And I see her opportunity quite clearly. Just a twitch, really. A very small deviation.
“I will help ship finish well,” she says.
Vera shivers.
“I will stay,” Ulyanova says. “To finish my work. Vera…”
“I will stay, too,” Vera says.
“But now, Antag ships are free to go home,” Ulyanova says. “There is nothing for them to return to. So they will die sadly, valiantly. They have honor. Ghosts and brain love tragic homecoming.”
I’m so lost now in useless backtracking that I start asking really dumb questions. “What about the Gurus who died? How does the ship, the brain react to that?”
“Ship can make more Gurus, if there is need. Ship can even replace itself, given warning. But not in sun.” Her smile is maddening. “You heard Antagonista female,” Ulyanova says. “She wants I will die, after I am used.”
I can’t think how Ulyanova heard that. Perhaps the ship ratted us out. Maybe those of us on the tea have no secrets—boring, lost, all our stories nearing their sad ends.
“You think the rest of us want to kill you?” I ask. “Rather than take a risk you’ll fail?”
“Yes,” Ulyanova says. “Would ship make new me, I wonder? Can you see, Vinnie? I dance on edge of knife. We play with brain. Brain plays with us. All to make story. Audiences wait. We might be popular again—as popular as those who fought on ship for years, fought and died. You sent them here, from Earth—and so did we.”
“So did Antagonista,” Vera says. “Many worlds contribute.”
“How did the cage fighters stay awake?” I ask. “Why didn’t they sleep, like us?”
“Many trips. If they not awake, others kill them. So… they adapt. They learn, do not sleep, no matter how long the time, how hard the trip. Like me. If I sleep, ship knows me to my soul… For now, plan is good. Ship is happy to return to Earth, to Mars, to pick up Gurus, then travel far and start new big show.”
Vera’s expression is that of a deeply puzzled child, as if this is finally getting to her. Madness leads. Reason sleeps. And sitting on the knife’s edge, two of our own, willing to do—what?
It seems to me they’ve got it good here. A waking dream of home.
“You help me open gate,” Ulyanova says. She waggles her fingers and the pot with potatoes reappears. “I remove Guru bombs from your head, use them… All but one. There is one more time I will reach out and use it to speak to you. And after that, one more time we will see each other here.”
She carries the pot back to the kitchen.
“Now go,” Vera says, shooing me. “Tell others Queen is tired. Being Guru is difficult.” With a quick backward glance, Vera follows me out the door to the hallway and then through the curtain, into the ribbon space, still dark, empty now—where have the others gone?—but for the drifting shadow of another dead searcher, its arms hacked away, blood drifting in beads and fist-sized green-brown gobs around the blinded ribbons. The blood has formed a wrinkled crust, making the gobs look like big raisins. I wonder how it got here—killed recently, another fight?
But the blood is old. This one has drifted forward, more likely.
Vera inspects the corpse and hmms sad sympathy. Then she takes my arm and spins me around, as if we’re dancing in the dark, between the drops of searcher blood. “I do not know how, or even if, Queen fools ship, brain, ghosts. They make hard time. She never sleeps, not to let them in.”
“But she’s back home—you’re back, too, right? This is the best you’ve had in years. What would you give to keep it this way?”
Vera looks at me as if I am some sort of vermin, a spider, a filthy mouse.
“Do you get out and go for walks on the streets, through the city?” I ask. “Do you live a normal life? Enjoy the weather? Is it all out there, a solid dream?”
I can’t shake the layers of illusion, both the ones behind the curtain and the ones that wrap my own thoughts. Maybe we’re all still caught up in Guru mind shit. Maybe everything is no more or less real than Ulyanova’s apartment, her pot of potatoes.
Is it possible for me, for any of us, to break free of whatever has been ordained by the Gurus or by their great resource, their master, their reservoir—this fucking ship?
“What is that to you?” Vera says, keeping her voice low.
“Do you know it isn’t real?”
“Queen knows,” Vera says tightly. “This life will end soon enough. Now go!”
She shoos me again, then returns to the curtain.
“HOW IS SHE?” Borden asks.
“They seem strung-out but in control, for the time being,” I say.
Kumar joins us at the asterisk. The ribbons are still dark. All we can see is the illumination from a thin coat of searcher skin juice, probably from the beaten and murdered, scattering deep-ocean guidance around our living spaces.
“How long have I been gone?” I ask.
“Hours!” Kumar says.
“Didn’t feel that long.”
“DJ, Sanchez, and Jacobi have gone aft,” Borden says. Makes me feel a little sick, that they didn’t wait. “They should be back any time now. I’ve ordered Tak and Ishida and Ishikawa to keep guard aft of the ribbon space, in case Antags come forward and try to catch us by surprise.”
“Why would they do that?” I ask.
“We’ve already found dead Antags. They might blame us.”
Litvinov returns from going forward, along the nose. “Is nothing but hollow,” he says. “Empty. What about Ulyanova and Verushka? Is still sane?”
I try to describe their situation—the apartment, the warmth, the familiar comforts of home.
“Life of Gurus!” Litvinov says. “Are they in danger from fighters? From criminals?”
“I don’t think so. But both are looking older. There’s definitely a cost. Ulyanova says the Antags are about to be badly disappointed.” I tell them more about the ship’s past journeys, the rearrangements and transfers from far worlds to Sun-Planet. “The Gurus have been planning for some time to get rid of bug influence.”
Kumar listens intently. “We have failed them, I suppose,” he says, still groggy. Nobody’s paying much attention to him, not even Borden. I check him over but there doesn’t seem to be any particular injury—his bruising is light. “I am fine,” he insists, waving me aside. “Do you still connect with Bird Girl?”
“Just more of that baseline signal. They’re alive, they’re busy, they don’t seem to want to interact… and the big male is the core of their efforts. They want to take him home. They all just want to go home.”
“But they do not know the situation?” Kumar asks.
“If what Ulyanova says is true,” Borden says.
“If they don’t,” I say, “they could learn very soon.”
Joe, DJ, and Jacobi return to the ribbon space. All are looking more than a little out of it, as if the scale of what they’ve seen takes time to absorb, and there is no time.
“Ship is changing all the way back,” DJ says, taking a deep breath.
“Fighters?”
“Three dead ones,” DJ says.
“All nonhuman,” Jacobi says.
“Hurray for our side,” Borden says.
“There are dead searchers and a few Antags all along the route we took, trying to follow the spine of the ship,” Joe says. “The cage fighters must have caught them by surprise—like us.”
“You can’t believe what’s going on back there,” DJ says. “There’s a gigantic tree-thing growing down the centerline, between the screw gardens and over the clover lake—branching and fruiting all sorts of mechanical shit, like making apples!”