You can save her, after a fashion. It's simple enough. If she is desperate for want of breath, she will be easy to manage. And this time, you understand the vermin well enough that there will be no unexpected repercussions.
You open wide your petals, and reveal your welcoming heart to the fading, shivering life-form who will be your salvation, if your dreams come true.
18
the broken holdes
Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down? Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee? Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever?
Benedick had not anticipated how badly it would affect him to see his home in ruins. When he and Chelsea left the transfer station, minimally equipped by the carnivorous orchids--clothing and a little food, at least, and ill-fitting boots that must have been salvaged from some storage locker undisturbed since the Moving Times, as they were primitive and immutable--he understood intellectually what he might find.
But to see a raveled hollow, the edges still decaying, scooped from the side of the world where there had been apple trees and hills and water, a manor house, and the world's best approximation of winter--that struck through him like an impaling blade, so he struggled to breathe around it. And it was not just his Heaven that lay destroyed. The unraveling extended wide and deep through the levels of the world.
Benedick stood stunned for a moment and watched reality unwind itself into coils of smoke and nothing. After the first gasp, he drew himself up, away from the arched, transparent wall of the inspection tube, and tried to make himself stern for Chelsea. His weakness over so petty and personal a loss would lend her no steel, and he thought she needed whatever he could give her.
Still, he almost snapped at her when she disturbed the silence to ask, "Which way from here?"
"Further down," he said, and as he turned to lead her, an angel exploded into his perception.
When contact with Nova resumed, it pushed home with such force that it left Benedick dizzy. The angel snapped into place like a tool into a socket, the world behind her. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that she emerged from the world, for it seemed as if each strand of her hair, each branching of her circuitry, each blue-green strand and sheet like dripping strings of algae, leading back and down and away, receded into a complexity beyond what Benedick could parse even with the assistance of his symbiont. Elsewhere in the continuum of Nova's attention, he spotted the jewel-like nodes of Caitlin and Perceval--and felt the moment when their awarenesses registered him.
Deus ex machina, he thought, allowing a moment's amusement before making sure his mask of severity was in place. Perhaps it was just his exhaustion, the weariness of the chase and the preceding adventures, but the fantasy comforted him more than he would have expected. He glanced over his shoulder at Chelsea, still silhouetted against the hatchway, her hair stirring with the change of air pressure, and said, "We're online."
She grinned at him. "Sweet connectivity. Hello, angel. What have you got for us?"
When Nova's avatar shook her head, the strands of hair--or algae, or circuitry--rippled like a curtain of flame.
"We've got you back," she said, with an artificial life-form's propensity for stating the obvious, "but we haven't located the First Mate yet. However, the Captain and I are fairly certain we have identified the source of the nullities, and that it's linked to Arianrhod's destination. We therefore conjecture that we also know where Tristen is, or at least where he's going to wind up, if he hasn't lost her trail. Are you and Prince Benedick well enough to continue the hunt, Princess Chelsea?"
"No crippling injuries," she responded, briefly touching the burned side of her face. It was healing well, curls of dead flesh sloughing in shaggy leaves from the new, blue-flushed skin revealed underneath. Bits of dead membrane clung to her fingertips when she drew back her hand. "Yuck," she said.
"You're shedding DNA everywhere," the angel observed.
"Cost of doing business," Chelsea said with a shrug. She wiped her hand on the trousers the carnivorous plants had provided. "It's on file."
Benedick shifted restlessly. "We have been proceeding south. I obtained a fix on Arianrhod's previous location, and we have been tracking that, but more recent information would be welcome. The source of the nullities, if pleasantries are satisfied?"
"Not in the south of the world, as previously surmised, but south of its structure entirely," Nova said. "Beyond the Broken Holdes, and outside the span of the world."
Benedick's heart had already begun to ache, sickened by awakening knowledge. He glanced at Chelsea for support or confirmation, but his sister frowned blankly. Of course; Benedick's own fault for permitting it. Their father had been a secret-keeper, and she was far too young for the early days after the catastrophe to be anything to her but received history.
He steeled himself and said, "Does Caitlin know?"
"She's been informed," Nova answered. "Am I to understand that you share her suspicions as to the source of the infection?"
Dry-mouthed but holding his face impassive, Benedick nodded.
Chelsea brushed his elbow with the back of her fingers. "And how about those of us who didn't pay attention to our tutors?"
"I very much expect your tutors were under strict instructions not to discuss any of this with you," Benedick said. "You know those portraits Dad had nailed to the wall?"
She looked up at him, sister to brother, but without the trust he'd seen time and again among the members of Mean families--or even those of Engine. If she watched him like an attentive puppy, it was a puppy with every expectation of being kicked.
Do better.
He still had one daughter left. And this sister, too. He said, "Those were the older sisters, Cecelia's daughters. The girls between Tristen and me."
"They were executed."
"So you have heard a little."
"Cautionary tales."
Benedick chuckled without humor. "Father believed in making examples."
She nodded, encouraging him to continue. "Only two of them were executed," he clarified. "The youngest lived. She is Chief Engineer, and the mother of my daughter Perceval. But of the two who did die, the eldest was Caithness, who would have been Captain. And the middle daughter was Cynric the Sorceress."
Benedick's hands wanted to twitch defensively, as if to cover his breast, but with an effort of will he held them relaxed at his sides. Chelsea watched attentively, but he did not think she had registered his discomfort. If he could hide his thoughts and weaknesses from Alasdair Conn, he figured he could hide them from anyone. "Colorful nickname."
"Colorless woman," Benedick said. "And I do not mean in terms of her personality, but she had a gift for making herself unnoticed, for going unremarked. For being--not at the heart of every conspiracy, because she was the center of none--but rather for being aware of things that rightfully nobody should have known. She was Alasdair Conn's daughter; we all had the sense to make sure we had resources no one else knew the existence of. But more than that, she was a bioengineer. The head of biosystems. A good deal of the ship's ecology grew out of her experiment--as did the colonies. Or rather, she created the first generation of the self-evolving form in which we recognize them today. When I was young, we did not have such things. Life was bounded in ways that would seem inconceivable to you now."