Needle, page 20
No one tried to restrain her when she finally waved goodbye and departed into the void. And still Urban did not relax. Not until she was aboard the lander, safely strapped into her couch, with the engines firing to bring her home.
Pytheas would stay until the new library was ready. After that, the Sakurans would be on their own.
Chapter
28
Dragon continued dumping velocity as it passed through the belt of ruins. In that interval, the lander returned home. The courser’s hull opened to receive it. And the landing team disembarked to a riot of welcoming hugs and eager questions.
Urban closed his eyes and breathed in Clemantine’s subtle sweet scent, his arms around her, cupping her head, basking in the warmth of her body. “I missed you.”
“Huh. You always say that.”
“Thank you for bringing Jolly back unbroken.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I was worried the Sakurans would try to stop you leaving.”
She sighed. “I worried a little too. They are desperate, and I think they considered it. I would have, in their place. But they must have realized they had little to gain by it, and everything to lose.” She drew back. “But we should have stayed longer, Urban. We should have helped them through this transition.”
He looked away. A twinge of guilt, because what he wanted was to put the Sakurans behind them. “The Scholar is there for now, guiding them, helping them to get set up with somatic Makers, and atriums, and teaching them how to use the library. It’s enough. It’s up to them to decide what to do next, and who they want to be.”
“Huh. Maybe Tanjiri’s entity has chosen that same strategy for us? Or have you encountered that mind again?”
“No.”
She must have seen some shadow in his expression. “You’ve tried, though. Haven’t you?”
He shrugged, not wanting to answer, to explain how that first encounter haunted him. For all his life, he’d sought knowledge and the strength it brought him—not to dominate, but to protect, to secure his own identity, and his freedom, and the freedom of those he cared for.
But everything he’d gained counted for nothing in the shadow of Tanjiri’s entity.
A ripple of quiet terror ran through him. On this path he had set for himself he would have to trust to the good will of a being far greater than himself—and that level of trust was not part of his nature.
“It’s early,” he said at last. “We still have a long way to go.”
<><><>
The bloom had chewed Okinowa’s long fingers to stumps, but they were regrowing, the porcelain scales of her exoskeleton replicating day by day, hiding within them her vulnerable flesh. She raised a hand, half-length fingers curved and claw-like. Hideous.
The Scholar—that strange entity that had initially inhabited the new library—had assured her that in time she would be whole again, and beautiful. Healing was a process, limited by the physiological constraints of her body, and priority had been given to the growth of her atrium.
With a newly smooth knuckle, she stroked the fading scars on her face. In the library, her ghost had no scars and its long fingers were fully formed.
The Scholar had taught all the people how to generate a ghost and how to use that mirror-being, that ethereal reflection of the self, to directly access the library. He had shown them how, within that form, they could wander a maze of knowledge, room after room of histories. But like her fingers, the library was still growing and its computational strata could not yet support any population of ghosts greater than two. Not with all the Dull Intelligences the Scholar had deployed to assist the people in this, their new life.
But there was a simpler, slower way to access the library, open to all. Using her knuckle, Okinowa tapped the blank face of a freshly generated tablet, waking it. And with her atrium, she summoned the attention of a DI.
At the first flush of their new-found power, most of the people had assumed they would regrow the great ship and set out for a more hospitable system. But Taddeus had argued otherwise.
“We can stay here at Volo’s Landing. No need to risk a crossing, or take the chance of being met by hostile elements in some distant star system. Not when we have unlimited resources here and the ability to manipulate them in any way we choose. Now that we have a working library, we can shape Volo’s Landing into whatever form of paradise we choose.”
The Scholar had affirmed the validity of this argument. Okinowa still wondered if it was the Scholar who had first proposed this path . . . but never mind that. She had supported Taddeus from the start, she’d won over Aurelius, and in the end the vote to stay had been unanimous. The people would remain at Volo’s Landing, and together create a great city on the rim of Tanjiri System.
With the Scholar’s guidance, Taddeus had already assembled a team and embarked on the project. The first step: to grow a huge radio antenna that allowed them to communicate with the Dragoneers’ great ship as it grew ever more distant on its journey toward the center of the system. The Scholar stayed on until the antenna matured. Just today, he had exchanged a series of test messages with the distant vessel. Satisfied with the antenna’s functioning, he had departed on his little robotic ship, leaving the people, once again, on their own.
Okinowa had waited patiently for this day. Only now could she and Aurelius safely use the resources of the library for their own essential project.
“We must strike hard and fast and without warning,” she had told him. “Not just to repay the defectors for their vicious history, but to ensure they can never bring harm to us again.”
<><><>
As Dragon completed its transit of the belt of ruins, it entered into a region of empty space—fearfully empty. No dust. No debris. Scarcely a stray molecule.
Urban had once had the Astronomer and the Mathematician work out estimates of the non-stellar mass of Tanjiri System as it had been, and as it was observed to be now—and they had calculated that at least eighty percent of its original mass had gone missing.
The Astronomer had speculated that some of this missing matter might eventually be found in dark structures far from the star . . . but Urban no longer gave credence to that idea.
On the high bridge, sharing that intimate space with both Clemantine and Pasha, he said, *I think the missing mass is just gone and this absence, this emptiness, is a signature of war.
*Of war? Pasha asked.
Clemantine understood him better. *You’re thinking about Artemis.
*Sooth.
At Verilotus, a trio of dimensional missiles had pursued the outrider, enfolding it in a blister of white light. And when that light winked out, Artemis was gone, excised from existence, without even dust or vapor left behind.
Urban described a dark vision. *Imagine a million missiles blossoming all throughout the swarm that used to veil Tanjiri. Each missile, capable of erasing a great swath of matter. Megastructures gone in moments. Leaving nothingness, where life used to be. What we see, what remains here, even with the Trinity . . . it’s a small fraction of what used to be.
He sensed nothing, no dust at all, impacting Dragon’s vast hull.
Space was not empty. Even in the void between stars, the density of matter averaged nearly a molecule per cubic centimeter. But here in this empty gulf, even that profoundly thin population of molecules was mostly absent. The result: a poisonous purity of empty space that Urban could interpret only as evidence of a merciless, murderous war.
He locked down his horror, preventing it from spilling over to the philosopher cells. On the gee deck, his avatar shuddered, all too aware of the immense destructive power that he himself commanded.
He swore a silent oath, yet again, that he would never use it, except at the direst need.
<><><>
At Volo’s Landing, Okinowa immersed herself in the library, marveling at the knowledge it contained. The wisdom of millennia. Of hundreds of civilizations. Nearly everything—everything she could think of—had been done somewhere, somewhen, with the knowledge of how to do it preserved within the library’s records, along with notes on the possible hazards and all that might go wrong.
And the library did not demand that she understand how to design an efficient nanomachine or a rocket engine. Neither did the Dull Intelligences need to know the details of such things as they assisted her. They merely located preexisting plans, aiding and advising as she set her own plans in motion.
Simple robots came first. She sent them beyond the forest’s edge, where useful matter could be found in abundance among the ice-clad cells of the megastructure. They synthesized vast quantities of rocket fuel and, more slowly, they grew rocket engines.
The design of the new city was still being worked out when Okinowa presented her own plan to protect it. “The remnants of our great ship are a hazard,” she announced at a general assembly. “For a long time now, they’ve been drifting slowly closer to the forest. Any slight gravitational perturbation could disturb their orbits and bring them down into the forest—or into the city. It’s time we pushed them away. Far away, eliminating all chance of collision.”
Aurelius added, “More than that, we don’t need a reminder of our suffering hanging over our heads.”
Not everyone supported this idea. Taddeus suggested the fragments served as a memorial to the bravery and valor of their ancestors. But Okinowa and Aurelius remained stubbornly determined. With everyone distracted by their own projects, they soon won a grudging agreement.
Okinowa meant to keep her word. She would use her new rocket engines to push the two massive fragments of the great ship far from Volo’s Landing. No one had asked where she meant to send them, and only Aurelius had taken the time to review her plans.
“It will work,” he’d concluded.
Okinowa had learned from the library about the potency of simple kinetic weapons: mass multiplied by extreme velocity yielded extreme destruction. The library had even calculated a launch window and burn rates sufficient to deliver her kinetic missiles to their intended targets. And once launched, those missiles could not be recalled.
Chapter
29
“Has the Cryptologist taken you for a lover?” Abby asked on an evening many ten-days after the landing team returned to Dragon.
She and Jolly lay entwined in the bedroom of his cottage, at peace—or so Jolly thought—after a delicious, exhausting hour of lovemaking. Now wariness stirred. He felt himself on guard.
“Answer,” she insisted.
Jolly didn’t think she was asking out of jealousy. They were not monogamous. Both had other lovers . . . though Abby had turned to him more often since Volo’s Landing. “You don’t like her, do you?”
Abby pulled away, allowing cool air to rush into the space between them. Propping herself on an elbow, she looked down at him with her pretty blue eyes and asked again, “Is she your lover?”
“Yes.”
It had begun just a few days earlier, here in his cottage, on the sofa and in this bed. He’d wanted it; he’d been thinking about it for a long time and he thought the Cryptologist had been thinking about it too, but he surprised her with his desire. She had questioned him, curious as always, enthusiastic in the end.
“Why don’t you like her?” Jolly asked.
Abby wrinkled her nose. “She’s not a real person.”
“Of course she is.”
“No. She’s an artificial entity. A biologically instantiated program. A tool. Vytet thinks so.”
“Vytet’s wrong. He might have thought he was creating a tool, but the Cryptologist is just as human as you or me or Vytet, no matter how she came to be. She doesn’t deserve your hate, Abby.”
“I don’t hate her.” Abby spoke with quiet intensity. “But I don’t think her feelings for you are real. She’ll use you, Jolly, if that’s what it takes to get where she wants to go. You will never be more important to her than the task she was born to solve.”
“Did Vytet tell you that too?” he demanded.
Abby did not flinch from his rising anger. “I love you, Jolly, and I don’t want to see you hurt.”
<><><>
Every thirty hours Dragon received a scheduled radio communication from Volo’s Landing—an update on the Sakurans’ progress. The news, relayed by Taddeus, was always positive. With the help of the library’s DIs, the Sakurans had stabilized both their health and their food supply. They had generated new equipment, from tablets to artificial wombs, and the planning for their great city, New Sakura, was well underway.
Each update reinforced Clemantine’s opinion that the Sakurans were a practical, adaptable people. She no longer worried they would lose their way. Her concern had shifted to the “defectors”—the silent sunward faction.
“What has become of them?” she mused—a wandering thought, inadvertently spoken aloud.
She sat with Vytet and Pasha at a low table in the dining terrace, surrounded by a soft hum of conversations from other tables. Beyond the winding vines that climbed the terrace’s pergola, the gee deck’s artificial sky blushed with subtle sunset colors. A solitary cricket chirped from somewhere close by.
“Who are you thinking of?” Pasha asked, eyes narrowed as if Clemantine had presented her with a delectable puzzle. “I can imagine so many options.”
Vytet laid down his chopsticks, head cocked in a thoughtful expression. Speaking softly, his voice a low burr, he said, “All these vast distances leave us with inexplicable mysteries in every direction. It’s haunting. What is the fate of our people at Deception Well? What is the situation at Verilotus?”
A smile from Pasha, her green eyes sparkling. “And all the people of the Hallowed Vasties—what became of them? It’s only the Sakurans who ever tell us how they’re doing.”
“Exactly that,” Clemantine replied. “Six hundred years ago, when the Sakurans first arrived at Tanjiri, they were met by radio silence. Since then, their sunward faction has established a city close to the living world, creating the Trinity. That’s our theory. But the inner system remains as silent as when the Sakurans first came.”
Vytet’s puzzled brown eyes regarded her from beneath heavy eyebrows. She met his gaze, saying, “You and I, we were there when our people first came to Deception Well, when we first entered the city.”
His lips pressed together; he looked away.
“You found a dead city,” Pasha said softly.
Vytet crossed his arms. “No, it was not dead. It was full of life. The parks and gardens all lush and overgrown, rustling with the movements of lizards and small mammals and the darting shapes of birds, the air alive with birdsong. It was only the people that had died. All of them, gone to bones.”
“Sooth,” Clemantine breathed. “Here, now, we know a faction of the Sakurans went sunward, and sometime after that the celestial city took shape. It might be that they thrived for a time, but why the silence?” She sighed, shook her head. “It’s so much like Deception Well, that—”
An alert interrupted her; she caught her breath. Vytet’s eyes widened and Pasha clutched the edge of the table—reactions that told Clemantine they’d received the alert too.
A DI spoke within her atrium: *A stealthed vessel has been detected, less than ten thousand kilometers from Dragon. It is of the same class as the initially encountered chameleon vessel.
*And it was only detected now? Clemantine demanded. *Already so close?
*That is correct. This chameleon vessel was noted during the standard telescopic survey.
*Why didn’t radar pick it out before?
*Because the vessel follows Dragon, while the ship’s radar looks ahead.
Clemantine asked no more questions. Instead, she generated a ghost, sending it to join Urban on the high bridge, arriving only a moment ahead of Pasha’s ghost.
Immediately, she felt herself immersed in a sea of hostility. The philosopher cells had noticed the intruder too—and they did not take well to its presence, so disturbingly close:
Urban countered this argument:
– negate that –
He forcefully drowned it with his own:
– hold –
– calm –
– identify: other –
Of course the philosopher cells recognized this ship. If it was not the same one they had followed around the belt of ruins, it was at least the same kind, and they had learned to accept its presence.
Clemantine added an argument of her own:
– we are strong / we are allied –
Urban echoed this, and Pasha too, across all the links of the high bridge, overwhelming all dissent.
*So we are safe this time, Pasha said as the cell field quieted. *But will we still be able to suppress Chenzeme instinct as we get closer to the living world?
*I can control the cell field, Urban insisted, as he always did.
*Sooth, Clemantine agreed. *Of course you can. But why engage? Pasha is right. The cell field is only going to grow more volatile, with Chenzeme instinct insisting such an obvious oasis of life should be destroyed. We need to shut the cell field down and keep it dark, just like we did for all those years at Verilotus.
In the intimacy of the high bridge, his resistance reached her ahead of his words. Urban valued the cell field as an auxiliary mind with its own sharp senses and a history and perspective usefully different from his own. It was the same argument Vytet had used to justify the Cryptologist, and though Urban acknowledged that, it hadn’t changed his feelings.
*This isn’t Verilotus, he insisted. *We don’t know what’s out there. And we can’t defend ourselves if the philosopher cells are dormant.
*We can’t defend ourselves anyway, she countered. *Chenzeme senses and Chenzeme memories cannot help us here. Not if the entity decides to move against us. Not when we’re surrounded by a ring of potentially thousands of dimensional missiles.
