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Authors: Joe Schreiber
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its dust-colored stem inclining toward her like a beckoning finger. At the same time she felt its life essence stirring within her, filling an almost physical void directly behind her breastbone and between her lungs, a place shethought of almost colloquially as her soul. At the same time she heard the first coarse whispers of its voice, gender-neutral, incoherent at first and then becoming clearer, like a foreigner adapting to the nuances of an entirely new language.
Zo? What happened? Are we well?
Zo gave a rueful smile, felt the lump on the back of her head.
I wouldn’t exactly say that
.
The orchid was silent a moment. Then:
I sense that things … have changed
.
“You can say that again,” she murmured aloud.
Repeat?
We’ve been abducted
, Zo told it.
Taken
.
Another silence. Then:
Yes, that is true. By this creature … Tulkh
.
Her eyes darted back up to it.
That’s his name?
The Whiphid? Yes. He’s a…
Hunting for the correct phrase:
What is it, this word …? One who takes people for money?
A bounty hunter
, Zo said, and felt the orchid nodding in agreement.
Yes. Solitary, a bloodthirsty species, and aggressive
.
Zo waited, processing the comment. The orchid had a gift for understatement, and she couldn’t help but wonder about the criteria for this assessment.
And a flower collector to boot
, she told it.
If the orchid had an opinion on this, it didn’t voice it.
What does he want?
she asked.
The orchid stayed silent. Staring at it, Zo began to realize how her fully wakened presence had already affected the trophy room’s biosphere. The naturally occurring moss on the ship’s ceiling had started spreading at a noticeably accelerated pace, sprawling to swallow up the exposed bolts and seams in the interior walls. There was some kind of switch plate just above her head with a sign written in another language—the Whiphid’s mother tongue, she assumed—but it was already so moss-covered that she couldn’t make out the letters. Scraps of green rot within the skulls had begun extending their first initial tendrils up as well, reaching outward through eye sockets and trepannedholes. Simply by being here, she’d jump-started the growth of the
Mirocaw
’s incidental flora.
Do you at least know where he’s taking us?
Again, no immediate reply from the orchid. Zo wondered if she’d reached the outer limits of the flower’s knowledge.
Then she felt the spacecraft jerk hard to one side, the nearly subsonic whine of the turbine pitch-shifting into afterburner mode, and realized she was about to get the answer for herself.
What’s going on? Are we crashing?
she asked.
Going down
, the orchid said.
Where
?
Silence again, then:
The worst place in the galaxy
.
10/Strapping on Ghosts
T HE IMPACT KNOCKED HER SIDEWAYS AGAINST THE WALL OF SKINS, AND Z O RECOILED , found her equilibrium, and brushed off the scuttling, hard-shell beetles that clung to her skin before they could sink their hungry little mouthparts into her. The things fell to the deck, scuttled blindly for an instant, and then vanished between the cracks, as if the Whiphid’s ship were just another corpse for their investigation.
Below her feet, the engines had fallen silent. In the stillness, she sensed the
Mirocaw
resigning itself to gravity, redistributing the vicissitudes of torque through its thousand tiny joists and connectors with a deep and exhausted sigh.
Zo still couldn’t tell if they’d crashed, or if it had just been a rough landing. She waited, scarcely breathing, as the thrusters cooled, ticking and ultimately falling silent. From outside, she could hear the wind. The sound brought with it a kind of alien desolation that seeped in from somewhere outside the durasteel-reinforced hull. She felt the skin on her back tightening with a shiver. It felt as if they’d landed in somewindowless crawl space in the bottom of the galaxy, a place inexplicably devoid of entrances and exits. Her gaze flicked back to
Zo? What happened? Are we well?
Zo gave a rueful smile, felt the lump on the back of her head.
I wouldn’t exactly say that
.
The orchid was silent a moment. Then:
I sense that things … have changed
.
“You can say that again,” she murmured aloud.
Repeat?
We’ve been abducted
, Zo told it.
Taken
.
Another silence. Then:
Yes, that is true. By this creature … Tulkh
.
Her eyes darted back up to it.
That’s his name?
The Whiphid? Yes. He’s a…
Hunting for the correct phrase:
What is it, this word …? One who takes people for money?
A bounty hunter
, Zo said, and felt the orchid nodding in agreement.
Yes. Solitary, a bloodthirsty species, and aggressive
.
Zo waited, processing the comment. The orchid had a gift for understatement, and she couldn’t help but wonder about the criteria for this assessment.
And a flower collector to boot
, she told it.
If the orchid had an opinion on this, it didn’t voice it.
What does he want?
she asked.
The orchid stayed silent. Staring at it, Zo began to realize how her fully wakened presence had already affected the trophy room’s biosphere. The naturally occurring moss on the ship’s ceiling had started spreading at a noticeably accelerated pace, sprawling to swallow up the exposed bolts and seams in the interior walls. There was some kind of switch plate just above her head with a sign written in another language—the Whiphid’s mother tongue, she assumed—but it was already so moss-covered that she couldn’t make out the letters. Scraps of green rot within the skulls had begun extending their first initial tendrils up as well, reaching outward through eye sockets and trepannedholes. Simply by being here, she’d jump-started the growth of the
Mirocaw
’s incidental flora.
Do you at least know where he’s taking us?
Again, no immediate reply from the orchid. Zo wondered if she’d reached the outer limits of the flower’s knowledge.
Then she felt the spacecraft jerk hard to one side, the nearly subsonic whine of the turbine pitch-shifting into afterburner mode, and realized she was about to get the answer for herself.
What’s going on? Are we crashing?
she asked.
Going down
, the orchid said.
Where
?
Silence again, then:
The worst place in the galaxy
.
10/Strapping on Ghosts
T HE IMPACT KNOCKED HER SIDEWAYS AGAINST THE WALL OF SKINS, AND Z O RECOILED , found her equilibrium, and brushed off the scuttling, hard-shell beetles that clung to her skin before they could sink their hungry little mouthparts into her. The things fell to the deck, scuttled blindly for an instant, and then vanished between the cracks, as if the Whiphid’s ship were just another corpse for their investigation.
Below her feet, the engines had fallen silent. In the stillness, she sensed the
Mirocaw
resigning itself to gravity, redistributing the vicissitudes of torque through its thousand tiny joists and connectors with a deep and exhausted sigh.
Zo still couldn’t tell if they’d crashed, or if it had just been a rough landing. She waited, scarcely breathing, as the thrusters cooled, ticking and ultimately falling silent. From outside, she could hear the wind. The sound brought with it a kind of alien desolation that seeped in from somewhere outside the durasteel-reinforced hull. She felt the skin on her back tightening with a shiver. It felt as if they’d landed in somewindowless crawl space in the bottom of the galaxy, a place inexplicably devoid of entrances and exits. Her gaze flicked back to
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