Emissaries from the Dead

20. SUSPENSION

In the indirect light of our skimmer, the eyes of the Brachiators seemed saturated with that ineffable quality that leads human beings to label other beings as wise.

It helped me not at all to know that this was a totally subjective quality, which had no bearing to actual, measurable wisdom, to know, in fact, that human beings, have been known to perceive that quality shining from the eyes of terrestrial creatures as varied as owls, orangutans, and even dogs. Much as I tried, I couldn’t resist my own involuntary reaction to a Brachiator face that rang the appropriate cues.

The Porrinyards had described Friend to Half-Ghosts as an old acquaintance, taking pains to stress that this was not the individual of the same name who lived near Hammocktown. I could have guessed that much. Hammocktown was many kilometers port and spinward, far too distant for even the speediest Brachiator to travel in these past two days. This Brach also looked different, its fur bearing a mottled, grayish pattern that may have been inborn or the effects of advanced age, and its face marked by the scars of several past battles, including one that intersected an eye opaque from time or trauma. “We are surprised at this visit.”

Skye spoke alone: “Why?”

“Because we have been told that all the Ghosts have left the world.”

That would be a reference to the evacuation of Hammocktown. Skye said, “That’s very recent news.”

“It is old news,” the Brachiator said. “It happened the night before this. We have known since before the suns came on, the next morning.”

“How did you get the news?”

“The creators wanted us to know, so we knew.”

This made sense. Considering the Brachiator rate of travel, the news couldn’t have been passed along by word of mouth. But which AIsource had told them, the majority or the ones I knew as the rogue intelligences? Would Brachiators even be able to tell the difference?

I whispered a question to Oscin, which emerged from Skye’s mouth. “Do your creators often bestow knowledge?”

The answer came at once. “They bestow knowledge every day.”

Another question whispered to Oscin and asked aloud by Skye. “Did they let you know what happened to Warmuth and Santiago?”

A pause. “We were told of one who seized Life and another joined by Death.”

“Does this make you sorry?”

“You are Ghosts. You drift between Life and Death. It is nothing new for you.”

I thought about that longer than I had to, reflecting on a next step that could not be avoided.

At a whispered request, we descended.

A thousand meters below the Uppergrowth, the darkness swallowed everything in the world the AIsource had made. Everything above us, below us, and to either side of us was an identical shade of black. Even the storms that so often lit up the clouds had quieted, leaving us adrift in what was, for the moment, a cocoon of penetrating darkness.

The Porrinyards sat opposite me, watching me tremble. Neither offered a comforting touch. Given how much they’d offered already, any time I showed even the slightest need, this seemed well out of character until I realized they probably realized how little I wanted their sympathy right now.

Somehow, they could see even that.

They allowed me several minutes of measured breath before they shifted position, in a way that preserved the nature of the space between them. “You don’t have to do this.”

I studied my hands. “I do if I want to feel it.”

“And how necessary is that? Can’t you understand it from a distance? Put what you know up against what you can figure out?”

“Not if I want to be sure.”

Skye moved from the seat beside Oscin to the seat beside me, the transition so graceful and so smooth that it was done before I could even register what was happening. Her eyes, dark in the uncertain glow of the instruments, glistened more than Oscin’s, seeming close to tears in a way that his did not. But when her lips moved, the voice that emerged was still mostly his. “Watching your back against Gibb was one thing. But this is another thing entirely. This is just taking risks for no good reason.”

I shook my head. “I warned you this was coming.”

It was the second time I’d seen them show anger. Like most elements of their personality, it seemed to exist not in their bodies but in some undifferentiated place between them, and it was palpable, burning with resentment and hurt. “You told me something was coming. You didn’t specify what. But you knew all along, didn’t you? How long were you on-station before you realized you were going to do this?”

I should have informed them that I didn’t need their permission. “The first day. When Lastogne introduced me to a Brachiator.”

Skye bit her lower lip, leaving Oscin the primary speaker. “But you knew Gibb and Lastogne would never authorize it. They’re responsible for your safety, and they know you’re untrained and psychologically unfit; you knew they’d pull rank on you the second you even suggested doing such a thing. Which means you needed other allies willing to arrange it behind their backs. Allies who could be counted on to break the rules when nobody else was around.”

Skye spoke alone. “That’s why you dumped Lastogne as your guide.”

Now both of them. “It’s been about more than just making friends, isn’t it? You’ve been testing us. Seeing how far would we go, to give you what you need.”

It had been a long, long time, maybe years, since I’d worried about hurting anybody’s feelings. I hadn’t imagined myself capable of wounding the Porrinyards, who between them seemed mounted on foundations stronger than my own had ever been. But damned if the two of them hadn’t turned brittle all of a sudden. And damned if they weren’t good about inflicting guilt. I needed several seconds to frame a satisfactory answer. “The first time I found my life in your hands, nobody asked my opinion first. The second and third time, I chose to have you along. That much wasn’t testing you, or using you. It was relying on you.”

They indicated the Uppergrowth with a roll of their eyes. “But it was always about this.”

“It’s been about more than just that for some time now.”

They moved to opposite sides of the skimmer, their positions so identical down to the slight twist of their respective right legs that they might have been performing choreographed parodies of one another. When they addressed the night, I couldn’t trace any individual sound to either individual set of lips. “When the individuals first Oscin and Skye announced their intention to link, their respective friends and family were horrified. They said, aren’t you afraid of what you’d be giving up? The individuals Oscin and Skye said, no, we’re not giving anything up. The families both asked the same question. How could we be sure.”

My chest burned. “What did you tell them?”

They chuckled in harmony. “Nothing accurate, Andrea. The individuals Oscin and Skye weren’t sure about anything. They hadn’t lived it, you see. It was just an intellectual abstraction for them. They didn’t know how many more cues I would receive. They didn’t know my shared self would be sure about almost everything.”

They turned from the night and sat opposite me, their eyes shining.

They said, “This is what you’ve brought back into my life, Andrea: that refreshing sense of uncertainty.”

The preliminaries, introducing me to the Brachiators as a New Ghost who wished to taste Life, were fast and easy.

Securing me was a nightmare. My limbs rebelled at the very idea of trusting my life to a few roots and vines and safety cables, and more than once froze rather than submit. More than once the Porrinyards assured me that there was no shame in giving up on the very idea. I considered listening to them when they insisted on making me promise to signal at the first sign of an emergency.

But I said nothing, and soon found myself clinging to the Uppergrowth with all four limbs. The roots and vines were slack enough to permit some mobility. I had inserted my arms and legs through the places loose enough to accommodate them, hooked my ankles around a low-hanging loop, and found branches thick enough to provide handholds. Although the Porrinyards advised me that most of Gibb’s indentures preferred to do this facing the Uppergrowth, because that was the orientation of the Brachiators themselves, I insisted on being positioned with my back to the world’s ceiling and my face to the clouds.

I did not feel any safer when the Porrinyards, standing together on the cargo bed, strung a support cable across my waist or even when they looped another, thicker band around my chest. Anchored deep within the multiple layers of vines, they supported the bulk of my weight, freeing my arms in case I needed them, and preventing my limbs from seizing in reaction to what would have been agonizing strain. My mind appreciated the further safeguards against falling, but my gut considered them illusory protections at best.

The storm clouds below me were so very, very hungry.

I was still struggling to get my breath under control when the Porrinyards said, “Andrea? There are a couple of other things you need to know.”

Among them was just how stupid I was to invite this insane situation. “Go ahead.”

The Porrinyards each rested a protective hand on one of my shoulders. “Most people are a little afraid of heights. Mild acrophobia is healthy. But extreme, uncontrollable acrophobia is a different beast entirely. Many extreme acrophobes are frightened of heights, not because they see those heights as dangerous, but because they don’t trust themselves that close to an opportunity to jump. They see themselves surrendering to impulse. It’s not the fear of heights, in other words, but the fear of impulse that paralyzes them.”

I considered how easy it would be to just loosen the protective cables and plunge, and found the thought, horrific as it was, much too attractive. “Now you tell me.”

“If I did not consider you currently in control of yourself, I would not be leaving you here.”

I bit rising hysteria. “I hope you guessed right.”

“Me too. You’re very beautiful.”

My calm failed, overwhelmed by the distance between me and the storm clouds far below. “S-so are you.”

They displayed a pair of dazzling white smiles. “I look forward to overcoming your resistance.”

Dammit, this wasn’t fair. “Th-that might be difficult. I’m not the kind to get talked into anything.”

“I have advantages,” they said. “I outnumber you.”

Whereupon they fell into crouches, steadied themselves within the skimmer’s specific gravity, and with a wave, sped off, taking both the light and my last chance to back down.

It was stupid to feel fear. Fear was nothing but the body’s involuntary response to perceived threats. Fear increased heartbeat, respiration, and perspiration; fear clouded the mind and paralyzed the limbs, and I’m going to die wasn’t subject to logical arguments about its counterproductivity.

Right now the single most persuasive image in my mind involved a sudden rip in the Uppergrowth. Let’s say, a few hairline tears at a spot already weakened by Brachiator claws, then strained to the breaking point by my own involuntary movements, spreading farther as the cell walls ruptured and the increased straub pulled the wounds still wider I’m going to die becoming a lightning-shaped zigzag Oh, Juje and an entire section of vines ripping loose all at once, spilling me into the same abyss that had claimed Santiago Shut up and just how far could I fall, really, before I felt the press of wind against my face and knew there was no hope? A meter? Two? Three?

I closed my eyes.

I’m going to die.

But that meant nothing, too, because we were all going to die, and every breath of air I managed to wrest from the universe was one more the nightmares of my childhood had failed to deny me. When I breathed it was an act of defiance. When I breathed it was a victory. When I breathed it was

Oh, dammit.

My last meal came up, spilling from my lips in a great volcanic comet.

It was one of the reasons I’d insisted on being secured face-down. People who vomit while secured in a face-up position have a nasty habit of choking to death. At least this way, if death came, it wouldn’t be messy and stupid.

Or at least not messy.

I wondered how far the vomitus had fallen. A few hundred meters? More? Was it still one coherent mass or had the wind separated it into—

Enough of that. Not helpful. Concentrate already. Banish the fear.

I thought of an imprisoned little girl, fighting off the effects of the inaudible sublims her keepers played to keep her docile, wanting to smash her fists against the walls but overcoming the rage and the fear and vowing to survive on her own terms.

There was no visible difference between that darkness and the darkness I faced now. I knew what the darkness hid.

But then, I’ve known since Bocai.

The long minutes went by, my breath slowing, my phobic reactions giving way to a kind of vague distress.

Have you ever spent a protracted period of time among a species not your own? I have. On Bocai, they had been vast extended family. In other places, they had been enemies, allies, or assignments. Here they were part of the landscape. I could smell the musty scent of their fur, and hear the soft rumble of their breath, and detect something of their personalities in the way they sighed and moaned and shifted position all around me. I could sense the rhythm of their strange, topsy-turvy lives and the connection they shared with their surroundings every second of every day. I could even sense their feelings toward me, the distasteful intruder in their midst: strange, alien, possibly even foul-smelling, so completely at odds with everything they considered normal. I could just imagine their reaction to being told that the human beings aboard One One One were here to help them. They couldn’t find the news heartening. What would they feel instead? Confusion? Amusement? Horror? Disgust? Rage? Malice? Maybe even something different from all of that, something that appeared on no human spectrum? Maybe anything but comfort. That, they wouldn’t feel. They called us Ghosts, after all, and Ghosts have always been incapable of putting the haunted at ease.

The truth was, whatever else may have been involved here, the AIsource had played a practical joke on us. They had arranged for our ideals to lead us into a world where our ideals were just plain irrelevant, a world whose inhabitants we would be honor-bound to help even though they got along fine if just left alone.

We considered them owned, but they had no frame of reference to measure freedom. We considered them prisoners, but they couldn’t live anywhere except with their captors. And we considered them slaves, but their only labor was to do what was natural to them. All the debates were just abstractions to those who actually had to live it: less relevant, even, than subtle discussions of color to creatures born blind. And whatever mazes they were driven through, whatever great dramas they played out for AIsource amusement, were likely destined to remain just as opaque to us. Our two races were like two parades marching down the same street to the same drumbeat, blind to one another until the moment of collision.

I was still wondering whether that was the whole point when the Heckler spoke, somewhere very close to me.

“You’re a real bitch, you know that?”

As before, the voice was neither male nor female, young or old, mad or sane: just a slick, measured voice, flensed of everything that might have given it character. Nor was it that odd not-a-voice-but-I-heard-it-anyway used by the AIsource.

This was once again human, with the humanity removed.

I was neither surprised nor alarmed. I would have been more concerned had the Heckler not shown up tonight. But since I was surrounded by Brachiators, who I didn’t want mistaking our more unpleasant exchanges for an attack on them, I activated my hiss screen before continuing. “Yes, I know that. Can you hear me?”

“As clearly as I’ll hear your screams when you fall.”

My ability to feel fear was currently operating at full capacity and wouldn’t bear any additional weight. But I smiled, to show appreciation for the snappy answer. “It’s been a while since I heard from you.”

Whatever leeched the emotion from the Heckler’s voice also defanged a clear attempt to snarl. “I thought you’d be smart enough to know you were on the losing team.”

“And I would have imagined you smart enough to recognize that I don’t join teams.”

“We’re all owned, Andrea. We all belong to one side or another. We may not always recognize what side that is, but that has more to do with our own blindness than with our stupid illusions of remaining neutral. In truth, we function only as much as we’re allowed to, by those who really pull the strings.”

Something shifted in the darkness. Something that seemed to move faster than any Brachiator had a right to move.

“Most of us are less than pawns. We just take up space and complicate the play for those who make a difference. Even those of us with a part in the game are just moved back and forth across the board, scoring our little points, working toward that one moment when we manage to score our side a momentary advantage. It’s not any way for a sentient person to live.”

“And that’s why you’re after me?” I asked. “To put me out of my misery?”

The Heckler emitted a sick, anguished laugh, as much self-loathing as malice. “I said most of us, Andrea. I only bought myself a longer leash.”

I freed my right arm, fumbled for my belt, opened something I’d taken from my bag in case I needed to defend myself, and cursed with disgust as it slid from my fingertips and tumbled forever into the darkness. Well. That was inconvenient.

“I knew about you,” the Heckler continued. “I’d read up on you. I’d learned all about how hated you were and how little you cared. I considered you a hero of mine. I didn’t want you working against me here. When I learned you were coming, I did what I could to drive you off.”

That would be the first of the messages I’d received after Intersleep.

I removed something else from my belt: a tiny disk, about the size of my knuckle, which even in this nigh-total darkness found enough ambient light to glisten. I swung it before me in a clumsy arc, not knowing whether that arc hung between me and the Heckler, and sweaty with the knowledge that it barely mattered.

“Am I supposed to think that’s some kind of weapon?”

I kept my voice level. “I don’t care what you think. I care what you know. And by your own admission, you know the kind of person I am, the kind of things I’ve done, and just how little I care. You know I wouldn’t hesitate to set off an explosion capable of incinerating everything within a hundred meters of here, as long as that meant getting rid of you too.”

Silence. Then: “That’s ridiculous.”

“It doesn’t matter that it’s ridiculous. What matters is that it’s also not out of character. What do you think? Is it out of character for me? Am I not the kind of person who’d walk around with a bomb all her life, on the off chance she might find herself in the kind of situation where it made sense to blow herself up? If you honestly believe I’m saner than that, then keep coming. If you don’t, then rest assured I’ll give you another chance to kill me by this time tomorrow.”

The empty space before me lit up with another of the Heckler’s images: this one a naked, emaciated version of myself, displayed on a darkened stage as I danced for the amusement of unseen puppeteers. My pierced wrists and ankles were swollen, semi-healed scabs. My face was painted clown-white, with bright red cheeks and a gobbet of glistening meat in the same place where a clown would have worn a rubber red ball for a nose. Hooks pulled my lips back into a ghastly, fixed smile belied by my eyes, a pair of lost, despairing orbs blinded by all the tears they had shed.

Then the image vanished, leaving purple afterimages on my retinas.

Then came the final words, no longer soulless, no longer an altered voice intended to hide the killer’s true nature, but the voice of the murderer, provided without any further masks. “You have no friends, Andrea. Not in the Dip Corps and not on One One One. Just allies, and enemies, and cylinked pets doing what their owners have ordered them to do.”

I waited.

Another cackle. “Hurts, doesn’t it? Hearing the truth about what they are?”

“Go to hell,” I said.

“I’ve never been anywhere else,” the Heckler said, in a voice filled with regret. And then, a moment later: “But neither have you.”

I continued listening for a while, in case the Heckler came back, but the only rustlings around me were soft and sluggish enough to come from Brachiators. And if I allowed myself to remain paranoid about this all night, I wouldn’t be strong enough to handle the next part. So I palmed the little disk (a coin, issued by a local government I’d brought down, bearing the face of a local politician I’d successfully prosecuted for crimes against the human species) and slipped it back into the little pocket on my belt.

Maybe, if I got back to New London, I’d take the time to replace what I’d dropped.

I’d feel naked until I managed to get my hands on another bomb.

In the meantime, I signaled the Porrinyards.

“Are you all right, Andrea?”

“Never better,” I said.

They sounded dubious. “Forgive me for having a hard time believing that.”

“No, I’m serious. Listen, the Heckler just made contact—”

They cut me off, in a voice more Oscin’s than Skye’s. “I can be right there.”

“No. The tough part’s still ahead. I just need you to stay awake, and look out for anything out of the ordinary. You may not be out of danger yourselves.”

A pause. “You think your friend might try to get to you through us?”

“Let’s just say the previous incidents show a certain disregard for collateral damage. Keep your eyes open.”

“And yours,” they said. “We don’t want to lose you.”

I don’t know how many hours I dangled there, listening to the movements all around me, trying to ignore the heights, trying not to picture the Heckler circling for another try.

I suffered several additional episodes of panic, but fought each one down. They used up so much energy between them that after a while I found myself drifting in and out of dreamless sleep.

A few eternities later, I realized I could see movement in the clouds far below. It was a series of irregular flashes, burning just long enough to register before disappearing. More lightning, of course, but what caused my pulse to race was the realization that I could discern the clouds even between flashes. The Habitat was no longer pitch-black. It was shrouded by a dim murk unable to hide the gradual ignition of the suns.

Turning to my left and right, I made out the many furry, nearly immobile forms that had kept the long night’s vigil over me. There must have been dozens of them, visible to my eyes only as black shapes. I could not yet tell how many were facing me and how many were looking away. It barely mattered. Even in their nigh-total immobility, they were still aware of me, still measuring me by the standards of creatures who lived the only way they knew how to live.

I looked around for a likely spokesbeing and found one in the form of the nearest Brachiator, a great black shadow perhaps all of five meters away.

“Uh…hello? Can you hear me?”

The black shape swelled with breath, then exhaled. “Yes.”

“Are you the one called Friend to Half-Ghosts?”

“Yes. It is a pleasure to be your friend now, Andrea Cort.”

I cleared my throat. “Am I a Half-Ghost now?”

Another low, rumbling breath, with a cute little whistle in it. Maybe the Brachiator had a cold. “You have been a Half-Ghost for most of the night.”

“That’s all it takes, then? Just hanging here?”

“All it takes is a connection to Life.”

I wondered if Brachiators bored themselves to tears on a regular basis or whether they only spoke this way when humans were around. “What about the other human I spoke to last night? There was one here, wasn’t there?”

“There was more than one.”

“When?”

“First there was the one-in-two. The one that brought you here.”

The Porrinyards, obviously. Stupid of me not to specify that. And impressive of the Brach to perceive their nature so quickly. “And after them?”

“Another.”

“When?”

“After the one-in-two left.”

“Did you hear me talking to that one?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know what we talked about?”

“We do not listen to conversations that are not our concern.”

That sounded prim. “It’s all right if you overheard.”

“Thank you. But we do not hear what we are not invited to hear.”

Brachiators, I decided, made the universe’s most useless witnesses. “Did you recognize the one I spoke to?”

“By reputation,” said Friend to Half-Ghosts.

I hadn’t suspected the word part of the Brachiator vocabulary. “What kind of reputation?”

“As a Ghost Who Kills Ghosts.” He sounded petulant, as if the answer was so obvious I’d wasted his time by merely asking.

“Would you happen to know whether it was male or female?”

“We have trouble discerning gender among Ghosts.”

“But you can tell the difference between New Ghosts and Half-Ghosts, right?”

Friend to Half-Ghosts sounded almost amused. “Yes. That is easy.”

“How?”

“Half-Ghosts are marked by Life.”

“Am I marked by Life?”

“Now you are.”

“And you can tell this?”

“It is what enables us to be friends.”

I almost recited my habitual response to offers of friendship: the one about not wanting friends and not looking for any. “Thank you.”

“You are welcome,” said Friend to Half-Ghosts.

He was being polite at best. He was not attached to me, or for that matter any of my semi-living kind. He could only be aggrieved by the intrusion of human beings, with their constant, distracting questions. Given common decency as an option, I would just leave him alone. But I didn’t have that option. There were still things I needed to know.

I subtly shifted my arms and legs within the network of roots and support wires that had held me fast for so long. They tingled like mad from impaired circulation, but would be able to move in a hurry if necessary.

I said, “I am happy we are friends. Because I need your help.”

Another rumble. “What would you like me to do?”

“I need your help staying alive.”

A low, disturbed rumble rose from the other Brachiators around us. I didn’t know how many members of the tribe had heard me, but those who had were scandalized, even angry, like the guests at any human gathering, hearing something distasteful from the stranger in their midst.

Friend to Half-Ghosts seemed more unflappable. “You are a Half-Ghost. You have all the Life you can ever know.”

“I don’t care. I’m tired of being a Ghost. I’m tired of having to return to the land of the Dead. I need more. I need Life the way you have Life.”

Was it just my imagination, or was Friend really trembling now, in fear or rage or frustration or dismay? It didn’t matter. I didn’t need imagination to hear a change in the timbre of his voice: a deepening, a hoarseness that had not been there before. “Too much Life is not healthy for Ghosts. We have heard this. The other Ghost—”

“Which one?” I asked.

“The one we have heard about. The one who embraced Life.”

“The one who died from it,” I said.

“Yes. She taught us that Life is not good for Ghosts. That it uses them up too fast.”

“It’s still a small price to pay for Life.”

A long pause. The quality of the air changed, and took on the quality of the last few seconds before a storm.

Friend to Half-Ghosts started begging. “Please, Andrea Cort. Do not ask for this. We do not want to use you up too fast.”

My throat went dry. I swallowed spit and said, “I know what I want, Friend. Give me Life.”

Everything in the world held its breath at once. The soft rustle of Brachiators shifting position on their vines, the sighs and grunts of Brachiator breath, the murmur of Brachiator words and all the other subliminal reminders of Life all abruptly cut away to nothing, replaced with the frantic, unspoken tension of creatures challenged to carry out an atrocity.

Then Friend to Half-Ghosts started to move.