“I’m out in space,” she said again. She shook her head. “You have … you have no idea … so many years … so many years, I wondered what it would be like … and my mother, she said that only fools would … would ever leave Montos … and I dreamed of other places, and the dreams frightened me, and I …”
He wasn’t sure that he entirely knew what she was talking about. She was speaking so quickly, about so many things, and she didn’t seem at all focused. He put a hand on her shoulder, and it felt remarkably cool to the touch. He was also a bit surprised to see that she was looking a little more tanned than she had earlier. Her skin was darkening a bit, and he wondered why that might be.
As caught up in the wonder of the moment as she was, she still shrugged his hand off her shoulder. Talk about presence of mind.
“Riella …” he began.
She turned and looked at him in surprise. “How do you know my name?”
“I have ways of learning things. Of learning your name … and learning of the Quiet Place.”
The effect the mention of those words had upon her was electric. She shrank back from him as if he had pulled out a vicious weapon and was about to gut her with it. “How … how could you … it … how …”
“You tend to do that quite a bit. Stammer out a series of barely connected thoughts. You might want to work on that.”
“Who are you?!”
“I’m Xyon.”
“I know that!”
“Then why did you ask?”
She put her face in her hands, and her fingers brushed against where her antennae had been. As if touching the now vacant area reminded her, she backed away from him while never taking her gaze from him. She was acting very much like a trapped animal.
“Shouldn’t you be demanding that I take you home about now?” said Xyon, his arms folded across his chest. “I mean, that is where this is going, isn’t it?”
“No. I …” She looked decidedly crestfallen. “I can’t go home, I can’t …” She turned and looked back at him as if truly seeing him for the first time. “What happened to those creatures? The ones who were chasing me?”
“I had a chat with them. They agreed to leave you alone.”
She looked at him with a trace of the wonderment that she’d been gazing out at the stars with. “Who are you? I mean, yes, I know your name is Xyon. But who are you?”
“No one important. I do what I feel like doing. There’s not much to say beyond that.”
“It can’t be that simple. You go around the galaxy helping people?”
“No. I just kill time, waiting to see what happens next in my life. Everything else is fairly incidental.”
“You’re lying. I don’t know why, but you are. Did you …” She hesitated to frame the question. “Did you kill them?”
“Kill who?”
“Those creatures, who were chasing me.”
“Oh. One of them, yes.”
“I could never do that. Kill something.”
“You would be amazed,” Xyon told her, “what you’re capable of killing when it’s trying to kill you.”
“I … suppose so. Have you killed a lot of people? Or things?”
“As many as I’ve had to.” Making a quick effort to turn the subject away from himself to something he felt more comfortable with, he said, “What I want to know, though, is why they were interested in you. What is this ‘Quiet Place?’”
“A place in my dreams.” She was barely speaking above a whisper. “Words that mean something only to me. How could you know of it? Where did you find out?”
“From the Dogs. They got the information from someone else.”
Slowly she sagged to the ground as if she had no strength in her legs. Her back slid against the wall until her rump thudded onto the floor. Then she sat and stared. “How could it be? It’s … it’s all in my head … I didn’t … it … I couldn’t …”
“You’re doing it again. The fragmented sentence thing.”
“Shut up!” she said, her temper flaring, and then she reined herself in, taking several deep breaths. Tears started to roll down her face and she quickly, firmly wiped them away.
“It’s obviously not in your head. At least, not only there. Do you have any idea how the Dogs would have found out, or how—”
“No.” Her fists thudded against her thighs. “I have no idea. None at all.”
She looked back out the viewport at the stars, and then slowly she got to her feet. She moved to the port and stood against it, staring out at the gleaming array of stars before them.
Then she whispered something, so softly that he couldn’t make it out. “What was that?”
“I need to sleep.” It was as if she were addressing him from another quadrant.
“You just woke up.”
“I know.” Quickly she walked away from him and to the backroom. He heard the bed creaking and, moments later, looked in on her to see her with her eyes closed, her chest rising and falling in a steady pattern.
He walked away, shaking his head, not even pretending to understand what was happening … and then he jumped as he heard her cry out. Immediately, he ran back to the bedroom in time to see her sitting up, looking as if she’d been frozen into the upright position. “All right, what in hell is going on?” he demanded.
She didn’t hear him, or if she did, she didn’t acknowledge him. She seemed to be concentrating intently, although he couldn’t quite determine what it was she was concentrating on. Immediately, she swung her legs down and off the bed and padded back up the hallway. He followed her, scratching his head. “Riella? Riella, would you mind telling me—”
Still no answer. Instead she had gone to the viewport and was staring out. This time, however, she didn’t appear overwhelmed by the glory of all creation. She seemed to be concentrating, trying to pick something out. He didn’t have a clue as to what she was doing.
“Turn us,” she murmured.
“What?”
“Turn us. Around. I want to see everything. All of it.”
He couldn’t even begin to understand what she was talking about, but there was no harm in indulging her. “Lyla,” he said. “Keep us stationary, give us a spiral survey of the area.”
“All right, Xyon.”
Riella jumped slightly at the unexpected female voice that seemed to emanate from right by her elbow. But then she promptly forgot about it as Lyla’s systems guided the ship in a gentle spiral pattern, like a gyroscope. Riella scanned everything around her intently, and Xyon watched all of it with quiet bemusement.
Suddenly she cried out, “Go back! Go back!”
Obediently Lyla angled the ship back in the direction that it had been pointing when Riella had shouted. The vessel froze in place as Riella stared, fixated, in one particular direction.
To Xyon, it seemed an eternity passed, and still she didn’t speak. Just stared. Finally he offered, “Would you like to see some star charts?”
She looked at him blankly at first. “What? Star charts?”
“Maps. Visual indicators that give names of systems, planets, distances, travel times …”
“You have such things?” She sounded amazed.
“Of course. Anyone who travels in space does. Well, they do if they’re interested in survival. I can punch up an overview of the general sector of space you were looking at, if that would be of interest to you.”
“Yes. Very much, I’d like to see it.”
“Lyla—”
“All right, Xyon,” she said without his having to complete the question. “On the side screen.”
He pointed to a screen just to the left of Riella’s shoulder, and she turned and stared at it, wide-eyed, as a detailed schematic appeared on the screen. She regarded it fixedly, so much so that he thought her eyes were going to pop clean out of her head.
“What are you looking for?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, somehow I had a feeling you’d say that.”
/> After that, she said nothing for quite some time, except to call for other star charts, or ask for closer studies of particular areas. Seeing that the conversation wasn’t going any further, Xyon busied himself with his own duties. Working with Lyla, he scanned various broadcasts over the ether, seeing if there was any more activity on the part of the Dogs of War. He managed to pick up, through deft tapping of private transmissions, the results of the Dogs’ recent visit to Montos. Apparently, a considerable portion of Montos City was in flames. Beyond that, things were unclear and contradictory. Some reports stated that the Dogs were running amok while others said that they had fled, although what they might be fleeing from Xyon could not even guess.
At that point, Xyon didn’t have anywhere else in particular to go. There were a couple of worlds he had been thinking about visiting, but none of them were particularly high priority. Besides, what was he supposed to do? Drag Riella all over the place?
Indeed … what was he going to do with her?
Not for the first time, he cursed himself for his impulsiveness. He had hauled himself over to Montos to try and help someone he didn’t know, to rescue her from a situation that he knew nothing about. He had actually managed to accomplish it, except now that he had done so, he didn’t know how to proceed. Xyon had an annoying habit of following his instincts without giving any thought as to where those instincts might lead him. Consequently, he tended to find himself in situations where his instincts had run out and he had nothing left to substitute for them.
Hauling Riella from one end of the quadrant to the other didn’t seem like much of an option. He could return her to Montos, but she didn’t seem particularly inclined to go there. Besides, matters there seemed rather unstable, and he might very well not be doing her any favors by depositing her back in the middle of it.
For that matter, something seemed distinctly wrong. He wasn’t entirely certain that Montos would be the right place for her in any event.
He was starting to realize that it wasn’t his imagination at all. She was looking distinctly less Montosian. He was beginning to suspect that the antennae had fallen off because either they weren’t real in the first place, or they had been grafted on somehow. And her skin color was deepening, darkening.
He had lost track of time when she suddenly said, out of the blue, “You really didn’t cut off my antennae, did you.”
“No, of course not.”
She nodded absently, still staring at the star charts. “You don’t seem the type to have done it.”
“Really. What type do I seem like?”
“I don’t know.” She didn’t even look in his direction. “I’m not sure what type you are … except that you scare me.”
“I scare you?” He laughed at that, and then she did look at him to fire an annoyed glare at him. But he was not particularly intimidated by the prospect of her anger. This was his ship, after all. If she got too much on his nerves, he could always punt her into space and be done with her. He couldn’t envision himself doing so, but then again, who knew what lengths she might drive him to. “Sweetheart, you’re the spookiest, weirdest thing on this ship, and it’s not as if there’s a great deal on it. You sleep, you scream, you study star charts for hours on end even though you’ve never been in space and have no idea where you would go even if—”
“Here.”
He blinked. “What?”
“Here,” she said again with greater emphasis, and she pointed at one particular sector. “Here is where I want to go. Take me there.”
He stepped closer. “Magnify sector 18M, Marks 113-114, Lyla.” The requested area immediately enlarged on the screen and he leaned forward to study it. “Why there?”
“There,” was all she said.
“But there’s nothing there. The star doesn’t even have a name; just a locale.” He glanced at the designation. “Star 7734. The system is … it doesn’t even have a system. It’s just there. There’s nothing there, Riella. It’s a waste of time to—”
She whirled on him, then, and there was something about her that was different. There wasn’t simply anger in her tone; it was more like solid iron, and when she spoke, it wasn’t begging or pleading or even petulance. It was with a voice of command that expected to be obeyed. “Take me there!” There was no mistake at all: it was, indeed, an order.
At which point Xyon toyed with the idea of tying her down or locking her away or in some other way endeavoring to teach her just who was running the ship and who had the right to bark orders at whom. Instead, Xyon was rather surprised to hear his own voice say, “All right. Lyla, set course for Star 7734.”
“Setting course, Xyon.”
“Let’s go, then.”
The fact that her rather strident command had been obeyed didn’t relax Riella in the slightest. Instead she remained whipcord tense. She shifted her focus from Xyon back to the star charts and fixated on them for some time, even once the ship was well underway for the requested destination.
Not for the first time, Xyon wondered just what in the world he had gotten himself involved in.
* * *
Riella did not want to sleep. She knew what would happen, for by this point, it was happening every single time she went to sleep. No longer was she experiencing a calm, restful slumber, not ever. She would go to sleep and the dreams would haunt her, and then she would awaken and feel less and less herself.
Hour upon hour she had remained, staring at the star chart while the ship, the Lyla, headed on the course that she had so emphatically stated must be followed. Xyon, finally succumbing to exhaustion, had settled in his bed at the far end of the ship and gone to sleep. It wasn’t as if he trusted her particularly; she had heard him muttering low commands to Lyla, caught the words, “Keep an eye on her,” and knew that he had instructed Lyla to summon him if there was any untoward activity on her part.
In an effort to keep awake, she said, “Lyla.”
“Yes,” came the brisk voice.
“What are you?”
“Pardon?” the ship replied.
“Well, I … I mean, I don’t pretend to be conversant with hardware throughout the galaxy. I probably know less than most people do about such things. But I was under the impression that there aren’t any computers as sophisticated as—”
Lyla’s voice interrupted. “What makes you think I’m a computer?”
Riella didn’t know what to make of that. “I’m sorry—”
“A computer. Why do you assume that I am?”
“Well, aren’t you?”
“I’m not exactly a computer.”
Riella felt a chill go down her spine. “Then … then what … are you? Are you a ghost or—”
“Ghost?” And Lyla laughed. “No. No, quite the contrary. I am very alive.”
“Alive?” Riella could scarcely believe it. “But … but how can you be alive? Is this entire ship alive, then?”
Again that eerie laugh. “Only in that I am part of it. The ship itself is not sentient. I, of course, am.”
“Of course,” said Riella, trying to sound casual even though the entire thing seemed insane to her. “Of course you’re sentment. I mean … why wouldn’t you be.”
There was a hesitation on Lyla’s part. Not a silence; Riella could sense it. The computer, the being, the … whatever it was … was hesitating.
“I used to be someone else,” Lyla said. “Someone … very bad. I did not serve society. I did not help others. This … was my punishment … and my salvation.”
Slowly the truth began to dawn on Riella. “You’re … not physically here, are you …”
“Not really. But my personality engrams were built into the ship. Part of an experimental program run by scientists who were formerly part of the Daystrom Institute.”
“And this ship was given to Xyon? Such a rare vessel? Why?”
“Given to Xyon? No. Xyon tends to acquire things in a manner other than having them given to him.”
Riella’s lips t
hinned. “So he is a thief, is what you are telling me.”
“Oh yes.”
Immediately Riella’s opinion of Xyon (that was still in the process of forming) took a downward turn. A hero, an adventurer, an altruist … these she could appreciate, even admire, although there was still something about him that was unsettling. But someone of a moral character low enough to be a thief … that called into question everything else he said and did. Who knew what uses he intended to put Riella to? Perhaps he was hoping he could ransom her, or perhaps …
She didn’t know. There were any number of possibilities, and none of them were especially pleasant.
But there was something that still eluded her. She wanted to ask more about Lyla’s background, but couldn’t quite bring herself to do so. Then she focused on something else. “I do not understand, though. If you are sentient, you can leave at any time. Or has he programed you in some way so that you—”
“Oh, no. No. My presence with him is purely voluntary.”
“Then why do you remain with a … thief?” The word was so distasteful to her that she was having trouble forming it.
“Because,” Lyla said matter of factly, “I like him.”
“How can you like a thief?”
“I like Xyon. What he does is immaterial to me. I do not judge; I appreciate someone for who they are, not what they are.”
“That is … very generous of you.”
“Really?” Lyla paused to consider this. “Yes, Yes, I suppose it is. I never thought about it much before. Interesting, isn’t it. As quickly as I think, with my computer mind … apparently I do not manage to think of everything.”
“Yes. Very interesting.” Actually, she wasn’t sure that it was interesting, but at that moment, she wasn’t all that sure of anything anymore.
The only thing that she was absolutely positive about was that she had to make it to that place on the star chart, the star that was designated as 7734.