“They’ll be nearby,” said the composer. “I know you kids love your pets.” He emphasized that last word without irony—in fact, he had a strangely serious look in his eye, and his attention was focused on Toby as he said it.
Something wasn’t right here. He should know what the denners were. The military bot took several carriers and put them on the floor. As Toby and the other two coaxed their denners into them, Toby was watching Kenani. There was an expectant, almost anxious look in the old colonist’s eye, as if there was something he very badly wanted to say, but couldn’t.
Toby looked at the ranked military bots. The eyes and ears of Peter? Or even Evayne? When he glanced back, Kenani caught his eye and nodded, almost imperceptibly.
Corva and the others looked stricken, but there was also an underlying grimness to Corva, a steely determination. Kenani had said nothing about the passenger carrier; was it possible that neither the police nor he had figured out that it was why they’d been in the chandelier station to begin with? No, he decided, it wasn’t possible: Kenani must know. He might be deceived by the falsified schedule Toby had filed, but then again, he might not. And he should know that the denners weren’t ordinary pets but stowaway companions. He was probably pretending to be kind to cover the fact that he was going to send Orpheus and the others to be studied, maybe even vivisected.
If their gambit succeeded, they might not get away themselves, but Corva’s brother would be safe. Toby knew that was all she was holding on to right now.
“Bedtime, kids,” said Kenani. He pressed his thumb to the locks of three lozenge-shaped cicada beds in turn, then stepped back. Toby ordered his suit to unravel, then climbed into his bed. He sat there for a moment, watching as Shylif, then Jaysir, then Corva slammed the lids on theirs. Then he faced Kenani.
“I’m still a McGonigal,” he said. “I can’t believe Evayne would hurt me. And if she doesn’t—if I’m still here in a month or a year or ten years—”
Kenani made a shushing motion. “I know,” he hissed. “You don’t think I know? Stupid boy. But she will kill you, there’s nothing I can do about that.” Again that odd emphasis in his words, and his eyes were fixed on Toby’s with fierce intensity.
Toby nodded. “I’ll remember,” he said.
Then he lay back and shut the bed’s lid.
Twelve
HE’D FELT THIS BEFORE.
Thrum … thrum thrum. Pause. Thrum …
Not so far away, though, and never so weak. Toby struggled to move—even to open his eyes. He felt like a lump of stone neglected by the sculptor. Buried in a hill. Lost in time …
He could feel the source of that faint vibration: a small, heavy body sprawled atop his. Orpheus was struggling.
Toby remembered the first time he’d awoken in between destinations. He’d been confident, had no idea that the tug had missed its target and wandered for thousands of years. He’d fallen down a well of centuries and not even known it. And this time? How long had it been?
But this wasn’t like that time. Orpheus was with him. Yet Orpheus was dying, he could hear it in the weakness of the vibration that traveled up and down his body. Dying, and it was Toby’s fault.
He couldn’t move, but after a profound struggle he was able to crack his eyes just enough to see that the lid to his cicada bed was closed. Its transparent surface was mostly frosted over, but outside, dim blue light showed the ceiling furred by the same white frost he’d seen in the tug. Frozen air, Sol had called it. The internal telltales of the bed were active and registered red: emergency power-up. Orpheus must have tripped them when he climbed in.
Orpheus and the bed were fighting: he was using all his power to try to revive Toby, and it was using its to push him back into hibernation. There was no question which one would win. This bed wasn’t set to care for a denner, though; Orpheus would die if he stayed here. He couldn’t possibly have enough energy left to wake himself again.
“Go…” He tried to say back to sleep, but his jaw wouldn’t move. If only he had his glasses, he could contact Orph through his interface, tell him to reset his clock—
Interfaces … didn’t these beds have their own internal controls? Of course they would. He twisted, flailed around in the narrow space, and felt a keypad near his right hand. He mashed numb fingers against it and was rewarded as data windows blossomed into existence in the crystal canopy.
The display showed that the bed was drawing on an inexhaustible well of power from elsewhere in the city. It was programmed to push Toby back into sleep, and it would keep at it until it succeeded. After all, he wasn’t due to wake up for another twenty-two years.
Why twenty-two? Then he remembered it alclass="underline" Nathan Kenani’s strange hinting statements and Toby’s own desperate plan. The order he’d sent to Orpheus just before they’d been sent to their beds.
“This is…” His voice was a ragged whisper, but he had to try it. “This is Toby Wyatt McGonigal. Wake me up.”
The indicators in the data window changed, and seconds later Orpheus’s drone ended. He felt the denner collapse into the gap between his arm and his body. Around them both, the bed was now humming into action.
Rest, Orph.
THIS TIME, TOBY AWOKE refreshed. He blinked lazily at the distant frosted ceiling, then remembered everything and turned on his side, gathering Orpheus into his arms. The denner was limp.
“Oh, no, no.” He hugged Orpheus to him, crying. The bed had woken Toby, but it had ignored the denner. Maybe it wasn’t too late, though. Cicada beds could perform medical wonders, and reviving creatures from the brink of death—or beyond—was their specialty. And somewhere nearby was the bed Orpheus had been in until today.
Toby went to lift the bed’s lid but got an alarm in response. “Toxic Atmosphere” and “Fatal Temperature Differential” were just two of the indicators that flashed red. He could lift the lid, but the first breath he took would freeze his lungs into solid cages.
“What do we do now, Orph?” From his position on his side he could see through the bed’s lid; most of the frost had cleared off it now. The beds containing Corva and Shylif were right next to his. Beyond them, the room was dark except for the blue telltales indicating where infrastructure machinery, designed to operate in hypercold conditions, was maintaining the ideal hibernation conditions for the city.
It was incredible, but Orpheus had survived that environment. Toby had known the denners could survive without air, and in deep subzero temperatures, for a little while. They had to have those abilities to be able to wake themselves from cold sleep. They were biological, but had been seriously genetically engineered at some point in the past.
He craned his neck to look down at the floor and saw little denner paw prints crisscrossing the thin snow that covered everything. There were broad drag lines through that snow, too. They seemed to start at a set of lockers in the dim corner of the room and ended up below Toby’s bed. What had Orpheus put so much effort into hauling over?
He couldn’t see it, but suddenly he knew. “Orph, you’re a genius,” he whispered to the lifeless body he cradled. “Hang on, hang on, I’ll get you help.”
Toby took several deep breaths, then, holding his breath, slammed the bed’s lid back.
The cold hit him like a hammer. He barely had time to roll off the bed and make a grab at the balled-up environment suit; then he couldn’t move. His fingers were painfully cramping into claws, and he just managed to reach out and cradle the suit’s helmet before his hands went numb.