Ashur spent a lot of his time in the exercise room with Teddy and Kitten, bouncing off the walls (and the floor, and the ceiling), though how much real cardio that gave Ashur in close to zero g’s is questionable. Rocket liked to spend most of his time with Wilson, learning what he could about ship operations. Captain Thomas divided her attention between several areas of the ship, and was currently in her office. Representative Lee spent quite a lot of time tucked into the mess hall with a tablet, writing, reviewing, and revising correspondence and contracts (ours was already signed and filed for posterity).
“Ladies,” I addressed Cocteau and Mirzakhani, “does this room have a device for playing music?”
Cocteau looked at me over the top of her book. “It does. Do you have something in mind?”
“Fire has sent something that she believes will prepare us for our cultural encounter with the Belters. I thought you might like to hear it, too.”
Mirzakhani didn’t look up from her reading. “Okay.”
“By all means,” agreed Cocteau. “You can download the music into Merlin’s main directory, under MEDIA. Then you can choose the areas of the ship you want it to play.”
“I would choose only SLEEPING QUARTERS,” advised Mirzakhani, still without looking up. “The others will be able to hear it from down the hall, but they’ll be less likely to complain if they don’t like it.”
I followed their directions, selected the first song, then hit PLAY. The music began with the solo voice of a man, but his role seemed to be as a prompt for the other singers to join in, definitely not singing in Standard. They played percussion instruments in a fashion I had never heard before, as if they were clashing them together as they danced.
Cocteau and Mirzakhani both put their reading down and sat up straighter.
Kitten peered into the room from the top of the doorway. (She could magnetize her feet, and thought it was very entertaining to be upside down in relation to everyone else.) “What is this wonderful music?!”
“Traditional music from Oceania,” I said. “It’s a gift from Fire.”
“It’s so clickety-clack!” said Kitten. “All the words flow together!”
“There are program notes.” I sent her a copy.
Kitten climbed over (under?) the top of the door and settled on our ceiling, tucking her paws beneath her as she read the virtual notes about the music of Oceania. The rest of us listened attentively.
“Amazing,” said Mirzakhani. “If this is traditional folk music, it could be thirty thousand years old.”
I stared at her, wondering if I had heard right. “Thirty thousand?”
“Oh yes,” said Mirzakhani. “That’s how long it’s been since humans began to colonize space.”
No one had bothered to tell me that before. Not that I had asked. Why would it occur to me to ask? One hundred years was the length of time Olympia had been journeying to Graveyard. It hadn’t occurred to me to wonder how much time had transpired before we existed.
Regardless of its age, the music of Oceania made an enthralling racket. Narm stuck his head through the door, Dragonette still perched on his shoulder. “What the hell?!” he demanded.
“Fire sent us some music,” I said.
Cocteau peered over her book at him. “It’s part of our cultural education for Maui. They’ll be insulted if you tell them you don’t like it.”
Narm put his hands on either side of his face. “Oh my God! With you people it’s always the retro!”
“You’re just jealous,” said Kitten, “because you can’t play the tom-toms and the boobams.”
“There, there,” said Dragonette. “I’m sure you could learn. I’ll bet you would be quite good at it.”
Narm shook his head and walked away. Dragonette just had time to wink at me before they disappeared down the short corridor. The rest of us leaned back in our bunks (or in Kitten’s case, on the ceiling) and listened to the music.
The hours slipped by. I marveled that we were sidestepping the vastness of time and space in little Merlin, leaving Olympia to labor along far behind us. It would take her many weeks to travel the distance we were crossing in just a few cycles—but I was glad our generation ship would take more time. I hoped Ashur and I would be able to return and teach our comrades what we learned about the Belters, and Graveyard, and …
The entities. The Three. Were we really going to be able to come back and talk about it? When we did, would Medusa and I be partners—friends again?
Captain Thomas appeared at the door. “Oichi—will you come into my office?”
She didn’t seem upset, but her expression let me know this was serious business. I abandoned my bunk and accompanied her to her office. Thomas didn’t close the door, so it didn’t seem to be a security issue she wanted to discuss. I was intrigued to see that Wilson was already there, waiting for us.
I stole a glance at Medusa in her corner. She remained tightly bundled.
“Wilson noticed something when we came out of our last jump,” said Thomas, and she nodded to him.
“It’s pretty rare for jumping ships to encounter other jumping ships,” said Wilson, “even if they’re engaged in battle. When that happens, there’s a perimeter alarm that goes off.”
They looked at me expectantly.
“It did,” concluded Wilson.
“Just now?” I said.
“Before our last jump. Someone crowded us. It’s hard to confirm proximity visually, unless another ship is really close—and this one should have been close enough to see. I didn’t see it, so I thought I might have a malfunction somewhere. That’s what I’ve been checking, but systems are all fine.”
“Timmy’s ship wasn’t visible to the naked eye when it fetched her from Olympia,” I said.
“If it’s her,” said Wilson, “she was ghosting us. We lost her on the jump.”
“How easy would it be for her to find us again?”
“Not easy at all,” said Wilson.
I couldn’t see why she would be after us at this point. Hadn’t her business been with Nemo, on Olympia?
Maybe she had new business.
“We thought you should know,” said Thomas. “I would be surprised if anyone tried to attack us this far into the Charon system, but surprises kill people all the time.”
“We should notify Medusa,” I decided.
“Done,” said Thomas. “She’s the one who said I should notify you.”
Oh.
Our last conversation had been pretty difficult. I shouldn’t be surprised that she wasn’t feeling chatty. “I’ll let Ashur know,” I said. “Thank you, Captain.”
When I returned to the bunks, everyone was embroiled in their own pursuits again. Kitten had gone back to the bridge. I climbed into my own bunk and tried to relax.
He didn’t even look up.
Seriously. He was so much better at this than me. He was probably going to sleep like a baby.
Not me. I slept fitfully during those hours we traveled to Maui—and I didn’t feel certain of anything.
* * *
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Captain Thomas. “It really does look like a giant hook.”
We guests were strapped into seats on the bridge—well, we humanoid guests. The Minis had once again contrived to be right in the middle of things, either perched on the shoulders of the Merliners or, in Kitten’s case, on the bulkhead above us, her neck stretched so that her head would have been squarely in everyone’s way if she had been lower (and bigger). Ashur and I still had an interesting view, both from the windows and from screens that rendered our approach to Maui into tactical displays. We approached Maui from the hook end, and that massive contraption gave Olympia a run for its money in terms of sheer grandeur.
How would Itzpapalotl compare? Crow said everyone had to come to Maui first—could they get there faster than we c
ould? Would we see that monster ship close in?
“Captain Thomas,” I said, “have you detected any sign of Itzpapalotl yet?”
“I doubt they’ll bring that juggernaut this far in-system,” said Thomas. “It’s probably got too many weapons. They’ll use a smaller craft, like Merlin.”
In that case, we would have no idea where they were unless we ran into them. That was a less-than-charming prospect.
“I wish we could see how the hook works!” said Rocket, who had become very enthusiastic about all things mechanical since he had started hanging out with Wilson.
“Me, too,” said Wilson, “but if it were in use, they wouldn’t let us approach from this end. Chunks of ore can break off and damage craft out here. That’s why this place is swarming with Minders.” He gestured as dozens of lights flashed past us, alternating amber and red. “They’re scooping up as many of the errant rocks as they can find.”
“That must take forever,” said Kitten.
“A base the size of Maui has thousands of Minders,” said Wilson. “Along with repair drones, tow-drones, scrubbers—you name it.”
As we got closer, we could see movement all over Maui’s rocky surface. Most of it was from machines. Narm quirked his glove controls until we could see a schematic of Maui that included a cross section. “I thought it would remind me of Olympia,” he said. “It’s spinning on an axis, but that’s about all it seems to have in common with your ship.”
Dragonette hovered near his screen, her propellers whirring. “The big space hook isn’t spinning, is it? It doesn’t look like it’s moving at all.”
“No—the hook is isolated from the spin arms.”
That made sense—it wouldn’t be helpful to introduce gravity into a situation where you were trying to move tons of rock. That part of Maui reminded me of our leading edge and its research towers.
When I looked at the cross section of Maui, I found one glaring difference. “There’s no Habitat Sector. Well—I mean there’s no big, airy space in the middle.”
“That’s where the refinery is,” said Wilson.
Maui had living and working spaces carved throughout the entire bulk of the asteroid. The simulated gravity they experienced would vary more than most of us experienced on Olympia, because many of the people on Maui must live and work farther in on the spin arms.
“Is it going to look like a bunch of space caves inside?” wondered Teddy. “They seem to have a lot of tunnels. I approve of that.”
According to the schematic, Maui’s shape looked suspiciously regular until we got close enough to see how it had been carved by mining tools, some of which must have been gigantic. A few of those behemoths were parked on the surface, reminding me of their smaller cousins on Olympia. I believed Medusa’s accounts of mining operations that had been undertaken early in our voyage, but they looked like small potatoes compared with what seemed to be happening in the asteroid belt of the Charon system.
“We’ve been hailed,” said Narm. “We’re going to automatic approach.”
“Does anyone ever fly this craft manually?” I said.
Thomas raised her hand. “I do. I’m the one who’s going to fly us into Graveyard’s gravity well.”
“I can navigate,” Narm said, “though not as good as Cap.”
“I can navigate, too,” said Cocteau. She refrained from saying how good she was at it. “The trickster god has us now. He’s drawing us in as well as he would with a celestial hook.”
Lee stared at the cross section on Narm’s screen. “Interesting. There are several areas that aren’t labeled.”
“Maui has his secrets,” said Ashur.
An access canyon loomed, and we were drawn in.
* * *
Mirzakhani was thorough with her decontamination procedures, though the official we had spoken to had been a bit blasé about the protocols. “Everyone on Maui got our vaccinations,” he said. “Just don’t kiss anyone.”
Mirzakhani did not agree. “Dot your i’s and cross your t’s, and when things go sideways, you’ll know what didn’t go wrong. That helps you concentrate on what did.” She sprayed substances that had been provided by doctors on Olympia up my nose and then Ashur’s. Afterward, all of us were sprayed head to toe with agents that should kill anything riding on our skin, in our hair, or on our clothes. Even the Minis were sprayed.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been this clean,” said Kitten.
Our decontamination didn’t take nearly so long as Merlin’s had, so I wondered if Olympia had been considered a special case. “We’ve been isolated for over one hundred years,” I said. “Maybe we were too cautious with you?”
“Maybe a little,” said Mirzakhani. “Your isolation was short, compared with some groups. After all, humans have been venturing into space for thirty thousand years. Most people have diverged.”
“Divergent evolution?” I remembered something about that concept from my school lessons.
“Consider the changes we’ve caused to ourselves deliberately,” said Mirzakhani, “and we need not meet alien races to find people different from ourselves. Though we have met them. We may even see a few aliens on Maui.”
That idea would have dazzled me if I hadn’t already met Gennady Mironenko and the Merliners. They were my aliens, and I was theirs. That’s what I thought at the time.
I don’t feel that way anymore, but I can’t help marking that last moment of innocence (or ignorance, if I’m going to be accurate). I felt a pleasant anticipation for the meeting we were about to have with the Belters. I assumed the tone would be something in between the meeting we had with Thomas and Lee in the House of Clans and the tea party we had held for them later, when the real negotiations took place.
Assumptions are based on what you already know—just before everything goes sideways.
* * *
Once we had all been sprayed and dosed, we signaled to the officials running the ship docks that we were ready to meet with our party—though we weren’t quite sure who that party would be.
“The party is already under way,” they said, which seemed a deliberate misunderstanding. “They’ll send someone to get you.”
The Minis had already ventured down the ramp to scout the territory.
Kitten hopped onto the top of the ramp railing and stretched her neck to an outrageous degree, trying to get a better look at the people and things in the lane. “People are doing stuff,” she reported. “Also, machines are doing stuff. So—stuff is being … done.”
I followed Ashur onto the ramp, moving cautiously in the simulated gravity. It didn’t tax me—it was about .7 g’s, this far out on the spin arm. I wondered how long the Belters could work on Maui without suffering some loss in bone density. Maybe at .7 g’s, it wouldn’t be that significant. That was one of many questions we would have to address if we established ties with the Belters, if some of us came to live and work here—and if some of them did the same on Olympia.
I added that to the big file of notes I was compiling.
Narm, Wilson, and Cocteau joined us on the ramp. “It’s warmer in here than I thought it would be,” said Cocteau, though in this case that meant it was cool instead of cold.
Dragonette flew back to settle on Narm’s finger. Rocket perched on Wilson’s shoulder (a very high perspective, indeed), but Teddy had to peer between the railings of the ramp. We goggled at the cavern, with its cables, and tow structures, and crates of goods being shuttled back and forth between ships. The scene was lit from one end to the other, but not brightly, heightening the sense of mystery we felt as we tried to fathom its contents.
Teddy seemed right at home. “This would be an interesting place to work.”
“Maybe you should roll around a bit,” suggested Cocteau. “Do a bit more scouting for us?”
Teddy looked to Narm for affirmation. �
�Is it allowed?”
Narm shrugged. “As far as I know, it isn’t disallowed. I don’t see a lot of port officers marching around, looking official.”
Teddy smiled. There is very little in this universe as charming as a smiling Mini. “Well, then—tally-ho!” He tucked himself into a ball and sped off down the access lane.
He zoomed around a couple of cargo tugs and rolled right up to a man about sixty meters down the row from us. Teddy unraveled and popped up in front of the man, who seemed admirably calm to be confronted so abruptly. We could see them talking, but they were too far away to hear what he was saying.
I hadn’t noticed this fellow until Teddy rolled up to him—his clothing was subtly colored. It did not appear to be casual garb. I wondered if he was a soldier or a security official—or …
An agent. Because his clothing reminded me of Timmy’s. I accessed Teddy’s sensory links and looked at him through Teddy’s eyes, listened through Teddy’s ears.
“Argus Fabricus,” said the man. “I’m pleased to meet you, Teddy. Are you a robot?”
“No,” said Teddy. “My contents are classified.”
Humor touched the long, pale features of the face I could see from Teddy’s POV. “As are mine. Will you tell me who made you, Teddy?”
“Ashur did.” Teddy pointed to us. When Argus looked in our direction, I held my breath.
“Oops,” I said aloud. I had the presence of mind to answer,
He wasn’t so distant that I couldn’t see his expression with my own eyes. I marveled that someone could appear so confident, yet so compassionate. Perhaps it was a balance that served him well, because he said,
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