Текст книги "Alternate Realities (Port Eternity; Wave without a Shore; Voyager in Night)"

Автор книги: C. J. Cherryh

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Текущая страница: 6 (всего у книги 38 страниц)

Of course, I thought, of course my lady needed us. It was insanity for them to put any of us down. They’d be alone then. It made sense.

“Thank you,” I said, finding my voice first, and the others murmured something like. It was an eerie thing to say thank you for. Dela smiled benevolently and lifted her glass at us. She was, I think, a little drunk; and so perhaps was Griffin, who had started on the wine when Dela had. Both their faces were flushed. They drank, and we did, to living.

And something hit the ship.

Not hard. It was a tap that rang through the hull and stopped us all, like the stroke of midnight in one of Dela’s stories, that froze us where we sat, enchantment ended.

And it came again. Tap. Tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap-tap.

“O my God,” Dela said.

VI

He names himself the Night, and oftener Death,

And wears a helmet mounted with a skull,

And bears a skeleton figured on his arms,

To show that who may slay or scape the three

Slain by himself shall enter endless night.

We ran to the bridge, all of us in a rush, Gawain and Percy first, being nearest the door, and the rest of us on their heels, out of breath and frightened out of our minds. The hammering kept up. Gawain and Lynn slid in at controls, Percy and Modred took their places down the boards, and the rest of us—the rest of us just hovered there holding on to each other and looking at the screens, which showed nothing different that I could tell.

Modred started doing something at his board, and com came on very loud, distantly echoing the tapping.

“What are you doing?” Dela asked sharply.

“Listening,” Lynette said as the sounds shifted. Other pickups were coming into play. “Trying to figure out just where they are on the hull.”

Dela nodded, giving belated permission, and we all stayed very quiet while Modred kept sorting through the various pickups through the ship.

It got loud of a sudden, and very loud. I flinched and tried not to. It went quiet of a sudden, then loud again, and my lady Dela swore at Modred.

“Somewhere forward,” Modred said with a calm reach that did something to lower the sound. “About where we touch the mass.”

“Trying to break through,” Gawain muttered, “possibly.”

“Wayne,” Percivale said abruptly, urgently. “I’m getting a pulse on com; same pattern. Response?”

“No!”Dela cried, before ever Gawain could say anything. “ No, you don’t answer it.”

“Lady Dela, they may breach us.”

“They. They. We don’t know what it is.”

“He’s right,” Griffin said. “That theyout there counts, Dela; and they’re trying a contact. If they don’t know we’re alive in here, they could breach that hull and kill us all—at the least, damage the ship, section by section. And then what do we do?—That area forward,” he said to the crew. “Put the emergency seals onto it.”

“Presently engaged,” Lynn said.

“Don’t you give orders,” Dela snapped. “Don’t you interfere with my crew.”

Griffin no more than frowned, but he was doing that already. My lady pushed away from his arm, crossed the deck to stand behind Gawain and Lynn. “Are there arms aboard?” Griffin asked.

“Stop meddling.”

“Tapes never prepared your crew for this. How much do you expect of them? Are there weapons aboard? Have they got a block against using them?”

Dela looked about at him, wild. She seemed then to go smaller, as if it were all coming at her too fast. I had never imagined a born-man blanking, but Dela looked close to it. “There aren’t any weapons,” she said.

The hammering stopped, a dire and thickish silence.

“Are we still getting that signal?” Griffin asked.

“Yes,” Percy said after a moment, answering Griffin. It made me shiver, this yes-no of our lady’s, standing there, looking like she wanted to forbid, and not. Percy brought the sound from the com up so we could hear it, and it was a timed pulse of static. One. One-two. One-two-three.

“Maybe—” Dela found her voice. “Maybe it’s something natural.”

“In this place?” Griffin asked. “I think we’d better answer that call. Make it clear we’re in here.—Dela, they know, they knowthis ship’s inhabited if it’s whole: what areships but inhabited? And the question isn’t whether they breach that hull; it’s how they do it. Silence could be taken for unfriendly intentions. Or for our being dead already, and then they might not be careful at all.”

Dela just stared. The static pulses kept on. I held to Lance’s arm and felt him shivering too.

“Answer it,” Griffin said to Percivale.

“No,” Dela said, and Griffin stared at her, frowning, until she made a spidery, resigning motion of her hand.

“Go on,” Griffin said to Percivale. “Can you fine it down, get something clearer out of that?”

The whole crew looked round at their places, in Dela’s silence. And finally she nodded and shrugged and looked away, an I-don’t-care. But she did care, desperately; and I felt sick inside.

“Get to it,” Griffin snapped at them. “Before we lose it.”

Backs turned. Percy and Modred worked steadily for a few moments, and we started getting a clear tone.

“Answer,” Griffin said again, and this time Percy looked around at Dela, and Modred did, slowly and refusing to be hurried.

“Do whatever he says,” Dela murmured, her arms wrapped about her as if she were shivering herself. She rolled her eyes up at the screens, but the screens showed us nothing new.

And all of a sudden the com that had been giving out steady tones snapped and sputtered with static. It started gabbling and clicking, not a static kind of click, but a ticking that started in the bass register like boulders rolling together and rumbled up into higher tones until it became a shriek. We all jerked from the last notes, put our hands over our ears: it was that kind of sound. And it rumbled back down again—softer—someone had gotten the volume adjusted—and kept rumbling, slow, slow ticks.

“Not human,” Griffin said. “Not anything like it. But then what did we expect? Send.Answer in their pattern. See if it changes.”

Hands moved on the boards.

“Nothing,” Percy said.

Then the com stopped, dead silent.

“Did you cut it?” Griffin asked, ready to be angry.

“It’s gone,” Modred said. “No pickup now. We’re still sending.”

The silence continued, eerie after the noise. The ventilation fans seemed loud.

“Kill our signal,” Griffin said.

Percy moved his hand on the board, and the whole crew sat still then, with their backs to us, no one moving. I felt Lance’s hand tighten on mine and I held hard on to his. We were all scared. We stood there a long time waiting for something ... anything.

Dela unclasped her arms and turned, flinging them wide in a desperately cheerful gesture. “Well,” she said, “they’re thinking it over, aren’t they? I think we ought to go back down and finish off the drinks.”

Her cheer fell flat on the air. “You go on back,” Griffin said.

“What more can you do here? It’s their move, isn’t it? There’s no sense all of us standing around up here. Gawain and Modred can keep watch on it. Come on. I want a drink, Griffin.”

He looked at her, and he was scared too, was master Griffin. Dela had let him give us orders, and now whatever-it-was knew about us in here. I felt sick at my stomach and probably the rest of us did. Griffin didn’t move; and Dela came close to him, which made me tense; and Lance—Griffin might hit her; he had hit me when he was afraid. But she slipped her white arm into his and tugged at him and got him moving, off the bridge. He looked back once. Maybe he sensed our distress with him. But he went with her. Percy and Lynette got up from their places and Lance and Viv and I trailed first after Griffin and my lady, getting them back to the dining hall.

They sat down and drank. We had no invitation, and we cleaned up around them, even Lynette and Vivien, ordinarily above such things, while my lady made a few jokes about what had happened and tried to lighten things. Griffin smiled, but the humor overall was very thin.

“Let’s go to bed,” my lady suggested finally. “That’s the way to take our minds off things.”

Griffin thought it over a moment, finally nodded and took her hand.

“The wine,” Dela said. “Bring that.”

Viv and I brought it, while Lance took the dishes down and Percy and Lynn went elsewhere. My lady and Griffin went to the sitting room to drink, but I went in to turn down the bed, and then collected Vivien and left. We were free to go, because my lady was not as formal with us as she had us be with her guests. Whenever sheleft us standing unnoticed, that meant go.

Especially when she had a man with her. And especially now, I thought. Especially now.

We went back to our quarters, where Lynn and Percy and Lance had gathered, all sitting silent, Lynn and Percy at a game, Lance watching the moves. There was no cheer there.

“Go a round?” I asked Lance. He shook his head, content to watch. I looked at Vivien, who was doing off her clothes and putting them away. No interest there either. I went to the locker and undressed and put on a robe for comfort, and came and sat by Lance, watching Lynn and Percy play. Viv sat down and read—we did have books, of our own type, for idle moments, something to do with the hands and minds, but they were all dull, tame things compared to the tapes, and they were homilies which were supposed to play off our psych-sets and make us feel good. Me, I felt bored with them, and hollow when I read them.

We would live. That change in our fortunes still rose up and jolted me from time to time. No more thought of being put down, no more thinking of white rooms and going to sleep forever; but it was strange—it had no comfort. It gave us something to fear the same as born-men. Maybe we should have danced about the quarters in celebration; but no one mentioned it. Maybe some had forgotten. I think the only thing really clear in our minds was the dread that the horrid banging might start up again at any moment—at least that was the clearest thought in mine: that the hammering might start and the hull might be breached, and we might be face to face with what lived out there. I watched the game board, riveting my whole mind on the silences and the position of the pieces and the sometime moves Lynn and Percy made, predicting what they would do, figuring it out when expectation went amiss. It was far better occupation than the thoughts that gnawed round the edges of my mind, making that safe center smaller and smaller.

The game went to stalemate. We all sat there staring blankly at a problem that could not be resolved—like the one outside—and feeling the certainty settling tighter and tighter over the game, were cheated by it of having somesort of answer, to something. Lynn swore, mildly, an affectation aped from born-men. It seemed overall to be fit.

So the game was done. The evening was. Lance got up, undressed and went to bed ahead of the rest of us, while Viv sat in her lighted corner reading. I came and shoved my bed over on its tracks until it was up against his. Lance paid no attention, lying on his side with his back to me until I edged into his bed and up against his back.

He turned over then. “No,” he said, very quiet, just the motion of his lips in the light we had left from Viv’s reading, and the light from the bathroom door. Not a fierce no, as it might have been. There was pain; and I smoothed his curling hair and kissed his cheek.

“It’s all right,” I said. “just keep me warm.”

He shifted over and his arms went about me with a fervent strength; and mine about him; and maybe the others thought we made love: it was like that, for a long time, long after all the lights but Viv’s were out. Finally that one went. And then when we lay apart but not without our arms about each other, came a giving of the mattress from across Lance’s side, and Vivien lay down and snuggled up to him, not because she was interested in Lance, but just that we did that sometimes, lying close, when things were uncertain. It goes back to the farms; to our beginnings; to nightmares of being alone, to good memories of lying all close together, and touching, and being touched. It was comfort. It put no demands on Lance. In a moment more Percivale and Lynette moved a bed up and lay down there, crowding in on us, so that if someone had to get up in the night it was going to wake everyone. But all of us, I think, wanted closeness more than we wanted sleep.

I know I didn’t sleep much, and sometimes, in that kind of glow the ceiling let off when eyes had gotten used to the dark, I could make out Lance’s face. He lay on his back, and I think he stared at the ceiling, but I could not be sure. I kept my arm about his; and Percy was at my right keeping me warm on that side, with Lynette all tangled up with him; and Viv sleeping on Lance’s shoulder on the other side. No sex. Not at all. All I could think of was that sound: we had fallen into something that was never going to let us go; we clung like a parasite to something that maybe didn’t want us attached to it at all; and out there ... out there beyond the hull, if I let my senses go, was still that terrible chaos-stuff.

If this was death, I kept thinking, remembering my lady’s mad hypothesis, if this was death, I could wish we had not tangled some other creature up in our dying dream. But I believed now it was no dream, because I could never have imagined that sound out of my direst nightmares.

It came again in the night, that rumbling over com: Gawain came on the intercom telling Percy and Lynn so; and all of us scrambled out of bed and ran for the lift.

So had Griffin come running from my lady’s bedroom. He stood there in his robe and his bare feet like the rest of us; but no word from my lady, nothing. It left us with Griffin alone, and that rumbling and squealing came over the com fit to drive us all blank.

“Have you answered it?” Griffin asked of Gawain and Modred, who sat at controls still in their party clothes; and Percy and Lynn took their places in their chairs wearing just the robes they had thrown on. “No,” Modred replied. He turned in his place, calm as ever, with dark circles under his eyes. “I’m composing a transmission tape in pulses, to see if we can establish a common ground in mathematics.”

“Use it,” Griffin said. “If the beginning’s complete, use it.”

Modred hesitated. I stood there with my arms wrapped about me and thinking, no, he wouldn’t, not with my lady not here. But Modred gave one of those short, curious nods of his and pushed a button.

The transmission went out. At least after a moment the transmission from the other side stopped. “I should see to my lady,” I said.

“No,” Griffin said. “She’s resting. She took a pill.”

I stood there as either/or as Modred, clenched my arms about me and let this born-man tell me I wasn’t to go ... because I knew if my lady had taken a pill she wouldn’t want the disturbance. This terrible thing started up again and the crew asked help and Dela took a pill.

An arm went about me. It was Lance. Viv sat near us, on one of the benches near the door.

“You’d better trade off shifts,” Griffin said to the crew, marking, surely, how direly tired Gawain and Modred looked.

“Yes,” Gawain agreed. He would have sat there all the watch if Griffin hadn’t thought of that, which was one of the considerate things I had seen Griffin do ... but it gave me no comfort, and no comfort to any of the rest of us, I think. It was Dela who should have thought of that; Dela who should be here; and it was Griffin instead, who started acting as if he owned us and the Maid. Until now he had looked through us all and ignored us; and now he saw us and we were alone with him.

“We’ll dress,” Lynn said, “and come up and relieve you.”

“Get back to sleep,” Griffin said to those of us who were staff. “No need of your being here.”

We went back to the crew quarters and got in bed again, except Lynn and Percy, who dressed and went topside again. Then Gawain and Modred came down and undressed and lay down with us as Lynn and Percy had—I think they were glad of the company, and worked themselves up against us, cold and tense until they began to take our warmth, and until they fell asleep with the suddenness of exhaustion.

What went on out there, that noise, that thing outside our hull—it might go on again and again. It might not need to sleep.

VII

The huge pavilion slowly yielded up,

Thro’ those black foldings, that which housed therein.

High on a nightblack horse, in nightblack arms,

With white breastbone, and barren ribs of Death,

And crowned with fleshless laughter—some ten steps—

Into the half-light—thro’ the dim dawn—advanced

The monster, and then paused, and spake no word.

We went about in the morning on soft feet and small steps, listening. We stayed to our duties, what little of them there were. Even the makeshift lab was quiet, where Vivien was setting things up ... running tests, that took time, and we could do nothing there. Griffin and Dela stayed together in her bed, and I walked and paced feeling like a ghost in the Maid’s corridors, all too conscious how vast it was outside and how small we were and how huge that rumbling voice had sounded.

“It’s probably trapped here too,” Dela said when I came finally to do her hair, “and maybe it’s as scared as we are.”

“Maybe it is,” I said, thinking that scared beasts bit; and I feared this one might have guns. On the Maidwe had only the ancient weapons which decorated her dining hall and the lady’s quarters and some of the corridors. Precious good thosewere against this thing. I thought about knights and dragons and reckoned that they must have been insane.

I finished my lady’s hair ... made it beautiful, elaborate with braids, and dressed her in her green gown with the pale green trim. It encouraged me, that she was up and sober again, no longer lying in her chambers prostrate with fear: if my lady could face this day, then things might be better. If there was an answer to this, then born-men could find it; and she was our born-man, ours, who dictated all the world.

“Where’s Griffin?” she asked.

“It’s eleven hundred hours. Master Griffin—asked Lance—”

“I remember.” She waved her hand, robbed me of the excuse I had hoped for to stop all of that, dismissing it all.

“Shall I go?” I asked.

Again a wave of the hand. My lady walked out into the sitting room and sat down at the console there, started calling up something on the comp unit—all the log reports, I reckoned, of all the time she had slept; or maybe the supply inventories. My lady was herself again; and let Griffin beware.

I padded out, ever so quietly, closed the door and wiped my hands and headed down the corridor to the lift as fast as I could walk. I went down and toward the gym in the notion that I had to be quiet, but quiet did no good at all: the gym rang with the impact of feet and bodies. They were at it again, Griffin and Lance, trying to throw each other.

It was crazy. They were. I had thought of lying again, saying that Dela wanted this or that, but she was paying sharp attention today, and the lie would not pass. I stood there in the doorway and watched.

They were at it this time, I reckoned, because there had been no decision the last encounter, thanks to me. No winner; and Griffin wanted to win—had to win, because Lance was lab-born, and shouldn’t win, shouldn’t even be able to contest with the likes of Griffin.

They went back and forth a great deal, muscles straining, skin slick with sweat that dampened their hair and made their hands slip. Neither one could get the advantage standing; and they hit the floor with a thud and neither one could get the other stopped. They didn’t see me, I don’t think. I stood there biting my lip until it hurt. And suddenly it was Lance on the bottom, and Griffin slowly let him up.

I turned away, fled the doorway for the corridor, because I was ashamed, and hurt, and I didn’t want to admit to myself why, but it was as if I had lost too, like it was my pain, that Lance after all proved what we were made to be, and that we always had to give way. Even when he did what none of the rest of us could do, something so reckless as to fight with Griffin—he was beaten.

Lance came up to the crew quarters finally, where I sat playing solitaire. He was undamaged on the outside, and I tried to act as if I had no idea anything was wrong, as if I had never been in that doorway or seen what I had seen. But I reckoned that he wanted to have his privacy now, so downcast his look was, and I could hardly walk out without seeming to avoid him, so I curled up on the couch and pretended to be tired of my game, to sleep awhile.

But I watched him through my lashes, as he rummaged in his locker, and found a tape, and set up the machine. He took the drug, and lay down in deepsleep, lost in that; and all the while I had begun to know what tape it was, and what he was doing, and what was into him. The understanding sent cold through me.

He should not be alone. I was sure of that. The lady had deserted him and his having the tape in the first place was my fault. I took the drug and set up the connections, and lay down beside him in his dream—lay down with my fingers laced in his limp ones and began to slip toward it.

The story ran to its end and stopped, letting us out of its grip; and whether he felt me there or not, he just lay there with tears streaming from his closed eyes. Finally I couldn’t stand it any longer and took the sensors off him and me and put my arms about him.

But he mistook what I wanted and pushed me away, stared at the ceiling and blanked awhile.

It was that bad.

And when he came out of it he said nothing, but got up, went to the bath and washed his face and left. Me, who was so long his friend, he left without a word. I heard the lift go down again; and it was the galley or the gym down there, so I had no difficulty finding him.

It was the gym. From the door I watched him ... doing pushups until I thought his arms must break, as if it could drive the weakness out of him.

Now, Beast, I thought toward the voice that had terrorized our night. Now, if ever you have something to say. But it stayed mute. Lance struggled against his own self; and I wished with all my heart that someone would discover some duty for him, some use that would get him busy.

He saw me there, turning suddenly. I knew he did by his scowl when he got to his feet, and I turned and fled down the corridor, to the lift, to the upper level, as far from the gym as I could excepting Viv’s domain.

And came Percivale, down the corridor from the bridge, looking as dispirited as I felt.

“Percy,” I said, catching at his arm. “Percy, I want you to do something for me.”

“What?” he asked, blinking at my intense assault; and I explained I wanted him to go down to the gym and fight with Lance. “It’s good for you,” I said, “because we don’t know what’s out there trying to get in, do we? and you might have to fight, to protect the ship and the lady. I think it’s a good idea to be ready. Griffin’s been working out with Lance. I’m sure it would be good for all of you.”

Percy thought about that, ran a hand over his red hair. “I’ll talk to Gawain and Modred,” he said. “But Lance is much stronger than we are.”

“But you should try,” I said, “at least try. Lance did, with Griffin, with a born-man, after all; and can’t you, with him?”

Percivale went down there first, and later that afternoon the three of them were looking the worse for wear and there was a little brighter look in Lance’s eyes when I saw him at dinner. I smiled smugly across the table in the great hall, next Griffin and my lady, with all the table set as it had been the evening before, and all of us again in our party best.

“I think it’s given up,” my lady said, quite cheerful, lifting her glass.

It was true. There had been silence all day. Modred was glum. His carefully constructed tapes had failed. Gawain said so ... and my lady laughed, a brave, lonely sound.

Griffin smiled a faint, small quirk of the lips, more courtesy than belief. And drank his wine. Before dinner was done something did ring against the hull, a vague kind of thump; and the crew started from their places, and Griffin did.

“No!”my lady snapped, stopping the crew on the instant, and Griffin, half out of his chair, hesitated. “We can’t be running at every shift and settling,” Dela said. “Sit down! The lot of you sit down. It’s nothing.”

My heart felt it would break my ribs. But no further sound came to us, and the crew settled back into their places and Griffin sat back down.

“We would have felt a settling,” Griffin said.

“Enough of it. Enough.”

There was silence for a moment, no movement, all down the table; but my lady set to work on her dessert, and Griffin did, and so did we all. My lady talked, and Griffin laughed, and soon we all talked again, even Lance, idle dinner chatter. I took it for a sign of health in Lance, that I might have done some good, and I felt my own spirits higher for it. Dela and master Griffin finished their meal, we took the dishes down, and Lance remained tolerably cheerful when we were in the galley together. He was smiling, if not overly talkative.

But it didn’t help that night. Lance was sore and full of bruises, and he wanted to be let alone. He didn’t object to my moving my bed over or getting in with him, but he turned his back on me, and I patted his shoulder. Finally he turned an anguished look on me in the light there was left in the room, with the others lying in their beds. He started to say something. He didn’t need to. I just lay still and took his hand in mine, and he put his arm about me and stroked my hair, with that old sadness in his eyes, stripped of anger. I could hear noises from farther over toward the wall, where Lynn slept. Either Gawain or Percy had come somewhat off the duty fix, and presumably so had Lynette.

Misery, I thought. And Lance just lay there in the dark looking at me.

“It happens to born-men too,” I said. I knew that, and maybe he didn’t. He had been more sheltered, in his way. “They’re more complicated than we are, and they get this a lot, this trouble; but they get over it.”

He shivered, and I knew he was caught somewhere in his own psych-sets, where I couldn’t truly help him, and he wasn’t about to discuss it. There was no reasonfor Lance, I thought. The lady and Griffin, and when it turned out that this voyage wasn’t ending, ever, then that was it for Lancelot, done, over. He cared for nothing else in all existence but my lady; and when he was shut away from her, that was when he—

–heard the story in the tape, and learned what the meaning of my lady’s fancy was, and what he was named for, and he began to dream of being that dream of hers. That thought came to me while we lay there in the dark. And there was a great hollowness in me, knowing that. Lance had found himself a kind of purpose, but I had nothing like his, that touched his central psych-sets. Being just Elaine, a minor player in the tape, I was meant to do nothing but keep Lance entertained when my lady was otherwise occupied, and to do my lady’s hair and to look decorative, and nothing more, nothing more.

Our purposes are always small. We’re small people, pale copies, filled with tapes and erasable. But something had begun to burn in Lance that had more complicated reasons; and I was afraid—not for myself, not really for myself, I kept reasoning in my heart, although that was part of my general terror. We should live as long as we liked. The lady had promised us, ignoring that thing out there, ignoring the uncertainties which had settled on us ... like growing old. Like our minds growing more and more complicated just by living, until we grew confused beyond remedy. We were promised life. The thing out there in the dark, the chaos waiting whenever we might grow confused enough to let our senses slip back into the old way of seeing—this living with death so close to us, was that different than our lives ever were? And didn’t born-men themselves live that way, when they deliberately took chances?

It was just that our death talked to us through the hull, had called us on com, had tapped the hull this evening just to let us know that he was still there. Death, not an erasing; not the white room where they take you at the end.

We’re already dying, my lady had insisted once; and my mind kept wandering back to that. I looked into Lance’s troubled eyes and sniffed, thinking that at least we were going to die like born-men, and have ourselves a fight with our Death, like in the fables.

Thermopylae. Roland at the pass. When it got to us we would blow the horns and meet it head on. But that was in the fables.

I began to think of other parts of the story, Lancelot’s part, how he had to be brave and be the strongest of all.

And of what the rest of us must be.

Lance slept for a while, and I snuggled up under his chin and slept too, happy for a while, although I couldn’t have said why ... something as inexplicable as psych-set, except that it was a nice place to be, and I found it strange that even in his sleep he held onto me, not the closeness we take for warmth, and far from sex too ... just that it was nice, and it was something—

–like in the tape, I thought. I wondered who I was to him. I reckoned I knew. And being only Elaine, I took what small things I could get. Even that gave me courage. I slept.

Then the hammering started again on the hull.

I tensed, waking. Lance sat up, and we held onto each other, while all about us the others were waking too. It wasn’t the patterned hammering we had heard before. It came randomly and loud.

Gawain piled out of bed and the rest of us were hardly slower, excepting Vivien, who sat there clutching her sheet to her chest in the semidark and looking when the lights came on as if it was all going to be too much for her.

But she moved, grabbed for her clothes and started dressing. Modred was out the door first, and Percy after him; and Gawain and Lynette right behind them. Lance and I stopped at least to throw our clothes on and then ran for it, leaving Viv to follow as she could.

We ran, the last bit from the lift, breathless, down the corridor to the bridge. The crew had found their places. My lady and Griffin were there, both in their robes, and my lady at least looked grateful that we two had shown up. I went and gave her my hand, and Lance stood near me—not that presumptuous, not with one of my lady’s lovers holding the other.