Her eyes scanned the other structures, more than a dozen easily visible from the balcony, some larger, none that much smaller. Mine skipped over the replicas of ancient architecture I did not recognize and over the synthstone reproduction of an early starship. Beyond the silvered starship, the golden pyramid glittered in the cold sun, and I took a deep breath. Even for me, visiting the ruins was hard.
Unbidden, the words of a song, Morgen’s song, glittered through my thoughts … .
“ … though buds blossomed too quick, too true,
and words we whispered flamed in vain
against Old Earth’s last reign and rain …”
Dialogue one: Had the ancients been Old Earth’s last reign, the fruit of the tree of knowledge that had fruited too soon?
Dialogue two: Get it together. Morgen had nothing to do with the ancients or the cyb at your elbow who’s looking for any possible key to Old Earth.
“Is there more?” asked Kemra.
I flushed, realizing that I’d spoken some of the words aloud. “It’s more of a private song. I’m sorry. I hadn’t meant to speak it aloud.”
For a moment, her eyes seemed different. “That’s all right,” she said, and cleared her throat, before half-turning and gesturing toward the remaining houses of the enclave. “How many of these?”
“There are more than five hundred behind this barrier. Similar enclaves existed in every major city, but this was the first and only one that had a barrier. That’s why it survived, I suppose.”
Kemra moistened her lips.
“There were gardens with flowers, thousands of different kinds. We only have a few handfuls of those left, although most of the wildflowers survived. That says something.”
“There aren’t many flowers on Gates.”
That didn’t surprise me, but I answered. “If you didn’t think it would upset the ecology, you could take some clips, some DNA samples.”
“How could that upset the ecology?” She laughed. “The early settlers terraformed everything. More than ninety percent of the flora has an Old Earth DNA base.”
Her acceptance of the casual reordering of an entire ecology upset me, but didn’t surprise me—not with the kind of “our might makes your right” ethic the cybs seemed to espouse.
A pair of broad wings caught the corner of my eye, and out of habit I focused on the eagle, trying to mesh, to follow … .
“It’s beautiful. We don’t have anything like that on Gates.” Kemra’s words disrupted my concentration, and I dropped my eyes and scan.
“He is,” I answered, glad to change the subject. “He’s a hunter, and hunters have to be functionally beautiful.”
“Do you think he’s aware of how …” She did not finish the sentence, then added, “Are they really aware?”
“He’s aware enough.” I studied the circling avian for a time.
“How aware, do you think?”
“Enough to have basic self-concepts.”
“Oh?”
“If I’ve got it right, this one thinks of himself as something like ‘Sky-Wing-Search.’” I shrugged.
A moment of silence followed, as I suspected it might.
“Careful!” came the faraway caution from someone monitoring me. Crucelle?
“Nothing else has penetrated,” I pulsed back, but got no answer.
“How do you know?” asked Kemra.
I had to shrug again. “I couldn’t tell you, exactly. It’s more a matter of feel.”
Her eyes traversed from my face to the sky and back to me. “Not exactly verifiable.”
“No, it’s not. I’m part intuit, and it drives the rat-comps crazy, the way …” I left off the part about how Morgen had done the same to me.
For a time, we watched Sky-Wing-Search as he circled farther and farther westward into the higher hills that fronted the mountains. Kemra stood as close to me as she ever had, lost in following the eagle, and something was wrong, something missing, but I could not place it.
“What’s that?” she asked abruptly.
That she even saw the slinking black shape streaking uphill toward the old park that held the only few areas of vegetation in klicks—besides the plastic trees—indicated boosted vision and a few other improvements.
“Vorpal.” I had the rifle ready, but the predator was headed away from us, and that was fine with me.
“A vorpal? It’s gone. You keep mentioning them. What are vorpals?”
“Vorpals are nasty predators that evolved/appeared since The Flight. Cross the independence of a wolf with the intelligence of a high primate, teeth that make knives seem dull, and the mindset of a Uksorissan—something like that, anyway.”
“You allow something that dangerous to run free?” Kemra seemed surprised, even after all that I’d already said.
“It’s not quite a question of allowing. Old Earth has this tendency to adapt. I’m not sure we’d like the vorpal’s successor.”
Again, for an instant, another puzzled expression crossed her face, only to be replaced with the mask of mild interest.
I wanted to scream at her, to tell her to really look at what she saw, but that wouldn’t work. History has shown that it never has, and that realization depressed me even more. I checked the sun and my selfnet. “We should be heading back. Your pilot will be getting worried before too long, and it would be better that he doesn’t.”
We left the Cretan home in silence, but as I reracked the rifle and guided the electrocart back down the drive, Kemra cleared her throat.
I looked at her for an instant, then waited.
“You said you’d answer my question.”
“About who lived here? The demis, of course. This was the enclave where Wayneclint lived.”
“And you leave it like this?”
“There are things we shouldn’t forget, either,” I said softly, remembering my mother’s rendition of The Old Draff’s Tale, and, later, my first visit to Cherkrik. “We, most of all. That’s the reason for the legend on the locial tower.”
We drove back mainly in silence, except for a few questions Kemra asked about geography and water supplies.
Both Dienate and Kessek were waiting at the foot of the locial tower.
“Thank you for everything,” I told Dienate.”I especially appreciated the Springfire.”
“I thought you would.” Dienate turned to Kemra. “I hope you found the ruins as instructive as we do.”
“They were very … interesting.”
I couldn’t help but catch Dienate’s disappointment, although her professional smile never wavered. “I’m glad you found them so,” she answered Kemra without even a flicker of anything besides politeness and warmth.
“Thank you,” I told Dienate again.
“You’re welcome,” she said, adding net-to-net, “I don’t envy you, Coordinator. She’s like ancient marble, and if they’re all like that, we’ve got troubles.”
“We got troubles,” I answered on the net, nodding as I did so, and turning toward the cyb lander where Kessek waited.
“So how were the ruins, Subcommander?” asked Kessek as we walked up the ramp.
“Ruins. Very instructive. Our friends”—she looked at me—“have some impressive history. You might have appreciated them.”
“Ruins are ruins. You ready to head back?”
“Very ready.” Kemra shook her head.
We settled into the luxurious couches in silence.
Later, as the lander leveled off and headed southwest, Kemra rubbed her forehead and looked toward me. “You don’t make it easy, do you?”
“I’m not in an easy position,” I answered truthfully.
“How long have you been Coordinator?”
“Since your approach to Old Earth was noted.” Should I have not answered the question truthfully, I wondered. A few questions to draffs or others in Parwon would have revealed the answer anyway, and the last thing I needed was for the cybs to question my honesty.
“Why were yo
u selected?”
“The Consensus thought someone unencumbered would be better able to devote full energy to the situation.”
“I can’t believe you’re unencumbered. Is this some transition?”
“My soulmate died three months ago.”
“And that makes you a candidate for planetary Coordinator?”
“The Consensus committee could change its decision at any time.” I laughed. “Maybe they will.” She was right, in a way, though, as the flashback in the enclave had demonstrated. I wasn’t operating as clearly as I should be.
“You don’t act as though you want the position.”
“No Coordinator does.”
That stopped her for a moment, and she moistened her lips and frowned, glancing up at the screen for a time, her eyes glazed, her attention on the net, seeking and scanning data on Old Earth. None of it was surprising.
I leaned back and waited, as I monitored her data requests.
“What’s that?” She gestured to the screen and the evenly spaced hummocks centered in the plains north of the Esklant Crossing. “Some renegade draffs hiding out?”
“Hardly. Draffs don’t live away from the locials.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a little rough out there. I’ve told you about the vorpals and cougars, and that doesn’t include the giant scorpions, snakes, and some very intelligent bears. It’s safer nearer the locials. Anyway, that’s a prairie dog town.”
“A prairie dog town? Rodents made that?”
“It’s a prairie dog town.”
“I don’t believe it.”
I shrugged. “It’s true.”
“Could you take me to see that? And Viedras—he’d love to see something like that—assuming it’s real. Could you take us to see it?”
“Who’s Viedras?”
“Our naturalist.”
Obviously, the idea was to keep me occupied and out of touch as much as possible while the cybs readied their attack. And she clearly didn’t believe my statement that draffs didn’t live away from the locials, but they didn’t, except for those that didn’t live long.
Crucelle was off-system. He did sleep, sometimes. So I netlinked Arielle, and backplayed the conversation. “Your thoughts, darkangel?”
“So complimentary you are, Ecktor. That scheming cybnav has definitely gotten orders to keep you on the go, and she likes you in an odd way, which means she’s putting more into it than she has to.”
“Thank you. Do you think the town will reveal too much?”
“It’s more likely to mislead her and the cybs. I’d calculate that they’d think it would show how we’ve totally lost control.”
“I can’t say no.”
“You shouldn’t. Not to the town visit,” Arielle answered.
“Thanks.” I turned in the seat to Kemra. “We can manage something, I’d guess.”
“Where were you?”
“I’m sorry?” I managed to look puzzled.
“Your eyes sort of glazed over for a moment. You were here, and you weren’t.”
Great! She knew we had something like the overnet, but I didn’t want her to realize its range, not yet, anyway. “I was thinking about prairie dogs and what we’d need.”
“Need? They’re rodents, aren’t they?”
“You’ll need your sidearm and the equivalent of a rifle—slugthrower variety. We can provide them, or you could even bring a half-squad of your armed marines.”
A faraway pulse from Arielle added to my concerns. “Ecktor, I told you she was more than a little interested. You’re Coordinator, remember?”
“For rodents?” asked Kemra.
“You’ll see,” I promised both of them. Then I leaned back in the supple couch and closed my eyes.
XVI
After my day at the ruins, I decided to spend the next morning in the southern gorge. If it had been earlier in the year, I would have gone up to the Breaks, but there was already more than a meter of snow there, and I didn’t want to fight bodily chill when I was trying to lift soul-cold.
I lingered over a third cup of tea, running my fingers across the polished flattened oval of adiamante that I’d brought back from my run days earlier. No matter how I held it, the niellen-deep blackness never lightened. Nor did the adiamante ever seem warmer or colder, and not even a diamond could scratch it. I suppose that was the way we demis wanted Old Earth to be, unchanging and unchangeable. Not that there wasn’t a reason for that desire, since most change, at least in the ecosystem, usually was for the worse, but we’d also learned that change was inevitable and unstoppable—except at a cost higher than we could afford to pay. Even before the end of the Chaos Years, most of the ancient coastal cities had vanished under the waves—those that hadn’t been devastated by the reawakening of the ring of fire and the red mist.
As the sky lightened, I set the adiamante in the center of the table and swallowed the last of the tea. My eyes crossed the holo of Morgen that hovered above the corner table, the one she had carved over the years from an ancient and gnarled bristlecone root. Her green eyes still questioned.
Was I doing right?
How would I know?
I shook my head and stood. Unlike Morgen, who knew, I had to struggle and grasp up from more mundane roots. Had our fates been reversed, she would have made a better Coordinator, a far better Coordinator. But we don’t choose our lots that way. With a last glance at the miniature representation of the sandy-haired woman in dark green trousers and tunic and a carefree smile, I headed for the shower.
No … the cyb didn’t really look like her at all.
The weather had held, and as soon as I preflighted the flitter, I was headed a hundred klicks south. Although the cedars and bushes had reclaimed the land, the path of the old highway below stood out clearly, especially where the ancients had removed bluffs and mountainsides. For millennia more it would remain a half-hidden pointer southward. There just wasn’t any practical way to undo all the massive mountain modifications undertaken by the ancients.
The smaller plateau above the river where I set the flitter down was a good thousand meters lower than the house, and correspondingly warmer and sunnier. The sunshine and warmth I needed. The combination of the cyb navigator, the job of Coordinator, and my own losses were going to leave me with years of compensatory-time debts—assuming I survived to pay them.
After a moment, I shook my head, pushing away thoughts of job and past, and turned westward. More ruins I didn’t need. After checking my jacket, my high boots, and the two long belt knives, I pulled on my gloves and began to hike toward the rim, less than a klick ahead.
My boots automatically carried me around the sagebrush and the smaller cacti interspersed irregularly along the plateau. The sun warmed my back as I walked, and my lips whistled a tune I thought I’d forgotten.
As I skirted a larger cactus—the kind that looked partly like a palm—whose name I never learned, I paused as a jackrabbit bounded from one low cedar to another with a speed I envied, a speed probably responsible for the species’ survival in a time of even swifter and deadlier predators.
Ahead lay the pile of rock that formed an ideal vantage point for the gorge and the twisting river that had formed it and that had survived the manipulations of man in the Time of Troubles.
The plateau was too flat and even to suit vorpals normally, but I still scanned for them, and left the straps on the knife hilts unsnapped.
I studied the rocks as I neared them, ensuring my gloves were on tight. The faintest of clicks, well-below normal hearing range, alerted me, and I skirted the dark flat rock. One of the scorpions flash-hissed onto the dark surface, twenty centimeters of clawed tail and venom, all appetite, but I left it alone. Killing it would only have ten to thirty others hissing out after me, and the one horde had to be the only one in a klick or so. The area woulnd’t support more. Scorpion packs—that was another thing the ancients wouldn’t have believed.
The pack meant that there were mo
re than a few other invisible fauna, but concealment was their best defense, and I saw none of the desert prawns or the sliders or anything else that the scorpions usually hunted.
I bounded up the rest of the rocks, slowing as I neared the top, and halted abruptly short of the edge as I saw the heavy black horns and the golden coat.
The kaliram clicked its front hoof on the stones, and a section of sandstone broke and slid onto the sandy detritus, then skidded downhill. The kaliram’s red eyes glittered, and I could sense the black cloud of confusion flashing toward me.
My mental screens went up, enough that I only staggered, although most draffs and even some demis would have been stunned or dead from the sensory impact thrown by a mature beast.
Downhill, the scorpions’ hisses died away, but they were too insensitive to be much more than stunned.
I dug in my boots and hoped that the ram would get the message.
When I did not fall, the kaliram stamped again, and another flash of blackness speared toward me. Prepared as I was, I stood, marshalling my defenses.
I didn’t need them.
After several moments, the golden-fleeced kaliram lifted his head and needle-ended black horns. The red eyes flashed, and the thick lips revealed the knife-edged teeth.
I watched.
The kaliram licked its muzzle, then turned, and bounded across the rock scree, surefooted as its vegetarian ancestors, then angled down toward the river below and easier prey.
I laughed.
After studying the silver stream below, and watching an eagle and a raven skirmish across the blue skies of morning, I turned and began to walk back to the flitter. Soulchill or not, I was Coordinator, and the mess in Parwon was still waiting.
XVII
Barely after I’d gotten airborne on my way to Parwon, as I climbed past Kohl Creek and away from the house, Keiko net-linked. “That Major Henslom was here. He wanted to take all his troops on a recreational hike into the hills. He called it a hike. I suggested that I’d need to inform you.”
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