She felt a tingle under her fingers. A quick, sharp vibration emanated from Blip. She glanced down. The companion bot sat unmoving. It was inert.
Neci continued, “Do you want to know the fantasies I’ve had?”
Syn coughed. “No. I don’t. I want you to open these doors and jump to your death.”
“You hate me so much?” Neci still stared out the window. While speaking, she reached over and grabbed Kerwen’s hand and held it. “Do you hate us? All of us? Why?”
Again, underneath her fingertips, the smooth surface of Blip vibrated. She glanced down again, and the sensation stopped.
“Well?” Neci pushed.
Syn grunted. “I don’t want you in my Disc.”
“I dream of a river. I dream of floating down a long, languid river. I dream of running my fingers in the water as the current pulls me along.”
Syn’s head jerked up. How had Neci known about that? She grimaced but stifled the reaction. Couldn’t let them know what she was thinking or feeling.
“I just want to be free,” Neci leaned in, “How can you hate me for that?”
Blip vibrated again. This time, Syn resisted the urge to steal a look. The vibration continued. It was slight, and there was no sound. Only a subtle sensation that Syn could feel. In answer, Syn tapped a finger gently on the side. The vibration paused and then started again. A response.
Blip was alive.
Syn tapped him again, this time with her pinky finger. Blip responded with a vibration localized near her finger. Then it stopped. Blip lay unmoving.
Neci put her fingers against the glass. “I think you hate us because we’re so much like you.” Neci glanced back at Syn. “I hate you, too.”
Syn didn’t want to, but the word was out before she could pull it back. “Why?”
“You were able to keep yourself from all of this. Somehow, you were the one who rolled the dice and came up a winner. Lucky little you.” Neci continued to ramble, her words puttering out like some pent-up spring. Her next words snagged Syn’s attention. “You’ll do it, you know.”
“No. Blip won’t open the door. I won’t open the door.”
“Blip,” Neci walked over and slid a finger along Blip’s surface. “Such a cute name.” Behind her, written on the glass was the word “WATER” in capital letters and rough handwriting. Neci’s strokes were irregular and out of alignment. She didn’t write often. She wasn’t practiced.
Neci caught Syn’s gaze at the word and said, “That’s why you’ll open the gate.”
“No.” Syn’s voice was firm, unwavering. “I’m not going to.”
“You don’t want to go home?”
“I don’t want you over there. We’ll all stay here.”
“What if there’s nowhere else to go?” Neci walked back to the window. “The first explosion was just to prove I can do it.”
“Prove what?”
“That I can and will destroy this place. I killed Zondon Almighty. Our home. I also, hopefully, punched through to the Underworld. To the groves and the body farms below that.” Neci gave a deep, contented sigh and then continued, “The next one is set to go off in an hour or so. It’ll punch through to the shield.”
Again, the term was odd. What shield? The magnetic flows that kept things moving around the ship? Or the ramscoop that catches the stray hydrogen before them. Neither seemed right. But then, Syn knew what she meant. “The water shield?”
Neci leaned in and fogged the window again. With her finger, she wrote FLOOD. “Yes. That’s exactly what I meant.”
The water shield was the final layer underneath everything. The barrier between the life of the Disc and the cold, emptiness of space. On Syn’s Disc, it filtered all of the water that flowed through the river Lokun and into the settlements. More importantly, it provided a critical barrier between the interior of the Disc and the dangers of cosmic radiation bombarding Olorun in its journey.
Taji crossed her arms and smiled. “Nothing to come back to.”
Next to her, Kerwen staggered back in surprise. “What? Why?”
So, Kerwen had not known. Only Taji and Neci. Syn glanced at Pigeon, and the girl was unreadable, but her frozen features were too still. Perhaps she was scared. Perhaps the shock that the moment had arrived and that Neci was going through with her plan might have been overwhelming.
“What choice do I have?” Neci said to Kerwen. “We have to get over there, and she won’t open the gate. When everything is thirty feet under water, then what else can there be to do?”
“You’ll kill everyone else on this side. The bots that survived,” Syn stammered.
“It doesn’t matter. We’ll live. And it’s all up to you.” Neci nodded at Blip, “And little ‘ol Blip there.”
Syn shook her head. “You live here. How can you destroy it all?”
Neci turned and stepped up to Syn, inches from her face. “This isn’t our home. We weren’t meant to live on this stupid ship. We were intended to live on Àpáàdì. Not here. This ship is a prison. This ship is what we’re stuck with because they screwed up. This is Hell. I don’t want to be here. None of this matters.”
Syn had had enough. She yelled back, “This is it. We’re not getting to Àpáàdì! We’re out of fuel.”
“You think I don’t know about that? All we have to do is lighten our load. I’d say about half our weight,” Neci cooed.
“You knew about the fuel?” Syn eyed Neci.
Kerwen interjected herself into the back-and-forth. “What about the fuel? What are you talking about?”
Taji sighed. “Just tell her.”
Syn motioned up toward the needle. “We’re out of fuel. Somehow we burned too much in our speed-up. We don’t have enough for the slow-down. Do you remember the vids? How Captain Pote said we’d make landfall by burning half during the first part and half during the second?”
“The idiots burned it all up!” Neci laughed. “All because they were too scared.”
“You know why they burned it all up?”
Neci whispered, “Mutiny.”
“Stop talking in riddles!” Kerwen balled her fists up.
Neci sighed herself, “Fine. Full story. The idiots got scared and took over. Killed most of the command crew.”
“What idiots?” Syn asked.
“I don’t know which idiots. Some of the colonists. Choose. They were all stupid. Anyway, they decide they don’t want to wait. Someone decides to work out the numbers and tries to speed up their journey by burning up most of the fuel to increase their speed and then using some method of skirting Kapteyn’s Star just on its event horizon to slow down. Everyone believed him. They did it. Then they consulted Olorun. The ship explained they were wrong. The figures were off. Way off. Then they lost it. That was the start of the Madness.”
“Liar!” Kerwen said.
Pigeon gave a sharp, shrill laugh. They all turned to look at her. She was sitting on the ground of the Jacob, her eyes staring at the ceiling. Syn allowed a glance to follow her gaze, but there was nothing there.
“What?” Taji said.
“You frightened Kerwen. She’s scared,” Pigeon said.
Kerwen relaxed her hands, releasing her fists. “I’m not scared. I just don’t understand. That can’t be the answer.”
“It isn’t,” Pigeon said, “Can’t you all tell she’s playing with you?”
Syn tapped Blip. His shell tingled. The sensation moved, and Syn followed it with her finger. She followed just a few inches, but the vibration led her finger to the bottom right of its shell—a location at the peripheral of her vision and blocked by her arm from the other’s sight.
She stole a glance. In the faint blue light, nearly imperceptible had she not been looking directly at it, words flashed: BE READY.