“We think Mastrit-PJ’s stellar expansion must account for the eventual fall off in message traffic,” Renato said eagerly. “Towards the end of the flight, Tanjuntic-RI was communicating with the colonies alone. Some messages were also forwarded from colonies established by other arkships, but there was nothing coming from Mastrit-PJ at all.”
“I’m surprised there ever was,” Alkad said. “If it detonated into a red giant, nothing should have survived. The star’s planets would have been consumed.”
“They must have set up some kind of redoubt in the cometary halo,” Renato said. “Their astroengineering resources were quite considerable by that time, after all. The Tyrathca who didn’t get to leave on arkships would have made some kind of survival attempt.”
“Fair assumption,” Alkad acknowledged.
“But that civilization would be finite,” Renato said. “They have no new resources to exploit, they can’t replenish themselves like the arkships do at every new star system. So eventually, they died off. Hence the lack of messages in the last five thousand years.”
“But one of the last communiqués from Mastrit-PJ was the one concerning the Sleeping God,” Parker said. “A century later, they finally went off air. Tanjuntic-RI had beamed a message back, asking for further details, but by then they were eight hundred light-years away. The Mastrit-PJ civilization was probably extinct before the first colony world received the original communiqué.”
“Can we see it, please?” Ruben asked.
“Of course,” Oski said. “We isolated the relevant text from the message, there’s a lot of softbloat garbage about source and compression. And they repeat each message thousands of times over about a fortnight to ensure the entire chunk is eventually received intact.” She gave them a file code. When they accessed it, the processor showed a simple text sheet.
INCOMING SIGNAL RECEIVED
DATE 75572-094-648
SOURCE FALINDI-TY RELAY
MASTRIT-PJ REPORTS
FLIGHTSHIP SWANTIC-LI SIGNAL RE-ACQUIRED DATE 38647-046-831.
LAST SIGNAL RECEIVED DATE 23867-032-749.
INCLUDED
TRANSMISSION DETAILS
SWANTIC-LI REPORTS
DATE 29321-072-491. PLASMA BUFFER FAILURE WHILE DECELERATING INTO STAR SYSTEM **********. MULTIPLE IMPACT DAMAGE. 1 HABITATION RING DEPRESSURIZED. 27 INDUSTRIAL SUPPORT CHAMBERS DEPRESSURIZED WITH ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT LOSS. 32% POPULATION KILLED. LIFE-SUPPORT FUNCTIONS UNSUSTAINABLE. TOTAL LIFE-SUPPORT CESSATION EXPECTED WITHIN 7 WEEKS. NO INHABITABLE PLANETS IN STAR SYSTEM. SENSORS LOCATED AN EXTENSIVE SPATIAL DISTURBANCE ORBITING THE STAR. IT IS A DORMANT SOURCE OF GODPOWER. IT SEES THE UNIVERSE. IT CONTROLS EVERY ASPECT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE. ITS REASON IS TO ASSIST PROGRESS OF BIOLOGICAL ENTITIES. OUR ARRIVAL WOKE IT. WHEN WE ASKED FOR ITS HELP IT TRANSPORTED SWANTIC-LI TO THIS STAR SYSTEM 160 LIGHT-YEARS AWAY, WHERE THERE IS A HABITABLE PLANET. TO ANY WHO COME AFTER US, WE DEEM IT AN ALLY OF ALL TYRATHCA.
DATE 29385-040-175. SWANTIC-LI POPULATION TRANSFERRED TO HABITABLE PLANET. COLONY GOERTHT-WN ESTABLISHED.
Tagged on to the end of the file were three pictures. The quality was uniformly low, even after passing through discrimination and amplification filter programs. All of them showed a silver-grey smear against a stellar background. Whatever the object was, the Tyrathca of Coastuc-RT had reproduced its shape almost exactly: a broad disk with conical spires rising from each side. Its surface was smooth, without any visible markings or structures, a constant metallic sheen.
“How big is it?” Joshua asked.
“Unknown,” Renato said. “And unknowable. We don’t have any references. There was no focal length given for any of the pictures, so there’s no way we can put a number on the beast. It could be gas-giant sized, or a couple of kilometres across. The only clue I have to go on is their claim that it comes complete with an extensive spatial disturbance, which I’m assuming is some kind of intense gravity field. That would tend to prohibit anything too small. The one object that can qualify as coming near to filling the parameters we’ve got so far is a small neutron star, but that couldn’t have this shape.”
Joshua gave Alkad a long look. “Neutron stars of whatever size don’t have the properties described by the Tyrathca in that communiqué,” she said. “Nor do they look like that. I think we have to conclude it’s an artefact.”
“I’m not going to quibble with anyone’s theories,” Kempster said. “Plain and simple, we don’t have enough information to determine its nature. Sitting here trying to second guess what five fuzzy pictures are showing us is completely pointless. What we have established, is the existence of something with some very strange properties.”
“The term ‘godpower’ is fascinating,” Parker said. “Especially as we’re not dealing with spoken nuances. Plain text gives our translation a much higher level of accuracy.”
“Ha!” Kempster waved a dismissive hand at the director. “Come off it, we don’t even have an accurate definition of God in our own language. Every culture assigns different values to God. Humanity has used the term to mean everything from creator of the universe to a group of big angry men who have nothing better to do than mess about with the weather. It’s a concept, not a description.”
“However you want to squabble over semantics, God implies an extraordinary amount of power in any language.”
“Godpower, not God,” Ruben corrected pointedly. “That has to be significant, too. It’s definitely an artefact of some kind. And as the Tyrathca didn’t build it, we’ve probably got as much chance as anyone of switching it back on.”
“It was dormant, and their approach woke it up,” Oski said. “Sounds like you don’t even have to press the button to activate it.”
“I say it still sounds like a stardrive to me,” Liol said, with a nod to Joshua. “The communiqué said it assists the progress of biological entities, and it shunted that arkship a hundred and sixty light-years. That seems pretty clear cut. No wonder the Tyrathca thought it was bloody miraculous. They don’t have FTL technology. And a stardrive big enough to transport an arkship is going to be built on one hell of an impressive scale. It was bound to astonish them, even with their fatalistic phlegmatism.”
“They said a lot of things about it,” Joshua said. “None of which quite match up. What I mean is, none of the qualities they’ve given it are aspects of a single machine. Stardrives don’t observe the universe, nor do they control physical existence.”
“I could add several questions,” Syrinx said. “Like what is it doing in a star-system with no biocompatible planet? It would also appear that there’s some kind of controlling sentience. Remember the Tyrathca asked it for help, they didn’t just switch it to stardrive function and fly away.”
“They couldn’t have anyway,” Samuel said. “It sent Swantic-LI to a system with an inhabitable planet. In other words, it knew there was one there when the Tyrathca didn’t.”
“That makes it benign, as well,” Kempster said. “Or at least, friendly; presumably to biological entities. And I’m just arrogant enough to believe that if it was co-operative with the Tyrathca it really ought to extend the same courtesy to us.”
Joshua looked round the group. “If no one has anything to add about its abilities or nature, I think we’ve learned enough to confirm we should continue with this mission. Monica, you want to say no?”
The ESA agent pressed her head into her hands and stared at the decking. “I agree this thing sounds pretty impressive, but I wasn’t just drawing attention to the Tyrathca to be a pain. They do worry me.”
“Not on any timescale we have to worry about,” Oski said. “Even assuming you’re one hundred per cent right, and they now see the human race as a dangerous plague to be wiped out. It would be decades before they can even contemplate such an action. Take the worst case, and assume they’ve already travelled from Hesperi-LN to the other colonies Tanjuntic-RI founded. They still won’t be able to build ZTT starships for years to come, not in any quantity. Fra
nkly, I have my doubts they would ever manage it. Retro-engineering our systems would be extremely difficult for them, given their lack of intuition. Even if they did crack it, they’d have to build production stations. So even if this flight takes us a couple of years, we’ll still be back well in time to warn the First Admiral.”
Monica consulted Samuel. “I think that’s reasonable,” he said.
“All right,” she said reluctantly. “I admit I’m curious about this Sleeping God.”
“Good,” Joshua said. “Next question, where the hell is it? You left the star system location blank.”
“It’s a ten digit coordinate,” Kempster said. “I can give you a direct translation if you really want. Unfortunately, it’s total nonsense, because we don’t have the Tyrathca almanac from which it was taken.”
“Oh bollocks!” Liol slumped back into the couch, slapping the cushion fabric in frustration. “You mean we’ve got to go back into Tanjuntic-RI?”
“Unwise,” Samuel said. “I believe the hornets’ nest analogy applies. We really did stir them up.”
“Can’t the Oenone work it out?” Liol asked. “I thought voidhawks have a real good spatial awareness.”
“They do,” Syrinx said. “If we had a Tyrathca almanac, we could take you straight to the star with the Sleeping God. But first we need that almanac, and there’s only one place to get it from. We have to go back.”
“Not so,” Kempster said cheerily. “There is a second star system where we know it exists: Mastrit-PJ itself. Even better, they received Swantic-LI’s messages direct; there may be others which were never relayed to Tanjuntic-RI. All we have to do is fly around the Orion nebula, any red giant star will shine at us like a damn great beacon. As soon as the sensors see it, we can work out a valid approach vector.”
“More promising, from our point of view, Mastrit-PJ is now uninhabited,” Parker said. “This time we’ll be able to undertake a more leisurely, and thorough, retrieval of the files we want from the ruins.”
“We don’t know how long this redoubt civilization has been dead for,” Oski said, a note of worry in her voice. “The condition of the Laymil relics are bad enough, and they’re only two and a half thousand years old. I can’t promise I can recover anything from electronics that have been exposed to space for twice that long.”
“If necessary, we can just scout round the stars closest to Mastrit-PJ for other Tyrathca colonies. There must be a lot of them in that area. They won’t have been warned about us devious humans yet. The point is, we can find copies of that almanac on the other side of the nebula.”
“I wasn’t disputing that,” Oski said. “I’m just saying, for the record, there may be problems.”
“You’re all overlooking one thing,” Joshua said. He almost smiled when he received their indignant looks. “Is there even going to be a Sleeping God waiting for us if the Kiint get there first? And what the hell do they want with it anyway?”
“We can’t not continue because of the Kiint,” Syrinx said. “In any case, we don’t have real proof that . . .” she trailed off under Joshua’s mocking gaze. “All right, they were at Tanjuntic-RI. But we knew they were interested before we set out. It’s because of them we’re here now. To my mind, this just proves the Sleeping God is a big deal.”
“All right,” Joshua said. “The other side of the nebula, it is.”
Chapter 02
Fifty years ago, Sinon had visited the Welsh-ethnic planet Llandilo, where he’d spent a cold three hours straddling sunrise to watch a clan of New Druids welcome the first day of spring. As pagan ceremonies went, it was a fairly boring affair for an outsider, with off-key singing and interminable Gaelic invocations to the planet’s mother goddess. Only the setting made it worthwhile. They’d gathered on the headland of some eastward-facing coastal cliffs, where a line of tremendous granite pillars marched out to sea. God’s colonnade, the locals called it.
When the sun rose, pink and gold out of the swaddling sea mist, its crescent was aligned perfectly along the line of pillars. One by one, their tops had blazed with rose-gold coronas as the shadows flowed away. Gladdened by nature’s poignancy, the congregation of white-clad New Druids had finally managed to achieve a decent harmony and their voices rang out across the shore.
It was a strange recollection for Sinon to bring to his new serjeant body with its restricted memory capacity. He certainly couldn’t remember his reason for retaining it. An overdose of sentiment, presumably. Whatever the motive, the Llandilo memory was currently providing a useful acclimatisation bridge to the present. Nine thousand of the serjeants trapped on Ketton’s island had gathered together near the edge of the plateau to exert their will, with the remainder joining their endeavours via affinity as they walked resolutely over the mud towards the rendezvous point. They weren’t praying, exactly, but the visual similarity with the New Druids was an amusing comfort. The beleaguered Edenists needed whatever solace they could garner from the dire situation.
Their first, and urgent, priority had been to stem the gush of atmosphere away from the flying island before everybody suffocated. A simple enough task for their assembled minds now they had acquired some degree of energistic power; the unified wish bent whatever passed for local reality into obedience. Even Stephanie Ash and her raggedy little group of followers had aided them in that. Now it was as though the air layer around the outside of the island had become an impregnable vertical shield.
Encouraged and relieved, they stated their second wish loud and clear: to return. In theory, it should have been easy. If a massive concentration of energistic power had brought them here to this realm, then an equally insistent concentration should be able to get them back. So far, this argument of logical symmetry had failed them utterly.
“You dudes should give it a rest,” Cochrane said irritably. “It’s real spooky with all of you standing still like some zombie army.”
Along with the others of Stephanie’s group, the redoubtable hippie had spent a quarter of an hour trying to help the serjeants open some kind of link back to the old universe. When it became obvious (to them) that such a connection was going to be inordinately difficult, if not impossible, he’d let his attention drift. They’d ended up sitting in a circle round Tina, giving her what support and comfort they could.
She was still very weak, sweating and shivering as she lay inside a heavily insulated field sleeping bag. One of the serjeants with medical knowledge who’d examined her said that loss of blood was the biggest problem. Their direct infusion equipment didn’t work in this realm, so it had rigged up a primitive intravenous plasma drip feed for her.
Stephanie’s unvoiced worry was that Tina had suffered the kind of internal injuries they could never repair properly with their energistic power, however much they willed her to be better. As with Moyo’s eyes, the subtleties of the flesh had defeated them. They needed fully-functional medical nanonic packages. Which wasn’t going to happen here.
Her other concern was exactly what would happen to the souls of anyone whose body died in this realm. Their connection with the beyond had been irrevocably severed. It wasn’t a prospect she wanted to explore. Though looking at Tina’s poorly acted cheer, she thought they might all find out before too long.
Sinon broke out of his trance-state, and looked down at Cochrane. “Our attempt to manipulate the energistic power is not a physically draining exercise. As there is nothing else for us to do here, we consider it appropriate to continue with our efforts to return home.”
“You do, huh? Yeah, well, I can dig that. I purge myself with yoga. It’s righteous. But, you know, us cats, we’ve got to like eat at some time.”
“I’m sorry, you should have said.” Sinon walked over to one of the large piles of backpacks and weapons which the serjeants had discarded. He found his own and unfastened the top. “We don’t ingest solid food, I’m afraid, but our nutrient soup will sustain you. It contains all the proteins and vitamins required by a normal human digestion sy
stem.” He pulled out several silvery sachets and distributed them round the dubious group. “You should supplement the meal with water.”
Cochrane flipped the cap off the sachet’s small valve and sniffed suspiciously. With everyone watching intently, he squeezed a couple of drops of the pale amber liquid onto his finger, and licked at them. “Holy shit! It tastes like seawater. Man, I can’t eat raw plankton, I’m not a whale.”
“Big enough to qualify,” Rana muttered under her breath.
“We have no other source of nourishment available,” Sinon said in mild rebuke.
“It’s fine, thank you,” Stephanie told the big serjeant. She concentrated for a moment, and her sachet solidified into a bar of chocolate. “Don’t pay any attention to Cochrane. We can imagine it to be whatever taste we like.”
“Bad karma’ll get you,” the hippie sniffed. “Yo there, Sinon. You got a glass going spare? I figure I can still remember what a shot of decent bourbon tastes like.”
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