Donovan stared at the vast array and a great sadness overwhelmed him. The “great day” had come and gone, and they had slept through it. He wondered whether, had all the colonists made it down, there would have been enough to keep the planet from slipping into barbarism.
“And now,” said Peacharoo, “ye must return to your sleep pods.”
“No,” said Méarana; and then using what she had picked up of the old speech, said “Panna matēn!” I will not do it.
A scowl of impatience crossed the ymago’s face. “Must I summon the Proctors again?”
“Proctors.” Paulie grunted. “If Teddy was here, I know what he’d say.”
“‘That can’t be good,’” said Sofwari. He turned and looked into the distance. Things moved in the shadows.
“Wait,” said Donovan. “Peacharoo! ‘Again’? Was there another awakee?”
“The pods have been awakening people at random. There is no cause for alarm and maintenance is working on it. But the world is not ready for them, and they must be rehibernated. We are all anxious to establish the rear base, but ‘Patience is the Watchword.’ Terraformation cannot be rushed. You must trust us.”
“Where did you take her—the most recent awakee?” said Donovan. “About a year ago. Red hair, golden skin; similar to my companion.”
“I will access the record.” Again, the ymago hummed a bland tune.
Mearana tugged at his sleeve. “My earwig is starting to pick up snatches.”
“That’s how neural nets learn. Careful. The Attendant is learning Gaelactic as well.”
“You asked if it saw someone who looked like me.”
“Yes.”
Her grip tightened. “Did it? Did it?”
“Please board my extension,” the Attendant said. “And I will take you to her.”
A riding platform emerged from the Attendant’s rear. It slid from no apparent opening and with no evident telescoping or unfolding. And there was no room within the Attendant to store it. Once they had boarded, Peacharoo sped off through the three-dimensional grid. Straight ahead, then left, then down. The catwalks had their own gravity grids. Whichever way they turned, they seemed to be on the level—and the whole vast chamber seemed to rotate ninety degrees. It was too much for Paulie, who lost his lunch over the side.
Bank after bank of pods flashed by. Almost faster than the eye could see.
Almost.
“Donovan. Father. They’re empty. The pods are open, and they’re empty.”
“Peacharoo said there was room. I suppose the vacancies are where the ancestors of the Enjrunii came from.”
Now and then, they passed other Attendants, some of them inactive hulks parked in special niches between pod banks or simply standing dead on the catwalks; others were active, like Peacharoo, and fussed over the equipment that fed and maintained the inhabitants of the pods.
Or used to feed and maintain them.
Not all the pods were empty. Donovan caught brief glimpses here and there into open pods and saw grinning skulls, mummified corpses, masses of corruption.
Other pods gave at least the seeming of functionality. Lights gleamed on panels beside them, gauges displayed quantities and qualities. Peacharoo entered a sector where the pods seemed almost pristine. There, it slowed to a stop, and Donovan and the others slid gingerly off the platform. “Quite a ride,” said Paulie, huffing.
Méarana found herself face-to-face with a viewing portal. Pressed against it from the inside was a woman’s face, partly dissolved and stuck in a gluey mass to the glasslike material. Méarana bit down on a scream and buried her face in Sofwari’s shoulder.
“An awakee,” said Sofwari, “but the pod would not open. She suffocated…or she went mad and died in there.”
She pulled away from him. “Is that supposed to comfort me? What if the same thing happened to Mother? That artificial intelligence stuffed her into a pod—and who knows if it was still working?”
“There is no need to be rude,” said Peacharoo in Gaelactic.
Paulie grunted, but said nothing. Billy Chins was breathing hard and looking in all directions. “Sahbs,” he said. “We have company.”
“I guess this here’s the Proctor,” said Paulie.
The newcomer was taller, thinner, and boasted a multitude of arms. Its ymago wrapped wholly around it, so that—save for the wheels on which it rolled—it seemed almost human. Blue of skin, it resembled some ancient multiarmed deity. Žiba the Destroyer, Donovan thought.
“Here, here,” it said in Gaelactic. “What’s all this, now?”
Peacharoo said, “Officer, these colonists have refused to re-enter their stasis pods after I have repeatedly asked them to do so.”
“We can’t have that, now, can we? Sahbs, it is not safe for ye to be up and about. The planet will not be ready to sustain life for…” A pause. “…nine lakh of hours. That is one-third of a life span, and there is little for an awakee to do before Debarkation Day. Idle hands and all that, what?”
“I want to see my mother!” said Méarana. “Thousands of pods have failed. You must have noticed! I want to make certain that she is all right.”
“The request seems reasonable, Attendant.”
Peacharoo said, “I have brought her to her mother’s pod. She can see all the lights are green.”
Méarana cried, “Which is it? Show me!”
The Attendant projected a laser to highlight the next pod but two. Méarana shoved her way past Billy and Paulie and the Attendant and pressed her hands and face against the viewport of the indicated sleep-pod. Donovan stepped up behind.
“Is it her?” he asked.
“I can’t see. I can’t see. Peacharoo! Are there lights inside the pod so I can see if that is Mother?”
“Such filial devotion,” said the Proctor, “is touching in these degenerate times.”
The Attendant’s laser interfaced with something in the controls. Lights inside the pod came to life, bathing the occupant in a yellowish gloom.
Méarana began to cry. Donovan wrapped an arm around her shoulder. “I never thought,” he said. “I never thought we would actually find her.”
“Donovan,” the harper whispered in the thickest Dangchao Anglic she could muster, “wha’ button wakes her oop?”
“How d’ye ken she be ainly in hyposleep?”
“An she waken oop when I press the button. If she’s nae slaeping…An she’s deid…She willnae wake oop.”
“An she be ainly sleeping, the wrong button maun kill her.”
“Aye, but I cannae lave ‘er here. That would gae kill her. Soon or efter, the pod will fail. She would dee wi’oot e’er waking…Or she mought wake and dee trapped like that…thing…back there.”
Donovan turned to the Attendant and the Proctor. “There are certain prayers that we need to recite for her in our traditional language.”
“Art thou then the sleeper’s husband?” the Attendant asked in the Old Tongue.
Donovan hesitated a moment. “Yes,” he said. “I am.”
He had begun to bow with his arms crossed over his breast when he noticed that Méarana had touched her fingertips to her forehead, breast, and shoulders. He quickly imitated the gesture, lest he give Peacharoo an inconsistency to wonder about. “Father and Brother,” he heard her say, “dinnae let the Fudir do anything glaikit.”
It would take a stronger prayer than that, the Fudir thought. Okay, Sleuth, Pedant, this is your show. There must be a manual override to wake up this one occupant. Pedant, what are the sound-shifts on those letters?
It will be all right, said the girl in the chiton.
They will try to stop her, said the Brute, and his hand stole into a coverall pocket to grip his dazer. Inner Child watched and listened. He heard Paulie say to Billy, “They ain’t gonna stuff me in one of those sausages.”
But the part of his mind focused on the control panel found and translated what it wanted. He raised his eyes upward. “An’ there be on your side of the d
oor a blue button set in a well?” he asked in Méarana’s dialect.
“Aye…”
“Ye maun press it whan I press this ain. On three.”
“Ae. Twa. Three”
The Attendant cried out as they stabbed the emergency buttons, and the Proctor reached out with his arms to pull them away. “Please to be desisting, sahbs,” it said. “That is a violation of Ship’s Regulations. Assault against helpless sleeper.”
The Proctor’s three-dimensional shell flickered and broke up under Donovan’s dazer, and the torso emitted a high-pitched whine. Behind him, he heard the pod door hiss as it unsealed.
The Proctor’s arm knocked Méarana to the catwalk and pushed Donovan’s gun aside. The image of the policeman recohered. “Assault on a Proctor is a termination offense. This is your first warning. Sahb, what are you thinking? Attendant, please restore the disturbed sleeper to her proper status.”
Peacharoo tried to get past Donovan, but the Brute braced his back against the pod bank and shoved with both feet. Peacharoo skidded. He shifted his feet to the Attendant’s superstructure—and his boots seemed to sink into the hologram’s chest. The automaton tilted, her right wheels lifted from the catwalk.
Billy fired at the Proctor, and its image again broke up. Paulie swung his sword and clipped off the top of the projection core—and snapped his blade in two.
Donovan sidestepped as the pod door swung open behind him. The Proctor’s arm let go and black smoke emerged from its casing. The Attendant toppled, wheels spinning. Somewhere, a klaxon began to hoot and a voice cried out in the Tantamiž: “The Pod Bay is under assault. The Pod Bay is under assault.”
Something shuddered deep within the ship. A dim, distant, low-pitched clank could be heard. And the catwalks shivered. The echoes reverberated into silence.
Paulie said in the silence, “That can’t be…”
“Shut up,” Donovan growled. He activated his comm. and called, “Franq, are you there? Speak to me.” He heard nothing. “Hallahan? This is Donovan. Speak to me.”
“There were no live systems in the engineering section,” Méarana said nervously.
“Franq! Hallahan! Blankets and Beads! Anyone on the trade ship? This is urgent.”
A rumble began in the depths of the Pod Bay, as of something massive rolling. There was a distant hiss.
Méarana said, “We should make our way back to where we left the shuttle.”
“Right,” said Sofwari. “Where was that…” The wallah’s face was layered in despair. The Pod Bay looked the same in every direction. How far had they come? Which turns had they made? The Pedant remembered the way, but the Sleuth pointed out that they could not run as fast as Peacharoo had carried them. It might take hours to return to the entrance. And I don’t believe we have hours.
“B-and-B, speak to me. We need guidance out of here. Lock onto our beacons and talk us to the nearest airlock or hangar deck. Speak.”
A voice crackled through static. “Donovan, this is Franq. We got troubles. Almost at shuttle. Get outside. Anywhere. We’ll locate you.”
Donovan glanced at the now-dark Attendant. “Sorry, Peacharoo.”
“How long was I asleep?”
Each of them jerked a bit at the new voice, though Donovan was startled least of all. A part of him—the Brute, he thought—had been aware of motion behind him. Méarana pushed past him, crying, “Mother! Oh, Mother!” Sofwari grinned. Billy looked at Paulie.
“I said, how long was I asleep?” She seemed remarkably alert for someone who had been but lately in a coma. By long tradition, the first words of such a one ought to be “Where am I?” But Bridget ban knew quite well where she was. She was still wearing the skinsuit in which she had been captured.
“About a year,” Méarana said, “maybe a little longer.” She was bouncing on the balls of her feet, suddenly looking years younger, crying, “We found you! I always knew it! I never gave up!”
Bridget ban said, “A year! What kept you?” Then she looked past her daughter, and the sardonic half-smile faded from her lips, and she said, “You!”
Donovan started to say, yeah, me; but as swift as a black mamba striking, Bridget ban had pulled a needier from a coverall pocket and fired.
Donovan ducked and the beam went wide.
Or it did not. Billy Chins snarled as the arm holding the dazer went numb. He ducked around the corner of the pod block. “Do it, Paulie!” he said as he disappeared. Paulie pulled his pellet gun and fired off four rapid shots.
He was a good shot, and four bullets would ordinarily have been sufficient to his purpose. But Debly Jean Sofwari had seen the hand move and had thrown himself in front of Méarana, and so the four bullets found one target.
The impact threw him backward onto his three companions. Donovan and Bridget ban leapt to either side, vaulting on the pod doors to the top of the stacks. Méarana jerked her arm forward and her knife flew from her sleeve and embedded itself in Paulie’s throat.
The Wildman clawed at the knife, lost consciousness as the blood gushed out, and fell to the catwalk. His legs kicked twice, and then he was still.
Méarana knelt beside the science-wallah and bestowed the long-sought kiss on Debly’s lips. His eyes stared at nothing. She thought she would miss the awkward little man with the strange enthusiasms.
Then she sprinted to where Paulie lay, pulled the knife from his throat without breaking stride, and clambered atop the pod rack, where she lay still.
She listened. She watched. Nothing moved. She might be alone in this vast abandoned ship.
“I see you’ve been keeping up your practice,” Bridget ban said in a low voice beside her.
Méarana did not flinch. “I was coming to look for you.”
“You…didn’t have to come yourself.”
“Who did you expect?”
“Little Hugh, to tell you the truth.”
“Why him?”
“You liked him, back when he used to visit. I thought you would go to him for help. Not the old drunk.”
“Did I guess right? I used to think it was Hugh; but it was Donovan, wasn’t it?”
“Do you want it to have been him?” She peered down the aisle where Billy Chins had disappeared. “He better show himself soon.”
“Why?”
“Don’t you hear the rumbling down below? I hope you don’t think one of those Attendants could stuff me in a tank.”
Donovan was a little disappointed in Billy Chins, and more than a little angry with himself.
“Why didn’t you see this coming?”
said Inner Child.
I never did trust him.
“Not quite four to two…,” the Fudir muttered.
Three to one. Our baby took out Paulie all by herself, but Sofwari took four in the chest.
“Two and a half to one,” said Donovan. “Méarana doesn’t have a chance against Billy.”
Donovan didn’t know if he had a chance, either. An old man, long out of practice. And a Hound just out of cold sleep. Separated so that they could not coordinate their moves. Billy might have the advantage.
“Brute,” said Donovan, “you watch down that way with the left eye. Child, take the right eye. Sleuth, you and Pedant try to work out his strategy. Silky, you listen for anyone else coming up on top of these pods with us.
“What about me?” said the Fudir.
“Work with Sleuth. When they figure out what Billy is up to, figure out how to handle him.”
“By the time the subcommittee reports are in, Bridget ban will have taken him out, packed up the harper, and abandoned us here.”
“Check our chronometer, Fudir. It took us less than a beat to get ourselves organized.”
“You know, yours is the persona that once worked as a Confederate courier. I was the masque, like that poor woman out at the Iron Cones.”
“I know. I’m thinking, what would I be doing right now, if I were him.”
“And?”
“He’ll wa
it to ambush us,” Donovan said, “from a direction we’d not expect.”
From below.
When Billy had ducked around the corner, he had also ducked up or down. Donovan was as certain of this as if he had seen him do it.
Yes. The human instinct is to look up for snipers. But the way the gravity grids are set, he can stand on the bottom of a catwalk, and shoot up from underneath.
“I agree,” said the Fudir, “but he’ll be on one of the pod banks, like we are now.”
Sleuth did some elementary calculations. Unless he can move like the wind and climb like an Awzetchan grass monkey, Billy Chins cannot be any farther than…
“There,” agreed Donovan. “Brute? Fudir? This is your show.”
He stood. The pod block possessed walkways, probably for maintenance automata, that wrapped around the block like ribbons framing a gift. Gravity grids ensured that the pod block was “down,” regardless which face one stood on. Commonwealth magic. Peripheral technology couldn’t manage it. The gravity fields would overlap, create resonances, blow the generators.
He loped across the walkway to the other end of the block and, when he reached the end intending to leap to the next block over, the walkway stretched across the gap like Peacharoo’s riding platform. He nearly stumbled in surprise.
Unless Billy has discovered this, he will expect any approach to be by the catwalks. That was some encouragement, anyway.
He crossed the next block the same way. Then he walked down the side for two levels, found the walkway running across the underside of the pod blocks, and hurried back the way he had come. Silky played gyroscope and maintained the original up/down orientation. To her, he was loping antipodally along the “bottom” of a block, whereas to the Brute, he was doing so across the “top.”
He came at last to the block where he expected Billy to be waiting in ambush and spied him sitting cross-legged at the far end, looking down at the catwalk where he expected his quarry. From the point of view of anyone fleeing down the catwalk from Bridget ban’s cocoon, he would be firing up from underneath.
When Donovan had crept closer, Billy spoke. “One direction, I could not constantly watch; and so from that direction you have come. Yet you did not slay me.”
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