“We got Jik out,” Geran said.
Chur blinked again. So much that came and went was illusion and it was the good things she most distrusted, the things she really wanted to believe. “He all right?”
“Knocks and bruises and the like. Told Tirun he’d run into a wall trying to leave. Likely story. You know you never get the same thing twice out of him. How are you feeling?”
“Like I ran into the same wall. What’d you do to that gods-be machine? You put me out?”
“Got pretty noisy around here. I thought you might need the sleep.” •
“In a mahen hell you did!” Chur lifted her head and shoved her free elbow under her. “You want my heartbeat up?”
“Lie down. You want mine up?”
“What happened out there?” She sank back, her head swimming, and tried to focus. “Gods, I still got that stuff in me. Cut it out, Geran. F’gods sakes, I’m tired enough, hard enough to go against the wind-”
“Hey.” Geran took her by the shoulder.
“I’m awake, I’m awake.”
“You want to try to eat something?”
“Gods, not more of that stuff.”
Foil rustled. A sickly aroma hit the air, which was otherwise sterile and medicated. Food, any food was a trial. Chur nerved herself and cooperated as Geran lifted her head on her arm and squirted something thin and salty into her mouth. She licked her mouth and took a second one, not because she wanted it. It was enough.
“Not so bad,” she said. It was so. She had missed salt. It did something more pleasant in her mouth than the last thing Geran had brought her. She cautiously estimated its course to her stomach and felt it hit bottom and lie there gratefully inert. She looked up at Geran, who had a desperately hopeful look on her face. “You worried about something, Gery?”
The ears flicked. “We’re doing all right.”
Lie.
” Where’s those gods-be black things?”
“Got ’em all penned up again.” Change of subject. Geran looked instantly relieved. And the traitor machine beeped with an increased heartbeat. Geran looked back at it and the facade fell in one agonized glance.
“We under attack?” Chur asked.
“We’re prepping for jump,” Geran said.
Scared Gods, Gery, you’d send a monitor off the scale-
“Huhn,” Chur said. “What’re you thinking? That I won’t make it?”
“Sure, you’ll make it.”
“How far’re we going?”
Geran’s ears went flat and lifted again. There was a drawing round her nose, like pain. “Home, one of these days.”
“Multiple jump?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Maybe, huh?”
“Gods rot it, Chur-”
/ haven’t got the strength. I can’t last it out. Look at her. Gods, look at her. “Listen. You mind your business up for’ard f’godssakes, what d’you want, me make it fine and you marry this ship up with a rock? You pull it together. Me, I’m fine back here. Back here feeding me-” The monitor started going off again. She let it. “When’d you eat, huh? Take care of yourself. I got to worry whether you’re doing your job up there?”.
“No ” Geran said. She gave a furtive glance at the monitor and composed herself sober as an old lord. “I just want to make sure you get anything into your stomach you can.”
“Don’t trust this machine, do you? I make you a deal. You cut that gods-be sedative out of the works and I’ll try to eat. Hear me?”
“Stays the way they set it.”
The monitor beeped again.
“Gods fry that rotted thing!” Chur cried, and the beep became a steady pulse. Geran reached and hit the interrupt; and it prevented the flood of sedative.
“Quiet,” Geran said.
She subsided. Her temples ached. The room came and went. But in the center of it Geran stayed in unnatural focus, like hunter-vision, hazed around the edges.
/ can think my way home, she thought, which was rankest insanity, the maundering of a weakened brain. Just got to hold onto the ship and get there with it.
That was crazy. But for a moment she seemed to pass outside the walls, know activity in the ship, feel the rotation of Kefk station, the whirling of the sun, a hyperextension like the timestretch of jump, where time and space redefined themselves. An old spacer could take that route home. She could not have explained it to a groundling, never to anyone who had not flown free in that great dark-she stopped being afraid. It was very dangerous. She could see the currents between the stars, knew the dimplings and the holes, the shallows and the chasms planets and stars made. She smiled, having mindstretched that far, and still being on her ship.