They replayed the telemetry of the probe’s last few moments. The second wreck lay half in and half out of the sharp-edged shadows cast by the probe’s searchlights. Ripper magnified the image, cleaned it, enhanced it, threw it on the holostage.
“It’s a Hound’s field office,” Donovan whispered.
A Kennel ship was nearly indestructible. Yet, something had cut it open and tossed it aside like an empty food packet. Méarana turned away from the suddenly blurred image.
Maggie Barnes spoke quietly to her First. “Did the scanners show any life-signs, D.Z.?”
The First Officer glanced at Méarana, then shook his head. “Hull breach. Sorry, m’lady.”
Méarana turned on Donovan. “You told me from the start it would end this way. Are you happy now?”
The Fudir brushed his sleeve against his eyes and shook his head. “No. No, I—” The Sleuth told him it was the logical thing to expect. He listened for his other voices, but even the girl in the chiton was silent.
“Well,” said Captain Barnes after a moment, “we know where not to land.”
A handful of people could learn little about such a vast artifact from a brief visit. Even Bridget ban had intended no more than to confirm its existence and location. But the salvage laws required certain formalities, and one was to set a crew aboard the wreck. Second Officer “Fresh” Franq would take two power room technicians named DeRoche and Wrathrock to make a quick survey of what looked like the engines. Méarana would go because the least she could do was complete what her mother had started, so there was no help for it but that Donovan and the others would accompany her.
“A flying crow always catches something,” Donovan told them. “We may as well watch for exotic materials, hard copy schematics, hand tools. Who knows? There might be something obvious—which is why you have to stay here, Billy. Méarana’s mother was after the activation ray. ‘Fire from the Sky.’ Maybe we can locate the systems that power and control it.”
“Be careful,” Maggie B. warned them. “We know that’s still working.”
“It’s a big ship,” Donovan answered. “It’s not as if we could break it.” Maggie shook her head. “The mucky-mucks can send fleets of experts to pick the ship clean. Before you set out to beat the odds, be sure you can survive the odds beating you.”
Everyone in the Periphery romanticized the old Commonwealth. It had been an era when anything had been possible and so, in song and story, everything was. It had become an age of magic and wonder; of which little more than names had survived. Approaching the vessel, it was hard not to assume that the wildest legends were plain truth. Could such a ship have been constructed by a race any less than godlike? And this had been only one of a vast Treasure Fleet.
Yet: a Fleet now vanished, her descendants living as savages on half-civilized worlds. The hoped-for “end run” had never rescued Terra.
The’ Loons had pushed the closest—they had almost made it—but the Terrans had “moosed,” and the desperate effort had proven in vain. No wonder the’ Loons despised Terrans, even if they had forgotten the details. If he could meet the men of the Commonwealth, Donovan wondered, would he find them as disappointing as he had the True Coriander?
Wild Bill Hallahan flew the shuttle to the ark’s blasted side, well away from the active regions, and took them in through one of the open landing decks spaced down the length of the vessel. Approaching, they saw the shattered remains of boats, among which stood one in almost pristine shape. It was streamlined for atmospheric flight. “Dibs,” said Wild Bill, pointing to it.
Hallahan settled the boat leaf-gentle on the landing deck, feeling for it with the skids. “No gravity,” he announced. “Gotta lash her down. Wrathrock, DeRoche, come with me.”
Skinsuit hoods stiffened into helmets when powered up. Donovan, Méarana, and Sofwari deployed theirs and disembarked. Second Officer Franq went to examine the flier, and the pilot and technicians joined him.
“Tao!” he heard Wild Bill exclaim. “The pilot’s still in it!”
That brought Méarana and Sofwari on the double. But Donovan stayed by the boat and stepped behind the ladder and waited.
“No rush,” he heard Franq say. “Just a skeleton wrapped in tin foil. That foil must be their space suit. I wonder if it generates a force field of some sort, because he’s sure not dressed for a space walk.”
“What was the gun for?” asked Méarana.
“Suicide,” said Wild Bill. “He came back up after what happened happened and…lost hope. Don’t know why he didn’t rejoin the others on the ground. Maybe he was out’a fuel. Maybe his lover had been on board. We’ll never know.”
“There is a song in him, though,” said the harper.
Donovan’s patience was finally satisfied as first one pair of boots, then another, climbed down the ladder. He poked a gloved finger into the back of the first man. “I didn’t think you could stay away, Billy.”
The Confederate turned and smiled. “Of course not.”
“Let me guess: you hid in the engine compartment? How did you evade your guard?”
Paulie was in the other suit. “I was the guard.”
“This does raise some rather delicate questions.”
“Donovan,” said Billy Chins, “I have watched your back and you have watched mine for many weeks. I saved your life in the Roaring Gorge, and Méarana’s during the storm surge on the Aríidnuxr. What more can I do to prove myself? I have been on this quest longer than anyone but you and the harper herself. Do I not deserve at least to look upon the end of it?”
Donovan sighed. “Stick with me, and don’t get out of my sight.”
Billy spread his hands. “Sahb! Where Billy-fella go?”
Méarana strode the ruined decks of the Vessel like the queen of High Tara. This was where Mother had meant to be, and she had come to walk those footsteps instead. She wondered if her footprints were big enough. When her mother’s ship had been hulled, the air pressure had blown everything loose out into space, and that included Francine Thompson of Dangchao Waypoint, d.b.a. Bridget ban, Hound of the Kennel, R.Mh., S.hÓ., etc. There would be no funeral: no burial. Only a memorial service, with ancient words spoken over an empty box.
Their suit lamps cast a halo of soft, subtly tinted light about them. It created an eerie effect in the dark interior: broken and twisted walls and decks, cables and conduits, gaping chasms in which shadows seemed to move. Once, Méarana thought she saw another suit weirdly following them: perhaps an ancient crewman, wrapped in foil like a bonbon, drifting through the empty spaces of the Vessel until he should find his way accidentally to the void and freedom. But when she shone her spotlight on the apparition, she could not find it, and perhaps it had not been there at all.
Another time, they found a floating machine, tangled in cables like a skin-diver caught in seaweed. It had wheels and extensors that resembled arms and two lenses that gave the appearance of eyes; but the carapace was blackened and the unit dead.
Their lamps found an inscription on one of the bulkheads. It was in the Tantamiž, and Donovan puzzled over it some before declaring that, if he guessed the sound-shifts correctly, it meant something like “Amphitheater” and the number five. Five decks from here? Amphitheater 5? Five paces this way? But the rest of the meaning had gone with the rest of the bulkhead.
Blankets and Beads tracked them and kept them informed of their position relative to the large pressurized sector. “When we find it,” Donovan wondered, “how will we enter without losing the pressure?”
“Why worry?” said Billy. “You can’t imagine there are people inside! Not after thousands of years.”
Méarana entertained the sudden image of survivors of this ancient catastrophe; huddled in a redoubt, a civilization in a box. Would such a people commit mass suicide one day when the futility of it all came home to them, when they finally realized that they would never leave their box, that there was nowhere else they could possibly go? Or would they forget that they we
re even in a box and forget that universes might not have walls?
Méarana told herself it was absurd; but the notion of a spaceship the size of a small moon was just as absurd. So who could say where the line of fantasy ought to be drawn?
As they worked deeper into the Vessel, they found intact rooms and corridors, machines dead but undamaged. There was no air or power or gravity, but whatever had wrecked the Vessel’s outer hull and torn up ordinary quarters and corridors had failed to penetrate this far into the ark.
Finally, they came to a door beside which small lights glimmered green and yellow and blue. What the colors meant was not clear. The Tantamiž consisted of cryptic abbreviations. But that there were lights at all meant everything.
There was a button labeled and another labeled . Beside them the symbol glowed green. Donovan studied all closely.
Billy coughed impatiently. “This means ‘close’ and that means ‘open.’ The symbols are universal.”
“That does seem obvious,” Donovan admitted. “I’m trying to decide if means ‘pi.’ Pirāņam means air, life, vitality, strength, power, so it might be the abbreviation for ‘air.’”
Sofari said, “So the green light might mean there is air on the other side, or it may mean that the power for the door is on.”
“Or there is life within,” said Méarana with thumping heart.
Donovan shrugged. “Or all the above. They had words that cut crosswise through ours.”
“One way to find out,” suggested Sofwari.
“Maybe the rest of us should get out of the way,” said Méarana. “In case pressing the button means something more serious than ‘open.’”
“Umm.”
“What, Debly? What!”
“If there is air under pressure in there, and the door opens, everyone standing in front of it gets blown away.”
“It must be an airlock. What’s the point of airtight doors with no way through them?”
“Aah,” said Paulie, “enough O’ this shit!” And he reached past everyone’s shoulder and pressed the button.
Everyone flinched. The door split down its center—there had been no sign of a crack before—and they found themselves staring down a broad, brightly-lit corridor.
Donovan had a moment to register the sight. Then he braced himself.
But there was no hurricane of outpouring air.
“Magicians,” he muttered. He stepped through the doorway and felt as if passing through a thick layer of gelatin. Then he was inside, and suit sensors activated. There was air around him. His helmet display read off temperature, pressure, and composition—well within the range of human atmospheres.
It occurred to him that, however long recycled, this was the atmosphere of Old Earth herself, that these very molecules had once blown in soft breezes on a free Earth.
His fingers fumbled at his helmet seals. By the time he had pulled the hood off, the others were around him and wondering at the tears that ran down his cheeks.
The ark was named A. K. Prabhakaran. It was the name of a person of such fabulous importance as to cause this enormous vessel to be named in his honor; but it was a name lost in an incalculable past. Warrior, politician, science-wallah, explorer…Even male or female. Whatever he had been, he was only the name of a ship now.
They learned the name from one of the crew.
Shortly after they had entered the pressurized sector, a multiwheeled cart with a raised front rolled down the aisle and stopped before them. The holostage flickered and the head and shoulders of a young woman appeared on the raised platform. The ymago did not have the ghost-like appearance of a normal projection, but seemed a solid body, so that the whole gave the impression of a mechanical centaur: half woman, half cart.
It spoke to them in the Tantamiž, but with many words of the Murkans and the Zhõgwó and the Yurpans mixed in. Donovan learned that he could follow it, though he had to ask the thing to repeat itself several times.
“Why are ye awake at this time?” Donovan understood the thing to say. “Our planet is not yet ready.”
“Who art thou, o machine, that thou mayest ask this of us?”
The ymago smiled. “I am Flight Attendant 8y493 pi-cha-ro, sri colonist; and such are my assigned duties.”
“I will call you ‘Peacharoo.’”
“As thou willst. This is not an alloted wake time. Hath there been a failure of thy pod?”
“And why should I not be awake?” He turned aside to tell his companions. “It says we’re up past our bedtimes. I’m trying to stay outside its box.”
“Be not foolish, sri colonist,” the machine countered. “The planet will not be a world for another nine lakhs of hours. Thou willt be an old man before the landings begin.”
“Nine lakh? Nine hundred thousand hours…Are those metric hours or dodeka hours?”
“Thy query signifieth naught. An hour is an hour. Which are your pods, and I will escort you to them. Do not waste your life-hours, for time spent is never to be regained.”
“A Terran hour, then. Nine lakh would be, ah, about a hundred years.”
Sofwari whistled. “Far less than a Gladiola ark requires to prep a planet.”
“Well,” Donovan told him, “a Gladiola ark is far smaller than this behemoth.” He turned back to Peacharoo. “The planet Enjrun is already terraformed. We have come from there. It is time to wake the colonists and bring them down.”
“I see no ecologist ratings on thy sleeve. Thou wearest not thy required bar code or insignia. Let me ask Ship’s Sensors.” The simulation hummed a bland ditty for a few moments. “The activation beam has been sent within the fortnight, but there is no return signal yet.”
“Thou fool,” said Donovan. “Thy sensors have been destroyed! The signals were sent more than a thousand years ago, but thine ears have gone deaf.”
“It sorrows me to say so,” said Peacharoo, “but such is not my department. If ye would please follow me?” The Attendant spun and rolled down the aisle at a walking pace.
“Tell it to take us to the control room,” said Sofwari. “I’d love to know if their gravity grids are based on the same principle as ours. And the genetic data…Invaluable!”
Donovan gave it a try. “Peacharoo! We have an urgent message for the captain. Might thou summon him?”
The Attendant stopped. “Captain Salahuddin is no longer aboard A. K. Prabhakaran. He believed End Run successfully seeded and took many landers to the planet. But several weeks have now passed and they have neither returned nor contacted the ship. Clearly, the ecosystem is yet too immature to support life. I have exceeded my normal authority in telling thee, but may it persuade thee of thine error.” The Attendant again started forward.
Several weeks… Donavan shrugged. “We may as well see where it’s leading us.” He caught up with the Attendant in a few strides. “What facility is this that we pass through? But speak slowly, that I may translate for my friends.”
“This is Cold Sleep Dormitory Number 183, sri colonist. If thy friends speak neither the Tantamiž nor the Murkangliš, they are in the wrong dormitory. This dormitory is reserved for Terrans. Colonists from the Lesser Worlds are housed elsewhere.”
“The Lesser Worlds,” said Billy Chins, confirming Donovan’s suspicion that he, too, understood the Tantamiž. “Would that include Dao Chetty?”
The Attendant fell silent for a moment, then the image of the girl said, “Tau Ceti is a valued and important member of the Commonwealth. They stand shoulder to shoulder with our comrades against the people of sand and iron.” Peacharoo then added several more compliments in the Zhõgwó tongue.
Sofwari exclaimed over this. Like most, he believed the Commonwealth had fallen through the revolt of Dao Chetty, and that the prehumans were long vanished before humans ever went to the stars.
“I see no sleepers,” said Donovan. “What section is this called that we walk through?”
“This, sri colonist, houses the local backup power and life support for this
bank of dormitories. It has been activated, but I have not been informed of the reason. I am sure it is but a drill. There is no need for alarm among the colonists.” The ymago actually managed to appear cheerful and reassuring. “If thou woudst return to thy pod, I will summon Attendants to escort thy friends also to theirs.
When Donovan had translated this, Méarana said, “Is this your artificial intelligence, Donovan? Artificial pig-head, I say!”
“It’s malfunctioning. What do you expect?”
“An ordinary automaton would not have disregarded a direct order,” said Sofwari. “Or told you about the captain. Peacharoo passes the ‘Enduring Test.’ It seems as if we are talking to a person.”
“Fash it. It seems as if we are talking to a bureaucrat! They only recite rules back at you, too. Seeming isn’t being.”
Donovan spoke to Peacharoo. “How long hath the emergency generator run?”
The ymago hesitated, and looked puzzled. “As much as an hour, or…longer. My clock synchronizeth not. Thank you for drawing my attention to this problem. I have sent a maintenance request to repair my clock. Please, do not be concerned, and follow me to your pods.” Then, a moment later, “The Attendants for the other dormitories answereth not my summons. Until they arrive, I will house thy companions temporarily in this dormitory, as numerous pods are now empty.”
As she said this, they passed through a portal into a vast open chamber within which floated evenly-spaced cubes in rows, columns, and layers. These vanished into the distance ahead, above, below, and to both sides. The Sleuth said, This sector seems larger on the inside than it was on the outside. That was impossible, of course; but here they were.
Each “cube” was a block of nested cylinders, twelve by twelve and bore a holographic display with a letter and a number. Since Tantamiž letters were themselves two-dimensional, this served to identify three-dimensional coordinates for each block. Between blocks, catwalks ran in every direction, including up and down. Sleuth estimated that the bay held as many as 50,000 cylinders.
And each cylinder held a sleeping colonist.
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