[This is a chapter from my latest novel, a sequel to The Fall of Doc Future and Skybreaker’s Call. The start is here, and links to my other work here. It can be read on its own, but contains spoilers for those two books. I try to post something new about every two weeks, with short stories and vignettes if I don’t have a new chapter ready. The next update is planned for the week of June 11th.]

Previous: Chapter 43



The meditation worked. It calmed. Flicker had that much, at least.

She could feel the deep rumble of the main drive of the Learning Is About To Occur all around her as she stood up. The safety lights in the compartment glowed a steady red, and the status monitor by the door displayed a warning in Grs'thnk, along with the symbol for a lethal environmental hazard.

She put on her costume with more than the usual care. The lights and hazard warning were on for a good reason; the inertial compensators in this compartment were off while the ship was outbound to Europa, accelerating at almost a hundred g’s. So her body weighed about five tons.

That didn’t bother her–she usually accelerated herself at far higher rates. But she wasn’t used to getting dressed while her costume and visor were being accelerated by anything but her, and she didn’t want to tear or break anything. Especially not the deck flooring.

She also felt a nagging sense of dissociation and dizziness because she was nowhere near the ground, any ground. That did bother her. On Earth, she didn’t just stand, glide, or (rarely) walk–she actively sensed and connected to the ground. No ground, no connection, and trying to use the structure of the spaceship as a substitute could easily wreck the compensators or even the drive, so she had to refrain.

But Learning was taking her to where she needed to be, so she would put up with the discomfort. And it looked like she would be able to sleep safely here–just not right now. It was still afternoon by her body’s internal clock, so she hadn’t really tried to nap, just tested the physiological effects to see if it was possible.

The psychological hurdles… well, she could do something about those.

Journeyman was in the prep compartment when she entered. It was cluttered–piled with equipment and spares they might need and wouldn’t be able to go back to Earth to get. He glanced up from his handcomp and smiled. He had faint dark circles under his eyes, and she knew he was feeling the strain too. He was wearing a coverall, his deceptively normal-looking safety glasses, and…

“Is that your new hat?” she asked, as she sat down on the bench beside him.

“Yup,” he said. "Picked it back up from Mad Hatter while you were talking with Yiskah. He wasn’t done adding a lot of the frills, and I haven’t had time to put any illusion templates on it yet, but the defenses are solid. He wanted to discuss the way the semiotics of hats have changed since I made my first one, but was grudgingly willing to admit that saving the world was a little more pressing.“

It was a brown flat cap–there was no sign of the spells that made it more effective head protection than a space-suit helmet.

"It looks kind of like your labwork spare–the one you said made you look like a newsboy from an old movie.”

“I’m fine with that; I’m not worried about trying to look older to get people to take me seriously anymore, like I was when I enchanted that fedora at fifteen. This is a tradesman’s hat. A journeyman’s hat. Mad Hatter got the joke just looking at it.”

Flicker smiled. "I guess he would. You still going over the plans?“

"For the third time. I don’t need to, it’s just nerves.”

He put down the handcomp, took off his hat, and ran his hand through his curly red hair. It was shorter than before their portal test mishap–some of it had gotten singed, and he’d trimmed it after he recovered.

“How wired are you?” he asked.

“Pretty bad. But we have to get sleep later if we possibly can. Tomorrow we’re going to be working sixteen to twenty hours just to get all the ice through the portal. I’m not going to be able to slow down very often, it’ll be years subjective, and virtual typing will be a pain. And even if the construction goes perfectly, things aren’t going to get any more restful after I’m carrying around a four billion ton, twenty megawatt black hole.”

“I hear you. Did those biogestalt exercises help at all?”

“Some. And Yiskah suggested a way to spend our ‘hurry up and wait’ time that will help tomorrow, because it will give my mind more to chew on for breaks.”

“Three mentioned something about that.”

“Yiskah was brutal with my emotional prep. She said if I was going to lose it, she wanted it to happen while I was still on the ground. And everyone’s been keeping things from me because none of you know how badly I’ll react. So when I speed up, I tend to speculate wildly without data–which is really unhealthy for a biogestalt.”

Journeyman winced. "That’s not the only reason I’ve been reticent, but yeah. No argument that it’s unhealthy. For anyone.“

She nodded. "There’s stuff about you that the others don’t want to accidentally give away without your permission. Because you’re my partner. This isn’t a perfect time–but it’s a time. And it will take our minds off tomorrow. If you want to talk.”

*****

Flicker didn’t usually drink tea, but she accepted the offered cup anyway. Journeyman said sharing tea was the best focus for a calming spell that he knew. And made it less likely he’d need to use one–he was a firm believer in the power of the placebo effect, and she’d personally felt the effectiveness of some of his 'spells’ that weren’t magic.

“So,” he said. "Where do you want to start?“

"Well, there are a whole bunch of 'Do you already know this person?’ questions that I never asked you. That I maybe should have.”

Journeyman smiled in the way that always made her heart beat a little faster. "I’m good at evading. Long practice.“

"Are you ever going to stop?”

“Not as long as it’s needed. Too many secrets aren’t mine to share–and I never know who you’re suddenly going to meet. But I can tell you about a few more.”

He took a sip of his own tea. "For instance… I’ve known Stella for six years. Worked with her occasionally for five.“

Calm. "Six years.”

“Yep. Mostly stopped after you met her. It got awkward.”

“Awkward. Were you… involved? Physically, I mean?”

He sighed. "That word can mean more things than you think it does.“

Flicker sped up to think. Context. I’m missing context. He can’t be trying to make me angry, but– Shit. Yiskah knew. Of course she did. She has Stella’s memories.

Calm. He’s right here. He’s talking. She slowed down again. "Explain. Please.”

“Okay. At first, she was just part of the grapevine. We swapped info. But she’s seriously effective at killing demons and demon summoners. So I tipped her off to some stuff I wasn’t sure I could handle appropriately by myself. She considered that a favor–by the time we met her main problem was her targets learning she was after them and disappearing. But then she wanted a new bullet repelling ward.”

Flicker frowned. "You told me those don’t last very long and are easy to dispel.“

"Most are. Properly set up ones based on a template in clothing are pretty good, if you’re a magician yourself, and renew them regularly. But there’s another way.”

“Listening.”

“A decent pattern magician can use tattoos or scarification to anchor a spell directly to the body. If you see a magician with tattoos, that’s often what they’re for. It’s not too common because the anchoring process usually hurts a lot. But that was what Stella wanted.”

“Stella doesn’t have tattoos.”

Journeyman smiled lopsidedly. "Have you ever seen her scars?“

"Not most of them. Not until…” Not until I spied on her after I promised not to. "…yes.“

"Now, I’ve done a lot of crazy things, but I wasn’t about to trace a ward that would inflict massive pain on She Who Waits, Eater of Demons And The Occasional Magician For Dessert. Except she pointed out that it didn’t necessarily have to be painful, because of something else she knew about me.”

“Which was?”

He sighed again. "I have basic proficiency with a discipline of magic that requires skills that can prevent the pain under certain circumstances. I have no great talent for it, but I pay attention to all the safety rules, and I’ve had a fair amount of practice. After a careful test, I agreed to use it, it worked, and Stella had her new bullet repelling ward.“

"You’re talking around something really carefully,” said Flicker.

“I’m trying to present things in a safer order. To start, there are problems with the name of this discipline. It’s arguably imprecise, inaccurate, annoying to several religious groups, encourages a number of dangerous assumptions, and tends to cause unhinged reactions from both uncritical enthusiasts and the 'burn the witch’ crowd. But they’re like Doc’s arguments for using 'pseudo-mythological extradimensional entity’ instead of 'god’ or 'demon’. They aren’t likely to change anything.”

“Okay,” said Flicker. "You think I’ll have a problem with it?“

"There are issues. And we’re on a spaceship–you have nowhere to run. I put a lot of trust in Yiskah’s judgement by even starting this. How calm are you?”

She took a sip of her tea. "Calm enough. What’s the name?“

"Tantric magic.”

“You know tantric magic? I have so many questions about it, why didn’t you– Wait. Did you have sex with–”

“Dangerous assumption number one!” Journeyman gave her a look over the top of his glasses. "I am not seeing evidence of calm.“

"Yeah, yeah.” Flicker sped up and activated her high speed com link. They’d brought a portable node for DASI, but she didn’t have full Database access at the moment due to light speed delays. And Flicker was tired of hearing 'Emotional hazard block’, anyway. However…

“Three? Are you there?” she sent.

Three had her consciousness distributed over many different nodes, including one on the Learning Is About To Occur. She had come far from her start as an unplanned biogestalt of Stella inside Doc’s Database. But she kept the number as her name–Stella Three, because Yiskah had better claim to Two.

“In person,” replied Three, along with with her custom emotes for good humor and enthusiasm. "What do you need? Which Talk are you having?“

"Well, Journeyman just told me about the anti-bullet ward he gave Stella Prime, and–”

“Oh god, those are great. He uses this adaptive tantric massage method to anchor them that’s wonderful, I’ve got all those memclips bookmarked. Prime stayed linked to me for the warning ward adjustment last night, so I got to feel that one first hand. Still does the trick, even when I’m a starship. Good times.”

“Good times. Last night.”

“Yeah, he ported up to the ship while Prime was there and spent the night. He was overloaded and had a bunch of magicians angry with him. And that Floater safety guy rattled him pretty badly–he was worried he might not be in quite the same universe as he was before he started deep space porting. Prime wasn’t doing all that well either, so they helped each other out. He didn’t want to dump anything on you, and you were busy unwinding with Donner, so don’t feel bad about it.”

Flicker wanted to speed up her mind more–but couldn’t. She was already at her effective memory synchronization limit, about one million times human baseline. She’d spent most of her life pushing for faster interfaces, to gather information quickly with the rest of the world temporarily paused.

She’d daydreamed about how nice it would be to have someone to talk to at speed, and her links to DASI had gradually improved. But DASI didn’t usually create new emotional contexts unless Flicker asked. Three, running on Learning’s hardware, was a different story. And her latency right now was under fifty nanoseconds. Flicker’s pause button didn’t work on Three.

“Flicker? Are you okay?”

Three was cheerful, friendly, and very, very smart. She treated Flicker like the mature adult she was striving to become–even when she wasn’t all the way there yet. Three knew she could risk knocking Flicker off-balance in ways others wouldn’t–because Three had the speed to help her back up again, if needed.

“Flicker? I just got a potential context adjustment failure warning for you from DASI. I’m sorry; you usually get upset from receiving context too slowly rather than too quickly. You don’t have to talk until you’re ready, but I’m here, and so are Learning’s on-duty liaison biogestalts–that’s Pira and Malk.”

Twenty microseconds. Forty.

Calm.

Sixty. Eighty.

“Yeah, context adjustment failure,” Flicker sent finally. "And jealousy spike. Big, destructive, stupid one. Working on it.“

"Ah, okay.”

Two hundred microseconds.

Flicker thought about what Golden Valkyrie had said to Journeyman, just before she left: "I look upon you with my Sight and I see alliance with my daughter, and trust, and loyalty, both ways, to the end of the world.“

Nothing there about openness or exclusivity. As Flicker already knew.

She suddenly felt cold. The rest… might be Flicker’s to break. Right here. Right now. Because "To the end of the world” could work both ways. They could be headed for just that–if she decided to lose it at her partner over something he’d started doing before he was even her partner the first time.

Eight hundred microseconds.

Emotions found ways to sneak around you when you tried to change them. Flicker’s early experiments with sex had been unfortunate. Her first attempt had led to a traumatic, life threatening disaster. Her second to the loss of her closest friend. She had finally found a way to make it safe–but it wasn’t ever anything she could take for granted. It could not be casual. So it was still hard for her to understand the mindset of those for whom it could be. Even Donner had rules he followed to keep things safe.

Journeyman and Stella? How could anything they did together not be a Big Deal? There were risks, there were consequences…

There were places for Flicker’s insecurity and jealousy to hide, under a cloak of rationalization.

Time to acknowledge those emotions for what they were, and try to adjust. Again.

Two milliseconds.

“Got my context under control,” she sent to Three.

“Good to hear. Need any help or have any other questions?”

“I’m good for now, I think. And I’ll ask Journeyman first. That seems to work better.”

Journeyman squinted at Flicker after she slowed back down. "That was a big shift. Now you’re scary calm. What happened?“

"I asked Three what the water was like,” said Flicker. "And she pushed me into the pool. She’s fast enough to do that. I’m dry again, but still a little cold.“

"I see.”

“I still have questions.”

“I kind of figured,” said Journeyman. But he looked relieved.

“I am glad,” said Flicker carefully, “that you and Stella were able to help each other last night. Three said you worked on a 'warning ward’ for her. Can I ask what that was about?”

“Since Three told you about it, yeah. All of Stella’s original wards went with her old body, but she replaced her scars using the shapeshifting ability that Doc built into the new one. Last night I beefed up the warning ward against mental and magical probes, because she expects a lot more of those as the head of the EDU.”

“Isn’t she immune to those?”

“The warning isn’t for her–it’s for poor bastards who might not have much choice about trying what their bosses tell them, even if they know it’s a bad idea. Better a nasty shock and a headache than getting their mind eaten.”

“Oh. Yeah. Does…” Flicker sped up to consider wording and ended up slowing back down with an entirely different question. "Do you ever get to the point where you stop tripping over things because you aren’t as grown-up as you thought you were?“

A rueful smile. "I haven’t. I’d say you’re safe ten minutes after you’re dead, but I think some Choosers would laugh at me.” The smile faded. "And Stella might have a few words, too.“

"Yeah.” Flicker looked down. "But it’s still a shock that she’d–“

"Flicker. Partner.”

Flicker looked back up. Journeyman was watching her intently. "Listening,“ she said.

"You like to put me on a pedestal. One so high that it’s hard to breathe, sometimes. But what you do to her… She could wear a t-shirt with 'Terrible Role Model’ printed on it, and you’d say 'That’s so cool; I wish I were more like you.’”

“Ow,” said Flicker. "You’re not wrong. Ow.“

"She was never flawless. And she’s still human. Not voluntarily–which comes with a whole new set of problems. I saw that right away. I think Doc is finally getting a clue. You, well…” He paused for a moment. "I’m human too. I’ve always had trouble with trade-offs between honesty and kindness. If humor and deflection don’t work…“ He shook his head.

"No, no, I needed to hear that.” Flicker frowned. "But if you already knew her… Why did you have to take her demon hunting to get her to help you, the day we had our fight?“

Journeyman half-smiled. "I didn’t have to. But I try to do things right. Stella had never gotten to really use most of the fancy mods in her new body. So I tracked down the only significant group of demons that ever got away from her, and threw a last fling party for a woman who was getting married to her new job.”

*****

Flicker couldn’t blame Journeyman for leaving out some of the messy details during their first talk. They’d been trying to reconnect after a serious argument, driven by necessary secrecy on his part and misunderstanding and misinterpretation on hers. But a few things surprised her.

“Did you really think I’d flip out because Stella kissed you?” asked Flicker.

Journeyman spread his hands. "After the misdirection we pulled? We both made mistakes. Shocks add up, and I just didn’t know how much would be too much at once.“

"Because you had to use those 'warp cuts’ to hold the portal. That’s… fair. I can feel the emotional kick, the 'you wouldn’t have had to do that if I’d been there’.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that why you changed the subject to growing up, and Sylvi, as soon as you could?”

“Partly,” said Journeyman.

Flicker frowned. "Why couldn’t you talk about her with Stella? You never explained.“

"Stella does not have the temperament of a healer. Or therapist. Not remotely. You keep needing her to do that stuff anyway. It wears her down. And her methods can be awfully rough. Ask her to guard my sleep from magical influence? Sure, she’d done that before.”

He waved his hand. "She is quite familiar with the interaction between paranoia, stress, and lack of sleep. Probably why she was able to help Doc as well as she did. But that night she tried something that seemed like a good idea.“ He shook his head again.

"What did she do?”

“Adaptive stress reduction using scent.”

“Ohhh,” said Flicker. "Was hers weird because of her new body? Or from killing all those demons?“

"It was unfamiliar. But she has those chemosynth and biosynth glands now, and can sense stress with her snakes, so she could use biofeedback to adjust her scent to something I found more relaxing. In her sleep, even. Which she did.”

“Did it not work?”

“Oh, it worked.” Journeyman looked over at a stack of force field hardware spares. "And in the morning, I woke halfway up. Something wasn’t quite right. I knew who I was with, but not where, so I turned over to ask her a question. And discovered I was not in bed with Sylvi. Even though I smelled clove cigarettes and dryad in spring. I was… upset.“

Flicker frowned. Some old memory was trying to stir.

Journeyman met her eyes again. "Stella complimented me on my reflexes, apologized, and said she now knew what I looked like when I was truly angry. So, yeah. She did a few more tests, and I replaced a ward for her, but…”

“Why were you so mad? Did Stella bring back something you needed to forget?”

Journeyman gave Flicker his 'you just ran off in a direction I didn’t expect’ look.

“It was a deception,” he said. "I’m not the same person I was back then. The world isn’t the same. And it never was as safe as Sylvi could make me feel.“ He looked down. "It was always a deception. One that was destructive for both of us. And coming back to reality from that again hurt a lot.”

“Oh. Was that was why you needed to talk to me about Sylvi?”

“Not the only reason. It was why I needed to drink to get started.” He frowned. "I had hoped you’d get an idea of how badly I was capable of screwing up as a teenager, but that part seemed to just… miss. Maybe I’m too good a raconteur, or passed over the last year too quickly. You asked if I wanted to try to find her.“

Flicker looked down. "I figured out that was a bad idea later. I didn’t have Database access; I couldn’t run my emotional context sims. So I mostly just listened and accepted.”

“That’s fair, and I’m sorry. You do what works for you. But you see why I’m still cautious?”

“Yeah.”

Journeyman sipped his tea, and Flicker sped up to consult her list of important questions. It was too easy for her to lose track of what she wanted to ask if she didn’t. She decided on the newest one, just added at the top.

She slowed back down. "So. Tantric magic. I need to know more about it. I’ve already been using something like it. The power transfer stuff is considered tantric magic, I’m not sure why.“

"History of magic,” said Journeyman. "The first human magicians to try personal power gifting–and survive long enough to write about it–were tantric healers. And tantric practice is handy for understanding the side effects.“

Speed up. If you aren’t ready for the answer, don’t ask the question. Am I ready?

Flicker considered for a while before slowing down again.

"Will you teach me?” she asked.

“No.” Flatly. No hesitation.

“Oh. Why not?”

“Several good reasons that I don’t need to explain, because there’s one that’s blindingly easy to understand: You already have a far, far better teacher.”

Speed up. Does Donner– Wait. Dangerous assumption. Do the teacher and practice partner have to be the same? If not…

Slow down. "Osk?“

"Yep. She’s already offered to supervise prep sessions for you at least twice that I know of.”

Is that what she was doing? "Oh. I’m still not entirely comfortable with the einherjar, because–“

"Then you need to sit down with Osk to discuss why, and what to do about it, before you start.”

“But–”

Journeyman held up a hand. "Talk to Osk. Yiskah too, if she’ll help. Just… not me. Okay?“

Speed up. Am I ready for another dunking in the pool? "Three?”

“Hey. Whatcha need?”

“My partner is acting worried and evasive, I don’t understand why, and I don’t want to make things worse.”

“Give me a microsec to get context from DASI; she’s handling the safety monitoring.”

“Okay,” sent Flicker. "I just wanted–“

"Ah, this one’s easy,” sent Three. "Boundaries. He said no. Why are you still arguing?“

"Um…”

“And he’s probably worried because you completely lost it the last time he said no to tantric magic. You had a nervous breakdown and ran away to a dark cave on another world, remember?”

Calm.

“That wasn’t–” Hang on. She’d wanted to unbind the Nine Worlds, using the diverted power that had been flowing through her, by directing it with a very poorly thought out sexual ritual. Put that way, it sure sounded like tantric magic.

“Thank you,” she sent instead. "I understand now.“

"Getting there.” Three sent a smiley.

Flicker slowed down, and Journeyman’s upraised hand and wary look unfroze again.

“Okay,” she said. "Sorry.“

He looked at her quizzically. "Is Three giving you biogestalt tranquilizers or something?”

Flicker snorted a laugh. "No. But she is helping.“

"Good.” He let out a deep breath. "That’s good.“

He still looked tired and tense. Flicker realized that with all her speeding up and slowing down, she’d never given him a chance to calm back down. Which he probably needed. So she sipped from her cup rather than asking another question.

"The tea was a good idea,” she said.

“It gives useful structure for pauses,” he said, and leaned back, holding his own cup.

They sat without speaking for a little while. The rumble of the ship’s drive was quieter in here, but still noticeable. And the dissociation wasn’t any less–a tiny part of her brain kept insisting 'You can’t feel the Earth, so this can’t be real.’ It made her mind itch.

Journeyman looked down at his cup, then met her eyes. "Are you going to be able to get any sleep at all tonight?“

"Probably; this is helping. Are you? You look like I worried you more.”

“I have ways to get to sleep. You’re probably seeing leftover stress from my session with Doc on last ditch contingency stuff.”

“How bad was that? I forgot to ask, and you were in the secure room,” said Flicker. "Did he pull up one of his nightmares? Yiskah says he keeps them compressed–that’s why she can’t read them even with a mind probe. Or… are you not allowed to talk to me about it? He’s still pretty touchy about that.“

"Uh, he didn’t specifically forbid it, but–”

“But you’re worried because it’s about what to do if we fail and I die? Don’t be. If you can manage a sideways worldline port, and carry even a little measure with you, then our chances of winning against the Visitors go way up, even if you don’t do it in this timeline, because of back causality.”

Journeyman stared at an inactive monitor screen. "That’s not… Listen, you’ve already got enough–“

"That’s fine. I’m used to being load-bearing. You aren’t. Who did he say to take with you? Besides Lif, I mean; she’s obvious.” Flicker thought for a moment. "Probably Black Swan, if she’s willing to go–Three could ride with her. And she’s not bio, and tough, so you could compensation dump to her, and possibly manage a third person if Lif helped. Right?“

Journeyman was looking a little glassy-eyed. ”…maybe.“

"Who? Yiskah?” Flicker frowned again, thinking. "But if you’re already taking Three…“

”…Ashil.“

"Oh, that’s brilliant! That would add all the entangled measure from the Grs'thnk! And if the Visitors get me, the whole portal-linked neighborhood is likely to go, too. No wonder the Floaters were worried–if they have really sensitive detectors, I bet they picked up possibility echoes or something already, and had no idea what was going on except that it was a bad sign and coming from you.”

Journeyman shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead with a hand. "Three? Help?“ he said.

"Hello!” said Three, as her avatar appeared on the monitor. "Flicker, are you overclocking your boyfriend again? He can overheat when you do that. Especially if you don’t let him get a rant in edgewise.“

"Sorry. Mike, are you okay?”

“I… will be,” said Journeyman. "But Doc really worried me.“

"Why?”

“Because it didn’t look like he was remembering a nightmare. It looked like possession, and not by anything human. Suddenly I was sharing a locked room with this… cyber-ghost thing. Who knew who I was but got my name wrong, then asked questions and gave advice with very disturbing implications. All my magician’s instincts were screaming 'Exorcism or run. Now now now.’ But I had to listen.”

“And I missed it,” said Three. "Damn.“

Journeyman shook his head. "Missing it isn’t something to regret. And I can guess one good reason why Doc is so dead set against uploading a biogestalt. Because it might let that thing loose.”

“What implications were so disturbing?” asked Flicker.

“I’d rather not go into that until I have time to check some things. And it won’t matter if we don’t succeed.”

“Oh.” Flicker studied him for a moment. "Mike, you look miserable. You know what? I can get by without–“

"Don’t start the mutual martyr game,” said Three. "Not healthy. Has he told you the nickname story yet?“

"Nickname?”

“No,” said Journeyman. "I never got that far.“

"Tell her,” said Three. "Me, too. I’m curious about the start. And I bet Flicker won’t be nearly as upset as you think.“

"Flicker? Do you still–”

“Yes. If Three is curious, I’m even–well. Please?”

“All right,” said Journeyman. He took a deep breath.

“Once upon a time, I got into serious trouble for unauthorized flower-picking…”

Next: Chapter 45

