Some loud grunting noises, and the sound of a lot of little sticks getting damaged, caused her to look sharply to her left just in time to see two large men, locked together, erupt through the wall of brush and tumble out into the open. Since the slope below was steep, they rolled together for several meters down toward the beach before the larger one—Beled—was able to lash out with one foot and plant it downslope, bringing both of them to a stop. At the same time he pushed up with both arms, shoving his opponent—a Neoander—completely off the ground, in a bid to flip him backward and send him tumbling down even farther. But the Neoander seemed to anticipate this and made his much longer arms whip around Beled’s torso, scrabbling for purchase on his rib cage.
Perhaps 50 percent of Beled’s body was still covered by ambots locked together to form a patchy carapace. The Neoander’s right hand came down on a cluster of them that was protecting Beled’s armpit, and those obliged their owner by delivering a clearly audible shock into the offending hand. This disrupted whatever grapple the Neoander had been attempting. Still, Beled’s gambit had basically failed, and he ended up toppling backward as his opponent’s momentum overthrew him. When he understood this he stopped fighting it and bent his knees, turning what might have been an ungainly sprawl into something more like a back somersault that employed the Neoander’s stomach as an impact cushion. Kathree heard a snapping noise but was a little slow to understand it as a rib being broken. The Neoander, on his back, involuntarily tried to contract into a fetal position, bringing his head up into Beled’s descending fist. The contact between the delicate structures of the modern hand and the massive bone arches of the Neanderthal skull was unequal and there was more cracking, to Beled’s disadvantage. Still, the blow gave the Neoander a jolt, which was enough time for Beled finally to draw a knife from a sheath and press it against the other’s throat. He kept pressing until the Neoander’s head was against the ground.
The fighting—at least that part of it—was over and Kathree was able for the first time to process a full image of Beled’s state: bloody, half-naked, spitting teeth, breathing much faster than he ever did when sprinting flat out on a treadmill. Anyway he was alive, and the fight was over for him, unless he chose to neutralize this opponent by cutting his throat. Which seemed inadvisable since he was now under the direct coverage of a bucky with a camera in it. The ancient Teklan-Neoander fights of asteroid mining lore might have ended with throat cutting, but not this one.
Other things happened in the bog that she did not see. Langobard emerged with Roskos Yur slung over his back in a fireman’s carry, and began tromping down the slope in some haste, not looking back. Beled, watching, called out a warning to him. In the same instant Kath heard movement from the bog and saw a human silhouette—not a Neoander—vault through the gap that had been torn in it by Beled and his opponent, and begin running after Bard. She was a squat woman with close-cropped hair, in military kit—a classic B. Kathree aimed her katapult at her and fired an ambot, then two more, but all of them somehow missed—the B was evidently wearing some kind of armor that was good at spoofing this particular model, and so she could stand there all day shooting at her and nothing would happen. Still, the B heard the katapult go whang and sensed the ambots zipping around her, which was enough to stall her for a moment. She turned toward Kathree. The look on her face suggested that she had not expected to see a female Moiran. As she was taking in this extraordinary spectacle, a fist-sized rock struck her on the downhill side of her head and, to all appearances, killed her.
Kathree looked down the slope to see Beled following through from having thrown the rock. He had transferred his unbloodied knife to his broken hand, and now shifted it back. Nearby was Bard, who had paused in his headlong sprint toward the beach and turned around to see what Beled was throwing rocks at. Blood seemed to be draining out of him.
On second thought, it was draining out of Sergeant Major Yur.
The Neoander that Beled had been restraining rolled up to his feet. Just as rapidly he went down again, and a katapult whang traveled up to Kathree’s ears. When Langobard turned around, she saw that Roskos Yur, badly mauled but still conscious, had brought his weapon into play with his free hand.
If there were other Red forces to be accounted for, they were either dead, unconscious, or in retreat toward the mountains.
For the first time in what seemed like a while—but had probably been just a few seconds of elapsed time—Kathree directed her attention to what was going on below.
The rubber boats from the ark had made a decision to avoid the middle of the cove. Instead they were splitting to either side to make landfall on the prongs formed by the crater’s rim. From there, they could hike around if need be.
A person was walking out of the water.
TY HANDED THE PIZZA BOX UP TO EINSTEIN AND TOLD HIM TO OPEN it and to keep what was inside of it dry and near to hand. The dry suit was doing a fine job of keeping his legs warm and so he decided to remain below, thigh deep in the water next to the islet. His time in the war had left him with distrust, bordering on disgust, with people like Cantabrigia Five who were always thinking about the narrative. But that way of thinking was infectious. He saw the little scene on the islet through the eyes not of Tyuratam Lake, but of a video camera beaming coverage to the ring. And he thought it looked perfect the way it was: the small conical spike of glass, grubby around the waterline with wave-washed sand, supporting two people: Einstein with the pizza box, and, standing next to him with a finger hooked through his belt loop, the Cyc with one headphone on and the other off. In fact he attended so closely to the image that he almost missed the main event. The look on the others’ faces told him he had best turn around and look out to sea.
Only the head and shoulders were protruding above the waves. The Pinger was trudging up the sloping floor of the crater as if returning from a casual underwater stroll. He or she breathed loudly and deeply for a little while, apparently reoxygenating, but then settled down to a more normal respiration. Where did they live? Where had this person come from? They must have diving bells, or something, that moved about underwater.
The Pinger was hairless and sleek, and, as soon became evident, lacked external genitalia. So, a woman? But if so it was a woman without breasts; and as far as Ty knew, these were still mammals.
A few paces behind was a roundish object that presently turned out to be supported by a neck, which turned out to be anchored in a sloping pair of shoulders. This one did have breasts. And behind her was yet a third person of the same general description.
As the first one ascended into shallower water, the shape of his body became clearer: round, and, in general, sort of projectile-like. Some part of Ty’s brain wanted to identify him as a fat man. And maybe he was fat, in the same way that an otter or a seal is: a thick layer of subcutaneous fat held in beneath taut, rather thick-looking skin. But in no way did he seem flabby or jiggly. His overall style of movement suggested heavy musculature hidden beneath that smooth jacket of, for lack of a better word, blubber. Basically naked, he did have a kind of web harness strapped around his torso, with a sufficient number of odds and ends attached to it to make it clear that he was a technological being. At first the Pingers had seemed black, but as they came out of the water it became clear that their skin was dark gray, and mottled with patches of lighter gray, shading toward blues and greens. Their bellies were of lighter hue than their backs, and the mottling tended to run up their sides.
Ty didn’t like to stare. But he couldn’t help it. Nothing was visible between their legs save a system of concentric folds within which, Ty assumed, a fairly normal set of genitalia must be hiding. Perhaps just awaiting a suitable invitation to present themselves.
They were drawing close enough now that their faces could be looked at. The underlying skulls probably looked the same as those of rootstock humans. But eyes, ears, and nostrils were guarded by systems of muscled flaps that were always in some amount of motion. Sonar Taxlaw’s earlier
remark about breeding wolves into poodles had been a bit indelicate. But the analogy held up. These people were to more ordinary humans as bulldogs were to hounds. All the same stuff was there. You just had to look for it a little harder.
Ty turned back to look at Einstein and Sonar. Understandably, they had eyes only for the approaching Pingers. “Einstein,” he said. Then, louder: “Einstein!”
Startled, Einstein nearly fell into the water, then focused on Ty. “Do you want it?” he mouthed, nodding at the rectangle gripped in his hands.
“No,” Ty said, “it has to be a child of Ivy.”
“Now?”
“Now.”
Einstein gripped the thing’s bottom corners in his hands and held it up above his head so that the approaching visitors could get a clear view of it.
It was a picture, blown up to about half a meter square. Any Spacer would recognize it as an iconic image from the Epic. It was the last photograph that Ivy’s fiancé, Cal Blankenship, had texted to her from the conning tower of his submarine, moments before closing the hatch and diving to escape from the opening salvo of the Hard Rain. The image was dominated by two concentric circles: in the middle distance, the aperture of the open hatch, framing a disk of sky already split in two by the fiery trace of a bolide. Surrounding that, much closer to the camera, the engagement ring that he had just removed from his finger.
The question was whether Cal’s descendants would recognize it. The lead Pinger’s face unfolded a little, his gray eyes seeming to become larger, his ears blooming from mere slits into something more resembling normal human ears, except smaller and sleeker. He stopped trudging in knee-deep water. The other two drew abreast of him. All three were gazing up at the picture held aloft by the shivering Ivyn. Ty’s ears were tickled by high-pitched vocalizations that were almost recognizable as English words. The Pingers were talking to one another, turning their heads to exchange remarks, pointing at the picture, gesticulating broadly. Of course, people who spent a lot of time underwater would become good at talking with their hands.
The female Pinger said something emphatic, getting the attention of the other two. Ty couldn’t understand the words, but the tone and the body language were emphatic: “Shut up. Listen. I know what this is.”
She held her left hand in front of her body. The palm was elongated. The fingers were stubby and, when she spread them apart, slightly webbed. With her right hand she enclosed the ring finger of the left and pantomimed sliding a ring off. She held the imaginary ring aloft, then brought her left hand up to her face and twitched her index finger once, pretending to take a picture.
KATHREE FELT HERSELF, AS SHE WATCHED ALL OF THIS, SLIDING down the slope on her ass in a semicontrolled manner, almost afraid that she might scare the Pingers away with a sudden movement. Bard had reached the lower camp quicker and laid Sergeant Major Yur out on a sleeping bag, where Hope was attending to him, already hooking up an intravenous tube. Kathree passed by Beled, who was straddling the helpless Red Neoander, putting huge plastic ties on his ankles and wrists.
She made it down to the beach, keeping well clear of Cantabrigia Five, who was speaking into a camera, and Arjun, who was just watching and mumbling into his varp.
Several more Pingers had waded up into the shallows. One of them—a male, strapped with more gear than the others—had approached Ty, and seemed to be trying to communicate with him. Ty was grinning, but he kept cupping a hand around his ear and shaking his head. The Pinger reached out, gently took Ty’s wrist, and plucked at the black stuff of his dry suit. Ty responded by mimicking the same gesture on the slick skin of the Pinger’s arm. Both of them laughed. The Pinger’s teeth were white and they were sharp.
The first three Pingers had come ashore on the islet and were inspecting the photograph, which Einstein was holding now in front of his chest, part invitation and part shield. Sonar Taxlaw, not so encumbered, faced off uncertainly against the female Pinger, who suddenly stepped forward and embraced her.
On the beach, Cantabrigia Five exchanged a satisfied look with Esa Arjun and glanced toward the sky.
Epilogue
“CAL SENT MORE THAN ONE PHOTO TO EVE IVY DURING THE WEEKS leading up to the Hard Rain,” said Esa Arjun. “A total of seventeen, including that one.” He nodded at the picture. Somewhat the worse for wear, it was leaning against the inner wall of Ark Darwin’s fuselage at the end of the table where he and Ty were eating lunch.
He and Ty and Deep. Deep was the Pinger who had approached Ty and befriended him with a nonverbal joke about his dry suit. He was seated a couple of chairs away at the same table. It wasn’t really clear whether he thought of himself as part of this conversation.
“Can he understand what I’m saying?” Arjun asked.
“He’s getting better. We sound like tuba music to them.”
“Is his name really what you say it is?”
“It’s the closest I can get to pronouncing it,” Ty said, “and he answers to it.”
Deep had been tearing into a raw fish filet, served on a platter with some seaweed garnishes. He seemed then to realize that he was being talked about, and tensed up in a way that seemed very human. At a loss for words, he grabbed his cup of cider and raised it to them. They raised theirs in return, and all drank.
“I think he’s some kind of technician or scientist,” Ty said. “All that stuff in his harness.”
“Yes,” Arjun said, eyeing the Pinger curiously. “Optics. Electronics. They preserved more technology than the Diggers were able to.”
“They had more space,” Ty pointed out, “and they could scavenge whatever sank to the bottom.” He turned his attention back to Arjun. “Anyway, you were saying about the seventeen photos?”
“Yes. Most of them were of a type referred to, in those days, as selfies. Now, technically, this was a criminal violation of military secrecy. Very strange given that Cal was otherwise so attentive to duty.”
“Yes,” said Ty, casting his mind back to scenes from the Epic. “I remember Eve Ivy agonizing about that when Eve Julia ordered Cal to nuke Venezuela.”
“That’s a perfect example. So, this lapse—if that’s what it was—has attracted some attention from scholars. All seventeen of the photos were eventually recovered from Ivy’s phone. An obscure sub-sub-sub-discipline of historical scholarship grew up around them.”
“The kind of thing only Ivyns would care about,” said Ty.
“Cloistered in some library on Stromness. Exactly.”
Ark Darwin was still riding at anchor outside the cove, and its fuselage was still flooded. This made it a perfect setting for what was happening now: a diplomatic conference between the Pingers and a delegation of important Blue officials who had been pod-dropped, straight from Greenwich, a few hours after the conclusion of the battle above the beach.
Einstein, Sonar Taxlaw, and all the other Blues had evacuated the cove and gone aboard the ark. Beled had been the last to depart; before climbing into the waiting boat, he had freed the captured Neoander and left him enough provisions to keep him in good stead until he could be rescued by his own people. And his own people had shown up in force a few hours later. But according to the deal they themselves had struck with the Diggers, their claim was to the land surface only. And Ark Darwin wasn’t on the land. So, a growing Red military encampment was spreading around the shore of the cove, facing their Blue counterparts across a few hundred meters of salt water.
The ark’s flooded hull was chilly, and obliged the Blue diplomats to dress warmly. Ty, Deep, and Arjun were in a dry space higher up and farther forward, a sort of half-exposed mezzanine where folding tables and chairs had been set up to act as a mess hall for the growing complement of Blue personnel—as well as any Pingers who felt like wading up the ramp. They were eating hot soup and quaffing a funky but quite palatable cider from the northern slope of Antimer.
“Now,” said Arjun—enjoying, as only an Ivyn could, the opportunity to wax professorial—“what you must be wondering abou
t these people is—”
“How the hell they survived. With only one submarine.”
Arjun nodded. “It turns out that if you look at the work of those scholars I mentioned—the most recent of whom died two centuries ago—there are clues.”
“But if the selfies were taken before the Hard Rain even began,” Ty protested, “how could there be clues as to what happened after?”
“I mean clues that Cal went out of his way to plant in the background of the photos. Clues intended for Ivy’s eyes only. Hints that he had more of a chance than one might imagine.”
“Go on.” Ty sat back and reached for his cup of cider.
“We know all about the Cloud Ark program, because it’s where we came from. It is our history. We have all of the records in our archives. Well, what Cal was hinting at, with these photos, is that there was another program, perhaps as large, that we never heard about.”
“A program to keep people alive under the sea?” Ty asked.
“Exactly. There are, in the background of these photos, detailed bathymetric charts of some of the deepest undersea canyons in the world’s oceans. There are documents—binders on a shelf—whose titles suggest that they are about such preparations. Other clues as well—it’s all public research, I’ll send you the information if you want it.”
“Okay,” Ty said, just to be cordial. He knew that he would never read those research papers. “But the bottom line is that Deep’s people”—he nodded at their tablemate—“didn’t survive just because Cal got lucky.”
“They have an Epic of their own that, for all we know, might compare to ours,” Arjun said.
Sonar and Einstein had been making their way down the food service line and now approached, eyeing the two vacant seats at the table. Arjun took this as his cue to excuse himself. Deep said goodbye to him with a courteous bob of the head. Within moments Ty and his Pinger friend had been joined by the young Ivyn and the Cyc. For a minute or two, the new arrivals did nothing but eat ravenously, the only conversation being Sonar asking the names and origins of the various foods—all new to her—on her tray. Ty handled those inquiries so that Einstein could be left free to stuff his face. After a while this became a source of amusement even to Sonar Taxlaw, who just watched the boy eat, and transferred some of her food to his tray when he began to run low.
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