There was deathly quiet. Tully was anchor, in a long dark sea.
She reached out and carefully, in motion that took the better part of a day, perhaps, in timestretch, disconnected herself.
. . . down again. . . . gravity slope.
It was hard to move at all. But Chur did that, levered herself to the side of the bed and remembered-she could have forgotten nothing-to put the safety back. For Tully's sake.
Longer still down the corridor, which reeled and snaked and kept going into the lighted bridge. Perhaps it took a day to walk it. Dark things skittered and moved, ran like black, rapid serpents in the corridors.