“Or you either.” Meri had been stroking his hair, now she gave it a short tug. “This has nothing to do with you.”
“I made her cry.”
“No, Speedy did that.” Meri spat the name, as if she were daring the Godspeed to display. She had not shown herself to them in almost three days.
Robman spun again.
“Speedy wouldn’t let her go out of the airlock,” said Meri. “Would she?”
“Without a suit?” Robman sipped Z-breeze from a tumbler as he watched his coin dance. “Never.”
“Who knows what Speedy will do?” said Adel.
“They’re wasting their time,” said Jonman. “Sister isn’t out there.”
“Do you see that,” Meri said “or is it just an opinion?”
“Take one, put one,” said Robman.
“Which gets you exactly nothing,” said Jonman. “I call a storm.”
“Then I call a flood.” Robman pushed three of his blocks toward Jonman’s side of the board. The tether connecting them quivered and Adel thought he could hear it gurgling faintly.
Jonman distributed the blocks around his biome. “What I see is that she’s hiding someplace,” he said. “I just don’t see where.”
Meri slid out from under Adel’s head and stood. “And Speedy?” Adel put the pillow on the armrest of the sofa and his head on the pillow.
“She’s here,” said Jonman. “She’s toying with us. That’s what she does best.”
“At least we don’t have to practice her damn play,” said Robman.
Adel wanted to wrap the pillow around his ears to blot out this conversation. One of their number had vanished, they were some fifty light-years from the nearest MASTA, and there was something very wrong with the cognizor in command of their threshold. Why weren’t the others panicking like he was? “Rehearse,” he said.
“What?”
“You don’t practice a play. You rehearse it.”
Meri told the wall to display the airlock but it was empty. “They must be back already.”
“Have some more Z-breeze, Rob,” said Jonman. “I can’t feel anything yet.”
“Here.” He thrust the tumbler at Jonman. “Drink it yourself.”
Jonman waved it off. “It’s your day to eat, not mine.”
“You just want to get me drunk so you can win.”
“Nothing,” said Kamilah, as she entered the salon with Jarek. “She’s not out there.”
“Thank the Kindly One,” said Jarek.
Robman gave Jonman an approving nod. “You saw that.”
“Is Speedy back yet?” said Kamilah.
“She hasn’t shown herself.” Meri had settled into a swivel chair and was turning back and forth nervously.
“Kamilah and I were talking on the way up here,” said Jarek. He strode behind Meri’s chair and put hands on her shoulders to steady her. “What if she jumped?”
“What if? “ Meri leaned her head back to look up at him.
“Adel says she was hysterical,” said Kamilah. “Let’s say Speedy couldn’t settle her down. She’s a danger to herself, maybe to us. So Speedy has to send her home.”
“Lose your mind and you go free?” Robman spun his coin. “Jon, what are we waiting for?”
“Speedy,” said Kamilah. “Is that it? Talk to us, please.”
They all looked. The wall showed only the empty airlock.
Adel hurled the pillow at it in a fury. “I can’t take this anymore.” He scrambled off the couch. “We’re in trouble, people.”
—be calm—
—tell it—
They were all staring at him but that was fine. The concern on their faces made him want to laugh. “Sister said something was going to happen. This is it.” He began to pace around the salon, no longer able to contain the frenzied energy skittering along his nerves. “We have to do something.”
“I don’t see it,” said Jonman.
“No, you wouldn’t.” Adel turned on him. “You always want to wait. Maybe that was a good idea when all this started, but things have changed.”
“Adel,” said Meri, “what do you think you’re doing?”
“Look at yourselves,” he said. “You’re afraid that if you try to save yourselves, you’ll be fucked. But you know what, people? We’re already fucked. It makes no sense anymore to wait for someone to come rescue us.”
Adel felt a hand clamp onto his shoulder and another under his buttock. Kamilah lifted him effortlessly. “Sit down.” She threw him at the couch. “And shut up.” He crashed into the back cushion headfirst, bounced and tumbled onto the carpet.
Adel bit his tongue when he hit the couch; now he tasted blood. He rolled over, got to hands and knees and then he did laugh. “Even you, Kamilah.” He gazed up at her. She was breathing as if she had just set a record in the two hundred meter freestyle. “Even you are perfectly scared.” Her medallion spun wildly on its silver chain.
“Gods, Adel.” She took a step toward him. “Don’t.”
Adel muted his opposites then; he knew exactly what he needed to do. “Speedy!” he called out. “We know that you’re decelerating.”
Meri shrieked in horror. Jonman came out of his chair so quickly that his tether knocked several of the blocks off the tikra board. Kamilah staggered and slumped against a ruby sideboard.
“Why, Adel?” said Jarek. “Why?”
“Because she knows we know.” Adel picked himself up off the Berber carpet. “She can scan planets twenty light-years away and you don’t think she can see us dropping rocks on her own surface?” He straightened his cape. “You’ve trapped yourselves in this lie better than she ever could.”
“You do look, my son, as if something is bothering you.” The Godspeed’s fetch stepped from behind the statue of Levia Calla. She was in costume as Prospero.
“What did… ?”
“Speedy, we don’t…”
“You have to…”
“Where is… ?”
The Godspeed made a grand flourish that ended with her arm raised high above her head. She ignored their frantic questions, holding this pose until they fell silent. Then she nodded and smiled gaily at her audience.
“Cheer up,” she said, her voice swelling with bombast. “The party’s almost over. Our actors were all spirits and have melted into air, into thin air. There was never anything here, no soaring towers or gorgeous palaces or solemn temples. This make-believe world is about to blow away like a cloud, leaving not even a wisp behind. We are the stuff that dreams are made of, and our little lives begin and end in sleep. You must excuse me, I’m feeling rather odd just now. My old brain is troubled. But don’t worry. Tell you what, why don’t you just wait here a few more minutes? I’m going to take a turn outside to settle myself.”
The Godspeed paused expectantly as if waiting for applause. But the pilgrims were too astonished to do or say anything, and so she bowed and, without saying another word, dissolved the fetch.
“What was that?” said Robman.
“The end of Act IV, scene 1,” said Adel grimly.
“But what does it mean?” said Meri.
Jarek put his hand to her cheek but then let it fall again. “I think Adel is right. I think we’re…”
At that moment, the prazz sentry ship struck the Godspeed a mortal blow, crashing into its surface just forty meters from the backside thruster and compromising the magnetic storage rings that contained the antimatter generated by collider. The sonic blast was deafening as the entire asteroid lurched. Then came the explosion. The pilgrims flew across the Blue Salon like leaves in a storm amidst broken furniture and shattered glass. Alarms screamed and Adel heard the distant hurricane roar of escaping air. Then the lights went out and for long and hideous moment Adel Ranger Santos lay in darkness, certain that he was about to die. But the lights came up again and he found himself scratched and bruised but not seriously hurt. He heard a moan that he thought might be Kamilah. A man was crying behind an overturned desk. “Is everyone all right?” called Jarek. “Talk to me.”