Exodus, page 67
So it was another fifteen hours in the clinic before they cleared her to leave. Walking was painful; the big semi-flexible groflesh ribbon around her stomach seemed to pinch with every step. Frankly she didn’t see much difference between that and the support band. But the tall Gath woman had assured her it was working its Centauri Cluster technomagic on her poor cells underneath.
Ellie walked into the owner’s quarters with practically the same level of trepidation she’d experienced flying into the Kingsnest factory. Finn was sitting on the central couch, staring at data on a broad screen. They looked at each other for an awful, awkward moment.
“Hi,” she said.
“Uh, hi.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no; I was an idiot.”
“You weren’t. I should have been more understanding. It’s just…You do go on about how terrible your life used to be. And, trust me, from the outside looking in, it’s not.”
“Yeah, I know; like I said, I can be a dick at times. But you said you wanted me to talk about my feelings. Nobody’s ever been that sympathetic before.”
“I do want you to talk, Finn, but this is like an obsession. That’s not good for you, either.”
“Damned if I do…”
“…damned if you don’t. You were opening up, and I was being a bitch.”
“No, you were being honest, too. That’s something else I’m not used to; nobody in the palace ever says what they actually think.” He stood up and took her hand, then gave her a cautious kiss. “You need to sit down,” he said before she could speak. “What did the medics say?”
“I’ll be fine. I need a good couple of weeks’ proper rest while the tissue recovers.” She sat on the couch, forcing herself not to flinch. “The medical tech you have here—it’s amazing. I thought I was done for when that kinetic burned through the armor. Made my eyes water, I can tell you.”
“I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“Yeah, well, we got out of the factory, but I’ve got to confess, I’m scared about what’s coming next. I mean, we’re going to alter the orbit of a planet, Finn. That’s crazy. It really puts me on edge. And you going on about how it’s going to liberate humans is making me worry about how the Imperial Celestials are going to react. Are they going to simply genocide us? I’m not like my grandfather; I can’t work out the politics.”
“I don’t know how they’ll react, either. I haven’t really thought about it. Except…perhaps I’m seeing it as the opening play in the first ever human Great Game. Maybe sending Dolod flying out of the Kelowan system will make them change their views about us, that we’re not some inferior species unable to govern itself, so maybe they should lighten up and allow us some freedom.”
“Freedom to do what? And don’t say: be a Traveler. Gondiar has a population of what? A billion humans? Two? They don’t all want to go whizzing round the Centauri Cluster. So what do you want for them, Finn?”
“I dunno. For them to have more freedom to choose, I suppose. Choose who their government is, what the economy should be like.”
“But your economy is magnificent. It’s provided everyone with a decent living standard for eight hundred years.”
“Okay, then, how about trusting us to make decisions and allowing us to have their levels of technology? Is that so unreasonable?”
“Again, to what end? You said yourself we can’t understand the first thing about ZPZ generators.”
“That’s not the only technology in the galaxy. The Celestials have medicine that would have fixed you up in hours, and allow you to live another couple of hundred years.”
“Nice. And if you got that, what do you think would happen to Gondiar? It’ll be the place every human scratching a miserable living in the Cluster will want to come to, not the place people want to leave. And face it, the vast majority of the existing population won’t want change—certainly not the kind of revolutionary change you’re hoping to start.”
“But having your own laws, decided democratically, is more than freedom; it’s dignity. I believe from the bottom of my heart we should be granted that right.”
“That’s a savior fantasy, Finn. It’s not real life. It’s not what’s going to happen if you do succeed.”
“So you’re saying I shouldn’t change whatever Dolod’s vector is going to be?”
“No. Human industry and economy need safeguarding, I accept that. The true crime here is that the Imperial Celestials won’t give us a voice at the table. So I reluctantly agree they can’t be surprised if we claim the right to take matters into our own hands. But then I’m only saying that because of all the effort we’ve made to make this possible. I don’t have the answers, Finn, I really don’t.”
“Me neither.”
They both laughed. Ellie relaxed, because it was the easy laugh they used to share so often at the beginning.
“We’re good, aren’t we?” she asked.
“Yeah, I’ve never had it so good before. And Ellie?”
“Yes.”
“You know I can’t do this without you. So thanks for putting up with me.”
She leaned over and kissed him. “It’s not difficult.”
* * *
—
The Diligent’s command and control center leaped back into existence around Finn. His distorted dreams—if that’s what they were—abandoned him. In his mind, the ZPZ generator’s unfathomable thought routines sank back into pleased serenity. He let out a calm breath in synchronicity and took his hand off the connection bulb.
The flight from Kiyu-Cerro back to Kelowan had required three frame jumps between star systems. Flying between the egress and ingress Gates of Heaven in each one had taken eleven weeks in total. But now the egress Gate from Oxanotol was retreating behind them, and the sensors were picking up the bright light points that were Kelowan’s planets shining welcomingly against the Poseidon Nebula.
“Thirty-one years and eight months,” Gyvoy said; he was consulting his sleek Lorentz watch in satisfaction. “Not bad. Dolod still has another eighteen weeks and four days before it reaches closest approach. I’ve gotta say, this is the best starship in the Cluster, seriously, people.”
Finn and Ellie exchanged a knowing smirk. Gyvoy had talked about nothing else but elapsed time for the whole voyage, becoming increasingly frenetic as the days progressed. Ducking out of conversations with him had become a standing joke on board.
“Status, please,” Captain Dejean said.
The various stations started to report in.
“ZPZ generator in standby mode,” Finn said when it was his turn.
“Captain, there’s a ship close by,” Uemi said. “Holding station with the Gate.”
That’s wrong, Finn thought immediately. Not many starships had flown into the Oxanotol star system’s ingress Gate ahead of them. The previous one had entered two days earlier, so by now they should be a long way off. Because nothing waited outside an egress Gate. Except Celestials checking on arrivals.
“Define ‘close by,’ ” Dejean said.
“A hundred and eight thousand klicks.”
“Can you get me a visual, please? Gyvoy, I need to know if it’s Celestial.”
Finn kept quiet. Rumors had taken on a fabulous life of their own during the voyage. The whole ship knew he’d brought something back from the factory, some amazing contraband humans weren’t supposed to have. However, it made people worried how the Elohim would react every time the Diligent approached a Gate of Heaven. And now here was a ship where no ship should be.
Along with everyone else, Finn watched a bright blur materialize on the central wall screen, then tighten up into a clear shape. It was a typical spaceship layout—the life support ring rotating around a central cylinder of girders stacked with fuel tanks, machinery, and fusion engines. Human-built, if Finn was any judge.
“That looks human-built to me,” Gyvoy said.
Finn studied the ceiling intently.
“Transponder data says it’s the Polkadav, a passenger and freighter ship registered at High Rosa,” Uemi announced.
“Which makes it being here very odd,” Gyvoy said.
“They’re beaming a comms signal at us,” Uemi reported.
“Acknowledge and establish a lnc,” Dejean told her.
One of the auxiliary wall screens shimmered into an image of a middle-aged woman’s face. Finn tilted his head to one side, squinting. Whoever she was, she looked supremely tired, and badly stressed. But those features…He knew them somehow, even though he’d never seen them before. Then his heart jumped. No!
“This is the Polkadav calling the Diligent,” the woman said. “Is Finn Jalgori-Tobu on board? I have to talk to him. We need help. Please. Finn, everything’s gone to shit.”
Everyone in the compartment turned to stare at Finn. He barely registered them through his shock. “Otylia? What the hell are you doing here?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Olomo spent the entire flight suspended cross-legged inside the stability pod at the center of the Xiyra, his four arms at his side, hands extended. As it flooded with buffer gel, class one bond filaments had wormed their way out of the pod’s synthlife lining to connect with the neural interface pads in his palms, allowing a perfect communion with the starship’s CI. Thicker, class two filaments had nuzzled up to his body’s ten chakragills, latching on to fill his supplementary veins with conservation fluid to balance his body density with the pod’s gel. In such a state, he could remain conscious and physically undamaged if the Xiyra’s acceleration climbed to fifteen gees. Should the starship perform more extreme maneuvers, the pod could also initiate some unpleasant preservation procedures.
Over the three thousand years (dilated) the Heresy archon had been representing his dominion, he’d only needed to call upon his ship’s extreme capabilities five times. As each of those episodes had demonstrated, when you need it, you really need it. So he didn’t take any chances even on something as unassuming as this mission. As soon as the Xiyra cleared the egress Gate from Kelowan, he switched it into darkflight mode. Its hull distorted the light that struck it, swirling photons around in unnatural refraction patterns so to any observer it would look like just another crimp in the polychromatic clouds that comprised the Pillar of Zeus. The drive exhaust was neutral atoms that sensors would interpret as ordinary solar radiation particles in a system already saturated in them. Thermally there was no signature at all. Standard active sensor scans would wash over it with no trace. Only a ship with an equivalent technology level would be able to detect it, but to do so would render such a ship highly visible to the Xiyra.
The starship decelerated into orbit around Lonizi, Tinaja’s only gas giant. Olomo was heading to a rendezvous due to take place in another three days, which allowed him sufficient time to examine space around the gas giant for any other starships that might be lying in wait. The chances of that were effectively zero, he knew, given this rendezvous had been arranged fifty-three years ago. But, again, an archon didn’t ignore such odds.
The Xiyra began to gather data from the quarter of a million monitor spheres it had dropped into orbit thirty years ago. They’d quietly observed the environment around Tinaja ever since—its magnetic field, the radiation flux, particle flow—and every disturbance had been analyzed and categorized. Olomo reviewed them all in conjunction with the ship’s CI and concluded there was no other ship or latent weapon lurking above Lonizi.
He detected Karaglo’s ship, the Mil’laury, approaching while it was still thirty hours out, its ion drive creating a broad energized wake through the smog of solar wind and nova dust. The Mil’laury was flying in from the deep indigo swirl of the HeSea a third of a light-year away. Its drive exhaust was a lot smaller than those of the other ships currently inbound from the HeSea to Tinaja. There was no Gate of Heaven leading to the HeSea, so the distance from Tinaja had to be covered the hard way. Every Grand Family in the Crown Dominion operated a fleet of scoop tankers, their ships flying a constant loop out from Tinaja to the precious remnants of the helium macroplanet’s nova. They’d spend up to a decade gathering the fuel with a magnetic scoop, then returning to the Crown Dominion with its vast numbers of energy-hungry cities and enterprises.
Olomo ran one final sweep through the monitor spheres, then ordered the stability pod to release him. As the buffer gel was pumped away, the class two filaments extracted the conservation fluid then withdrew from his chakragills. He felt gravity build as the Xiyra’s life support section spun up. The type one filaments dropped from his hands as the pod opened, its upper segment retracting up into the ceiling. Lights came on, revealing a compartment clad in metallic ebony tiles. He walked across to the spar room as splodges of gel trickled down his legs.
Three androids were unrolling as the spar’s scented water shower came on. They attended him with sponges, wiping away the dribbles of gel and reinvigorating his skin with exfoliation leaves and unguents. By the time he came out and put on his robe, another android had prepared a meal. In theory the conservation fluid supplied every nutrient his body needed, but he never emerged from the pod feeling anywhere near satisfied.
By the time he finished eating, the Mil’laury had dropped into a million-kilometer orbit above Tinaja. “Discontinue darkflight,” he instructed the CI through the connection bud on his palm bracelet.
The outer layer of the Xiyra’s hull changed, banishing the distortion to reveal itself as a simple pale gray ovoid shape. A minute later a secure lnc between the two was established.
“I was uncertain you’d be here,” Karaglo said.
“And I you,” Olomo replied. “My ship will rendezvous with yours, it’s easier.”
The Xiyra performed a fast approach, demonstrating just how maneuverable it was compared to the Mil’laury. Karaglo’s ship was a deep space research vessel, its primary hull a two-hundred-meter-diameter sphere. A cluster of five fusion rocket exhausts were at the back, surrounded by a ring of thermal radiators glowing dark claret. As the Xiyra closed in, the nozzles sank down, and the hull rippled shut over them.
As the senior member of the pair, Olomo received his colleague in the Xiyra’s day lounge. He wore a brown-and-gray robe, its fluctuating red and green collar symbols announcing the seniority his position gave him in the Heresy Dominion’s polity. Karaglo’s robe was a modest blue-and-gray, with a simple, stable yellow collar. Olomo suspected that his guest had spent a little too much of his hundred-year mission inside a stability pod. The result was almost as if the astrophysicist had suffered some alarming illness, leaving him with a curved spine that gave him a hunched profile, and loose, graying flesh that had sagging folds.
The self-perceptual he shared with Olomo was equally ragged. This was someone who was unduly tense and defensive. The purpose and confidence that distinguished the Heresy Celestials from the original K-rarz Dominion they’d split from six thousand years ago was lacking, like a cavity in his personality.
Outwardly, Olomo remained as urbane as his self-perceptual proclaimed him to be. “Your devotion to your mission is a triumph of clarity and integrity,” he said formally. “Please join me.”
The two sat in a sunken grotto below overhanging ferns while a stream trickled past to empty into a pond filled with bioluminescent koi.
“Most gracious of you,” Karaglo said, “but my mind has been distracted of late. Did you act on my information about the gas giant’s trajectory through the Poseidon Nebula?”
“I did. I sent another research ship into the Poseidon nebula outside Kelowan where the trajectory suggested it would be. It found the gas giant close to the predicted location; and more: It’s an iron exotic.”
“Really? How fascinating.”
“Quite. As we speak, it is traversing Kelowan’s outer cometary belt.”
“I see. It is gratifying my instruments and calculations are correct.”
“You doubt the Mil’laury’s capabilities?”
“No. It’s not astrophysics I worry about. But the things I’ve discovered out here…”
Olomo took a glass of honey wine from an android, then took another and handed it to Karaglo. “What have you found?” he asked gently.
The astrophysicist took a sip of the wine and gave him a reluctant look. “I believe the helium macroplanet was brought to nova by a strangelet.”
Not even Olomo’s resolution could prevent a slight flicker of disapproval crossing his face. “I see. Well, it’s always been a potential hypothesis. How substantial is this assumption?”
“Our dominion’s previous science mission into the HeSea detected some anomalies in the way the macroplanet’s end-stage gas shell expanded. There were…perturbations that the collapse theory couldn’t quite explain.”
“Yes. That’s why the Heresy Dominion funded your mission.”
“With your endorsement.”
“One does what one can,” Olomo muttered modestly.
“Yes, for a price,” Karaglo said sharply. He took another drink of his wine.
“Quite. So the nova propagation theories don’t match the actual event?”
“I don’t think so. But they did allow me one small triumph. Olomo, I found the remains of the helium macroplanet. It’s taken thirty years, but I did it. I managed to narrow it down to a zone just seven AUs across. And I was right; it’s still in there, barely fifty meters in diameter. I’ve been studying it directly for the last eight years.”
“I’m impressed. What were your results?”
Karaglo’s head dipped. “The strangelet might be contained inside the neutronium mantle.”
“Might be?”
“Yes. The results of the observations I undertook are ambiguous. I need—we need—to return with more research vessels, and a way of opening the remains.”
