Chapter 21

Entirely capable of fending for themselves, the rest of the camp left Zuri and I undisturbed the next morning.

Crossed wrists held under my hand, my sister bucked hard against me, her eyes squeezing shut, screaming hard as I finally allowed her to join me in climax. Shuddering, back arched as I released inside her, we collapsed together, gasping. Around us I could hear sounds of activity as the camp rose with the dawn.

“So good...” Zuri moaned, her tongue forcing its way into my mouth as her released hands stroked the breadth of my shoulders with loving tenderness. Beneath me her wetness slicked the interior of the cocoon.

Eventually our need for food forced us to dress. Pulling a white turtlenecked underlayer from the tent’s eaves, I briefly entertained the mental image of my pink scalp emerging from the neck’s white tube.

Suddenly, I felt a subtle pulse race down my spine. Between my thighs, my shaft twitched.

Frowning, I brought the image up again, simplifying it into an engram’s geometrical symbols: a pink ball pushing through a white cylinder.

Still wet from our coupling, my cock began to harden, straining towards my belly.

Years of frustrated searching in Ship’s archives had never revealed anything to control an erection. Homo liberas hormones could be modified to a limited degree, but adaptations for sex appeared to have been completely lost, or never developed. I’d given up any hope of finding anything to overcome my body’s limitations in lovemaking.

“Zuri.” Reaching out blindly in the tent, I grabbed her arm. “I think I found it.”

“What?” She turned and looked down. “Oh. Oh!”

“Think we can hold off breakfast a little while longer?”

Grinning, my sister opened her arms to me.

Two hours later I emerged from the tent, eyes gritty from a nap and stomach growling with hunger. Around me, factos immediately swarmed to strike the shelter. The rest of the camp had been cleared hours ago, stamped into a rough circle of flattened snow under the automaton’s broad, stippled tracks. Breath steaming as they sipped mugs of hot cocoa, Zuri, Kirra and Ananya stood around the RTG that remained at the center, watching the triplets tottering about, wrapped in thick orange parkas that turned them into little balls. The knowing grins that greeted my emergence made it clear that my sister had shared every detail of the new engram and our resulting tryst.

Crouching on her collapsed tent, Esther methodically folded its edges inwards, a frown of concentration on her face as her facto stood to one side, its four arms spread helplessly. After Hotene and my mother, Esther was perhaps the stubbornest of my extended family, constantly insisting that she could do everything by herself and disdainful of any offer of help.

Looking around, I noted a missing figure. “Where’s Hotene?”

Entirely concentrated on her packing, Esther shrugged. “Gone. She went ‘way.”

Instinctually I reached out with evoc to find my second daughter. But where Hotene’s presence should have been in my mind there was suddenly ... nothing. Not even a void. It was as if she didn’t exist.

Icy fear fell into the pit of my stomach, chilling the marrow of my bones. Evoc never failed. My family had been a constant mental presence since I was five years old, a feeling as warm and intimate as my own skin. Hotene’s sudden and complete absence felt like having a limb separated from my body with a cleaver.

Heart beating fast, I looked around wildly into the snow-covered landscape, irrationally hoping that I’d see my daughter emerging through the trees. But there was nothing. No tracks, not a single sign that she’d departed the camp.

Picking up on my panic, Zuri looked at me curiously.

“Can you find Hotene?” Frowning, my sister’s eyes lost focus before they widened in fright in response to the same feeling of emptiness. “When did you see her last?”

“An hour ago, while it was still snowing.” Zuri’s face was a mask of confusion and guilt. “I just assumed she’d taken a little time for herself. Askr, I’m so sorry...”

Stop what you’re doing right now.

I’d only ever tried mass evoc once before, many years ago, as a test. Powerful enough to break into takamakura dives and rouse people from sleep, the emergency broadcast branched like lightning through my family.

The call’s effect was immediate and uncanny, lifting everyone’s heads in unison with expressions of shock. Too young to receive the message, the triplets remained unaware and unaffected, laughing and screaming as they wandered back and forth across the snow.

Can anyone reach Hotene? Blocking evoc communication was possible: Hotene had done it to me many times after one of our fights. But doing so never obscured location. Whatever this was, it wasn’t a fit of pique.

After a moment, three heads moved in near-synchronicity. All negative. Ice crept into my veins, freezing my blood even as my heart surged, pumping wildly in panic.

Think. Mother’s earliest lessons came back to me as clearly as if she was speaking in my ear. Don’t allow the problem to dictate your reaction. Work a solution.

Did anyone see which way she went? I broadcast.

Standing on her half-folded tent Esther looked carefully left and right before shaking her head slowly, as did everyone else.

Taking a breath, I came to a decision. Search party, now. Kirra, stay here with the triplets. Ananya, head spinward. Zuri, antispin. I’ll head towards the bow. Esther, are you prepared to search towards the stern? The terrain would be easiest for her there, and she would remain in sight of the camp.

Back straightening, the six-year old looked at me steadily. Yes, father.

As Zuri and my daughters made themselves ready I took a moment to check the weather. Another thirty centimeters of snow had fallen while I napped, but the curve of skyscape was now clear; the temperature hovered at -25°C.

Everyone take a facto, but keep them trailing you. Quarter the area outside of camp and search outwards. Look for any sign, tracks in particular. Communicate anything you find. Any questions?

A sway of four heads.

Go. Dropping what they were doing in the same instant, the factos wheeled to follow us as we split apart. Walking out of camp I could hear Kirra quietly explaining to the triplets what was happening as they started to cry, picking up on their family’s fear and tension.

Decades ago I’d dived a basic takamakura module of wilderness tracking. The skills I’d retained were rusty with disuse, but still serviceable. Recalling lessons with each new step, I found myself instinctually looking for draglines and prints, summoning an engram to boost edge contrast in my visual cortex as I scanned the field of white around the camp. Broad feet crunching heavily through the snow, the facto following me raised its lower limbs awkwardly with each step, struggling through the deep drifts.

Sweeping my eyes back and forth revealed only the paired pop-marks of snowshoe hares. Silence from the rest of my family told me that they’d been similarly unsuccessful.

No facto would have followed Hotene when she’d wandered away from camp; the automaton’s instincts towards her safety and care had ceased when she’d turned 14. And she hadn’t taken one with her. Which left her alone and out of contact, far away from her family.

Recalling the howls I’d heard the previous night made me shiver under the parka as I walked. Any predator should shy away from humans, or, at best, regard us as one of their own, but animals tended to become wilder and less predictable further from the ringriver. I could tell myself a thousand times that Hotene was in no danger from attack, but I couldn’t help thinking of what might happen to her, nor force visions of teeth and claws ripping into soft flesh out of my head.

The environment itself posed a far greater threat. Snow that appeared firm could take two or three of Hotene’s light steps before giving way, silently swallowing her into a hidden crevasse. The smallest seismic shift could set off an avalanche from the steep valleys in the mountains, suffocating her in a coffin of white. A twisted, broken leg could kill her after a few hours of exposure.

Visions of Hotene lost and in pain resisted every effort to push them away, even as I tried to concentrate on the search. Anxiety skittered and scraped like an insect across my skin, drawing every nerve tight.

I’d almost reached the edge of the valley before I glimpsed the first sign, a bootprint no deeper than a fingertip half-hidden at the base of an aspen. It was a find of pure luck: another minute of snowfall or a sustained gust of wind might have obliterated the trail entirely. Two more careful steps revealed another bootprint, then a third, leading up out of the valley towards a rocky outcrop on a ridge above.

Found a trail, I broadcast.

The collective evoc response almost overwhelmed me. Trembling with relief, I stood below the ridge, cupped my gloved hands around my mouth, and shouted.

“Hotene!”

Waiting for an answer sent me only the sound of the wind.

Haven’t spotted her yet. Everyone return to the campsite; I’ll keep looking.

Filled with a fresh burst of energy, I lifted my boots higher to lunge through the thick drifts of snow that had collected in the lee of the hill. Distracted from my anxiety, I took a moment to reflect upon how easily I’d fallen into commanding my family. The last two decades had provided few opportunities for any decisions of real import, yet organising and directing the search party had felt completely natural.