The suit woke and swarmed up his arm, built itself over his head. It felt like he was plunging into an icy lake as the pieces conformed themselves to his arms and shoulders, covered his face and mouth, and ringed his torso. The thing flipped him over as it finished its work, and just as he was seeing spots and about to faint, he felt a blast of cool—but not cold—air shoot down his throat.
Coughing, frostbitten by the material sheathing his whole body, Toby rolled, thrashed, and banged his head on the base of another bed. Then he was able to sit up. The air rushing into him was getting warmer and so was the metal touching him everywhere. The suit was trying its best.
More coughing. He crouched there for a long time, until the painful tingling of reawakening nerves settled into mere clammy chill. Then he levered himself to his feet and looked around.
Half the room’s beds were showing amber telltales. They were trying to wake their sleepers. Toby stumbled over to one and scraped away the frost to reveal the face of a grim middle-aged man within it. One of Nathan Kenani’s soldiers, no doubt.
“Go back to sleep,” he said. The beds’ indicators flickered and then changed. Quickly, he gathered Orpheus into his arms and crunched through the frozen air to the denner’s original cicada bed, which he found by following Orpheus’s paw prints into the next room. The pet beds were little boxy affairs suitable for cats and dogs, set along the far wall. It was easy to find Orpheus’s—it was the one with the open lid, whose lights were flashing red while it beeped in alarm. He set Orpheus carefully inside and commanded it to start emergency treatment.
Next he had to take care of Kenani’s bots—which were, after all, McGonigal bots. Several stood in the darkened corners of the main room. These were watching Toby. They’d probably been awakened by the alarms that had gone off when Orpheus tried to override his bed. They were doubtless programmed to wait for the human soldiers to wake up before taking any action.
“You’re mine now, all of you,” he told them, and his voice overrode their settings. “Find my glasses and warm them up.”
He went to the other boxes and commanded them to awaken Shadoweye and Wrecks. Then he returned to the main room and gave the same order to the beds where their masters slept. One of the bots handed him his glasses, and he pushed them against his faceplate until the suit understood and built itself a mouth to bring them in. It fitted them onto his face, the interface sparkled into life around him, and he activated the Cicada Corp Console.
And then … there was no more to do. He found himself turning around and around in the middle of the room, adrenaline making him swing his arms and curse—but the beds were working. He was done here.
Toby left the main room to find a window. The suit’s interface said it was hundreds of degrees below out there, and what atmosphere there was, was hydrogen and very thin. The normally bustling spaces looked postapocalyptic with snowdrifts covering the carpets and frost on the dead video signs. Here and there, faint telltales glowed from dormant equipment. He soon found a door to the main spaceport hall and walked over to one of the transparent outer walls of the city. Outside, he could see the other spheres of the continent, vast dark curves breaking up the starscape. Stars meant the city must be very high in the atmosphere, and indeed, when he ventured a look down, he saw nothing but black.
Yet kilometers overhead, attached to the side of the dark spheres was a fantastical lantern. Glowing warm yellow, the single solitary city sphere cradled greenery inside it, while little bright dots of flying machines drifted lazily around its curving side.
The Weekly lockstep was awake.
Toby sagged against the clear wall. For a second he thought he was going to faint, but at least now he knew there was somewhere to go once they got out of this room. They could even find a hot meal up there.
He hadn’t really thought this would work. The only thing that made him set Orpheus’s alarm for seven years less a day, just after Kenani got the drop on him, was his memory of Corva and Shylif talking him into sleeping in the shipping container. It had seemed impossible, but they’d done it. More than that, they claimed to do it all the time. If they could perform such routine miracles, why couldn’t Toby do something as simple as set Orpheus to wake in seven years’ time instead of thirty? He’d guessed that the pet bed couldn’t override Orpheus’s own internal clock, and based on what he’d seen in the kitchen downstairs, Orpheus should have no problem getting out of it. His modified biology should let him survive long enough to open Toby’s own bed and climb in. And then he could wake his human.
Simple enough, but so many things could have gone wrong. Even a basic mechanical lock on the pet bed would have killed the plan—and probably Orpheus. Toby certainly hadn’t factored in the lack of air. It had been Orpheus’s own idea to drag a pressure suit over to Toby’s bed, though he couldn’t actually lift it in.
Toby turned his head. He could see Orpheus’s icon through the wall, or so the glasses made it seem. The indicator was no longer red, but amber.
He wanted to dance in a circle and shout his elation, but there was still something to do. This task was the biggest and, after bare survival, the most important by far. A responsible man wouldn’t be wasting his time jumping around. He’d be acting.
Toby selected a dozen or so military bots and told them, “You’re coming with me.”
With them thudding through the snow behind him, he headed for the elevators.
EVEN WITH THE HEATERS going full blast, the passengers were shivering as they entered the terminal lounge. Most looked around in sad confusion; they’d expected to be awakened on normal lockstep time, and it was clear that hadn’t happened. Some were angry, and a knot of these approached Toby where he sat at the exit.
At the far end of the hall, the elevator was just disgorging the latest of the refugees from Thisbe. Toby quickly scanned the faces, but nobody there seemed likely to be the one he was looking for.
He turned his attention back to the five angry men now standing before him. One of the military bots flanking him shifted slightly, and distant Weekly city light slid liquidly over its armor. One of the men glanced at it nervously.
“See here,” said the one in the lead. “Why’re we off frequency again? We know we were quarantined—”
“You tholes rolled over for the McGonigals,” said another. “It’s disgusting—”
“But why this?” The first waved at the creaking walls and wreathes of subzero vapor that coiled and flanked the passengers like cobras. “It’s a mess!”
Toby cleared his throat. He’d had plenty of confrontations with angry characters and usually dealt with them well—in gameworlds. Generally those characters didn’t all talk at the same time, as these guys were doing, nor did they egg their bot companions on to posture threateningly in front of combat bots that could squish them instantly. If combat bots had any sense of humor, Toby was sure his were laughing on the inside.
Suddenly he, too, had to laugh. The men glared at him.
“What’s so funny?”
“If you’re all like that on Thisbe, then I see where Corva gets it,” he said.
“Corva?”
Toby turned. A man not more than a few years older than Toby himself pushed his way through the encircling crowd. He had piercing dark eyes, black hair, and familiar high cheekbones. He wore a multipocket jacket and baggy trousers, had a collapsed pressure suit knotted around his waist, and a satchel slung over his shoulder. “Did you say Corva?”
“Corva Keishion of Thisbe sent me,” Toby said. “Who’re you?”
“Where is she!” The young man stepped forward and half raised his arms, maybe to grab Toby’s arms. The combat bots shifted, and he didn’t complete the gesture, but he said, “She’s my sister. I’m Halen.”