Astra

Chapter Thirty Six: Just a Little Pinprick

His hands splashed to his sides; his back contracted, throwing his head back so that his beard stood straight in the air. His good eye flashed like wet bone. Breath hissed from his lungs. "Catch him!" the Ice said. The two of them could barely keep him from diving to the floor as his metal eye crawled fearsomely in its socket. The good eye found Starless. His mouth began to move in the clicks and squeals of the Phyrnosian tongue. "I'll be damned," the bodywriter said.

The Knife came up behind him. "He's possessed!" he said.

"He's saying something about zuulite," Gill said. "And there's someone else, too; a different voice. It's almost like he's picking up reception on the Phyrnosian Eye."

"He's possessed," the Knife insisted.

"He's not. He's merely contracted something, as I said." With a practiced hand, the bodywriter bent Howl's head forward and parted the man's hair. Howl screamed in the foreign tongue.

"Jesus. We should be recording this," the Knife said.

The Iceman ran two fingers up and down Howl's upper spine until he found what he was looking for. "I'll have to open him up," he said. "It's a simple procedure. But it's between his vertebrae. I need to get him into the shop."

"What's between his vertebrae?" Gill said.

"Can do," Vince said. He lifted Howl easily and followed the Iceman into the bay of Orbital 9, leaving the women alone.

"Will someone tell me what is going on?" Gill said.

The Knife stood in the chilly hallway outside the Iceman's operating room. He looked out into the night. Night was the only reality, he thought. Night, which held all the mornings of the universe. Night, which was the only god.

On the other side of the wall, the endless, endless night, brushing against Orbital: pressing in, searching. Night would crush them if it could. He closed his eyes. When he opened them he saw a bright light in the far distance. It bled sideways in the darkness, became large, and was gone. All without a sound.

It had been the death of something- a star, a planet. The Knife sighed to think of all the things he would ever know. Leaned his head back on the wall, so that his cap pressed comfortingly over his eyes. He thought of Gillian. Of her olive and bronze and sweet smelling hair. Gillian.

The darkness listened.

On the other side of the door, the bodywriter held up his knife. "One more," he said. As often as he opened bodies, it was difficult to resist talking to them.

"Ssssk," Howl said. He sat hunched on the slab, his thighs drawn up like haunches. The Iceman pressed a button, and Howl melted back, asleep. A series of clicks, and the table fixed him into place for surgery. Lying on his stomach, held tightly by the table, Howl Johnson dreamt of ice. He dreamt of the earth he thought had been locked from him forever.

If he could just crawl through the ice. Everything would fall into place. He flexed his toes, inching his body through the ice towards the green core within it. Everything was still there, beneath the ice and waiting. Waiting just for him. Earth.

"Easy, big guy," the Iceman said. He lay his blade alongside the outermost edge of the controller embedded in Howl's spine, and sliced.

"You can come in. He's all sealed up now."

Vince came in the room. "This it?" he said. He looked at the device. It was thin and delicate as a fish scale, and veined with blood. Threads trailed from its edges.

The Iceman flicked one of the threads admiringly. "These are how it could control his limbs," he said. "As to how they were able to make him say the words they wanted, I have no idea. I didn't realize Phyrnosians had the technology."

"May we see him?" Gill said, standing in the door.

Vince handed her the Phyrnosian device."This was inside him," he said. "Between his shoulders. They used it to control him."

"Like a puppet," she said. She quickly handed it back.

"You okay?" the Knife asked.

"Not really, no." She rubbed her arms. "How do you know he's ok now? Suppose something of-them-remains inside him?"

"I imagine he will have strange dreams," the Iceman said. "But nothing serious. It should fade away. What I wonder is, how deeply did they submerge him? How much of this experience will he remember?"

Starless pushed into the room. "How is he?"

"He's fine," the bodywriter assured her, tugging his operating mask loose. He folded it neatly and slid it into his jacket pocket as he moved to let her stand at Howl's bedside. She bent over the captain and kissed his cheek. "I felt something rock the station a little while ago," the Iceman said. "Did you see anything?"

"Yeah. A star went out or something," Vince said.

"Hm." The bodywriter pressed his earlobe. "'Nna? Did you see the star go out? 'Nna, come in. That's odd. She usually answers. We'll let him rest and check the viewers. I didn't know any stars were expected to go off."

"It does seem strange."