She saw herself—her actual self, shorn of the suit and naked as the day she was born—standing in blackest darkness. At first the void was empty save for her, and a stillness surrounded her, as if she existed in a time before time itself.
Then in front of her flowered a profusion of blue lines: fractal tracery that coiled and scrolled like vines as it spread. The lines formed a dome of intersecting shapes with her at the center, a shell of endlessly repeating curves and spikes—a universe of detail in each point of space.
And she knew, somehow she knew, that she was seeing the Soft Blade as it truly was. She reached out and touched one of the lines. An electric chill poured through her, and in that instant, she beheld a thousand stars born and died, each with their own planets, species, and civilizations.
If she could have gasped, she would have.
She took her hand away from the line and stepped back. Wonder overcame her, and she felt small and humbled. The fractal lines continued to shift and turn with a sound like sliding silk, but they grew no closer, no brighter. She sat and watched, and from the glowing matrix above, a sense of watchful protectiveness emanated.
Yet she felt no comfort. For outside the tracery, she could sense—as if with ancient instinct—a looming menace. Hunger without end spreading cancer-like in the surrounding blackness, and with it, a twisting of nature that resulted in the straightness of right angles. Without the Soft Blade, she would have been exposed, vulnerable, helpless before the menace.
Fear overtook her, and she huddled down, feeling as if the fractal dome were a candle flickering in the void, threatened on all sides by a hostile wind. She was, she knew, the focus of the menace—she and the Soft Blade alike—and the weight of its malignant craving was so great, so all-encompassing, so cruel and alien, that she felt helpless before it. Insignificant. Barren of hope.
Thus she stayed, alone and scared, with a sense of imminent doom so strong that any change—even death itself—would have been a welcome relief.
PART FIVE. MALIGNITATEM
And as a twig is bent, it grows.
—MARION TINSLEY
CHAPTER I. ARRIVAL
1.
Kira woke.
At first she couldn’t tell where she was. Blackness surrounded her, a black so profound there was no difference between her eyes closed and her eyes open. Where the emergency lights should have been, only an inky darkness pervaded. The air was warmer than normal for a trip in FTL—moister too—and no breath of wind stirred the womb-like space.
“Morven, raise lights,” she murmured, still groggy from her long inactivity. Her voice sounded curiously muffled in the stilled air.
No lights brightened the space, nor was there any response from the pseudo-intelligence.
Frustrated, Kira tried something else. Light, she told the Soft Blade. She didn’t know if the xeno could help, but she figured it was worth a try.
To her satisfaction, a soft green illumination gave shape to her surroundings. She was still in her cabin, but it in no way resembled the room as it had been upon departing Sol. Ribs of organic black material lined the walls, and fibrous cross-weaves matted the floor and ceiling. The newborn light came from pulsing, fruit-like orbs that hung upon growths of twisted vines that had crawled up along the corners of the room. The vines had leaves, and in them, she saw the shape of the oros fern repeated and elaborated upon in ornate, rococo flourishes. And everything—vines, orbs, ribs, and mats—was covered with tiny, textural patterns, as if an obsessive artist had been determined to decorate every square millimeter with fractal adornment.
Kira looked with a sense of wonder. She had done this. She and the Soft Blade. It was a far better thing than fighting and killing, she thought.
Not only could she see the results of their efforts, she could feel them, like extensions of her body, although there was a difference between the material of the suit itself and the plantlike creations. Those felt more distant, and she could tell that she couldn’t move or manipulate them the way she could with the actual fibers of the Soft Blade. They were, in a sense, independent of her and the xeno; self-sustaining life-forms that could live on without them, as long as the plants had proper nourishment.
Even disregarding the plants, the Soft Blade had grown during the trip. It had produced far more material than was required to cover her body. What to do with it? She considered having the xeno dispose of the material, as she had with unneeded tendrils on Orsted, but Kira hated to tear down what they had built. Besides, it might be unwise to get rid of the mass when there was a chance—unpleasant to consider but not outside the realm of likelihood—that she might need it in the near future.
Could she leave the extra material in the cabin, though? Only one way to find out.
As she prepared to free herself from the struts holding her in place on the bed, Kira looked down at her body. Her right hand—the one she’d lost at Bughunt—had melted into the mattress, dissolved into a web of snarled lines that ran the length of the bed and into the casing on the walls.
A momentary surge of panic caused the material to ripple and stir and extrude rows of barbed spikes.
No! she thought. The spikes subsided, and Kira took a steadying breath.
First, she concentrated on re-forming her missing hand. The snarled lines twisted and flowed back over the bed, once more giving shape to her wrist, palm, and fingers. Then, Kira willed the Soft Blade to release her from the bed.
With a sticky sound, she broke free. Surprised, Kira realized that she didn’t have any physical connection to the black growths on the walls, though she could still feel them as part of herself. It was the first time she had managed to consciously separate herself from a part of the Soft Blade. Apparently the xeno didn’t mind, not so long as it still covered her body.
It was an encouraging development.
Still somewhat disoriented, she pulled herself along the wall to where the door ought to be. As she approached, some combination of the xeno’s awareness and her own intent caused that section of the gleaming black material to retract with a slight sliding sound.
Beneath was the desired pressure door.
It opened, and Kira was relieved to see the normal brown paneling covering the walls of the hallway outside. Her efforts to constrain the Soft Blade’s growth had been a success; it hadn’t spread to the rest of the ship.
Looking back, she said, “Stay,” same as she would to a pet.
Then she exited into the hallway. The mass of black fibers inside her cabin remained behind.
As an experiment, Kira closed the pressure door. She could still feel the xeno on the other side. And again, it didn’t try to follow her.
She wondered how the different parts of the Soft Blade communicated. Radio? FTL? Something else? How far away could they safely be? Could the signal be jammed? It might be an issue in combat. Something she’d have to watch for.
But for the present, Kira was content to leave the growths in her cabin. If she needed them, a single thought would be enough to summon the rest of the xeno to her side. Hopefully without damaging the Wallfish.
She smirked. Falconi wouldn’t be too pleased when he found out about her cabin. Hwa-jung too, and Gregorovich, if the ship mind ever returned to his normal self.
Kira assumed they had arrived, but the Wallfish still seemed quieter than it should. She tried pulling up her overlays, but as with each of the last two FTL trips, the Soft Blade had absorbed her contacts. She wasn’t sure at what point exactly, but it must have happened sometime during her dreaming hibernation. Frustrated, she muttered, “When are you going to learn?”