Now all LizAlec needed was some skin. Not a full balloon suit or even a half-balloon, just some basic skin, the white spider’s-silk kind.
“Pressure skin,” LizAlec demanded and waited while the bioAI weighed up her request. It could find no obvious reason to give her one, but then there seemed no obvious reason to refuse. The skin arrived in a vacuum-sealed foil package, etched with NASA’s hologram and a shiny Tampertell copyright strap. No cheap Korean copies for the Brotherhood.
LizAlec stripped. Not easy in zero G wearing wrong-size ReeGravs, but she managed it, albeit somewhat clumsily. After peeling the cotton smock off over her head, LizAlec lobbed the garment into the air for the pleasure of watching its material balloon out and swirl like a jellyfish. The croptop Jude had thrust at her just over a week before had rotted under the arms with sweat and LizAlec tried not to imagine what she smelt like to others, not that Lars would have noticed. Even the goats smelt cleaner than he did.
Her knickers were vending-machine disposables and went the way of her croptop, into a waste tube. She didn’t bother trying to take them off her over ReeGravs, just ripped them apart at the side seams.
To put on her second skin, LizAlec needed to take one foot out of her boot, push her foot hard into the tight elastic skin and get her foot back into the ReeGrav, all without overbalancing in zero G. Somehow, LizAlec didn’t see how she was going to do it.
“Hold yourself to the floor,” said a voice.
LizAlec jumped, tried to cover herself and then remembered the voice was in her head. Alex couldn’t really see her and even if he could, he was only a neural construct, nothing more.
“Good,” said Alex. “You’re getting a grip on it.”
Yeah, thought LizAlec... For a killer standing naked in a ring colony’s vast glass-walled cathedral talking to the ghost of her father, she was doing brilliantly. It was just a shame Lady Clare wasn’t there to be impressed.
Hold yourself to the floor.
LizAlec tried and failed, miserably. Every time she moved her unweighted leg, it tried floating upwards until she was almost tipped on her side. “It’s impossible,” said LizAlec, “you can’t defeat zero gravity, it’s basic...”
“You reckon?”
LizAlec nodded. Yes, she did reckon.
“Throw that boot across the room,” said Alex.
LizAlec bent to pick up her spare ReeGrav and heard Alex sigh.
“Without touching it,” he insisted, sounding just like Lady Clare at her most patronizing.
Fucking terrific, now she had two of them on her case. Furiously, LizAlec catapulted the heavy boot across the cathedral and was watching it bounce off a grey steel pillar before she even realized what she’d just done.
Shit. She stopped the boot dead so it just hung there.
“Now,” said Alex, “instead of flinging your shoe across the room, throw yourself at the floor, gently.”
LizAlec did and found she was standing steady, her bare unbooted foot planted firmly on the marble tiles. It wasn’t gravity, not really, but it was a good imitation. All it took was, was what...?
“The intelligence not to stand around naked looking for logic.” Alex sounded amused.
“Yeah, right.” LizAlec rolled on the first piece of skin, feeling the spider’s silk tighten up her legs and over her stomach as molecular chains bound themselves around areas of potential stress. The suit fitted neatly up over her breasts and finished under her arms, sealing itself to her skin. The second piece went over her shoulders and down to her wrists, leaving LizAlec to thrust her fingers into gloves and roll them up until they sealed themselves tight.
All that was left was a two-part, full-head face mask, but there was no way LizAlec was going to use both bits, though she knew she should. She’d already suffocated once that morning. The thought of smart silk tightening over her mouth was more than LizAlec could handle. Stupid or not, some prices were too high to pay. In the end, LizAlec compromised with herself by struggling into the balaclava section without first fitting the underlag that sealed off nostrils and eyes.
She was done.
“Computer...”
The screen lit to show the bioAI was listening.
“The dome’s about to blow out.”
Diodes flared all along the eagle’s wing as the system ran emergency checks and came up with nothing. The bioAI was about to explain to LizAlec that she was in error, when LizAlec strode into the middle of the transept, stood below the pulpit and spread her arms.
Strung between metal pillars, the glass walls rose all around her and hung overhead in the ceiling vault of the vast cathedral. What they were built from was marketed as SlowGlass, but was really a radiation-resistant polymer designed to play back on one side anything it saw on the other. But LizAlec didn’t know that — at least not consciously — and what she saw was so close to what there was outside it made no difference.
Besides, she was too busy concentrating.
Closing her violet eyes, LizAlec felt the crystal walls as sound, echo-locating her new senses against each constricting wall, feeling the walls hold solid as she pushed her mind against them. The cathedral was built to retain pressure far greater than the single atmosphere it now contained. Ribs of titanium alloy ran outside the glass walls, like fluid Art Nouveau pillars, as if Gaudi had started designing in liquid metal. Except the elegant metal tracery didn’t hold the cathedral up, it held it in, safely containing the glass walls.
“Just do it,” said the voice of Alex. “Don’t think about it. Do it...”
Reaching up to grip the rings to which she’d been bound only half an hour before, LizAlec did, punching out a harmonic so high that even she couldn’t hear it, throwing the notes in all directions, feeling the internal lattice of the crystal walls scream under the vibration until cracks appeared and molecular bonds broke.
Vast sections of wall spun like oversized shrapnel into the void, almost taking LizAlec with them. All the warmth, all the air, everything that made space briefly human went in a single gulp as void and vacuum ripped out pews and prayer books, pulled the lectern from the floor. Banners, the simple altar, a fish tank, Brother Michael’s metal chair, everything exploded away into space as the void tried and failed to pull LizAlec after them. Her shoulders burnt with agony as she clung to the rings. Sheer will power held her feet to the floor.
“Welcome to insanity,” said the voice in her head. “You’ll find it runs in the family.”
Bitter cold ripped warmth from LizAlec’s body, a cold so absolute it was almost literally beyond her imagining. Breath was dragged from her lungs, her chest tightened in agony. LizAlec could feel Death waiting.
So she let go. Of the rings that held her to the pulpit, of her identity, of her mind.
For a second, as the dying wind pulled at her body, LizAlec thought she was about to join the vanishing detritus; but even as she was pulled off her feet, the pulpit cracked open and metal tentacles caught LizAlec and dragged her towards an opening pod.
Nine seconds from grab to go was the safety margin LockMart allowed, but the pod had her bundled into a chair and was sealing itself within two. By the time LizAlec’s pod had cleared the shattered cathedral, another pod was already in position, rising from the floor. But there was no one else to rescue so it remained resolutely shut.
“Heat,” LizAlec told herself. That was what the sensors keyed i iv on, body heat. Set against the cold black of the vacuum she must have burned in their vision like a flame. All the same, she’d have liked to see how The Arc’s AI was going to assimilate that little episode to its learning curve. She was still wondering about it when the little metal spiders came and began cutting away the spider’s skin covering most of her face.