Ascending - James Alan Gardner [120]
As I held her, more mist trickled out of her nose. The bits did not stay outside; whenever she inhaled, all the mist went back in again. After one exhalation, I waved my hand through the fog around her face in an effort to disperse it…but the tiny particles simply swirled past my fingers and returned inside with the next breath. Of course, I could have prevented this by squeezing Festina’s nostrils shut. However, I did not wish to asphyxiate my friend, so I stayed my hand.
Suddenly, Festina let loose a colossal sneeze. The sneeze was remarkable in several regards: volume of sound, volume of air, and volume of sputum discharged into my face. I wiped off the moisture with great dispatch (or more precisely, with the sleeve of my jacket); and as I was doing so, a burst of fog exploded from my friend, streaming out her nose and mouth, and even little wisps from her ears. In seconds, Nimbus floated before me…while in my arms, Festina opened her eyes and said, “Christ, I feel like shit.”
“That is because you had a cloud man in your head,” I told her. “It seems he saw you unconscious and succumbed to penetrative urges.”
Festina stared at me a moment, then closed her eyes, murmuring, “This is all a dream, this is all a dream, this is all a dream.” She opened her eyes, looked at me, and said, “Damn. So much for that theory.”
The Cloud Man Gets Huffy
I helped my friend sit up—which was not as easy as it sounds. First, I still held the gooey infant Starbiter in one hand and was attempting not to hurt her (or get too much of her ickyness on me). Second, the floor kept shifting, trying to reshape itself to Festina’s body the moment she moved in any direction. It made me wonder how many people died because of these foolish floors; one could easily sink into a customized crater and starve to death because one could not get out.
Starvation was a subject much on my mind.
When Festina finally reached the vertical, she shook her head as if trying to clear her wits. Then with a groan she said, “Shit…what’s happened since I went down?”
“Very little. The Shaddill have seized the Hemlock and have begun to capture smaller ships.”
“That’s all they’ve done in six hours?”
“It has not been six hours,” I told her. “It has been less than five minutes.”
“But I thought…the first time the Shaddill flashed you, Uclod and Lajoolie were unconscious for…I shouldn’t be awake yet.”
Nimbus drifted closer—which is to say, closer to Festina. His tiny bits avoided me, as if his whole body were leaning back from my presence. “I thought it advisable to wake you,” he told my friend. “Stimulate your glands and nervous system; get some adrenaline pumping; counteract the effects of the beam.”
“You can do that?” Festina asked.
“Apparently,” he said. “I haven’t had much practical experience with Homo sapiens, but my medical training covered first aid on familiar alien species. Apologies if my methods lacked finesse; how are you feeling?”
“Like crap, but I’ll live. Thanks.”
Nimbus fluttered, temporarily losing his human shape. “Then I’ll move on to someone else. The more of us who are conscious, the better we can deal with the Shaddill when they arrive.” He swirled above the other bodies as if looking them over one by one; then he coalesced next to Lajoolie. “This one next,” he said. “We may need muscle.”
“I have muscle,” I told him. “I am excellent at feats of strength.”
He did not answer. In fact, his body tightened at the sound of my voice. Perhaps he was simply compressing his components in preparation for flying up Lajoolie’s nose; but it occurred to me, he might be upset at certain insinuations I had made about his behavior: specifically, my remarks about penetrative urges. He was, after all, a creature who burned with shame over something as simple as tickling his daughter or seeing