She hated that he’d had to witness this. He would never be the same again.Ged’s fault,she told herself.Tharanoth’s fault.Another, louder voice echoed over and over in the back of her head:My fault.
She tuned it out. She dragged the scientist across the blood-slick floor, forcing her to hobble on one foot, until they reached the first gate. There, the scientist used another panel to scan her eye. The gate rose without a sound to reveal a strange vessel.
Neri croaked, “Is that a boat?”
It resembled one, if only in the way a cactus resembled a yucca plant. Sleek, pale, and oblong, it had fins like a deepriver fish and no visible deck.
“That will take us back?” Ysira asked the scientist.
“You won’t be able to control the navigator,” she said instead of answering.
Ysira hadn’t the faintest idea what she was talking about. “Then you’re coming along.”
“It’s forbidden to me!” the scientist screamed at her. “Ican’t.”
“You’re going to try.” Ysira jabbed her in the small of her back, urging her forward, ignoring the dread that gnawed at her insides.
The craft’s interior was compact, no bigger than Ysira’s bedroom in Ogden’s clinic. A padded chair sat embedded in the back wall. At the front—the part resembling a fish’s nose—lay a translucent, crescent-shaped table arrayed with shifting symbols, and beneath it, a closed compartment approximately the length of a human torso. Protruding from its end . . .
A human brain.
In Ogden’s service, Ysira had seen her share of them. She had removed a few from skulls herself, dissected them and learned their basic anatomy. This one still pulsed, not dead at all, nerves linked to a glowing bulb atop the crescent, spindly metal rods protruding from the grey matter like a spider’s legs.
“It’s still alive. No. Oh, no—” Neri broke off with a shuddering breath.
Don’t look,Ysira’s subconscious screamed at her.Just use the ship, don’t think about it, don’tlook?—
“What is it?” Neri demanded of the scientist, with unusual force. He pressed a hand to his head as though plagued by a terrible sound.
“The navigator.” The scientist spoke wearily. “A telepathic consciousness, merged with the ship. It’s necessary to travel through the Source.”
Ysira ripped open the compartment. A man lay there—no, aboy;he couldn’t be much older than Neri—limbs amputated, brain exposed, connected to a latticework of tubes and wires. His flesh melded with the ship itself. He appeared to be asleep, eyes closed, but Neri clutched his head and mumbled, “No no no. . .”
Nausea churned in Ysira’s gut with unprecedented violence. “You—” Her throat burned. “You Harvest us. For this.”
The scientist reached over and shut the compartment. “Faster-than-light travel is the most valuable resource in the universe.” The look on her face conveyed a simple plea:Whatelse would you have us do?As if this were inevitable, and worse—mundane.
“Tell it to take us home.” Ysira choked down bile. “Back to the Scar.” The scientist stared blankly at her.
“The canyon,” Ysira snapped. “The enormous red mark in the middle of the desert. You can’t miss it.”
The scientist hesitated. But she pressed her palm against a screen beside the brain—thenavigator—and entered a series of commands. “Approximate coordinates are set.” She pointed at a red panel in the center of the crescent. “Press here and you’ll eject. Nowpleaselet
me go.”
“Not just yet,” said Ysira.
“There’s only one crash couch.” The scientist’s voice rose in pitch. Her gaze whipped toward the padded seat. “There’s no room for us all, and I can’t survive on your planet?—”
“How does it work?” Ysira pointed at Neri. “Would it keep him safe if the landing goes badly?”
“You could survive a dead fall from orbit in that couch,” said the scientist. “But?—”
“Show him how to get in it,” said Ysira. “Then open the doors.” “What about you?” the scientist begged. “What aboutme?”
“You have two choices,” said Ysira. “One: you do what I tell you and take your chances. Two: you refuse, and I crush your skull right now.”
Tears streamed down the scientist’s cheeks, but she did as she was commanded. Ysira watched and waited, terrified and doing her utmost to pretend she wasn’t, as the alarms outside blared and time trickled away. At last, the far doors opened, revealing the blue-green sphere of Celes Lor amid a field of stars.
