Cytonic (The Skyward Series Book 3)

Doomslug! I thought, excitedly projecting the thought toward her. How?

Hiding, she sent back. Delvers. The impressions were laced with the idea of hiding in a hollow of stone, trying not to be seen by a predator that prowled nearby.

I sent you home! I sent to her.

You equal home, she sent back, picturing us together. Then she added something to the image—projected into my mind. A version of her in my arms, but now with eyes and a smiling mouth plastered on her front. They looked like they’d been drawn on with marker. She didn’t quite understand what eyes and a smile were for, in human terms, but she seemed to sense that this expression indicated contentment. Happiness.

Home. She didn’t live in a cave. She lived with me. Wherever I was.

I felt like an utter fool. I’d vanished into the nowhere holding Doomslug, a cytonic creature that had evolved to avoid the attention of delvers, and then my father’s pin had immediately shown up in my pocket. And I’d been told by more than one person that cytonic people could change how they appeared in here. If a person could, well, why not a slug?

You look like my pin! I sent her.

Special, she said, very pleased. We are special. To hide.

Still, I said. You didn’t have to follow me in here.

She sent back comforting emotions and the image of me being chased by a predator. She’d been worried about me. So she’d come with me, but had hidden herself. I hadn’t been communing with my father’s soul. She was the one who had been supporting me all this time, the familiar mind that had lent me strength in resisting the delvers.

I felt an enormous wave of gratitude. And relief, actually, that she wasn’t my father’s soul. It wasn’t that I didn’t love him, it was just that…well, there had been something unnerving about that thought. I could see that I’d substituted the familiar feeling that came from Doomslug with something I wanted. Which I now realized I didn’t want at the same time.

This made way more sense. Though…uh…I had buried her… She made a distinctly annoyed fluting sound.

“Sorry,” I whispered, chagrined. “I didn’t know it was you.”

I got an indignant fluting in response.

“No, I won’t bury you again,” I said. “But you could have told me.”

She sent me fright. Fear of the delvers, who had been nearby. Watching for her kind. She’d come in here with me, but had deployed her camouflage out of fear. After that she’d been comfortable riding in my pocket. Enjoying the…sensation of this place? Was that right? When in the nowhere, her kind just liked to snuggle down and absorb the nowhere “radiation.” Less slug, more…sea cucumber maybe?

This was what she did every time she traveled through the nowhere during hyperdrive jumps. Because of the delvers. It was why starships traveling via slug were so much safer than ones using cytonic people.

Can’t leave, she sent me. Since we weren’t in the lightburst, she was locked into the belt like I was. Other than that, she seemed content to be back with me, though I again had to promise I wouldn’t bury her. I wasn’t certain how much she understood; I’d always seen her as an animal before. But in here, I felt like I could understand her better.

You talk smarter now, she sent to me. Though it wasn’t words—but I interpreted them that way.

I’ve been practicing, I said to her, with my powers. You think it’s working? You understand me?

Smarter talk, she said with a fluting approval, and a reality ash dropped from her.

Wait, I said, pinching it between my fingers. What are these, anyway?

Poop! she said.

I blinked, but… Okay, I quested deeper into the meaning of what she’d sent. She thought it was the same thing as, well, poop. But it wasn’t—her powers linked her to the somewhere, and that pulled through a little reality. A kind of crust. I rubbed the ash between my fingers, and thought maybe I understood. Like fragments formed around holes between dimensions, these ashes formed around creatures that bridged the two dimensions.

Actually, hadn’t I been told that being near a fragment helped people keep their memories? Was that because, in essence, the small bits of new rock growing on the fragments were reality ashes?

Well, people were starting to notice me kneeling there beside the wall. So I took the pin that was Doomslug in one hand, the Surehold icon in the other, then held that one up.

“Hey,” I said to them. “You all missing something important?”

That caused a ruckus, of course. I settled down in a chair to wait as people rushed over. Maksim called for Peg, and it took her less than five minutes to come charging in. There, she reverentially reached down and cradled the stuffed animal.

“How?” she said. “Your…special talent?”

I nodded. “Tell me. Do you know what these really are?”

The tenasi captain clutched her icon, then glanced at the rest of the pirates. Finally, she waved for me with one meaty hand. “Let’s chat, Spin,” she said. “In private.”

The other pirates gave us space. Together, Peg and I left the chamber and entered the hallway outside.

“It was my secret escape plan,” she said softly as we continued walking. “I hid a taynix—a hyperspace slug—in my things when I entered. Took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that the stuffed toy in my luggage—my childhood favorite, but which I’d thought I’d lost years before—was indeed the same thing.”

“So the other pirates and workers don’t know?” I asked.

She shook her head. “The icon is already valuable enough. Don’t want them getting the idea that it might be able to hop them back to the somewhere.”

“It can’t,” I said. “Not while it’s in the belt.”

“You’re sure?”

“Reasonably. But I guess all of the slugs can hide themselves as objects.”

Nope, Doomslug said in my head. Only the yellow-blue ones. That was conveyed by a picture of herself.

There are other kinds? I asked.

Tons!

Right. Okay then.

Peg continued walking, thoughtful, so I kept pace with her. We soon left the barracks and entered a courtyard between several buildings. Inside it stood three trees. They were about three meters tall, with extremely stout limbs and very few leaves.

From the branches grew fruit. Like, actual fruit. Lots of it, in a variety of colors, shaped kind of like upside-down pears. Peg walked to one tree and inspected it. Then she selected a cherry-orange fruit and pulled it off.

She walked over and presented it to me. “A mulun,” she said. “For bravery. I’d hoped to have grown a few, and I have!”

I balked. “So…do these trees really…”

“Grow fruit based on how we tenasi feel?” Peg said. “Yes. My soul is bound to this tree. I was allowed to carry a new sapling with me, grown from my old tree, when I entered. Many of us believe that the fruit contains our emotions—and makes us able to be calm in battle. I find that to be a lie, or at least an exaggeration. But the bond is real.”

That made it even stranger to take the fruit as she forced it upon me.

“It is your reward,” she said. “Please. Honor me.”

So I took it. “Uh…do I…eat it?”

She laughed. “Not usually. Plant it. You won’t bond to it like a tenasi, but…well, having that tree will be recognized by others of my kind. As an honor.”

Well, that was cool. I was glad I didn’t have to eat it. Though in the past I’d made a few cracks about feasting on the blood of my enemies, that was completely metaphoric. I put the fruit and Doomslug’s pin in a pocket.

Peg turned back to the tree and drew her lips to a line. Not baring teeth, not threatening, instead content and happy.

“It just feels so odd,” I said. “Everything else about your people, Peg, seems about…well, being predatory. Aggressive.”

“No, not aggressive,” she said. “Merely growing a better future by making the next generation strong. We test, we push, we prove.”

“And trees relate to that…how?”

“Not at all,” Peg said. “Why should they? Humans are terrifying conquerors, but you have art, don’t you?”

“I suppose we do,” I said. Even during the war for survival on Detritus, we’d made sculptures and statues. People couldn’t help it.

“We evolved with these trees,” Peg said. “We care for them, and they provide fruit for us. Aggression and killing are always about life—life for yourself, for your kind. My people have forgotten that, and pretend those emotions don’t exist. I haven’t forgotten them. But I suppose that attitude is what ended up driving me to this place.” She waved to the trees. “These are about life too.”

Then she slapped me on the shoulder. “You’re leaving, aren’t you? My offer wasn’t tempting enough? You’ve decided to take another path. I see it in your expression.”

I supposed…I supposed that I had decided. Not because I felt guilty, but instead because…well, I had to. I didn’t trust the delvers. I needed to know what they were hiding, the things they didn’t want any of us to know.

But it wasn’t merely about duty. It was about stories. After it all, I…didn’t want to live in a story. Not if it meant leaving my friends and family. I wouldn’t ever be happy in here without them, and I didn’t want to forget them like Chet had.

Having the permission to stay had somehow given me the courage to leave.

“Thank you for taking me in,” I told Peg. “For not tossing me off the side of the fragment the moment you found me trying to steal from you.”

“I think I got the better end of the deal,” Peg said. “Will you at least stay a few days, to celebrate?”

“We’ll see,” I told her. “First, there’s something important I need to do.”