If the price he had to pay for their help was one human soul, the happiness of a castaway—
“Maybe,” he said, very slowly, very carefully, “we can discuss this again. When it’s time for me to leave here. When our negotiations are finished,” he said.
“Of course,” Water-Falling told him. Through Archie, as always. “Though I doubt you’ll receive a different answer.” The chorister lifted one of her arms and rotated her claw from side to side. Lanoe had no idea what that meant.
Archie’s face twitched. “She understands your impatience,” he said. “She apologizes. When the Choir invited you here, they thought you would want to learn about their society and their customs. She can see now that was wrong. You’ve got other interests. She says that maybe now it’s time.”
“Time?”
“Time for you to see what the Choir has to offer you. What they have to offer humanity. Will you come with us, and take a look?”
“Sure,” Lanoe said. Valk started to get up, to join them. Lanoe sent him a quick message, then said, “No, Valk, you stay here. Enjoy the apportation show, whatever that means.”
“All right,” Valk said. “If you think it’s best.”
Lanoe nodded. He followed Water-Falling and Archie as they left the banquet hall. Outside an aircar was already waiting for them.
The asteroid was only a few hundred meters across. Brownish-gray in the light, nothing but sharp shadows on its night side. Covered in craters until it looked like a chunk of pumice tumbling slowly around an eccentric orbit that took it within half a million kilometers of the star. A thoroughly uninteresting chunk of rock. None of Bury’s sensors detected the slightest hint that the scout was down there. Of course, he couldn’t use any active sensors—if he did, the scout might notice that it was being scanned. But his telescopes and rectennas weren’t picking up a thing.
“You’re sure you saw something?” he asked.
“Just a—a glint, like the tiniest damned flash of light,” Ginger replied. He could hear her breathing into her microphone. He’d tried to calm her down but this time it wasn’t working. “Like maybe—maybe—a reflection off of a canopy.”
“You let Lieutenant Candless know?”
“I sent her a quick message. She said we should investigate it. Bury, I don’t know what to do here.”
“We investigate. Just like we were ordered to do,” he told her.
“You know what I mean. If the scout is there, if it engages us—”
“Hang back,” Bury told her. “Stay behind me. I’ll do it. Just—just stop panicking, okay?” It sounded absurd even as he said it. “I’ll go in and take a look, and you just … Ginger, just hang in there.”
“Thank you,” she breathed.
Maybe he was helping her. He just didn’t know. He goosed his throttle and surged forward, swooping down toward the asteroid.
It would be next to impossible to orbit a rock that small, so he didn’t try. Instead he pushed forward on his control stick to loop around it, touching his maneuvering jets just a bit so he rolled as he approached, until the asteroid swung around in space until it was directly over him. He looked up through his canopy, checking the craters, searching for anything that didn’t belong. Any straight lines. The sharp edge of an airfoil. The glow of a cooling thruster.
Nothing. He brought up a sensor board, checked the infrared, let his computers try to find patterns in the rock. He focused on looping around the night side, keeping his eyes open but mostly focusing on flying while his gear did the work. The computer might see something he would have missed. But … no.
Nothing. He gritted his teeth, kept looking. If Ginger had just gotten spooked, if she’d seen this flash of light because she expected to see it, because her terrified brain was playing tricks on her …
“I’m turning up bosh,” he said. “Ginj, I’m going to switch over to active sensors. I’ll just make a quick sweep, as fast as I can, and then we’ll know there’s nothing here. Okay?”
“Bury, if he is there—”
“Then I’ll flush him out. Just hang back—you’re going to be okay.”
She didn’t reply.
He gestured to bring the sensor board up directly in front of him, partly obscuring the view through his canopy. A virtual keyboard flickered to life before him. With his right hand still on his control stick, he tapped out a series of commands with his left, hunting and pecking at the keys. He readied a full lidar sweep of the asteroid that would turn up anything down there. It would also give away his position to anyone who was watching.
It was worth it, if it helped calm Ginger down.
He tapped the key.
On his display the asteroid appeared as a series of images that melded together to form a composite, a false-color visualization of the tumbling rock. Craters bloomed with light, mountains disappeared as their shadowed sides were exposed. Boulders were scanned and rendered in three dimensions, showing just how regular and natural and boring they were. “Nothing yet,” he said. “Ginger, I think—”
“Bury!” she cried.
A red light flashed on his tactical board. He glanced over and saw it—a ship burning hard, streaking away from the far side of the asteroid. Moving fast and accelerating.
“Hellfire,” he swore, and swiped the sensor display out of his view. He twisted around on his maneuvering jets and punched his main thrusters, chasing after the scout as fast as his engines would allow, but he knew, he was certain, he would be too late.
The scout was on a trajectory that would take it right past Ginger, less than a dozen kilometers from her position.
“Ginger, he hasn’t seen you yet,” Bury called. “You have a perfect shot. If you don’t take it—”
“Bury, you have to do this, you have to …”
She trailed off. He could still hear her breathing—hyperventilating. He cursed silently and hit his throttle again, but he had slowed to a crawl as he approached the asteroid and it was going to take precious seconds for him to get back up to speed.
“Ginger,” he said, “just listen. It’s easy. Your computer will find a good firing solution. All you have to do is—”
He stopped because his tactical board showed him a yellow dot streaking away from the scout. Ginger’s fighter, moving away from engagement at speed.
She was running for it.
“No,” he said. “No. Ginj, turn around. Turn around right now and face him. He’s not changing course—he’s not chasing you. Ginj, you need to do this.”
But she was already gone. She’d cut the comms laser that connected them. Turned tail and run. It looked like she was headed straight back to the cruiser. And the scout was getting away—its pilot had corrected his course and his new trajectory would take him right through the wormhole throat. Bury turned to chase him but the unarmored ship could move faster than he could. The bastard was going to get away, he was going to—
“Lieutenant Maggs, if you please,” Lieutenant Candless said, on the open channel.
“Happy to be of service,” Maggs replied.
Bury had forgotten that Maggs’s Z.XIX could shoot at such a long range. On the tactical board, the blue dot that marked the scout’s position blinked for a moment, then disappeared. Through his canopy Bury could just see a faint, luminous wisp appear up ahead. Appear, and then vanish once more.
Bury checked the board again, looking for Ginger.
She was still running. Hellfire, he thought. Ginger, damn you, don’t you know how this looks?
“Ensign Ginger,” Candless said. “Return to your formation.” There was no response. “Ensign,” Candless said, very calmly, “I am not making a request. If you fail to return to the formation, you will be in violation of orders.” The Lieutenant sighed and Bury could tell she didn’t want to do this. “Ginger,” she said, her voice even softening a little—“Ginger, if you don’t turn back, right now, there’s nothing I can do for you. There will be charges.”
“Ma’am,” Bury said, “I
think she’s turned off her comms. I don’t think she can even hear you.”
“That, in itself, would be a violation of standing orders. I’m sorry, Bury.” Candless cleared her throat. “Ensign Ginger. You have five seconds to return,” Lieutenant Candless said. “Shall I count them for you? Three, now. Two seconds. One.”
“Lieutenant!” Bury called. “Let me go after her. I can talk her back, I know I can, if you just let me—”
“Ensign Bury,” Lieutenant Candless said, “I need you right where you are. You will maintain position and you will clear this channel.”
“But—”
“There may be other Centrocor units waiting just inside the wormhole throat. We need to be prepared to repulse them if they appear. If you persist in cluttering this channel with useless speech, then you will find yourself in just as much trouble as your fellow ensign. You have your orders. Do they require clarification?”
Bury could only watch Ginger go, a tiny bright dot very far away now.
“Ensign Bury. Do my orders require clarification?”
“No, ma’am,” Bury said.
As they descended once more through the aqueduct, down toward the globe of water at the heart of the city, none of them spoke. Perhaps Archie knew now that he couldn’t ever speak privately, not even in that blast of noise. Perhaps the shaming had taught him to control his emotions. Maybe Water-Falling simply had some way to keep him clamped down, unable to think or feel, much less speak.
The aircar left the tunnel and spiraled down toward the island, the only bit of solid ground in the trapped ocean. The beacon of the lighthouse there followed them, lighting their way as they set down.
“It’s this way,” Archie/Water-Falling said. Both of them gestured at the lighthouse, their arms moving in unison. Just outside the door of the building a chorister waited for them. “This is Trill-of-the-Prey-Animal-at-Dusk. She keeps this place safe. It’s a position of enormous trust.”
The chorister bowed. She gestured as she spoke, perhaps knowing that otherwise Lanoe couldn’t know who was addressing him. “Before the Second Invasion, the Choir were like a set of claws closed around a seed. The claws kept the seed inviolate, but it could not grow. When the Twelve built this city, when they hid it away from the dangers of the galaxy, they made sure to leave their claws just a little bit open. You have passed through that opening because we know we must allow ourselves the possibility of trust.”
The Choir didn’t seem to need him to say anything in return. When she was finished with her ceremonial speech, Trill-of-the-Prey-Animal-at-Dusk led them inside the lighthouse. As with every Choir building Lanoe had seen, the ground floor was a single broad room. A ramp led upward, toward the light, but that wasn’t their destination. Instead they were ushered onto a moving platform that took them down, into the rock of the island.
Lanoe’s ears popped as they descended. The air grew warmer and heavier, thick with humidity. For a moment he felt his stomach flop around inside his abdomen, and his feet started to come away from the floor. It was a sensation he recognized—gravity was failing. Before he could even react, though, his weight returned and it was as if nothing had happened. Neither Archie nor either of the choristers seemed to notice the change at all.
They must have descended for at least a kilometer before the walls around them fell away and the platform came to rest on the floor of a large cavern.
“This is the safest, most heavily protected place in our city,” Archie said, his face slack, his mouth barely closing on the words. Lanoe guessed that Water-Falling had taken complete control of Archie now and was speaking directly to him, one-on-one. “Archie has never been down here before. Any chorister may come here if they wish, but they typically choose to stay away. This isn’t a place to visit lightly.”
Lights in the ceiling shone down on maybe thirty stone columns, each one worked with an elaborate bas-relief. A two-dimensional display hovered before each column, showing a single still image.
“The Twelve imagined this place into being, though they did not build it with their own hands. It took generations of the Choir to make it a reality. This is a place designed to outlast all of us, to remain intact and safe as long as necessary. If the city were to be attacked, even if it were destroyed and our bubble of wormspace collapsed, there are safeguards in place to preserve this chamber. These columns,” Water-Falling said, gesturing at them, one after another, “will be protected, until they are needed.”
Lanoe walked over to the nearest of the columns and studied the image that floated before it, a picture of some kind of creature like a speckled lizard with a single arm growing out of its back. The arm ended in a hand with two opposable thumbs. The lizard wore a close-fitting garment made of what looked like foam rubber.
He moved to the next column. Its display showed a knot of tentacles, some of which ended in delicate spiral shapes, some of which ended in what looked like compound eyes.
A third column bore the image of something almost humanoid, a creature with two arms and two legs but no head. A coat of thick, black-striped spines covered its entire body except the palms of its hands.
Each of the columns had a similar image, each showing a creature wildly different from all the others.
“You did an impressive thing, Aleister Lanoe, when you defeated the Blue-Blue-White fleet. Especially given how few ships you had, how few pilots.”
“You saw it happen,” Lanoe said. “You can see through the wormholes, can’t you? Use them like telescopes.”
“The Choir can’t shut itself off from the outside world, not completely. We watch. We force ourselves to watch, when the Blue-Blue-White kill and slaughter. We have seen it happen, again and again. You defeated one of those fleets but you know there are more of them. Millions more. They will keep coming for humanity. They won’t stop until they’ve destroyed humanity completely. You know that.”
“Sure,” Lanoe said. “Unless we stop them.”
“It can’t be done. I’m sorry. So many have tried. They can be turned back, individual planets can be saved, as you have seen. But there will always be more fleets. They will always keep coming, and eventually, they will wear you down. Even the weapons that the Choir possessed before the Second Invasion—many of which have been lost and cannot be recreated—were not enough. There is only one weapon that can stop them for good.”
“What is it?” Lanoe asked.
“Time,” Water-Falling said. “Your companion, Tannis Valk, was able to access their computers and analyze their programming. He was not the first. We have seen that data as well, and we know what will happen. Eventually, long from now, the Blue-Blue-White’s fleets of drones will have visited and reconstructed every gas giant planet in the galaxy. With no more work to do, with their mission fulfilled, they will shut themselves down. Then it will be safe for the Choir to leave this city, and this bubble, and return to worlds underneath the stars.”
“How long will that take?” Lanoe asked. “Actually, never mind. I know you don’t measure time the way we do.”
“I can read Archie’s mind to understand your concept of years, and the calculation isn’t a difficult one. It should take another two and one-half billions of years, as you measure them.”
“Only that long,” Lanoe said.
“The Choir has come to take a distant view. We’ve had to. We will wait, and we will outlast the Blue-Blue-White. And when the time comes, you can be there with us.”
Lanoe stopped in front of another of the columns. It showed the image of a creature a little like a pill bug, all segmented chitin and tiny legs. Elaborate calligraphy was tattooed or drawn across the armor plates. Writing in an alphabet he didn’t recognize.
“I think I’ve figured it out,” Lanoe said. “What this place is for. These columns are hollow inside, aren’t they? And they contain samples of DNA.”
“Genetic material, stabilized in a crystalline form. Not all of these species used the same chemicals to pass down their genomes. Some
of them aren’t even carbon-based.”
“Sure,” Lanoe said. “Sure.” He dropped his head. Closed his eyes. Thought things through. “So when the time comes, you—what? Clone a bunch of new people from this stock? Do you store their memories, too? Their cultures, their technology, everything they know, everything they’ve ever written down?”
“Unfortunately we can’t collect anything but the genetic samples. It would be impossible to store all that data in a manner secure enough to last until the proper time.”
“So … you’ll re-create these species. Make new copies. Except they’ll be born not even knowing who they are. You’ll find them a nice planet to live on, maybe teach them how to make fire. Tell them to go forth and multiply.”
“It means survival. The other option is extinction.”
Lanoe looked around at the columns. “Each one a different species. They took your offer.”
“The Choir has approached seventy-three different intelligent species, since the time of the Second Invasion, and to each of them we made the same proposition.”
Lanoe counted the columns. Twenty-eight. “A lot of them said no, then.”
“We honored their wishes.”
“And of the seventy-three you’ve asked, how many of them are still around? How many of them haven’t been wiped out by the Blue-Blue-White?”
“Just one,” Water-Falling said. “Humanity.”
Lanoe looked at one more column, one more image. It showed a picture of Archie, with two small differences. He didn’t have his beard in the picture. Nor did he have the scar across his temple.
The column behind the image wasn’t finished. There was no bas-relief inscribed on its surface, and it was shorter than the others, its top open to the air. “Empty?” Lanoe asked.
“One individual can’t provide enough varied genetic material to reproduce an entire species. We would need samples from approximately twelve hundred humans to create a viable gene pool.”
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