"The Naked God - Faith" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Peter F.)Chapter 10To a civilization innocent of regularised interstellar travel, the arrival of a single starship could never be viewed as a threat in itself. What it represents, the potential behind it, however, is another matter. A paranoid species could react very badly indeed to such an event. It was a factor Joshua kept firmly in mind when “That original radar pulse is all I’m picking up,” Beaulieu reported. “They haven’t seen us.” “We’re in clear,” Joshua told Syrinx. All communication between the two starships was now conducted via affinity, the bitek processor array installed in “We’re ready to swallow in,” Syrinx replied. “Shout if you need us.” “Okay, people,” Joshua announced. “Let’s go with the plan.” The crew brought the ship up to normal operational status. Thermo dump panels deployed, radiating the starship’s accumulated heat away from the gleaming photosphere; sensor booms telescoped up. Joshua used the high-resolution systems to make an accurate fix on the diskcity, not using the active sensors yet. Once he’d confirmed their position to within a few metres, he transferred the navigational data over to a dozen stealthed ELINT satellites stored on board. They were fired out of a launch tube, travelling half a kilometre from the fuselage before their ion drives came on, pushing them in towards the diskcity on a pulse of thin blue flame. It would take them the better part of a day to fly within an operational distance when they could start returning useful data on the artefact’s darkside. Joshua and Syrinx considered it unlikely the diskcity could detect them in flight, even if their sensors were focused on space around With the satellites launched, he brought the starship’s active sensors on-line and conducted a sweep of local space. “We’re now officially here,” he told them. “Aligning main dish,” Sarha said. She followed the grid image, waiting until the coordinates matched the diskcity. Joshua datavised the flight computer to broadcast their message. It was a simple enough greeting, a text in the Tyrathca language, spread across a broad frequency range. It said who they were, where they came from, that humans had cordial relations with the Tyrathca from Tanjuntic-RI, and asked the diskcity to return the hail. No mention was made of the There were bets on how long a reply would take, even of what it would say, if all they’d get back was a salvo of missiles. Nobody had put money on getting eight completely separate responses beamed at them from different sections of the diskcity. “Understandable, though,” Dahybi said. “The Tyrathca are a clan species, after all.” “They must have a single administration structure to run an artefact like that,” Ashly protested. “It wouldn’t work any other way.” “Depends what’s tying them together,” Sarha said. “Something that size can hardly be the most efficient arrangement.” “Then why build it?” Ashly wondered. Oski ran the messages through their translator program. “Some deviation in vocabulary, syntax and symbology from our Tyrathca,” she said. “It has been fifteen thousand years after all. But we have a recognizable baseline we can proceed from.” “Glad to see some sort of change,” Liol muttered. “The way everything stays the same with these guys was getting kind of spooky.” “That’s drift, not change,” Oski told him. “And take a good look at the diskcity. We could build something like that easily; in fact we could probably do a much better job of it like Sarha says. All it demonstrates is expansion, not development. There’s been no real technological progress here, just like their colonies and arkships.” “What do the messages say?” Joshua asked. “One is almost completely unintelligible, some kind of image, I think. The computer’s running pattern analysis now. The rest are text only. Two have returned our greeting, and want to know what we’re doing here. Two are asking for proof that we’re xenocs. Three say welcome, and please rendezvous with the diskcity. Uh, they call it Tojolt-HI.” “Give me a position on the three major friendlies,” Joshua said. Three blue stars blinked over his neuroiconic image of Tojolt-HI. Two were located in the bulk of the disk, while the other was at the edge. “That settles it,” he said. “We concentrate on the rim source. I don’t want to try and manoeuvre “The dominion of Anthi-CL,” Oski said. “Sarha, focus our com beam on them, please, narrow band.” Joshua ran through the message from the rim to get a feel for the format, and composed a reply. STARSHIP LADY MACBETH COMMUNICATION DIRECTED AT TOJOLT-HI, DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL. MESSAGE THANK YOU FOR YOUR ACKNOWLEDGEMENT. WE HAVE TRAVELLED HERE IN THE ANTICIPATION OF EXCHANGE OF MATERIALS AND KNOWLEDGE BENEFICIAL TO BOTH SPECIES. WE REQUEST PERMISSION TO DOCK AND BEGIN THIS PROCESS. IF THIS IS ACCEPTABLE TO YOU, PLEASE PROVIDE AN APPROACH VECTOR. CAPTAIN JOSHUA CALVERT DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL COMMUNICATION TO STARSHIP LADY MACBETH MESSAGE YOU ARE WELCOME TO MASTRIT-PJ. IGNORE ALL MESSAGES FROM OTHER TOJOLT-HI DOMINIONS. WE RETAIN THE LARGEST DEPOSITS OF MATERIAL AND KNOWLEDGE WITHIN OUR BOUNDARIES. YOU WILL GAIN THE MOST BENEFIT BY EXCHANGING WITH US. CONFIRM THIS REQUEST. QUANTOOK-LOU DISTRIBUTOR OF DOMINION RESOURCES “What do you think?” Joshua asked. “Not quite the kind of response you’d get from our Tyrathca,” Samuel said. “It could be their attitude has changed to adapt to their circumstances. They seem to be tinged with avarice.” “Resources would be scarce here,” Kempster said. “There can be no new sources of solid matter for them to exploit. A kilo of your waste may well be more valuable to them than a thousand fuseodollars.” “We’ll bear it in mind when we start negotiating,” Joshua said. “For now, we have an invitation. I think we’ll accept.” STARSHIP LADY MACBETH COMMUNICATION DIRECTED AT DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL MESSAGE WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR INVITATION, AND CONFIRM THAT WE WISH TO EXCHANGE EXCLUSIVELY WITH YOU. PLEASE SEND APPROACH FLIGHT VECTOR. CAPTAIN JOSHUA CALVERT. DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL COMMUNICATION TO STARSHIP LADY MACBETH MESSAGE ARE YOU UNABLE TO COMPUTE APPROACH VECTOR? ARE YOU DAMAGED? QUANTOOK-LOU DISTRIBUTOR OF DOMINION RESOURCES “Could be they don’t have traffic control here,” Joshua said. He ran a search through his neural nanonics encyclopaedia file on Hesperi-LN. “The Hesperi-LN Tyrathca didn’t have any formal control system before they started receiving Confederation ships.” “You also need to have a lot of ships flying before that kind of arrangement becomes essential,” Ashly said. “We haven’t even detected one ship around Tojolt-HI yet. I’ve been running a constant scan.” “They’re certainly scanning us in return,” Beaulieu said. “I’m registering seventeen different radar beams focused on us now. And I think there’s some laser radar directed our way, too.” “No ships at all?” Joshua asked. “I can’t find any drive emissions down there,” Sarha said. “With our optical sensor resolution, we ought to be able to see even a chemical reaction thruster flame inside that umbra.” “Maybe they’ve used something like the voidhawk distortion field,” Dahybi suggested. “After all, Kempster said mass was precious to them. Maybe they can’t afford reaction drives.” “Gravitonic detectors say you’re wrong,” Liol said. “I’m not picking up any kind of distortion pattern in this neck of the woods.” “They’re not going to tip their hand this early in the game,” Monica said. “They won’t show us what they’ve got, especially if it’s combat capable.” Sarha shifted under her restraint webbing to frown at the ESA agent. “That’s absurd. You can’t suddenly shut down all your spacecraft traffic the instant you detect a xenoc. You’d leave ships in transit. Besides, they don’t know how long we’ve been watching them.” “You hope.” Sarha gave an exasperated sigh. “They don’t have ZTT technology, so the only interstellar ships they can conceive are arkships. And if one of those used its fusion drive to decelerate into this system, they’d be able to track it from half a light-year out. They must be curious about us and how the hell we got here, that’s all.” “Never mind,” Joshua grumbled. STARSHIP LADY MACBETH COMMUNICATION DIRECTED AT DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL MESSAGE WE ARE NOT DAMAGED. WE HAVE CAPABILITY TO COMPUTE AN APPROACH VECTOR TO YOUR LOCATION ON TOJOLT-HI. WE DID NOT WANT TO BREAK ANY LAW YOU HAVE CONCERNING APPROACHING VEHICLES. ARE THERE ANY RESTRICTIONS COVERING APPROACH SPEED AND SEPARATION DISTANCE FROM YOUR PHYSICAL STRUCTURE? CAPTAIN JOSHUA CALVERT DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL COMMUNICATION TO STARSHIP LADY MACBETH MESSAGE NO RESTRICTIONS CONCERNING YOUR APPROACH. WE WILL PROVIDE FINAL HOLDING POSITION COORDINATE WHEN YOU ARE WITHIN ONE THOUSAND KILOMETRES OF DOMINION TERRITORY. QUANTOOK-LOU DISTRIBUTOR OF DOMINION RESOURCES STARSHIP LADY MACBETH COMMUNICATION DIRECTED TO DOMINION OF ANTHI-CL MESSAGE UNDERSTOOD. EXPECTED RENDEZVOUS TIME 45 MINUTES. CAPTAIN JOSHUA CALVERT Joshua datavised the flight computer to ignite the fusion drives. “Joshua,” Syrinx called. “We’ve found another diskcity.” “Where?” he asked. Everyone on “It’s trailing Tojolt-HI by forty five million kilometres, inclined two degrees to the ecliptic. Kempster and Renato were right. The odds of us emerging so close to the only inhabited structure are non-existent.” “Jesus, you mean this redoubt civilization is strung out all around the star’s equatorial orbit?” “Looks that way. We’re scanning probable locations for more of them. Assuming the separation distance is constant, and they’re not in wildly high inclination orbits, that would mean there’s well over a hundred of the things.” “Acknowledged.” “Over a hundred,” Ashly said. “That makes quite a civilization all told. How many Tyrathca do you think one of those diskcities could support?” “With a surface area of twenty million square kilometres, I should think anything up to a hundred billion,” Sarha said. “Even with their level of technology, that’s a lot of area. Think how many people we cram into an arcology.” “Look at it from the population perspective, and no wonder the Anthi-CL dominion wanted exclusivity,” Liol said. “The demand on resources must be phenomenal. I’m astonished they managed to survive this long. By rights they should have drowned in their own waste products a long time ago.” “Societies only have waste products while acquiring fresh raw material remains a cheaper option than recycling,” Samuel said. “This close to the star, the diskcities are extremely rich in energy. There can be few waste molecules that cannot be reprocessed into something useful.” “Even so, they must have strong prohibitions on reproducing. I see a circle of life like this, and all I can think about is a culture growing in a dish.” “That analogy doesn’t hold for sentient life. The Tyrathca nature is inclined to logically empowered restrictive behaviour. After all, they regulated themselves perfectly on a ten thousand year arkship voyage. This situation is no different for them.” “Don’t assume their dominions are uniform,” Sarha said. “I’m detecting some areas on the disk with a much higher temperature than the others, their thermal regulation has completely broken down. Heat from the star is flowing straight through. They’re dead.” “Maybe so,” Beaulieu said. “But there’s still a lot of activity down there. We’re being bombarded with radar signals from every section. A lot of dominions are very interested in us.” “Still no ship launch,” Joshua said. “No one’s trying to intercept us before we reach Anthi-CL.” He accessed the sensors to watch Tojolt-HI growing against the radiant crimson expanse of the giant star. Apart from the scale involved, it was similar to their approach to the antimatter station. A jet-black, two-dimensional circle cutting right into the photosphere. The cold light of the nebula behind them was unable to illuminate a single feature on the back of the diskcity. Only “What are they all saying?” he asked Oski. “I’m running a keyword discrimination program on the datatraffic. From the samples so far, it’s all pretty much the same. They all want us to dock at their own section of the diskcity, and each claims to have the greatest resources, as well as unique information.” “Any threats?” “Not yet.” “Keep reviewing it.” Sensor data on Tojolt-HI built up slowly during the approach phase, giving the crews on The dense shade of the darkside was inevitably dominated by the thermal transfer machinery. Radiator panels stacked in kilometre-high cones stood next to circular fan towers of faint-glowing fins, minarets of spiralling glass tubes with hot gases rushing through them competed for root space with encrustations of black pillars like a spiky crystal growth, whose sheer ends fluoresced coral pink. Their meandering ranks formed mountain ranges to rival anything thrown up by planetary geology, running for hundreds of kilometres along the webs. Straddling the valleys between them on long stilt-like gantries were giant industrial modules. Dark metal ovoids and trapezohedrons of machinery, their exterior surfaces a solid lacework of pipes and conduits, rising to a crown of heat-dissipation fins or panels (a direct ancestry could be traced to the machinery on Tanjuntic-RI). Although the diskcity had an overall uniformity bestowed by its basic web design, no region or structure was the same, technologies were as heterogeneous as shapes. The standardisation and compatibility synonymous with the Tyrathca had clearly broken down between the dominions millennia ago. As they drew closer, more movement became visible across the darkside. Trains, made up from hundreds of tanker carriages and kilometres in length, slid slowly along the valleys and embankments between the thermal transfer systems. Their rails were an open framework of girders; suspended above the tubes and foil sheets of the disk, undulating like a roller coaster track, dipping down to merge with the larger tubes, allowing the trains to run inside them, then rising up the stilt legs of industrial modules to pass straight through the middle. “Who the hell built this place?” Ashly asked in bemusement as the grey pixels built up into a comprehensive image in this neural nanonics. “Isombard Kingdom Brunel?” “If it works, don’t try and fix it,” Joshua said. “There is more to it than that,” Samuel said. “Tojolt-HI is not a declining technology. They have selected the simplest engineering technology which can sustain them. Whilst humans would no doubt progress to developing a full Dyson sphere over fifteen thousand years, the Tyrathca have refined something that requires the minimum of effort to maintain. It does have a kind of elegance.” “But it still fails repeatedly,” Beaulieu said. “There are dozens of dead sections across the disk. And each failure would cost them millions of lives. Any sentient creature should try to refine its living environment to something less prone to accident, surely?” Samuel shrugged. The Anthi-CL dominion began issuing instructions for “How is the translation program update coming on?” Joshua asked Oski. “Do we know enough to communicate directly now?” “It’s integrated all the new terms we’ve encountered so far; the analysis comparison subroutine response time is down to an acceptable level. I’d say it’s okay to try and talk to them.” “At last,” Sarha said. “That’s got to be a ship.” The vessel was docked to the rim a hundred kilometres along from their rendezvous coordinate. It had a simple profile, a pentagon of five huge globes scintilating with a soft gold and scarlet iridescence under the gas-giant’s illumination, each one at least two kilometres in diameter. They surrounded the throat of an elongated funnel made from a broad mesh of jet-black material; its open mouth was eight kilometres across. There was no recognizable life support section visible from “Picking up a lot of very complex magnetic fluctuations from that thing,” Liol said. “Whatever it does, there’s a lot of energy involved.” “If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a Bussard ram-scoop,” Joshua said. “It was a neat idea, pre-ZTT era interstellar propulsion. Use a magnetic scoop to collect interstellar hydrogen, and feed it direct into a fusion drive. A cheap and easy way to travel between stars, you haven’t got to worry about carrying any on-board fuel. Unfortunately it turns out the hydrogen density isn’t high enough to make it work.” “In our part of the galaxy, maybe,” Liol said. “What’s the hydrogen density in space between a red giant and a nebula?” “Good point. That could mean they’re in contact with the closest colony stars.” He didn’t believe it; there was some missing factor here. What would be the reason to travel to a nearby star? You couldn’t trade over interstellar distances, not with slower-than-light ships. And given your destination would have the same technology and society as your departure point, what could be traded anyway? Any differences or technological improvements that sprung up over the millennia could be shared by communication laser. “Hey,” he exclaimed. “Parker?” “Yes, Joshua?” the old director responded. “We thought the reason for Tanjuntic-RI losing contact with Mastrit-PJ was because civilization failed here. It hasn’t. So why did they go off-air?” “I have no idea. Perhaps one of the colony worlds relaying the messages round the nebula collapsed.” “A Tyrathca society failed? Isn’t that a bit unlikely?” “Or it was killed off,” Monica said. “I’d like to think the enslaved xenocs finally rebelled and wiped them out.” “Possible.” Joshua wasn’t convinced. On this half of the disk, every tube section was made from glass; a trillion corrugations held together by black reinforcement hoops like the roof of God’s greenhouse. Light evaporating from the photosphere below was thick enough to qualify as a crimson haze; it gusted against the diskcity, only to be rebuffed by the burnished surface in copper ripples longer than planetary crescents. This was a hint of how sunset over eternity’s ocean would appear. “Jesus,” Joshua crooned. “I guess this makes up for Tanjuntic-RI.” They held position for several minutes with every sensor boom extended to gather in the scene, then Joshua reluctantly fired the secondary drive rockets to bring them back into the disk plane and back towards the rim. He locked As soon as Sarha confirmed their on-board heat exchangers could handle the sun’s heat, Joshua opened a direct communication channel to the Anthi-CL dominion. “I would like to speak with Quantook-LOU,” he said. The reply came back almost immediately. “I speak.” “Again, I thank the Anthi-CL dominion for receiving us. We look forward to beginning a prosperous exchange, and hope that it will be the first of many between our respective species.” Make them believe that others will be coming, he thought; that implies any forceful action on their part would ultimately have to be accounted for. Pretty unlikely given the scale of things around here, but they don’t know that. “We too have that anticipation,” Quantook-LOU said. “That is an interesting ship you fly, Captain Calvert. We have not seen its like before. Those of us who disputed your claimed origin no longer do so. Is it a subsidiary vessel of your starship, or did you cross interstellar space in it?” Joshua gave his brother a disconcerted look. “Even if this translation program is getting creative on me, they’re not responding like any Tyrathca I know about.” “That’s a leading question, too,” Samuel cautioned. “If you confirm we travelled round the nebula in “And they’ll want it,” Beaulieu said. “If we’re right about the pressure on local resources, it’s their escape route out past the surrounding colony worlds.” “No it’s not,” Ashly said. “I lived through the Great Dispersal, remember. We couldn’t even shift five per cent of Earth’s population when we really needed to. ZTT isn’t an escape route, not even with the industrial capacity of a diskcity. Everything is relative. They could build enough ships in a year to transport billions of breeder pairs away from Mastrit-PJ, but they’d still be left with thousands of billions living in the diskcities. All of whom would be busy laying more eggs.” “It might not solve their problem, but it would certainly give star systems where they propose to settle one hell of a headache,” Liol said. “We’ve seen what they’ll do to aboriginal species occupying real estate they want.” Joshua held up a hand. “I get the picture, thank you. Though I think we have to consider ZTT technology as our ultimate purchasing power to get the Sleeping God’s location. The Hesperi-LN Tyrathca already have ZTT. It might take decades to reach Mastrit-PJ, but it will spread here eventually.” “ Joshua held her stare as he reopened the channel to Quantook-LOU. “The nature of our ship is one of the items of knowledge we can discuss as part of the exchange. Perhaps you would like to list the areas of science and technology you have the most interest in acquiring.” “What areas do you excel in?” Joshua frowned. “Wrong,” he mouthed to his crew. “This is not a Tyrathca.” “I agree, this is not a response I would expect from one,” Samuel said. “Then what?” Sarha asked. “Let’s find out,” Joshua said. “Quantook-LOU, I think we should start slowly. As a gesture of good faith, I would like to give you a gift. We might then start to exchange our histories. Once we understand each other’s background we should have a better idea where useful exchanges can be made. Are you agreeable to this?” “In principle, yes. What is your gift?” “An electronic processor. It is a standard work tool among humans; the design and composition may be of interest to you. If so, duplication would be a simple matter.” “I accept your gift.” “I will bring it to you. I am eager to see the inside of Tojolt-HI. It is an astonishing achievement.” “Thank you. Can you dock your starship to one of our ports? We do not have a suitable ship to collect you from your present position.” “Curiouser and curiouser,” Liol said. “They can build habitats the size of continents, but not commuter taxis.” “We have a small shuttle craft we can use to reach the port,” Joshua said. “We will remain in spacesuits while we are inside Anthi-CL to avoid biological contamination.” “Is a direct physical encounter between our species dangerous?” “Not if adequate precautions are taken. Our species is very experienced in this field. Please don’t be alarmed.” Joshua piloted the MSV himself, ignoring Ashly’s snide remarks about union rules. It was cramped in the little cabin; Samuel and Oski came with him, as well as a serjeant (just in case). He had to promise the others a rota for visiting the diskcity, everyone had wanted to come. The port which Quantook-LOU had designated was a fat bulb of grey-white metal four hundred metres across, which flared out from the end of a web tube. Its apex was taken up by a circular hatch seventy-five metres in diameter, open to show a dimly-lit interior. “Looks like one big empty chamber in there,” Joshua said. He fired the thrusters carefully, edging the little craft inside. Gentle red light shone from long strips that curved round the walls like fluorescent ribs. Between them were rows of almost-human machinery. It put him in mind of the docking craters in Tranquillity’s spaceport. Directly opposite the main outer hatch was a stubby cylindrical grid, with much smaller airlock hatches at the far end. Joshua steered the MSV towards it. “Your datavise carrier is starting to break up,” Sarha reported. “That’s to be expected, though a good host would offer us a constant link. We’ll start to worry if they actually shut that hatch.” The MSV reached the top of the cylindrical grid. Joshua extended one of the vehicle’s waldo arms to grip it in the clamp. “We’re secure,” he reported, using the band to Quantook-LOU. “Please proceed to the airlock ahead of you. I await on the other side.” Joshua and the others fastened their space armour helmets into place. They assumed the Tyrathca didn’t have programmable silicon, so they wouldn’t know about SII suits. The armour would appear to be their actual spacesuit, reducing the risk of offending their hosts at the same time providing a degree of protection. The MSV’s cabin atmosphere cycled and the four of them slid out. There were three airlock hatches at the end of the grid. Only one of them, the largest, was open. The chamber behind was a sphere six metres across. “Those other hatches were too small for the breeders,” Samuel said. “I wonder if one of the vassal caste has been bred for a higher IQ; they certainly weren’t capable of useful engineering work before.” Joshua didn’t reply. He stuck his boots to what could have been the chamber floor just as the atmospheric gas started to hiss in. Suit sensors told him was a composition of oxygen, nitrogen, carbon dioxide, argon, and various hydrocarbon compounds, the humidity level was very high, and there were several classes of organic particulate in circulation. He made a strong effort to keep his hand away from the innocuous-looking cylinder on his belt which was actually a laser. Strangely, he felt no excitement at this moment. It was almost as if there was too much riding on it for him to take anything other than an objective view. A good thing, he supposed. The inner hatch opened, revealing one of Tojolt-HI’s wider habitation tubes dwindling away to a flat metal bulkhead a kilometre away. Two colours dominated the interior: red and brown. Joshua smiled round his suit’s respirator tube as he saw the cluster of xenocs waiting for him. They weren’t Tyrathca. First impression was a shoal of human-size seahorses floating cautiously in the air. They had that same kind of flowing twitch along the length of their body, as if forever poised at the start of a race. Their colouring was almost black, though Joshua suspected that was due to the unvarying red light; sensor spectral analysis showed their scales were actually a shade of dark grey-brown very close to the Tyrathca, suggesting a common Mastrit-PJ ancestry. The head was pointed, dragon-like, with a long beak-mouth and two small semi-recessed eyes. It was held almost at a right angle to the body by a heavily wrinkled neck, suggesting considerable flexibility. The rest of the body had an ovoid cross section that gradually tapered away towards the base, though there was no sign of any tail. It curved slightly, producing an overall S-shape. Three pairs of limbs were spaced equidistantly along it, all sharing the same basic profile: a long first section extending away from a shoulder-analogue socket and ending in a wrist joint. The hand appendage was elongated with nine twin-knuckle digits. On the highest set of limbs they were thin and highly dextrous; the middle set were smaller and thicker; while the hindset were stumpy, toes rather than fingers. On most of the xenocs the hind feet appeared to be withered; becoming simple paddles of flesh, as though they were borrowed from aquatic creatures. It was an appropriate classification. Every surface inside the tube sprouted lengthy ribbon fronds of rubbery vegetation, all of them reaching up for the geometric centre. Even those planted in the glass were growing directly away from the light, something Joshua had never seen on any terracompatible world he’d visited, no matter how bizarre some of its aboriginal botany and biochemistry. The constant tangle of vegetation along the inside of the tube did however make movement very easy for the xenocs. They seemed to glide along effortlessly through the topmost fringe, with the lower half of their bodies immersed in the brown fronds, their limbs wriggling gently to control their motion. It was a wonderfully graceful action resulting from what was essentially a mad combination of the smooth flick of a dolphin flipper and a human hand slapping at grab hoops. Joshua admired it with mild envy, at the same time wondering just how long evolution would take to produce that kind of arrangement. It was almost a case of symbiosis, which meant the fronds of vegetation would have to be He couldn’t doubt these xenocs were intelligent beyond any Tyrathca vassal class the Confederation had encountered. They wore electronic systems like clothes. The upper half of their bodies were covered in a garment that combined a string vest with bandolier straps to which various modules were clipped, interspersed with tools and small canisters. They also went in for exoaugmentation; lenses jutted out of eye sockets, while plenty of them had replaced upper-limb hands with cybernetic claws. Joshua switched his sensor focus around them until he found one whose electronics seemed slightly better quality than the others. Their styling was more slimline, with elegant key pads and displays. Some of the modules were actually embossed with marmoreal patterns. A fast spectrographic scan said the metal was iron. Curious choice, he thought. “I am Captain Joshua Calvert, and I apologize to Quantook-LOU,” he said. The communication block relayed his words into the hooting whistles of Tyrathca-style speech, which he could just make out through the muffling of the SII suit’s silicon. “We assumed the Tyrathca occupied this place.” The creature his sensors were focused on opened its gnarled beak and chittered loudly. “Do you wish to leave now you have found it is otherwise?” “Not at all. We are delighted to have gained the knowledge of your existence. Could you tell me what you call yourselves?” “My race is the Mosdva. For all of Tyrathca history we were their subjects. Their history has ended. Mastrit-PJ is our star now.” “Way to go,” Monica said over the general communication band. “Let’s not jump to conclusions,” Syrinx admonished. “They’re clearly from the same evolutionary chain.” “Relevant observations only,” Joshua told them. “I mean, do we even need to carry on? We can be diplomatic here for a couple of hours, then fly off to the nearest probable Tyrathca colony star to get what we need.” “They have the same language and origin planet,” Parker said. “It’s highly probable they share the same stellar almanac. We need to know a lot more before we even consider moving on.” “Okay.” Joshua datavised his communication block back to its translation function. “You have achieved much here. My race has never built any structure on such a scale as Tojolt-HI.” “But you have built a most interesting ship.” “Thank you.” He took a processor block from his belt slowly and carefully. It was one that he’d found in One of the other Mosdva slithered forwards through the foliage and gingerly took the block before hurrying back to Quantook-LOU. The distributor of resources examined it before putting it in a pouch near the bottom of his torso garment. “I thank you, Captain Joshua Calvert. In return, I would show you this section of Anthi-CL, of which you have expressed such interest.” “Was that cynicism?” Joshua asked his people. “I don’t think so,” Oski said. “The Tyrathca language as we know it doesn’t have the carrier mechanism for that kind of nuance. It can’t, because they don’t have cynicism.” “Might be a good idea to keep the analysis program watching for those kind of patterns emerging.” “I’ll second that,” Samuel said. “They’ve been bombarding us with sensor probes from the second that hatch opened. They’re clearly looking for an advantage. This kind of mercantile behaviour is thankfully easy to appreciate. It almost makes them human.” “Wonderful. Sixteen thousand light years, and all we get to meet is the local equivalent of the Kulu Traders Association.” “Joshua, your first priority is to understand exactly what position Quantook-LOU has within their social structure,” Parker said. “Once that is known, we’ll be able to proceed quickly to a resolution. Their culture is plainly developed along different lines from the Tyrathca, though I’m happy to say the basics of trade apparently remain a fundamental.” “Yes, thank you, Mr Director.” And I wonder if “Accompany us, then. I will enlighten you.” The whole Mosdva group turned, virtually in unison, and began their sliding glide along the vegetation. Joshua, who considered himself highly proficient in freefall conditions, was fascinated by the manoeuvre. There was a lot of torque and inertia involved with such a move; their mid-limbs must apply a lot of pressure to the fronds. And the fronds themselves must be stronger than they looked; try tugging a terrestrial palm like that and you’d rip it in half. He cancelled the tak pad application on his boot soles and kicked off after them. Ultimately, he cheated, using the cold gas jets of his armour’s manoeuvring pack as well as climbing a frond like a rope. When he reached the upper fringes, the fronds now did their best to impede his progress; where they parted for any Mosdva, they formed elastic nets for him. The best method, he found, was to stay above their tips altogether, and reach down as necessary to swing yourself along. Gauntlet tactile sensors reported the vegetation was spongy, but with a solid spine. Out of the four of them, he was the most agile, though he struggled to keep up with Quantook-LOU. And the serjeant’s motions were plain painful to watch; Ione had not ventured into Tranquillity’s zero-gee sections very often. The Mosdva had slowed to observe the progress of the humans, allowing them to catch up. “You do not fly as fast as your ship, Captain Joshua Calvert,” Quantook-LOU said. “Our species lives on planets. We’re accustomed to high-gravity environments.” “We know of planets. The Mosdva have many stories of Mastrit-PJ’s worlds before the expansion devoured them all. But there are no pictures on file in Tojolt-HI, not after such a time. They are as legend, now.” “I have many pictures of planets in my ship. I would welcome exchanging them for any pictures you do have of Mastrit-PJ’s history.” “A good first exchange. We are fortunate to have made contact with you, Captain Joshua Calvert.” Joshua had been hanging on to a frond tip as he waited for the serjeant to catch up; now he realized the plant was wriggling slightly. There certainly wasn’t enough of a breeze to do that. “The fronds stir the air for us,” Quantook-LOU explained when he mentioned it. All plants on Tojolt-HI flexed gently; that was why they’d originally been selected, and careful breeding had enhanced the trait. Air had to be moved in freefall, or stagnant pockets of gas would build up, unpleasant and potentially lethal for animals and plants alike. The Mosdva still had mechanical fans and ducts, but they were very much secondary systems. “Not quite up to Edenist levels,” Sarha said. “They’re edging towards biological solutions,” Ruben replied. “Leaving the mechanical behind.” “You can’t use wholly biological systems here, not in this environment, it’s too hostile.” “And there is precious little sign of genetic engineering techniques being employed,” Samuel said. “Quantook-LOU told us the plants were bred. Cross-pollination is almost a lost art in human society, Adamist and Edenist alike. We shall have to be more careful here than we originally expected, both in what we say and what we exchange with them. This society is static, and it survives perfectly by being so. To introduce change, even in the form of concepts, could be disastrous to it.” “Or save it,” Sarha said. “From what? We are the only conceivable threat it faces.” They progressed further along the tube, gradually encountering more Mosdva as they went. All of the xenocs stopped to watch as the humans went past, slow and clumsy in comparison to their entourage. Mosdva children flashed about through the fronds, incredibly agile. They burrowed deep below the tips in smooth dives and popped out everywhere, making sure they got a look at the humans from all angles. Like the adults, they wore torso harnesses that contained a multitude of electronic modules—but none of them had cybernetic implants. Looking down past his gauntlets, Joshua could see straight through the corkscrew fronds. They weren’t as dense as he’d first thought—a plantation rather than a jungle—which allowed him to piece together how the tube was constructed. There was an outer casing, the ribbed section with glass on the sunside, and an opaque composite or metal on the darkside. Lining that on the inside was a tightly packed spiral of transparent piping, studded with small copper-coloured annular apertures from which the plants grew. Their roots were visible inside the pipe, just. The spiral was filled with an opaque and somewhat glutinous fluid which cut down the sun’s intense red glare. It was also flecked with dark granules and a swirl of tiny bubbles, which showed him how fast it was being pumped along. The spirals contained either water or hydrocarbon compounds, Quantook-LOU said when Joshua asked what it was; its circulation formed the basis for their whole recycling philosophy. Heat from the red giant was swiftly carried round to the darkside, where it was disposed of via the thermal exchange mechanisms, generating electricity in the process. A range of algal species flourished inside the various fluid types, absorbing Mosdva faecal waste and transforming it into nutrients for the plants, which in turn maintained the atmosphere. The thickness of the spiral pipe (none under two and a half metres in diameter) meant the fluid bulk also acted as an excellent protection from stellar radiation. They were shown web tubes which specialised in high-yield arable plants. Living tubes, which were sectioned off by thin sheets of silvery-white fabric. Industrial tubes, whose manufacturing machinery was strung out along the axis, just above the plant tips. (“Condensation must be hell for them,” Oski said at that.) Huge public tubes thronging with Mosdva. After two hours, they were in a section dedicated to what the translator program termed the Anthi-CL dominion’s Quantook-LOU stopped in a large bubble of transparent material, the junction for three small tubes. The surface was still a spiral of pipe dotted with chunks of hardware, but there were no plants; and apart from the bubbles, the fluid was almost clear. It gave a peerless view out over both darkside and sunside. “My personal space,” Quantook-LOU said. Joshua could just make out the misty smears of the nebula through the curving walls. Sharp-edged dissipater cones formed a strange, close horizon. Sunside was a simple uniform mantle of red light. “It is matched with everything else we have seen here,” he said. “What of your world, Captain Joshua Calvert? Does it have sights to match this?” The exchange of history began. Under the Mosdva’s urging, Joshua, Samuel, and Oski started off describing continents and oceans (concepts which had to be clearly defined for the Mosdva—they’d even lost the words for them in their language), and moved on to explain how humans had emerged from Africa to spread across Earth after the Ice Age glaciers retreated. How a technoindustrial society had developed. The rampant pollution which had altered the planetary ecology for the worse, creating an era where ships flew between the stars to found new colonies. How the Confederation now embraced hundreds of star systems, and traders prospered among them. A colourful generalised summary, devoid of any real detail and timescale. In return, the Mosdva told them of Mastrit-PJ’s long story; how neither they nor the Tyrathca were the original sentient species on the one planet which supported biological life. The Ridbat were the first, with a society that had flourished over a million years ago. Little was known of them now, Quantook-LOU said, other than whispers that trickled from generation to generation becoming wilder with each telling. They were Mastrit-PJ’s true monsters, ravenous beasts with evil minds. Wars had been constant while they were alive, two of which escalated into the exchange of nuclear weapons on the planetary surface. Their civilization was knocked back from an advanced technological culture to primitive barbarian on at least three separate occasions. It wasn’t known if they ever had spaceflight; there was no evidence of off-planet activity. The fourth and last Ridbat industrial era was brought to an end by thermonuclear conflict, concurrent with the release of biological weapons which wiped them out along with seventy per cent of the planet’s animal life. The Mosdva had risen to a rudimentary state of intelligence while the Ridbat ruled the planet. That made them useful slave creatures, who were bred for dexterity and strength and passivity while any traits such as curiosity or stubbornness were ruthlessly culled. By the time the Ridbat exterminated themselves, the Mosdva had become fully sentient. Although their population was severely reduced by the diseases raging across the land, they did at least survive as a species. With the Ridbat gone, Mosdva evolution reverted to more traditional lines—as normal as life could become on such a ruined planet. Their own civilization was extremely slow to emerge as a coherent whole. Mastrit-PJ, with its exhausted mineral resources, devastated biosphere, and extensive radioactive deadlands, was not an environment conducive to sophisticated or high-technology-based cultures, and the cautious Mosdva psychology fitted this well. They became nomadic during the period of nuclear winter which followed the demise of the Ridbat, roaming between habitable areas. It was only after the glaciers withdrew, half a million years later, that the Mosdva began to advance again. They achieved a modest level of industrialisation. Because there were no underground petrochemical deposits left, nor coal or natural gas, their technology was based around the concept of sustainability, benign and in harmony with the ecosystem. Although not opposed to change, change generated from within was extremely slow to manifest itself. Steady advances in the theoretical fields of science such as physics, astronomy and mathematics were not grasped upon for technological extrapolation. They already lived in what they considered to be a golden age. After their terrible heritage, stability was the one icon they craved above all else. Such a desire could have led to a society whose timescale rivalled geological epochs. Fate dealt that prospect two bitter blows. Once the glaciers were gone, the Tyrathca, until then simple bovine herd animals, began to share in Mastrit-PJ’s evolutionary renaissance. Their sentience was a long time emerging, but their progress towards it reflected their physical stamina, plodding forwards imperturbably. On any other world, their total lack of imagination would have been a serious flaw, but not here. Sharing the planet with a species as benevolent and (by now) advanced as the Mosdva meant that they had access to machinery and concepts they themselves could never originate. Unfortunately for the Mosdva, the Tyrathca were more aggressive, a trait which came from their herd ancestry and its consequent territorial disputes, which in turn led to the breeding of the vassal castes, especially the soldiers. With their copied technology, greater size and larger numbers, they swiftly became the dominant of the two species. This situation could well have spelt extinction for the Mosdva. Their settlements were being put under considerable pressure by the Tyrathca expansion. Then Mosdva astronomers discovered their star was about to expand into a red giant. For a race whose thoughts operated on an abstract level, the knowledge of certain extinction in 1,300 years’ time would be devastating enough; for the Tyrathca, to whom a fact was immediate, it was intolerable. Racial survival provided a unifying motivator which enabled them to swiftly consolidate their domination of the planet. For the second time in their existence, the Mosdva were effectively enslaved. First they were used to devise a scheme whereby some if not all the Tyrathca could survive the star’s expansion. They came up with the arkship concept which would guarantee ultimate racial survival, with habitable asteroids sheltering the remainder of the population which couldn’t be evacuated. Secondly, they were made to implement it. With their smaller bodies, greater dexterity, and higher intelligence, they made excellent astronauts—unlike the Tyrathca themselves. Mosdva technical expertise was adapted and utilized to capture asteroids and shunt them into orbit around Mastrit-PJ, where they were hollowed out and converted into arkships. The arkship building phase lasted for seven centuries, in which time 1,037 were built and launched. After this, with the star’s growing instability wrecking the planet’s fragile ecology, Mastrit-PJ’s massive space manufacturing capability was switched to adapting asteroids into habitats. The asteroids chosen were orbiting more than a quarter of a billion kilometres from the star, putting them outside the predicted expansion photosphere. As this operation was far simpler than changing asteroids into giant starships, over seven thousand were created in just two centuries. Unlike the arkships which were immediately lost to the Tyrathca upon completion, building the asteroid habitats was a near exponential growth process, as new habitats used their industrial capacity to prepare further asteroids. A thousand years after the project began, the planet had become uninhabitable, and was completely abandoned. No Mosdva were ever carried on an arkship, the vessels were used exclusively by the Tyrathca. As soon as they had finished building one, the Mosdva were moved on to the next. However, they couldn’t be excluded from the asteroid habitats without a policy of complete genocide. The Tyrathca tolerated them, knowing that their own numbers were constantly rising, necessitating an ongoing construction programme. And with the exact conditions of the star’s expansion unknowable, they would need Mosdva technical ability to adapt the asteroid habitats to the environment of the swollen photosphere. When Mastrit-PJ’s star expanded, its diameter was larger than predicted, as was its radiant heat output. New, larger thermal dissipation systems had to be constructed for the asteroid habitats, and quickly. As a consequence, the habitats became even more engineering-dependent, which began the gradual shift of political power. Only Tyrathca breeders were capable of any meaningful technological activity, making all but the builder, housekeeper, and farmer vassal castes redundant. Their soldier caste was now bred purely to keep the Mosdva in line. The revolution didn’t happen all at once, but rather over a thousand year period, starting ten thousand years earlier. The asteroid habitats initially formed a cohesive one-nation grouping after the expansion. But the scarcity of mass in the form of unused asteroids to mine forced the Tyrathca to revert to their original clannish state of competition. As the number of unused asteroids declined, wars were fought over the remainder. Each asteroid habitat reverted to complete autonomy. After that, the rise of the Mosdva to supremacy was inevitable. They controlled the habitat machinery, and industrial facilities, a power they discovered which enabled them to dictate their terms to the Tyrathca. Under this new order, the asteroid habitats gradually banded together politically and physically. As they did, new design concepts were enacted, bringing the old Mosdva dictum of sustainability to the fore, enabling them to maximise their use of dwindling mass resources. Life support sections outside the spun-gravity biospheres were constructed. First they were little more than adjuncts to the gridwork which held the clustered asteroid habitats together; transport and transfer tubes, eliminating the wasteful need for airlocks and vessels. But the Mosdva, with their climbing-adept limb arrangement and natural agility, found they adapted well to the freefall environment inside them. Only the Tyrathca needed gravity and the associated complex engineering to maintain the rotating biospheres. More freefall segments were constructed and added to the clusters, hydroponics and industrial sections first; which led to their technicians spending more and more time in freefall. Living sections followed quickly. The era of the diskcities began. “And the Tyrathca?” Joshua asked. “Are they still here?” “We do not keep them any more,” Quantook-LOU said. “They are no longer our masters.” “I congratulate you on ridding yourselves of them. The Confederation has always found them difficult to deal with.” “But we are not difficult, I hope. And the dominion of Anthi-CL is on the edge of Tojolt-HI. That makes us rich in mass, more than any other. We are good trading partners for you, Captain Joshua Calvert.” “How does being on the edge of Tojolt-HI make you richer than other dominions?” “Is that not obvious? All ships have to dock at the edge. All mass flows through us.” “Oh, classic,” Ruben said. “The rim dominions are the diskcity harbourmasters, they can charge what they like to allow cargo through. They’ve probably got some kind of political alliance between themselves to put the squeeze on the central dominions.” “A minimum fee?” Joshua asked. “Most likely. It puts us in a good position. Everything travels through them; QED, they must have good communications with all the other dominions. They should be able to find us a copy of the almanac file if it still exists.” “Okay.” Joshua checked his neural nanonics time function. They’d been in the diskcity for nine hours. “I thank you for your hospitality, Quantook-LOU. My crew and I would like to return to our ship now. We have gathered enough information to see where our respective interests lie, so we’ll start reviewing what items and information we’ve brought with us which will bring about the most beneficial exchange for both of us.” “As you wish. How long will this review process take?” “Only a few hours. I look forward to returning, and the start of true negotiations between us.” “As do I. Our resources will be marshalled to cope with your demands. Perhaps then I could visit your ship?” “You would be an honoured guest, Quantook-LOU.” Ten Mosdva formed the entourage to see them back to the MSV. It had been left untouched, though Ashly and Sarha who’d been monitoring its status, reported it had been bombarded by every conceivable active sensor sweep. As soon as they were back through “Probably not,” Parker said. “As a general rule, sleep evolves from a planetary day-night cycle; they don’t have that here any more. I suspect they have slow periods, but no actual sleep.” “Ah well, that’s one weakness we’ll have to concede to them. I need a meal, a gel wipe, and some time in the cocoon. It’s been a long day.” “I concur,” Syrinx said. “The ELINT satellites are approaching operational range, which may or may not give us useful information on the dominions. We also need to evaluate what we’ve heard today, and I’d like us all fresh for that. We’ll reconvene in six hours to see what the satellites have found and discuss the next stage.” Joshua managed three hours in the cocoon before he woke. He stared at the cabin wall for fifteen minutes before acknowledging he’d need to put a somnolence program into primary if he wanted to sleep again. He hated doing that. Liol, Monica, Alkad, and Dahybi were already in the small galley when he air-swam through the hatch. They gave him varying sympathetic looks which he acknowledged ruefully. “We’ve been talking to Syrinx and Cacus,” Monica said. She shrugged at Joshua; he’d paused in the act of filling his tea sachet from the water nozzle to raise an eyebrow. “Not just us that’s restless. Anyway, they’ve located another seven diskcities.” Joshua datavised the flight computer for a general communication link and said good morning to the “The Mosdva empire appears to be quite extensive,” Syrinx told him. “Judging by the distribution of diskcities we’ve seen so far, that early estimate needs to be revised upwards. Fair enough if we believe there were seven thousand asteroid habitats to begin with. Kempster and Renato have also been scanning further out from the photosphere. So far they haven’t located a single lump of rock within twenty degrees of the ecliptic. Quantook-LOU was telling the truth when he said there was a desperate struggle for mass after the stellar expansion. Every spare gram must have been incorporated into the diskcities.” “Quantook-LOU didn’t say struggle,” Joshua said. “He said wars, plural.” “Which he blamed squarely on the Tyrathca,” Alkad said. Joshua gave the physicist a bleak look. She didn’t say much, but her comments were normally pretty valid. “You think the Mosdva took control earlier than that?” “We can never know exactly what this star system’s history is, but I would think it likely that the Mosdva started their revolt right after the star’s expansion phase. That would be when the Tyrathca were most dependant on them. Everything else we’ve been told does tend to paint them in an unusually generous light. An oppressed people struggle to regain their long-lost freedom. Please. History is always written by the good guys.” “I did gloss over some of our less endearing traits,” Joshua said. “That’s human nature.” “You should have stung Quantook-LOU’s office space with some nanonic bugs,” Liol said. “I’d love to hear what’s being said in there right now.” “Too big a risk,” Monica said. “If they found them, at worst they could interpret it as a hostile act; and even if they were diplomatic about it, we would have handed them a whole new technology.” “I don’t think that leaves us much to worry about,” Liol said. “The Confederation isn’t about to be invaded by Mosdva, it’s the Tyrathca we have to worry about.” “Enough,” Joshua said. He shifted round to make room for a sleepy unshaven Ashly who was drifting into the galley. “Look, we’ve just about got everyone up now anyway, we’d best convene and thrash out what we’re going to do next.” There was one more discovery before the meeting started. Joshua was finishing his breakfast when Beaulieu datavised a curt message requesting him to access “At last,” Liol said eagerly. He closed his eyes and accessed the image. Beaulieu hadn’t activated any visual enhancement programs to counter the redness. All Joshua could make out was a big brilliant-white shape gliding up towards a rendezvous with Tojolt-HI—the same configuration as the ship already docked to the rim: five huge globes clumped round a drive unit and scoop. Except these globes were glowing a vivid purple-white, brighter than the photosphere. “It surfaced twenty minutes ago,” Beaulieu datavised. The cosmonik replayed the recording. “The globes have been dimming since it surfaced,” Beaulieu said. “Their external temperature is dropping in concert.” “Looks like you were right about it being a ramscoop, Josh,” Liol said cheerfully. “It’s got to be where they get their mass from now the asteroids have been consumed. Fancy that, mining the sun.” “That thermal dump technology is damn impressive,” Sarha said. “It’s got to be superior to anything we have. Shedding heat while you’re “Simply compressing and condensing photosphere hydrogen into a stable gaseous state wouldn’t generate that much heat,” Alkad said. “They must be fusing it, burning it down into helium, perhaps even all the way to carbon.” “Christ, they must be desperate for mass.” “The iron limit,” Joshua mused. “You can’t fuse atoms past iron without having to input energy. Every other reaction until that element generates energy.” “Is that relevant?” Liol asked. “Not sure. But it makes iron their gold equivalent. It can’t hurt knowing what they value most. It’s the trans-iron elements that they’ll be running out of.” “The fact that they’ve resorted to this extraordinary method gives us some considerable leverage,” Samuel said. “We’ve seen little evidence of molecular engineering compounds in the diskcity structure. Our materials science will allow them to exploit mass far more efficiently than they do currently. Every innovation we bring has the potential for inflicting vast change upon them.” “This is what we have to decide,” Syrinx said. “Liol, have the ELINT satellites revealed anything that might help us?” “Not really. They’re holding station a thousand kilometres above the darkside now, which gives us excellent coverage. It’s pretty much what we observed as we flew in: trains moving about and very little else. Oh, we picked up a couple of nasty-looking atmospheric vents. The tubes must have ruptured. There were bodies in the gas stream.” “They must fight a constant maintenance battle against structural fatigue,” Oxley said. “That’s a lot of surface area to cover.” “Everything’s relative,” Sarha said. “There’s a lot of Mosdva to cover it.” “I wonder how inter-dependant the dominions are,” Parker said. “For all Quantook-LOU says about driving a hard bargain on the cargo and mass which Anthi-CL sends to the inner dominions, they have to ensure supplies are preserved. Without fresh material, the tubes would decay. The inner dominions would react strongly to such a threat, I imagine.” “We’ve confirmed eighty dead areas across Tojolt-HI,” Beaulieu said. “They amount to just under thirteen per cent of the total.” “So much? That would tend to indicate a society in decline, possibly even a decadent one.” “Individual dominions might fall,” Ruben said. “But overall their society remains intact. Face it, the Confederation has inhabited worlds that don’t exactly thrive, yet some of our cultures are positively vibrant. And I find it significant that none of the rim sections are dead.” “The other major source of external activity is based around those dead sections,” Liol said. “It looks like major repair and reconstruction work. Those dominions certainly aren’t decadent, they’re busy expanding into their old neighbours’ territory.” “I can accept they’re socially comparable to us,” Syrinx said. “So based on that assumption, do we offer them ZTT technology?” “In exchange for a ten-thousand-year-old almanac?” Joshua said. “You’ve got to be kidding. Quantook-LOU is smart, he’ll know there’s something very wrong about that. I’d suggest we build in an exchange of astronometrical data and records along with whatever commercial trade deal we can put together. After all, they’ve never seen what lies on the other side of the nebula. If we offer them the ability to break free of Tyrathca-dominated space they’ll need to know what’s out there.” “I’ve told you,” Ashly said. “ZTT isn’t a way out.” “Not for the proles,” Liol said. “But the leadership might take it for their families, or clans, or members of whatever cause they rally round. And it’s the leadership we have to deal with.” “Is that the kind of legacy we really want to leave behind us?” Peter Adul asked quietly. “The opportunity for interstellar conflict and internal strife?” “Don’t get all moral on me,” Liol said. “Not you. We can’t afford those kind of ethics. It’s “If, as intended, we’re going to ask a God for its help, perhaps you should consider how worthy we’re going to appear before it should you follow that course.” “What if it considers obliterating your foes to be a worthy act? You’re assigning it very human traits. The Tyrathca never did that.” “That’s a point,” Dahybi said. “Now we know why the Tyrathca managed to get where they are with zero imagination, how does that reflect on our analysis of the Sleeping God?” “Very little, I’m afraid,” Kempster said. “From what we’ve learned about them, I’d say that unless the Sleeping God explained itself to the Tyrathca of Swantic-LI, they simply wouldn’t know what the hell it was. By calling it a God, they were being as truthful as only they can be. The simplest translation equates to our own: something so powerful we do not comprehend it.” “Just how much will ZTT change the diskcity society?” Syrinx asked. “Considerably,” Parker said. “As Samuel points out, just by being here we have changed it. We have shown Tojolt-HI that it is possible to circumvent Tyrathca space. As this is a species with an intellect not dissimilar to our own, we must assume they will ultimately pursue that method. In effect, that gives us control over the timing, nothing more. And allowing them access to ZTT now may generate a portion of goodwill among at least one faction of a very long lived and versatile race. I say we should pursue every effort to make the Mosdva our friends. After all, we now know that ZTT or the voidhawk distortion field ability are hardly the last word in interstellar travel, the Kiint teleport ability has taught us that lesson.” “Any other options?” Syrinx asked. “As I see it, we have four in total,” Samuel said. “We can try and get the almanac through a trade exchange. We can use force.” He paused to smile apologetically as his fellow Edenists registered their disapproval. “I’m sorry,” he said. “But we have that ability, therefore it should be examined. Our weaponry is likely to be superior, and our electronic and software capability would definitely be able to extract information from their memory cores.” “That’s an absolute last resort,” Syrinx said. “Totally,” Joshua agreed firmly. “This is a culture which wages war over any spare mass on a scale we’ve never seen before. They might not have sophisticated weapons compared to ours, but they’ll have one hell of a lot of them; and “If Quantook-LOU proves uncooperative, we simply find a dominion which will help us. We’re not exactly short of choice. The last option is a variant of that: we leave straight away and find a Tyrathca colony.” “We’ve established a reasonable level of contact with Quantook-LOU and the Anthi-CL dominion,” Sarha said. “I think we should build on that. Don’t forget time is a factor as well, and we came here so we wouldn’t have to deal with the Tyrathca.” “Very well,” Syrinx said. “We’ll follow Joshua’s tactic for now. Set up a major commercial trade, and tack on the almanac data as a subsidiary deal.” Joshua kept the same team with him when he returned to the diskcity. This time they were shown directly to Quantook-LOU’s private glass bubble. “Have you found trade items within your ship, Captain Joshua Calvert?” the Mosdva asked. “I believe so,” Joshua said. He glanced round the translucent chamber with its barnacles of alien machinery, vaguely disquieted. Something had changed. His neural nanonics ran a comparison check with his visual memory file. “I’m not sure if it’s relevant,” he told his crew through the affinity link, “But several chunks of hardware bolted onto the piping are different now.” “We see them, Josh,” Liol answered. “Anybody got any ideas what they could be?” “I’m not picking up any sensor emissions,” Oski said. “But they’ve got strong magnetic fields, definitely active electronics inside.” “Beam weapons?” “I’m not sure. I can’t see anything that equates to a nozzle on any of them, and the magnetic field doesn’t correspond to a power cell. My best guess is that they’ve rebuilt this whole chamber as a magnetic resonance scanner: if they’ve got quantum interface detectors sensitive enough they probably think it will allow them to look inside our armour.” “Will it?” “No. Our suit shielding will block that. Nice try though.” “Did you examine the processor I gave you?” Joshua asked Quantook-LOU. “It has been tested. Your design is a radical one. We believe we can duplicate it.” “I can offer more advanced processors than that. As well, we have power storage cells that operate at very high density levels. We offer the formula for superstrength molecular chains; which should be very useful to you, given your shortage of mass.” “Interesting. And what would you like in return?” “We saw your ship returning from the sun. Your thermal dissipation technology would be extremely useful to us.” The negotiation took off well, Joshua and Quantook-LOU reeling out lists of technology and fabrication methods. The trick was in trying to balance them: was optical memory crystal worth more or less than a membrane layer that could guard metal surfaces against vacuum ablation? Did a low-energy carbon filtration process have parity with ultrastrong magnets? As they talked, Oski kept monitoring the new hardware modules. The magnetic fields they put out were constantly changing, sweeping across the translucent bubble in waves. None of them were able to penetrate their suits. In return, her own sensors could pick up the resonance patterns they generated inside the Mosdva. She slowly built up a three-dimensional image of their internal structure, the triangular plates of bone and mysterious organs. It was an enjoyable irony, she felt. After forty minutes, the magnetic fields were abruptly switched off. Liol was paying scant attention to the negotiations. He and Beaulieu were occupied reviewing the data coming in from their ELINT satellites. Now they had the observation subroutines customized properly, there was a lot of activity to see on the darkside. Trains moved everywhere, following a simple generalized pattern. Large full tankers made their way inwards from the rim, offloading cargo at the industrial modules, then once they were empty, they turned and went directly back to the rim. Goods trains, those loaded with items produced inside industrial modules, ran in every direction. Liol and Beaulieu were beginning to think they might even be independent trading caravans, forever touring round the dominions. Something Joshua hadn’t asked was if the Mosdva had currency, or if everything was bartered. “Another vent,” Beaulieu commented. “It’s only seventy kilometres from the captain’s location.” “Christ, that’s the third this morning.” Liol ordered the closest satellite to focus on the plume. Bobbles of liquid were oscillating amid the gas squirting out towards the nebula. Ebony shapes, radiating brightly in the infrared, thrashed around inside it, their motions grinding down the further away they got from the darkside. “You’d think they’d have better structural integrity after all this time. Everything else they do seems to work pretty well. I know I wouldn’t like to live with that kind of threat looming over me, it’s worse than building a house on the side of a volcano.” His subconscious wouldn’t leave the notion alone; there was something wrong about the frequency of the tube breeches. He ran a quick projection through his neural nanonics. “Uh, guys, if they suffer structural failure at this rate, the whole diskcity will fail inside of seven years. And I’ve included some pretty generous rebuilding allowances in that.” “Then you must have got it wrong,” Kempster said. “Either that, or this isn’t a normal event we’re witnessing.” “Venting again,” Beaulieu called out. “Same web as the last, barely a hundred metres apart.” In the Ruben, Oxley, and Serina nodded in unison. Their minds merged with the bitek memory processors governing the satellites. “Do we tell Joshua?” Ashly asked. “Not yet,” Syrinx said. “I don’t want him alarmed. Let’s see if we can confirm the cause first.” An hour after they began negotiating, Joshua and Quantook-LOU had finalized a list of twenty items to exchange. It was to be mainly information, formatted to the digital standard used by the Mosdva, with one physical sample of each item to prove the concept wasn’t merely a boastful lie. “I’d like to move on to pure data now,” Joshua said. “We’re interested in as much of your history as you’re prepared to release; astronomical observations, particularly those dealing with the sun’s expansion; any significant cultural works; mathematics; the biochemical structure of your plant life. More if you’re willing.” “Is this why you have come?” Quantook-LOU asked. “I don’t understand.” “You have ventured around the nebula, sixteen thousand light-years by your own telling. You believed the Tyrathca were all that lived here. You say you came purely to trade, which I do not believe. There can be no meaningful trade between us, the distance is too great. At most it would take two or three visits by ships such as yours to level all differences between us. Your technology is so superior we cannot even scan through your spacesuits to verify you are what you say you are; which means that any machinery you see here you will be able to understand and duplicate without our assistance. In effect, you are giving us a multitude of gifts. Yet you are not driven by altruism, you pretend you are here to trade. You persevere in the task of gaining information from us. Therefore, we ask, what is your true reason for coming to this star?” “Oh Jesus,” Joshua moaned over their secure communication link. “I’m not half as smart as I thought I was.” “None of us are, it would seem,” Syrinx said. “Damn, he saw right though our strategy.” “In itself a useful piece of information,” Ruben said. “How so?” “Everything in Anthi-CL is valued in terms of resources. Quantook-LOU controls their distribution, which makes him leader of the dominion, and he’s also a tough negotiator and diplomat. If those are the traits which make him a good leader, then that confirms the level of competition which exists among the dominions. We may still have leverage. I would suggest that now the cat’s out of the bag you play it straight, Joshua. Tell him what we want. Frankly, what have we got to lose at this point?” Joshua took a breath. Even with Ruben’s unarguable summary, he couldn’t bring himself to gamble the outcome of their mission on a xenoc’s generosity. Especially when they had confirmed virtually nothing the Mosdva had told them about Mastrit-PJ’s history, nor even their own nature. “I congratulate you, Quantook-LOU,” he said. “That is an admirable deduction from such a small amount of information. Although not entirely correct. I will profit considerably from introducing some of your technology to the Confederation.” “Why are you here?” “Because of the Tyrathca. We want to know where they are, how far their influence extends, how many there are of them.” “Why?” “At the moment our Confederation co-exists alongside them. Our leadership believes this situation cannot last forever. We know they have conquered entire sentient species as they spread from star to star, either enslaving them as they did you, or exterminating them. We were fortunate that our technology is superior, they did not threaten us when we first encountered them. But they already have our propulsion systems. Conflict is inevitable if they continue to expand. And any further expansion must be outward, through our worlds. If we know their extent while our starships remain superior, we may be able to terminate that threat.” “What is your propulsion system? How fast do your ships travel?” “They can jump instantaneously between star systems.” Quantook-LOU’s reaction was enough for Joshua to class him as human, or as near as made no difference. The xenoc emitted a piping squeal, the fore and mid limbs clapping urgently against his front torso. “I am glad I have no eggs in my pouch,” Quantook-LOU said when he had quietened. “I would surely have cracked them.” Marsupial? Joshua wondered idly. “Do you realize what you have in your ship, Captain Joshua Calvert? You are our salvation. We considered ourselves trapped here orbiting this dying star, encircled by our enemies, never to escape as they did. No more.” “I take it you’d like to acquire our propulsion technology?” “Yes. Above all things. We will join your Confederation. You have seen our numbers, our ability. Even with our limited resources, we are vast and powerful. We can build a million warships, a hundred million, and equip them with your propulsion system. The Tyrathca are slow and stupid, they will never match us in time. Together we can embark on a crusade to rid the galaxy of their evil.” “Oh Jesus wept,” Joshua exclaimed over the communication link. “It just keeps getting better. We’re going to let loose a cosmic genocide if the Mosdva ever get ZTT technology. And I’ve a feeling the four of us might not be allowed back to “We can shoot our way through the bubble,” Samuel said. “Get outside and wait in the structure until “It’s not that stressful,” Liol said. “We can give Quantook-LOU any old file full of shit. Hand over the schematics for a deluxe, ten-flavour ice cream maker if you want. He’s not going to know the difference until we’re long gone.” “That’s my brother.” “Right now, you’ve got more immediate troubles. We think the dominions are having some kind of armed conflict. The number of tube breeches is reaching epidemic proportions out here.” “Fucking wonderful.” Joshua scanned round the bubble again. It wouldn’t be too much trouble to break out. And he hadn’t seen a Mosdva in a spacesuit. Yet. “I am prepared to offer you our propulsion system,” he told Quantook-LOU. “In return, I must have all your information concerning the Tyrathca flightships and the stars they colonized. This is not negotiable. They were sending messages back to this star for thousands of years. I want them, and the stellar coordinate system they used. Provide that for me, and you can have your freedom to roam the galaxy.” “Obtaining that information will be difficult. The dominion of Anthi-CL does not keep many Tyrathca files of such antiquity.” “Perhaps other dominions will have what I require.” Joshua’s suit sensors picked up the agitated movements of the seven other Mosdva in the bubble with them. “You will not deal with another dominion,” Quantook-LOU said. “Then find out where that information is kept, and trade for it.” “I will examine the possibility.” Quantook-LOU used a mid-limb to grasp a pipe rim on the surface of the bubble. Five of the electronic modules worn on his harness sprouted slim silver cables. Their ends swung round blindly, and they began to wind through the air with a serpentine wriggle, heading for one of the electronic units bolted to the piping. They plugged themselves into various sockets, and the pattern of lights on the unit’s surface changed rapidly. “Crude, but effective,” Ruben commented. “I wonder how far their neural interface technology extends.” “Captain,” Beaulieu called. “We’re seeing what looks like troop movements around the Anthi-CL dominion.” “You’ve got to be shitting me.” “Mosdva in spacesuits are crawling along the darkside structure. There is no fabrication or maintenance equipment accompanying them. They are most agile.” Joshua didn’t even want to ask what kind of numbers were involved. “Sarha, go to flight readiness status, please. If we need you, we’ll need you fast.” “Acknowledged.” “How long do we wait?” Oski asked. “Give Quantook-LOU another fifteen minutes. After that, we’re out of here.” But the Mosdva stirred after only a couple of minutes. Three of his five cables unplugged themselves, and wound back into their harness modules. “The dominion of Anthi-CL has five files relating to the information you want.” Joshua held up a communication block. “Transmit them over, we’ll see if that’s enough.” “I will release the index only. If this is what you require, we must discuss how to complete the exchange.” “Agreed.” His neural nanonics monitored the short dataflow from the bubble’s electronics into his block. Syrinx and “Sorry, Joshua,” she said. “These are just records of messages transmitted by the arkships. Standard updates on how the voyages are progressing. There’s nothing of any relevance here.” “Any messages sent from Swantic-LI?” “No, we didn’t even get that lucky.” “This information is no good,” Joshua told Quantook-LOU. “There is no more.” “Five files, in the whole of Tojolt-HI? There must be more.” “No.” “Perhaps the other dominions won’t allow you access to their databases. Is that why you’re all at war?” “You have brought this upon us. It is for you we die. Give me the propulsion system. End all our suffering. Does your species have no compassion?” “I have got to have the information.” “Where the Tyrathca live, what planets they have colonized, is irrelevant now. If we have your propulsion system, they will never threaten you again. You will have accomplished your aim.” “I will not give you the propulsion system without receiving the information in exchange. If you cannot provide it, I will find a dominion that will.” “You may not deal with another dominion.” “I do not wish our association to end in threats, Quantook-LOU. Please find the information for me. Surely an alliance with another dominion is a small price to pay for the freedom of all Mosdva.” “There is a place on Tojolt-HI,” Quantook-LOU said. “The information you want might still be stored there.” “Excellent. Then plug in, and make the deal. Anthi-CL has obtained enough new technology from us to buy another dominion.” “This place has no link to the dominions any more. We expelled it long ago.” “All right, time to say hello again. We’ll go there and access the files direct.” “I cannot take you beyond our borders. I no longer know which of our allies remain trustworthy. Our train may not be allowed to pass.” “You forget. I’ve already invited you to visit my starship. We’ll fly. It’s quicker.” Valisk continued to fall through the dark continuum. The ebony nebula outside flickered with faint bolts of phosphorescence, illuminating the giant habitat’s exterior with a feeble glimmer of luminescence as it passed through. Had there been anyone out there who cared, they would have been saddened by how dilapidated it had become. The girders and panels of the counter-rotating spaceport appeared to be fraying with age; around the port’s periphery solid matter was decaying into sluggish liquids. Large dank droplets dripped away from the eroded, tapering ends of titanium support struts, gusting away into the depths of the nebula. Intense cold was punishing the polyp shell badly, devouring the internal heat faster than it could be replenished. Slim cracks were opening up everywhere across the surface, some of them deep enough to reach the outer mitosis layer. Thick tar-like liquids bubbled up through them in places, staining the outer surface an insalubrious sable. Occasionally a chip of polyp would flake away from the edge of a new fissure, drifting away listlessly, as though velocity too was subject to increased entropy. Worst of all, twelve jets of air were fountaining undiminished out of broken starscraper windows, spraying the icy gas in long wavering arcs. They’d been there for days, acting like a beacon for any new Orgathé who glided out of the nebula’s labyrinthine nucleus. The big creatures would squirm their way through to the interior, blocking the blast for a few seconds as they crammed in through the empty rim. Erentz and her relatives all knew about the shrinking atmosphere, but there was nothing they could do to halt it. The darkling habitat cavern belonged to the Orgathé and all the other creatures they’d brought with them. In theory the humans could have made their way to the starscrapers via the tube lines and water ducts. But even if they managed to seal up some of the breaches, the arriving Orgathé would simply smash through new windows. Five caverns deep in the northern endcap had become the last refuge of the surviving humans, chosen because each one had only a couple of entrances. The defenders had adopted a Horatius strategy. A few people armed with flame throwers and incendiary torpedo launchers stood shoulder to shoulder and saturated the passageway with fire whenever one of the creatures tried to get through. Human ghosts hung back during each battle, waiting until the creature retreated before they scampered forward to absorb the sticky fluid it had shed, giving themselves substance again. They formed a strange alliance with the living humans, warning them when one of the dark-continuum creatures was approaching. Though none of them could be persuaded to do anything else. “Can’t say I blame them,” Dariat told Tolton. “We’re as much a target to the creatures as anybody else.” He was one of the very few solid ghosts allowed in the refuge caverns. And even he preferred to skulk about in the small chamber Dr Patan and his team used rather than face the ailing, strung-out bulk of the population. The habitat personality along with Rubra’s remaining relatives had consolidated their survival policy around the single goal of protecting the physics team. A cry for help to the Confederation was their only hope now. And given the state of the habitat, time was short. Tolton had become afraid to ask for progress reports. The answer was always the same. So he hung around with Dariat, unrolling his sleeping bag in the corridor outside the physicists’ chamber, as close to their last chance as he could be without actually getting in the way. The personality or Erentz would give him the odd task to do, where he had to go out into the big cavern again. Usually it was moving some bulky piece of equipment about, or assisting with their small stock of rations. He also stripped and cleaned torpedo launchers ready for the defenders, surprised by how good he was at something so mechanical. At the same time, it meant he knew how low their ammunition was. “Not that it matters,” he complained to Dariat as he flopped down on his sleeping bag after a session cleaning the weaponry. “We’ll suffocate long before then.” “The pressure is down by nearly twenty per cent now. If we could just find some way of sealing the starscrapers, we’d stand a better chance.” Tolton took a deep breath, exhaling slowly. “I don’t know if I can tell yet, or if I’m just imagining the air’s thinner because I know that’s what I should be feeling. Mind you, with that smell coming from next door, who knows.” “Smell is one sense I haven’t regained.” “Take my word for it, in this case that’s a blessing. Ten thousand sick people who haven’t had a bath for a month. I’m amazed the Orgathé don’t turn tail and run screaming.” “They won’t.” “Is there any way we can fight back?” Dariat squatted down. “The personality has considered pumping the light tube.” “Pumping?” “Divert every last watt of electricity into heating the plasma, then switch off the confinement field. We did it before on a small scale. In theory, it should vaporise every fluid-formed creature in the habitat cavern.” “Then do it,” Tolton hissed back. “Firstly, there’s not much power left. Secondly, we’re worried about the cold.” “Cold?” “Valisk has been radiating heat out into this Thoale-cursed realm ever since we got here. The shell is becoming very brittle. Pumping the light tube is like letting off a bomb inside; it might shatter.” “Great,” Tolton griped. “Just fucking great.” He had to pull his feet in as three people staggered past, carrying a not-so-small microfusion generator between them. “Is that for the pumping?” he asked once they’d passed. Dariat was frowning, watching the trio. What are they doing?he asked the personality. They’re going to install the generator back in the Why? I’d thought that was obvious. Thirty of them are going to fly it the hell away from here. Which thirty?he asked angrily. Does it matter? To the others it will. And me. Survival of the fittest. You shouldn’t complain, you’ve had a damn good run. What’s the point? The starships are damn near wrecks. And even if they do get a drive tube running, where are they going to go? As far as they can. The So far. Entropy will eat through it. The whole ship will rot away around them. You know that. We also know it has functional patterning nodes. Maybe the pattern can be formatted to get a signal out to the Confederation. Some kind of energy burst that can punch through. Holy Anstid, is that what we’re reduced to? Yes. Happy now? “They need the generator over in the armoury,” Dariat said. “Their power supply packed in.” He couldn’t look the street poet in the eyes. Tolton grunted indifferently, and pulled the sleeping bag round his shoulders. When he breathed out, he could see his breath as a white mist. “Damn, you were right about the cold.” Can Tolton go with them?dariat asked. We’re sorry. Come on, you are me. Part of you, anyway. You owe me that much out of sentiment. And he was the one who got our relatives out of zero-tau. Do you imagine he will want to go? There are thousands of children cowering in the caverns. Would he walk past them to the airlock without offering to exchange places? Oh shit! If there is to be a token civilian on board, it won’t be him. All right, all right. You win. Happy now? Lady Chi-Ri wouldn’t approve of bitterness. Dariat scowled, but didn’t answer. He went into the neural strata’s administrative thought routines to examine the ships which were still docked at the spaceport. Most of the spaceport’s net had failed, leaving only seven visual sensors operational. He used them to scan round, locating four starships and seven inter-orbit vessels. Of all of them, Wait now,the personality said. The sheer surprise in the thought was so unusual that all the affinity-capable stopped what they were doing to find out what had happened. They shared the image collected by the few external sensitive cells that were still alive. Valisk had reached the end of the nebula and was slowly sliding out. Its boundary was as clearly defined as an atmospheric cloud bank. A plane of slow-shifting grainy swirls stretching away in every direction as far as the sensitive cells could discern. Slivers of pale light trickled among the dull gibbous braids, an infestation of torpid static. There was a gap of perfectly clear space extending for about a hundred kilometres from the end of the nebula. What is that?a badly subdued personality asked. Another flat plane surface ended the gap, running parallel to the nebula, and extending just as far. This one was hoary-grey and looked very solid. Visual interpretation subroutines concentrated on the sight. The entire surface appeared to be moving, seething with tiny persistent undulations. The mélange,dariat said. dread made his counterfeit body tremble as memory fragments from the creature in the lift shaft surfaced to torment him. This is where everything finishes in this realm. The end. Forever . . . Get the “What’s happening?” a puzzled Tolton asked. He looked along the corridor as semi-hysterical shouting broke out in the physicists’ chamber. A stack of glass tubing crashed to the ground. “We’re in trouble,” Dariat said. “As opposed to what we’re in now?” Tolton was trying to make light of it, but the ghost’s conspicuous fear was a strong inhibitor. “So far our time here has been paradise. This is when the dark continuum becomes personal and eternal.” The street poet shuddered. Help us,dariat pleaded. For pity’s sake. I am you. If there’s a single chance to survive, make it happen. A fast surge of information came pouring through the affinity bond, running through his mind with painful intensity. He felt as if his own thoughts were being forced to examine every cubic centimetre of the giant habitat, stretching out to such a thinness they would surely tear. The flow stopped as fast as it began, and his attention was twinned with the personality’s. They looked at the spindle which connected the habitat to the counter-rotating spaceport. Like most of the composite and metal components of the habitat, it was decaying badly. But near the base, just above the huge magnetic bearing buried in the polyp, five emergency escape pods were nesting in their covered berths. Go,the personality said. “Follow me,” Dariat barked at Tolton. He began to jog along the passage towards the main cavern, moving as fast as his bulk would allow. Tolton never hesitated, he jumped to his feet and ran after the solid ghost. The main cavern was in turmoil. The refugees knew something was wrong, but not what. Assuming another attack from the Orgathé, they were shuffling back as far as they could get from the two entrances. Electrophorescent strips on the ceiling were dimming rapidly. Dariat headed for the alcove which served as an armoury. “Get a weapon,” he said. “We might need it.” Tolton snatched up an incendiary torpedo launcher and a belt of ammunition for it. The pair of them headed for the nearest entrance. None of the nervous defenders questioned them as they raced past. Behind them, they could hear Dr Patan’s team shouting and cursing as they ran across the cavern. “Where are we going?” Tolton asked. “The spindle. There’s some emergency escape pods left that didn’t get launched last time I left in a hurry.” “The spindle? That’s in freefall. I always throw up in freefall.” “Listen—” “Yes yes, I know. Freefall is a paradise compared with what’s about to happen.” Dariat ran straight into a group of ghosts waiting at a large oval junction in the passage. They couldn’t see the mélange, none of them were affinity capable, but they could sense it. The aether was filling with the misery and torment of the diminished souls it had claimed. “Out of my way!” Dariat bellowed. He clamped his hand over the face of the first ghost, pulling energy out of her. She screamed and stumbled away from him. Her outline rippled, sagging downwards with a soft squelching sound. The others backed off fast, staring in wounded accusation with pale forlorn faces. Dariat turned off down one of the junction’s side passages. Light from the overhead strips was fading rapidly now. “You got a torch?” he asked. “Sure.” Tolton patted the lightstick hanging from his belt. “Save it till you really need it. I should be able to help.” He held up a hand and concentrated. The palm lit up with a cold blue radiance. They came out into a wider section of the passage. There’d been some kind of firefight here; the polyp walls were charred, the electrophorescent strip shattered and blackened with soot. Tolton felt his world constricting, and took the safety off the launcher. Dariat stood in front of a closed muscle membrane, barely his own height, that was set into the wall. He focused his thoughts and the rubbery stone parted with great reluctance, the lips puckering with trembling motions. Air whistled out, turning into a strong gust as the membrane opened further. There was no light at all inside. “What is this?” Dariat asked. “Secondary air duct. It should take us right up to the hub.” Tolton shuddered reluctantly, and stepped inside. Valisk had cleared the nebula, its great length taking several minutes to complete the transfer into clear space. The spaceport was the last section to leave it behind. Four lights gleamed brightly around the rim of the docking bay which held the The windows looking out onto the bay flickered with light as the desperate crew hauled themselves past the maintenance team offices; oxygen masks clamped to their face, torches shining ahead of them. A couple of minutes later, the starship began to show some signs of activity. Thin gases flooded out of nozzles around the lower quarter of the hull. One of the thermo dump panels slid out of its recess and started to glow a faint pink at the centre. The airlock tube disengaged, withdrawing several metres before lurching to a halt. Clamps around the docking cradle flicked back, releasing the hull. Chemical thrusters around the starship’s equator fired, sending out shimmering plumes of hot yellow gas. They tore straight through the bay’s structural panels, creating a vicious blowback of atmospheric gas from the life-support sections. The More powerful chemical rockets ignited, propelling the starship away from the spaceport. One of them exploded, its combustion chamber weakened by exposure to the dark continuum. The starship pitched to one side, then recovered. It began to climb steadily towards the nebula. An Orgathé swooped out from the percolating gunge and descended on the starship. Its talons tore through the hull plates, shredding the equipment underneath. The rockets died amid a shower of sapphire sparks. Fluids and vapour streamed out from deep clefts. A second Orgathé joined the first, the huge creatures tugging the starship violently between them. Big chunks of metal and composite were ripped free, twirling off into the void. The creatures were eagerly clawing their way through the tanks and machinery to reach the life support capsules and the kernels of life-energy cowering inside. There was a final spew of gas as the capsules were punctured, then the Orgathé were still as they consumed their ephemeral meal. The habitat personality had little time for remorse, or even anger. It was watching the surface of the mélange as it grew closer. The incessant motion was becoming clearer, an agitated ocean of thick fluid. Closer, and a billion different species of xenocs were drowning in that ocean, their appendages, tentacles, and limbs writhing against each other as they strove to keep afloat. Closer still, and the bodies were actually forming themselves from the fluid and clawing madly to lift themselves into the void above, a brief existence of useless strife and wasted energy before they collapsed and dissipated back into the mélange. If they were lucky, peaks would arise as souls merged together, combining their strength as they sacrificed identity. Those at the pinnacle stretched themselves further and further, quivering to break free. Only once did the personality see an Orgathé, or something similar, sweep upwards, newborn and victorious. When we hit that, the amount of energy we contain is going to blow a hole clean through to the other side,the personality said shakily. There is no other side,dariat said. Just as there is no hope.every part of his body ached from the climb up through the air duct. He had forced himself to keep going, at first hiking up the slope, then as the gravity fell off, pulling himself along a near-vertical shaft with his arms. Then why do you keep going? Instinct and stupidity, I suppose. If I can delay entry into the mélange by a day, then that’s a day less suffering. A day out of eternity? Does that matter? To me, now. Yes. It matters. I’m human enough to be terrified. Then you’d better hurry. The southern endcap was within twenty kilometres of the melange. Ahead of it, the surface was churning with activity. Huge peaks were jabbing up as melting bodies climbed on top of each other so they could be the first to touch the shell and feast on the life-energy within. Dariat reached the end of the duct and commanded the muscle membrane to open. They air-swam out into one of the main corridors leading to the hub chamber. Tolton had fastened his lightstick to the launcher, as he’d seen Erentz do. He swept the beam round the black corridor in an alert fashion. “Any bad guys around here?” “No. In any case, they’re all waiting for the impact. Nothing’s moving in the habitat.” “I’m not surprised. I can taste the horror; it’s physical, like I’ve overloaded on downer activants. Shit.” He smiled brokenly at Dariat. “I’m frightened, man. Really frightened. Is there any way a soul can die here, die completely? I don’t want to join the mélange. Not that.” “I’m sorry. It can’t be done. You have to live.” “Fuck! What kind of a universe is this anyway?” Dariat led Tolton into the darkened hub chamber and held his hand high, letting the energy pulse recklessly. The resulting burst of light revealed the geometry: silent doors leading to the spindle commuter cabs, hoop avenues down to the tube train stations. He aimed himself at a door leading to the engineering section and kicked off. The corridors on the other side were metal, lined with grab hoops. They slithered along them quickly, using the manual controls to get past airlock hatches. The air was freezing but breathable. Tolton’s teeth started chattering. “Here we go,” Dariat said. The escape pod’s circular hatch was open. He somersaulted in, vaguely unnerved by the familiar layout. Twelve acceleration couches were laid out around him. He chose the one under the solitary instrument panel and started flicking switches. Same sequence as last time. The hatch hinged shut automatically. Lights came on with reluctance, and the environment pumps started to whine. Tolton held his hands up in front of the grille, catching the warm air. “God, it was “Strap in, we’re about to leave.” The personality watched the tip of the southern endcap touch the surface of the melange. I am proud of all of you,it told rubra’s descendants. Fluid cratered away from the impact, then rushed back to slam against the shell. Hundreds of thousands of berserk souls surfed it inwards and penetrated the polyp to immerse themselves in the magnificent tide of life-energy coursing within, absorbing it directly. The temperature difference between fluid and polyp was too great for the habitat’s weakened shell to withstand. The existing fissures flexed wildly as thermal stresses tightened their grip. Dariat activated the pod’s jettison sequence. Explosive bolts cut away the berth’s outer shielding, and five of the solid rockets fired. They were flung clear of the spindle, racing out level with the surface of the melange. Goodbye,the personality said. the accompanying sorrow brought tears to Dariat’s eyes. Valisk burst apart as if a fusion bomb had detonated inside. Thousands of human souls came fluttering out of the billowing core of hot gas and crumbling polyp slabs, indestructible phantoms naked in the darkness. As with all life in the dark continuum, they sank into the mélange and began their suffering. The solid rocket burn ended, leaving the escape pod in freefall. Dariat looked out of the small port, seeing very little. He twisted the joystick, firing the cold gas thrusters to roll the pod. Grey smears slashed past outside. “I can see the mélange, I think,” he reported faithfully. In his mind he was aware of the wailing and torment gushing from the awesome conglomeration of pitiful souls. It chilled his own resolution. There could be only one fate here. Amid the misery were several steely strands of more purposeful and malignant thought. One of them was growing stronger. Nearer, Dariat realized. “Something’s out there.” He tilted the joystick again, spinning the pod quickly. Pale blooms of light emerged deep inside the nebula, silhouetting a speck that whirled and shook as it arrowed towards them. “Shit, it’s one of the Orgathé.” He and Tolton stared mutely at each other. The street poet twitched feebly. “I can’t even say it’s been fun.” “There are five solid rockets left. We can fire them and fly back into the nebula.” “Won’t we just wind up here again?” “Yes. Eventually. But it’ll be another day or two out of the mélange.” “I’m not sure it makes that much difference to me now.” “Then again, we could fire them when the Orgathé reaches us, fry the bastard.” “It’s only doing what we’d do.” “Last choice, we can fire the rockets to take us into the mélange.” “Into! What use will that be?” “None whatsoever. Even if we don’t break apart on impact we’ll melt away into the fluid over a few days.” “Or fly straight through to the other side.” “There isn’t one.” “You never know unless you try. Besides, this way has the most style.” “Style, huh.” They both grinned. Dariat rolled the pod again, getting a rough alignment on the mélange. He fired two of the solid rockets. Any more, and they really would crack open when they reached it. The cold will probably do it anyway, he thought. There was three seconds of five-gee acceleration, then they hit. The deceleration jolt was fearsome, flinging Tolton against the couch’s straps. He groaned at the pain, bracing himself for the worst. But the pod’s thermal coating held, defying the devastating subcryonic temperature of the mélange. The pod juddered sluggishly as its rocket motors continued to fire, thrusting them deeper and deeper below the surface. Both of them could hear the cacophony of souls outside, their shock and dismay as the rocket exhaust vaporized the fluid in which they were suspended. The cries grew fainter the further in they went. After fifteen seconds the rockets burnt out. Tolton’s laugh had an unstable timbre. “We made it.” The port had frosted over as soon as they struck the fluid. He reached over and tried to wipe the beads of ice clear. His hand stuck to the glass. “Bugger!” He lost some skin pulling it free. “Now what do we do?” “Absolutely nothing.” |
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