Ulyanova avoids meeting my eyes. Gray, finely wrinkled around her face and neck—as if she has grown old here! And Vera is looking older as well. They’re becoming part of this apartment, this life—this instauration.
“Look at him, he is hurt!” Vera says, and suddenly, as if our Guru Queen has seen me for the first time, she notices the blood and swelling.
“Get him ice and a rag,” she tells Vera, her voice deadly calm.
Vera goes to the kitchen and brings back ice wrapped in a worn towel. Both of them apply it to my face, my neck, my forearms. Feels cold. Soothes—a little.
“Do you know what’s happened?” I ask. “The cage fighters—”
“I know,” she says. “Like I said, when I opened gate. Did you not watch for them?”
“They came during the leap, while we were still… stunned.”
“Ah,” she says. “They learn not to sleep, like me. Vera, find chair for Vinnie. We must talk.”
“The ship didn’t tell you they would find us, attack us… that way, that time?”
She shakes her head. “Ship has its motives. Vera! Chair!”
Vera brings forward a cheap dining chair, made of deal and pine. As I sit, I look left. Filmy white drapes billow before a narrow glass door that opens to a shallow patio with cheap iron rails. Through the drapes, as they slowly flap and spread, I see that beyond and across a narrow street, other apartment buildings rise gray and stolid.
How far does the illusion go? How real is it out there? How far can she walk across town, to the park, up and down the streets—when she wants to relax? Queen of the apartment. Of the world outside. Queen of the voices and the children, of the blocks that could very well be out there, if I wanted to look.
“Queen of the city,” I say.
“It is what I tell her!” Vera says. “Queen of Moscow, of all we see. Here Gurus once live and dream of other lifes. But now—only her.”
“I am not entirely queen,” Ulyanova says, with an irritated glance at Vera. “Wrong move, boring move, and ship knows, brain knows—everything will change. All will die.”
“How many human fighters were in the cages?” I ask.
“Fifteen. Some have died since. Humans not best at cage fighting, it seems.”
“Where did the others come from?”
“From where ship has been.”
“Between stars?” I ask.
“No. Big planets out where comets are born. Ship has already carried beings not from Earth, out to Antagonista planet. I warned you.”
“Right.”
I want to get back, organize… warn Bird Girl and the Antags. If they don’t already know.
“A few planets swing down through system every thousand centuries,” Vera says, as if reciting from a textbook. What sorts of beings would grow up on all these worlds? The cold ones, the warm ones? How much more complicated can this get?
“What’s all that to this ship? To the Gurus?”
“Victors of long fights in cages explore, find you. I lose searchers. Do fighters know you? Hate you?” She nearly aspirates the word.
“One does,” I say.
“Male?”
“Yeah. Barely. A monster.”
“Why does this one want to kill you?”
“Four of us helped put him on this ship, indirectly, ignorantly—years ago.”
“The cage fighters kill Antags, searchers—kill with much pain. Pain as they have experienced, and more.”
Her face is so like the face of my mother the morning after she woke up and her boyfriend was gone. Quiet. Not in the least curious. Almost dead-looking. She cooked eggs and made me breakfast.
“Why do you let them move around?” I ask her. “Why not just cage them again?”
“Think!” Vera cries. “She tells you! Even now, she plays game with ship. She builds walls inside. Ghosts cannot cross. Brain cannot hear.”
Ulyanova gives me her own sadly critical look. “Brain and ghosts are fascinated by revenge. And so am I. When I open gate, as if to test me, cages open as well. I can do nothing. I cannot protect! I must not. I must not show you are important to me.”
Despite the ice, my whole body aches. I dread the thought of what I might find if we go aft… if we do what we have to do.
“You are more interesting if you fight,” Ulyanova says softly, moving near the window. She seems to want to lean into the sunlight, the breeze through the filmy white drapes. “And you will live… if you fight. Be as brave as searchers, who do not fight—but protect, and die.”
This discussion has long since crossed the line to scaring the shit out of me. So casual, so isolated—behind the curtain. How much time does Ulyanova have before the brain, the ship, the ghosts catch on to our little ruse?
She’s playing with me. She’s making my life more interesting by making me think she controls. How long can that be enough of an excuse? Until we get boring. Then we’ll just be fused like those fucking ships coming back from the transmitter. Maybe the cage fighters are just prelude to that.
Ulyanova straightens and walks around a beat-up coffee table. “Worse is done by Gurus, by ship, before we come. Years before battle seasons on Mars, on Titan, ship grew, ship traveled to a large moon. This moon orbits two worlds, tossed and heated for billions of years… Kept alive without sun, not made by bugs, but older, with very strong inhabitants. Ship auditioned them in little wars, then gathered them by tens of thousands… and carried them to Sun-Planet. It supplied them with arms and landed them… to eliminate Antagonista and searchers. New soldiers, new species—not affected by bug archives. Very popular for Gurus. New show begins.”
Vera says sadly, “Antagonista have no home. Nearly all have died. For those we carry, there will be one last, short war, short fight… death.”
“What if you help them?” I ask, my heart suddenly made of lead.
“I will confirm this mask. And then, ship will cancel us.”
The heat in the fake Russian apartment is muggy, oppressive. “What happens to us, then? If we kill the cage fighters, stay interesting… Are we going to leave the ship and fight down there, on Sun-Planet, with them?” I ask.
“Antags will leave ship. It is their duty,” Ulyanova says. “Hard part comes after.”
“We must not let Guru plans finish,” Vera says.
“I tell Verushka. If I do not stay Queen, ship will gather fighters from yet more moons, more worlds—also not from bugs. Ship will deliver them to Earth. Many, many of them. Soon it will prepare by growing for them new weapons, interesting weapons, evenly matched—and more ships.
“These new recruits, brought to Earth, will be told story, like what Gurus told us—and they will fight to kill humans, all humans, and then, will be set up for long war against those victorious on Sun-Planet. Not Antagonista. Those will already be dead.
“But I have my own plan. If I stay in control, if I do not make stupid move! First, we will go to Mars and Earth and gather up last of Gurus, and last of those Wait Staff and leaders who live only for Gurus. They will be brought into ship and receive promotions, live as we do. For days, they will be happy.” She points out the window at the long, hot summer of Moscow.
“Brain and ghosts will be happy. If I convince, if I am interesting, they may do what I say. I will send you off on ships that carried Gurus and traitors, and you will return to Earth. Then Guru ship will begin trip to far place, to opposite system—three hundred billion klicks. Very long leap.”
In my head, she’s helping me see that path, that grazing, high-speed journey out beyond everything we know, out to the far side of the Kuiper belt.