Archie looked slightly embarrassed as he translated Water-Falling’s response. “You don’t approve of the Choir’s policy of shaming those who have transgressed,” he said. “You seemed to think it was cruel. She wants to know if restraining humans against their will in a tiny box is somehow more kind?”
“I suppose,” Lanoe said, “you have a … point. Let’s move on, shall we? We still need to see the engines.”
Water-Falling didn’t press for further discussion. She allowed herself to be steered aft once more, into the warren of tiny corridors that surrounded the ship’s fusion torus—much of them now cluttered with debris and wreckage.
“As small as these compartments look, engineering is actually the biggest section of the ship, by volume,” Lanoe said. “A lot of our mass is taken up by shielding around the reactor and the reinforced spars that hold the ship together during maneuvers. As you can see, this section is a little worse for wear, especially with our chief engineer incapacitated. Yet I’m told our drive came through the maneuver fully intact, so there’s no danger of a heat or radiation leak. These drives are nearly indestructible—I’ve flown on ships that were reduced to little more than a few twisted beams of metal but the engines came through still perfectly functional.”
“Water-Falling is very interested in seeing this,” Archie said. “The Choir’s power generation systems down in the city are sufficient to our needs, but we’re always looking for ways to improve our output.”
Lanoe nodded happily. “Yes, and I’m happy to show them to you. Through that hatch is the main inspection corridor. It’s our best chance to see something interesting. If you’ll … oh. This is slightly embarrassing.” He went and stood next to the square hatch, which was only a meter wide. “I’m afraid this hatch was built for a human being to wriggle through. I don’t know if you’ll fit.”
Water-Falling ran her claws around the edge of the hatch. Stuck her head inside, and then her shoulders. Her hips just wouldn’t fold properly, however. After a full minute of trying she had no choice but to give up.
“A shame,” Lanoe said. “It really is impressive in there. But I suppose it can’t be done, so we’ll just have to end our tour here.”
“I could fit,” Archie pointed out.
“Hmm? Well,” Lanoe said, “I suppose you would. But doesn’t Water-Falling want to see the engines for herself, with her own eyes?”
“You forget that we share our experiences,” Archie told him. The chorister chirped musically. “Really, Commander. You’ve spent enough time with the Choir that I would think you’d remember that.”
“Yes, of course,” Lanoe said. “What was I thinking? All right. Well, Archie, if you’ll go in first, M. Valk will be in right after you. I’ll stay out here to keep Water-Falling company while you go and have a little look.”
The castaway crawled through the hatch and disappeared. Before Valk followed him, he gave Lanoe a glance and the tiniest of meaningful nods.
Time to see if their plan would actually work.
At first, as they listened to Archie and Valk clambering around inside the drive, Lanoe simply stood next to the hatch, smiling at Water-Falling and occasionally checking his wrist display. He called one of the neddies, one of Paniet’s engineering crew, to come out and speak with them. “Let’s have the beginner’s lecture on fusion drives,” he said. “Our new friend here is interested in hearing how they work.”
“I—well,” the neddy said. He licked his lips and glanced back and forth between his commander and the alien visitor. He seemed just as terrified of the chorister as Ginger had been, but Lanoe could see in the man’s eyes that like most engineers of his experience, he was happy that someone, anyone, had taken an interest in his work. “I’m not sure how simple you’d like this, but—”
“Oh, let’s go right back to the fundamentals,” Lanoe suggested.
“It’s a basic laser resonance reaction in a tokamak-style containment bottle, with some preheating of the deuterium pellets by zeta-pinch compression in the injection phase. I’m not sure how much you know about sign inversion in ultrahigh-temperature plasmas, but—”
“Assume we skipped that day in physics class,” Lanoe said. He wasn’t listening to the neddy at all. Instead he watched Water-Falling carefully, though he had no idea what exactly he was looking for. He didn’t understand her body language. Was the slump of her shoulders an indicator of boredom, or was it something else?
Did she suspect what Lanoe was trying to do?
A voice came booming back to them from beyond the inspection hatch. “What’s wrong with Archie? Is he—”
The voice cut off abruptly. Water-Falling’s arms lifted and fell, and she pushed past the neddy to lean her head inside the hatch. She ducked back out and came to stand over Lanoe, leaning far over until her eyes were directly over his head.
“Is something wrong?” he asked her.
Her chirp was completely unlike the one that signaled laughter. This one was a series of rising warbles that even to a human sounded like a cry of distress or alarm.
Music to Lanoe’s ears.
The inspection corridors that crisscrossed through the drive were a trackless warren, a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. If it weren’t for Valk’s computer brain, which could make a perfect map of each panel and cable bundle they passed, he could easily have gotten lost back there.
Not that they got very far. Just a few meters in, before they’d gotten out of sight of the narrow hatch, he stopped and his whole body went slack. “What’s wrong with Archie?” the castaway shouted. Clearly Water-Falling had taken control. “Is he …”
Valk shoved the man’s yielding body farther into the corridor. Almost instantly he recovered his muscle tone and got back up on his hands and knees. He gave a sheepish laugh and looked back at Valk over his shoulder.
“I’m afraid I’ve come over all peculiar,” he said. “A bit light-headed. Perhaps it’s claustrophobia.”
“Nope,” Valk said. The corridor was just wide enough for them to crawl through in their heavy pilot’s suits. He pushed forward, hand over hand, and Archie had no choice but to get out of the way—by moving farther down the passage. “Just a little farther and there’s a place up ahead where we can sit down and take a rest.”
A few meters farther on and Archie just stopped moving. “If it’s all the same to you,” Archie said. He didn’t get to finish his thought. “Oh,” he said. “Oh. I don’t feel right at all. Is there—is there something wrong with, I don’t know, the acoustics of this place? It’s so—quiet. But that can’t be right, I can hear my voice echoing like I’m at the bottom of a well.”
“It’s the shielding,” Valk explained. “It blocks microwave transmissions.”
There was barely room to turn around in the inspection corridor. Archie twisted and struggled until he was facing Valk. “Microwaves,” he said, softly. “You mean—”
“Water-Falling can’t hear you right now,” Valk told him. “None of the Choir can. Lanoe had us come in here for just that reason.”
“What are you saying? You mean I can’t—they can’t—none of—none of the Choir can …”
“You’re cut off from their thoughts,” Valk said, gently. “It’s been a long time since yours was the only voice in your head, hasn’t it?”
“Cut off. A long … A long time,” Archie said. Was he just echoing Valk? Trying to retransmit Valk’s voice, the way the Choir picked up and retransmitted each other’s thoughts? “I’m not sure … I mean … this feels so wrong. I want to go back. I want to go back!”
“Archie, calm down,” Valk said. “We’re your friends.”
“Are you?” Archie shot back at him. “Are you? In the vehicle bay I saw … I … Damn this! My thoughts—I can’t—I can’t—”
His eyelids started to flutter closed and Valk had to grab his arm and shake it to get him to focus. “Look, Archie, we can take you home. We can take you back to … to any planet you like, okay? We want to
help you! If you feel you’re being held against your will, if the Choir is forcing their emotions on you, if—”
“Home,” Archie said. Another echo, maybe. “A long time.”
“It’s what you want, isn’t it?” Valk asked. “You must have thought about it in the last seventeen years. It must have been—”
“By all hell’s hymnals, man, I’ve thought of little else. But that eagle. That … eagle. You—you’re the Blue Devil.”
“That’s right,” Valk said.
“I trust you. I don’t trust …”
“Archie, stay with me. Focus on me. You’re a human being. You’re not one of them. I can help you.”
“Home,” Archie said, and his voice broke, shattered with emotion.
“Yes,” Valk said. “I can take you home.” And then he steeled himself for what came next. It felt utterly, completely wrong. It was what Lanoe wanted. Those two things shouldn’t have added up, but hellfire, Valk thought. Hellfire, it had to be done. “I can take you home,” he said again. “But first I need you to answer some questions.”
Lanoe’s wrist minder indicated that Valk and Archie had been gone for less than five minutes. With Water-Falling chirping like an emergency decompression alarm the whole time, with her vast bulk craning over him as if she would fall on him, dissolve and devour his guts like one of her ancestral prey animals, it felt like forever.
He’d thought he would know when Archie was coming back—he’d thought the moment would be obvious when the castaway reentered the sphere of the Choir’s influence. In fact, even after Archie poked his head back out of the hatch and started talking soothingly to Water-Falling, hushing her in soft, quiet tones, it felt like the man was still free.
For a moment, at least. Then Archie’s eyes rolled up in his head and he grasped desperately at a railing to keep from falling over.
“Izzz,” he said. “Izzz ullrit, it’s all right.” Archie pushed himself back up onto his feet. His face was slack but not the lifeless rictus mask it had been a moment before. “It’s all right,” he said, and Lanoe didn’t know if the castaway was talking to him or to Water-Falling. “I’m all right. I’m all right. I’m back. I’m all right.”
“He should lie down for a while,” Valk said, shoving his head and shoulders out of the hatch. The big pilot flipped easily out and onto his feet in the minimal gravity. “He had a bit of a shock, that’s all. We didn’t realize that the shielding inside the drive would affect him like that. I guess it interfered with the microwave transmission of—”
“Quiet,” Archie said. No, Lanoe thought. That was Water-Falling’s voice. “Enough. I can read Archie’s memories. I know what you talked to him about in there. I know this was a—a ruse.” The word came out of Archie’s mouth as if it belonged to a foreign language. Well, Lanoe thought, maybe that wasn’t so far from the truth. There were no lies among the Choir. How could there be? No subterfuge, no dissembling.
“We talked about taking him home,” Valk said.
“We have already told you he is not our prisoner! He is free to do as he pleases. Did you think we … that we … lied about that? Do you not understand yet that such things are impossible for us?”
“I think you’ve been pumping him full of your emotions for seventeen years,” Valk replied.
Lanoe laid a hand on his arm. “Enough. She’s right. She didn’t lie to us. And we shouldn’t lie to the Choir. We should put our cards on the table now. I needed some information about the Choir’s relationship with the wormholes. I knew Archie could answer my questions.”
“You could have simply asked!”
“Could I?”
“We’ve hardly kept secrets from you,” Water-Falling said. “We’ve been completely open. We manipulated the spacetime harmonic to send you a message via wormhole. We brought you here through the low-energy wormhole that is the only safe route to our homeworld. We allowed M. Valk to view an apportation show!”
“Sure,” Lanoe said. “You don’t have secrets. You don’t hide things, that’s not your way. You’ve told us that more than once. But there’s a kind of lying even telepaths can manage. Lies by omission.”
“You wouldn’t have told us that wormholes can be used as weapons,” Valk said. “That’s what the cold wormhole was, Lanoe, and the other hazards on the map—they’re traps. Designed to catch any Blue-Blue-White ships that accidentally wander into the wormhole network.”
“Really?” Lanoe asked. “That’s—but then—”
Valk turned to address Water-Falling again. “You would never have told us that it was the Choir who built the network in the first place.”
Lanoe started to respond to that, but then he actually heard what Valk had just said, and his jaw shut with a click.
“Wait,” he said.
That couldn’t be right.
Could it? Lanoe had always been taught that traversable wormholes were a natural feature of four-dimensional spacetime. That large gravity sources like stars warped space so much that they ripped holes in the fabric of the universe—the wormholes he’d flown through his entire career. There were theories, whole schools of physics based on that concept.
The idea that someone could have built the network of wormholes, even a species like the Choir, seemed ludicrous. It was like saying someone had built the ocean with a hammer and nails. Beyond imagination. Sure, he’d seen evidence that the Choir could manipulate wormholes. Sure, they lived in a bubble of wormspace, which he’d used to think was impossible, but …
“They did it before the First Invasion,” Valk said. “Archie told me. At the height of their culture, before the Blue-Blue-White nearly wiped them out. The Choir built the whole damned thing. Connected up half the stars in the galaxy.”
“Is that true?” Lanoe asked.
Water-Falling reached up with all four claws and covered as many of her eyes as she could. Was it a gesture of exasperation—or shame? Anger? Was she reliving the terrible losses her people had suffered? Lanoe couldn’t know. He just couldn’t read her.
“Yes,” she said. Through Archie.
He stepped closer to the chorister. He knew he was treading on quicksand. He knew that he might have already offended the Choir beyond repair. But if they could help him, if they could help him in his crusade against the Blue-Blue-White in a real, materially useful way, something more practical than simply storing human DNA against a hypothetical future—well, he had to try.
“Water-Falling,” he began, “I know I’ve done a foolish thing. But perhaps I simply took a more direct route to a place we would have reached anyway. I know the Choir doesn’t keep secrets, and I know that if you didn’t tell me this before, maybe … maybe you would have, eventually. I had to know now, because my time with you is growing short.” No need to mention the fact that Centrocor was, at most, hours away from pouncing on him again. “And because I need to ask the Choir for a favor. A gift. A help.”
“You’ve already seen what we have to offer,” Water-Falling said. “You would ask for more? Opinion on this is mixed. There is a slightly ambiguous trend toward thinking you are greedy, human. That you want more than you deserve. We cannot tell if your newfound humility is feigned. There is a moderately strong trend toward thinking you are clever, perhaps too clever.”
“Please,” Lanoe said. “You can open new wormholes. You can connect distant parts of space, go anywhere you choose. That’s incredible. Please,” he said again. “I need you to open a wormhole for me. One that will connect—”
“No,” Water-Falling said.
“You haven’t heard what I was going to suggest,” Lanoe said.
“Humans and choristers are very different, and sometimes we have trouble understanding you. There is no mystery about what you, Aleister Lanoe, want. What you would ask of us. You wish us to open a stable wormhole between one of your human stars and the homesystem of the Blue-Blue-White. Everyone knows this.”
“I’m that transparent, huh?” Lanoe asked, knowing what was coming. D
amn.
“It cannot be done. It will not be done. You have already been told this. Stop, now. Stop polluting our thoughts with your impossible demands.”
“All right,” Lanoe said, “then maybe—something else, something less offensive to you. Maybe a wormhole that—I don’t know, gets us closer to their planet. If you could just—”
“Stop! Now! This negotiation is over! I will return immediately to the city. I will not speak another word with you!”
The chorister turned on her many feet and stomped off toward the vehicle bay, toward where she’d left her aircar.
Lanoe’s heart sank in his chest. He couldn’t believe it.
He’d failed. He’d failed—
“Archie,” Water-Falling said. “Archie. Come.”
The castaway shook himself. His eyes cleared and he stood up a little straighter. “No,” he said. “I’m staying here.”
Nobody looked more surprised at his defiance than Archie himself. But he folded his arms across his chest and didn’t move, even when Water-Falling beckoned him with all four of her arms.
Perhaps more passed between them—more entreaties, more refusals. Entire conversations, whole discourses of shame and command and reproach. It was impossible to say. Eventually she let out a sharp, discordant chirp and stormed off, leaving the castaway behind.
“I’m staying here,” Archie said again, in little more than a whisper.
“I saw the three-headed eagle in your vehicle bay. This is a Navy ship. Earth Navy,” Archie said. Half-empty food tubes lay scattered around him, piled up on every flat surface in the wardroom. Occasionally he would pick one back up and try more of its contents. The cruiser’s stores couldn’t offer ostrich steaks and fresh greens, but after seventeen years of the Choir’s fare, Archie couldn’t seem to stop eating human food. “But you’re the Blue Devil. What are you doing here?”
Valk wasn’t sure exactly how to reply. “A lot of things have changed since you left Tiamat,” he tried. “I’m not really sure where to begin.”
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