more enervated than they’d said, as if she sank into death and not a deep coma-sleep with a tinge of awareness.
She’d listened to the explanations, but … this … was … not … right. She couldn’t let herself slip away into sleep because she was sure she would not wake again. She’d die, and that might not help anyone.
She wanted to be of use, she wanted to contribute, not to be a leech, or even taken along out of sufferance.
Yes, stone blocks bricked around her, pressed on her chest, sat on her head and if she allowed it, would infiltrate her brain and solidify it. Solidify everything. Not the preferred process. Not.
THINK! she screamed into her own mind. Tried to twitch her fingers, couldn’t. That was correct, what was supposed to happen. Breathing nearly stopped. Correct. One last breath. No! THINK. What was going wrong? THINK!
Chemical equations danced before her vision, the various stuff slipped in to her blood. CHECK BLOOD! FEEL BLOOD! Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Too much of … too much of something.
Fight. But stone encased her now, not just the slabs but layered over her body like inflexible armor.
THINK! Harder and harder to think. So fight! Fight for another breath because to stop would be to die. Emotional hurt to lose Pizi. Pizi would hurt, too. That gave her a spurt of energy.
Sniff the gas. Gas correct.
Only a little too much bad stuff in her veins. Or arteries. Or both. Blood.
If she could have spilt her blood, drained it, she would have.
Dark redness, blood.
Spiraling downward, away, away, away from the here and now.
NO! FIGHT!
Fight. In her head she sat up. The capsule had disappeared … in the far distance she saw it waiting for her down a stone passage looking like some she — they’d, she and Pizi — had gone through on the way to the city. The way to the ship, to Lugh’s Spear. The name of the ship infused hope that energized.
She would find her way back in her mind from this place in the stone passages of the city to the capsule far away, one that represented safety and life. Arise from the cryonics tube of Lugh’s Spear.
Already in her imagination, she did not lie flat, but sat straight, stiff in her stone, but with grit enough to fight. Yes! Hearing her own creaks, she moved one knee. Difficult. Slow. Heavy.
Taking too long. She could roll … NO! THINK!
If she rolled off what seemed like a stone dais, she’d hit the stone floor and she would not get up again. The armor encasing her would trap her. For the moment it, and her body, still responded to the control of her mind. As long as she didn’t sleep.
Stand up, get moving, keep moving. Like all of her life.
She’d find Pizi again, and … and maybe friends, maybe a lover on the voyage for the rest of her life. She visualized a boat on the sea. It dissipated with the next thought. She imagined the starship moving through the vastness of galaxies. It popped the next second.
Just. Move.
Stone scraping stone she slid, creaked, toppled from the dais, caught herself. Tried to bite her lip instinctively. Couldn’t. Crystallized lips, too. Her face was stone. Her eyes couldn’t move, could see through a narrow band, maybe a rock helmet, too.
Didn’t matter. Fight. Keep moving. March!
And she did, for an eternity, until she didn’t know who she was or why she moved, only that she could see a sunburst far in front of her and she had to reach it because it would be warm, and purr, and the fur would soak up her tears when she buried her face in it.
Step, step, step.
Two arches stood in front of her. Both dark. She paused and would have slumped and fallen but the stone armor kept her upright. Right. The right arch, the correct arch, on the other side of the tunnel. She liked going to the left, less chance of being trapped. Less confinement, to the left.
Not this time.
Awake!
She shuddered in her stone skin. Not her voice, some other voice.
Heart friend!
Yes.
Step, stumble, run!
Levona opened her eyes and looked through clear glass. She’d awakened from the cold, cold, cold stone. Now felt many stares locked on her again. Time had passed, her body told her that, but she didn’t know how much. Before she’d slid into the frozen stasis they’d said the test would last days or a week. But they’d miscalculated the amount of the damn chemicals