Bird Girl disagrees. We’ve gone this far. Not to go farther will mean defeat and death.
The last Guru puts up an awful, sad barrage of squeaks and guinea-pig growls, as if intent on making us all feel it’s totally without resources or power. Inside my head, I feel those embedded chunks of suggestion vibrate as if in sympathy. And I’m not the only one.
“Agree with it!” Kumar says, aghast. “It’s the only way!”
This doesn’t convince any of us, least of all Joe. But our Antag counterparts have made up their minds. Bird Girl and her commanders pull the bag and shackles off the Guru. The Guru’s squeaking becomes slower and deeper, like a toy whose batteries are running down. Then it makes a sound like a cat playing fiddle on its own sick guts.
What lies beyond the doors is nighttime black. Neutral. Waiting.
Maybe a little hungry.
“No pain if it is gone,” Ulyanova says so softly she can barely be heard. “If it dies, I become—I think and solve right here. Right now. Kill the Guru. Kill it!”
Kumar shrieks, “No! It wants to die!”
With blinding speed, Bird Girl is handed a bolt weapon by one of her assistants, one of the pair holding the Guru. The commanders try to stop her, but she points it and fires point-blank into the damp, mewling gray bundle. At such short range, the bolt cooks and spatters. Half-baked blood flecks my face. I wipe it away, fascinated beyond disgust.
Then she turns the weapon on the scruffy Antag, their contact, and fires two more bolts into her chest. The unfortunate creature wilts like a spider in a candle flame. Her limbs shrink and curl, her chest caves in—her head wrinkles like a rotten apple.
Then—
She’s gone.
None of us can believe what we’ve just seen.
“She is Keeper mind-fuck,” Bird Girl says. The translator throws her words back verbatim. “Yours is real.”
“You’ve done what the Guru wants!” Kumar shouts, furious. But nobody is listening. Instead, as if hypnotized, we’re locked on to Ulyanova’s face, her sharp eyes, her words.
“We go now!” she sings—and the pieces in my soul combine, spin, helpless—
“See and follow!” Ulyanova cries out.
I’m right behind her, we’re linked by hand, the puzzle gate requires two Gurus, and suddenly, I’m good enough. Ulyanova is strong enough. We click all the tumblers together, melting the little bombs inside me, using all their energy. The nerd part of me just loves puzzles, doesn’t it? And with all that extra, perverse energy—and Ulyanova’s deep connection—
The Gurus are not necessary.
I feel the gate succumb and become very, very simple.
Empty air, really.
Bird Girl says something to her fellows and the Antag commanders grip Borden and Litvinov and violently shove them through the blackness, like shoving swimmers into a pool. The darkness swallows all. That’s it, I’m thinking. Nice knowing you. They’re going to be coughed out as mincemeat.
But the gate doesn’t throw back anything. Again, it remains black, neutral—empty.
“All go, now!” Ulyanova sings again, hand releasing mine and waving like a wagon master’s.
Our leashes are gathered; we’re surrounded by Antags and kicked and shoved into the blackness. Our screaming gets kind of silly, really, like tourists on a roller coaster. I manage not to make much noise as I go through.
I briefly see Borden and Joe…
Kumar! Looking old and baffled.
But where are they? Where am I? Deep cold but no pain. No cutting or dicing.
When I emerge in a shimmering, shadowy space, not that different from the in-between, I’m still thinking and firmly believe I’m me, always my gold standard for feeling alive. Tak and DJ and Joe float limp beside me. Bird Girl is here, too. She’s got a tight grip on the leash that holds Ulyanova. The starshina appears to be asleep.
The Antag commanders come through next, followed by the rest of our Skyrines, and what might be the last of the Antags. I’m astonished, as much as I can be astonished, in this condition, the condition that prevails—numb and cold and alive.
I never thought we would make it this far, or take it this far. I always assumed that somewhere between here and then Ulyanova would spark out, or I would, or the Antags would give up and kill us all. I did not know what to believe or think while passing through. Nor do I know what to think of where we are now. The problem with dealing with Gurus has always been that nothing is what it seems.
I try to look deep. Am I empty of those little instaurations, those buried bombs, all fused and used?
No time to know.
We’re in a big, dark nothing. Okay. Got it. That makes me giggle. Only nothing is what it seems.
We killed all the Gurus we had, didn’t we? And the scruffy Antag, who seems to have been an illusion, a deception, and a damned fine one to last so long.
Where’s the glowing fog coming from? Our eyes are adjusting to a different kind of illumination, a grayish, dead-looking elf-light that surrounds the gate. At least I think it’s the gate. The center is covered. No going back? Or can Ulyanova solve the puzzle whenever she wants?
Is she human now, or Guru?
Can she control what’s in her mind?
Or control me?
DJ takes hold of his section of our leash and pulls himself into view. His face is as thin and pale as an El Greco saint. Tak and Joe are right behind him. Jacobi, Ishida, and Ishikawa are leashed up to Vera and Bilyk. In the back, Litvinov has Kumar by the shoulders. The elf-light seems to glue itself to everything that came through the gate, like plankton in a passing tide. Patches wrap us here and there and we all look like broken ghosts.
Parts of the glow break off as we move and gleam in the dark like flakes of mica in clouded moonlight. I’m reminded of the Spook’s big steel tables and the quantum treatment. More of the same? All Guru tech, we’ve been told. How much more of this before we crumble like dolls made of dust?
But the Antags, and in particular Bird Girl, seem to still have it together, even after they destroyed two Gurus and bolted one of their own. Has this been their plan all along? A double deception right up until the crunch? Do they trust Ulyanova?
I don’t.
They gather our leashes and arrange us like posies in a bouquet. We’re all here, Kumar and Litvinov taking up the rear, and the way the Antags are exercising their wings, I think we’re about to be drafted to the forward parts of this godawful ship. For a time, I almost want to resist—to force them to bolt me, all of us, just to end the suspense.
But that’s not an option.
“Up there,” Bird Girl says, pointing with both wingtip hands into the forward darkness. “We hear searchers. Gurus take them as slaves. It is what we expected. What we have been told. Up there.”
“What the hell is a ‘searcher’?” Joe asks.
“She means the squids,” DJ says. That’s the image she’s feeding us.
PART TWO
PLUTO AND BEYOND
The Antags beat against the thick, cold air. We’re still in pajamas, of course, and now we’re freezing. Antags don’t care. We’ve made it this far, we’ll go the distance. Valley Forge. Battle of the Bulge. Those soldiers had it worse. It was lots colder in those places than here. But we’re still clacking and chattering and shivering. DJ is blue with cold, pale gray in the bad light—and maybe it is bad light, infected light. Who knows what the Gurus could use to punish intruders?