by Tony Daniel
“Who is coming?” said the puffing little machine via the tube.
A speaking machine? What was this? Where was he?
Drifting, drifting.
The Sea. Upon the Sea . . .
Wait. Not yet.
Come back.
Yes, he remembered now. The human speaking through the machine. He’d known that, had forgotten. Gitaclabber yanked himself back to awareness as best he could.
“A Mutualist craft and, most importantly, a Sporata vessel,” he said. “The Sporata war vessel is named Guardian of Night. It carries Mutualist refugees. And the artifact. Powerful. Destructive. That’s where the craft gets its name.”
Is this vessel a danger to us? What is its purpose regarding us?
Gitaclaber puffed out a laugh. This set off a coughing fit that took a while to control. When he finally did bring it under control, he was noticeably weaker. His breath was short and choppy—and there was the unmistakable stink of microbial decay in his mucus. Not a good sign. He probably did not have long.
“A danger? Yes. But not from attack,” said Gitaclaber. “On the contrary. The captain and officers of the Guardian of Night plan to defect.”
The human poked at its symbol board quickly, stripped the paper from the printer, strummed a sentence from the page as if it were a musical instrument.
Defect? As in change sides? Defect to whom?
“Why, defect to you humans, believe it or not.” Gitaclaber stifled a laugh. He did not think he could survive another coughing fit. “Defect to this nation-state you serve, the Gathered-Something-or-other . . . the United States. Ricimer explained it to me, but he may as well have been spewing into the wind. I do not understand politics. Never did.”
The human was silent for an atentia or two. Then he wrote and handed Gitaclaber the paper.
Where do we meet this vessel? Where do we find it?
Yes, that was the information he must deliver. The bit he’d left out before, knowing he’d been discovered. Knowing . . .
Gitaclaber spoke, but felt he was not making much sense. Drifting. Away.
What seemed tagatos later, Gitaclaber dreamed his way toward the Sea of Words, his mother’s ocean, the liquid past, present, and future from which he had always imagined poetry must arise. Shape itself around the stones of the world. Recede with the tide. Swell again and again against the shore of reality. Whatever reality was.
The question was no longer of concern to him.
His gaze shifted from the Speaker to the female, the one who had pulled him from space, saved him, if only for a little while. They’d never spoken, yet he felt he knew her. For so many tagatos, they had lain together like mates. The mate he’d never had. Had never wanted with his dangerous life. His mother, the Mam. This female. Such brief closeness, such brief warmth.
To be yanked away. Always yanked away.
He needed to tell her. She needed to know.
Yes. There was one more bit of reality to attend to.
One more word.
For a final moment, the Poet swam to the surface of his mind. He looked at the female human. He’d thought her so grotesque at first.
But she saved you.
He gazed into her tiny pinprick eyes. So very like stars.
Her face cracked longwise. The human smile. The one expression he’d come to understand.
She pulled you from the emptiness.
“The Vara Nebula,” the Poet said. Quietly, but comprehensively, the words drifted from him. “You will find Guardian of Night at the Eridani gate.”
There was more, but this was all he could muster, all the tide would allow. The out-rushing tide. His words were enough. They had to be.
Enough.
The tide, the sea . . .
Now delight. For on this visit to the Sea of Words, he was not confined to the beach. No, he was tugged away by the undertow.
No longer would he have to content himself with pulling out mere fragments of meaning from the spray, the crash of the waves, the tidal leavings in the pools and estuaries.
This time, with a happy thrill, a satisfied sigh, Gitaclaber realized he could do as his mother had done. He could plunge into that forever liquid and drown in words. Dissolve.
Find her. Speak himself to her. Travel as one to the place where all words abide, where one great poem makes and remakes the world.
He could speak himself home.
And so he did.
Migration Song
—For My Two Mothers
by Gitaclaber
In this dream
Rain rounds the shoulders of stones
For a million cycle of cycles rain falls
Rain that turns stone against stone
grinds a face
a me
into one stone
into one sunlit now
This dream became my dream
and I, a dreamer,
dreaming stone,
dreaming creation
But now the rain is past
The sun is dead. The stars blink broken code.
And I have traveling to do
away from this endless necessity to feed.
19 January 2076
Vara Nebula Eridani Exit
A.S.C. Scout Craft 5040, 5050
“Anvil, this is Blade. Are you seeing what I’m seeing? Contact, contact.”
“We have got beta on it as well, Blade.”
“Approach vector fifty-five. Five-five. We’ll take orbit.”
“Understood. We have your coverage and backup, Blade. Lucky you saw her first.”
“Not if she fires on us with that . . . whatever it is supposed to be.”
“Understood. Watching you in, Blade.”
The one-pilot primary scout craft, its Guardian pilot using the call sign “Blade,” hurled toward what was, at first, a point of light. The point of light grew steadily larger. Took on definition.
The secondary craft, its pilot designated “Anvil,” followed behind at a discreet distance. If Blade were taken out, it would be Anvil’s task to scramble and report back to the armada.
A definite possibility if what they had found was, indeed, the Guardian of Night.
Blade zoomed closer.
Weird. The image resolution didn’t seem to be increasing upon approach.
“Anvil, I may have equipment malfunction.”
Damn, Blade thought. I’ll have to give up the ID. She liked Anvil. They were part of the same scouting group and had attended the Academy together. But she didn’t want to give up a prize like this.
It was moments such as this that could make or break a career. Determine whether you made captain, even admiral. Or hit the glass ceiling of commander and never moved forward.
“Suggest you pull out, Blade,” said Anvil. “I am nominal on all remote sensing.”
“Just a minute,” Blade said. A bit closer.
“Blade, if your equipment has a fail and you don’t pull out, you could be subject to disciplinary protocols. You know that.”
A little closer.
Still not resolving. The vessel still a blur.
“Curse it.”
But then Blade understood. The throes. She was seeing a vessel in the throes, a particular, known craft failure. Relief flooded her. She puffed out a laugh. “Anvil, Anvil, no malfunction on my part. Repeat: no malfunction. Quarry vessel is in an out-of-control spin.
She glanced at the beta-signature analysis.
A transport vessel of some sort. What was it doing near the Vara?
The answer dawned on her. She’d found a Mutualist vessel. One of the crafts purported to be rendezvousing with the rogue Guardian of Night.
“Blade, will you comply with my request or do I have to—”
“Anvil, this is Blade. I am nominal. No sensor malfunction.”
“Repeat.”
“It’s Mutualist,” said Blade. She laughed again. “Vessel is in the throes. Complete seizure, looks to be.”
“You�
�re joking.”
“I’m not,” said Blade. “The idiots have even left their beta beacon on. She identifies as the Efficacy of Symbiosis.”
“So it’s a match. This is the dreaded Mutualist resistance craft?”
“We’ve found his rendezvous, Anvil. This is the Guardian rendezvous vessel. Has to be.”
“I’m on approach,” Anvil replied. “Yes, I see the same thing you see.”
Anvil laughed along with her.
The Mutualist vessel was an eyesore upon the galaxy, truly she was. Even before the throes took her, she’d obviously been lubberly, a planet-dweller’s idea of keeping a craft trim and bright, no doubt. She had a dull, worn hue that no churn would ever shine, and she appeared a beaten thing, dented and dinged and not once taken care of. Some sort of crystallized plume trailed away from her. Could the stupid crew not even bring itself to plug its own atmospheric leaks?
Barbarians. Traders. Symbiots.
“We’ve got her,” said Blade. “She’s not going anywhere in this condition. We could fire on her, even. End this here.”
“Blade, do not, repeat, do not fire on that vessel. We’ll have our guts pulled out in hand-length increments. CAP and the admiral will want that honor.”
“I know it, Anvil,” said Blade. “Just a passing fantasy, that’s all. Shall we report?”
“We’d better.”
“What about leaving the craft here?”
“You know as well as I do that the throes is fatal. Nobody recovers. Nobody gets out.”
“Yes, all right, all right. Reversing now. Vectoring toward base, Blade.”
“Acknowledged and agreed. Right behind you, Anvil.”
The scout pilots made a very accurate banking turn away from the crippled Mutualist craft.
As they were speeding away, Blade risked a glance back.
She hadn’t made the kill, but she’d made the ID. There would be a citation. Surely a promotion.
This was a career-defining moment. There was no doubt.
She was going to make admiral after all.
The “Efficacy of Symbiosis”
A mad spin inside the craft. Guardians holding tight to bulkhead railings, gripping floor grills. Anything to hang on. The spin nauseating, almost unendurable. Emergency lights flashed. Emergency esters blared.
Yet the crew did endure. They did hold on.
Finally, after what seemed an eon to those aboard, a gilled hand moved over a toggle.
The spin slowed, arrested by gyroscopic motion in the other direction.
The spin ceased.
The vessel righted itself.
The first mate looked to the captain, who was standing beside her on the bridge. They exchanged a glance, but no esters. All was silent.
Both gazed at the large view-screen display on the bulkhead beside them.
Blinking lights headed away from their vessel on the display. Farther away.
One off the screen.
The other.
“They have gone to make their reports, Captain.”
“Yes. Good.”
“I don’t like our exterior configuration,” said the first mate, who was not a civilian in actuality, not a trader, but was, in truth, this vessel’s executive officer. “It pains me. A mere transport. And succumbing to the throes—as if this crew would ever permit matters to come to that. It is shameful.”
“It was necessary.”
The XO nodded to the right. Agreement. Yet she still seemed troubled, unsure.
The captain didn’t blame her.
“Do you really think this will work, Captain?” she asked.
“Do you mean have we fooled them into thinking we are a foundering Mutualist vessel? Yes, I believe we have.”
“And on a larger level, sir?”
“I do not know,” Ricimer answered. “What I most long to see at the moment is our true namesake. Where is the Efficacy of Symbiosis?”
“It is troubling.”
“If she does not appear, we will have to rethink our strategy,” the captain said. “We cannot carry these refugees into battle.”
“Perhaps this is for the best,” said the XO.
“For the best? We have near a thousand souls on board that were to be delivered at this rendezvous. If the Efficacy does not appear, we will have to find them a home.”
“Or they could join the fight.”
“Half of our refugees are children. What if they are all that remains of Mutualism? Of what is good in our species?”
The XO lowered her head, chagrined. “Of course you are right. They must be protected.”
“I’m willing to gamble my life in our venture, and you have agreed to follow me,” the captain said. “But all of theirs? I cannot. I cannot.”
The captain looked at his view screen one more time. “Where is she?” he asked. The XO wished she had an answer. She did not. She remained silent. “Where is the Efficacy?”
Then, without another word, the captain turned and left the bridge, shaking his head and clenching his fists in troubled thought.
For the first time in many molts, the XO felt her captain’s uncertainty. She must be careful not to communicate it to the rest of the crew. But she was distressed.
If he, if the captain she’d followed into dozens of engagements and emerged somehow alive, didn’t know what do next, then who did?
Nobody.
SEVENTEEN
5 January 2076
Femtodynamics Warren D
Huntsville, Alabama
Boom, boom, boom!
Topside, the drop-rods had begun to fall once again. Surface transport would take a beating, but everyone was safely below ground. Safe for the moment. Sam could just imagine the pulverizing the surface infrastructure was taking.
She suspected there must be a major churn drop as well, or else planetary defense would have dealt with the rods. The servants in the upper atmosphere and the orbital guard must be scrambling like crazy.
Sam squeezed her unlit cigarette (how had that gotten there?), folded and crushed it in her palm, then put the crumbly mass into her lab-coat pocket. “Okay, my dears,” she said to her gathered team. “Welcome to the Chinese Wall once again. Functions? Information flow? What have we got?”
Before them, in chroma re-creation, the Kilcher artifact hung in macabre three-dimensional splendor.
Sam’s first impression was that she was looking at an enormous narwhale tusk, or the horn of a zombie unicorn cut through with some animating, undead fungus. It was simultaneously lovely and nasty-looking. Menacing.
The artifact had the appearance of a twisted horn, a pointed stake tapering from about the thickness of a body-length at its base to a rounded point a human hand might cup comfortably at its tip. The raised, weltlike striations of the artifact’s twist were crusted with flaky extruded salt and coruscated blisters of rust. The declivities of the artifact between were blackened by a smear of something that looked very like mold. You got the sense that it would be soft to the touch—and quite possibly poisonous.
She turned to Remy, her IT whiz—a virtuoso at computational modeling. Sam rarely trusted virtual creations to match reality, but she trusted Remy’s. He didn’t fudge, and he told you when he was making an educated guess. “How close are we on this?”
“If the translation of the material is correct, this is how the artifact would appear,” Remy said with a slight French accent. “But as to how it works or what it does, or if it actually does anything . . .”
“Yeah, that’s the trillion dollar question,” Sam replied.
Sam’s team was gathered around the chroma projection of the artifact. Some stood still. Others tried to see it from different angles. Bai, her quantum chromadynamist and chemical engineer, fidgeted and bit her black-painted nails and occasionally whisked stringy hair from her eyes. Total darkender. Amusing, because Sam knew she was in a quiet relationship with Reynolds, her straightlaced evangelical mathematician. Sam decided to give them a few more minutes
before she started the differential.
She knocked out another Rojo and had it in her mouth before she realized what she was doing. Probably best not to light up at the moment, but holding the cigarette calmed her. She rolled it around between her right index finger and thumb, felt the tobacco give within the packed cylinder of paper.
Nothing like an early conference call with your high-flying, perpetually caffeinated boss—oh, and additionally with the U.S. president—to put a quick step in your morning. Especially when the purpose of the call was to push you to figure out an entire new branch of science and decipher an enemy’s superweapon in the process—not necessarily in that order, but all preferably by lunch, if possible.
You want it when?
The problem was, it wasn’t Kylie Jorgenson or President Frost imposing the deadline. The approaching sceeve armada was doing that. They were closing from Alpha Centauri, having obliterated the Extry outpost there. They were now spreading in a half-domed canopy formation, vectoring in on the solar system and scheduled to arrive from galactic north at the Kuiper Belt. Control of the Kuipers was strategically important, since it was an area rich with throwing rocks for rapid rearmament of kinetic weaponry. The Extry fleet was already there, determined to deny the sceeve the resource or, if not, to use the Kuipers for cover and camouflaged attack if the anticipated space battle came down to guerilla tactics and harassing strikes.
There was, of course, the possibility that the sceeve would alter course and attempt a solar-system entry at the asteroid belt or even glean the Jovian system for debris. But most bets were on the Kuipers for the coming Ragnarok—as a steady stream of returning scout craft seemed to confirm.
The sceeve were predictable if nothing else, Sam thought. At least we have that on our side. Of course, when one side possesses near overwhelming force, bringing unpredictable tactics to bear was usually beside the point.
Sam had given up her morning bicycle rides in to work through Huntsville’s hilly terrain for the past weeks as air attacks escalated, and she missed them. She’d reluctantly accepted a servant chauffeur at Jorgenson’s insistence, even though she still liked to override the autopilot and drive herself. But during her four a.m. commute in this morning, she’d surrendered the car to autopilot and watched the news in a chroma hover display.