Mirror Space - Marianne de Pierres [62]
Mira didn’t answer the biozoon. She was beyond fear now. Beyond feelings. She didn’t hear the explosion that punctured the faux sky, or feel the Ave dive towards the roof of the Hue in terror.
She was spared the sight of the biozoon scalding the skin from the creatures that had hunted her down, just as her mind protected itself from her fall to the strange quilted surface when the Ave’s claw opened involuntarily with pain; and best of all she did not see the dreadful, dreadful rage that Insignia loosed upon the surviving creature, ripping it apart with the spine of its hardened underbelly, and crushing the flickering life force beneath it when it set down on the Hue near its fallen Innate.
“Mira-fedor! Mira-fedor!’
Insistent, tinny shouting roused her, but she couldn’t see, as if her eyes were cloaked with dark patches. She managed to roll her head but any more seemed impossible.
‘A biozoon, Mira-fedor.’ Wanton sounded excited, she thought distantly.
Dearest, you must come to me so I can help you.
Insignia’s voice crept into her limbs but still she couldn’t move them. The baby in her stomach felt heavy and lifeless.
Mira. You must come to me. My sensors tell me our baby is dying.
Our baby. She found herself echoing the biozoon’s words in her mind.
And with that echo, a frisson of concern grew; concern that brought with it a tiny surge of energy and will. Insignia would heal her baby.
She tried to awaken her other senses. She blinkedrepeatedly to clear the darkness. From the vague outline it seemed as though the biozoon had berthed on her right side. She would need to crawl there. But crawling required the movement of useless limbs so she began to rock from side to side until momentum took her over in one complete roll.
She waited awhile, summoning the energy to repeat the manoeuvre. Wanton called encouragement to her, though she could barely understand its speech.
The child remained inactive.
Change direction, Mira, Insignia instructed. I am closer to your feet.
Sluggishly, she inched her chest forward towards her belly until it would bend no more. Then she worked her legs backward away from her head.
Her breaths came slow and hard, as if her heart could barely pump the necessary blood to keep her lungs functioning.
She rested for a time before trying again.
Rock, rock, rock, became her mantra, followed by the painful exertion of tipping over: pain without energy.
After a handful of rolls she felt the hard, sharp edge of something against her face. Her fingers moved compulsively at the contact.
Once more. Roll onto the lip, instructed Insignia.
But that meant a small measure of elevation that Mira couldn’t manage. She drifted from consciousness but was brought back by a series of vicious stings to her hand.
Roll.
She jerked reflexively against it, enough to raise her shoulders onto the lip of biozoon skin.
It curled around her, lifting and sliding her up and then inside. Mira fell onto the spongy familiar surface of Insignia’s flesh and heard the muted sound of the egress scale sealing. A moment later she had the vague sense of being surrounded by softness.
I have encased you in a tubercle, Mira. I will attempt to heal you.
Nothing then.
For a long, long blissful while.
Mira avoided consciousness. Every time her thoughts tried to form into something cogent she deliberately broke them apart and sought the safety and comfort of nothing.
You must wake, Mira.
She ignored the voice. She did not need to wake. Ever.
The voice spoke to her sporadically, telling her things about the baby, or details of her own progress, but she did not care to hear them.
It seemed that it stopped for a time, and she welcomed the silent oblivion back. But it returned eventually with gentle persistence.
Mira, your brain activity suggests that you can hear me. Decisions need to be made.
Mira pulled the darkness over herself like a blanket. No. No more decisions. No more survival. Just the dark and the quiet.
Innate, please!
Mira stirred a little. Insignia had displayed anger and frustration