The Changeling Game, Chapter 38

38.
The Bell That Must Not Ring

Pain.

There was nothing but pain for a time. Her universe was made of it.

Little larva, can you hear us? Little larva, come back to us…

She wanted to tell them to leave her alone, but she couldn’t make words.

Little larva, do not die. Come back to us…

They weren’t going to leave her alone. Finally she found just enough strength to answer.

“Not dying…” she mumbled. “Just… trying to fucking sleep…”

“That’s my girl,” a man’s deep, velvety voice said from somewhere outside of the darkness. “You rest, a tafat-iw. I have you. I’ll keep you safe…”

Riddick? No. The voice was different, just as deep but not quite as rough. With a hint of an accent Riddick didn’t have…

Ewan. That was the name that went with the voice. Ewan Zdan…

We told you not to do that, little larva. You could have died.

“Had… to… move it…”

We do not understand how you accomplished that and lived. It should not have been possible. You are still so small.

The stars were far too bright to look at. She felt them surrounding her, peering at her with eyes that weren’t eyes, seeing her in some way she struggled to comprehend.

You almost broke your five-shape. Do not try to do anything like that again until you have hatched.

“Do what?” she managed to ask, also managing to limit her words to the dream space. She was vaguely aware that her body—her shell—was being held in someone’s arms. Ewan’s?

They tried to explain, but she didn’t understand. She could barely focus. They showed her mind-bending shapes, things that normally would have had her fleeing in terror, but she wasn’t even strong enough—or scared enough—to look away. Emotion was a blank. Emotion needed energy, and she had none.

A cube, she thought after they showed her yet another iteration. A sealed cube with no way in or out…

Broken now.

It means nothing. The …Moribund’s…? voice was like angry distant thunder.

It means everything.

She was already lost. What use is breaking an empty box? Be done with this filth.

She hatched this larva and its broodmates. They are not filth. They are hope. This little one might even be the One.

One reckless trick and you would fall at its nethers. You lie to yourselves. We will be your “One.” You waste your time. We do not need this filth’s help to rise. We will break the ’verse itself…

And have you yet? Go. You have no place among us.

If Jack were strong enough to care, she thought, she might have been afraid. But she felt almost as if she was back in the isolation ward, cocooned against herself, cut off from sense and emotion. Even the poisonous rage of the one entity—

She needed to call them something better than that.

“Do you have names?” she asked the darkness. “What are all of you called?”

Names are delimiters, the Moribund snarled. Jack wondered if it knew what the others called it.

Our names were stolen, they whispered.

“Can I give you one? I need something to call you.”

She sensed disgust from the one hateful “voice” in the darkness, but curiosity from the others.

“What about…” The word, which had been in her head since the morning, floated back. “Apeiros?”

Apeiros… infinite… She could feel them mulling it over. It is an interesting choice. You may see deeper than you know. A name that means hope. Yes, little larva, you may call us this.

Fools. All of you. Falling over a tiny piece of filth…

Little by little, the pain was receding. The stars were no longer blinding. Jack could feel herself, not floating anymore, but lying down on something warm. She could hear a soft double-rhythm pulling at her.

Go, little larva. You can wake to your five-space now. You will not die…

She opened her eyes.

There was still daylight, but the light level had dropped considerably. Even so, it felt almost too bright to keep her eyes open, and it set her head pounding again. She was resting in Ewan’s lap, head on his chest, his heartbeat in her ear. He was sitting in the sand, legs stretched out and his back leaning against a boulder, gazing out over the landscape of Elsewhere. The tide, although still several kilometers away, had begun rolling back in and the sun, mostly hidden by the deep grayish blue of pregnant storm clouds, was halfway to the horizon. Lightning flickered over the waters off to the southwest.

An unknotted string hung in the air nearby, marking the spot where Jack had tethered the special comm to a bench in U1. Ewan had carried her back to the location of the grotto.

He had the comm in one hand, and his other arm was wrapped around her. Their packs lay beside them in the sand. His was open and a smaller version of his field kit was out; several bloodstained wipes were lying crumpled beside it along with a penlight and a portable diagnostic.

He glanced down at her and blinked, his eyes widening a little. “Baraka. Oh, thank God. Tislilel? Are you back with me?”

“Mmm-hmm…”

“I need you to say a little more than that, taḥbibt-iw. Can you, for me?”

“Did I pass out?” Jack managed to ask.

“You did. Your nose started bleeding right before you collapsed, and for a while, one of your pupils was dilated. You’ve been unconscious for the last three hours while I brought you back here. I was afraid you might have given yourself an aneurysm.”

“Kinda felt like I did… fuck, my head hurts… I felt like I split it open when I pushed that damned box out…”

“Box?” Ewan gave her a quizzical frown.

“Inside the ship. I think… I think I broke open an apeirochoron.”

“Unless that’s just the name of some cerebral blood vessel I’ve forgotten about, I don’t know what that means.”

She didn’t really have words for what she was trying to tell him… or if she did, she couldn’t put them together. She couldn’t paint the air with shapes made out of light, Apeiros style, to try to show him, either. But that was okay. Maybe one day…

Maybe one day what, exactly? She felt like she was trying to focus in eight directions at once, some of which were impossible. Her thoughts were looping… looping…

“Please don’t go back to sleep, Tislilel. Not yet.”

“Sorry…” She wanted to tell him that she’d gone too far, that she should have listened to him, and to them, and stopped. But she’d been incapable of doing so at the time, and even now that was hard to admit. It had been the act of a child, the child she kept telling herself she no longer was. She changed the subject. Slightly. “I saw the envoy. She was at the spaceport. And I got a better look at what she’s connected to. Darkness. She wears all white, but she’s all darkness.”

An infinite darkness that even the Apeiros seemed to fear…

The Demons of the Darkness… What would look like a demon to one of them?

“Stay awake, Tislilel. No sleeping. Did she see you?”

“No. Remember how I used my tablet for a few minutes before we got close to the ship?”

“I do, yes.”

“I turned off the ship’s outside cameras. My codes were still good. Nobody saw us walk up, in either ’verse.”

Ewan laughed softly. “Well played. So you could see her in U1, but she couldn’t look into Elsewhere to see either of us. And if they were recording the camera feeds from the ship itself…”

“We never appeared on them before they stopped.”

“That’s a relief. I’m curious… do you play chess?”

Jack wondered if he really was curious, or just trying to keep her talking, coherent, and awake. “My dad was gonna teach me, but when my parents started fighting, and after the divorce, he never had time.”

“You should learn it. You have the right strategic mind for it.”

“I dunno. Half the time I feel like it doesn’t tell me the plan until it’s time to do it.” She was, slowly, having an easier time staying focused on the moment at hand. The tide would be rising soon. “What time is it?”

“Almost thirteen pm.” He quirked a smile at her. “We’ve missed lunch. Not that I had any kind of appetite until now. How about you? Are you feeling at all hungry?”

“Yeah, but… also queasy. Is that bad?”

“Possibly. Do you want to try to drink some water? I can give you something for your headache if you think you can keep it down.”

Until then, Jack hadn’t noticed how thirsty she was. “Yes, please. Or if you have anything with caffeine—”

“Absolutely not. Not until I know for certain you don’t have a brain injury.”

“Spoilsport…”

“I’m serious, Tislilel. No caffeine until I say it’s safe.”

“Fine… any orange juice?”

“Yes, that you can have. And I do, indeed, have some.”

He brought out a small bottle of juice for her, making her use the first few sips to take some pills for her headache. To their mutual relief, her nausea began to ease, and he let her have some of the savory crackers he’d also brought, flavored with spices she’d never known before New Marrakesh.

“These are so good,” Jack sighed, leaning her head against his shoulder. “Now I’m really getting hungry.”

“It might be time for us to go, then. Especially with that rain approaching. I was just about to call for help when you began mumbling actual words.” He stroked her cheek with his fingertips. “You have no idea what a relief it was to hear you say ‘trying to fucking sleep…’”

He had done an amazing imitation of her accent. She found herself laughing. Ow.

“My head does still hurt,” she admitted, “but not nearly as bad. I think I can pull us back into U1, though.”

“Now you have me in a quandary,” Ewan sighed. “I don’t want to overtax you after everything you’ve already done, and especially not before I can get a good scan of your hard little head. But the alternative is dragging your sister out of bed, while she’s still healing, to come down here to bring us across. So you have to promise me…”

He leaned his head closer to hers, locking his eyes with hers, his expression simultaneously fiercely serious and gently teasing. The palm of his hand, where it rested on her cheek, made her skin tingle.

“…that this time, you really will stop if it becomes too much.” A hint of a genuine plea appeared on his face. “Please don’t scare me like that again.”

He thought I might be dying, too. At the time, it had just felt like a strange tug of war game that she’d desperately needed to win. Until the tension had abruptly snapped and its full power ricocheted back against her. She’d won, but she still wasn’t sure of the cost. What if she really had given herself brain damage?

She lifted her hand and rested it on his cheek, feeling smooth skin and rough stubble under her palm, the muscles over his cheekbone and the hollow below, the strong line of his jaw. “I promise. I really, truly promise.”

His eyes weren’t olive green, she found herself thinking. More a sea green, a few shades paler, and slightly bluer, than hers, which her father had called “moss green,” her mother had called “jade green,” and her cousins, always looking for creative ways to be rude, had called “pond scum green.” His sea green, she mused, was the loveliest shade she’d ever seen.

For a long, still moment, their eyes stayed locked. Jack found she was intensely aware of every point of contact between their bodies, all of which seemed to almost hum with energy. Then a look of alarm flickered over his face and he pulled away, just a little. A second later, a roguish—but somehow forced—grin appeared as he drew back even more. “In that case, I will accept your invitation to return to U1. I’ve made sure we’re in a clear space of the garden Ababat—sorry, my father—rented.”

“How’d you manage that?” Jack asked, still recovering from the moment herself as he moved her off of his lap—the brief touch of his hands on her waist sending powerful shocks coursing through her—and stood up.

He picked up the plastic bag that had held the comm, dropping the tether inside it at the same time. “I flapped it around the space to make sure it didn’t hit anything on the other side. Since it’s in both worlds.”

“Smart,” Jack laughed, climbing unsteadily to her feet. This time, laughing didn’t make her head hurt quite so much.

“I have my moments,” he agreed as he helped her up and began reassembling their packs. She noticed that he was careful not to let their bodies come into contact again.

It made the transition back a little awkward, but he was willing to at least let her hold his hands to do it. A moment later, they were surrounded by a garden that she realized would have been a terribly romantic setting if they weren’t suddenly so busy hiding from each other.

A lesser man, she mused, would have tried to kiss her. Would she have wanted him to quite so desperately if he’d been a lesser man?

If I were even just five years older… she thought, filled with a sense of terrible loss. He would never, ever act on what she was certain both of them had suddenly been feeling. Part of her, the part that still wanted to try to eat an entire bucket of Halloween candy in one sitting, the part that knew and didn’t care that some of the things she craved might be bad for her, the part that always convinced itself that she was more of an adult the less she acted like one—the part of her that had nearly shattered her brain over a sealed box just hours earlier—was tempted to try to get him to do so anyway. Every cell of her body was hungry for something she couldn’t name or explain but was certain he could give her. But—

It would break him. It would break them both. She didn’t want to know that, but she knew it.

And then, she admitted to herself and had to swallow back a laugh, Kyra would cut his dick off and make him eat it.

Maybe, she supposed as she rewound the tagelmust around her head, she could return to Tangiers Prime when she was legally an adult. Maybe then, if Ewan hadn’t already married and settled down, there would be a space for these feelings…

“So,” he asked behind her, the cheerful tone in his voice sounding just a little bit forced, “do you feel up to making the trek back home?”

Jack shouldered her pack and nodded, slipping back into her teenage boy persona. Hopefully that’d help defuse the moment further. “Let’s do it,” she said in her boy voice, an octave below normal.

The rented grotto was part of a garden complex that could be hired for lunches and dinners, for parties and gatherings. Although the lunch hours had already passed, many of the parties were only just breaking up. Well-dressed diners and revelers were departing, most giving Jack and Ewan askance looks as they emerged from their grotto and locked its gate behind them. They did rather look like a pair of disheveled ruffians, Jack thought. She was glad Ewan had already cleaned up her nosebleed.

I know what they all think he’s been doing… with a boy, she thought, hiding the snicker that bubbled up. Even a few hours ago, she could have shared the joke with him. Not now.

While he stayed close to her as they walked, and she could feel him watching her the whole time for signs that she was unwell, he didn’t touch her. The gulf suddenly between them felt miles wide. But any time she glanced his way, she saw only concern. Periodically, he tried to use the special comm to make a call, but it never seemed to go through, even after she pulled it all the way back into U1 for him.

Along the route back up into the Rif, Jack heard snatches of conversation and rumor about some kind of new security incident at the spaceport. Nobody was sure, exactly, what had happened out there, but the place was in full lockdown and the local comms system was overloaded. She was suddenly glad that the garden Cedric had chosen was so far away from the perimeters that had gone up around the spaceport… and might soon go up around the hospital. It was even outside of the checkpoints she and Kyra had encountered the last time they’d traveled downtown, partway up into the heights.

And Ewan had had to haul her unconscious ass that whole distance, she realized. Almost fifteen kilometers and up several hills…

“I’m really hoping that carrying my dead weight all that way didn’t throw out your back or anything,” she told him.

“It was torture,” he said with an almost-easy smile. “You weigh nearly as much as my boot camp combat load.”

“This is what you guys get for feeding me,” she teased back, feeling more relaxed—more like things were normal—with each passing minute.

“You do eat enormous quantities. Not quite your weight in crickets, though… I could swear I thought it was going to rain soon,” Ewan said as they crested a switchback and looked down over the city and sea below them. To the west, the sky was mostly clear, the sun dropping closer to the horizon. Her eyes were handling the increased light level better, she realized.

“Not in this universe,” Jack reminded him. No one was around to hear.

“Ah. Yes. Of course.” Ewan’s smile became rueful. “Is it raining over there yet?”

Jack shifted her vision to look into the darkening world of Elsewhere. “Looks like it’s gonna storm pretty hard there soon. Good thing we didn’t wait around on that side.”

“It’s a beautiful place,” Ewan remarked. “So untouched by humans until now. And yet habitable…”

“Pretty weird, huh?” Jack agreed as she followed his train of thought. “No terraforming required.”

“I suppose every planet has a universe where that’s true,” he mused, gazing out over the more familiar landscape of U1’s New Marrakesh.

“Yeah. Back when I was first learning about this stuff, I asked my teacher why we’d gone into space at all if we could’ve just moved to other Earths that hadn’t been polluted to death. He didn’t know why.”

“Because colonization is about control,” Ewan said after a pensive moment. “The concessions and payments that had to be made, by so many societies, to gain access to ships to leave Earth… the treaties they had to sign, the rights they had to sell away… would have been unnecessary if all one had needed to do, to reach a new world, was take a beautiful girl’s hand—”

He stopped himself then, turning his head away, but not before she saw the sudden, stricken look that passed over his face.

Jack made herself look away, too. The instant of vulnerability she’d seen in his eyes was unnerving, almost negating the thrill of hearing him call her beautiful. “Oh look,” she said after an awkward minute, pointing at the hospital. Its base practically sparkled with flashing blue lights. “I think someone discovered our handiwork.”

“I think you’re right.” Ewan grinned, his expression relaxing again. “Fortunately, Usadden had this evening-day off and instructed the noon shift to complete an inventory of the Matador bodies an hour before we were set to arrive. In preparation for turning them over to the Quintessa Corporation tomorrow, of course. So they were fully accounted for long after he left the morgue at the end of the morning-day. And he has an iron-clad alibi for this afternoon.”

“Where’s he been while we’ve been doing crime?”

“Attending a conference hosted by the President of the City Council,” Ewan told her, the sparkle back in his eyes. “Discussing, of all things, how to improve the quarantine protocols for incoming Star Jumpers.”

“That,” Jack laughed, “is a damned good alibi.”

The silence between them as they hiked the rest of the way still wasn’t entirely comfortable, but it was slowly getting there. They were still two blocks away from home, and phantom thunder had begun to growl overhead in Elsewhere, when Cedric, Safiyya, Takama, and Izil hurried out to meet them.

“Where have you two been?” Takama demanded. “Dihya’s been upset for hours, saying Tislilel was hurt!”

Fuck, Jack thought, guilt knotting her stomach. Of course she knew… She hoped the Apeiros hadn’t begun badgering her sister again.

“Right after she started,” Cedric added, “we got word that the spaceport was under lockdown. What did you two do?”

Jack could feel even more guilt rising within her, and the sudden fear that they might never trust one of her plans, or her, again.

“Tislilel realized that it wouldn’t matter what else we took away from the Quintessa Corporation if they still had the Scarlet Matador,” Ewan told them. “But pulling that into Elsewhere turned out to be more difficult than she expected. Some part of it—you called it an ‘apeirochoron,’ is that right?—resisted. Pulling it through knocked her out.”

But she hadn’t pulled it through, she thought. It had already been in Elsewhere. She’d had to force it out of U1—

“And you allowed this?” Safiyya’s face, in that moment, looked almost exactly like her mother’s when she’d been up to no good with her cousins.

“He was yelling at me to stop,” Jack volunteered, some of Audrey’s I’m-so-sorry-please-forgive-me seeping into her voice. “I… didn’t.”

“I want her to have a proper CT scan,” Ewan added. “We can use the bruise she already has on her forehead as the excuse.”

“I will arrange it,” Takama said, sighing. “Right now, we had better let Dihya have a look at her so she can calm down and get back to resting.”

“Did you try to call us at all?” Izil asked. “The comms have been spotty since the lockdown was announced. We tried a few times, but got no answer.”

“It took almost three hours to get from the spaceport to the garden,” Ewan sighed. “But yes, I did try. Several times. No connection.”

“Why did it take so long?” Safiyya asked, frowning again at her son.

“He had to carry me the whole way,” Jack told them. “I was out cold.”

Big mistake. Takama and Safiyya began fussing over her, their arms around her as they shepherded her toward the house. Ewan had fallen back and was talking softly to Cedric and Izil, too softly for Jack to hear what they were saying.

“It’s done, though,” she told both women, struggling to find a way to get back to a sense of achievement. “Everything that had a connection to Elsewhere in the hospital and the spaceport is all the way in Elsewhere now. You should’a heard the envoy scream when the ship disappeared…”

“I am glad you succeeded,” Takama said, her voice still a little stern. “Now, though, you are on bed rest until I take you for the scan, and after that until the physician says otherwise. Understood? You may be very good at ‘heists,’ but there will be no more for a while.”

Kyra and Sebby were both agitated when Jack entered the bedroom.

“Oh thank fuck,” Kyra muttered, sagging against her pillows. She looked exhausted, sending another pang of intense guilt through Jack. Sebby, meanwhile, practically launched himself across the room and wouldn’t stop touching Jack’s face with his antennae.

Later, while Jack and Kyra rested, Ewan appeared with Tafrara by his side to change Kyra’s bandages and IV bags. He seemed more himself, bantering with both of them in an easy way, telling Kyra that, next morning-day, she would be allowed to get up and begin walking. They had brought a very late lunch with them, which Jack dug into ravenously, and he’d even teased her about how moving starships must be hungry work.

Those words echoed through her, trying to connect to… something… but failing.

It was only much later that Jack realized that, for the remainder of her stay on Tangiers Prime, Ewan made it a point to never be alone with her again.

Except once.