Unfortunately the signals were too complex for even Valk to understand what they meant. For one thing they were analog, not digital, and encoded in a format he’d never seen. He remembered having once visited the Diyu system, where all the signs in the stores were required to be printed in both English and Mandarin. Decoding the Choir’s transmissions would be like trying to work out what those printed logograms meant without a dictionary. You could tell that something was being communicated, but it was impossible to even know what kind of alphabet was being used—those logograms, Valk knew, sometimes represented whole words, and sometimes combinations of words, and sometimes just sounds.
He calculated that he could probably learn to read the Choir’s signals, but that it would take him six years of study. Five if he didn’t have to work with Lanoe at the same time.
Lanoe—oh, no—with a start, Valk was pulled back into his body, into the present moment. He hadn’t realized how far he’d strayed. For a moment he worried someone might have noticed that he’d disappeared into his own thoughts, but no, of course they hadn’t. Valk had written a subroutine just for that purpose, a program to make it look like he was paying attention, even when he was far away. Reviewing his logs, he saw that he had nodded at all the right places and even sent Lanoe a sarcastic message.
This whole business of copying and multi-threading his consciousness might be getting a little out of hand, he thought.
“—have a common enemy,” Lanoe said. “Common ground for understanding. It’s not that I don’t appreciate what you’re trying to do, and I think it would be valuable for our two species to meet at that level and learn from one another. But I’m a military man, and my first priority has to be the defense of humanity.”
“Water-Falling understands,” Archie said. “And she signals partial agreement. That, uh, that’s what it means when she holds up one hand and lowers the other three, yes? You see how one of them is higher than the others? That suggests she might be open to persuasion.”
Lanoe nodded. “Sure. I’m afraid I’m not a great talker. I like things to be plain. Understandable. So let’s get this on the table. I came here because you—the Choir—sent a message to one of our ships. That message congratulated us on destroying one of the Blue-Blue-White’s queenships, and saving a planet from their killer drones. The imagery in that message—”
Water-Falling gestured and a display lit up near her right side, showing the footage of the queenship exploding.
“Right,” Lanoe said. “You see that little dot, there, flying away from the explosion?”
Water-Falling expanded the image until the dot was clearly visible as two humans in suits, holding on to each other.
“That’s M. Valk, and myself. We did that. I won’t say we didn’t have any help, but … we didn’t have much. It was a close thing and we lost … some very important people in that battle.”
“Water-Falling is curious,” Archie said, “why you’re bringing this up.”
“To make it clear what my motivation is. The Choir should know that,” Lanoe said. “The Blue-Blue-White weren’t there, at Niraya. They sent their drones to do their fighting for them. I have devoted myself, and the rest of my life, to taking the battle to the damned jellyfish themselves. To forcing them to stop these fleets, to end the killing. If they refuse, if they won’t, if they can’t—then I intend to bring justice down upon their heads.”
“Well said,” Archie told them, though it was unclear, for once, whether he was speaking for himself or for the Choir.
“You’ve promised us your help in fighting the Blue-Blue-White. I’m very grateful for your offer, and I want to take advantage of it as soon as is physically possible. If you have warships to add to the cause, that’s great. You mentioned that the Choir developed new weapons to fight the killer drones. I can use every arrow that I can get in my quiver, if, ah—did she understand that reference?”
“She did, but—”
“If she has information about the Blue-Blue-White that I lack, I’ll take it. Hellfire, the Choir seems to know the wormhole network a lot better than we do. If they can just point us in the direction of the Blue-Blue-White homeworld, just that would be a huge help.”
“She is emphatic about the fact there are no wormholes that go there,” Archie said. “And there never will be.”
Lanoe frowned. It was one of his thoughtful frowns. Valk knew that look—it meant he’d just noticed something but was still processing what it meant.
“The point is I’ll take whatever they’re offering. Why are you looking at me like that?”
Archie had, in fact, turned an ashen color. Valk remembered how agitated the castaway had seemed on the ride to this tower, how elevated his heartbeat had been, how heavily he’d been breathing. The effect was even more noticeable now.
He signaled Lanoe. He’s afraid of something. Terrified.
“There may have been a wee little miscommunication,” Archie said.
“What are you getting at?” Lanoe demanded.
“The message we sent—well, not to beat too far around the bush, I wrote it. The English bits, at the very least. I was trying for succinctness, and rather missed precision, I’m afraid.”
Lanoe glared at the man. Perhaps he knew what was coming. To Valk it was a complete mystery.
“The message read ‘we can help,’ and that’s accurate. As far as it goes. But the help they’re offering is of a specific variety, and it’s none of the things you mentioned. To be frank, the Choir are a bit puzzled why humanity sent a warship here. They were expecting a diplomatic mission. If I had any part in this confusion, then, really, I just wish to—”
“Get to the point before I wring your neck,” Lanoe said.
“They’re not offering to help you fight the Blue-Blue-White’s attacks,” Archie explained. “They want to help you survive them.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It had felt damned good to be back in the cockpit of a BR.9. With nothing but light duties to do onboard the cruiser, and then with the nightmare of the cold wormhole traverse, Bury had felt himself going a little stir crazy. Just being out, flying on his own recognizance, helped a lot. He’d even felt himself smile once or twice as Lieutenant Candless had them run through formations around the unnamed planet. It was almost like being back at Rishi, almost like when he’d taken his first solo flights, when for the first time he’d felt the exhilaration, the utter freedom, of flying alone through infinite space.
At least—it had felt that way for the first six hours of the patrol. Now, with his back cramping up, with his fingers sore from holding tight to his control stick, flying had lost a little of its luster. He was getting tired, too, his eyes losing focus for whole seconds at a time, his head drifting forward inside his helmet. With no word from the other side of the wormhole, with nothing to look at but the fat green planet below them, it was getting tough to stay sharp.
Until a blue light started blinking on his tactical board. A light that indicated that a non-allied craft had been detected insystem.
That woke him up in a hurry.
“I want everyone to remain calm,” Lieutenant Candless called on the general radio circuit, once she’d confirmed they’d all seen it. “I’ve received additional sensor data from the cruiser. There’s been an indication of some movement out in the system. Near the wormhole throat, to be precise. Too far out to get any good imagery—it could very well be a false positive. One of our scopes might have picked up a passing asteroid, or perhaps a piece of debris we left behind when we arrived here. I’m still awaiting verification.”
“Eyeballs peeled, in other words,” Lieutenant Maggs cut in. “And should you see any hexagons, remember they make handy targets.”
“Cut that chatter,” Lieutenant Candless called. She sounded supremely annoyed. It was a tone of voice Bury knew all too well. “We would all do well to remember Navy protocol, just now. Especially the part about chain of command.”
“A thousand pardons,” L
ieutenant Maggs called back, but then he cut himself out of the general circuit before he could be chastised again.
Bury had to admit a grudging respect for the man—he seemed to live without a care for who he offended, and he certainly never offered a genuine apology. Perhaps in time Bury would prove himself and he could afford to act that way, and then he would waste no time telling Lieutenant Candless exactly what he—
A green pearl appeared in the corner of his vision. An incoming call from Ginger. He accepted it right away. “Bury,” she said. “Bury, I need to talk.”
He swung his head around, trying to locate her fighter. It was far enough away to just be a bright dot over by the limb of the planet. He couldn’t see anything else near her, no enemy ships or any sign of danger. “What’s going on?” he asked. “Did you see something, or—”
“Shut up, Bury. That’s not what I meant.” He listened to her sigh for a while without interrupting. “You know what this is about.”
He wasn’t sure he did. Unless—
“If there is something there,” she said. “If Centrocor has caught up with us … I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“You mean—you’re not sure if you can fight.”
“I don’t know if I can even pull a trigger,” she told him. “Bury, you know me better than anyone else here. You know I’m not just flighty. What we talked about, back in my bunk. You know that wasn’t just temporary jitters.”
“Maybe, Ginj. Maybe, but—”
“I’m not going to be any use to anybody. Everybody’s counting on me, and I know I’m just going to be a liability.”
“Come on,” he told her. “If we do get into a scrap—if I’m in trouble. Or Lieutenant Candless gets pinned down, I bet you would fight then. You would fight to defend us.”
“Maybe,” Ginger said. “I actually like you, Bury. Despite just about everything you’ve ever done or said, you’re still my classmate, and that counts for something. And I owe Lieutenant Candless a lot. But when I picture it in my head, all I see is me, freezing up. Going numb and not doing anything. Not shooting, not even running away.”
“You’re talking yourself into a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
“Bury, if it happens. If I lock up and can’t shoot. They’ll court-martial me. Throw me in the brig. I’ll be disgraced. My whole family will be dishonored. But I can’t take another life. I can’t do it.”
Bury tried to think of words that would calm her down. He could hear her hyperventilating and he knew if she had a full-blown panic attack now she might actually run away or do something drastic. He didn’t even like to think about what.
“Ginger,” he said, “just take it easy. Breathe for me. Just breathe, okay? Most likely this is nothing.”
“What?”
“You heard Lieutenant Candless. She said it might be a false positive. I believe that. Okay?”
“You believe it,” she said. “You believe it because—”
“Because we beat those bastards once. I don’t think they have the guts to try us again. Ginger, I’m telling you right now. We aren’t fighting today. It’s just not going to happen.”
“ … yeah?” she asked, her voice tiny.
“This is just a routine patrol. Nothing is going to happen. Come on, Ginger. Breathe for me. Let me hear you breathe.”
He listened as she inhaled and exhaled, each breath coming slower and deeper. Good, that was good. Maybe he was really having an effect.
He just hoped he hadn’t told her a terrible lie.
For all of Lanoe’s attempts to keep them focused on business, the Choir were adamant. The agenda of events had to go forward.
Lanoe and Valk were taken on a tour of the city in an open-topped aircar. Its engine was so quiet and the ride so smooth it felt like they were drifting along in a hot air balloon. Water-Falling pointed out various sights and Archie gave them a running commentary on what they saw.
There was no sun in the bubble of wormspace, and the ghostlight from the distant walls shed no more illumination than the stars would on a night on Earth. Mostly the Choir worked in well-lit buildings, but parts of the city—its industrial sections, some largely automated infrastructural regions—were kept dark to save energy. If the Choir needed to access those areas, they would be lit up by one of the tall lighthouses, which shed beams that could be directed anywhere in the city. “There’s a keeper in each tower, someone in charge of nothing but directing the light where it needs to go. It’s considered a solemn duty, and only the most trusted choristers are chosen. They need to listen always for the will of the people to know when they need to shift the light.”
“Fascinating,” Lanoe said. He just wished they could get on with this. He very much wanted to see what kind of help the Choir were offering—though he’d begun to doubt it would be anything like what he wanted.
The aircar moved on, dipping low between two rows of high buildings. Water-Falling gestured at a street lined with statues of the Surviving Twelve and a park kept permanently empty and unoccupied as a memorial to all those who had been lost. “The Choir have a long memory, and they think forward well into the future,” Archie said. “History is always with them.”
“How long ago did the Twelve build this place?” Valk asked.
“Hard to say, really. They don’t have the same idea of time we do. To them history’s more about relationships, about the thoughts, the feelings, not the facts. It’s all a bit … layered. Events occur, things happen, and then they get discussed, and the discussions get analyzed, and then they make comments on the analysis. So you can talk about ‘the second invasion,’ but then you also have to talk about ‘how we feel now about the second invasion,’ but they’d say you were still being imprecise unless you recited all the poetry about ‘the second invasion,’ and then somebody’s reinterpretation of ‘the second invasion’ will come into favor, and how that reinterpretation changes the way you hear the poetry about it …” Archie chuckled. “A bit thick, hmm? To them, of course, it’s just how things are ordered. You measure how long ago something was by how many layers of commentary it’s built up.”
Lanoe thought it sounded needlessly pedantic, but he knew better than to say anything. The Choir were listening. They were always listening.
“How long have you been here?” Valk asked.
“Seventeen years, nine months, and twenty-one days,” Archie said, without hesitation.
The car dipped to pass under a massive, figured arch, then headed down a long inclined shaft. Around them yellow windows shed a little light on a broad tunnel lined with thin bricks. Water sluiced downward through the tunnel, and the echoing noise of it was loud enough Lanoe couldn’t hear his own thoughts, much less what their tour guide had to say. It didn’t bother him much—he had very little interest in how the Choir organized their infrastructure. He watched the rippling water below, saw how it foamed when it crashed against the walls.
When a hand fell on his shoulder—a hand, not a claw—he was so startled he had to grab the aircar’s railing. He turned and saw Archie standing right behind him. He couldn’t hear what the castaway said, but from the way his mouth moved, Lanoe thought maybe it started with “please.” He shrugged, not understanding. Archie’s face fell, and he shook his head, then repeated his message. “Please,” he was definitely saying “please.” Lanoe got that much, then something that was maybe “home.”
A green pearl appeared in the corner of Lanoe’s eye. A message from Valk.
He’s begging us to take him home with us when we leave. For some reason he thinks he can’t say that while the Choir are listening. He thinks they can’t hear him in this tunnel.
Lanoe glanced over at Water-Falling, where she stood at the prow of the aircar. She appeared to be looking down at the water, but of course the choristers had eyes in the backs of their heads.
Lanoe looked back at the castaway’s face. Looked him right in the eye and gave a tiny nod. He tried mouthing “Are you okay?” but Archie could
n’t seem to understand.
He’s wrong, Valk sent. She can hear him better than you can.
Lanoe gave Archie a discreet nod—mostly just to keep him from saying anything else. At least for the moment.
They descended for several minutes, then emerged into an open space so large Lanoe couldn’t see the walls. Below them the outflow from the tunnel cascaded into an enormous spherical mass of water that seemed to hang, unsupported, in the air. Out in the middle of the water, on a tiny island of rock, stood a lighthouse that shone its beam upon them, and for a second Lanoe could see nothing else.
When his eyes had adjusted he turned toward Archie, to see if he could repeat his question now that they could hear each other. Instead he saw that Archie’s face had gone slack, his tongue hanging out of one corner of his mouth.
“The central reservoir,” Archie said, his voice flat, emotionless. “This is the ultimate source and destination of all the water in the city. In fact, the city was built around it. It’s much more than just a big puddle, though. The Choir has done some fancy tricks with density and quantum superposition, do not ask me for any details as they’re quite outside my pay grade, but somehow this place generates the local gravity as well …”
Whatever Archie had tried to tell him in the tunnel, it looked like it was going to have to wait.
The blue light on Bury’s tactical board never went away. For what felt like hours the four of them held formation and maintained silence while Lieutenant Candless stayed in contact with the cruiser, making use of its sensitive instruments, its telescopes, its radars and lidars, its hyperspectral imagers and passive millimeter-wave interferometers.
Forgotten Worlds Page 40