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adverse_camber “…You’re very crackly, there, Celerity. I hope the environment isn’t too hostile.”
“Magnetosphere.” Sitting in the co-pilot’s chair in their little vessel so she could talk to her partner, the big femme glanced at the monitoring screen and gave it a tap, glumly. “Or at least, that’s what this readout is telling me. Environment planetside’s fine.”
Dack chuckled, a little more relaxed. “Yes, and Star’s nodding in the background, like he has the faintest idea what we’re talking about,” he supplied, dryly; a flicker of indignant noises were just audible in the background. “At least that’s something that’s not changed much, he says the previous survey team noted periodic storms in the upper atmosphere, so we’ll just have to bear that in mind if we can’t always get through to each other. At least you got there safely. Any ideas where your target might be?”
“None yet. We tracked him until he went into a landing cycle, then we lost him.”
“ Magnetosphere again?”
“Probably. Or gravity, or solar wind, or… I don’t know, I just know he vanished off our scans. You know I’m not the most sciency of people, I don’t know what disrupts interstellar particulate flow. I guess it must be something like that.”
Not being able to see her face didn’t mean he wasn’t observant; he obviously heard something in her voice that worried him. “…Is everything all right, Lara?”
She stared down at the console for a moment or two. “…not really.” She propped her forehead against her hands, elbows braced on the controls, and just stared down at the little speaker in the communications terminal.
“… Seem?” he intuited.
She nodded. “I’ve been arguing with him again,” she explained, quietly. “More since we landed. And it was probably my fault, again. Yelled at him for no good reason.”
“ Now that I doubt very much. I’ve seen you yell without reason about the same number of times as I have fingers on one hand.”
She chuckled, painfully. “He didn’t want a bath. How is that a good reason to lose my temper with him?”
There was a long silence at the other end of the line, and when he finally spoke again, his voice was soft. “You just spent thirty seven rotations cooped up together in a little metal box,” he said, softly. “It doesn’t surprise me that he might have made you cross, if you were talking… about as much as Seem usually talks about what’s on his mind.”
Celerity knew that meant ‘trying to pretend it didn’t happen so we didn’t have to talk about it.’ “I’m beginning to think we’re never going to patch things over,” she husked, softly. “Especially since he won’t let me apologise to him.”
Her voice must have wobbled again, because there was a rustle in the background, and a clunk, as of a door closing. “Talk to me, Lara. We’re in private. It won’t go past this room.”
“No.” She shook her head, tiredly. “I won’t tattle on him-”
“ You’re not tattling, you’re discussing a youngling with your partner. Please. At least give me the chance to try and help you,” he cajoled, gently. “I know Seem isn’t the easiest to handle – he’s prickly at the best of times, and an opinionated little glitch even when he’s in a good mood. Just talk to me. You never know, I might be able to advise you a little.”
“How? He won’t even let me talk about it,” she explained, feeling her voice beginning to edge into discordance. “All I want to do is say I’m sorry. I want to say I’m sorry, because it was a stupid error of judgement, and every day I chew myself up inside with what might happen, what might have happened, and he won’t even talk to me about it.” She struggled to keep the static out of her voice. “He just makes a, a stupid little sarcastic noise, and dismisses it. Makes me feel like I’m just an oversized, slow, slovenly burden. I know he doesn’t want me here, he’s only tolerating me because you made him have someone come along to help him.”
The words were getting hard to push out in any coherent form; she was resisting the need to cry, even though it had been building up inside her ever since they departed. “I’m only here for Footloose; I’m not here for him any more. If it was anyone else…” She closed her eyes, feeling all constricted, deep in her chest. “I want to come home,” she admitted. “Some big ugly part of me wants to say forget it. You’re on your own, you ungrateful little wretch, I’m going home.” Static pulsed through her vocaliser before she could claw it back; her words came out more like sobs. “But him and Lucy have been like my own sparklings for so long, Dack, and even if he is a brat I love him. I just I-I don’t know what to do. I just wish he’d talk to me!”
He was quiet for several very long moments, and she was beginning to think she’d hurt his feelings, insulting his nephew like that, when he finally spoke. “I don’t know what I can say to you apart from sorry, on his behalf,” he said, quietly. “Because that’s not how we brought him up. Certainly not to be so rude.”
She sniffled quietly, still resting her head between her hands. “I just want to be able to talk to him. Ask him how I can… can try and fix this,” she creaked.
“ First of all, I’d say he doesn’t want to have to talk to you because he doesn’t want to think about what happened,” Dack counselled, gently. “Partly also because that’s just how he is; his feelings are his feelings, and no-one else’s, so no-one else gets to hear about them.” Beat. “But he also doesn’t want to have to think about how you might have been right to do what you did, and that if he’d been in your place, he might have done the same.”
She stared at the little console speaker. “So he doesn’t want to understand my viewpoint, in case it makes him feel bad for thinking the same way.”
“ Hmm. Listen, I can sometimes get through to him, do you want ME to have a word-”
“No! No…” Celerity interrupted, alarmed, straightening and flattening a hand against the console, as if that would somehow stop him. “That is-… no, it has to be me. If we make amends because you forced his hand, he’ll always resent me. I just…” Her shoulders sagged; her head felt so heavy, like a lump of lead (and just as useful) between her shoulders. “Need to find a way to get through to him.”
“ Don’t take this the wrong way, Lara, but… maybe you need to stop trying.”
She lifted her head. “What?”
“ He’s a stubborn little glitch. Keep trying, and you’ll just make him more stubborn. Don’t make a fuss, don’t treat him any differently to how you did before all this blew up, and eventually he’ll have thought it through enough to come to you.”
“What if he never does?”
“ That’s just Seem for you. Sometimes you just can’t get his feelings out of him, and trying harder to discuss it makes him bury them deeper. He might never discuss it, but he will come round, and he will treat you civilly again, and he might even apologise. You just need to give him his own space, and some time.” Beat. “Sound sensible?”
“It does. It’s a good idea!” She forced a happy voice, as if her mood had been bolstered. “I’ll… just be patient, then.”
Both knew he wasn’t fooled by her false cheer, but neither commented on it. “That’s the spirit,” he agreed, warmly, trying to encourage her. “I promise, he’ll buck up. And in the meantime, you take care of yourself, all right?”
“I’ll try,” she nodded, and stroked her fingers briefly down the screen. “…I miss you.”
“ I miss you, too. But we’ll be back together soon, right? Because you’ll find that old bag of smeltings, and be back home, and you’re both good at your job so it’ll be sooner than you realise! All right?”
“Right.” Pause. “You take care too.”
Celerity sat with her head resting in her hands for long after he’d signed off. She wanted to take comfort from his words, but deep inside she knew it was going to be difficult. How was she to give him space if they were to work so closely together?
…all she really wanted to do was apologise. Clear the air between them, so they knew what each other was thinking and could try and fix it. And that was the only thing that wasn’t on the cards.
There was a little touch at her left shoulder, and she turned her head to find Fred perched there, where he’d scrambled from the back of the chair, a worried look in his dark eyes. “Why sad?” he wondered, his little ears folded backwards in concern. His topknot had already begun to go frizzy in the short time since he’d bathed. “Not enjoy bath?”
“No, no, I enjoyed it,” she reassured, forcing a smile. It was a bit of a lie – she’d appreciated the care they’d taken, of course! And it had been nice to get rid of the dust. But that was all – and seeing Seem glaring at her, impatiently, had made her hurt inside. “It’s nothing.” She brushed a large finger over Fred’s whiskers, making him purr quietly. “We’re just… in bad moods because we’re so far from home.”
He ran his tiny fingers up her antennae, soothingly, and listened as the trace of static from her vocaliser softened and eased into silence. “We go back soon,” he reminded, rubbing cheeks.
0o0o0o0o0
Squishy planets were always so covered in wet, Slipstream mused, glumly, sitting on the rocks and staring out over the ocean; he was already misted over with spray and glittering, wetly. It’d leave his newly washed paintwork all covered in tiny white salt-freckles, but that was the least of his worries.
“Is everything all right?”
He turned his head very briefly to see Mirii standing close by, a pale ghost under the moonlight with her pale gold skin and pale blue-grey field-nurse’s jumpsuit. Visitors. Huh. Could do without them, they always wanted to talk. But he returned his gaze to the ocean, and answered anyway. “Not really.”
“Do you mind if I sit with you?” When he shrugged, shook his head, she picked her way over the rocks, daintily, and settled next to him, content to ignore the fine spray that came up from the waves striking the shore below.
“I don’t know why you’d want to. I’m not the best company,” he admitted.
“Perhaps.” She spread her hands, acceptingly. “Perhaps I considered that you need company more than I do.”
His sombre expression grew suspicious. “Did Lara send you?” he challenged, irritably; still trying to get him to talk, and still surprised he was getting increasingly stubborn about it.
“No,” Mirii shook her head, and there was something about her manner that made him feel inclined to believe her. “I have not seen her since you parted ways, earlier today, but then I have been busy. We need to finish the village’s vaccinations so we may move on to the next settlement.”
“Is that the only reason you’re here? In this village, I mean, not… here.”
“That is correct.” She gave him a smile. “Most fortuitous that we should have met, I would say!”
“Not really lucky,” he argued, shaking his head. “To start with, we thought your ship’s engines were Firewire’s ship’s, so it wasn’t really a coincidence, and for second, why are you lucky to have met me? A more sour-tempered bundle of spares would be nigh-on impossible to find.”
“Well, I do consider myself lucky,” she asserted, firmly. “And I would like to get to know you, and maybe help you.” She paused, and glanced up to meet his gaze. “It saddens me that you do not get on well with your aunt,” she admitted. “Family is important, especially when you do not have much of it close by.”
He pursed his lips and went silent.
“Most of my family is a long way away – across the other side of the galaxy, in fact – but then I have not been blessed with a large family in any case,” she went on, amiably. “A few siblings, adoptive parents, and my wonderful husband. I am not sure what I would do if I they had hurt me badly enough that I were not able to talk to any of them.”
“It’s not so much that. Not the… the hurt side of it, as such. I’ve just been… finding her hard to get on with, lately,” he admitted, quietly, and unexpectedly. “Which is stupid, because you probably wouldn’t find a nicer person. I just…” He studied his interlaced fingers, and unwittingly echoed Celerity’s words to his uncle. “…we spent an eighth of a solar orbit cooped up in a little box together, trying to pretend none of this has happened.”
The pen considered his words, and perked an ear. “I am assuming you have considered talking to her about it.”
“I thought about it, yeah.” Slipstream gave a funny painful little laugh, and shook his head. “And I thought it was a bad idea. I know I’ll only shout at her, and for no good reason.”
“Bottling things away inside you like this is not healthy,” Mirii reminded, gently. “You need to discuss it with your aunt.”
“There’s nothing to discuss,” he was quick to deny, and shook his head. “She knows how I feel.”
“But how can you hope to fix it if you will not discuss it?”
“It’ll go away.”
“It has not so far.”
Slipstream gave her a glance, semi-resentfully. “I don’t think I asked you for your opinion.”
“No, you did not,” Mirii accepted, inclining her head, politely. “And I am sorry for stepping on your toes. But I do not wish to see anyone unhappy, especially when it seems their problems would be better resolved by discussing it.”
He studied his feet, silently.
She lowered her voice. “The reason you came here… Is it a personal matter?” she wondered, gently.
He gave her a scrutinising glance. “You mean, am I not here chasing Firewire just because it’s police business?” He shrugged, with one shoulder, and looked back down to the waves, surging softly beneath his feet. “You’re half right,” he confirmed, in a small voice. “I’m here for my sister, too.”
Mirii moved a tiny fraction closer, trying to offer a little comfort. “Is that who the person you are following ‘behaved inappropriately’ towards?”
Slipstream nodded, awkwardly. “He, uh… he took… something… from her. And we need to get it back, or she’ll-… she’ll not be her, any more. She’ll be someone different.” He was sure the words hadn’t been so hard to get out, earlier, but now they stuck in his vocaliser like chunks of broken glass. It was certainly easier to talk to Celerity, but he felt that was only because she already knew the situation. “I don’t want someone different. I want my sister back!”
“It is always harder to deal with when it is close family,” she agreed, softly. “I know if it were my sibling-”
“It’s more than just that. She’s my twin. I can’t-…” His voice fractured briefly into static, and he had to take a moment to regain his composure. “I can’t imagine living without her. We’re like… we’re two halves of a whole. Drive each other to despair sometimes, and frag it do I want to run her through the mill, sometimes, but she’s a part of me, too.”
“I must confess I find the concept of ‘twins’ a peculiar concept.” She gave him a curious look. “I presume you can be physically identical very easily. Is there more to it than that?”
“We were a single entity, when we were sparked,” he confirmed, with a little nod. “Ama-… that is, our bearer… she didn’t know she was carrying for a very long time, and just… worked as normal, worked through the pain, even when it nearly blew her fuseboard. The stress triggered a secondary fission, and one infant became us two, my sister and me.”
Mirii nodded, understanding. “Similar to how a single fertilised ova may split into two?”
Slipstream frowned, thoughtfully. “I don’t know a whole lot about biology, but… If that’s what happens, then it’s kinda similar, I guess. But squishy twins would be identical, right?” He gave her a glance, to which she nodded. “Lucy and me, we’re… two halves of a whole, I guess. We work best when we’re together.”
“That can not be easy,” Mirii observed, with a frown. “How do you cope when you need your twin to do something you cannot do yourself, but she is unavailable to help?”
“Oh, it-it’s not that drastic,” he corrected, hastily. “I mean… we’re opposites, we complement each other. She’s a flier with a groundling name, I’m a groundling with a flier’s name. She’s scared of small spaces, I hate heights. She’s outgoing and exuberant, I tend to be introspective and more subdued – she improves my mood, I help calm her excesses. And we often – frag it, usually know what each other is going to do before we do it, especially if it’s going to be something stupid, so we can stop it happening.” He stared down at his hands, miserably. “And now she’s hurt. Might never get better.”
“Is there no way they can repair her?”
“There’s not many bits of us that are unique and irreplaceable,” he explained, sadly. “Of course, he’s taken one of those bits…”
0o0o0o0o0
Argh, so impatient. SO impatient. I hate waiting like this. It’s my father in me, I guess. He’s NEVER patient. But he’s usually just impatient for impatience’s sake, and I’m worried about Lou.
As for Celerity – argh. I could have screamed when she said she’d let Lucy go and see that creep who’s been stalking her, but she looked so guilty, and I can’t really fault her reasoning – the guy pleaded with her, wanted to apologise! And Lucy agreed to it – she’s not some silly little pastel coloured slip of a femme who needs protecting! And she deserves an apology, more than anyone, for everything that slagger did to her. I just wish I’d been here earlier, I could have gone with her. Chances are, he might have said nothing, in the end, if he knew I was there, but at least I’d have been sure she was safe.
We should never have let her actually in there with him. Made her stand outside the doorway, talk through the field. Tempting fate, letting her inside, especially after she moved the camera on purpose when she went in, wanting a little privacy – to yell at him, she said. I don’t even know what I think he’s going to be able to do, but it makes me profoundly anxious anyway. He makes me anxious! I’m sure he’s a whole lot smarter than he acts. But who am I to argue with Lou? She’ll only tell me I’m being my usual overprotective glitchy self and to go stick a fork in somewhere sensitive.
Pace, pace, pace. I check my chrono again – a few more clicks have passed since I last checked it. Stop doing that, Seemy, you’ll drive yourself batty.
“…signal’s back to just one, sir,” the monitor reports, attracting my attention and glancing up at me. “No warning alerts raised. On her way back, I guess.”
“Hn. I guess.” It’s… okay, it’s reassuring, maybe. If he was going to do anything to her? Lucy’s smart enough to raise the alarm. She might be an idiot at times, like our father, but like him she’s a self-respecting idiot, and won’t put herself at risk on purpose. I lean over the monitor’s shoulder, anyway, stare down at the readout; one signal, in the corner where Firewire had sat with his wrists cuffed. I watch the doorway, gearing up to pounce on Lucy and check her over for damage.
Nothing. Clicks become deci-breems. Pace, pace.
I look over the monitor’s shoulder again and there’s STILL only one signal coming up on the screen. Pace, pace. Still no Lou. I know something’s gone wrong, I know it. She’s not just stopped to talk to someone in the corridor, like the monitor says, because she’s not answering my pings, either. I hope she’s not done anything stupid – got mad and holed his spark chamber. Not because he’s not a bastard that deserves it, but because I hate to think of Lucy punished in his stead.
Still nothing. “I’m going to check what’s up.”
I’m already heading down the corridor when he agrees; “of course, sir. I’ll notify the Super.”
The corridor is empty; there’s the smallest sliver of light creeping around the door at the far end, and I try to convince myself that it’s just Lou being her usual irresponsible self and leaving by the wrong exit. Firewire’s cell is unsecured; the telltale diodes are unlit, and the usual faint crackle of blue-lilac at the field margins is absent.
“Seemy?” a little voice croaks, and I spin, frantic, to find Footloose alone on the floor, halfway under the bunk – no wonder we couldn’t see her on the screens. “Whass goin’ on? Whass alla noise about? Can’t you jus’ lemme sleep?”
“Lucy-!” I drop to her side, aghast, barely able to think coherently. “What happened?” There’s a little bit of broken glass on the floor, smears of opalescent white fluid around it, and her chest has been opened - half the latches on one side are open, the other half broken off. How could we have not noticed this amount of force, going on in our own cell block? How can she have not raised the alarm?!
“He said he wanted to talk to me,” she replies, with a shaky smile. “Lara said it’d be ok, s’long as it was just once. To say sorry. He did say it!”
I already feel unstable, trying not to think too hard about the implications. “But what did he do to you, Button?” I plead, softly, gathering her up off the floor. “Come on, talk to me. Please.”
“He said he was just borrowing it,” she replies, dreamily, using a slack hand to push her chest plate aside, revealing a gaping hole and damaged wiring… and a missing component. She touches a finger to the empty socket, almost tenderly. “Gonna bring it back in a little while. No worries, eh?” Her hand droops back to the floor.
“Lucy, that’s your command cylinder he’s taken,” I remind her, shakily. The little nanite-etched component that controls and governs an individual’s personality, how they access their memories and how they respond… Etched over the thousands of solar orbits of a machine’s early lifetime, totally irreplaceable. “Why did he want it? What is he doing with it?”
“Jus’ wanted to look at it,” she replies, dreamily. “Just cuz it’s pretty. He said I was pretty, too, Seemy. Deuce never says it the way Firewire does.”
I cradle her against me, offlining my optics against the despair that’s swelling in my chassis, constricting my spark and making everything hurt. “Did he give you anything to drink?”
“Nuh-uh.” She rests her head against my shoulder, lays slack in my arms as I carry her to the front desk, where we can wait for a medic to arrive. “Something to make me smell nice. Said he bought it for me as an anniversary present, but you caught him before he could give it to me.”
Must have been that smear of opal-white fluid on the floor, I recognise. And I know criminalistics will isolate some sort of viral anaesthesia from it – all so he could dump her here in his place while he escaped, drugged, bribed, tricked, mutilated and abandoned, while he runs for it.
Why couldn’t he have just knocked her out and run for it, not… not butchered her like this? Of course, if he can’t have her, no-one can. It’s not even as if he’s never said it before. She will be mine, one way or another, forever and ever.
We should have taken him more seriously, but no. It’s ok, they said. He’s harmless, they said. He’s not hurt her before, not ‘in the normal sense’ as they so glibly put it. That he brutalised her mind over and over isn’t good enough to count as “hurting her”…
0o0o0o0o0
“They say she has maybe a solar orbit before she’s reduced to the state of a, a vegetable,” Slipstream finished relating the story, faintly. “And then it won’t matter what we install. We’ll have to just… start over. She might regain her memories, but she won’t be the same person.”
She covered his large blue hand with her small pale gold one, and stroked his fingers gently with her thumb. “Please, do not despair,” she soothed, gently. “If you do not disapprove of my doing so, I should like to help you and your friends search for him.”
The big male was conspicuously silent in response; she glanced up and met the wary, uncertain look in his dim violet eyes.
“Why would you do that?” he wondered, softly, sliding his hand out from under hers. “Has he already met you? Asked you to throw us off his trail, is that it?”
Mirii had to stop and wonder. Was he always this suspicious of peoples’ motives, or had Firewire’s actions just made him so? It didn’t change her sentiment, at least – she did want to help. “I have lived here a month or two, now, and I have some knowledge about Telluvia – certainly its geography – and I can speak both the native language and the laima tongue,” she elaborated, trying not to take offence at the way he’d immediately jumped at the least favourable conclusion. “And… I feel sorry for you. “I understand how you must feel.”
“How can you possibly-”
Before he could finish, she cut in, gently. “I have a very small family,” she explained, softly. “And recently I came very close to losing both my husband, and his brother – I do not know what I would have done if they had died, or been changed into people I no longer recognised. So I feel for you, and I want to help you.” She gathered his hand off the rocks and squeezed his large fingers in both hands.
Slipstream actually managed the tiniest flicker of a smile, and leaned down closer to brush their cheeks together. “Thank you, Mirii,” he creaked. “It’s very kind of you.”
12523 / 80000 words. 16% done!
“Magnetosphere.” Sitting in the co-pilot’s chair in their little vessel so she could talk to her partner, the big femme glanced at the monitoring screen and gave it a tap, glumly. “Or at least, that’s what this readout is telling me. Environment planetside’s fine.”
Dack chuckled, a little more relaxed. “Yes, and Star’s nodding in the background, like he has the faintest idea what we’re talking about,” he supplied, dryly; a flicker of indignant noises were just audible in the background. “At least that’s something that’s not changed much, he says the previous survey team noted periodic storms in the upper atmosphere, so we’ll just have to bear that in mind if we can’t always get through to each other. At least you got there safely. Any ideas where your target might be?”
“None yet. We tracked him until he went into a landing cycle, then we lost him.”
“ Magnetosphere again?”
“Probably. Or gravity, or solar wind, or… I don’t know, I just know he vanished off our scans. You know I’m not the most sciency of people, I don’t know what disrupts interstellar particulate flow. I guess it must be something like that.”
Not being able to see her face didn’t mean he wasn’t observant; he obviously heard something in her voice that worried him. “…Is everything all right, Lara?”
She stared down at the console for a moment or two. “…not really.” She propped her forehead against her hands, elbows braced on the controls, and just stared down at the little speaker in the communications terminal.
“… Seem?” he intuited.
She nodded. “I’ve been arguing with him again,” she explained, quietly. “More since we landed. And it was probably my fault, again. Yelled at him for no good reason.”
“ Now that I doubt very much. I’ve seen you yell without reason about the same number of times as I have fingers on one hand.”
She chuckled, painfully. “He didn’t want a bath. How is that a good reason to lose my temper with him?”
There was a long silence at the other end of the line, and when he finally spoke again, his voice was soft. “You just spent thirty seven rotations cooped up together in a little metal box,” he said, softly. “It doesn’t surprise me that he might have made you cross, if you were talking… about as much as Seem usually talks about what’s on his mind.”
Celerity knew that meant ‘trying to pretend it didn’t happen so we didn’t have to talk about it.’ “I’m beginning to think we’re never going to patch things over,” she husked, softly. “Especially since he won’t let me apologise to him.”
Her voice must have wobbled again, because there was a rustle in the background, and a clunk, as of a door closing. “Talk to me, Lara. We’re in private. It won’t go past this room.”
“No.” She shook her head, tiredly. “I won’t tattle on him-”
“ You’re not tattling, you’re discussing a youngling with your partner. Please. At least give me the chance to try and help you,” he cajoled, gently. “I know Seem isn’t the easiest to handle – he’s prickly at the best of times, and an opinionated little glitch even when he’s in a good mood. Just talk to me. You never know, I might be able to advise you a little.”
“How? He won’t even let me talk about it,” she explained, feeling her voice beginning to edge into discordance. “All I want to do is say I’m sorry. I want to say I’m sorry, because it was a stupid error of judgement, and every day I chew myself up inside with what might happen, what might have happened, and he won’t even talk to me about it.” She struggled to keep the static out of her voice. “He just makes a, a stupid little sarcastic noise, and dismisses it. Makes me feel like I’m just an oversized, slow, slovenly burden. I know he doesn’t want me here, he’s only tolerating me because you made him have someone come along to help him.”
The words were getting hard to push out in any coherent form; she was resisting the need to cry, even though it had been building up inside her ever since they departed. “I’m only here for Footloose; I’m not here for him any more. If it was anyone else…” She closed her eyes, feeling all constricted, deep in her chest. “I want to come home,” she admitted. “Some big ugly part of me wants to say forget it. You’re on your own, you ungrateful little wretch, I’m going home.” Static pulsed through her vocaliser before she could claw it back; her words came out more like sobs. “But him and Lucy have been like my own sparklings for so long, Dack, and even if he is a brat I love him. I just I-I don’t know what to do. I just wish he’d talk to me!”
He was quiet for several very long moments, and she was beginning to think she’d hurt his feelings, insulting his nephew like that, when he finally spoke. “I don’t know what I can say to you apart from sorry, on his behalf,” he said, quietly. “Because that’s not how we brought him up. Certainly not to be so rude.”
She sniffled quietly, still resting her head between her hands. “I just want to be able to talk to him. Ask him how I can… can try and fix this,” she creaked.
“ First of all, I’d say he doesn’t want to have to talk to you because he doesn’t want to think about what happened,” Dack counselled, gently. “Partly also because that’s just how he is; his feelings are his feelings, and no-one else’s, so no-one else gets to hear about them.” Beat. “But he also doesn’t want to have to think about how you might have been right to do what you did, and that if he’d been in your place, he might have done the same.”
She stared at the little console speaker. “So he doesn’t want to understand my viewpoint, in case it makes him feel bad for thinking the same way.”
“ Hmm. Listen, I can sometimes get through to him, do you want ME to have a word-”
“No! No…” Celerity interrupted, alarmed, straightening and flattening a hand against the console, as if that would somehow stop him. “That is-… no, it has to be me. If we make amends because you forced his hand, he’ll always resent me. I just…” Her shoulders sagged; her head felt so heavy, like a lump of lead (and just as useful) between her shoulders. “Need to find a way to get through to him.”
“ Don’t take this the wrong way, Lara, but… maybe you need to stop trying.”
She lifted her head. “What?”
“ He’s a stubborn little glitch. Keep trying, and you’ll just make him more stubborn. Don’t make a fuss, don’t treat him any differently to how you did before all this blew up, and eventually he’ll have thought it through enough to come to you.”
“What if he never does?”
“ That’s just Seem for you. Sometimes you just can’t get his feelings out of him, and trying harder to discuss it makes him bury them deeper. He might never discuss it, but he will come round, and he will treat you civilly again, and he might even apologise. You just need to give him his own space, and some time.” Beat. “Sound sensible?”
“It does. It’s a good idea!” She forced a happy voice, as if her mood had been bolstered. “I’ll… just be patient, then.”
Both knew he wasn’t fooled by her false cheer, but neither commented on it. “That’s the spirit,” he agreed, warmly, trying to encourage her. “I promise, he’ll buck up. And in the meantime, you take care of yourself, all right?”
“I’ll try,” she nodded, and stroked her fingers briefly down the screen. “…I miss you.”
“ I miss you, too. But we’ll be back together soon, right? Because you’ll find that old bag of smeltings, and be back home, and you’re both good at your job so it’ll be sooner than you realise! All right?”
“Right.” Pause. “You take care too.”
Celerity sat with her head resting in her hands for long after he’d signed off. She wanted to take comfort from his words, but deep inside she knew it was going to be difficult. How was she to give him space if they were to work so closely together?
…all she really wanted to do was apologise. Clear the air between them, so they knew what each other was thinking and could try and fix it. And that was the only thing that wasn’t on the cards.
There was a little touch at her left shoulder, and she turned her head to find Fred perched there, where he’d scrambled from the back of the chair, a worried look in his dark eyes. “Why sad?” he wondered, his little ears folded backwards in concern. His topknot had already begun to go frizzy in the short time since he’d bathed. “Not enjoy bath?”
“No, no, I enjoyed it,” she reassured, forcing a smile. It was a bit of a lie – she’d appreciated the care they’d taken, of course! And it had been nice to get rid of the dust. But that was all – and seeing Seem glaring at her, impatiently, had made her hurt inside. “It’s nothing.” She brushed a large finger over Fred’s whiskers, making him purr quietly. “We’re just… in bad moods because we’re so far from home.”
He ran his tiny fingers up her antennae, soothingly, and listened as the trace of static from her vocaliser softened and eased into silence. “We go back soon,” he reminded, rubbing cheeks.
Squishy planets were always so covered in wet, Slipstream mused, glumly, sitting on the rocks and staring out over the ocean; he was already misted over with spray and glittering, wetly. It’d leave his newly washed paintwork all covered in tiny white salt-freckles, but that was the least of his worries.
“Is everything all right?”
He turned his head very briefly to see Mirii standing close by, a pale ghost under the moonlight with her pale gold skin and pale blue-grey field-nurse’s jumpsuit. Visitors. Huh. Could do without them, they always wanted to talk. But he returned his gaze to the ocean, and answered anyway. “Not really.”
“Do you mind if I sit with you?” When he shrugged, shook his head, she picked her way over the rocks, daintily, and settled next to him, content to ignore the fine spray that came up from the waves striking the shore below.
“I don’t know why you’d want to. I’m not the best company,” he admitted.
“Perhaps.” She spread her hands, acceptingly. “Perhaps I considered that you need company more than I do.”
His sombre expression grew suspicious. “Did Lara send you?” he challenged, irritably; still trying to get him to talk, and still surprised he was getting increasingly stubborn about it.
“No,” Mirii shook her head, and there was something about her manner that made him feel inclined to believe her. “I have not seen her since you parted ways, earlier today, but then I have been busy. We need to finish the village’s vaccinations so we may move on to the next settlement.”
“Is that the only reason you’re here? In this village, I mean, not… here.”
“That is correct.” She gave him a smile. “Most fortuitous that we should have met, I would say!”
“Not really lucky,” he argued, shaking his head. “To start with, we thought your ship’s engines were Firewire’s ship’s, so it wasn’t really a coincidence, and for second, why are you lucky to have met me? A more sour-tempered bundle of spares would be nigh-on impossible to find.”
“Well, I do consider myself lucky,” she asserted, firmly. “And I would like to get to know you, and maybe help you.” She paused, and glanced up to meet his gaze. “It saddens me that you do not get on well with your aunt,” she admitted. “Family is important, especially when you do not have much of it close by.”
He pursed his lips and went silent.
“Most of my family is a long way away – across the other side of the galaxy, in fact – but then I have not been blessed with a large family in any case,” she went on, amiably. “A few siblings, adoptive parents, and my wonderful husband. I am not sure what I would do if I they had hurt me badly enough that I were not able to talk to any of them.”
“It’s not so much that. Not the… the hurt side of it, as such. I’ve just been… finding her hard to get on with, lately,” he admitted, quietly, and unexpectedly. “Which is stupid, because you probably wouldn’t find a nicer person. I just…” He studied his interlaced fingers, and unwittingly echoed Celerity’s words to his uncle. “…we spent an eighth of a solar orbit cooped up in a little box together, trying to pretend none of this has happened.”
The pen considered his words, and perked an ear. “I am assuming you have considered talking to her about it.”
“I thought about it, yeah.” Slipstream gave a funny painful little laugh, and shook his head. “And I thought it was a bad idea. I know I’ll only shout at her, and for no good reason.”
“Bottling things away inside you like this is not healthy,” Mirii reminded, gently. “You need to discuss it with your aunt.”
“There’s nothing to discuss,” he was quick to deny, and shook his head. “She knows how I feel.”
“But how can you hope to fix it if you will not discuss it?”
“It’ll go away.”
“It has not so far.”
Slipstream gave her a glance, semi-resentfully. “I don’t think I asked you for your opinion.”
“No, you did not,” Mirii accepted, inclining her head, politely. “And I am sorry for stepping on your toes. But I do not wish to see anyone unhappy, especially when it seems their problems would be better resolved by discussing it.”
He studied his feet, silently.
She lowered her voice. “The reason you came here… Is it a personal matter?” she wondered, gently.
He gave her a scrutinising glance. “You mean, am I not here chasing Firewire just because it’s police business?” He shrugged, with one shoulder, and looked back down to the waves, surging softly beneath his feet. “You’re half right,” he confirmed, in a small voice. “I’m here for my sister, too.”
Mirii moved a tiny fraction closer, trying to offer a little comfort. “Is that who the person you are following ‘behaved inappropriately’ towards?”
Slipstream nodded, awkwardly. “He, uh… he took… something… from her. And we need to get it back, or she’ll-… she’ll not be her, any more. She’ll be someone different.” He was sure the words hadn’t been so hard to get out, earlier, but now they stuck in his vocaliser like chunks of broken glass. It was certainly easier to talk to Celerity, but he felt that was only because she already knew the situation. “I don’t want someone different. I want my sister back!”
“It is always harder to deal with when it is close family,” she agreed, softly. “I know if it were my sibling-”
“It’s more than just that. She’s my twin. I can’t-…” His voice fractured briefly into static, and he had to take a moment to regain his composure. “I can’t imagine living without her. We’re like… we’re two halves of a whole. Drive each other to despair sometimes, and frag it do I want to run her through the mill, sometimes, but she’s a part of me, too.”
“I must confess I find the concept of ‘twins’ a peculiar concept.” She gave him a curious look. “I presume you can be physically identical very easily. Is there more to it than that?”
“We were a single entity, when we were sparked,” he confirmed, with a little nod. “Ama-… that is, our bearer… she didn’t know she was carrying for a very long time, and just… worked as normal, worked through the pain, even when it nearly blew her fuseboard. The stress triggered a secondary fission, and one infant became us two, my sister and me.”
Mirii nodded, understanding. “Similar to how a single fertilised ova may split into two?”
Slipstream frowned, thoughtfully. “I don’t know a whole lot about biology, but… If that’s what happens, then it’s kinda similar, I guess. But squishy twins would be identical, right?” He gave her a glance, to which she nodded. “Lucy and me, we’re… two halves of a whole, I guess. We work best when we’re together.”
“That can not be easy,” Mirii observed, with a frown. “How do you cope when you need your twin to do something you cannot do yourself, but she is unavailable to help?”
“Oh, it-it’s not that drastic,” he corrected, hastily. “I mean… we’re opposites, we complement each other. She’s a flier with a groundling name, I’m a groundling with a flier’s name. She’s scared of small spaces, I hate heights. She’s outgoing and exuberant, I tend to be introspective and more subdued – she improves my mood, I help calm her excesses. And we often – frag it, usually know what each other is going to do before we do it, especially if it’s going to be something stupid, so we can stop it happening.” He stared down at his hands, miserably. “And now she’s hurt. Might never get better.”
“Is there no way they can repair her?”
“There’s not many bits of us that are unique and irreplaceable,” he explained, sadly. “Of course, he’s taken one of those bits…”
Argh, so impatient. SO impatient. I hate waiting like this. It’s my father in me, I guess. He’s NEVER patient. But he’s usually just impatient for impatience’s sake, and I’m worried about Lou.
As for Celerity – argh. I could have screamed when she said she’d let Lucy go and see that creep who’s been stalking her, but she looked so guilty, and I can’t really fault her reasoning – the guy pleaded with her, wanted to apologise! And Lucy agreed to it – she’s not some silly little pastel coloured slip of a femme who needs protecting! And she deserves an apology, more than anyone, for everything that slagger did to her. I just wish I’d been here earlier, I could have gone with her. Chances are, he might have said nothing, in the end, if he knew I was there, but at least I’d have been sure she was safe.
We should never have let her actually in there with him. Made her stand outside the doorway, talk through the field. Tempting fate, letting her inside, especially after she moved the camera on purpose when she went in, wanting a little privacy – to yell at him, she said. I don’t even know what I think he’s going to be able to do, but it makes me profoundly anxious anyway. He makes me anxious! I’m sure he’s a whole lot smarter than he acts. But who am I to argue with Lou? She’ll only tell me I’m being my usual overprotective glitchy self and to go stick a fork in somewhere sensitive.
Pace, pace, pace. I check my chrono again – a few more clicks have passed since I last checked it. Stop doing that, Seemy, you’ll drive yourself batty.
“…signal’s back to just one, sir,” the monitor reports, attracting my attention and glancing up at me. “No warning alerts raised. On her way back, I guess.”
“Hn. I guess.” It’s… okay, it’s reassuring, maybe. If he was going to do anything to her? Lucy’s smart enough to raise the alarm. She might be an idiot at times, like our father, but like him she’s a self-respecting idiot, and won’t put herself at risk on purpose. I lean over the monitor’s shoulder, anyway, stare down at the readout; one signal, in the corner where Firewire had sat with his wrists cuffed. I watch the doorway, gearing up to pounce on Lucy and check her over for damage.
Nothing. Clicks become deci-breems. Pace, pace.
I look over the monitor’s shoulder again and there’s STILL only one signal coming up on the screen. Pace, pace. Still no Lou. I know something’s gone wrong, I know it. She’s not just stopped to talk to someone in the corridor, like the monitor says, because she’s not answering my pings, either. I hope she’s not done anything stupid – got mad and holed his spark chamber. Not because he’s not a bastard that deserves it, but because I hate to think of Lucy punished in his stead.
Still nothing. “I’m going to check what’s up.”
I’m already heading down the corridor when he agrees; “of course, sir. I’ll notify the Super.”
The corridor is empty; there’s the smallest sliver of light creeping around the door at the far end, and I try to convince myself that it’s just Lou being her usual irresponsible self and leaving by the wrong exit. Firewire’s cell is unsecured; the telltale diodes are unlit, and the usual faint crackle of blue-lilac at the field margins is absent.
“Seemy?” a little voice croaks, and I spin, frantic, to find Footloose alone on the floor, halfway under the bunk – no wonder we couldn’t see her on the screens. “Whass goin’ on? Whass alla noise about? Can’t you jus’ lemme sleep?”
“Lucy-!” I drop to her side, aghast, barely able to think coherently. “What happened?” There’s a little bit of broken glass on the floor, smears of opalescent white fluid around it, and her chest has been opened - half the latches on one side are open, the other half broken off. How could we have not noticed this amount of force, going on in our own cell block? How can she have not raised the alarm?!
“He said he wanted to talk to me,” she replies, with a shaky smile. “Lara said it’d be ok, s’long as it was just once. To say sorry. He did say it!”
I already feel unstable, trying not to think too hard about the implications. “But what did he do to you, Button?” I plead, softly, gathering her up off the floor. “Come on, talk to me. Please.”
“He said he was just borrowing it,” she replies, dreamily, using a slack hand to push her chest plate aside, revealing a gaping hole and damaged wiring… and a missing component. She touches a finger to the empty socket, almost tenderly. “Gonna bring it back in a little while. No worries, eh?” Her hand droops back to the floor.
“Lucy, that’s your command cylinder he’s taken,” I remind her, shakily. The little nanite-etched component that controls and governs an individual’s personality, how they access their memories and how they respond… Etched over the thousands of solar orbits of a machine’s early lifetime, totally irreplaceable. “Why did he want it? What is he doing with it?”
“Jus’ wanted to look at it,” she replies, dreamily. “Just cuz it’s pretty. He said I was pretty, too, Seemy. Deuce never says it the way Firewire does.”
I cradle her against me, offlining my optics against the despair that’s swelling in my chassis, constricting my spark and making everything hurt. “Did he give you anything to drink?”
“Nuh-uh.” She rests her head against my shoulder, lays slack in my arms as I carry her to the front desk, where we can wait for a medic to arrive. “Something to make me smell nice. Said he bought it for me as an anniversary present, but you caught him before he could give it to me.”
Must have been that smear of opal-white fluid on the floor, I recognise. And I know criminalistics will isolate some sort of viral anaesthesia from it – all so he could dump her here in his place while he escaped, drugged, bribed, tricked, mutilated and abandoned, while he runs for it.
Why couldn’t he have just knocked her out and run for it, not… not butchered her like this? Of course, if he can’t have her, no-one can. It’s not even as if he’s never said it before. She will be mine, one way or another, forever and ever.
We should have taken him more seriously, but no. It’s ok, they said. He’s harmless, they said. He’s not hurt her before, not ‘in the normal sense’ as they so glibly put it. That he brutalised her mind over and over isn’t good enough to count as “hurting her”…
“They say she has maybe a solar orbit before she’s reduced to the state of a, a vegetable,” Slipstream finished relating the story, faintly. “And then it won’t matter what we install. We’ll have to just… start over. She might regain her memories, but she won’t be the same person.”
She covered his large blue hand with her small pale gold one, and stroked his fingers gently with her thumb. “Please, do not despair,” she soothed, gently. “If you do not disapprove of my doing so, I should like to help you and your friends search for him.”
The big male was conspicuously silent in response; she glanced up and met the wary, uncertain look in his dim violet eyes.
“Why would you do that?” he wondered, softly, sliding his hand out from under hers. “Has he already met you? Asked you to throw us off his trail, is that it?”
Mirii had to stop and wonder. Was he always this suspicious of peoples’ motives, or had Firewire’s actions just made him so? It didn’t change her sentiment, at least – she did want to help. “I have lived here a month or two, now, and I have some knowledge about Telluvia – certainly its geography – and I can speak both the native language and the laima tongue,” she elaborated, trying not to take offence at the way he’d immediately jumped at the least favourable conclusion. “And… I feel sorry for you. “I understand how you must feel.”
“How can you possibly-”
Before he could finish, she cut in, gently. “I have a very small family,” she explained, softly. “And recently I came very close to losing both my husband, and his brother – I do not know what I would have done if they had died, or been changed into people I no longer recognised. So I feel for you, and I want to help you.” She gathered his hand off the rocks and squeezed his large fingers in both hands.
Slipstream actually managed the tiniest flicker of a smile, and leaned down closer to brush their cheeks together. “Thank you, Mirii,” he creaked. “It’s very kind of you.”
