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“Let’s find what we have to use,” Griffin said then. But he sat there a moment, as if some of the strength had drained out of him, while our Beast—we knew now for sure it was more than one—battered at the hull on all sides of us.
“We don’t really have any choice,” Dela said. “We have to do something, and that’s all there is left to do, isn’t it?”
“That’s all there is to do,” Griffin agreed.
“Isn’t—” Viv asked, breaking the silence she had kept in our councils, “isn’t there the shuttle? Couldn’t we get off in that?”
Faces turned toward her. “We could use it,” Gawain said, “not for that—but to get up against their hull. Without breaching our own.”
“And getting back again?” Griffin asked.
“That,” Gawain admitted, “not so likely.”
“The shuttle might end up anywhere,” Ly
“We could get off from the ship,” Viv protested.
“No,” Lance said patiently, having understood things a long time ago, “we can’t. You don’t understand, Viv. The shuttle engines are less powerful than the Maid’s. And engines only work here, up against the mass.”
“Where matter exists at all,” Modred added.
Viv simply shut her eyes.
“Don’t,” Dela said. “Vivien, it’s all right.”
Vivien didn’t understand. She simply didn’t want to understand. I think we all knew that much, even Dela, who understood us least of all.
And Vivien opened her eyes again, but she kept her mind sealed, I was sure of that.
“What do you reckon to do?” Griffin asked Ly
“There’s equipment and parts in storage,” Ly
“Let’s find it,” Griffin said.
So Griffin launched himself—wherever we were now, and whatever had changed since that leap through space we had made. Dela still sat at table after the others had left, and I did, and Vivien did.
“Might I get you something?” I asked Dela.
“No,” Dela said hoarsely, her hands locked before her on the table. And so we sat for a while. “He has to do something. That’s Griffin’s nature. I couldn’t let him not do something, could I? But we’re in danger of losing Ly
“Yes,” I said. “I’m afraid we might.”
“It’s awful, that place out there. It’s a terrible way to die.”
“Ly
Vivien got up from the table and fled, out the door.
“But some of us are,” I added.
“Vivien’s worthless,” Dela said. “Worthless.”
“Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”
“Isn’t she?”
“She was very good, with the books. They’re just not here, now.”
Dela looked up at me, puzzled-seeming. So hard she could be, my lady; but she looked straight at me, not into me, not through me, as sometimes she would. It was as if I had gotten solid enough for her to see. “Do you care?” she asked. “Vivien doesn’t care about anyone at all but Vivien.”
“She can’t,” I said, thinking of that tape, thetape, and what wounds thatVivien had suffered that our own Viv had shared. Like Modred. Like the rest of us. And Ly
“I know Vivien’s,” Dela said. Of course, she knew us all.
“She’s Vivien,” I said, afraid. “And she would be happy if she weren’t.”
‘That’s a strange things to say.”
“Like I’m Elaine,” I said. “And Lance is Lance.”
Dela said nothing at all, not understanding, perhaps, the thing I tried to creep up on, to tell her. She gave me no help. I found the silence heavier and heavier.
“We should dosomething,” Dela said. “It would be healthier if we did something.” She dropped her head into her hands. I patted her shoulder, hating to see her that way.
“We could go help them,” I said. “We can fetch things.”
It was unthinkable, that impertinent we. But that was the way it had come to be. Dela lifted her head, nodded, got up, and we went to find the others.
We, my lady and I, as if she were one of us, or as if I had been born.
Finding them was another matter. They had disappeared quite thoroughly when we called to them from the lift on one and the other level.
“The holds,” Dela said, “if they’re going to be hunting supplies.”
So we went to the bridge to track them down, because the Maidhad a great many nooks and dark places where it was difficult to go and no little dangerous.
Especially now.
So we came to the bridge, and found one of them after all, because Modred was at his post, talking to them, ru
“Where are they?” my lady asked.
“Middecks hold number one section,” Modred said. “It’s not a good idea,” he added then, with never a flicker. “This operation. But no one argues with master Griffin.”
“Do what he told you to do,” my lady said sharply, and turned and walked out. She had no wish to be told it was hopeless. Neither did I, but I lingered half a breath and looked back at Modred, who had not yet turned back to his post.
“Ly
“What can we do?” I asked.
“Be glad it will take them days to be ready.”
“And then what?” I asked. “In the meanwhile, what?”
Modred shrugged, looking insouciant. Or dead of feeling. He turned his back on me, which hurt, because I thought us friends, and he might have tried to answer. If there were answers at all.
“Elaine,” my lady called, impatient, somewhere down the corridor outside, and I turned and fled after her.
So we found the rest of them, all but Vivien.
They were on middecks, down the corridors from the crew quarters, and bringing parts out of storage by now, out of that section of the Maidthat was so cold they had to use suits to go retrieve it; the stuff they set out, a big canister, and metal parts, was so cold it drank the warmth out of the air, making us shiver. “We make a Bridge,” Griffin explained to us. “We’ve got the rigging for it if we improvise. We use our own emergency lock on our side, and grip onto whatever surface we choose with a pressure seal, so we can sample their atmosphere before we break through.”
Dela said nothing to this. I knew she was not sanguine. But Griffin was so earnest, and so was Ly
It was a matter of finding everything and then of carrying it all up the difficult areas of the Maid, into places our present orientation made almost inaccessible. We had weight to contend with—and Gawain and Percy got up on juryrigged ladders in the impossible angles of passages we were never supposed to use in dock as we were, in places where the hammering outside the hull rang fit to drive us mad. We added to it the sound of drills and hammering of our own, making a rig of ropes that would let us lift loads up the slanting deck and get it settled.
We worked, all that day, fit to break our hearts, and most all we had done was just moving the materials into place and making sure that the area just behind the lock was pressure-tight, and that everything they would need was there. Modred never came, nor did Vivien.
It was, I knew, I think more than one of us knew, only another one of Griffin’s schemes, that Ly