Burya peered at the rabbit. “I’d call it anything it wants. It’s got a gun, hasn’t it?” By noon, the forest had changed beyond recognition. Some strange biological experiment had warped the vegetation. Trees and grass had exchanged leaves, so that now they walked on a field of spiny pine needles, while flat blades waved overhead; the leaves were piebald, black and green, with the glossy black spreading. Most disturbingly of all, the shrubbery seemed to be blurring at the edges, species exchanging phenotypic traits with unnatural promiscuous abandon. “What’s responsible for this?” Burya asked Sister Seventh, during one of their hourly pauses.
The Critic shrugged. “Is nothing. Lysenkoist forestry fringe, recombinant artwork. Beware the Jabberwocky, my son. Are there only Earth native derivations in this biome?”
“You asking me?” Rubenstein snorted. “I’m no gardener.”
“Guesstimation implausible,” Sister Seventh replied archly. “In any event, some fringeworks are recombinant. Non human-centric manipulations of genome. Elegant structures, modified for non-purpose.
This forest is Lamarckian. Nodes exchange phenotype-determinant traits, acquire useful ones.”
“Who determines their usefulness?”
“The Flower Show. Part of the Fringe.”
“What a surprise,” Burya muttered.
At the next stop, he approached the rabbit. “How far?” he demanded.
The lagomorph sniffed at the breeze. “Fifty kilometers? Maybe more?” It looked faintly puzzled, as if the concept of distance was a difficult abstraction.
“You said sixty kilometers this morning,” Burya pointed out, “We’ve come twenty. Are you sure? The militia doesn’t trust you, and if you keep changing your mind, I may not be able to stop them doing something stupid.”
“I’m just a rabbit.” Ears twitched backward, swiveling to either side to listen for threats. “Know where master is, was, attacked by Mimes. Haven’t heard much from him since, you bet. Always know where he is, don’t know how — but can’t tell you how far. Like fucking compass in my head, mate, you understand?“
“How long have you been a rabbit?” asked Rubenstein, an awful suspicion coming to mind.
The rabbit looked puzzled. “I don’t rightly know. I think I once—” He stopped talking. Iron shutters came down, blocking the light behind his eyes. “No more words. Find master. Rescue!”
“Who is your master?” Burya demanded.
“Felix,” said the rabbit.
“Felix … Politovsky?”
“Don’t know. Maybe.” Rabbit twitched his ears right back and bared his teeth. “Don’t want to talk! We there tomorrow. Rescue master. Kill the Mimes.”
Vassily looked down at the stars wheeling beneath his feet. I’m going to die, he thought, swallowing acrid bile.
When he closed his eyes, the nausea went away a little. His head still hurt where he’d thumped it against the wall of the cabin on his way through; everything had blurred for a while, and he’d caught himself floating away on a cloud of pain. Now he had time to reflect, the pain seemed like an ironic joke; corpses didn’t hurt, did they? It told him he was still alive. When it stopped hurting—
He relived the disaster again and again. Sauer checking everybody was suited up. “It’s just a pinhole,” someone said, and it had seemed so plausible — the woman had let some air out of her cabin to trip the decompression interlocks — and then the bright flash of the cutting cord proved him wrong. The howling maelstrom had reached out and yanked the lieutenant and the CPO right out of the ship, into a dark tunnel full of stars. Vassily had tried to catch a door handle, but the clumsy mitten hands of his emergency suit wouldn’t grip. They’d left him tumbling over and over like a spider caught in the whirlpool when a bath plug is pulled.
Stars whirled, cold lights like daggers in the night outside his eyelids. This is it. I’m really going to die.
Not going home again. Not going to arrest the spy. Not going to meet my father and tell him what I really think of him. What will the Citizen think of me?
Vassily opened his eyes. The whirling continued; he must be spinning five or six times a minute. The emergency suit had no thrusters, and its radio had a pathetic range, just a few hundred meters — more than enough for shipboard use, perhaps enough to make a beacon if anyone came looking for him. But nobody had. He was precessing like a gyroscope; every couple of minutes, the ship swam briefly into view, a dark splinter outlined against the diamond dust of the heavens. There’d been no sign of a search party heading his way; just that golden fog of waste water spreading out around the ship, which had been over a kilometer away before he first saw it.
It looked like a toy; an infinitely desirable toy, one he could pin all his hopes of life and love and comradeship and warmth and happiness on — one that hung forever out of reach, dangling in a cold wasteland he couldn’t cross.
He glanced at the crude display mounted on his left wrist, watching the air dial tick down the hours left in his oxygen bottle. There was a dosimeter there, too, and this wasteland was hot, charged particles streaming through it at a rate that might suffice to prevent his mummified corpse decaying.
Vassily shuddered. Bitter frustration seized him: Why couldn’t I do something right? he wondered.
He’d thought he was doing the right thing, enlisting in the Curator’s Office, but when he’d pridefully shown his mother the commission, her face had closed like a shop front, and she’d looked away from him in that odd manner she used when he’d done something wrong but she didn’t want to chastise him for it. He’d thought he was doing the right thing, searching the engineer’s luggage, then the diplomat’s — but look where it had taken him. The ship beneath his shoes was a splinter against the dark, several kilometers away and getting farther out of reach all the time. Even his presence aboard the ship — if he was honest, he’d have done better to stay at home, wait for the ship (and the engineer) to return to New Prague, there to resume his pursuit. Only the news from Rochard’s World, the place of exile, had filled him with a curious excitement. And if he hadn’t wanted to go along, he wouldn’t be here now, spinning in a condemned man’s cell of memories.
He tried to think of happier times, but it was difficult. School? He’d been bullied mercilessly, mocked because of who and what his father was — and was not. Any boy who bore his mother’s name was an object of mockery, but to have a criminal for a father as well, a notorious criminal, made him too easy a target. Eventually he’d pounded one bully’s face into pulp, and been caned for it, and they’d learned to avoid him, but it hadn’t stopped the whispering and sniggering in quiet corners. He’d learned to listen for that, to lie in wait after classes and beat the grins off their faces, but it hadn’t gained him friends.
Basic training? That was a joke. A continuation of school, only with sterner taskmasters. Then police training, and the cadet’s college. Apprenticeship to the Citizen, whom he strived to impress because he admired the stern inspector vastly; a man of blood and iron, unquestionably loyal to the Republic and everything it stood for, a spiritual father whom he’d now managed to disappoint twice.
Vassily yawned. His bladder ached, but he didn’t dare piss — not in this suit of interconnected bubbles.
The thought of drowning was somehow more terrifying than the idea of running out of air. Besides, when the air went — wasn’t this how they executed mutinous spacers, instead of hanging?
A curious horror overtook him, then. His skin crawled; the back of his neck turned damp and cold. I can’t go yet, he thought. It’s not fair! He shuddered. The void seemed to speak to him. Fairness has nothing to do with it. This will happen, and your wishes are meaningless. His eyes stung; he squeezed them tightly shut against the whirling daggers of night and tried to regain control of his breathing.