Of course, it was also possible the suit was just mindlessly carrying out its imperatives, and that it was going to end up poisoning and possibly killing her through some hideous mismatch of chemistry.
Nothing she could do about it either way.
Kira still didn’t feel hungry, not yet. And she didn’t have to relieve herself. So she closed her eyes again and allowed her mind to wander back through the dream, picking out details that seemed important, searching for any hints that might help answer her questions.
“Ando, start audio recording,” she said.
“Recording.”
Speaking slowly, carefully, Kira made a full record of the dream, trying to include every piece of information.
The cradle … The Plaintive Verge … The memories resounded in her like the tone of a far-off gong. But Kira felt the Soft Blade still had more to share with her—that there was a point it was trying to make, a point that had yet to become clear. Maybe if she fell asleep again, it would send her another vision.…
3.
After that, time grew indistinct. It seemed to move both faster and slower. Faster because great swathes of it passed without Kira noticing while she was asleep or in the hazy twilight between slumber and wakefulness. Slower because the hours she was awake were all the same. She listened to the endless cycle of Bach, she contemplated the data she’d gathered on Adra—trying to determine if or how it related to the xeno—and she dwelled in the happier recesses of her memories. And nothing changed, nothing but her breathing and the flow of blood in her veins and the dulled movement of her mind.
She ate little, and the less she ate, the less she felt like doing. A vast calmness settled over her, and her body felt increasingly distant and insubstantial, as if it were a holo projection. The few times she left the pilot’s seat, she found she had neither the will nor the energy to exert herself.
Her stretches of wakefulness grew shorter and shorter, until she spent most of her time drifting in and out of awareness, never quite sure if she had slept or not. Sometimes she received snatches of images from the Soft Blade—impressionistic bursts of color and sound—but the xeno didn’t share with her another memory like the one of the Plaintive Verge.
Once, Kira noticed that the hum of the Markov Drive had ceased. She lifted her head out of the thermal blankets wrapped around her and saw a smattering of stars outside the cockpit windows, and she realized that the shuttle had dropped out of FTL in order to cool down.
When she looked again, some time later, the stars had vanished.
If the shuttle returned to normal space at any other time, she missed it.
As little as she ate, the store of ration packs still continued to dwindle. The dust the suit expelled gathered in a soft bed around her body—molding to her form and cupping it like dense foam—or else drifted away from her in delicate threads toward the intake vents along the ceiling.
And then one day, there were no more ration packs.
She stared at the empty drawer, barely able to process the sight. Then she returned to the pilot’s seat and strapped herself down and took a long, slow breath, the air cold in her throat and lungs. She didn’t know how many days she’d been in the shuttle, and she didn’t know how many days were left. Ando could have told her, but she didn’t want to know.
Either she was going to make it or she wasn’t. Numbers wouldn’t change that. Besides, she was afraid she would lose the strength to continue if he told her. The only way out was through; worrying about the duration of the trip would just make the journey more miserable.
Now came the hard part: no more food. For a moment, she thought of the cryo tubes at the back of the shuttle—and of Orso’s offer—but as before, her mind rebelled against the idea. She would rather starve than resort to eating another person. Maybe her stance would change as she wasted away, but Kira felt certain it wouldn’t.
From a bottle she’d stashed by her head, she took a pill of melatonin, chewed it up, and swallowed. Sleep, more than ever, was her friend. As long as she could sleep, she wouldn’t need to eat. She just hoped she would wake up again.…
Then her mind grew increasingly fuzzy, and she fell into oblivion.
4.
Hunger came, as she knew it would, sharp and grinding, like a clawed monster tearing at her gut. The pain rose and fell, as regular as the tide, and each tide was higher than the last. Her mouth watered, and she bit her lip, thoughts of food tormenting her.
She had expected as much, and she was prepared for worse.
Instead, the hunger stopped.
It stopped and it didn’t return. Her body grew cold, and she felt hollowed out, as if her navel were wedded to her spine.
Thule, she thought, offering up one last prayer to the god of spacers.
And then she slept and woke no more, and she dreamed slow dreams of strange planets with strange skies and of spiral fractals that flowered in forgotten spaces.
And all was silent, and all was dark.
PART TWO. SUBLIMARE
I stood over her on the ladder, a faint snow touching my cheeks, and surveyed her universe.… a world where even a spider refuses to lie down and die if a rope can still be spun on to a star.… Here was something that ought to be passed on to those who will fight our final freezing battle with the void. I thought of setting it down carefully as a message to the future: In the days of the frost seek a minor sun.
—LOREN EISELEY
CHAPTER I. AWAKENING
1.
A muffled boom sounded, loud enough to penetrate even the deepest of sleep.
Then clanks and clatters, followed by a rush of cold and a flare of light, bright and searching. Voices echoed, distant and garbled but discernibly human.
Some small part of Kira’s mind noticed. A primal, instinctual part that drove her toward wakefulness, urging her to open her eyes—open her eyes!—before it was too late.
She struggled to move, but her body refused to respond. She floated inside herself, trapped by her flesh and unable to control it.
Then she felt herself inhale, and sensation flooded back to her. The sounds seemed to double in volume and clarity, as if she’d removed a set of earplugs. Her skin tingled as the suit’s mask crawled back from her face, and she gasped and opened her eyes.
A blinding light swung across her, and she winced.
“Holy shit! She’s alive!” A man’s voice. Young, overeager.
“Don’t touch her. Call the doctor.” A woman’s voice. Flat, calm.
No … not the doctor, Kira thought.
The light stayed focused on her. She tried to cover her eyes, but a foil blanket stopped her hand. It was wrapped tight across her chest and neck. When had she done that?
A woman’s face swam into view, huge and pale, like a cratered moon. “Can you hear me? Who are you? Are you hurt?”
“Wh—” Kira’s vocal cords refused to cooperate. All she could produce was an inarticulate rasp. She struggled to free herself from the foil blanket, but it refused to give. She slumped back, dizzy and exhausted. What … where…?
The silhouette of a man blocked the light for a moment, and she heard him say, with a distinct accent: “Here then, let me see.”
“Aish,” said the woman as she moved aside.
Then fingers, warm, thin fingers, were touching Kira on the arms and sides and around her jaw, and then she was being pulled out of the pilot’s seat.