The Starry Rift Part 3

She sat up, and mugged a you got me face. "I was afraid you were going to ask me that. We don't have any bodies back home, Sylvie."

"Huh?" said Dev.

"Technically, er, physically, we are dead. And we don't know if we will ever die, which is quite a trip." She looked at me seriously. "That's the way it has to be. It'll change-we'll find a way around the problem. It's going to be possible for other people to fly to the stars, but so far, only 'nauts who can handle having no body left at home can survive this kind of travel. We're the forerunners."

"n.o.body would do that," breathed Dev, after a moment. "Now I know you're faking. You're cheating on us, telling us weird lies. This is a game. You're nothing but big cheats."

"Yeah?" said the pirate queen. "And what are you?" She was still looking at me, not at Dev, in a way that made my stomach turn over. "You've been messing with us, making the jumps we make, getting in deep, playing with the code as if it's your little Lego set. We thought you were two of our colleagues, psyching us out, because you were cheating the same way we can. It's rare. When it combines with someone who . . . well, someone who doesn't have much use for their physical body, that's when you get a neuronaut candidate."

"No," said Dev. "You're in a lab somewhere. Hooked up to life support."

She shook her head, slowly, sad and happy at the same time.

She was like an outlaw angel, breaking all the rules.

The crew-they were called the Kappa Tau Sigma Second Crew (KTS, for Kiowa Taime Springs)-had turned themselves in, for our sakes. You see, apparently it's okay on the Earth-type planets, where they're finding out what they can do with a.n.a.log bodies, out there on alien soil, in the real no-kidding s.p.a.ces between the stars. But it's hard on them (in some weird way), making the straight leaps from normal s.p.a.ce to information s.p.a.ce-the plane where everything exists in simultaneity, and a journey of 560 light years is pretty much instantaneous. The 'nauts get burnout, they get tired and irritated, so instead of doing it the hard way, they take shortcuts through the human datasphere, the code-rich hub games that are like playtime to them. They're not supposed to do it-it's supposed to be dangerous for our consensus reality or something, but they do. And the scientists hate them for it, and call them cheats, just the way we did.

Anyway, we got hauled back. Dev woke up on life support, in the hospital. I woke up in my bed at home. Then it was nightmare fugue for a while. We had the choice between angry, scared, tearful parents and psych tests, science questions, and medical procedures, when we were awake, or going to sleep and finding out what our sickeningly ripped-up neuronal mapping wanted to do to us next in the way of vile nightmares. Horrible, awful! When we talked to each other screen to screen, the conversation consisted mostly of me saying Bad! Bad! and Dev saying Bad! Bad! . . . We couldn't deal with sentences or anything.

But we got better. We came out good as new.

The morning after Dev came home from the hospital, I got into my wheelchair, which I hate to do, because it takes all my strength and reminds me that I keep on getting worse. Two years ago I could casually sling myself into the chair; now it's like climbing Mount Everest. I got my head in the support, I dehooked and rehooked all the tubes I needed, which is something else I hate to do, and I whizzed myself along to Dev's room. I hardly ever visit my family anymore. I prefer my bed. I used to fight like a tiger to keep myself going. There were years when I insisted on walking in a frame without motor a.s.sist, years when I insisted on getting up every day and going around in my chair. Now I love my bed. It's the only territory I'm still defending, the only place I have left to stand. Although, of course, I'm lying down.

My motor nerves are eating themselves. There's no gene therapy that will work for me; there's no cure. It's not fatal. I'm fourteen: I could live for decades . . . treating my brain like a pet animal and trying to ignore the sad sack that used to be my body. My mom and dad still desperately want that to happen. But I had talked to them (I'd recovered from our adventure much faster than my healthy, normal little brother). The Kiowa Taime Springs people had talked to them too. They were coming around.

I looked down at my little brother, my best friend, thinking about the day he came to me and insisted I had to start playing the games again, because he loved me. I thought of all the wonderful times we'd had, exploring and fighting, skimming over the snow, solving mysteries. I thought of paddling the channels in the reed-beds with him, and the way he'd yelled when he was shooting down the white water. I watched him breathe; his eyelashes fluttered on his cheeks. I knew what he was going to say when he woke. He opened his eyes, and blinked, and smiled. "Hi, Sylvie. What an honor!" But his smile faded. We both knew. We knew.

"Take me with you," whispered Dev, reaching out. "Please."

There was nothing I could say. I just sat there, holding his hand.

ANN HALAM was born in Manchester, England, went to convent schools, and then took an undergraduate degree in the History of Ideas at the University of Suss.e.x, specializing in seventeenth-century Europe, a distant academic background that still resonates in her work. She first realized she wanted to be a writer when she was fourteen, when she won a local newspaper's story compet.i.tion. She has written more than twenty novels for teenagers, starting with Ally Ally Aster and including Taylor Five, Dr. Franklin's Island, and most recently, Siberia. She has also written a number of highly regarded SF novels for adults as Gwyneth Jones, notably White Queen, North Wind, and Phoenix Cafe, and the near-future fantasy Bold as Love series. Her collection Seven Tales and a Fable won two World Fantasy Awards, and her critical writings and essays have appeared in Nature, New Scientist, Foundation, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and several online venues. She has been writing full-time since the early 1980s, occasionally teaching creative writing. Honors include the Arthur C. Clarke Award for Bold as Love and the Philip K. d.i.c.k Award for Life. She lives in Brighton with her husband, son, and two cats called Frank and Ginger; likes cooking, gardening, watching old movies, and playing with her Web sites (homepage.ntlworld. com/gwynethann and www.boldaslove.co.uk).

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

The story "Cheats" was born when I first picked up the controller for a fantasy s...o...b..arding game, and I swear I could feel the cold air; I could smell that crispy, frosty atmosphere you're in when you're lying facedown on a toboggan at the end of a downhill glide. Now I keep imagining a future with full-immersion games where your brain reacts to the virtual world exactly as if it's real . . . and why not? The real world we think we perceive all around us is really just built from a pattern of firing neurons. Plus, in the view of more and more scientists, the real universe is built from information, the same as the games are. I have a wild idea that young people who grow up as expert immersion gamers may come to see themselves as "made of information" in the real world, the way the games are "made of" computer code, and this gives me the wilder idea that there's a back door from virtual reality, where distance means nothing, into the s.p.a.ces between the stars.

ORANGE..

Neil Gaiman.

(Third Subject's Responses to Investigator's Written Questionnaire.) EYES ONLY.

1. Jemima Glorfindel Petula Ramsey.

2. Seventeen on June the ninth.

3. The last five years. Before that we lived in Glasgow (Scotland). Before that, Cardiff (Wales).

4. I don't know. I think he's in magazine publis.h.i.+ng now. He doesn't talk to us anymore. The divorce was pretty bad and Mum wound up paying him a lot of money. Which seems sort of wrong to me. But maybe it was worth it just to get shot of him.

5. An inventor and entrepreneur. She invented the Stuffed m.u.f.fin, and started the Stuffed m.u.f.fin chain. I used to like them when I was a kid, but you can get kind of sick of Stuffed m.u.f.fins for every meal, especially because Mum used us as guinea pigs. The Complete Turkey Christmas Dinner Stuffed m.u.f.fin was the worst. But she sold out her interest in the Stuffed m.u.f.fin chain about five years ago, to start work on My Mum's Colored Bubbles (not actually TM yet).

6. Two. My sister Nerys, who was just fifteen, and my brother Pryderi, twelve.

7. Several times a day.

8. No.

9. Through the Internet. Probably on eBay.

10. She's been buying colors and dyes from all over the world ever since she decided that the world was crying out for brightly colored Day-Glo bubbles. The kind you can blow, with bubble mixture.

11. It's not really a laboratory. I mean, she calls it that, but really it's just the garage. Only she took some of the Stuffed m.u.f.fins money and converted it, so it has sinks and bathtubs and Bunsen burners and things, and tiles on the walls and the floor to make it easier to clean.

12. I don't know. Nerys used to be pretty normal. When she turned thirteen, she started reading these magazines and putting pictures of these strange bimbo women up on her wall, like Britney Spears and so on. Sorry if anyone reading this is a Britney fan ;) but I just don't get it. The whole orange thing didn't start until last year.

13. Artificial tanning creams. You couldn't go near her for hours after she put it on. And she'd never give it time to dry after she smeared it on her skin, so it would come off on her sheets and on the fridge door and in the shower, leaving smears of orange everywhere. Her friends would wear it too, but they never put it on like she did. I mean, she'd slather on the cream, with no attempt to look even human colored, and she thought she looked great. She did the tanning salon thing once, but I don't think she liked it, because she never went back.

14. Tangerine Girl. The Oompa-Loompa. Carrot-top. Go-Mango. Orangina.

15. Not very well. But she didn't seem to care, really. I mean, this is a girl who said that she couldn't see the point of science or math because she was going to be a pole dancer as soon as she left school. I said, n.o.body's going to pay to see you in the altogether, and she said how do you know? and I told her that I saw the little Quicktime films she'd made of herself dancing nuddy and left in the camera and she screamed and said give me that, and I told her I'd wiped them. But honestly, I don't think she was ever going to be the next Bettie Page or whoever. She's a sort of squarish shape, for a start.

16. German measles, mumps, and I think Pryderi had chicken pox when he was staying in Melbourne with the grandparents.

17. In a small pot. It looked a bit like a jam jar, I suppose.

18. I don't think so. Nothing that looked like a warning label anyway. Yes, there was a return address. It came from abroad, and the return address was in some kind of foreign lettering.

19. You have to understand that Mum had been buying colors and dyes from all over the world for five years. The thing with the DayGlo bubbles is not that someone can blow glowing colored bubbles, it's that they don't pop and leave splashes of dye all over everything. Mum says that would be a lawsuit waiting to happen. So, no.

20. There was some kind of shouting match between Nerys and Mum to begin with, because Mum had come back from the shops and not bought anything from Nerys's shopping list except the shampoo. Mum said she couldn't find the tanning cream at the supermarket, but I think she just forgot. So Nerys stormed off and slammed the door and went into her bedroom and played something that was probably Britney Spears really loudly. I was out the back, feeding the three cats, the chinchilla, and a guinea pig named Roland who looks like a hairy cus.h.i.+on, and I missed it all.

21. On the kitchen table.

22. When I found the empty jam jar in the back garden the next morning. It was underneath Nerys's window. It didn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure it out.

23. Honestly, I couldn't be bothered. I figured it would just be more yelling, you know? And Mum would work it out soon enough.

24. Yes, it was stupid. But it wasn't uniquely stupid, if you see what I mean. Which is to say, it was par-for-the-course-for-Nerys stupid.

25. That she was glowing.

26. A sort of pulsating orange.

27. When she started telling us that she was going to be wors.h.i.+pped like a G.o.d, as she was in the dawn times.

28. Pryderi said she was floating about an inch above the ground. But I didn t actually see this. I thought he was just playing along with her newfound weirdness.

29. She didn't answer to "Nerys" anymore. She described herself mostly as either My Immanence, or the Vehicle. ("It is time to feed the Vehicle.") 30. Dark chocolate. Which was weird because in the old days, I was the only one in the house who even sort of liked it. But Pryderi had to go out and buy her bars and bars of it.

31. No. Mum and me just thought it was more Nerys. Just a bit more imaginatively weirdo Nerys than usual.

32. That night, when it started to get dark. You could see the orange pulsing under the door. Like a glowworm or something. Or a light show. The weirdest thing was that I could still see it with my eyes closed.

33. The next morning. All of us.

34. It was pretty obvious by this point. She didn't really even look like Nerys any longer. She looked sort of smudged. Like an afterimage. I thought about it, and it's . . . Okay. Suppose you were staring at something really bright, that was a blue color. Then you close your eyes, and you'd see this glowing yellowy-orange afterimage in your eyes? That was what she looked like.

35. They didn't work either.

36. She let Pryderi leave to get her more chocolate. Mum and I weren't allowed to leave the house anymore.

37. Mostly I just sat in the back garden and read a book. There wasn't very much else I really could do. I started wearing dark gla.s.ses. So did Mum, because the orange light hurt our eyes. Other than that, nothing.

38. Only when we tried to leave or call anybody. There was food in the house, though. And Stuffed m.u.f.fins in the freezer.

39. "If you'd just stopped her wearing that stupid tanning cream a year ago, we wouldn't be in this mess!" But it was unfair, and I apologized afterward.

40. When Pryderi came back with the dark chocolate bars. He said he'd gone up to a traffic warden and told him that his sister had turned into a giant orange glow and was controlling our minds. He said the man was extremely rude to him.

41. I don't have a boyfriend. I did, but we broke up after he went to a Rolling Stones concert with the evil bottle-blond former friend whose name I do not mention. Also, I mean, the Rolling Stones? These little old goat-men hopping around the stage, pretending to be all rock and roll? Please. So, no.

42. I'd quite like to be a vet. But then I think about having to put animals down, and I don't know. I want to travel for a bit before I make any decisions.

43. The garden hose. We turned it on full, while she was eating her chocolate bars, and distracted, and we sprayed it at her.

44. Just orange steam, really. Mum said that she had solvents and things in the laboratory, if we could get in there, but by now Her Immanence was hissing mad (literally) and she sort of fixed us to the floor. I can't explain it. I mean, I wasn't stuck, but I couldn't leave or move my legs. I was just where she left me.

45. About half a meter above the carpet. She'd sink down a bit to go through doors so she didn't b.u.mp her head. And after the hose incident she didn't go back to her room, just stayed in the main room and floated about grumpily, the color of a luminous carrot.

46. Complete world domination.

47. I wrote it down on a piece of paper and gave it to Pryderi.

48. He had to carry it back. I don't think Her Immanence really understood money.

49. I don't know. It was Mum's idea more than mine. I think she hoped that the solvent might remove the orange. And at that point, it couldn't hurt. Nothing could have made things worse.

50. It didn't even upset her, like the hose-water did. I'm pretty sure she liked it. I think I saw her dipping her chocolate bars into it before she ate them, although I had to sort of squint up my eyes to see anything where she was. It was all a sort of great orange glow.

51. That we were all going to die. Mum told Pryderi that if the Great Oompa-Loompa let him out to buy chocolate again, he just shouldn't bother coming back. And I was getting really upset about the animals-I hadn't fed the chinchilla or Roland the guinea pig for two days, because I couldn't go into the back garden. I couldn't go anywhere. Except the loo, and then I had to ask.

52. I suppose because they thought the house was on fire. All the orange light. I mean, it was a natural mistake.

53. We were glad she hadn't done that to us. Mum said it proved that Nerys was still in there somewhere, because if she had the power to turn us into goo, like she did the firefighters, she would have done. I said that maybe she just wasn't powerful enough to turn us into goo at the beginning and now she couldn't be bothered.

54. You couldn't even see a person in there anymore. It was a bright orange pulsing light, and sometimes it talked straight into your head.

55. When the s.p.a.ces.h.i.+p landed.

56. I don't know. I mean, it was bigger than the whole block, but it didn't crush anything. It sort of materialized around us, so that our whole house was inside it. And the whole street was inside it too.

57. No. But what else could it have been?

58. A sort of pale blue. They didn't pulse either. They twinkled.

59. More than six, less than twenty. It's not that easy to tell if this is the same intelligent blue light you were just speaking to five minutes ago.

60. Three things. First of all, a promise that Nerys wouldn't be hurt or harmed. Second, that if they were ever able to return her to the way she was, they'd let us know, and bring her back. Thirdly, a recipe for fluorescent bubble mixture. (I can only a.s.sume they were reading Mum's mind, because she didn't say anything. It's possible that Her Immanence told them, though. She definitely had access to some of "the Vehicle's" memories.) Also, they gave Pryderi a thing like a gla.s.s skateboard.

61. A sort of a liquid sound. Then everything became transparent. I was crying, and so was Mum. And Pryderi said, "Cool beans," and I started to giggle while crying, and then it was just our house again.

62. We went out into the back garden and looked up. There was something blinking blue and orange, very high, getting smaller and smaller, and we watched it until it was out of sight.

63. Because I didn't want to.

64. I fed the remaining animals. Roland was in a state. The cats just seemed happy that someone was feeding them again. I don't know how the chinchilla got out.

65. Sometimes. I mean, you have to bear in mind that she was the single most irritating person on the planet, even before the whole Her Immanence thing. But yes, I guess so. If I'm honest.

66. Sitting outside at night, staring up at the sky, wondering what she's doing now.

67. He wants his gla.s.s skateboard back. He says that it's his, and the government has no right to keep it. (You are the government, aren't you?) Mum seems happy to share the patent for the colored bubble recipe with the government, though. The man said that it might be the basis of a whole new branch of molecular something or other. n.o.body gave me anything, so I don't have to worry.

68. Once, in the back garden, looking up at the night sky. I think it was only an orangeyish star, actually. It could have been Mars; I know they call it the red planet. Although once in a while I think that maybe she's back to herself again, and dancing, up there, wherever she is, and all the aliens love her pole dancing because they just don't know any better, and they think it's a whole new art form, and they don't even mind that she's sort of square.

69. I don't know. Sitting in the back garden talking to the cats, maybe. Or blowing silly-colored bubbles.

70. Until the day that I die.

I attest that this is a true statement of events.

Signed: Date: NEIL GAIMAN was born in England in 1960 and worked as a freelance journalist before coediting Ghastly Beyond Belief (with Kim Newman) and writing Don't Panic: The Official "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" Companion. He started writing graphic novels and comics with Violent Cases in 1987, and with seventy-five installments of the award-winning series The Sandman, established himself as one of the most important comics writers of his generation. His first novel, Good Omens (written with Terry Pratchett), appeared in 1991 and was followed by Neverwhere, Stardust, American G.o.ds, and Coraline.

Gaiman's work has won the Hugo, World Fantasy, Bram Stoker, Locus, Geffen, International Horror Guild, Mythopoeic, and Will Eisner Comic Industry awards. His most recent books are Anansi Boys, The Sandman: Endless Nights, and a picture book, The Wolves in the Walls (with longtime collaborator Dave McKean). His short fiction has been collected in Smoke and Mirrors, Fragile Things, and M Is for Magic. Upcoming is a new novel, The Graveyard Book. Gaiman moved to the United States in 1992 with his wife and three children, and currently lives in Minneapolis.

Visit his Web site at www.neilgaiman.com.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

I was going to Australia, where editor Jonathan Strahan would look at me, I had no doubt, with enormous, hurt, puppy-dog eyes if I still didn't have a story for him. I was in Minneapolis Airport, waiting to get onto a plane to San Francisco, where I would change planes and fly to Sydney.