“Go on,” she said.
“The Rosk that bit you. She’s dead.”
“Yes.” Her tone was matter-of-fact. No remorse, no pride.
Ashby nodded. “That’s what bothers me.”
“That… a Rosk died?”
“No.” He tapped his chest. “This. This feeling in here. That’s what bothers me. I hear that you shot someone, and I’m glad of it. I’m glad that you stopped her before she could hurt you more. I’m glad that she’s dead, because that means you’re still here. What does that say about me? What does it say about me, being relieved that you can do the thing I condemn my own species for?”
Pei looked at him a long time. She pressed close to him. “It means,” she said, her forehead against his, her lithe limbs wrapped around his body, “that you understand more about violence than you think.” She pressed her fingers against his cheek, a touch of worry crossing her face. “And that’s good, considering where you’re headed.”
“We’re not going into a combat zone. The Board says the situation there is perfectly stable.”
“Uh huh,” she said flatly. “I’ve never looked a Toremi in the eye, but they do not sound stable to me. That species was sending our explorers back in pieces before you guys even knew the rest of us were out here. I don’t buy this alliance, and I don’t like the idea of you going out there.”
Ashby laughed. “This coming from you.”
“There’s a difference.”
“Really.”
Her eyes shifted, displeased. “Yes, really. I know which end of a gun to point at someone. You won’t even pick one up.” She exhaled, her cheeks turning a pale orange. “That’s not fair, I’m sorry. All I mean is, I know you. I know you’ve probably thought this out long and hard. But I don’t know the Toremi. I only know what I hear, and—just, please, Ashby, be careful.”
He kissed her forehead. “And now you know how I feel every time you leave.”
“It’s an awful way to feel,” she said with a smirk. “And I wish you didn’t feel it either. But I suppose it’s good, in a way. It means that you care for me as much as I care for you.” She placed his hand on her hip. “I like that.”
They put off room service for another hour.
Day 180, GC Standard 306
THE WANE
Seated safely behind the window in their quarters, Ohan gazed into the black hole. With some effort, they could remember how the galaxy had looked during their Host’s childhood, before infection. Flat. Vacant. Blank. So much of existence was lost to a mind untouched by the Whisperer. Their alien companions had such minds. Ohan pitied them.
Looking only with their eyes, Ohan’s view of the activity taking place along the edges of the black hole’s accretion disk was no different than the way the rest of the crew saw it. A flock of unmanned skimmer drones sailed close as they could safely get to the event horizon, just on the edge of gravity’s embrace. They drifted through the swirling silt, and to the ordinary observer, they would appear to be doing nothing but drawing dust trails with their comb-like arms. But if Ohan looked with their mind, mapped it all out with the right numbers and notions, the space outside became a majestic, violent place. Around the skimmers’ arms, raw energy tumbled and boiled, like a thrashing sea churning up flotsam. Tendrils of the stuff curled up around the combs, arching and writhing as they were coaxed into the collection hoppers. Or so Ohan imagined. They pressed close to the window, in awe of the storm that lay beyond sight. And again, they thought of what their crewmates would see: an empty patch of space, blacker than black, and little skimmers collecting invisible cargo.
How still the universe must look to their eyes, Ohan thought. How silent.
That invisible cargo was what their captain had come to purchase. Ashby was probably haggling over the price of ambi cells at that very moment. Raw ambi—the stuff Ohan envisioned torquing around the skimmer combs—was difficult to gather. Ambi could be found everywhere and in everything, but the way that it wove itself around ordinary matter made extracting it a troublesome task. With the right technology, it could be wrenched apart, but the process was so tedious and reaped such small rewards that it wasn’t worth the effort. It was far easier to gather ambi somewhere where matter was already being ripped apart by forces greater than anything any sapient could build—like a black hole. Black holes were always surrounded by turbulent seas of free-floating ambi, but getting close enough to gather it posed an obvious risk. For ambi traders, the risk was worth it, especially since it allowed them to charge a premium. As expensive as ambi cells were, they were the only thing that could power the Wayfarer’s interspatial bore. It was a necessary expense for a ship such as theirs, but one that always left Ashby looking a little gray afterward. Ohan had read of ships powered entirely by ambi cells, but they had trouble conceiving of a life in which such an extravagance was affordable.
Ohan picked up the razor that lay beside the washbasin near their feet. They clicked a skipping rhythm with their tongue as they trimmed the patterns in their fur. The swirls of fur and clicks of tongue meant nothing to their crewmates, but they meant everything to Ohan. Every pattern represented a cosmological truth, every series of clicks an abstraction of the universe’s underlying mathematics. These were symbols and sounds every Sianat Pair knew. They wore the layers of the universe upon their skin, drummed its beat with their mouths.
A sharp twinge blossomed deep within their wrist, and for a moment, the Pair lost control of their hand. The razor slipped, nicking their skin. Ohan chirped, more out of surprise than pain. They wrapped the fingers of their other hand around the wound, rocking back and forth for a moment as the feeling faded to a quiet burn. Ohan exhaled. They looked down to the cut. Thin blood oozed forth, matting a tiny patch of fur. But the razor had not gone deep. Ohan stood stiffly and walked to the dresser in search of a bandage.
This was the first stage of the Wane: stiffness and muscle spasms. Eventually, the pain would spread to their bones, and their muscles would become increasingly difficult to control. The pain would then disappear completely, but this was a devious mercy, as it indicated that their nerve fibers had begun to die. Death would come afterward, in its own time.
The Wane was an inevitability in a Sianat Pair’s life. Though the Whisperer unlocked the mind of the Host, it also shortened their life. Solitaries—blasphemous Hosts that avoided infection, a crime punished by exile—reportedly could live well over a hundred standards, but no Pair had ever lived to be more than thirty. From time to time, alien doctors would come forward, offering to help cure the Wane, but they were always refused. There could be no chance of a treatment damaging the genetic stability of the Whisperer. The infection was sacred. It could not be tampered with. The Wane was a fair price to pay for enlightenment.
Even so, Ohan was afraid. They could disconnect themself from the fear, but it lingered, like an unpleasant taste in the back of the throat. Fear. Such a throwback emotion, meant to spur primitive lifeforms away from potential predators. Life’s universal constant. Every fear of rejection, of criticism, of failure, of loss—these were all caused by that same archaic survival reflex. Ohan knew that their own fear of death was nothing more than some primitive synapses firing within their Host’s brain, the emotional equivalent of jerking a hand away from a hot surface. When they reached for the higher parts of their mind, they knew that death was nothing to fear. Why should they fear something that came to all lifeforms? In some ways, having reached the Wane was a comfort to Ohan. It meant that they had been successful in avoiding a sudden, premature end.