advice, showing any of the courses the lifeboat could take to get up and away. Each one showed the lifeboat being targeted by three or four satellites and each one ended with a well-rendered explosion.
‘
Direct hit received on defence fields
,’ the lifeboat added.
Red lights, many more than Joel knew how to deal with, were flashing on the control desk. The Dead World swept past his vision again and the lifeboat reported two more direct hits.
So, if
up
was out . . .
The pain stabbed again and the grit at the back of his eyes felt more like grinding boulders, but again it went as quickly as it had come.
‘Then configure forceplanes for maximum aerodynamic effectiveness and dive,’ he said.
Oomoing dreamt, and that itself was unusual, because dreams rarely came in the Small Sleep. And one part of her mind was fully aware that this
was
the Small Sleep, a measure forced upon her by the lack of food. Dreaming wasn’t unusual at all in normal sleep, which lasted the usual half year, but now?
Still, it was a happy dream, so Oomoing sat back and enjoyed it.
She was with her family, and she was glad. It was her Waking Day and her three sons – she had never bred a daughter to be another mother, but her sons compensated more than adequately – were around her. There was First Son, proudly clutching the breeding contract Oomoing had negotiated on his behalf with her best friend’s eldest daughter. Second Son, the day he joined her in the laboratory as her assistant. And her own Third Son, after gaining his pilot’s licence. Chronologically it made no sense, but that aware part of her mind saw the connection – for each son it was the proudest day of his life.
She had fed in the waking frenzy, and then bathed, and now she reclined on a couch while they tended to her and brought her food and drink. Then they offered their Sharings to her and she took them in and lived the lives they had lived for the last half year. She shared in their joys and their sorrows, and the family was as one.
And someone else was there. Someone not of the family, someone Not Us, and Oomoing felt irritation, then anger that someone should gatecrash the occasion. But there was no-one there and she sprang up from her couch, and she could hear him but not see him, and smell him but not touch him; a presence all around, worming its way into the bonds between them.
And suddenly they were not her sons, they were rivals, they were impostors, they were after her for her name and her memories.
‘It’s not right!’ she cried, but still it pressed down on her and now it was all around her, worming its way into her mind, into her body, into her being, stripping away her identity, her essence.
It’s not real
, said a small part of her mind, but that part of her mind felt itself rapidly receding.
She was
Oomoing
. Not Learned Mother Oomoing the forensic scientist, not My Mother Oomoing the mother of three sons, but
Oomoing
, the hunter, the fighter, the invincible.
You are not!
shouted a small voice in her mind from a long way away, and she recognized it as the pretender Oomoing, the Oomoing of those other titles, the Oomoing that she was in her waking hours.
You are a captive on an extraterrestrial ship. Now is not the
time to give up your mind. You must concentrate
.
Oomoing swatted the other, the impostor, the traitor away with an angry growl and sprang up, eyes open, fully awake. All her senses were confused. She didn’t know where she was – a cave of some sort, but it was strangely light and dry. She breathed in deeply, but instead of the smells she would have expected of frightened food animals and moist earth and rotting plant life underfoot and trees and bushes, all that came in was a dry, alien scent that wasn’t alive or dead. And where her ears should have been full of the rustling of plants, the passage of animals through the undergrowth, the wind through the leaves, all she heard was an annoying hum, a deep vibration through her
‘
Direct hit received on defence fields
,’ the lifeboat added.
Red lights, many more than Joel knew how to deal with, were flashing on the control desk. The Dead World swept past his vision again and the lifeboat reported two more direct hits.
So, if
up
was out . . .
The pain stabbed again and the grit at the back of his eyes felt more like grinding boulders, but again it went as quickly as it had come.
‘Then configure forceplanes for maximum aerodynamic effectiveness and dive,’ he said.
Oomoing dreamt, and that itself was unusual, because dreams rarely came in the Small Sleep. And one part of her mind was fully aware that this
was
the Small Sleep, a measure forced upon her by the lack of food. Dreaming wasn’t unusual at all in normal sleep, which lasted the usual half year, but now?
Still, it was a happy dream, so Oomoing sat back and enjoyed it.
She was with her family, and she was glad. It was her Waking Day and her three sons – she had never bred a daughter to be another mother, but her sons compensated more than adequately – were around her. There was First Son, proudly clutching the breeding contract Oomoing had negotiated on his behalf with her best friend’s eldest daughter. Second Son, the day he joined her in the laboratory as her assistant. And her own Third Son, after gaining his pilot’s licence. Chronologically it made no sense, but that aware part of her mind saw the connection – for each son it was the proudest day of his life.
She had fed in the waking frenzy, and then bathed, and now she reclined on a couch while they tended to her and brought her food and drink. Then they offered their Sharings to her and she took them in and lived the lives they had lived for the last half year. She shared in their joys and their sorrows, and the family was as one.
And someone else was there. Someone not of the family, someone Not Us, and Oomoing felt irritation, then anger that someone should gatecrash the occasion. But there was no-one there and she sprang up from her couch, and she could hear him but not see him, and smell him but not touch him; a presence all around, worming its way into the bonds between them.
And suddenly they were not her sons, they were rivals, they were impostors, they were after her for her name and her memories.
‘It’s not right!’ she cried, but still it pressed down on her and now it was all around her, worming its way into her mind, into her body, into her being, stripping away her identity, her essence.
It’s not real
, said a small part of her mind, but that part of her mind felt itself rapidly receding.
She was
Oomoing
. Not Learned Mother Oomoing the forensic scientist, not My Mother Oomoing the mother of three sons, but
Oomoing
, the hunter, the fighter, the invincible.
You are not!
shouted a small voice in her mind from a long way away, and she recognized it as the pretender Oomoing, the Oomoing of those other titles, the Oomoing that she was in her waking hours.
You are a captive on an extraterrestrial ship. Now is not the
time to give up your mind. You must concentrate
.
Oomoing swatted the other, the impostor, the traitor away with an angry growl and sprang up, eyes open, fully awake. All her senses were confused. She didn’t know where she was – a cave of some sort, but it was strangely light and dry. She breathed in deeply, but instead of the smells she would have expected of frightened food animals and moist earth and rotting plant life underfoot and trees and bushes, all that came in was a dry, alien scent that wasn’t alive or dead. And where her ears should have been full of the rustling of plants, the passage of animals through the undergrowth, the wind through the leaves, all she heard was an annoying hum, a deep vibration through her
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