6

Losses, Gains, Reload and Aim

From where Strider was sitting she could see the disc of Qitanefermeartha. She felt as if the planet should show some sign of the premeditated act of mass murder she had perpetrated upon it. Necessary murder, perhaps, but it seemed to her like murder nevertheless.

She shifted in her seat. Once they were safe at the pole—although two people had failed to make it—Segrill had communicated with his Bredai allies, and within the hour a Bredai shuttle had arrived to lift them off-planet: it had been about the size of the Santa Maria. By that time five of the humans had died of asphyxiation, and several others had required urgent treatment. Fortunately the air aboard both the shuttle and the mother ship to which they were boosted approximated to F-14's atmosphere, so with luck it didn't contain anything toxic. Even so, everyone was now following Polyaggle's example and as a precaution refusing to eat anything but textured vegetable protein; there was anyway little temptation to eat whatever it was that the vast, clumsy-seeming Bredai enthusiastically consumed in room-sized quantities.

There had been so many losses, mused Strider, aside from among her own personnel. The Helgiolath fleet had been reduced by over one-half, Kortland himself seemingly being among the casualties. Several of Segrill's fighters had simply vanished: just because the Trok were small didn't mean that their personal griefs were small. A few of Qitanefermeartha's defenders had fled into the wilds of The Wondervale, but the remainder had been destroyed in their entirety. The Autarchy had lost its Autarch, and its capital.

Everybody had lost something, it seemed.

She was annoyed with herself that only one loss seemed to count very much to her.

Pinocchio.

Lover, trusted friend, confidant, advisor. The person to whom she could confess her most intimate secrets, her most neurotic worries. The one member of her personnel whom she hadn't had to be captain of. The rock to which, in times of need, she could cling.

Bredai decontamination had made the Spindrifter version look positively subtle. Not only was Strider entirely hairless, she felt as if every follicle had been individually scoured out, and none too gently. The Bredai didn't have too much use for fabric, and so like everyone else she was naked—Umbel knew what they were going to do next time they needed to suit up. It was curiously reassuring that her physical nakedness matched her nakedness of spirit.

Pinocchio.

Which idiot back at the SSIA had thought to give the bot such an infantile, patronizing name? Again and again Pinocchio had proved himself to be at least the equal and usually the superior of the humans around him. She wished whoever it had been were in front of her, so that she could . . .

And then, as her blood cooled, she thought about the name a little further.

No, after all, the name had been perfectly apposite.

Odd how long it had taken her to realize that fact.

#

Danny O'Sondheim, leaning into the Pocket, felt as if the wormhole were actively pulling at him. He realized there was sweat on his forehead, but resisted the urge to wipe it away: to do so he would have had to pass his hand through the small green knot that the Images had created for him in the center of the Pocket.

Dammit, but he missed the presence of Strider. Dammit, but at the same time he was glad she was gone: the Santa Maria was his. People didn't enlist in the SSIA to become seconds-in-command.

There was a strange taste in his mouth. He at last identified it as lime. That was the taste of the wormhole.

He pressed the button that the graphic display told him to press so that the tachyonic drive would cut in. He found himself grinning just before he pressed it. The drive itself was going to revolutionize humanity's physics. The ride back through the wormhole was going to be an exhilaration.

In point of fact, O'Sondheim first realized the Santa Maria had entered the wormhole when he found himself staring into a blackly cavernous maw, framed above and below by arrays of mauve and seemingly very sharp teeth. That the upper and lower jaws were currently several hundred kilometers apart did not reassure him at all.

It's all just an illusion, was his first thought. Oh shit, was his second.

#

Quite a lot had been gained, thought Lan Yi as he stroked the skin of his forearm, amazed yet again by its silky smoothness. Although the experience of decontamination itself had been unpleasant, he was captivated by the various sensations of its after-effects.

The destruction of the Autarch and of Qitanefermeartha was a first step towards, he hoped, The Wondervale's gaining some form of freedom as it struggled out from under the tyrant's boot. Of course, there would be another Autarch soon—as soon as various competing would-be heirs battled out the succession, wiping out a few worlds and species along the way. But the early days of a new tyranny are the time when it is at its most vulnerable: there was hope.

Alliances, too, were gains.

There was the alliance now of the humans with the Trok and the Bredai and the various other species who had thrown off the thraldom to which they had been subjected on F-14. The Helgiolath, the Onurg of the Pridehouse had explained, were not necessarily to be trusted for ever, but perhaps they could be trusted for now. And then there was the forthcoming alliance with the ancient species, something which Lan Yi eagerly anticipated. He still wanted to study Polyaggle, to find out how such a highly sophisticated colonial organism—if that was what she was—could have evolved. The prospect of discovering other, equally strange species stirred more than just his intellect. He was honest enough with himself to recognize that there was an emotional charge there as well. The appeal of scientific research can be described as the satisfaction of human inquisitiveness—which is a long phrase meaning "the thrill."

And there had also been a personal gain.

Lan Yi walked across the floor of the sparsely furnished common-room the Bredai had created for the humans and took Strauss-Giolitto's hand. She reached her head down towards him and they pecked each other chastely on the cheek. At some time or another as they'd separately careened over the barren plains of Qitanefermeartha they'd individually realized quite how much they meant to each other. Older brother, younger sister; big sister, little brother.

There were tears in Strauss-Giolitto's eyes.

"Shit," she said, "but I've been thinking about that damn' bot again."

#

It was several subjective days later when Strider felt the nudge of an Image into her mind. The probe seemed slightly clumsy and nervous, as if this were some kind of tyro. Was there such a thing as a newborn Image? She had come to the assumption that the beings were immortals.

LEONIE, said an unpracticed voice.

Pinocchio's voice.