“Well, I can’t either!”
Toby was finally, truly irked. Without meaning to—maybe—Quath actually had insulted him. Or so he felt. So he stormed out of the big bowl where Quath stood, transfixed by distant conversations with her own kind.
So now Toby loped through vacant ship corridors, fretting to himself, hoping to release through his muscles what he could not resolve in his own feelings. Most of Family Bishop was jammed into the cafeterias, talking and eating and forming the communal consolations that had always before gotten them through a crisis. Maybe it would this time, too, but Toby didn’t like the drift of events. And jogging didn’t clear his mind much today; it just made him even hotter, sweat collecting in his eyebrows and stinging his eyes. An itchy heat laced the air. The usual well-being that came from a workout did not settle upon him.
So he slowed his step when he rounded a long curve and saw the same small side passage, caught the acrid scent of smoke. With a certain eagerness he walked puffing to the edge of the group—larger this time—around a flickering corn husk fire.
He settled in, exchanging ceremonial nods with the others, accepting a passed flask of fruity liquor that rasped in his throat but sent a warm, welcome pulse through his body. The Family talk was amiable and he sat and soaked it up for a while, but then an edge came into it and eyes drifted his way. He had defended his father the last time here, and now voices arose among the huddled figures that voiced outright fear. It slid quickly into anger at Killeen, and Toby began to feel uncomfortable.
Jocelyn said, “Our hull temperature, it’s goin’ up and up and up.”
A voice muttered, “Can feel it ever’where. Hot as a clam at a clambake.”
Toby had never seen a clambake or a clam, didn’t know what they were, had never even seen a body of water he couldn’t pitch a stone across—but the term remained in the Family tongue. “Lemme have some of that,” Toby whispered to a bald woman sitting nearby.
She passed him a flask of ripe apricot brandy that made his nose sting when he swigged some into the back of his throat. But it was good to feel the spin of it steal up into him, lighten his head just a tad and smooth the world off a bit. His body would quickly enough metabolize the alcohol into burnable fuel—the Family had long ago been engineered to turn every possible food into usable energy—but it gave a momentary glow. And he needed that now. A prickly irritability ran through this crowd of huddled shapes, snappish remarks lancing through the gloom, and even the ancient consolation of the dancing flames did little to deflect the mood.
“We got how long before we roast?” an engineer asked, flicking her long mane of tawny hair with a jerk of her neck.
Jocelyn shrugged, glanced at Cermo. “A day? Two?”
Cermo looked uncomfortable. Ship’s officers had to be the lubricant between the Cap’n and the Family, and they got rubbed raw sometimes. “The computers are tellin’ us there’s ’bout a day left before the cooling runs out. Then we go to backup.”
“What’s that?” a man’s slurred voice called out. “We peel down naked and get in the food freezers?”
This got a sour laugh all around but Cermo didn’t join in. “You can strip if you want. Looks to me like we’re not wearing all that much now.”
He was right. Toby was in shorts, like most around the smoky fire. A few wore loose robes. Family liked to dress up whenever possible, a holdover of the era when a fine cloth jacket or silky shirt was a precious treasure, a last emblem they had salvaged from the Calamity, the loss of Citadel Bishop.
A few small jokes circulated, mostly about the skinny flanks, pink beer-bellies, and pale pencil-arms exposed, for the Family still liked to josh and chivy and rank each other. Toby thought this was a good sign; when they couldn’t laugh any more, they’d be in deep trouble. Then Cermo said, “Backup plan is to fall back into ship’s core. All of us.”
“What for?” an angry woman asked.
“The outer zones will get pretty bad,” Cermo said reasonably. “The cooling systems can handle us if we’re packed into the inner areas.”
“Leave the growing domes?” a woman cried with disbelief.
The crowd dissolved into discordant voices, piling in.
“Without us tending ’em, they’ll all die, for sure.”
“We’ll never get them back to harvest.”
“That’s death, right there!”
“Whose idea’s that?”
“Those damn computers, is who.”
“Yeah, what do they know? They’re not Family computers.”
“So what? Our systems, the ones back in the Citadel, they were small-fry kin to these computers.”
“Can’t trust ’em, I say.”
“Well, I say different. We—”
“Nobody can save us if we lose all the crops at once.”
“She’s right. We’ll never reseed if the soil gets baked.”
“Hey, might get rid of those weevils for good.”
“Yeasay, and all the earthworms that do the real soil work.”
“Cermo, you can’t mean that.”
“We won’t just crawl back in our holes and give up!”
“We’re Bishops!”
“Yeasay, we’re meant to move and search and shoot anything gets in our way—not turn into moles.”
“Who says we should? You know who—the Cap’n!”
“Yeasay, this idea smells like him.”
“Got his whiff, all right.”
“Too big for his britches.”
“Never trusted that one, never did. I used to say—”
“Followin’ this damn fool course, it was his idea.”
“Got us into a goddamn trap.”
“Any fool would naysay flying into this hellhole!”
“But no, Cap’n says we got to go, well we just roll over and wag our tails and off we go.”
“While he flumdiddles on the Bridge!”
“Yeasay, nice and cool!”
“Bridge is right in the center of the ship, it’ll be frosty.”
“I say we go get cool ourselves. Whatsay you?”
“Good idea!”
“Enough hunkerin’ down here.”
“Let’s move!”
The crowd had swollen in the gloom without Toby noticing and now it rose as one, yammering and elbowing and smelling of sweaty irritation. With the zigzag logic of a mob they set out to do what they had just been protesting, moving click-step quick inward. It cooled a bit as they wound down the central helical ramp.
Toby followed. A kind of rolling-stone energy grew in them, gathering the moss of the undecided from side corridors. Bishops liked action a lot more than mulling matters over.
By the time they got to the Bridge level, the campfire group was a milling, murmuring mob. Toby could feel their muttering rise like an animal’s warning growl. This wasn’t going to be like other times, when Killeen had used a stern scowl, quick reasoning, and then a sunny smile to turn aside bands of complaining Bishops. This gang had a mean, dark streak in it.
The Lieutenants at the Bridge felt it, too. They formed a four-person block at the Bridge entrance and tried to stare down the mob. Toby looked around, but Cermo and Jocelyn had faded back. No point in them showing their faces, when the others would do their work.
Or were they that crafty? Toby wasn’t sure. The campfire ritual had seemed to just burst out with the jittery anxiety they all felt, which was the point of the age-old custom, after all.
Toby himself tried to slip quietly away from the Bridge. Even more than Cermo and Jocelyn, he was in a conflicted position. But elbows and close-packed shoulders kept him from beating a retreat. Skeptical eyes speared him, as if to say, You’re going to slide away now?
Toby wasn’t sure what he should do, and then events made up his mind for him.
The Bridge was tall enough to jut a balcony out over the corridor, meant as a place to which an officer could retreat and hold a quiet conversation. K
illeen used it now, stalking into view above the heads of the buzzing throng. He wore full dress uniform with its impressive crisp blues and gold spangles. An excited babble broke out at his appearance. More Family joined the edges with every moment. Killeen stood, hands behind his back, for a long moment, letting the grumbling beast below give vent, waiting until the noise ebbed.
When he did speak his voice was solid and surprisingly mild. “You came to view our progress?”
“Progress? Ha! We’re sailing into hell!” a man called.
Killeen shook his head. “We are staying ahead of the mechs.”
“You mean they’re runnin’ us!” a woman shouted, her words soaked with derision.
“They are trying to catch us, sure—when didn’t they?” Killeen swept his gaze over the still-growing crowd, fixing individuals in turn with his gaze.
“They’re gonna’ cook us for sure!” a man accused.
“Not by a mech’s eye.” Killeen smiled confidently. “We entered the galactic jet just a few minutes ago.”
A confused stirring at this news.
“Didn’t you notice?” Killeen added mildly. “Our hull should start to cool off in a while.”
“How come? That jet looks pretty hot.”
Killeen waved a hand. “It’s not. Funny business, but turns out the gas here is blue because it’s cooled off. Fighting its way up, out from the gravity well that black hole makes, well, that takes all the zip out of the gas.”
The crowd stirred and muttered with disbelief.
“So we’ll stop heating up?” a woman called.
“Our computers say so.”
“Well, that’s fine,” a man said. “But we still—”
“We can follow the jet on out,” Killeen said amiably. “The blue clouds are condensing as they cool.”
A man said angrily, “That don’t excuse the damn fool idea of comin’ here in the first place.”
“We hold you accountable!” a woman called.
“Yeasay—and what do we get out of all this, anyway?”
“More trouble!”
“More mechs!”
“And we sure don’t need more of this Cap’n!”
That was too much for the Trumps. Abruptly individual Aces and Fivers and Jacks shouted down the doubting Bishops. Surly jibes, angry taunts. Fistfights started, but officers broke them up.
The chaos went on for minutes and Killeen stood silently, watching. His mouth twitched once and Toby guessed. He’s thinking that it’s pretty damn strange, when your own Family is against you, and Trumps stand by you.
Finally the crowd had settled down to a growing, sour-mouthed mutter. Killeen spread his hands. “I think you folks should just go back to your tasks and—”
They all felt it at the same time—a compression that boomed into a rolling pulse, as if Argo had become a great heart that beat with slow, solemn weight.
I return, enjoined to deliver instructions.
It was like God speaking in a cramped room. The mob rustled. Their eyes raked the walls, searching for the voice, showing too much white, like panicked sheep.
But Killeen reacted only with a skewed mouth and a skeptical slant to his eyebrows. He crossed his arms over his chest, as if prepared to hear out the Magnetic Mind before responding. “Yeasay, we are listening.”
It is you and the Toby creature to whom I need transfer this complex of curious meanings.
“I’m here!” Toby called.
People nearby gave him a startled glance and moved hurriedly away, as if they wanted no association with one who would call down this daunting thing that shook the walls to make speech.
My duty is imposed by encumbered obligations from my far past. I once benefited from the powers who now call on me, and so stand as messenger to motes such as you—a post requiring humility I do not come to naturally. So I be quick of it—here.
A high-pitched wail filled the ship, reverberating in agonizing harmonics. Sharp, shrill, endless. A cutting pressure, driving all thought away. For an excruciating moment it held, built—then cut off savagely. The stunned silence that followed seethed with dread.
Such was your course. Follow it well or you will suffer to be torn to atoms, and then still more.
“Our . . . course?” Killeen croaked.
The trajectory your benefactors instruct you to follow.
Regaining composure, Killeen said sternly. “And which way is that?”
You are to follow my magnetic field lines. Cling close to me, that you do not shear into fragments.
“Why? And where are you, anyway?” a burly man shouted.
Silence, small mind.
“The hell I will. Who are you, what are you, to—”
A fist of sound struck them. The colossal thump pulsed through floor, ceiling, walls. People lurched, fell, shrieked.
I do not suffer the attentions of mortals, but for my obliged task. That—and no more.
“That, that sound you sent—” Killeen held out his hands, palms down, to still the throng. “You say it was a course plan along you?”
Without me as a guide, you would come to swift wreak and ruin.
“Look, we’re going to head out along the galactic jet. I—”
Such a trajectory would inevitably intersect those who desire your end.
“Mechs? We’ve gotten away from them before.”
There are agencies and physicks here you cannot grasp.
Killeen folded his arms across his chest and scowled. Toby knew that look, had seen it form like a stone wall against opponents. But there was some other element in his father’s stance, an odd note of staged and studied performance he had not seen before. He wondered at it, caught a sliver of intuition, but then the Cap’n spoke.
“I want to know the authority by which you—or any other of your ‘agencies’—gives us orders.”
How you strut! I have dwelled here longer than your species has existed. You are as ephemeral as the passing, fraying cloud. Yet pride often accompanies such infinitesimal durations.
“Maybe it’s that long life of yours that makes you so longwinded?” Killeen winked at the crowd.
I speak to you now only out of obligation—which does not include enduring the slings and errors of toy intelligences. Very well—your benefactor is the creature Abraham, of whom we spoke.
Joy kindled in Killeen’s eyes. “He is alive.”
The warp and slide of space-time here does not allow such easy simplifications.
“But if he sent this just now—”
The very term “now “is as ephemeral as you. Here, worse than meaningless.
Toby could see curiosity overcome his father’s exasperation. Killeen chewed at his lip and called, “That course you sent. I want to know where it’ll take us.”
Where I live most intensely. The seat of forbidding energies and grand remorse. Where my feet dance on sizzling plasma. Inward, tiny thing. To your terror.
SIX
Lightning Life
Almost despite himself, Toby was drawn back to the Bridge through the long hours of their descent.
Argo was using the galactic jet as a shield now, plunging in along it. Ghostly blue filaments twisted and snarled and rushed by them, fleeing outward. Their streaming made the ship’s flight seem even faster. The deck rumbled with the plasma drive’s effort, sucking in the blue gas and thrusting it out the back.
And now a puzzling, unspoken question was answered. For days the ship had buzzed with speculations: where were the mechs?
The Eater of All Things had loomed in legend for Family Bishop, and part of that ancient story held that mechs lurked and labored there. Why, no one knew. They had driven humans from True Center long before the fall of the Chandeliers.
But until now they had seen only fleeting glimpses of mech ships. Now, far up along the jet, Argo detected huge, dark mech constructions. They had seen before enormous masses of mechwork, on their passage inward—and had avoided them. Immense, mysterious, shrouded in ene
rgy-collecting panels. All mute, speaking on no channel humans knew.
These mech structures ringed the jet as though taking energy from it. The jet walls were alive with brilliant blue-white flashes. Here antimatter, made near the black hole, collided with matter in furious, annihilating battle. But most of the jet’s energy lay in its outward thrust. The mechs did not seem to lessen this as the jet passed. Instead, they seemed to be studying it.
Why were the mechs up there, circling the jet? It occurred to Toby that maybe this was their way of listening to the inner rumblings of the black hole itself, but he could not imagine how. The jet was eerie and, he was quite convinced, beyond human comprehension. Its constant turbulence served to hide the Argo, Killeen said. And the mech fabrications seemed to ignore such tiny matters as a single ship, anyway. Argo scurried like a rat through a palace.
Oddly, the center of the jet was nearly empty, making their flight easier. The gas had been robbed of its heat by the effort of climbing up from the gravitational pit of the unseen black hole. The thick, cooling gas column around them protected against the ferocious heat of the disk. It was almost as if someone had planned this tunnel into the innermost realm. To his teacher Aspect Isaac, of course, it was just a bit of interesting physics.
The spin of the black hole hollows out the gas that it throws up this way. This jet resembles the spools of cotton candy I got as a boy at the fairgrounds, a spun-out cloud of sheer sugary delight.
“What’s cotton candy?”
I forget how much your people have lost. Have you never been to a fair?
“A fair what?”
A gathering where—never mind. At least this beautiful blue haze around us reminds me of my better days, when high culture reigned in the Chandelier of Queens, and I went ceiling-skating with my father.
“You were in the Chandeliers?”
Did you think I descended from clod-huggers such as you? We had great powers then, and held our own against the mechs who now drive you like cattle before them. We regularly ventured into even this region, spying on the mechs who worked their strange ways here. We—
“Hey, you’re from the Arcology Era!”
Isaac’s Aspect-aura turned peevish.
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