“But it backfired,” I said, “didn’t it?”
“Yes. Those of the Fulcrum were embarrassed and ashamed, and conceived a plan to make an exchange of blood for blood. As we had taken samples of blood from the Warden of Heaven’s body, they would convey samples of our blood to the surface of Arbre. We had detected signals from the planet, which, as we later learned, had been sent by Fraa Orolo. These took the form of an analemma. Jules Verne Durand had become the foremost authority on Orth and on the avout. He was covertly sympathetic to the Fulcrum. He interpreted Orolo’s signal as pointing to Ecba, and suggested that it would have profound symbolic value to deliver the samples there. He even volunteered to go down on the probe. But at about the same time he was ordered to go on the raid to the concent of the Matarrhites, and so was no longer available. Lise went in his stead—without his knowledge, of course. For she had learned much of the avout, and even a few words of Orth, from Jules. It went wrong and she was shot while boarding the probe, as you know.”
We let a few moments pass untroubled by words.
“Since then things have moved fast. I would say that Prag Eshwar has done what Prags do, which is—”
“React tactically, with no thought of strategy,” Jad said.
“Yes. It led us to this pass. Thirty-one have been slain by your fraas and suurs—from the Ringing Vale, I presume?”
Fraa Jad made no response, but Gan Odru looked my way, and I nodded. He continued, “Eighty-seven more are held hostage—your colleagues herded them into a chamber and welded the doors shut.”
“A misinterpretation,” Fraa Jad said. “Such people do not take hostages, so the eighty-seven were put in that room to keep them safely out of the way.”
“Prag Eshwar interprets it, rightly or wrongly, as hostage-taking, and prepares a response with one hand. With her other hand she has reached out to me and asked me to discuss matters with you. She is shaken. I don’t really know why. The large bomb that was destroyed has always been a weapon of last resort; no one would seriously consider using it.”
“Pardon me, Gan Odru, but the Pedestal was getting ready to launch it,” I blurted.
“As a threat, yes—to hang above your planet and exert pressure. But that is its only real use. I don’t understand why its loss has shaken Prag Eshwar so deeply.”
“It didn’t,” Fraa Jad said. “Prag Eshwar sensed terrible danger.”
“How would you know this?” Gan Odru asked politely.
Fraa Jad ignored the question. “She might explain it by claiming that she had a nightmare, or that sudden inspiration struck her in the bath, or that she has a gut feeling that tells her she ought to steer a safer course.”
“And is this something that you brought about!?” Gan Odru said, more as exclamation than as question. He was getting very little satisfaction from Fraa Jad, and so turned to look at me. I can’t guess what he saw on my face. Some mix of bemusement and shock. For I had just seen a glimpse of an alternate Narrative in which we had visited appalling destruction upon one of the Orbs.
“That we might send a signal to Prag Eshwar—is that such a difficult thing to believe for you, Gan Odru, the Heritor of a tradition, a thousand years old, founded on the belief that my predecessors summoned you hither?”
“I suppose not. But it is so easy, after all this time, to harbor doubts. To think of it as a religion whose god has died.”
“It is good to doubt it,” Fraa Jad said. “After all, the Warden of Heaven’s mistake was failure to doubt. But one must choose the target of one’s doubt with care. Your third Gan detected a flow of information from another cosmos, and saw it as cryptic messages from his ancestors. Your Prags, ever since, have doubted both halves of the story. You disbelieve only one half: that the signal came from your ancestors. But you may still believe that the signal exists while discarding the third Gan’s incorrect notions as to its source. Believe, then, that information—the Hylaean Flow—passes between cosmi.”
“But if I may ask—have you learned the power to modulate that signal, to send messages thus?”
I was all ears. But Fraa Jad said nothing. Gan Odru waited for a few moments, then said, “I suppose we’ve already established that, haven’t we? You apparently got inside Prag Eshwar’s head somehow.”
“What signal did the third Gan receive nine centuries ago?” I asked.
“A prophecy of terrible devastation. Robed priests massacred, churches torn down, books burning.”
“What gave him the idea it was from the past?”
“The churches were enormous. The books, written in unfamiliar script. On some of their burning leaves were geometrical proofs unknown to us—but later verified by our theors. On Urnud we had legends of a lost, mythic Golden Age. He assumed that he was being given a window into it.”
“But what he was really seeing was the Third Sack,” I said.
“Yes, so it seems,” said Gan Odru. “And my question is: did you send us the visions, or did it just happen?”
We have come…we have answered your call. Was he the last priest of a false religion? Was he no different from the Warden of Heaven?
“The answer is not known to me,” said Fraa Jad. He turned to look at me. “You shall have to search for it yourself.”
“What about you?” I asked him.
“I am finished here,” Fraa Jad said.
Part 12
REQUIEM
Something was pressing hard against my back—accelerating me forward. That couldn’t be good.
No, it was just gravity, or some reasonable facsimile, pulling me down against some flat firm thing. I was monstrously cold. I started to shiver.
“Pulse and respiration are looking more normal,” said a voice in Orth. “Blood oxygenation coming up.” Jules was translating this into some other language. “Core temp is getting into a range compatible with consciousness.”
That would, perhaps, be my consciousness they were talking about. I opened my eyes. The glare faded. I was in a small but nice enough room. Jules Verne Durand was seated on the edge of my bed, looking clean and sleek. This more than anything else confirmed the vague impression that a lot of time had passed. I was hooked up to a bunch of stuff. A tube was cinched under my nose, blowing something cold, dry, and sweet into my nostrils. A physician—from Arbre!—was glancing back and forth between me and a jeejah. A woman in a white coat—a Laterran—was looking on, running a big piece of equipment that was circulating warm water to—well—you wouldn’t believe me if I told you, and then you’d wish I’d kept such details to myself.
“You have questions, my friend,” Jules said, “but perhaps you should wait until—”
“He’s fine,” said the Arbran. He was dressed in a bolt and chord. He had a tube strapped across his upper lip. He shifted his attention to me. “You’re fine—as far as I can tell. How do you feel?”
“Unbelievably cold.”
“That’ll change. Do you know your name?”
“Fraa Erasmas of Edhar.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“I would guess on one of the orbs on the Daban Urnud. But there are some things I don’t understand.”
“I am Fraa Sildanic of Rambalf,” said the physician, “and I need to tend to your comrades. I need Jules to come with me as interpreter, and Dr. Guo here to supervise the core warming procedure. Speaking of which, we’ll be needing that.”
Dr. Guo now punctuated this statement in the most dramatic way you can possibly imagine by reaching up under my blankets from the foot of the bed and disconnecting me from the core warmer. For the first time in a long time, I uttered a religious oath.
“Sorry,” said Fraa Sildanic.
“I’ll live. So—”
“So we are going to have to leave your questions unanswered,” Fraa Sildanic continued, “but one is waiting outside who will, I think, be happy to lay it all out for you.”
They left. Through the opening door I glimpsed a pleasant view over open water, with green
growing things all over the place, soon blocked by a small figure coming in at speed. A moment later, Ala was lying full-length on top of me, sobbing.
She sobbed and I shivered. The opening half-hour was all about raising my core temp and getting her calmed down. We made a great team that way; Ala was just what the doctor ordered as a way to raise my temperature, and using me as a mattress seemed to be good for what ailed her. During the bone-breaking shivering that hit its peak about fifteen minutes in, she clung to me as if I were an amusement park ride, and kept me from vibrating right off the bed. This kind of thing gave way, in due course, to other fascinating biological phenomena, which I can’t set down here without turning this into a different kind of document.
“Okay,” she finally said, “I’ll report to Fraa Sildanic that you have excellent blood flow to all of your extremities.” It was the first complete sentence that had come out of her mouth. We’d been together for an hour and a half.
I laughed. “I was thinking Heaven? But Heaven wouldn’t have these.” I tugged gently at the hissing tube under her nose. She snorted, and batted my hand away. “Oxygen from Arbre?” I asked.
“Obviously.”
“How did it—and you—get here?”
She sighed, seeing that I was determined to ask tedious questions. She pushed herself up, straddled me. I raised my knees and she leaned back against them. Snatched a pillow, propped herself up, got comfortable, fiddled with her oxygen tube. She looked at me, and once again the I’m in Heaven hypothesis floated to the top. But it couldn’t be. You had to deserve Heaven.
“After you went up,” she said, “the Pedestal rodded all of our space launch infrastructure.”
“I’m aware of it.”
“Oh yes. I forgot. You had a vantage point. So, we got the message that they were extremely cross with us over the two-hundred-missile launch. But they had fallen for the decoy—the inflatable thing you launched. They sent us detailed phototypes of the wreckage. Were they ever triumphant!”
“Maybe they were only pretending to fall for it.”
“We considered that. But, remember—a few days later, you guys were able to just walk right in.”
“Well, it was a little more difficult than you make it sound!” I was trying to laugh, but it was hard, with her weight on my tummy.
“I get that,” she said immediately, “but what I’m trying to say is—”
“The Pedestal hadn’t taken any extraordinary precautions,” I agreed, “they were totally surprised.”
“Yes. So, one moment, they are feeling triumphant. The next, out of nowhere, all of a sudden, their World Burner has been wrecked. A bunch of their people are dead. One of the twelve Vertices has been seized by Arbran commandos.”
“Wow! The Valers did all that?”
“They sneaked onto the World Burner and planted three of the four shaped charges they had with them. Then they headed for a certain window—”
“Pardon me, a window?”
“That vertex is a sort of command post and maintenance depot for all things World Burner. There is a conference room with windows that look out over the bomb. Osa and company had a plan, apparently, to rendezvous there. Along the way, they were noticed, and came under assault by the maintenance workers who were out there in space suits. But the workers didn’t have weapons per se.”
“Neither did the Valers,” I said.
She gave me a sort of pitying look. Maybe with a trace of affection. “Okay,” I said, “Valers don’t need weapons.”
“The Geometers’ space suits are soft. Ours are hard. Just imagine.”
“Okay,” I said, “I’d almost rather not. But I can see how it would come out.”
“Suur Vay died. She took on five guys, one of whom happened to be carrying a plasma cutter. Uh, it’s a very unpleasant story. She and the five all ended up dead. But, largely because of her intervention, the other three Valers made it to that window.”
She paused for a moment, letting me absorb that. I had really hated Suur Vay when she had sewn me up after Mahsht, but when I remembered that picnic-table surgery now, it made me want to cry.
Once we’d given Suur Vay a decent moment of silence, Ala went on: “So, imagine this from the point of view of the big bosses inside the conference room. They see a large number of their people converted to floating corpses before their eyes. There’s nothing they can do about it. Fraa Osa trudges right up to the window and slaps on a shaped charge, right up against the glass. They’re not certain what it is. He makes a gesture. The World Burner explodes in three places: the primary detonator, the inertial guidance system, and the propellant tanks. There is a huge secondary detonation as the tanks rupture.”
“That we noticed.”
“Fraa Gratho is killed by a piece of flying debris.”
“Damn it!” My eyes were stinging. “He stood between me and a bullet…”
“I know,” she said softly.
After another silence, she went on, “So, the bosses now understand the nature of the object that’s been slapped on their window. They get the message and open an airlock. Esma comes inside. Osa stays where he is—he’s the gun to their heads. Esma stays in her suit. She herds all the Geometers she can find into the conference room, locks the door, welds it shut with Saunt Loy’s Powder. Now, Osa joins her, bringing the shaped charge with him. They lock the doors into the vertex, sealing it off from the rest of the Daban Urnud, and weld those too. They detonate the fourth charge in such a way that most of the vertex vents its atmosphere to space. Now it can’t be approached except by people in space suits. They hole up in one of the few rooms that still has an atmosphere. Their suits are out of air now, so they climb out of them, and suffer the usual symptoms.”
“What is up with that, by the way?”
She shrugged. “Hemoglobin is a classy molecule. Finely tuned to do what it does—take oxygen from the lungs and get it to every cell in the body. If you give it oxygen that is only a little bit different from what it’s used to, well, it still works—just not as well. It’s like being at high altitude. You get short of breath, woozy, can’t think straight.”
“Hallucinations?”
“Maybe. Why? Did you hallucinate?”
“Never mind…but wait a second, Jules can get along just fine on Arbre air.”
“You acclimatize. Your body responds by generating more red blood cells. After a week or two, you can handle it. So, as an example, some of the people who live on the Daban Urnud rarely leave their home orb. They have trouble going into common areas of the ship, where the air is a mixture. Others are used to it.”
“Like the Fthosian cosmographer who let us in the airlock at the observatory.”
“Exactly. When she saw you guys gasping for breath and starting to lose consciousness, she recognized what was going on. Sounded an alarm.”
“She did?” I said.
She gave me that pitying-but-affectionate look again. “What, you were hoping you’d managed to sneak aboard?”
“I, er, thought we had done exactly that!”
She grabbed my hand and kissed it. “I think your ego can be satisfied by what you did accomplish, which people are going to be celebrating for a long time.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling it was time to change the subject away from my ego. “She sounded an alarm.”
“Yes. Of course, there were lots of other alarms going off at the same time because of the Valers’ mayhem,” Ala said, “but some medics came to the observatory and found you unconscious, but alive. Fortunately for you, the physicians around here are used to dealing with such problems. They put you on oxygen, which seemed to help. But they had no way to be sure; they’d never treated Arbrans, they were worried you were going to suffer brain damage. Better safe than sorry. So they put you on ice in a hyperbaric chamber.”
“On ice?”
“Yeah. Literally. Dropped your body temperature to limit brain damage while oxygenating your blood as best they could with Laterran air. You�
��ve been unconscious for a week.”
“What about Osa and Esma, holed up in that vertex?”
She let a long moment pass before saying, “Well, Raz, they died. The Urnudans figured out where they were. Blew a hole in the wall. All the air escaped into space.”
I lay there for a minute.
“Well,” I finally said, “I guess they went out like real Valers.”
“Yes.”
I laughed in a not-funny way. “And—like a true non-Valer—I lived.”
“And I’m glad you did.” And here she started crying again. It wasn’t sadness over the dead Valers. Nor joy that the rest of us had lived. It was shame and hurt that she had sent us into a situation where we easily could have died; that the responsibilities placed on her shoulders, and the logic of the situation, had left her no alternative to the Terrible Decision. For the rest of her life—of our life, I hoped—she’d be waking up sweaty in the middle of the night over this. But it was a hurt she’d have to keep to herself, since most people she might share it with would not extend her much sympathy. “You sent your friends to do what!? While you sat on the ground, safe!?” So it was going to be a private thing between us, I knew, forever. I squirmed free and held her for a bit.
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