Arrival - Milan (Gravity is a Bitch)
Who: Milan Tran, Gerald Tarrant Where: City Section 1 (When: Evening Day 1, Sunday, December 9)
All that is important, Serge, is that you survive....
And then there had been the Light. The Light that was Halcyon Scarlet, in Transcendence Mode.
The Light that was Serge.
The Incubator was blasted apart.
Milan Trane felt Donna scream. Felt the animated husk that was Donna, die.
Good bye...
She'd loved him. She'd fought for him. For the idea of him. Or for the Godthing that was the Incubator. Were they different? He didn't know.
The incubator shattered apart. And so did Milan.
What was left of the human in his thoughts turned in the last instants to the world below. A world he had watched from above like a god, or an angel cast out in exile, watched protectively even as he reached down to spread the Virus. With the Incubator gone, there would be nothing left to transmit the Virus to Earth any more. That ended communication. And for that, Milan mourned. Humanity was once again cut off.
The inhuman thoughts... well they could not be translated. But the Virus didn't fear death. It didn't know death. Death was nonexistence and therefore unknowable.
Therefore, Milan was not afraid.
Nonexistence was... no, nonexistence was not
Consciousness could not maintain.
Yet.
Consciousness was.
That was all.
Gravity.
The heaviness crushed. Pinned. Held in bondage.
Milan had forgotten gravity. How cruel it could be. Knowing it again, now, was utterly unfathomable.
Darkness... darkness was. Air... lungs... heart, beating...
Body nude and translucently pale in the darkness, Milan glowed a little. But there was no one to see.
The battle with gravity began. Sitting up... was hard.
So he crawled, in the dark.
During the day, Gerald had confined himself to the building that he'd woken up in. It was a large place, split into dozens of smaller abodes; he could only assume that it had once housed dozens of families of the Krell. Some of the doors had opened for him, some had not. Nothing was vastly different from the interior of the rooms that he'd woken in.
Without his sword, however, Gerald was disinclined to wander far. Instead he'd figured out how to work the machines that dispensed food and those that filled a large tub with water. Pre-heated water! As if the building had a natural hot spring that it tapped into. Gerald had stripped away the new garments and bathed, even though he was already clean. Then he'd spent some time with the books that Robby had given him. Out of all of them, the fragments of the Krell journal proved the most manageable, and he'd spent the most time between its covers.
Twelve hours after Robby had retired to his niche, he emerged again. Something heavy and grateful settled in Gerald's stomach, some tenseness of his shoulders relaxed, as he took the familiar weight of the blade in his hand. He had Robbie make his belt as well, and hung the sword at his hip.
When the robot told him of someone in the area, Gerald felt confident enough to head out. Perhaps this someone could give him answers to his questions.
"The life form reading is four kilometers west, 30 degrees south. However I cannot confirm, sir."
Gerald realized, as he gathered up his discarded scarf and wrapped it around his shoulders, that he had no idea of the directions here. Before he would have simply done a Locating, or watched the Fae for a disturbance. "I... cannot find south from here." Damned inconvenient was what it was.
The robot paused, clicked, and the slot in his belly opened. There was a palm sized object inside with a suspended needle.
"The blue side of the needle points north. Or I can lead you."
But Gerald was smiling. "No need." He took the compass and watched the needle waver and then settle. "Compasses are some of the few technologies that work on Erna." He had never had a reason to use one, being an Adept and able to work the Fae, but that did not mean he hadn't learned. "I will be back soon." Gerald left without ado, confident until he reached the deserted street--then, in the face of the unknown, he went more slowly.
Somehow, Milan had crawled away from enclosing walls, in the dark. The surface under him was smooth, and the dust on it so fine as to be nearly intangible, but he felt it, like gravel scraping his sensitive skin. Skin, bones, nerves... how they screamed their existence at him!
He passed through an opening, the shape odd, some bent triangle or amended diamond, a panel half blocking it, frozen in place. Passed from clean, filtered air that tasted like filth and rottenness, to freer, and more organically laden stuff, washing into his lungs with each pull of breath, coating his lungs with particles that felt horribly like decay.
There was a ramp, and a wide place between more walls... buildings? Defiance against gravity's unyielding grip.
Above, far, far above, obscured by molecules of oxygen and nitrogen and too many other gasses, there were stars.
Real stars? Milan thought they must be cruel imitations, they were so far and so faint.
He tried getting up, and failed, fell. Managed only to prop against one of the walls, half in the walkway, looking up.
The thick atmosphere dulled his senses. He didn't hear movement until it was almost upon him.
Without a Locating trying to gauge distance was imperfect. When Gerald had moved on his feet he had been hunting, chasing, closing in on prey. He'd run through the Forest, the vegetation giving way before its Master. Following the beautiful symphony of fear that his chosen prey left behind her, Gerald had never counted his steps.
At one point, under the arousing burden of those memories, Gerald stopped and pressed himself to a wall. He could barely hear over the annoyance of his hammering heart--for a moment he just stood, waiting for it to subside. Then he moved on, wondering if he'd missed the person. If they, maybe, were in a building. Or if the robot had simply been wrong.
All of those thoughts were washed away when Gerald turned a corner to put himself on a more southerly course. A human, almost pale as he'd once been pale, without the subtle flush of life.
Settling a hand on the hilt of his sword, Gerald approached.
Milan looked up, scarlet eyes in his fine, pale face sweeping up the bizarre figure. A... man, dressed in a costume. Carrying a metal staff at his hip?
Milan simply watched him approach, without trying to move, without covering his nakedness. One arm rested over his lap, the other was pressed against the smooth ground, keeping him upright with the support of the wall behind. Well, upright sitting. His long legs curled beside him, too affronted by gravity's tyrannical demands to properly support him, yet.
Milan looked at the man and saw organic life.
Meat.
Inside him, the Virus questioned again, in spite of its habitation, how meat could be considered sentient.
The little light that was cast from one of the glow panels on the building's side made the man's eyes look like liquid fire. Gerald thought of Hell and his fingers had floated upward--a few inches closer to the scar marring the left side of his face--before he gained control of himself.
He stopped, just out of arm's reach. Not out of sword reach, although he did not draw, nor loosen the blade from the sheathe. "Are you hurt?" Gerald asked, his quiet voice smooth.
Are you hurt?
Milan let the words drop into the pool of his consciousness. The Virus examined them and discarded the sounds as meaningless. He let it recede.
The laugh began softly but it grew, and then faded again to softness.
"No. I'm dead."
Gerald made a small noise of ascension. "As am I."
White eyebrows drew up over the albino's eyes,
"How do you do?"
Another soft laugh followed and faded.
The man was obviously addled. Decisions would have been easier to come by had Gerald been on Erna, or had Fae to work with. Under such circumstances there was no man that could have hurt him, had he been wary. Now, wariness wouldn't be enough. He did not intended to die a third time.
"Better than you, it looks like."
Milan didn't contradict. To his eyes, the man standing, clothed, secure in himself, seemed a bit like a shell, a shell of flesh over emptiness. But there was something dense there as well.
He reached and extended his hand. "Help me stand. Unless you wish to carry me?"
It wasn't exactly an order. But Milan had always been blessed with a lack of concern for other's egos.
And, stepping in and reaching to clasp the outstretched hand, Gerald somehow managed to make the movement seem of his own violation. His sword was kept to the outside as he ungently pulled the albino upward, ready with his other hand should the man's legs not support him.
The white of the man's skin, the red of his eyes--Gerald was forcibly reminded of Amoril and he wondered at the irony that would put him in the path of an albino so soon after the last he'd known had betrayed him so thoroughly.
The strength of the grip that pulled him upwards sang an odd song of joy along Milan's nerves. His palm and fingers tingled at the living contact as if electric ants were biting into him along every centimeter of the contact. The shock of it ran down his legs and firmed them, and to his own surprise, no, astonishment, he was standing, clinging to that grip, swaying on his feet as his muscles and tendons but mostly his mind lodged loud protests against the downward force that hammered at him to give up, go limp, stop fighting it.
He gasped, and then his face lit up with the surprise. His eyes locked on to the man's eyes and he smiled, even as his sense of equilibrium spun and reversed. For a few moments he was balanced, but then he pitched, and reached out for the man, falling against Gerald's chest, head tilted up on white, stretched neck.
"...Gravity..." he gasped. "...such a bitch!"
Old pathways of neurons fired at such a blatant emotional response and within silver eyes, Gerald's pupils dilated. He held the man up easily; his own feet planted firmly. "Gravity?" he asked. "You are unused to gravity?"
Milan laughed again, softly. "That," he said, "or gravity is unused to me..." His eyes turned up to the distant, dim stars. He regretted the millions that couldn't be seen, too dim to shine though an atmosphere.
The roughness of the man's clothes scraped against his skin like unrefined ore.
Something made Milan want not to move from where he was, and the man held him easily. Those muscles were used to winning against the subatomic 'weaker force', that was obvious.
"Besides dead," Milan said, suddenly wanting to know, and prevented from just taking it by... by what? Something held the Virus in check. "besides dead, what are you?"
Gerald found himself at a loss as how to answer that question. Suddenly he was the one who should know--yet he had no better answers than the man in his arms. Had he been brought here, the same as Gerald had? The manner of their entrances was certainly similar.
"Human," he said, though it should have been obvious, he looked no different than the albino, except for pigmentation. Although, hadn't he looked the same when he'd been the Hunter? And he'd certainly not been human then.
Meat.
Yes, but so was Milan, at least in part.
"Yes?" Milan watched the man's features move, remembering distantly what expressions mean to humans. "Humans... have names... I was Milan Trane..."
Gerald's expression was schooled to the finite. Now his face was calm, delicate, handsome features passive and yet still regal. Assured.
Was. He didn't frown, perhaps the man considered him dead still. "My name is Gerald Tarrant."
Was. Had been Milan Trane. Had been human. Before Contact. Before the Incubator. Before the Virus.
The man's name confirmed his humanity somehow, though it was likewise obvious.
"Thank you, Gerald Tarrant," Milan said, still draped over the man's chest, "for helping me up."
Gerald knew that the right thing to do would be to take Milan back to his own quarters and have Robby fabricate clothes for the naked man. Give him something to eat, drink.
Except that Gerald was unused to hospitality and more still to keeping a stranger at his back. "The question is," he said, low, "what to do with you now." Clearly, the man had no strength to attack him. He looked around at the closest buildings.
"When you decide, let me know," Milan said, the ghost of his original personality supplying the response.
The way the man was looking around, he seemed about to undo all the hard work that had brought Milan out of the building he had woken in. True, he could crawl it again, but that would be something of a waste.
He pressed hands flat against Gerald's chest and fought himself back on his own, struggling to control the balance of his body's mass.
One hand dropped away, the other resting on Gerald as he tested this.
It was like bone marrow needles stabbing up through the floor.
"If we are both dead," Milan murmured, "this must be hell."
"Oh, trust me," Gerald said, wry amusement flavoring his voice, rolling out the sounds, "this is far too pleasant for Hell." He looked back at Milan. "There are empty housings near to mine."
"Ohhh? Perhaps its just getting warmed up..." the former scientist smiled again.
Housings. Gravity bound enclosures. But then, they were shelter from the elements. A faded memory of rain surfaced like a bubble and burst and Milan shuddered.
"Take me," he said, and his eyes glowed scarlet, as if implying any and all those words could come to mean.
The only response that indicated Gerald heard more than one meaning was the way the black of his pupils expanded, reducing the silver irises to mere coronas.
But the fact that it was obviously an order--no matter which way it was take--put Gerald's back up. He was thoroughly unused to being ordered around and, frankly, did not intend to comply in any way that might give Milan the impression that it was something he would do normal. Lines must be drawn.
For ten centuries, he had been the most feared thing on Erna. Before that he had been a Neocount and a Knight of the Order of the Flame on the goddamed Prophet of the Church. He was no man's servant. That was a yoke that he would not bear, even for Vyrce, the only man for which he had respect.
Gerald smiled. His eyes didn't share the humor with his mouth. "Standing is one thing, walking another. I think it best I carry you." But instead of scooping the man up across his arms, Gerald ducked and turned into Milan in a graceful motion and then he was hoisting him over his shoulder (the one opposite his sword hip) and wrapping a strong arm around the backs of his thighs.
The sudden movement, the lift and jerk and change of perspective startled Milan, but he didn't tense for more than a nanosecond. He wasn't a dead weight, however. He contemplated the view he'd been given - the ground and Gerald's legs and ass.
His lips curved.
There was that about the man that stirred a memory.
"If you think it best," he murmured. Yes, the human form was simply meat, but what was left of the human Milan still had aesthetic appreciation. It would be easy to reach down and touch that attractive double curve as he hung there.
The thought didn't go as far as provoking action. Not yet, anyway.
Which was probably better, since he would have gotten dumped into a gutter for his trouble. Gerald might have been meat, but he'd never been treated as such and had little patience for blatant shows of disrespect.
Having had three children, having drank blood, having been a knight and Adept--the bare ass near his face was ignored easily.
Milan was hardly concerned about the attractiveness or lack of it of his body, or any part of him, Being carried... well, while the view wasn't unattractive, it prevented Milan from seeing where they were going. The dark along the way was deep but there were ambient sources.
It felt strange to travel only in two dimensions.
Gerald was annoyed with the lack of Fae; it hampered his vision without being able to work his Sight in the dark. But he carried on without a break in stride, pride carrying him forward smoothly. He strained his merely human senses as far as he could. He wondered if those glow lights could be put into something hand-held, like a lantern.
With long strides it wasn't long before Gerald slowed with his burden outside the door of the building he'd woken up in. He ducked again and settled Milan's feet to the ground, gripping his shoulder with a hand as he stood again and palmed open the door.
It was a little easier to balance. The hand on his shoulder was like a clamp. Near painful, but steadying. His head swiveled to watch the door open, blinked at the light that came from within. His hand reached out to touch the side of the interestingly-shaped opening.
Gerald had just brought him back to his own residence. When he'd visited the other nearby homes it had been daytime (still an eerie wonder, to move about under the sun--if he'd covered his head with his scarf at least there'd been no one to see him) but now Gerald was unsure about getting the glow lights to work accurately.
"This is a temporary arrangement," he said, watching the trace of Milan's fingers. "Tomorrow when it is light you can pick a house of your own."
Milan heard the voice, accepted the information. His mind was fixed on the door's movement, the light beyond. A door panel that slid back was not a wonder - it had been part of everyday life on the satellite, and on the Earth before. But door panels that moved and artificial light that did not flicker like fire implied technology.
The Virus woke from its dormant recession, and the red in his eyes seemed to glow.
"Tomorrow," he repeated absently, "when it is light..."
He took a step, body remembering the movement. His hand on the door opening helped to support him as Gerald had done before.
Despite not wanting to tend to an invalid, Milan was the only other human here. Gerald hovered, swallowing his distaste at playing healer. How far he'd come in only two days of his crippled heart beginning to beat again.
Milan did not have gravity. Gerald thought about that as he kept step with the man. That meant... he was a starfarer? Silver eyes jumped up with the possibility. "Are you from Erna? Are you one of the colonists that came with Casca?"
Robby hadn't told Gerald where the 'others' would come from. Gerald assumed his own planet.
Fired scarlet eyes turned to Gerald and the glow died a little as human shifted back into a more dominant mode. "I don't know Erna," he said. "Or Casca. The planet that Milan Trane originated on was known by its inhabitants as 'Earth'."
The origin point of the Virus had never been known.
"I was..." the shift in point of view was unconscious, "on the satellite Helio-Lab IV, when we made contact. The satellite became the Incubator. It took seven years for humans to return there." He had been there for seven years, with Donna. And the Virus.
Little of that made sense to Gerald except to let him know that one, he'd put his foot in his mouth but two, that this man was a starfarer.
And, beyond a doubt, not in full facility of his wits.
"Come in and sit. I'll draw some water."
Water... to drink? Or bathe? Milan's nude body was dusted with fine particles that felt like rough gravel to his hypersensitive nerves.
Sit down? Yes, acclimating to Earth normal gravity would need to be done in stages. But he had some sense that his body was in what amounted to adequate physical condition, for meat.
He walked, one step at a time, but his eyes were all over the room around them. He could sense it - his mind had been awakened to the concepts as well as their limitations.
"This isn't a human place..."
"No," Gerald said, palming the door closed behind them. "They were called the Krell; I'd never heard of them before waking here this morning. After dying," he added. The books he kept his mouth shut about; they were in the back room. He'd never been one to deny others knowledge but Amoril's betrayal--Gerald's library, centuries of paper, torn to shreds, defecated upon--was still fresh in his mind and that here was another albino lent nothing to his wanting to share.
Milan's head turned as he regarded Gerald. "Krell..." His head tilted. A comprehensible alien race? Comprehensible in that they had material wants, to need a house like this. "Organic life forms."
Gerald had said 'this morning'. Gerald had said many things that provoked questions, excited curiosity. Milan had once had an insatiable curiosity, a thing like curiosity that was honed to a need, a geas. The sense of it was teased into waking.
"Where are they?"
"I would assume organic," Gerald returned. He didn't wholly trust the liquid that the pyramid on the table supplied; it smelled off. He hadn't had the chance to ask Robby about it since the robot had spoken up about the other human. But the other alternative was to run around like a slave, to and from the washroom. "Since there are machines to produce food and drink."
"The information that I've pieced together suggests that they were all wiped out from some sort of disaster." He touched the top of the pyramid and reached into that flat darkness for a Fae that wasn't there, focusing his intent on liquid. He wasn't sure if there was an easier way.
A circular panel promptly appeared, split in half, slipped apart into the table's surface to allow a platform to rise with a cup and liquid. The cup was vaguely shaped by Gerald's thought into a type familiar to him.
Milan followed Gerald, slowly, his steps containing an odd glide to them. He stood in the archway, supporting his balance with one hand on it, and watched the table produce the cup and liquid.
"Disaster. But you found no rotting corpses..."
"I did not. Although it seems to me that the Krell existed here before Earth was a planet. Corpses would have long decomposed to dust." He stepped back to Milan and handed him the cup.
"Before Earth was a planet... Five billion years ago? More?"
Milan looked down into the cup and was startled to see a reflection. A face, slightly distorted by the liquid, but recognizably human.
He stared at it, caught for a moment.
Serge...
"I assume so," Gerald said. Instead of saying anything else about it he caught Milan staring at the thin reflection of himself in the cup's liquid and instead, "Milan?"
Yes, Milan...
He looked up, and then lifted the cup to his mouth. Odd to drink something. Odd in a vaguer secondary way to drink something from an open cup, rather than a bag or tube. Open cups required gravity, but then here was all this gravity in spades...
The first touch of the liquid made him shudder. He swallowed it, registering taste, but not whether it was pleasant or disgusting.
Gerald watched the man drink and then turned away, stepping back through the other room to settle himself on the odd furniture that he could only assume was a couch of some kind. He glanced and found the door to the back room--with the books--closed. Good.
Milan held the liquid on his tongue for a moment and then swallowed. The sensations crawled around in his body in a way that made him want to find something sharp and let the biochemical reactions out. His features were too unreadable to mirror any of this.
He took a second drink with a smaller shudder. "This is not water. Not solely." It was merely an observation. If Gerald had just given him poison, he did not appeared to be concerned.
Could the dead be killed?
Carollian logic suggested that since they had organic bodies, since they were flesh, the flesh could be affected. Maimed, mutilated. Delicate mechanisms disrupted.
Wasn't that interesting?
After a moment Milan said, "Thank you." He took swaying steps over to the table and set the cup down, carefully. His motor skills were still adjusting and he sloshed a little out of it.
He examined the pyramid. Placed his hand against it. This was some form of mechanism.
The Virus rose, hot, under the surface of his skin, starting to melt the organic flesh to reach the substance of the pyramid. Milan's head twitched to the side and he suddenly exerted something in himself, pulling the Virus back. Not now, not yet. He wasn't ready to blend with the table, to become part if its mechanism in order to learn about it. On Earth, the Virus had been hunted. There might not be any Variable Gears here, but whether the humans, like Gerald, would feel threatened by the Virus, as Earth's humans had, and retaliate, or try to destroy him, as Earth's humans had, it was too soon to know.
And now his curiosity was woken. He wanted more information.
His hand drew away with only the faintest adhesion and a slight pull.
Gerald was watching quietly from his space on the couch. Over the awkward motions of Milan's body, the pull away from the triangle went unnoticed as an oddity. "No. It tasted off to me as well. It is different than the water in the washroom - I think that the device..." He tapered off, shrugged. "It produces food as well, cubes that, at least, are edible. I don't think that it is supposed to be just plain water."
"An organic supplement," Milan suggested. He turned and fixed his attention back to Gerald, resting his hips against the table as an assist.
"You woke here this morning?"
He was given a nod in return. "About an hour after sunrise." One sun, as there was only one moon. Strange.
"Yet already quite at home," Milan observed. He studied Gerald. "Is that a weapon?"
Gerald was sitting to accommodate the long sword; when Milan asked he glanced at it briefly as if he'd forgotten it was there. He had, to a degree of consciousness. "Yes. A sword." So Milan was not only a starfarer, but one who didn't know a sword when he saw one?
Swords were archaic, but the question had been less about identifying its shape and more about its purpose. So it wasn't simply a costume piece, or for show or some other purpose.
"What is Erna?"
That passed right by Gerald; to him there was absolutely no reason to carry a costume sword--it was not even a thought. It would not have crossed the mind of anyone who'd lived on Erna.
"The planet I am from. It is a colony of Earth. A lost colony."
Impossible.
The word did not emerge from Milan's lips, after all, there were many things that were not apparently possible, that could nevertheless be made to come to pass.
He watched Gerald unwinkingly as he considered it.
"Have you encountered non-terrestrial life before?" Perhaps that was why Gerald seemed so collected.
For a moment Gerald's eyes unfocused. He thought of the Iezu, half human, half something else... thought of their history that had been destroyed, and had taken with it perhaps any chance people had to reach the stars of their ancestors. He closed his eyes, swallowed back the pain of that.
In a way, he'd died for that knowledge, and it had been for nothing. Vryce could not have persuaded the Patriarch to leave the Keep standing, that he knew in his bones.
Gray eyes opened, flecks of silver catching the light. "Yes, I have."
Milan moved, drawn towards the man, his steps gliding from the effort it took not to falter. "Organic? What are they like?"
"We thought they were demons. On Erna... the planet has an energy of its own. Feeding off people's mind, it can spawn creatures. Nightmares given flesh and blood." Gerald fingered the butt of his sword. "For centuries we assumed that they were Fae creations, fed by people; the Iezu all catered to specific tastes. Pleasure. Pain. Beauty... they were worshipped like demi-gods."
He could still remember Karrill's temple if he closed his eyes, the velvet couches and drapes, the fountain of wine, the groups of fornicating couples and triples. Gerald smiled vaguely. "We were wrong. They were imperfect offspring of a starfarer. She had been pulling aspects of men who had come close enough to her volcanic home, a single aspect at a time, trying to understand humans. The Iezu were her offspring after all, half human. She was..." Beautiful, vague. His eyes unfocused. No one would know, unless Vryce did something about it.
He blinked and there was a faint downward twitch of his lips.
The fire in Milan's eyes caught as the Virus reacted. "Beautiful," Milan whispered. "Incomprehensible. As much so to the humans as the humans to it?"
Not the Virus. But not without similarities. Possibility was infinite.
Gerald only nodded. He watched the strange flicker in those albino eyes.
"And do the humans of your Erna want to understand? Do they seek to communicate with it?" It wasn't an important question. Just another curiosity.
There was a shrug. "I doubt they will ever know. The only ones who discovered the truth were myself, the man I was traveling with, and an Iezu who was... a friend." He used Vryce's word. "I was killed two days later. Vryce... I'm not sure he can prove anything to anyone without my library, and it was most like blown to kingdom come once I was dead."
Milan tilted his head slightly. "But you... did you? Otherwise what would have been the purpose of the library...?"
"The knowledge that the Iezu were half alien... being able to learn more, learn the right things..."
There was a flash of deep disappointment in Gerald's eyes, but it was momentary. One hand curled into a fist and then eased. "My library had a thousand years worth of information. More. It dated back to colonization, 1,200 years ago." He looked away rather than let Milan see his face.
"The knowledge that the Iezu were half alien... being able to learn more, learn the right things..."
There was a flash of deep disappointment in Gerald's eyes, but it was momentary. One hand curled into a fist and then eased. "My library had a thousand years worth of information. More. It dated back to colonization, 1,200 years ago." He looked away rather than let Milan see his face.
"Learn the right things..." Milan shook his head. "Right is an ambiguous concept." Milan sighed and moved slowly around the room, still nude, but more interested in examining it, just as Gerald had done. His muscles and joints protested but he ignored them. Flesh was so very fragile. Poor housing for sentience.
"Correct things," Gerald specified. "As in changing the belief that the Iezu were simple Fae-born demons. If we had learned from their mother..." They might have been able to start again, build machines that worked, eventually reach technology that would take them back to the stars. It was too much to try to explain to Milan. It didn't matter now.
He should have offered Milan clothes, but he did not. The man had not yet asked.
Reaching a door, Milan paused in front of it.
The door opened. Beyond was the bathing room Gerald had discovered with Robbie's guidance. "May I go in here?"
The veneer of civility was returning slowly.
Gerald looked up, nodded.
The pool was sunken into the floor, water constantly circulating, constantly cleaned. There was another oddly shaped object, a bit like a low, tricornered stool with a smooth hole in the seat. one point of the triangular seat supported an arm that curved back and down.
Milan looked it over and laughed.
Yes, Milan was certainly a few sigils short of a Warding. Who laughed when they were in the washroom? Gerald watched the door that the man had disappeared through.
The pool was clean looking, and large. Nostrils flaring, Milan stepped as carefully as he could down into it. The water was a few degrees warmer than human body temperature.
The sensation of it slithered across his skin. He rode through the shudder and focused on how the buoyant substance cushioned a little against that constant, vicious downward pull.
After a minute Gerald sat up, and then stood. He walked on soft, near silent leather to the doorway. He was more worried about the man drowning himself.
Milan relaxed in the clear water, getting used to the physical sensation. He looked up as Gerald entered and smiled.
"I helped myself." His limbs moved idly in the water. "Considering that I never expected to have to deal with gravity again, I'm doing better than I might have expected."
Gerald leaned against the frame, crossing his arms over his chest. "You lived in space?"
Existed would have been a better word, but if he had died, he must have been alive. Milan nodded. "For seven years." The first hint of real emotion - the human side of him registered weariness. It had taken so long for Serge to come.
Seven years. In space. Gerald couldn't even imagine. Something hungry surfaced, sharp and needy. If he could figure out this Krell technology... there was a bridge, he thought, something similar here to the Fae of Erna. Thoughts could be manifested. If he could figure things out...
Did he have another lifetime? A lifetime of quiet, interrupted time in which to study and explore? Gerald would take it, and more. A gift horse's teeth needn't be checked.
Milan watched the man's features, felt the subtle shift of energy. He felt the want, the hunger, but couldn't guess what had triggered it.
He fanned the water slowly. The particles of dust had been swept away with the water, and his nerves were almost getting accustomed to the sensation of it, almost ready to regard it as soothing.
Which meant he should probably get out.
"Coming out," he said aloud. "Unfortunately it probably won't be pretty."
He pushed himself to the edge of the pool, the movements almost practiced, the odd grace that of a person accustomed to moving in zero-G. He tried to stand, to step out. Crawling was the second option.
There was no offer of help, and would be none until Milan asked for it. Gerald wouldn't have.
There wasn't much to hold onto, and there was water on the floor, dripping from Milan's body, by the time he made it from pool to his knees, from knees to wall, and with the help of the wall, back to his feet.
The evaporation cooled him. The shiver was unpremeditated.
"So do you know how we got here?"
A soft length of fabric was offered over; something else that Gerald had asked Robby to produce--he'd had a very small list by the time the robot had brought his sword. "No. And I have a feeling that it won't be explained to us. But the fact that we both know we died... That, at least, is a common thread to start from."
Milan accepted the cloth, and wrapped it around himself. "It was nice of them to supply you with clothes," he murmured, corner of his mouth twitching in wry amusement.
Silver eyes caught on the lips for a moment and he smiled dryly in answer. "They were made for me by a... You know the word robot?"
White eyebrows lifted. "Yes of course. Though it's a vague and generic term." He started to smile. "The Krell left a bot?"
Then he added, "or did it die also?"
"Oh, no," Gerald said, supremely unconcerned over the fast that he had not offered clothes to his impromptu guest. Had the man wanted to be shod, he should have said so. "It has retired into its niche, I suppose, since I left to get you."
He stepped out of the doorway and looked at the panel in the wall where he knew Robby was stored. Or, stored himself. His lips parted... and then closed. Instead, he reached out, forming a silent Working of the robot in his mind.
The niche opened and Robby trundled forth. "Yes, sir?"
Milan, unconsciously holding the cloth around him with one hand, stared with widened eyes and took several shaky steps towards it.
"You're...kidding..."
Gerald turned to look at Milan. His eyebrows were raised in surprise. "You know Robby?"
"Rob-by?" Milan said almost distractedly. Then he let out a low laugh. "What an amazing design..."
The Virus woke and reached, seeking the mechanical and cybernetic simplicity the way a creature surrounded by nothing but horrors would yearn towards a simple logical object. Milan's hand moved, fingers stretched out. Once infected, the Virus would try to liberate this machine from it's mechanical bondage to the biologics, the meat. If the robot's programming prohibited this, it would merge the machine with whatever biologic was closest to break the bondage and put the machine in charge.... or something like that. Or nothing at all like that...
With an effort, Milan pulled his hand back, as his eyes glowed red.
"It's... quaint..." voice slightly choked, he tried to sound normal. Whatever that was.
It didn't work well enough to escape Gerald's notice. He'd had many long years to study the human psyche. He watched the way Milan's Adam's apple bobbed and long to work a Knowing on the man. "Quaint. Perhaps you would care to explain?"
The albino shook his head. "I'm at a loss," he admitted. He pulled his eyes away from the robot and that made it easier to think. He found a smile somewhere. "I used to be an engineer. I've designed Variable Gears. The... the tech of my time is... different from this." He thought back over what Gerald had said. "How did um, Robby, make you clothes so quickly? I take it it didn't weave the cloth...?"
"It fabricated them. It could not explain better unless I knew a language called Quantum Physics." He watched the other man now for tells.
"Molecular construction? That's... fascinating..." That kind of physics was in it's infancy on Earth, at least the Earth Milan knew. The Virus seemed to be able to do a kind of molecular reconstruction, making anything out of anything, but Milan had never analyzed how. He'd left that part of him behind once contact had been made.
"So you know how to speak Quantum Physics?" It didn't show that Gerald felt a little out of his league.
"Speak it?" That was an interesting what of looking at things. But it wasn't incorrect, Milan supposed. "What you say this robot can do is beyond the understanding of the subject that the scientists of my Earth, my time, have advanced to." Not beyond his personal experience but... without the Virus in his mind he probably couldn't have understood how he had survived in space for seven years after the satellite had been abandoned.
Gerald made a small noise, selfishly glad not to have been one-up'ed. He turned, palming the door to the bedroom (at least, as he thought of it) open. The books were there on the empty shelf of the room in a neat stack. "Lights," he said softly as he stepped inside. That much, it seemed, he and the house had come to agree on.
He gestured to the clear dome. "It manifests your thoughts, though it doesn't seem capable of physical production. But if Robby can see the kind of clothes you require, it makes it easier."
Milan walked, his steps still tentative, trailing behind Gerald to the next room. He looked at the dome, and the Virus looked, and the mist appeared and started to swirl.
Milan felt his mind start to download into the thing and swayed back, hand over his eyes. His lungs asked for more air than he had been taking. In cyberspace, he had been able to create anything, himself, any world, he could do this.
Being in the meatsuit made it infinitely more difficult, though. He wasn't sure he wanted to use those resources just now.
Gerald put a hand on Milan's arm as the man covered his eyes and swayed on his feet.
The contact sent an odd thrill along Milan's too excited nerves. He wondered whether this man would have had the courage Raven hadn't had, the courage to look into the Incubator.
The thought settled him, somehow. He visualized himself as he had appeared to Serge in the Net.
The mist coalesced into a figured, dressed in simple, clinging black.
Energy drained right out of Milan, out of his body and he stumbled back.
Muscles moved before Gerald had decided, one way or the other. He stepped and caught Milan, keeping him on his feet. He glanced at the image in he dome and then at the albino's face. "That was fast."
Maybe he wasn't special after all.
Leaning against the support, Milan turned his gaze to Gerald. He smiled slowly. "Have you ever ridden the Net before without an interface?"
Gerald snorted very quietly. "You assume that I understood a word of that. I'd don't make it a habit of getting myself caught in nets."
The smile only curved a bit more. "Have you ever put your consciousness in another receptacle?"
There was a small jerk, quickly mastered. Gerald helped Milan to sit. "No," he said, the smoothness of his voice almost erasing the physical reaction. Why would anyone want that? No, never.
"Then I'd say you are very special," Milan returned. His head tilted. "I'm guessing but I'd be surprised if you don't have some kind of mental skills. Meditation? Thought projection?"
"I am an Adept on my planet. Someone who has a natural ability to manipulate the Fae--the energy of Erna," Gerald said. "Something like thought projection, I suppose. My will forces the Fae to do my bidding."
"The Fae?" Head tilted, images of fairies spilled improbably through Milan's thoughts. "Energy... fascinating."
"The Fae is what manifests people's thoughts," Gerald explained. "There are four types, solar, tidal, earth and dark fae." It was strange, having some one not about the fae. On Erna, children were warned before they could speak. Never go out at True Night.
Milan nodded. "If there is anything like that on Earth it is an obscure or unknown thing."
Gerald laughed and it was a dry sound. "No, there is not. The colonists from Earth who landed on Erna... they had no knowledge of the fae. They were almost all killed by their own thoughts before Casca made a sacrifice that shaped the fae and made it somewhat controllable."
"Colonists from Earth..." But humans hadn't gotten further than the nearest neighbors. "The Earth I knew... there have been no space colonies."
That pasted honest, open shock onto Gerald's face. He sat up, sat forward. "But how can that be? We have records that were in tact. The entire colony had been in cold sleep, had put down on Erna as the only habitable planet... It came from Earth. We speak the same language."
"You speak English," Milan pointed out, but his tone was almost soothing. "One of the dominant languages of Earth but not the only one." His head tilted. "Your records... when did the colonist leave Earth, was that recorded?"
"No. There isn't much. But from what I gathered, it sounded like it didn't matter." Gerald opened his hands, closed them in an outlet for his irritation. "The colony, the... seedship. There were over 4,000 people at their launch, all of them put into coldsleep. The ship took them so far to the edges of the galaxy that millennia had passed on Earth."
He fell silent, listening to his own words. Even had space colonies been a thing of Milan's earth, the time difference was too vastly great. "All of this is impossible." There was a coating of anger on his voice, rough.
Milan listened, head tilting slightly. "In spite of the description of your Erna as a place where manifestly impossible things happen, you have essentially a logic and ordered mind. The problem with ordered minds when confronted with the impossible is that all but one in a million break."
Without barely moving a muscle, Gerald shifted, straightened his face, and just that--partnered with the steely glint in his eyes--allowed him to look deeply menacing. Not even thirty in physical years but the youth hardly seemed to matter.
Milan gazed back.
"You do remind me of Raven," he said mildly. "It's that look. Gerald... which is more impossible? The discrepancies in our mutual histories, or the fact that two dead people are discussing them?"
It was a valid point and Gerald--angered or not--was not a stupid enough man to overlook it. He took a soft breath and held Milan's red eyes. "You're right." And that was all. He raised his voice and turned his eyes to the door. "Robby."
"Yes sir." The robot moved forward.
Gerald looked at Milan. "Can you make the image again?"
A heartbeat later he held up a hand. "On second thought. I saw it. Would you rather it tried to replicate it?"
Milan inclined his head. "Please." He wanted to observe, and the first effort had sucked a great deal of energy from a physical body he was still getting used to experiencing.
There was nothing to observe. As an Adept, Gerald had never had any need of words or gestures to mark his Workings. He reached and did. As it was now, he only looked at the dome so that he could see if the image was forming correctly. When he was clear, he turned his eyes back to Milan. "Is that correct?" There were bound to be details missing, things that he didn't know.
There weren't really. A black pullover, high in the neck, and black leg and foot coverings, probably some thin knit that would stretch to mold the body's shape. "Fine."
Milan considered for a moment visualizing one of the Variable Gears. Halcyon Scarlet perhaps. It made him smile.
"You'll need to tell him the fabric," Gerald said, sitting back some, keeping a part of his focus on the image.
Milan glanced at the robot. "Neosilk. Any slip on shoe."
"Yes sir. Ten minutes."
"Neosilk?" An interesting word, to Gerald's ear.
"Synthetic," Milan said, watching the robot move away. "Similar to your shirt."
Synthetic silk. It was almost awing. Leaning back against the odd couch, Gerald let the image slip and the dome fuzzed and cleared. "Who is Raven?"
"A human scientist. He was with us on Helio Lab IV. He was there at the creation of the Incubator." And he had spent the next seven years on Earth, organizing the battle against the Virus.
It didn't give Gerald much information but he didn't push for more. He fell quietly, perfectly fine with the silence.
"It was that stern look of yours," Milan added after a moment.
Stern. Men have pissed themselves over that look and you think I'm stern. Like an annoyed schoolteacher, perhaps. Showing nothing of the thought, Gerald merely nodded.
Milan had always been immune to Raven's look. Few others were. Raven had been comfortable telling the world-controlling conglomerate Zanell to wait on hold while he took another line.
"Are there others?"
"Like us?" Gerald shrugged. "Robby told me that there was high chance of others appearing, but couldn't give me specifics. You were the first."
"How large is the city?"
Again, Gerald shrugged. "I've been here roughly fifteen hours. Twelve of those Robby was making my sword and inaccessible to me. Even during the day, I have no urge to wander around without a way to protect myself." Not to mention that it was still just uncomfortable--if not physically--to be about in the sunlight.
So much like Raven.
"How did you find me? Were you wandering?"
"The bot told me." Milan's vernacular, yet it rolled smoothly off Gerald's tongue.
Robby obviously had sensors of some kind. "So you went to see."
Gerald nodded. "And found you."
The man ran along Milan's nerves, just his presence. "So we have a second life." Memory tugged at him, but somehow Milan felt there was no going back.
"Or something like it. If we died to get here, will we die to get out? Will we die at all?" For whatever reason, the thought brought a smile to Gerald's face. "I suppose that either way we should get comfortable."
That returned a smile to Milan's lips. He lay back on the odd shaped couch.
Gerald hadn't quiet meant here, not for Milan, but he said nothing at the newly-relaxed posture. He glanced at the opposite wall and could almost feel the night through it, dark and peaceful. Even without the dark fae at his beck and call, even without being able to hear the song of the shadows... He wanted to be out in it.
Robby returned to the room.
"Your garments, sir."
Milan sat up, and took the items draped over the robot's arm. Robby had produced a black silky knit that seemed to drink light. Milan pulled the top over his head and the slightly thicker pants up his legs.
Later, Gerald would have to ask Robby to duplicate the Neosilk so that he could touch it, feel it. After ignoring the nudity for so long, it was strange to have Milan covered. Suddenly, he stuck out like a sore thumb - even though Gerald approved of the color.
It felt as odd to be covered, now as it had to feel air on bare skin. But the fabric was static free - how had the robot known to do that? - and it dulled the sensations a bit, in a way that was almost comforting.
Milan looked over at Gerald. "Thank you."
Gerald just nodded, accepting the thanks in the least of ways without being insulting. He wanted to go outside... but he could feel the wear on his body, the way his eyes were beginning to dry and his muscles to want to be stretched.
Being human was so inconvenient.
"From empty space to an empty world," Milan murmured. He slipped into the shoes and tried walking, into the other room for lack of other destination.
It was pathetic. Gerald missed Vryce's presence. He settled his head back against the couch back. He was not concerned about being good company.
It felt odd, not being alone, yet somehow more alone for the knowledge of no world other than this, no NeoHongKong with teaming population below. Gerald was like a dark body, Milan could feel the pull of him.
He wandered the house slowly, stopping to lean on walls or objects.
Gerald closed his eyes. This all was familiar to him in a vague, dreamlike way. An environment that reacted to him, an albino his only companion...
Maybe he'd wake up tomorrow, dead. Or alive. Stranger things had happened.
Eventually Milan's legs tired of supporting his weight to the point of agony and he curled up on the couch in the larger room. In orbit, he hadn't slept so much as paused.
His body chose a fetal tuck as his eyelids slowly slid down.