Needle, page 32
He shivered in the dusk, his gaze on the river but his mind on Jolly, still waiting quietly beside him.
Don’t hate me.
“It’s not like that,” Urban said gruffly.
But what came next? What should he do? What could he do? He’d gambled and lost. Now he was stuck. They all were. Stuck on Prakruti until they could synthesize fuel and the fuel tanks to hold it, enough to get Thousand Years back to Nara.
He crossed his arms. And what of the Cryptologist? Had she been lost? Or had Ezo accepted her?
Jolly was brooding on her too. “Do you think she’s dead?” he asked, with a catch in his voice.
Urban sighed, his mind slowly settling to what had happened. “I don’t know. We may never know.”
<><><>
Pasha came around the side of the shrine in time to overhear this exchange. In the deepening dusk, Urban’s skin suit had begun to glow with a gold light, and Jolly’s lime green. But Pasha had extinguished her suit’s light. That allowed her to linger unnoticed, a flush prickling her cheeks—just as Urban had said, held back by shame, and other people’s expectations.
That’s not who I am!
It wasn’t who she wanted to be.
She felt hollowed out, exhausted from the ceaseless looping of her thoughts as she obsessed over the Cryptologist’s fate and the sting of Urban’s words and her own regret. If she’d been a better person, she would have paid more attention to the Cryptologist. But she’d kept her distance, because that project had slipped out of control and she’d been embarrassed by it. Such a stupid way to feel!
Why had it taken so long for her to see the Cryptologist for what she was? A unique and fascinating mind. Not Pasha-made-bold. Urban was wrong about that because unlike Pasha, the Cryptologist had always been willing to reshape the very definition of herself to crack the puzzle—the cruel and relentless obsession—Pasha had helped to force on her.
Now the Cryptologist was gone and there was nothing she could do . . . nothing she could do . . . but . . . maybe . . .?
<><><>
“Urban!” Pasha cried out, startling him so that he took a backward step as she emerged from the shadows at the end of the porch.
He’d been so distracted by his anger, his frustration, that he’d lost track of Pasha. He hadn’t known she was there.
“What?” he asked irritably. “What is it?”
Eyes wide with excitement she gestured at the shrine’s doors. “The Cryptologist entered the silver. What if she’s still there, still part of it, lost within it—”
He sucked in a sharp breath, no longer listening because he knew where this was going. By the Unknown God! He would have seen it himself, if he hadn’t allowed his own bitter disappointment to cloud his thinking. Yes, the silver had vanished from the shrine, but it had not vanished from him—not from his perception. He still held an awareness of it—and maybe he could find the Cryptologist there?
“All right,” he murmured, sitting cross-legged at the edge of the porch.
Jolly crouched beside him. “Wait, what—”
They both froze as something rustled in the wet grass. But Urban had heard such before, on Verilotus. No doubt some tiny mammalian life, emerging to undertake a nocturnal quest for food.
Larger creatures would be stirring too, with senses adapted to sample the night’s molecular signatures. Would they be frightened by the unique scents they encountered tonight? Or would curiosity draw them to visit the meadow?
With a soft hiss, he thought, Let Ezo decide!
He told Jolly, “I’m going into the silver to look for her.”
“Oh.” Eager now. “I’ll go with you.”
“No. I need you to keep watch—you and Pasha.” He turned to catch her eye. “Make a lot of noise if anything big comes out of the dark, all right?”
In the glow cast by his skin suit, he saw her nod.
He turned to face the river. Closing his eyes, he entered the silver—and to his surprise, he found Wailoa there, waiting to greet him. The Tanji embraced him, cocooning him in an affection that was surely love, as if he meant to comfort Urban for some tragedy still to come.
What is it? Urban asked in alarm.
Instinct prompted him to send a submind to check the status of Dragon and the ship’s company, but of course he could not. The Narans still had not allowed him direct access to their network. He could not even communicate with Thousand Years. The submind went nowhere, but his question remained.
What is it?
Had Wailoa come to tell him of the Cryptologist’s demise?
The Tanji spoke no words. Never any words from him and usually no answers either. But this time was different. Urban understood Wailoa had seen something, or learned of it . . .
From Ezo?
From Ezo, yes. Urban sensed Wailoa’s awe of the leviathan and his regret for what must be.
Tell me.
Wailoa complied by softening the boundary of his mind, just enough that Urban perceived something coming, something imminent. Not the Cryptologist, nothing to do with her. This was an object, bound for the Trinity, on a trajectory that would skirt both planet and moon. Neither world to be harmed by it, so the Tanji would not sacrifice themselves to stop it. Wailoa, Kureo, all the others scattered around the belt of ruins—they would take no side. Let the Sakurans carry out their foolish war.
A war?
Yes, a war launched against Nara. A war Urban triggered despite his promise of peace. But he is forgiven. He is a higher being capable of perceiving the wonder of life, of cherishing the beauty and complexity of existence.
Never mind that!
Urban understood now what Wailoa had learned—and he had no intention of standing aside. Wrenching free of his trance, he rose to his feet.
Jolly stood with him, clutching at his arm. “Did you find her?”
Full darkness had fallen, but the glow of their skin suits cast them both in colored light.
“No, there was no chance. Something else is going on. We need to get to the shuttle, and get a warning out to Dragon before it’s too late.”
Pasha spoke from the shadows. No friendly glow of light illuminated her skin suit. “What warning? What do you think has happened?”
“Come with me. I’ll tell you on the way.”
“Tell me now. We’re on the wrong side of this world, Urban. It’ll be hours before you can get an uplink to Nara.”
Chapter
44
With Dragon’s hull cells dormant, the Astronomer could rely only on his system of telescopes and hull cameras to scan the Near Vicinity. Data arrived at regular intervals from Pytheas and Khonsu, to be processed into images by a skilled DI. Each image added to or clarified his map of the system. He knew the shape, position, and orientation of every megastructure and had located 8,436 chameleon ships orbiting amid smaller chunks of debris. After more than two years in the system, he felt he knew it well.
So it came as a rude shock when a previously unknown object appeared on a newly processed image. That single observation told him little, so he ordered a realignment of the main scopes with the goal of obtaining a sequence of images that would let him chart the object’s trajectory. With each successive image, his concern grew. And then he chanced to receive an unscheduled transmission from Griffin that clarified the potential hazard.
Urban messaged him moments later, anxious and angry. *Can you confirm Griffin’s observation?
*I can confirm the existence of two objects. I’m developing detailed trajectories now.
<><><>
From the high bridge, Urban watched the swift approach of not one, but two kinetic missiles, irregularly shaped and tumbling rapidly. They bore toward Nara with a dangerous momentum, easy to track now he knew they were there, their trajectories easy to extrapolate.
At the same time, in the library, a council of ghosts spontaneously gathered around him, their worried eyes studying a three-dimensional map of the Trinity and the space around it. A red line on the map marked the projected path of Mass-1, a yellow line for Mass-2, both objects on track to skim disturbingly close to Nara without actually impacting it—if nothing changed.
“Expect to see a slight course correction,” Kona predicted. “Those objects are meant to take out Nara.”
Urban nodded bitter agreement. The Sakurans had betrayed him. Betrayed his trust.
“I don’t understand,” Tarnya said. “What are we seeing? Where did those objects come from? Who would do such a thing?”
Urban gritted his teeth, reminding himself Tarnya was relatively young. Born into Deception Well’s peaceful era, she had no real understanding of hatred and its partnered demand for bloody revenge.
In low, slow words he told her, “They are from Volo’s Landing.”
He knew it in his gut, and now the Astronomer confirmed it, speaking from his frameless window. “The geometry of the objects matches the two broken sections of the Sakurans’ great ship. The dark hull material reflects very little light. What the telescopes picked up was a bright reflection off of ice and that is only intermittently visible, indicating the two objects are tumbling. My guess is the interior of both sections has been loaded with a large quantity of ice to increase the mass of each object, and thereby increase its destructive power.”
Tarnya shook her head, still gripped by denial. “I can’t believe the Sakurans did this. Why would they?”
“Hatred,” Clemantine said. “They were taught to believe the ‘the defectors’ had sabotaged their great ship and in doing so, destroyed their library. A death sentence. And we couldn’t convince them otherwise. Not when we were there. And maybe not even after we contacted the Narans.”
A low growl from Kona. “Even if we had finally convinced them, what of it? These crude missiles were launched long ago—long before we made contact with the Narans.”
“I don’t want to believe that,” Tarnya insisted.
Urban dismissed this with a cutting gesture. “It doesn’t require belief.” He turned to Clemantine. “We’ve got a few hours before we have to act. Message them. If they’ve got active control—”
“Right.” She looked away, her face shifting into a contemplative expression as she prepared a message.
“What else?” Vytet wondered. “We can’t just wait for a response.”
Urban felt eyes on him—while he eyed the map. Without a course correction, the two masses would coast harmlessly past Nara. That would be the best outcome because then he would not have to act at all. But such a fortuitous twist felt extremely unlikely. The Sakurans were new at war, but given the ingenuity and the accuracy of this impending strike, he had to believe they had included an autonomous system to correct any errors in the initial trajectories.
He turned to the Astronomer. “Can you see the location of any engines on either mass?”
“Tentatively, yes. There are features that could be engines—though the rapid tumbling motion has prevented the acquisition of a clear image.”
Urban sent a silent summons to the Engineer and the Pilot. A moment later, the two Apparatchiks winked into existence, appearing within their frameless windows on either side of the Astronomer. They would have been monitoring events, listening to the discussion. So without preamble, he asked his question: “There’s no way we can physically land on those objects before they close on Nara—is there?”
“Not if you mean to survive the landing,” the Engineer confirmed. “You could crash an object into one of them of course, but their relative velocities are too high and time is too short for a successful landing.”
“You’re thinking of sabotaging their engines?” Kona asked.
“If I could prevent them from refining their course . . .”
“We have the capacity to destroy both objects,” Kona reminded him.
“I know, I know . . .”
“You’re concerned about the debris?”
“Debris should not be a major concern,” the Engineer interjected. “A quick calculation shows a single strike in a central location will vaporize approximately twenty percent of the targeted mass, shattering the rest, resulting in a scatter of fragments—some of which could still impact Nara—though subsequent strikes can quickly eliminate this hazard.”
“There are other risks,” Urban said, eyeing the edge of the map where Dragon rested between the chameleon ships he knew as Wailoa and Kureo. All three vessels still displayed their slowly shifting rainbow lights. “I promised the entity we were not a war fleet despite our weapons.”
In his singular encounter with Ezo, Urban had pleaded benign intention: We are only curious. We only seek to know.
He went on, “I accepted without protest an escort of chameleon ships, and I kept my approach to the Trinity slow so there could be no question of a kamikaze attack. Every action, every communication I’ve taken has been a promise to bring no harm.”
And Ezo had trusted him, allowing Dragon a close approach to the precious planet and moon despite the courser’s deadly gamma-ray gun. What would become of that trust if he deployed that weapon now, here at the Trinity?
He gestured at the two chameleon ships. “How will they react if I use Dragon’s gun?”
With an instantaneous blossoming of white space, they could erase all further risk of violent behavior . . .
He shook his head, as if he could shake off the mental image. “War is not allowed here,” he concluded.
Kona said, “And yet the Sakurans have undertaken an act of war.”
“Kona is right!” Tarnya exclaimed. “This is an act of war. So why hasn’t the entity already responded?” She held her hands palm up. “There are thousands of chameleon ships out there. They must have observed these kinetic weapons long before we did and deduced their purpose. Why haven’t they acted to defend the Trinity?”
Urban’s jaw worked as he considered this. He didn’t like the answer that came to him. He voiced it anyway. “The target is not Ezo or Prakruti. It’s Nara.”
“Meaning the entity doesn’t care about Nara?” Clemantine asked.
“Maybe humans are expected to solve human problems,” Vytet suggested.
Tarnya turned to Urban, touched his arm. “Why don’t you ask?” she pleaded. “Ask the entity, or those other minds that inhabit the chameleon ships. What are we allowed to do?”
Urban pulled away from her, shaking his head. “It’s not me. I can’t ask. It’s only my avatar and that’s in Nara.” And with Argo away, he had no means of direct communication.
“Do we need to ask?” Vytet wondered. “Because in truth, we are facing a simple decision. If it becomes certain Nara is at risk, we either do nothing, or we act.”
“We would have to act,” Urban said. “Whatever the risk, we would have to act because we caused this. It’s our fault. My fault, for giving the Sakurans a library, when they did not have the cultural foundation to handle it.”
He had only sought to restore them to the status of their ancestors, who had once had a library of their own. But they had abused that gift.
Never again, he promised himself. Never again will I risk giving away dangerous knowledge.
<><><>
Taddeus Li Kubba led the committee tasked with the development of the city of New Sakura. He spent most of his waking hours on the project, which was why he was still in the planning center hours after everyone else had gone home.
The new facility had been hollowed out of the ice and lined with insulated walls that allowed a balmy, above-freezing atmosphere, while actively countering any incursion of the deadly bloom that had claimed so many lives in centuries past. Taddeus bobbed, tablet in hand, languid in the microgravity. An automated inventory report had just come in and as he scrolled through it, he grew more and more pleased at what it said.
For two years, molecular mining operations had been collecting vast stores of compounds and pure elements from the ice fields. The report listed quantities-in-hand for every substance necessary to the construction of New Sakura.
Organics had come easily. It was the hunt for usable metals that had slowed the build. Even with the technology of the Dragoneers, they could not dissect the megastructure’s impenetrable skeleton. Instead, they had to harvest rare metallic molecules one by one from melting ice.
But his team had done it! The report confirmed they now possessed a sufficient quantity of every rare metal needed for the build. Taddeus clutched the tablet, closed his eyes, and sighed, awash in gratitude that he had lived to see his people restored, and blessed with a future of abundance.
A sharp beep cut short this peaceful mood, calling his attention back to the tablet. A knot of anxiety congealed in his belly when he saw that an unscheduled message had arrived from Dragon.
Since their departure, the Dragoneers had communicated only at set times, even on that day they’d confirmed the existence of the lost cousins of Nara. The receipt of an unscheduled message now filled Taddeus with foreboding. For several seconds he did nothing, said nothing. Then finally he gathered his courage and murmured, “Let me hear it.”
Clemantine spoke, her voice so familiar to him, but not the anger in it. There is still time, she insisted. Despite the light-speed delay, time remained for a signal to reach the two kinetic missiles now aimed at Nara. Call them off, she demanded. You do not want to endure the consequences if you continue with this action.
Details followed. Taddeus Li Kubba listened, paralyzed in the grip of a dreamlike horror. Only when the message ended, and then began again, did he recover the power of movement, launching himself at the planning center’s open doorway.
<><><>
Alone on the high bridge, Urban reminded himself there was time. Hours, before he needed to act. He used the time to shift Dragon inward toward Ezo: a long, slow fall into the moon’s gravity well that would bring the courser close to the approach trajectory of the kinetic missiles. But that wasn’t the only reason he was moving.
