Aufeis: Accumulation (Phi'lasasam)
For the sixth straight day there was rain. More pissing rain. Every little brush of wet on glass was like a thunderclap.
Ayel could feel it, stuttering past the tightly drawn slats, roaring through the gutters cut high above the tower cell he shared with four louts in Tactical who all believed the Elements forged them invincible. Certainly they were impervious to things like neatness and order and weird, gangly Nav freaks. Respect they'd learned, for Nav freaks, for the property of Nav freaks, and most especially for Nav freaks' caches of stimulant tabs. It cost them some cartilage, a little blood, a smattering of self-respect. Nothing could hope to strip them of ego.
They were gone. Out. On maneuvers or something; that was days ago, five or maybe seven tabs ago--couldn't sleep now. Work to do. There was always more work--more than they could do, on purpose. Taught them how to cheat, how to hoard knowledge and use it to wipe out the competition. Social strategies--the skill of soldiers and politicians. Which worked very well, if one made the right friends.
His friends were in Ihhliae, in Ra'htleihfi, in Mnaeha, everywhere but here.
His hands twitched on their own, muddying his prior calculations with ugly amber chatter marks. He was too wired. Shouldn't have had that last cup of hholaer, not with the tab.
His thoughts were leaping, racing, coiling up the walls in shade and amber and rain, and he wondered what it would be like, to be a machine. Not just to think like one. The map writhed amber under his hand; he reached down, tapped the interface, turned the diagram, and the room leapt in shifting bands of light. Star lines, sector markings and their necessary indicators (aaenhr'hir euhre, khaeus daenn-a, ihrh rhaaih--no konae'n in machine space, in the unmapped dark).
What would it be like to see only symbols instead of stars, everything only numbers? To view the world in three ways only: tie or vet or ehl'fehill--yes, no, all-possible. What would it be like. To know everything. To feel nothing.
It wouldn't matter that Oren was gone. Out of his reach until summer.
Ayel made himself sit, forced his feet still. Checked the chrono, bit his lip. The solution was due in an hour. Time would not wait for him. And he'd be coming down, soon. It was already beginning, that itch under the skin, the way the light burned, clawed down behind his eyes until they watered. Rain, inside and out. He stared at the chart lines until they bled and buzzed, hot bright arcs that blocked out the rain. Long sleek chops of gold and orange that flowed like water in the shadows of the darkened room, like a sudden becalming at sea. Gleaming.
He had to look away. Shutting his eyes didn't help.
Six days. Six days of this. Only an hour more.
The layout told him nothing. And this decided if he left or stayed, if Sharra's extra shifts and his own overtime were worth a damn. But Etrevon sectors didn't make sense; they thought in trees where they should think in matrices. He'd have to understand. Make himself understand. Find the pattern. There was a regimented, precise repetition here, if he could only find it. Use it to draw a way out of bedlam he'd never seen, around a mindset utterly alien, to plot an escape for a crippled and badly under-supplied vessel under attack. Blindly sketching maps in the dark.
Impossible. But that was the point.
A sudden hot thread of copper flooded the back of his throat, made him gag. Nosebleed. Standard side-effect. The shakes came next, if he didn't pop another tab.
No, no, wait, the nurse had babbled something at him, something written on the foil, not more than ten in thirty hours...and...the packet was empty, anyway.
He flung it across the room. Maybe while sobbing. Hard to tell if it was that or a spasm; his hand clenched, flexed on its own. The tremors were worse already and the rain hurt. Fell like acid across his nerves.
Had to think like they did. What was it, what was...
He shut his eyes, shaking, and tried to think of the shore. That serene place Nurn was teaching him to build in his mind. No good. His heart was too quick, hard and hurting, going so fast enough to chew a hole through his side.
And then he knew. His fingers licked the glass, smooth and constant as the rain drilling down the windows, perfect, merciless. A bright way through hostile spaces, one dependent on acceleration, on stellar mass, on the noise of the nearest confirmed dark bodies. It might not be enough, but the only requirement is plausibility...yes, it fit; there was the pattern. The intervals would make sense if precisely ordered, and...but that would take more time than he had left.
Estimates. Less elegant. Partial credit? Most of victory is better than none of it. Best information would put them--the terminal clattered in protest, buzzing to keep up with hands that twitched on the input surface, leaping rapid and erratic--best estimates would return the ship to the mouth of the trap, undetected. Right back the way they came in. And it should only take them sixty years or so, real-time. The crew might live.
He breathed deep and let it run, made the computer sing the simulation back to him in long, swooping amber lines. Conjecture and bravado marched over areas that were once blank. The walls shimmered with it, seething, daring the dark.
His teeth began to chatter. But the data checked. He sent his copy, rushed to get it through, not waiting for the playback to finish--grateful forever that Koval was never in his office and expected them to submit everything by network.
Ayel wedged himself between the mattress and the wall to wait the worst of it out. He couldn't rest, wouldn't rest, but he needed to stop; his brain had grown teeth and it wanted out, out, out. The headaches were always so much worse in crowds, in dorms, in cramped places full of people.
The shore won't come to him. He was too tired, too tightly wound. More than that. He didn't want to be there alone. Without Oren his friends.
(When is that, what is that, why does he always think of him them when there is work to be done? And if it does not stop raining he is going to tear out the shutters and fling himself right through the window, see if Ael really can fly.)
Too late he reached for the blanket, nearly wrenched his back as it arched, ankles clattering on the bunk's edge, feet twitching in a parody of the corpse-dance.
It would pass. Term was nearly over. It would end. It would end. He had only to hold his head, shelter it from the wall and wait, shield his bones from the floor. He had only to wait.
There was no hiding from the rain.