Maker - Michael Jan Friedman [18]
Nikolas shook his head and took a step back. “No…”
Then Locklear crumpled and hit the deck. But his body didn’t make a sound. It was as if he lacked substance, as if he weighed no more than the air around them.
Nikolas knelt beside his friend and saw that his eye-holes were empty. No, he thought, correcting himself—Locklear’s eyes were still there, lurking in the darkness of their sockets. They had just shriveled like raisins.
“Andreas?” said a voice.
It was different from Locklear’s—soft and strong at the same time, and ever so feminine. And the woman to whom it belonged was somewhere nearby.
Nikolas looked up and saw her standing by herself at the far end of the corridor. She had yellow hair twisted into a single braid and startling blue eyes, and a face that made his heart pound in his chest.
Gerda Idun…? he thought.
“Is that you?” he asked, his voice echoing.
“It’s me,” she said, taking a step toward him, and then another. “I know how bad you feel about your friend, and I want to make your pain go away.”
He did have pain, almost too much to bear. And if anyone could assuage it, was Gerda Idun.
But she had gone back to the universe she came from. He had watched her fade away on the transporter platform, enveloped by a column of light.
“How—?” he asked.
She didn’t answer. She just came forward to embrace him. But the closer she got, the more her expression began to change.
Nikolas started to fear that Gerda Idun would die too, just like Locklear and Redonna and all the others. He didn’t think he could stand it if that happened.
However, she remained solid and vital, her cheeks flushed with life. She’s not dying, he realized with a pang of relief. But she looked as if she was in some kind of pain, and it seemed to get worse with every step.
“No,” he breathed, and got up to help her, though he didn’t know what to do. If he couldn’t help Locklear or the others, what could he do for Gerda Idun?
But as he came for her, she recoiled and put her hands up. It was as if she didn’t want him near her.
“It’s all right,” he told her. “I don’t care what happens to me. I just want to hold you again.”
Still, she shrank from him. It was then that he realized it wasn’t Gerda Idun who was changing. It was him.
His hands were becoming pale and clawlike, and his legs were growing weak—too weak to hold his weight. The life was going out of them. As he sank to his knees, he saw the look on Gerda Idun’s face—one of horror and disgust—and that was worse than anything else that could happen to him.
“Please,” he said, though his throat was suddenly too dry to utter anything else. “Please…”
But the corridor was growing dimmer. It was getting harder and harder to see Gerda Idun. And he was too weak to hold himself up any longer. As he fell forward, helpless to stop himself, he knew with a certainty he had never felt before that he would be dead well before he hit the deck….
Suddenly, there was light all around him—light that was too bright for his eyes. And to Nikolas’s surprise, he didn’t feel weak anymore. Propping himself up on an elbow, he shaded his eyes and blinked until he could get some idea of where the light was coming from.
It took a while, but he got his answer. It was coming from everywhere—the walls as well as the ceiling. But on the Stargazer, the only lighting strips were overhead.
Which meant that he wasn’t on the Stargazer. He was somewhere else, he told himself, as the cold sweat of his nightmare began drying on his skin.
And it wasn’t the cargo hauler. That much was becoming clear to him, because he didn’t feel as if he were in a cavern. But it wasn’t until he got to his feet and looked around that it struck him where he might be.
On the Ubarrak ship.
Nikolas could tell by the pictograms cut into the walls. Now that he could see them, there was no mistaking them. They looked exactly like the designs he had studied back at the Academy.
He didn’t know how he had gotten there. But clearly, the alien had had something to do with it.
Getting to