They encountered surprisingly few obstacles. A few times, Siegfried ordered a halt so they could examine some oddity.
“I’m pretty sure this was originally a chameleon mine,” Falkner said, examining a squat heap of something in the middle of the tunnel floor. “It was probably activated by vibration or heat—possibly both. When the nanobots spread to this point, the chameleon field would have failed. The explosives might still be live, so take care.”
“What good would these defenses be,” Alexander asked, a slight sneer to his voice, “if their own nanobots would disable it?”
Falkner, who’d been squatting to wave various devices over the thing, eased back onto his heels. “A couple possibilities. This could have been in place since the tunnel was built. Or it this might have been set by the invaded, not the invaders. If it was set by the invaders, then they probably did have it sealed against their own nanobots. However, even the best seals break down over time.”
Siegfried added, “It’s long been a mystery why the invaders didn’t destroy Artemis. Most people think this is because it was a prize they wanted for themselves.”
“Although why the planet would be a prize,” Alexander said slyly, “has been debated.”
“Indeed,” Siegfried said, shooting a warning glance to remind his brother that the Old One and Julyan were present. Julyan, who was hunkered against a wall, as far as was prudently possible from this potentially explosive thing, pretended not to notice. The Old One looked blankly attentive as always. Siegfried continued, “But we must consider, how many years did the invaders think would pass before they returned? Twenty years? Fifty? A hundred at the outside. I doubt they anticipated the extent of the destruction and fragmentation that happened once the war they triggered here spread through the empire.”
“I agree,” Falkner said. “Another bit of evidence that they intended to return relatively quickly is that they did not design the nanobots they released here to mutate into a neutral form. We have evidence that they employed automatic deactivation elsewhere, so I take this to mean that they thought they would return within a relatively short framework and could employ an antivirus at their convenience.”
“Or the lack of deactivation could be evidence that they were being very careful for some other reason,” Alexander said. This time the glare Siegfried sent him was far from subtle. Alexander must have realized he’d overstepped some invisible boundary, because he quickly added, “Or perhaps they wanted to make certain the planet stayed an undeveloped paradise. It would have been a pity to preserve Artemis for her wilderness wonders only to return to a planet in in the midst of a full-blown, pollution-filled industrial revolution.”
“Sounds good to me,” Falkner agreed. “Shall we get going? At the rate we’re traveling, we’re going to need to camp down here at least one night.”
“At least,” Julyan said, “we don’t need to worry about getting soaked. It gets rainy in the mountains this time of year.”
The three Danes looked at him blankly. Belatedly, Julyan realized that the energy fields on the scooters probably kept the rain out, too.
But they wouldn’t keep the ground dry, he thought with a flare of anger. I’m fed up with being treated as if I’m only a little brighter than Seamus.
When Julyan glanced at the Old One, hoping for who knew what reassurance, those cool grey eyes only said, “So, then, keep your mouth shut.”
* * *
The next several days were almost too much fun to be called work. Ring insisted on trying the flight and float capacities of the spavek. He bounced off the walls and ceiling as he learned how to control velocity and arc, but soon was managing the suit with uncanny skill.
Leto had reactivated the simulated firing range, so Ring explored the various elements of the blue spavek’s weapons systems. Eventually, they planned to move to live fire, but not until Ring was scoring at least ninety percent in simulation. The spavek could generate beams of various kinds, some intended for fine work like cutting, others with no other use than as very destructive weapons.
Griffin was reminded of the ruined military installation Adara had shown him on his second day on Artemis. The entire side of a mountain had been sheared off, the rock not just exploded, but melted. It would have been an astonishing show of force anywhere, but on pastoral Artemis—well, Griffin had had no problem understanding why, five hundred years later, stories were still told about the single armored figure who had caused all of that destruction.
Although the spavek could fire small missiles and some were stored in racks nearby, Griffin suggested they avoid using projectiles except in simulation. “The charges might have broken down over five centuries. Even the damper and containment fields built into the range might have trouble dealing with some random recombination of elements.”
No one—not even Ring, who was showing quite a bit of assertiveness these days—argued with Griffin on this point. Ring was less cooperative when Griffin suggested that he, Griffin, might activate another spavek, so they could try some sparring.
“Not you,” Ring said, “nor Terrell. The bear might fly in orange arms, and the fish, eventually, in yellow or pink, but, until you embrace the dark paths, neither you nor Terrell will spread wings of purple and green.”
Griffin was offended. He was getting tired of Ring’s refusal to speak plainly, though some part of him accepted that Ring was probably being as clear as he could be. What really ticked him off was that Ring clearly didn’t think Griffin could operate one of the spaveks.
“May I remind you,” he countered tartly, “that I am probably the only person on this planet who has ever operated a flying craft? Why can’t I operate the spavek? Take it off and let me have a try.”
“If you insist, seegnur.”
The readiness with which Ring floated down made Griffin think he was destined to fail. From the impish grin Terrell quickly squashed, Griffin knew his friend thought so, too. Ring backed the blue spavek into one of the convenient squires set around the arena, did something to snap open releases, then stepped out. Meanwhile, Griffin methodically stripped down.
I’m a skilled small ship pilot. I’ve worn battle armor before. Why am I suddenly scared?
He knew why, even if he denied it to himself. Watching the ease with which Ring had adapted to the rig, Griffin suspected that there had to be some sort of symbiotic linkage. Nothing else explained a primitive who could barely sit a horse managing power armor with such ease. The horror stories of Kyley had been full of intelligent machines that started running their owners’ lives.
The anthropologist in Griffin whispered, Now you have a very good idea where those stories originated. How many of the Old Empire’s tools survived their makers and were found by those innocent of their power?
The skeptic in him countered, Yes. But could those tools use just anyone? Ring was created to synchronize with the old technology. Maybe Castor might manage, but you? You’re safe. Stop being a wuss. Back on in, fasten the snaps. Nothing’s going to happen.
At least you’ve got to try, said another voice, bossy, like his sister Jada. What sort of scientist is afraid of experimentation?
“A live one,” Griffin said aloud as he stepped into the suit’s embrace. He felt the squire hum. Remotes closed the panels, pressed the helmet down over his head. Starting at his extremities, the hum of electric current ran through Griffin’s nerves, surged along his limbs, intermeshed at his core, causing his muscles to spasm then release, spasm then release. Griffin would have screamed, but the helmet had possessed his head.
Linkages of spiked energy pricked against the rims of his eyes, swarmed up his nostrils, probed into his ears. Something larger, thicker, pressed between his lips, forcing them open. He refused to think about what the suit was doing lower down, but a very bad memory, something to do with his brother Alexander, flashed into Griffin’s mind, then vanished instantly to wherever he had kept it suppressed.
There was no pain, no pleasure, just a practicality th
at was somehow more horrible than either would have been. Griffin wanted to use the suit. The suit was doing what was necessary to find out if this was possible. This violation was Griffin’s own choice. Again, he tried to scream, and this time he heard a sound that might have been his own voice.
Terrell spoke, his voice tight and anxious. “Griffin? Griffin? Are you all right? The telltales on both the squire and the spavek are showing activation is complete. The squire has lowered you to the ground. You’re just standing there.”
Power armor, Griffin told himself. All this is is some weird form of power armor. Try to raise an arm. Your right arm.
After a tremendous effort, his right arm lifted. He heard Terrell cheering. Griffin moved his left arm. Then he raised and lowered each leg, managing a few steps. Each action required a tremendous amount of effort. He wondered why the Old Imperial technology—supposedly so much better than that of his own people—should be so hard to operate.
The buzzing through his nervous system, which had fallen to a numbing hum, intensified once more. It moved deeper, penetrating from the peripherals into Griffin’s core, vibrating along his spinal column. Prickling touched the inside of his brain. He knew he couldn’t really feel what was going on—didn’t the brain have minimal sensory nerves?—but Griffin would have sworn he could feel every ripple and convolution outlined in a painless but remorseless lightning.
Once or twice the inspection paused, as something of potential interest had been located. Then it moved on, digging deeper, layer by layer, eventually cell by cell. Griffin raised his hands, trying to rip the seals open, but the gloves, capable of such precise manipulation when worn by Ring, were stiff and unyielding, as if each finger had been dipped in plastic and was now hardening in futile clawlike curves.
Had the examination continued, Griffin might have gone insane, but Ring came to his rescue. The big man touched the center of Griffin’s chest, pressing his hand hard against one of the spavek’s panels. The questing force that had been delving into Griffin rushed to meet Ring, meshing its energies with his, welcoming him. Griffin had the faint, embarrassing feeling that he was being complained about.
Ring’s reply was inaudible but somehow comprehensible. “He did better than I dared hope. Let him go. He has been stronger than you can know.”
Griffin felt grateful, even more so when Ring shoved the spavek into the waiting squire and triggered the releases. The suit let him go, withdrawing its connectors with apologetic grace. Ring, too, was apologetic.
“I had not realized that you were so almost alive. I thought that, but for a tiny vine, you were dead, that the roots would not find soil in which to bury. Forgive me. I would not have had you so used.”
Terrell caught Griffin, whose knees were buckling, and helped him over to one of the built-in benches that encircled the testing chamber.
“What happened, Griff? I thought you were doing all right. You were moving the thing, though stiffly.”
Griffin felt his friend’s emotions with an intensity that he never had before, at least when both were awake. Terrell’s fear mingled with a trace of anger, delight was ebbing before apprehension. This must be the “vine” Ring had spoken of. Whatever the suit had done to Griffin had—almost certainly temporarily—intensified his psychic link to the factotum.
“If I understood Ring, he let me put the spavek on because he didn’t think I had the necessary adaptations to let my nervous system mesh with whatever the suit uses to link with its wearer. The problem was, I had just enough that the suit kept looking to make a connection. It couldn’t find it, though, and my system was getting overloaded.”
“That’s horribly dangerous!” Terrell protested, looking at the suit as if it might come after him next, his earlier enthusiasm swallowed by a sea of distrust and apprehension.
“It was—but only because I hadn’t been trained how to operate the cancellation sequence,” Griffin said, knowing he was right, now recognizing what one of the pulses in his core had been. “If I had been, I simply would have told the suit to let me go and it would have.”
“So it kept trying,” Terrell said, “because you didn’t tell it to stop and it found just enough to convince it the effort was worthwhile? That still seems insane—like holding someone underwater and hoping he gets himself free before he drowns.”
“It felt rather like that,” Griffin said, forcing a shaky laugh. “Again, my lack of training was the problem. My guess is that the test pilots or whatever you want to call them were trained to recognize that they were not synchronizing correctly with the suit.”
“Why didn’t the suit know?” Terrell protested. “You talk as if it’s somehow intelligent.”
“Perhaps the completed models would have had safeguards,” Griffin said. “Remember, this was a test lab. These were all experimental models. Probably every one of them has some flaw or incomplete element.”
“And Ring didn’t have a problem because he has the right sort of adaptations?” Terrell asked, now sounding less angry, more interested, although his fear was still present.
Ring nodded. “I have dreamed of blue since the coming of the first star. I did not know what it was until after the second star fell. Then my heart sang that if I were not here to know the blue, all would be lost.”
Griffin tried to remember the weird prophesy Ring had recited soon after he had arrived with Bruin and Kipper. Something about there being no hope unless Ring was present, about the return of slavery, then that odd stuff about cats. “If the cats do not breathe in the dusty orb, if the thread does not learn that it binds tightest when it is knotted firmly into itself, if the dreamer does not wake from the visions, then even with Ring, with Bruin, with Kipper, still there will be disaster.”
He felt uneasy. The coming of the first star could refer to his own arrival. The shuttle burning through the atmosphere had been seen as a falling star, even in daylight. Could the second star refer to what had been reported in Spirit Bay? Had he been right to dismiss it so lightly? But they weren’t dismissing it lightly. Adara was off to make sure there was nothing to the rumors.
Space trash, he thought, comforting himself, letting his mind slide back to the fascinating problem of the secrets of Leto’s complex. That’s all it is. Just space trash.
Interlude: Parasitism
arms
legs
voice
to
needy
childish
vengeful
omnipresent
rusts
smuts
root rots
devouring to live
parasitism
12
Beneath the Surface
Sleeping on a bed was nice, even if Adara did have to share the creaking frame with Sand Shadow. Nonetheless, the huntress woke with the dawn. Ambling into the kitchen, she found the widowed cousin who served as the family’s cook and housekeeper slicing slabs from a ham and dropping them into a skillet. They exchanged greeting while Adara cut herself bread and smeared it with thick strawberry jam.
The family that was not quite hers kept farmer’s hours. Bread and jam or bread and cheese would hold them until the milking was done, eggs gathered, cows turned out to pasture, horses fed, and routine tasks attended to. Then they would meet for a larger meal that would sustain them until noon.
From bitter experience, Adara had learned that the scent of Sand Shadow that clung to her made domestic livestock nervous, so she didn’t offer to help. Instead, she settled herself on a three-legged stool on the porch and amused herself between bites of bread and jam with carding wool.
Neenay found her there. Sliding behind her spinning wheel, she started pumping the peddle. When the process of transforming fluff into yarn was under way she said, “Hektor left with first light. Even if he does stop at the cobbler’s, I suspect you’ll have news of Spirit Bay before lunch. Will you be staying on after?”
Adara licked a bit of jam off one finger so it wouldn’t soil the wool and co
nsidered. “It depends on the news. If there’s nothing, I might stay a day or so. Bruin is with Griffin and Terrell, so they won’t starve.”
“Not pining to get back to one or the other?” Neenay asked.
Adara shook her head. “More pining to be away, if you want to know. Mother, I never said I didn’t want a…” She almost said “mate” as the hunters did, then corrected herself to politer use. “A husband, but I want one who will be a partner, too. I’m not sure either of those two would put up with me for long once the shine had worn off. I’m not the easiest person to deal with.”
Neenay chuckled. “Tell me about it.” She grew more sober. “But you like them?”
“Both. Very much. I’d give my life for either of them.” Adara paused. “But I’m not sure I could give my life to either of them … Does that sound as strange to you as it does to me?”
Neenay surprised Adara by shaking her head. “It’s a mistake many a young woman—especially one with interests beyond the usual—makes. Some women are perfectly content with the roles our bodies built us for—bearing children, then raising them—just as some men have no desires beyond following in their fathers’ trades, farming the same land, living in the same house. There’s nothing wrong with feeling that way either. But for those whose gifts lead them outside those expected paths, there’s always the question of what to choose.”
“And?”
“I say if you choose a man, make sure it’s one who makes you feel as if you’re choosing for the larger life, not the smaller. If you choose to settle and have children, then you should feel the joy of it, not that you’re imprisoning yourself. Equally, if you choose to follow—say—a hunter’s path, you shouldn’t feel as if you’ve shut yourself out of a life you would have loved but feared as too ‘ordinary.’”
Adara nodded. “Then, by those terms, I’m not ready yet for any decision. Since I think that both Terrell and Griffin honestly care for me—though each after his own fashion—then, much as the idea is inviting, I need to stay out of their blankets. I don’t want to give any false hopes.”
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