Leslie already had that half-assed comparison of the birdcage to some sort of sacred site stuck in his mind when he and Charlie soared through the bars, leaving the rest of the EVA team behind. His cliché generator was ready with images of cathedrals and wild, holy places he'd seen, temples and ziggurats and the hush of mysticism, some animal part of his mind ready to be awed by the angle of sunlight through the bars of the cage.
He couldn't have been more wrong.
The interior of the birdcage hummed with energy, a feeling like a racetrack on Stakes day or a ship's bridge anticipating the order to fire. Electricity prickled the hairs on his arms, and for a moment he thought it was an actual static charge. He turned to see if Charlie's suit glowed blue with Saint Elmo's fire.
Charlie had half-rotated toward Leslie, a fat white doll with a golden face, and their eyes met through the tint as if through mist. “You feel that.”
“I feel something,” Leslie answered. “Like I stuck my finger in a light socket.”
“Dr. Tjakamarra?” Lieutenant Peterson's voice over the suit radio, and Leslie lifted his hand to show he was all right, waved, and continued forward.
“Something's happening,” Charlie said. “Jen, Jeremy? Do you detect any changes out there?”
“Nothing to speak of,” Jeremy answered. “What sort of change am I looking for?”
“It feels like we've entered some sort of an energy field,” Charlie said. Leslie tuned him out, listening to the conversation with only half an ear. “Check for anything in the electromagnetic spectrum. Any kind of leakage.”
A silence. Leslie drifted incrementally forward, edging into the interior of the birdcage the same way he'd edge into a strange horse's paddock — slowly, calmly, but as if he had every right in the world, or out of it, to be there. The teardrop-shaped Benefactors glided soundlessly from bar to bar, some of them passing within tens of meters, and still seemed to take no notice. The prickling on his skin intensified. He glanced about, at the cage, the obliviously moving aliens, at the slick sheen of mercury-like substance that covered the armature of the birdcage. It was visually identical to the substance of the enormous droplet-shaped aliens, and, in fact, when they touched down on one of the beams, they became indistinguishable from it. They slid along the structure like droplets of water along the wires of a wet birdcage, and passed over and through each other like waves, whether they met moving about the armature or sailing through the space inside.
“Nothing's leaking out this way,” Jeremy said. “I can't answer for what's going on inside the birdcage, though. The whole thing could be a sort of—”
“Massive Faraday cage?”
“Or something, yes.”
“Leslie? Charlie?” Jen Casey's voice. She sounded worried; Leslie wondered if someone might be waving at Charlie and himself from their entrance point, but he wasn't about to turn around and look. Leslie craned his head back, trying to get a look directly “up,” toward the top of the armature.
“I hear you, Jen.” Charlie sounded a little odd, too, which wasn't surprising, if his skin was responding to the same storm-prickle Leslie felt. “What's wrong?”
“Richard says the nanite chatter is increasing. I think maybe you should come back.”
They turned to each other again, Leslie and Charlie, and Leslie saw the question in Charlie's eyes. Leslie's hands spread reflexively inside his gauntlets as another shiver slithered up his back.
“We've already made history,” Charlie said.
“And so what if we have? We haven't learned anything yet.”
The flash of Charlie's teeth showed through the tint in his faceplate. “Jen,” he said, “we're going to head out to the middle of this thing at least—”
“Charlie, that's another klick. Maybe a klick and a half.”
“Nothing ventured,” Leslie said, and gave Charlie a thumbs-up before he kicked his maneuvering jets on. “Jen, remind me on the way back out—”
“If you get back out,” she interrupted, but he heard grudging approval in her tone.
“Hey, this is your harebrained scheme, sweetheart.”
She laughed. “All right, Les. Remind you what?”
“Remind me to get a sample of the fluid on the birdcage when we pass by it again, would you? Maybe have Corporal Letourneau run back to the Buffy Sainte-Marie and pick up some sort of sterile containment vessel?” He turned, watching another raindrop slide along another wire. He had to remind himself that the scale was skyscraper beams and elephants at a kilometer or better, and not spiderwebs wet with dew that he could reach out and brush away with his gauntleted hand.
“We had a probe try that, remember? Hydrogen and nanites.”
“Oh, right.” He rolled his eyes at his own obtuseness.
A pause, as if Jenny discussed the problem of samples with Letourneau over local channels, and then the crackle of her voice. “We'll try a magnetic bottle this time; maybe it'll make a difference. Hey guys, are you noticing a lot of static on this channel all of a sudden?”
“I'm noticing more lightning-storm skin prickles, too,” Charlie said. “I wonder if it's true that you can feel lightning ionizing a path before it hits you.”
“Doctors.” The lieutenant again. “I really think the Benefactor activity is picking up. I would feel much better if you two came back—”
And then Jenny's voice, sharp with fear, urgent and clipped. “Putain! Charlie, move. That thing's coming right at you!”
Leslie's head snapped up, not that it helped him in the slightest. He turned in the suit, faster than the gyros could handle, and reached for Charlie's arm. His grab failed; instead, he sent himself tumbling, and slapped hard at the autostabilize button on his chest, hoping the suit's gyroscopes would suffice to level him out. Spread out. Make yourself broad and flat. Don't scrunch up; it will just make you spin faster—
It was working. He tried to catch a glimpse of Charlie and could only see rippling silver, one of the teardrop aliens, close enough that its fluid side towered like a battleship overhead. Whatever Casey shouted dissolved into the deafening crackle of static. Ionization prickled over his skin, sharp enough to sting.
He closed his eyes so he wouldn't struggle against the suit in panic or by reflex, spread-eagled himself against the void, and allowed his inertial systems to bring him safely to rest. He couldn't hear anything but static over the radio, and then even the static cut off, leaving him in silence. But at least he hadn't bounced off the birdcage's superstructure. Yet. And he thought he had stopped tumbling.
Cautiously, Leslie opened his eyes.
And a bloody good thing, too, because there was Charlie, not too far off, spread-eagled just as Leslie was and coming toward him much too fast and on a direct collision course. Leslie raised his hand, reached for the other emergency switch — the get-me-the-hell-out-of-here one — and froze as the other spacesuited figure echoed the gesture precisely.
Oh, bloody hell.
His own reflection, in the side of a bubble of liquid silver, broke over him with the force of a ten-foot wave.
Tobias Hardy probably had two hundred different fifteen-thousand-dollar suits, and Constance Riel hated every single goddamned one of them. She hated the way he had them tailored to make his shoulders look broader, and she hated the complicated manner in which somebody was paid to fold the handkerchief that always matched his tie.
If he had an image consultant, the man should be fired.
Unfortunately, unlike Riel's ability to keep her job, Hardy's ability to keep his wasn't dictated by any arcane metric of approachability multiplied by sober respectability and personal charisma. Which was a pity; the world might be a nicer place if “corporate raider” were a popularity contest.