Memento Mori, Chapter 04

[keaalu]

     For a few seconds, Rae found he couldn’t speak – could barely even breathe. So what if he’d put the puzzle together, the final picture was even more incomprehensible than all the jumbled pieces had been. His friend – his giant, metal, computer brained mechanical friend... was now biological. A scared, dirty, half-frozen waif of a laima.

     No. Come on Rae, that can’t be right. He clenched his fists into his cushion, frustrated at himself. Was it really somehow more comprehensible to think a machine had suddenly inexplicably turned organic? Rather than the idea Larissa’s crew might have coached an impressionable little fessine on what to say, while they went off and bullied the real Blink into doing something she didn’t want?

     For a few moments, he just watched her, sitting on the urge to challenge her. Blink – if that was truly who she was – sat and carefully ignored him, studiously concentrating on trying to button up her shirt, with awkward hands that looked like they were all thumbs.

     Rae sighed. Whoever she was, whatever had happened...? Jumping at her and challenging her was the last thing she needed. The poor thing was probably not only shocked and frozen, but absolutely terrified by having her world so comprehensively turned upside down. Not to mention, probably embarrassed at the condition he found her in. No wonder she looked so sick and withdrawn!

     He settled on the cushions next to her, and encouraged her to tuck back into her quilt. No point in rushing her, not any more. He’d done what he’d come here to do, after all, he’d found her, and it wasn’t as if he was going anywhere any time soon. “Tell me what happened, sweetheart...” he encouraged, gently. “Maybe if we work through it together, we can find a way out, mm?”

     Obediently, she did as told, snuggling down in the thick fabric. “She said-... said she was helping me.” Shaky though it was, muffled through the fabric and barely comprehensible, it was unmistakably Blink’s voice – soft, understated, almost as though scared to make itself heard.

     “Who did?” He let his hand rest on her shoulder, hoping to come across as supportive. “How is this supposed to help you?”

     Her eyes flickered briefly up at him. “Frond.”

     “That-... that creepy white non-laima thing did this to you?” It took every last ounce of self control not to give life to his anger with some sort of explosive outburst. He swallowed it back down before trusting himself enough to carrying on speaking, more softly. “I thought it-... she... was your friend.”

     “She was,” Blink confirmed, softly.

     Wait. “…um, ‘was’?” he echoed.

     “She was dying.” The fessine kept her gaze fixed on the heater, quietly. “This was the last thing she was able to do before she finally faded out.”

     “So-… what? She did this to you – and now you’re stuck like it? Forever?”

     Blink tried to hide it, but her flinch was fairly obvious.

     Rae hastily backed down. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m just-… rrgh.” He sighed and folded his hands in his lap, frustrated. “I just wish you’d stop letting people do things to you, Bee. Just because they tell you they’re your best friend doesn’t mean they’re going to actually do things that are in your interest, y’know?”

     Blink remained awkwardly quiet, for a little while, not sure what to say. “I didn’t mean to worry you,” she offered, faintly, glancing up at him. “I’d have called you if I’d known what would happen. So you didn’t feel like you had to follow me.”

     Rae smiled, glumly. “Ah, I’d probably have still followed you anyway, if I thought you were in trouble. It’s what friends do, right?” He sighed, and let his arm rest around her shoulders. “How’d they even manage to abduct you in the first place? I can’t even see how they’d have knocked you out, let alone dragged you aboard.”

     Blink’s brow furrowed ever so slightly in thought. “The captain-… Larissa, I think… approached me with an offer while I was working on the engines,” she explained, her voice slowly losing its croakiness the more practice she got with using it. “She said it was...” She pursed her lips, trying to remember. “ ‘The opportunity of a lifetime’. She tried really hard to sell it, to make me think I’d be helping them achieve something great, but I know they were just after materials they could re-sell.”

     “Did she tell you what she was after?”

     “Not really in any detail. They basically wanted my help getting into Kust University Science Institute. I’m not sure why they picked me, because I’m good at engineering but not breaking into security systems.”

     Rae nodded, keeping awkwardly quiet about what he suspected was the real reason. You can go outside safely. Plus, if Institute Security shoots at you, well, you’re ‘just’ a machine. “But because you weren’t interested in what she had to offer, that put her in a bad mood?”

     “Maybe. A little. I-… I was tempted to go along with it,” Blink admitted, quietly. “It sounded like it could have been exciting, and, well-... I was behind on my rent. I needed the money.” Her ears sagged, very slightly, and she forced a miserable smile. “But I said I couldn’t go with her, because I needed to call my family.”

     Rae could only manage a sympathetic look for her. If he and that wretched white monster hadn’t bullied her into thinking it was a good idea, maybe they wouldn’t all be in this predicament right now.

     “We argued a little bit, and because I wouldn’t agree, she shot me instead,” Blink went on. “Nasty little EM-pulse gun. By the time I woke up, we were already on their way. It was why we crashed.”

     Rae quirked a brow. “What, did she hit the computer instead?” he half-joked.

     “I hadn’t finished my work on the engines when she knocked me out.” He felt one thin shoulder come up in a shrug, under the blankets. “I’d taken out half of the flow regulators, so I could replace them, but didn’t get the chance to before they took off. They ended up using the engines with no regulations on the fuel influx into the reactor core.”

     “That’d explain the particle trail they were laying down,” Rae mused, thoughtfully. “I wondered if something had gone wrong.”

     Blink studied her feet, and flexed her toes. “The engine mass went supercritical just after we arrived in Hesgeri space,” she agreed. “We ejected the bulk of it, but not fast enough. The core cracked. They had to lock down the engine room, which meant they had no power generation at all. We had just enough in the batteries to maintain shields during the crash.” She shuddered, and curled down tighter. Her voice shivered, thinly. “And that was horrible.”

     Rae gave her shoulders a little squeeze. Just seeing the vessel’s exterior, he could understand exactly what she’d been through (and didn’t even want to try and imagine what must have quite plainly been a spectacular crash).

     “The captain was furious. She thought I did it on purpose.” Blink tucked herself down slightly smaller, her voice going quieter. “I thought she was going to kill me. She had this... this nasty, sharp, evil looking disruptor.” She placed her hands over the back of her neck, lacing her fingers. “She probably would have shot me if one of her crew hadn’t talked her down.”

     “Well at least you had someone looking out for you, huh?” Rae soothed.

     “I don’t think he was doing it for me,” Blink demurred, shaking her head. “Just didn’t want her to do anything she couldn’t un-do – I think they still planned on going to Kust, even after we crashed. He just pointed out that I couldn’t warn them because I was unconscious, and they should have checked if I was finished before doing anything. I don’t think any of them were very good at engineering, they just got someone else to do it when they called in to port.”

     “You make it sound like that’s different to anyone else that engages your services,” he reminded, with a little smile, and thankfully she took it in the way it was intended, managing the feeblest little laugh.

     “I think they were going to try and call for help from one of their contacts, but never got the chance to. I don’t really know what happened. I never saw any of them ever again. They just... abandoned me in the hold, among all the other things they’d stolen. Only place big enough for me.” She forced a sad smile. “That was when I found out Frond had stowed away, too.”

     Rae muttered something unpleasant under his breath. “But why in all of Kettu did she think this was even a remotely good idea,” he sighed. “How was it supposed to save your life, turning you into a little icicle in the ship’s hold?”

     “That was probably my fault. I was too scared to leave, and my legs didn’t work properly anyway, and-”

     Rae cut in. “No no, don’t you dare go blaming yourself again. She turned you into something completely new and just dumped you there, expecting you to be fine and get on with living like normal? That’s not ‘probably your fault’. If I’d not come along when I did, you’d have disappeared from this existence as well.”

     “Please, Rae.” Blink gave him a pleading look. “She was just trying to be nice. Her kind don’t even think the same way we do. They change forms at will, so she probably didn’t realise exactly what she was doing. She just knew she had to save me, and-…” Her shoulders slumped, sadly. “Because she wasn’t strong enough to change the world to fit me, she had to change me to fit the world.”

     She’d visibly deflated by the end of her sentence, shoulders slumping and back rounding. It looked to Rae like certain truths about her situation were finally starting to sink in.

     “At least she gave me all the knowledge I need to operate this new frame,” she added, softly. “So at least I won’t make myself look like too much of an idiot when I need to eat, or-... anything else.”

     “It’s really not so bad,” Rae soothed, gently stroking her hair. “Being warm-blooded, I mean. A ‘squishy’, to use your vernacular.” He gave her a gentle elbow. “I promise. It’ll be all right. Soon as you’re properly warmed up and comfortable, we can start to think where we go from here.”

     Blink studied her fingers, where they peeked out over the hem of the blanket. “I never realised being cold was so horrible,” she confessed, miserably.

     “See, and there was you thinking it was just me whining.” Rae chuckled and gave her an affectionate squeeze. “Does this mean that when we get home, and get you back in your proper body, you won’t moan at me for having the heating on, any more?” he teased.

     “I’ll try and remember not to.” She managed a feeble smile that quickly faded. “...home feels like it’s a very long way away, right now.”

     Rae let his cheek rest against the top of her head. “Yeah.” He sighed in agreement, tiredly. “I know. But we’ll fix it. However long it takes.”

     Blink turned over her hand, to reveal an intricate circular pattern scarred into the centre of her palm. “Frond said-… this is the key to help you find yourself.” She glanced up at him, as though to gauge his reaction.

     Rae gently took her still-chilly hand into his, and studied the marks carefully. “Um. Did she by any chance tell you what that actually meant?”

     Deflated by his response, Blink closed her fingers back over her palm, and shook her head. “I suspect it’s some sort of symbol her people use,” she guessed. “If I can find them, they’ll return me to my old form. I mean… my original frame might be ‘in storage’, somewhere. This is just a, a… temporary vessel for my consciousness.”

     Or you might have been changed into a biological creature all the way down to the atomic level, Rae thought, but didn’t say so out loud. Either seems equally likely. “I guess that’s no less believable than her being able to turn you organic in the first place,” Rae accepted, dubiously. “She didn’t get time to go into much detail before she, uh… you know?”

     “No. She was weak. I think the engines made her sicker, and when the core broke, it finished her off.” Blink studied the backs of her fingers, quietly. “I didn’t think to ask anything else at the time.”

     “We’ll work it out,” he repeated, gently. “We’ve got plenty of time, eh? No need to stress.”

     Blink mumbled something that Rae didn’t catch, but that sounded disappointed.

     He changed the subject, carefully. “Do you know what it was that attacked you?”

     Blink’s ears twitched, flattening back all of their own accord, proving that whatever it was had been frightening. “No. How did you know about that?” She leaned closer to him, involuntarily. “Is it back? Did you see something?”

     “No, no. I haven’t seen anything,” Rae was quick to soothe. “There’s just-…” How much to tell her? “I guess you didn’t see it, but there’s some blood on the wall outside. Just a little.” That’s it, Rae, keep lying to her. “It looked like there’d been a fight, I wondered if a wild animal got on board. Did you see it?”

     The small laima cast her gaze around the room, anxiously. “I didn’t see it, but I heard it very well. I just hid between those boxes, where you found me, and tried not to move at all until it went quiet again.” She drew in a shaky breath, as though trying to steady her nerves. “It sounded big. Hungry.”

     As though in agreement with the point she was making, somewhere under the blanket there came a low, straining gurgle. Startled, Blink shot Rae a look of alarm. “What-... what was that? Was it a warning noise?”

     Already back on his feet, Rae laughed. “I guess you could call it that, of a sort. Do your middles hurt, a little, too?”

     “A little,” she agreed, covering her stomach with one hand. “How could you know that?”

     “Well, it happens to everyone, sooner or later.” He clambered back among the emergency stockpile in the medusi’s cupboard, looking for some kind of emergency food ration. “Means you’re hungry. You’ve not eaten anything since Frond took your real body away, have you?”

     “I didn’t think my reserves were so low that I needed to.” Blink ran her hand over her stomach, awkwardly. “So much for giving me all the information I needed to survive...”

     “Here.” Rae tripped out of the cupboard, brandishing something triumphantly. He held it out to her; a fist-sized brick wrapped in ridiculously gaudy plastic. “This should settle your stomach. I’m sorry your first meal couldn’t have been more interesting, but... needs must, and all that.”

     Blink accepted it, warily, turning it end over end in her hands for a good few seconds, trying to work out what precisely the brightly-coloured lump actually was. “I’m supposed to ingest this...?” She looked scared and appalled in equal measures.

     “Mm-hmm.” Rae nodded his confirmation. “Looks like a stick of plastic, but it’s a nutritionally complete stick of plastic. You don’t need anything extra except some water.” He set the bottle of drink down on the floor beside her; it leaned dramatically on the sloping deck, but didn’t fall.

     Blink pursed her lips, frowning in concentration, and managed to separate the layers of the wrapper.

     “Look, I’ve been thinking about what we should do now. Maybe we ought to stay here until you’re feeling better,” he suggested, watching her shakily peel the plastic from around the ration bar. “It’s a mess, for sure, but the ship is at least stable, right? It’s not going to slide away down into the gully. We can keep any hungry creatures at bay by closing the doors, and there’s more than enough food and water to last us twenty or thirty days.”

     Blink shook her head, warily studying the concentrated food stick that had emerged like an inverted butterfly from its bright chrysalis. Made of a compressed, protein-enriched fruit mass, it looked more like a slab of slightly translucent beige plastic than food, just like Rae had said. The idea of getting it inside her body somehow was… distasteful, to say the least. Had to just trust her friend was right and it was meant to be consumed, not used to waterproof the underside of a boat. “We can’t stay aboard for long. You saw how badly the engine core was damaged in the crash, and it’s leaking all manner of nasty particulates. The shielding was designed to keep a minor leak contained in the engine room, but it’ll fail eventually.” She opened her mouth, and hesitantly placed the bar between her teeth.

     He watched her carefully bite down into the unappealing rations and pull off a small portion. “When you say eventually... how long a safe period are we talking?”

     “I-... uh.” Blink coughed, startled by the taste of the food. “A day or sssugh-... this is... ugh.” She couldn’t quite hide her disgust at the food, swallowing with difficulty and using a mouthful of water to wash the gunk off her teeth. “How are you supposed to refuel on this? It’s like chewing on a bar of sticky wax!”

     “It’s survival food, Bee. It’s not meant to be a gourmet meal, it’s meant to keep you alive.”

     “But it’s revolting!” She looked genuinely horrified. “It’s going to glue my insides up.”

     “Well, that’s maybe a little strongly worded…” Rae chuckled, gently. She was clearly thinking about the damage substandard fuels could do to her pumps. Don’t need to worry about that any more... “But I know they don’t taste good. I’m not looking forwards to having to eat them, myself.”

     “Can’t I… maybe… leave it for a little while?” She held it out to him, unhappily.

     “How about try a little more, eh? You need to get something inside you, or you’ll fall over. I don’t know if I’ll be able to find anything else edible.”

     Blink winced, but obediently took another mouthful.

     “Don’t forget, that new body evolved for eating stuff like this.” Rae smiled, sadly. “You’ll be all right. You won’t need to eat it for very long. As soon as we get off the mountain, we can find something better.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Speaking of which, we’re going to lose our daylight, soon, and need to make some plans for what we’re gonna do next. It’s definitely not going to be safe to travel in the dark.” He paced, a few steps one way and back again, trying to straighten his thoughts. “Um. How about. So long as you think it’ll be safe to stay on board a little longer…” He glanced at her, hopeful of agreement.

     Blink nodded her confirmation, too busy with her laborious chewing to speak.

     “…we’d be safer if we stay overnight. We can head out at first light, maximise how far we can get in the daytime. It’ll be safer than trying to get down the mountain in the dark, too – we’re not exactly high up, here, but we’re high enough that a fall could do some wicked damage. You can practice walking while we’re still on the ship.”

     Blink looked down at her new feet and flexed her toes, and nodded. “I’m not very steady at the moment,” she agreed, glumly. “I’ll be a liability.”

     “Nah, I didn’t mean it like that,” Rae chided. “I mean, I’d carry you myself, if I trusted myself not to fall and squash you. I don’t know what the terrain’s going to be like, though. You’ll be safer if you’re not relying solely on me.”

     “Life is suddenly full of ‘exciting learning experiences’,” she sighed, quietly, retreating to the comparative safety of concentrating on eating. She struggled down the rest of the bar, looking like it was one of the toughest things she’d had to do in her whole life – and Rae realised that in a way, unused to food and with teeth that had never been tested before, it probably was one of the biggest challenges her new body had faced, thus far. And life was probably going to continue to test her in this way for a long time yet.

     Blink was at least relieved to find that having a little food inside her, however revolting it might have been, did relieve some of the discomfort in her abdomen. When Rae suggested that maybe they try practising maintaining her balance, she felt well enough to agree to it.

     He helped her stand, and let her cling to him until she’d got a wobbly idea of how to balance on those new legs and small feet. For someone who had once towered over him, at least twice his height, in her new biological guise Blink made a very small fessine; the top of her head came barely to his shoulder.

     “Feel all right?” he prompted.

     “My legs have an extra joint,” she complained, distractedly. “I-... feel like I’m trying to walk on tiptoe.” She tottered a single step forwards, and shot him an abstract glare, although it looked like it was borne more from frustration at her own inabilities than any anger at him. “I was too heavy to do that in my old body, so-... never, hngh-...” Another shaky step. “Never got any practice.”

     “Well, you’re already doing well,” he soothed, with a grin. “You’ll do fine.”

     “You expect me to have enough agility to be a mountain climber by morning?” Blink tried a step unaided, flailed her arms for balance and grabbed back onto him. “This-... ridiculous!”

     “Aw, don’t lose hope this early in the game. You remember how you used to balance before?”

     “That was different-!”

     “Howso?” Rae relinquished his hold on her arms again.

     “My gyroscopes gave me infinitely better feedback than these... squashy pink processors!” She tottered another few steps and latched onto the wall. “They don’t respond very well at all to my attempt to calibrate them.”

     Rae smiled, sadly. “You just have to practice, hon. You’ll get there.”

     Blink pursed her lips, frustrated. Wobbling awkwardly, she made her first successful lap of the room only by furniture-walking, clinging to dressers and chairs and the bed for support.

     In spite of her misgivings, she made good progress, and was almost walking unaided by the time evening finally began to draw in. She joined Rae in the entry annexe, quietly.

     “All right. We need a plan.” The spur stood just inside the ragged hole in Happenstance’s side, and stared out down the mountain. The sun had dropped just low enough in the sky to cast the amber light of evening right into his eyes. “Work out where we’re going to go first, where we’ve got the best chance of calling for help.”

     Blink tottered her way over to him, using the wall to help her balance and then grabbing his arm. She visibly cringed at the view. “It looks a lot bigger out there than it used to,” she admitted, feebly. “Don’t you think we’ll get lost?”

     “Not if we follow landmarks, and have a goal in mind. I think we’ve got a good chance of getting to exactly where we want to go. I mean, look.” He pointed away into the distance, where the smooth rim of the ocean could just be made out through a creeping evening haze. In front of it was a darker, jagged smudge. “That must be Kust, do you think?”

     Blink looked in the direction of his arm. “It’s a long way away,” she pointed out, reluctantly.

     “You think? Maybe.” He nodded, mostly to himself. “I think we could manage it in a couple of days. It’s pretty big, pretty easy to see, and at the end of a river valley. All we have to do it follow the valley, and we’re there.”

     “You think it’s a good place to go to?” The small woman glanced up at her friend. “We don’t know what’s there.”

     “No, but I figure if Larissa’s crew were aiming that way, there must be something worth stealing, right? If there’s something worth stealing, there’ll be things to help us call for help, too.” He tried to smile, reassuringly, although inwardly he wasn’t sure how much he believed himself. “We need to strip the ship for things we can use, before we do anything. Rope, blankets, rations, energy cells, anything useful that we can get our grubby hands on – and things to carry it all in, if we can find something. We won’t get far if we’re relying on just the clothes on our backs. If there’s any warmer clothing, too, we’ll take that. All right with that?”

     “I’ll try.” Blink turned to face the closest cabin, and very, very carefully made her way across the ruined entry room towards the door. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to find very much.”

     “Well, let’s just do the best we can.” Rae grimaced, and shrugged. “These useless pirates might not have brought much, in the first place. They strike me as pretty useless all around. I’ll go destroy some boxes in the hold, see if they brought anything that wasn’t illegal contraband, if you wanna check the cabins...?”

     “All right.”

     “...oh, and Blink?”

     She looked back at him. “Yes?”

     “...don’t go onto the bridge. Trust me.”

     She replied with a look of frightened dismay, and made a mental note to avoid the room at all costs.

* * * * *
     Larissa’s bedroom became camp for the two laima, for the night. By the time they lost all the natural light and had to resort to battery-powered lanterns, they’d accumulated quite a pile of “useful stuff”, to use Rae’s vernacular, and retired to get some rest.

     “We’ll have to pick through this in the morning,” Rae suggested, casting an approving eye over their finds. “Travelling with too much stuff is almost as bad as travelling with not enough. I mean, we need to make sure we can carry enough to eat; we don’t want to carry junk we won’t use, instead of food and water. I don’t wanna trust my ability catching game, and eating random berries sounds like a big no-no, you know? Heh.” He chuckled to himself.

     Blink snuggled up in her quilt, watching him. “You think we’ll have enough things there?” The cool lantern threw her skinny features into an awkward, angular relief, and left a ghostly impression of her former appearance.

     “Oh yeah, more than enough, looks like. Could maybe do with some more rope, but everything else looks fine.” He picked up one the good sized hunting knives he’d found in the hold, quietly pleased at the find. At least they stood a chance at defending themselves. “Listen, Bee?”

     She glanced up at him. The lantern threw weird green glints into her eyes.

     “If you wanted to get some sleep, I’m happy to watch for dangers,” he offered.

     She shook her head. “Thank you, but I don’t need to defragment,” she reassured, quietly.

     “I didn’t say that. I said, if you want to sleep. Sleep is a good thing, especially after you’ve had such a... frazzling day. Give that poor brain some down-time.”

     “I’m really not in the mood to rest.” She forced a little smile. “I just... don’t feel good.”

     “You mean, a ‘hungry’ kind of not-good?”

     “No, I-... I’m just thinking. I mean-...” She shifted her shoulders, uncomfortably. “I’m never going to see my family again, am I.” Her voice was so very flat, so matter-of-fact unemotional, that it was no big surprise to Rae when the tears started.

     “Aw, hon. Sure you are.” He moved to her side, and gathered her against him; she clung to him, grimly, hands twisting into his clothing. “Of course you’ll see them again! We’ll get a call out for a rescue, and the instant we’re offworld, we’ll call them. All right?”

     But his words didn’t have the soothing effect Rae had hoped. In the gloom of the night-time cabin, with nothing to distract her from darker thoughts, the enormity of her situation had apparently sunk in, at last. “Even if they somehow believe me, I’m stuck in this fragile little soft body, no idea how I’m supposed to get my real form back – wobbly on my feet, and having to endure those disgusting fuels, and, and-…” Her words slipped back into distressed incoherence.

     Rae tightened his grip, ever so slightly, and rested his cheek against the top of her head. “Shh. It’ll be all right,” he soothed. “Just a few days and you’ll have found your feet, and I promise you won’t have to keep eating that horrible sludge all the time. It won’t be anywhere near as unbearable once you’re used to it-”

     “But I don’t want to get used to it! I don’t want to be biological!” she wept, helplessly. “I want to just be me, again…”

     “And you will be. You just have to be patient a little while, honeybee. Just until we escape from here. All right?” He sat with her, arms around her shoulders, until at last she grew heavy in sleep and he was able to get her to snuggle back down in her nest of cushions on the deck. Once sure she was asleep, he sighed, and sagged back against the wall.

     What a day.


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