I woke upside down. Opening my eyes, I realized I was in a lifepod, surrounded on all sides by space. So it wasn't strictly true that I was upside down. Lessons from childhood bobbed up in my mind. In Space there's no up nor down.
Which was another of those things like antigrav not making you sick to your stomach. It's fine to say that, but clearly the scientists who thought so didn't live in my body. In space, with nullgrav, with a minimal vehicle between me and the void, everything was upside down. Always.
I tweaked the joystick to bring me "up" the other direction, but I still felt upside down. It must be two hours at least since I'd fallen asleep. The reasons for falling asleep of course were that I was exhausted, Circum Terra wasn't answering, and the pod moved straight ahead at a constant speed no matter what I did.
But now things looked more interesting. In front of me, Circum Terra loomed—doughnut shaped, shining with the lights of myriad docking stations and beacons. And behind me . . .
Looking over my shoulder, squinting, I could see a straggle of other lifepods, in hot pursuit. Er . . . . in pursuit as hot as they could manage. Which wasn't much. These lifepods had no speed controls. They had a fixed speed and—I thought—twelve hour air supply. I wished I'd paid more attention to Father's lectures about the lifepods. But I knew they all had fixed speeds. And so Father's goons were as far behind as they'd been when they'd left the space cruiser.
I had to get to Circum, dock and make my case quickly. To be honest, I doubted anyone would take the opinion of the goons over mine, but one never knew.
I looked down at the front of my torn slip. Not much chance of making myself look respectable before I reached Circum. As for my hair, with the best hairdressing in the world, and lots of work, I could tame the wild black curls. With my fingers, in a small space vessel, I'd have to hope I didn't look too savage to ask for refuge.
My eye on the goons behind me—just in case they magically gained on me—I reached for the button of the com, and pressed it. Before I could open my mouth, a voice came from it. Father's voice.
"Athena Hera Sinistra," he said. "Has left my Space Cruiser while hallucinating. She might be in the grip of mind-altering drugs. She must be believed to be armed and dangerous. We're asking Circum Terra to detain her till she can be retrieved by my employees."
Several shocks hit me in succession.
First—the com was two way? My mind accommodated to this quickly, though. Of course it was two way. How else could a base talk a stranded castaway through landing?
Second—my father was talking? My father? Last time I'd seen Daddy Dearest, he looked about as likely to talk as to sing opera. So what had happened? Had he been behind this all the time?
No. I couldn't imagine Father being part of any plot that involved his laying there, in a medical room, cold and dead-looking like landed mackerel. I knew for a fact that most procedures he'd had done on him, from minor re-gen to surgery he had insisted on local anesthesia only, because he didn't trust anyone to operate on him while he was out cold.
So . . . no. Father wasn't behind this. He couldn't be. But whoever was either had awakened him and forced him to issue this warning, or found a way of faking his voice—not hard with computer generation—so that it even fooled me—little harder, but possible.
That it was recognizable as Father's voice was all that mattered. No one at Circum would doubt it. Not for a minute.
And though I'd been on my best behavior while in Circum—the charming socialite Athena Sinistra—I was sure even they got casts. And the casts had been full off and on of my misdeeds. The running with wild broomers. The time I'd flown my broom right up against a wall and everyone had thought I'd die. Drugs? They'd believe that. Psychotic behavior under drugs? They'd believe that too.
This was the last shock, and the worst of all. Because it dawned on me slowly: Third, I couldn't go to Circum.
And this was a problem indeed. Because space lifepods depended on the fact that the ship in trouble would have sent a rescue signal. And faster ships would have come to rescue any survivors within hours.
This meant . . . I had oxygen for a few hours more—I wasn't sure how many as I didn't know the speed of the lifepod nor how long I'd slept. Not nearly enough to make it to Earth.
I looked behind me, at the lifepods pursuing me. The formation they were in. I could only go to Circum or the other way into the dangerous powertrees. They'd never catch me before I made it to Circum, but what was the point, if they could capture me without getting there before me?
What other choice did I have? I thought of my time in Circum Terra. I'd flirted with scientists and befriended techs, but the ones I'd felt most comfortable with were the powerpod harvesters. These men, who risked their lives daily navigating through the thorny, dark labyrinth of the powertrees and harvesting the unstable powerpods, were somehow the same kind of person I was. We were kin. We understood each other.
Now, with Circum up and to my left—well, to my insides everything felt like down and left, but it was relatively above the lifepod and I knew it—I had the forest of powertrees, the powerpods glowing upon them like captive fireflies to my right. Earth cast its shadow on us and put us in night.
If I couldn't go to Circum, why not the powertrees?
Fine, fine, any rational person would refuse to consider the powertrees. Ever. But I was never a rational person. And what choice did I have? They wouldn't pursue me in there.
And if I could find a harvester there, in the forest of coiling branches, if I could get the harvester to take me on, I'd have a chance, wouldn't I? I could talk to the harvester operator and convince him of my story, and get him on my side before I landed in Circum. I might have a chance. Just a slim chance, but better than none.
I veered off towards the powertrees. Calling them trees is, of course, a misnomer. They have no trunks and no roots. They are rather a conglomeration of twisting branches with what appear to be gigantic thorns growing out of them. And here and there, amid them, the powerpods in various stages of ripeness, radiation glowing through their skins.
What did I know about them? Absolutely nothing. Or nothing more than you learned in your primary programs. That the trees are a biological solar collector, planted and grown in the late twenty first century during the reign of Earth's bio-rulers. That they were fed organic matter from Earth via the ancient beanstalk that predated circum terra and which was no longer safe for people, but which still worked perfectly for cargo. That they collected the sun's radiation into the powerpods which, in turn, brought to Earth, powered our civilization.
How the trees grew in space, in vacuum? No idea. Clearly they were a closed system, their skin immune to the vacuum of space. How? No idea. But then again, neither had our leading scientists any ideas. The bio rulers, fortunately deposed in turmoils long before my birth, had been bio engineered to be well beyond our intellectual capacity. None of us could match it. But we still used the power system. All or our technology was keyed to it. And it was so abundant and inexhaustible
Even the harvesters had no idea how the trees grew in vaccuum. All they knew was how to pick the pods at the sweet spot between ripeness and instability. Too little ripe, and they would have too little power, barely worthy transporting to circum. Too much and they would blow up and take the harvester with them before ever getting to Circum extruding chamber.
Oh, another thing they knew—or said they knew—and that was that darkship thieves, the descendants of a few escaped biorulers, lived somewhere beyond the stars and stole ripe pods. Or so they'd told me. I wasn't sure it was a true legend, or the equivalent of stories to frighten a child.
I'd given them no thought at all—not until I found myself flying into the tangle of powertrees.
The joystick was sweaty in my hand, and it was hard to maneuver—even this small a ship—between trunk and powerpod, carefully, carefully. Harvesters had precision controls and computer aided steering. I had a joystick and an unwieldy pod that reacted just a little too slow.
Down over a branch, I dodged above the next just in time to avoid smashing into it, and then there was a huge powerpod in front of me, the fissures in the skin indicating it was overripe and about to blow. I twisted sideways and barely skidded away from it. And found myself threading a needle hole, barely large enough for the pod to dive through. I hoped.
I swallowed hard, as I went into it. I'd have prayed if I believed in gods.
And then, out of nowhere I hit something. Not hard. And whatever I hit was not as deadly solid as the diamond-hard trunks and certainly no powerpod. For one, it didn't blow up.
Even after hitting it, I couldn't see what it was. It was . . . dark. Straining, I could make out a rounded outline, but barely distinguishable from the surrounding gloom.
My throat closed. It was a darkship. It was a darkship piloted by the descendant of the biorulers. The biorulers had been inhumanely intelligent, modified to be that way. They'd also been unable to reproduce—leading to their being called Mules—to ensure that the human race survived. But if this was a descendant, they must have been able to reproduce? Or was this one of the original biorulers? How long did they live? And what did they want with us? Their rule of Earth had been utterly ruthless. They'd moved and eliminated populations without regard. What would they do with me?
In a panic, I looked behind, looked around for a harvester. But there was no one in sight. I tried to move away from the ship, but I seemed to have caught somehow. All I managed was a long, painful scrape.
And all of a sudden my com button pushed itself down and a voice came over it. A deep, male voice, with an odd accent. "Blazing Light," it said. "Why are you scraping my sensors?"
I froze. This thing wasn't a ship. It was a creature. A dark, huge and powerful creature. And I'd injured it.