Needle, page 18
Like all Sakurans, Taddeus had been trained from childhood to retreat from the vicinity of a bloom. Centuries of bitter experience had taught his ancestors that horrible, inevitable death followed for anyone caught by the black mist. Once touched, nothing could be done to save them and it was worse than useless to try, because the bloom would jump from one person to another, and with each jump, one more person would be lost. The best anyone could do for the future of Volo’s Landing was to save themselves.
So when Abby described the bloom, Taddeus reacted automatically, retreating to the gel membrane, transiting it when his turn came, joining his companions there in the lock—where they all remained, packed shoulder to shoulder. A small, crowded space, and quiet. Too quiet. All the familiar faces made strange by expressions of shock and despair. His own face surely the same.
He looked for the visitors, but saw only Shoran and Riffan, both packed in tight at the center of the crush. Where was Clemantine?
Someone murmured in a high-pitched voice, “Okinowa is lost.”
Someone else said, “Hush.”
It was true, though. Taddeus had seen Okinowa caught by the bloom, along with the visitor, Abby. Who else would be lost?
Kev and Firiah came next through the membrane, crowding in behind Taddeus. As they did, Taddeus felt his kisheer ripple at his shoulders. The kisheers of all his companions began to ripple too—a sign that available oxygen in the lock had already grown scarce.
Aurelius emerged from the membrane. “I’m the last,” he announced grimly. “Kisheers up! Save what oxygen is left—except you, Umeji.”
Umeji carried a tablet she’d been using to make a video record of the tour. Aurelius told her, “Message our people. Let them know what’s happened, that we’re here in quarantine for the next three hours . . .” At a quaver in his voice he paused, closed his eyes, and then continued. “Let them know, four lost. One of our own . . . three of our guests.”
Three guests . . .
An announcement that drew horrified whispers and moans of despair. The implication of it went beyond the loss of four lives. Their future may have died in that grow room. What chance now that the visitors would offer them any aid, when three of their delegation would not be returning?
“Kisheers up!” Aurelius insisted.
This time, Taddeus obeyed. The membrane of his kisheer rippled up from his shoulders to cover his mouth and nose and ears. Tendrils of it entered his mouth, flowed into his throat. During the seconds it took for the tendrils to merge with the tiny papillae lining his mouth and throat, he endured a familiar sense of suffocation. Then, as the kisheer bonded fully, he no longer had any urge to breathe, and the kisheer took on its task of converting the carbon dioxide in his blood back into usable oxygen.
With his ears sealed, Taddeus could hear nothing. But he could see that Shoran was still unmasked and that she was speaking emphatically, apparently addressing Aurelius across the crowd. Aurelius listened and then shook his head, his mouth forming the word no.
Alarmed at the possibility that Aurelius, in his temper, would reject some reasonable request or even threaten the visitors, Taddeus reached out to him past Kev. He squeezed Aurelius’s shoulder and when he had his attention he signed in swift gestures, What does she say?
Aurelius, eyes red with grief, signed back, She wants us to believe they are all still alive.
But Aurelius didn’t believe it; Taddeus could see that. And it was easy to imagine him blaming the visitors for what had happened. Taddeus knew, that regardless of the oxygen level, he needed to be the reasonable voice in this conversation.
Hold on, he signed as he triggered the reflex that would release his kisheer.
<><><>
Clemantine listened to Okinowa’s rasping breathing. It sounded bad, but it wasn’t getting worse. Jolly’s trick really had helped to stop the deterioration of her lungs. But she wasn’t out of danger yet. Far from it.
“Shoran, what’s your status?” she asked over the team channel.
Shoran responded immediately, her usual good humor gone. *I’m in the lock along with Riffan and the rest of the tour. It’s tight in here, but we’re fine. The problem is, local protocol calls for us to quarantine here for three hours. That’s what they do to ensure no bloom spores have infected them.
“Not acceptable,” Clemantine said. She had no real familiarity with the physiological limits of unaugmented humans, but in the historical dramas she’d watched, they were fragile creatures. “Okinowa is alive now, but I don’t know for how long. She has no somatic Makers to repair her injuries, and those injuries make her vulnerable to the cold. Tell that to Aurelius. Tell him I need to get her to the landing ship.”
*I’ve been talking to him, telling him what I see in there. But he’s skeptical. Stand by. Let me try again to convince him.
A minute passed, and then another. The only sound: Okinowa’s troubled breathing.
“Shoran?”
*Still here. It’s a no-go. The people here are terrified of the bloom. That’s what they call it. From what Taddeus said, I think it’s an artifact left over from the original ecology of D-1. It’s drawn to warmth. That’s why it’s more of a problem in the grow rooms, and it’s why the rooms are isolated. The bloom migrates through the ice. The Sakurans conduct regular patrols, watching for early signs of outbreaks, and burn them out when they find them. That’s what Okinowa tried to do.
“But she was too late,” Abby said bitterly.
Riffan spoke: *It was our fault. Our arrival distracted them. The patrols fell off. They weren’t as frequent, or as thorough.
“It was our fault,” Abby agreed, a slight nervous tremor in her voice. “The bloom burst when it did, because the scout-bot tapped it open.”
“We’ll analyze the details later,” Clemantine snapped. “The bloom has passed. Our priority now is to get Okinowa to the landing ship.”
Shoran said, *I’m working on it, Cee. But right now, Aurelius doesn’t mean to let you out at all.
*It’s their protocol, Riffan explained. *An infected chamber is closed off for at least a ten-day. They have no other means to counter a bloom, except to isolate it.
Clemantine considered this. She needed to get Okinowa out quickly, without a fight, and without debate or confrontation. Was it possible to engineer a back door?
She glanced around the grow room, calculating what it would take to create an alternate exit to the surface. They were outside D-1’s native tunnel system; it could be done. But it would require time that Okinowa did not have.
A new voice broke in over the team channel: *I am here, and I can fix this.
Clemantine gritted her teeth, recognizing the unexpected and unwelcome voice of the Cryptologist. Why was that creature here?
But then she chided herself. ‘Why’ was a question to be pursued later. Right now, she needed to persuade the Sakurans to allow her to save Okinowa’s life, and if the Cryptologist had an idea, Clemantine wanted to hear it. “You have a way of getting Okinowa out of here?”
*No. That would require diplomacy, a field in which I have little talent.
The scout-bot stirred as the Cryptologist spoke, scuttling closer to Okinowa. It raised a wiry limb, exposing the sensor pad at its end.
“Are you doing that?” Clemantine asked.
*I am.
Moving slowly, cautiously, the bot tapped at the corrupted tissue of Okinowa’s face. Then it reached between her parted lips to sample the tissue of her mouth, and the chemicals in her panting breath. As it worked, the Cryptologist explained her plan:
*A course of customized somatic Makers is required to return this being to a fully functional state. I have now acquired tissue samples and am using the resources of Pytheas’s library to create that course.
*Are you sure you know what you’re doing? Shoran asked uneasily.
*No. I know very little about this process. However, it may reassure you to know that I am working under the supervision of the Bio-mechanic—though time-delayed, of course.
“All right,” Clemantine said.
It was a good solution. It might even work. Far easier to deliver a course of somatic Makers to Okinowa than to try to get her out past the determined resistance of her people.
“You’ll need to generate a new scout-bot to make the delivery.”
*Unnecessary, the Cryptologist replied with unflagging confidence. *I’ve already recalled one from the forest.
“Get it on its way to us as quickly as you can.”
*I will do so.
“Shoran—it’s up to you to persuade Aurelius to let that bot through.”
*Already done. Taddeus has reminded him what his ancestors were capable of and what his people lost—and might yet regain if they cooperate. And Taddeus has made it known that Okinowa is his partner, his lover. If she walks through that membrane on her own, whole and uninjured, Aurelius is not going to send her back.
<><><>
They moved Okinowa into the lush warmth of the greenhouse, laying her down in the aisle between walls of beans and squash. After that, all they could do was wait and hope.
Clemantine tapped Shoran’s video feed. She saw the lock, crammed with Sakurans standing shoulder to shoulder between the gel membranes, breathing through the veils of their kisheers as they waited out their quarantine. Riffan had his hood up and sealed. Only Shoran, Aurelius, and Taddeus remained unmasked—a necessary accommodation allowing them to talk to one another.
While Taddeus remained the diplomat, the Sakurans’ quiet leader glared at Shoran, his face set in a hard, angry expression, so typically male—an emotional mask that did not quite hide his worry and his grief.
Clemantine said, “Shoran, I’m riding you. Tell Aurelius I can see him, hear him, and that I want my questions answered, now, while there’s nothing else for us to do but wait. And my first question is, how the hell did his people end up here?”
When Aurelius heard this, his shoulders sagged as if with some deep, internal sigh of resignation. He turned to Taddeus. “You tell it. Tell them our story and whatever else they want to know.”
Chapter
26
There was little room to move in the lock, and when anyone did it set off a wave of motion. One person would bump into two or three around them, and those in turn would gently collide with neighbors until the whole crowd shifted in the microgravity. Then Taddeus, who bided on the perimeter, would be pushed against the icy wall, only to bounce off again, and the wave would move in the opposite direction.
Tell them our story, Aurelius had commanded.
Adrift at the edge of the little chamber, light-headed from the low oxygen and his kisheer rippling its warning, Taddeus took several seconds to gather his thoughts. And then he spoke—softly, cautiously, his words only slowly gathering momentum.
“Our story begins long ago, when our ancestors looked back toward older star systems—those that had been settled before any great ship reached Sakura—and in all those systems they observed rapid transformations. Impossible evolutions. It all seemed impossible, as if planets were being reshaped into swarms of orbital structures so huge and so plentiful they began to eclipse the light of the parent star.”
Aurelius listened and signed to the others what he was saying, so they would know.
“In this time, the people of Sakura began to change too, infected by a religious fervor that induced them to seek a state of oneness, of unity, of communion with all life—or so they described it. A state of bliss in which every singular entity would become but a facet of the whole.
“Not all were swept up in this movement, though. Some few thousand stood apart, fearful of what was happening all around them. Estranged from family and friends, they found each other and together resolved to escape the madness that had taken over their people.
“Placing their lives and their futures into the care of a great ship, they entered the vessel’s cold sleep chambers, certain that when they woke again, they would be in a new star system where they could start over without repeating the mistakes of the past.”
Taddeus paused to take several deep breaths, striving to catch up on an oxygen deficit. Then he resumed, saying, “Of course, that is not what happened. That great ship and the mind embodied within it was very old. He had visited every settled system between Sakura and Sol. He had carried the first settlers to several of those systems, and he carried people and information between them. He feared and hated what was happening to the worlds he had nurtured and loved.
“From his logs, we know he fell into a deep and hopeless melancholy, and ultimately erased himself from existence—leaving the ship to fare on, while centuries slipped past.
“The first cold sleep chamber to fail was that of Volo Li Kubba. An automated system woke her. Imagine her shock when she discovered what had happened, and the incomprehensible span of time now lost.”
He paused again, his gaze downcast and a bitter smile on his lips, self-conscious because he bore the surname of his distant ancestor and because his feelings toward her had always been mixed. Another deep breath.
“Volo resolved to handle the situation by herself. She woke no one, later explaining she did not want to subject anyone else to the horror she felt, lost and alone in the vast dark nullity between the stars. All on her own, she decided the voyage had been a mistake and it was her task now to take her people home.”
Another pause, more deep breaths. Unsure how long he could keep going, he told an abbreviated story.
“Volo was very clever. She immersed herself in the ship’s library and soon learned to pilot. Her first task was to bring the ship around in a great arc, and then she charted a course back to Sakura—and more time slipped past.
“Then another cold sleep chamber failed and its occupant awoke. Our history doesn’t remember the name of this person. We only know that as she grasped what had happened, she panicked. Defying Volo, she woke all the others—and chaos ensued.”
Taddeus closed his eyes a moment. He’d had nightmares about that tragedy, though it had all fallen out centuries before his birth.
He said, “The great ship, of course, had neither the room nor the resources for so many people. All knew it, but while they had been in cold sleep, a great wave of ruin had washed over the known worlds. The mysterious swarms of gigantic orbital structures had all vanished, replaced by drifting wreckage. Aboard the great ship, fear and uncertainty ruled. None would entrust themselves to cold sleep again, not without new leadership and a consensus on their future course.
“Hours passed, factions formed, and no consensus could be reached. Many supported Volo’s actions, but more were furious that she had taken it upon herself to end the outward journey and risk a return to lost Sakura. In the packed spaces of the great ship, with too little to eat and not enough oxygen to breathe—”
Taddeus paused, giving in to a moment of soft, cynical laughter at the gasping irony of his present situation. And then he forged on.
“In those bitter circumstances, violence broke out. A contagious violence. Many died, and Volo lost control of the ship.
“In the end, the survivors brokered a bitter compromise. They would proceed to the nearest settled system along their present course. Once there, those who did not wish to resume the outward voyage would leave the ship.
“That system was Tanjiri,” Taddeus said. “The ship’s library told them they should find a thriving civilization there, but the telescopes revealed something other: a system gone silent and dark, encircled by a bizarre halo of giant structures. And the planetary census did not match the library’s records.
“All feared to come here, but given the ship’s limited resources, and the bitter, uneasy peace between the factions, they had no real choice.
“At first, Volo promised her faction that despite the radio silence, a thriving civilization was sure to be found among the outer structures. And for such a great people, it would be nothing to construct a new ship, a mythical ship to take them home. She persuaded many who had stood against her before.”
Taddeus shook his head, forever puzzled by his ancestors—what they had chosen to believe and their inexplicable decisions dooming their descendants.
“No sign of life was ever detected among the megastructures—and Volo declared this a good thing, as if she’d never promised anything else. She assured her faction, that with no one to stand in their way, it would be easy to harvest what was needed to repair and resupply the ship, and then go home—and her faction was happy to believe. But those who controlled the ship were not.
“They did not want to go faring between the stars. Declaring they’d traveled long enough, they proposed to stay, to become Tanjirians. But they worried that ancient hazards haunted the broken megastructures.” A slight pause, allowing everyone to reflect on the coincidence of this story being told in the shadow of a bloom. “Anyway, they wanted to take the ship in-system, make a home there, build their own celestial city . . .”
He shrugged. “The two sides could not agree, and while the would-be Tanjirians controlled the ship, Volo now commanded the majority. She had convinced people the voyage had been a mistake. She told them they could go home, that home still existed just as they remembered it.”
Another long sigh.
“I don’t know how they could have believed this. They were very frightened, I know, and they wanted to believe it even when the ship’s telescopes told a very different story. But Volo would not be contradicted. She insisted the images of Sakura that showed it like Tanjiri, encircled by ruins, were all fake . . . and our ancestors chose to believe her.
“With hatred between the factions and no possibility of compromise, violence broke out again—but only briefly, because our enemies abruptly abandoned the great ship.
“These new Tanjirians had installed a copy of the library aboard the only landing ship.” Taddeus heard the bitter note that had entered his voice, but he could not help it. “They took that ship, and they left us. And they left the great ship sabotaged.”
