“Charlie,” Richard said, “I'd prefer you waited the full eleven days. I don't like you risking yourself unnecessarily.”
I don't like risking myself at all, Charlie replied. But we've established there's nothing toxic to earthling life in here. The proteins and sugars even twist the right way. And I've got a belly full of alien nanosurgeons that should be able to handle anything I might get myself into. If I wasn't thinking hard about Persephone and Eve, I'd even consider taking a bite out of one of those things that look like azure figs.
You sound like you're talking yourself into something, Chaz. Leslie needed to walk. It was driving him nuts that he couldn't stuff his hands in his pockets and go for a stroll.
Oh, hell, Charlie answered. He reached through the canopy and grasped an outgrowth of the chamber's glowing wall, strands of light sliding through disarrayed greenery. I've already talked myself into it. What's the worst that could happen?
“At least go back to Jeremy and the base camp—” Richard said, but Charlie shrugged inside his space suit again and pushed himself away from the bulkhead, setting himself adrift.
Jeremy would just get in the way, he said, reasonably. Besides, we figured out how to talk to the birdcages when we got swallowed and chewed up a bit, and Les and I are both fine.
Sure. Psychically linked and chock-full of alien micromachines, and I'm stuck in orbit with a space suit that's being renewed by alien tech the only thing keeping me alive, and I can't feel my body. But just peachy, all in all. Chaz—
Trust me, Leslie, Charlie said, and tripped the latches on his helmet with gauntlet-awkward thumbs.
Leslie held his breath, his hands clutching uselessly on nothing but the fabric of his gauntlets as Charlie lifted the helmet aside, as if he could force Charlie to hold his in sympathy, as if—
Charlie blinked, his eyes immediately scratchy and red, and spoke out loud. “Well, I'm allergic to the flower-analogues. The air smells clean. Green, moist — damn, there's a lot of ‘pollen.'”
Are you sure you don't want to put your hat back on?
“Yeah,” he said. Leslie could feel the sneeze building in the back of Charlie's throat, and to be honest, it did feel just like a snoot full of dust and plant sex. And the air did smell glorious through Charlie's nose, fresh and cool and redolent of sweet strange flowers, gingery and complex. “Huh. I'd strip off the rest of my suit, but I don't want to haul it back. Oh, damn.”
Charlie's head went back, his lungs filled with a breath taken for a deep and violent sneeze—
And he vanished like a blown-out candle, completely and painlessly gone. Leslie reached for Richard, and Richard wasn't there. Dick?
Dick?
Nothing. Richard, can you hear me? Bugger all—
His fists clenched hard, hard enough that the lining of his gauntlets cut his hands. Which was when he realized he could feel them, feel his stomach clenching on nothing, the aching head, weird clarity, and nausea that he knew from past experience was the next step after the sharp pangs of unassuaged hunger.
When Richard fell out of her head, Genie almost sat down on the floor. Her knees went wobbly and she clutched wildly about herself before her left hand connected with the wall. She tottered, but stayed up. It wasn't that she didn't know how to do anything without Richard, really. It was just that she had gotten used to not ever being alone.
She turned, wild-eyed, and yelled for Richard out loud, already knowing she'd get no answer. She raised her eyes, glanced around the monitors, found herself staring at Wainwright. The captain locked her gaze on Genie, standing in front of the chair she'd bolted out of, the hand that wasn't still holding her coffee cup open and turned aside as if she expected at any moment to receive an explanation in the palm of it.
Genie's eyes felt big as softballs, her hair trembling against her cheeks as she shook her head jerkily before Wainwright could ask her question. “Captain.”
“Can you explain to me why the hell”—Genie flinched, and the captain softened her voice—“why I can't get ahold of my AI, please?”
“Oh,” Genie said, wiping sweat from her palms. “Captain, the worldwire is down.”
Wainwright's eyes got as big as Genie's felt. She managed not to drop her coffee cup, but she turned on the ball of her foot and started chipping orders off like bits of a block of ice.
Genie was already moving by the time Captain Wainwright turned around, looking for her. Genie's feet wanted to glue to the floor. She wanted to back into a corner and shake, because the look on Wainwright's face was like the look on Elspeth's face when Elspeth shook her awake and dragged her out of bed in her pajamas, the night Toronto died. The night Leah died.
And Genie not only couldn't feel Richard anymore — she couldn't feel Patty, or Aunt Jenny, or Charlie — or anybody else on the worldwire either. She was all by herself. “Is everything going to be okay?”
“I don't know…” And then the captain sort of paused, and sort of settled into herself, as if she had gotten just a little more solid, a little more real. As if she'd just remembered she was the captain. “Yes,” Wainwright said. “It will. You know what I think you should do?”
Genie shook her head. She would have said something, but she could tell already that her voice would just come out a squeak.
“I think you should go to your father's lab and find him or Elspeth. And tell them I sent you, because he's going to be trying to get hold of Richard, and maybe you can help.”
“Because Papa's not on the worldwire.”
“Right.”
Genie drew one big breath and let it out through her teeth before she nodded. “All right,” she said. “Be careful, okay?”
The captain blinked, and her eyes went dark and soft. “Cross my heart. You, too.”
“I will.” And then she thought of something. “Captain?”
Wainwright had already started turning back to her crew; the look she shot Genie was halfway between that softness and professional ice. “What is it?”
“Did you try calling Charlie or Jeremy on the radio?”
The captain's eyebrow rose. “A fine idea, young lady. Now follow orders. Off the bridge.”
“Yes, ma'am.” Genie turned back around and ran.
It was weird not to have Richard in her head, weird not to be able to reach out to him and have him tell Elspeth and Papa that she was coming. She could have used the intercom, she guessed, but she didn't want to stop that long. And a good thing she decided not to, because the alarm for general quarters sounded when she was one turn and half a passageway from Papa's lab. She leaned forward and sprinted with everything she had.
The pressure doors didn't come down, which was what she'd been scared of, but she still had to lean against the wall beside the hatch to the lab panting before she could get enough breath to grab the wheel. She didn't bother to knock or push the buzzer before she undogged the hatch, just swung it open and called inside, the alarm worrying at her ears.
“Genie!” Elspeth was inside, right by the door. She must have started coming as soon as she saw the wheel turn. She reached out and dragged Genie over the kneeknocker. Genie let Elspeth dog the hatch before asking any questions. Her papa only looked up from his console long enough to flash her a strained smile, and then glanced back down again, fingers flickering through his interface, the red, green, and violet holograms dying his skin. “Where's Boris?” Elspeth asked.