Brann was stretched out on the recliner Jaril had deformed for her out of a lump on the floor of the eggroom. A teapot steamed on an elbowtable beside her, she had a cup of tea making a hotspot on her stomach; she sipped at it now and then when she remembered it while she watched a story stream past on a bookplayer she balanced on her stomach beside the cup (the god had translated several of these and presented them to her, which surprised her and tended to modify her opinion of him/it, which was probably one of the reasons he/it did it). Yaril drifted in, leaned over her shoulder a moment, watching the story. “Braun. “
“Mmm?”
“Danny Blue’s restless. Jaril thinks he’s going to wake soon.”
“How soon?”
“Ten, fifteen minutes, maybe.”
“Hmm.” Brann set the player down beside her, shifted the cup to the elbowtable and pushed up. “He showing any trouble signs?”
“Jaril says he’s been having some nightmares, isn’t much to any of them, Jaril could only catch a hint of what was going on, more emotion than imagery. That stopped a short while ago. Jaril says it looks like he’s trying to wake up.”
‘Trying?” Brann stood, tucked her shirt down into her trousers, straightening her collar. “That doesn’t sound good.”
Brann bent over Danny Blue. His head was turning side to side on the pillow in a twitchy broken rhythm; his mouth was working; his hands groped about, crawling slowly over his ribs, his face, the bed, the sheet that was pulled across the lower part of his body. She trapped one of the hands, held it still. “He’s not dreaming?”
Jaril was kneeling close to her, a hand resting against the side of Danny’s face, fingertips bleeding into him. “No.”
“What do you think?” She felt his hand flutter like a bird within the circle of her fingers; using only a tiny fraction of his strength, he was trying to pull away from her. “Yaril, Jaril, should I let him kick out of it…” she frowned as he made a few shapeless sounds, “… if he can? Or should I jolt him awake? I don’t like the way he looks.”
Yaril leaned past her, her face intent, her hands moving through his body. She turned her head, stared for a long moment into her brother’s eyes, finally pulled free. “We think you better jolt him, Bramble.”
Danny Blue snapped his eyes open and promptly went into convulsions; he screamed, hoarse, building cries that seemed to originate in his feet and scrape him empty as they swept through his body and emerged from his straining mouth. Brann, Yaril and Jaril held him down, the changers reaching into him and soothing him whenever they could snatch a second between his kicks and jerks. Shivering, shaking, bucking, he struggled on and on until they and he were exhausted and even then he showed no sign he knew what was happening to him or where he was. He lay limp, trembling, blue eyes blank, looking past or through them.
Brann chewed her lip, spent a few moments feeling helpless and frustrated. She wiped the sweat-sodden hair off her face, tucked the straggles behind her ears and stood scowling at him. Finally she bent over him, slapped his face, the crack of her palm against his cheek filling the small room. -Dan!” She flung the word at him. “Danny Blue! Stop it. You aren’t a baby.” She rubbed the side of her hand across her chin, back-forth, quick, angry. “Listen, man, we need you. Both of you. I know you don’t have to be like this.”
He looked at her, the blankness burnt out of his face and out of his eyes, replaced by bitterness and rage. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and pushed up. He looked at her again, then sat rubbing at his temples, staring at the floor.
“We need to talk, Dan. Can you work with Yaril and Jaril to give us some privacy?”
“You couldn’t wait?” He spoke slowly, with difficulty, his mouth moving before each word as if he had to decide which part of him was ordering his speech.
“What’s the point. Either you can or you can’t, what good will waiting do?” She shrugged. “Except to sour you more than you are already.”
He opened his mouth, shut it. He draped his hands over his knees and continued to stare at the floor.
“I’m not going to coax you,” Brann moved to the door, Yaril and Jaril drifting over to stand beside her, “or waste my breath arguing with you. Make up your own mind where you want to go. Don’t take too long about it either. We’ll be in the sitting room figuring how to walk out of this.”
A little over half an hour later Danny Blue ducked through the doorway (he was a head taller than he’d been two days ago) and strolled into the egg-shaped sitting room. He was wearing Daniel’s trousers, his sandals and his leather vest, Ahzurdan’s black silk undershirt; he had Daniel’s lazy amiability as a thin mask over Ahzurdan’s edgy force. He nudged a chair out of a knot in the rug, kicked up a hassock; he settled into the chair, put his feet up, crossed his ankles and laced his fingers over his flat stomach. “You can forget about privacy,” he said. “Over in the reality where this ship was built they had some mean head games. Very big on control they were. 01’ god here, he’s got a hook sunk in my liver which says I’m his as long as he wants me. I don’t work against him, I don’t help anyone else work against him, I don’t even think about trying to get away from him. You can forget about sorcery or anything like that, this has nothing to do with magic. Takes a machine to do it, takes a machine to undo it. So. There it is.”
Brann drew her fingertips slowly across her brow as if she were feeling for strings. “I don’t think,” she said slowly, “I don’t think it did it to me… um… us. We did some things it didn’t like… and… and we didn’t… there wasn’t anything inside stopping us. Yaril? Jaril?”
The changers looked at each other, then Yaril said, “No. The god hasn’t done anything we can locate in us or you. We might be missing something that will show up later, but we don’t think so.” She hesitated, took hold of Brann’s wrist. “Being what we are, I don’t think we’d need machines to undo a compulsion the god tried to plant in us, and Brann’s linked very tightly with us. I think… I don’t know… I think we could undo any knots in her head. I’m afraid we couldn’t help you, Dan. The connection isn’t close enough.” She shifted her hand, laced up her fingers with Brann’s. “There’s something else, isn’t there?”
Danny Blue uncrossed his ankles and got to his feet. “I wanted to ask you, Brann, you and them, give me some time before you push the god into doing something drastic. I, the two parts of me, we have to get an idea what the god wants and what we can do about it.”
Jaril dropped beside Brann, took her free hand. *We’ll watch,* he said. *And we’ll do some exploring ourselves. *
*Be careful that thing doesn’t learn more from you than you do from it. Remember what happened before. *
*We are not about to forget that, Bramble. * The voice in her head sounded grim. Yaril said nothing but the same angry determination was seething in her, Brann felt it like thistle leaves rubbing against her skin.
*So we give him some time. Three days?*
*Yes. That’s good. And we’ll keep the time, Bramble, the god can make a day any length he wants. Tell Dan three downbelow days.*
*Downbelow days. Good.* Brann relaxed and the changers slid away. “Three days, Dan,” she said aloud. “Three downbelow days.”
The outside door slid open, Danny Blue strolled into the eggroom. He nudged a chair out of a knot in the rug, kicked up a hassock; he settled into the chair, put his feet up, crossed his ankles and laced his fingers behind his head.
Brann looked up from the book she was scanning. “Ready to talk?”
“Where are the changers?”
“They got bored staying in one place, I suppose they’re exploring the ship.”