by Linda Nagata
Lot felt a hand caress his head. He looked up, to see Jupiter gazing down at him with an odd, squinting expression. “Switch off your camouflage, Lot, you’re straining my eyes.” His voice carried effortlessly over the thunder of the passing troops.
Lot felt his cheeks go hot beneath their cover of camouflage paint. He hurriedly knocked a wrist panel and the suit’s camo function flicked off, leaving him clothed in dull gray. He snapped off his hood as the last of the assault troops rolled out of the loading bay. Captain Antigua moved out with them, heading downhill, toward the lower elevator terminus.
Jupiter crouched beside Lot and ruffled his tangled blond hair. Rare approval floated on the air between them. “You’ve given us victory,” he said. “You are more than my only child. You are my right hand.”
Lot stared at him, momentarily stunned, feeling his mouth open in a silly grin. Jupiter grinned back at him, and that made it even worse, leaving Lot crazy-happy like some of the women would get at convocation.
Jupiter touched his hair one more time. Then he straightened, and stepped across the corridor to confer with Captain Hu.
Lot coughed softly, trying to vent the mean, racking spasm he could feel building in his lungs. He felt warmed by a deep sense of pride. He’d opened the way for Jupiter. He’d let the army into the underbelly of Silk. He was Jupiter’s right hand, and he was not going to give in to another spasm of coughing. That was not how a trooper conducted himself.
He coughed again, then swallowed hard several times. Across the corridor, he could hear Captain Hu relaying progress reports:
“Loading bays two through six have been opened. Approximately twenty percent of the army has entered the corridor system. . . .”
“And Nesseleth?” Jupiter asked.
Lot moved forward at the name of the great ship, the sculpted entity that had carried them across the void.
“The great ship is still coming down,” Hu said grimly. Lot caught the scent of disagreement in those words. “She has approximately two hours left, Jupiter, before she burns.”
Lot couldn’t suppress a cry of dismay. “Nesseleth?” He scrambled forward, forgetting for the moment a trooper’s proper reserve. “Did the Silkens hit her? Have they killed her?”
Jupiter frowned down at him, his angry mien impacting against Lot’s sensory tears, and suddenly Lot felt stricken. He looked down, covering his mouth to stifle another cough. His eyes were watering. He could scent Jupiter’s disapproval and he knew he should back away, stand quietly on the side, wait for orders. But the ship was going down. If Nesseleth died, they would have no way out. No way back.
Dread realization crept through his brain. “You’ve ordered her to crash, haven’t you?” He backed away a step. “You’ve killed her.”
Jupiter barely looked at him. “She was human once. She seeks her own salvation. To follow the army is her own wish.”
“No, that’s not why.” Lot shook his head. “It’s because she loves you. She’s doing it because she loves you.” Suddenly Lot felt jealous, fiercely jealous, because he wasn’t sure he loved Jupiter that much, enough to lay down and die for him, no questions asked, and he wanted to be able to love that much, to believe. . . .
The cough that had been working at his lungs finally slipped out in that moment of stress. It started small, but after the first hack Lot lost all control over it. He turned away, throwing his hands over his face as his body shook with the convulsions. He felt as if he were choking, as if his lungs were melting, as if he couldn’t get a breath. And all the time he was picturing Nesseleth and wondering if it would be worse to strangle, or to burn.
He was on his knees before it was over. In his hands he could see blood-colored mucus. He could feel the weight of Jupiter’s gaze, and the sense of his anger all around.
Then Jupiter was there. He swept Lot up in his arms, holding him against his chest as if he weighed nothing. “What have they done to him?” he demanded of Captain Hu, and the fury in his voice made Lot shrink. “Have the Silkens used assault Makers against him?”
“We can’t know that yet, Jupiter.” Hu took two stomping steps toward the loading bay. “Medic!” he bellowed. “Dammit, where’s that medic?”
“Get a tactical squad on this,” Jupiter growled. “If the Silkens want to play germ warfare, then let them. We’ll see how their museum Makers hold up against a modern arsenal.”
Lot started to protest. The dust in the ancient air ducts had irritated his lungs. There had been no assault Makers. But another coughing spasm took him and he couldn’t get the words out. Blood sputtered out between his lips, smearing across Jupiter’s armored chest. Then strong arms were grasping him from behind, pulling him away.
Jupiter bent quickly, kissed him firmly on the head. “We’ll be together again.”
“No, wait!” Lot croaked, reaching for him. “I didn’t mean it. Don’t leave me.” But Jupiter was already gone.
Chapter 2
Lot could not remember a time before the great ship. He’d been born on the long outward passage from the star cluster called the Committee. Nesseleth had been his world. In her warrens he’d known a hazy, timeless sense of permanence, as if his life there might go on forever with no real change. The new world to which they were bound had seemed as theoretical as death, a phantom specter lying far, far over his personal horizon.
Then Lot had turned seven—over a year and a half ago now—and Jupiter had taken him to his strategic chamber aboard the great ship. There, he showed him a holographic schematic of their destination.
Lot studied the star system. A faint white nebula veiled the G-type primary, enwrapping it like the woven nests some spiders spun around their eggs. The nebula looked nothing like the warm, dark spheres that enclosed the cordoned suns of the Hallowed Vasties. “That star is Kheth?” Lot asked, unsure what was expected of him. Jupiter nodded.
Under the veil, Lot could see only one planet. Its image was exaggerated in scale, a lovely terrestrial world wrapped in a meld of living green and blue. Within the planet’s orbit, the density of the nebula was very low. Puzzled, Lot looked up at Jupiter. “Where are the other planets?” he asked. “Where are the moons and the asteroids?”
Jupiter gazed thoughtfully at the display. “This is all that’s left. If there were other planets, they’re gone now, or dispersed into the stony nebula. The Chenzeme must have scourged this system.”
Lot felt his heartbeat quicken. He knew all about the ancient war of the Chenzeme. It had been fought a long time before people even existed—a terrible alien conflict that had left no known survivors. The Chenzeme were gone. But their weapons still prowled the void, attacking great ships and frontier worlds at unpredictable intervals. Still, Lot had never heard of the Chenzeme actually tearing a planet to pieces. That would make them as powerful as the people of the Hallowed Vasties. . . .
An objection occurred to him. He looked cautiously to Jupiter, assaying his mood, searching for any hint of dark temper, but he uncovered only a quiet anticipation. “I don’t understand,” Lot said softly. “The Communion’s here, and you said the Communion ended the war.”
Jupiter smiled. His hand rested lightly on Lot’s shoulder. “Peace wasn’t made overnight.” He pointed to the green-blue living world under its nebular veil, and the view zoomed in, sending the edge of the image rocketing off into the walls. “What was fashioned here required millennia to accomplish, and millions of years to refine.”
Lot studied the planet, wondering what Jupiter wanted him to see. There was the gossamer thread of the space elevator, built by human settlers only a few hundred years before. He could make out the swelling of its anchoring mass some fifty-five thousand miles beyond the surface of the world. And low on the elevator, just above the main mass of the planetary atmosphere, a tiny bump that contained the city of Silk.
Except for the anchoring point of the elevator, the world itself revealed no evidence of technological life-forms, though the continents and seas were reputed t
o teem with living things—a biological mélange comprising many different genetic systems, including the coding structure of the insidious plagues left behind by the ancient regime.
Chenzeme plagues could be found on seemingly pristine planets, in the tails of comets, in the dust among stars. They were a constant hazard to great ships that mined almost all their raw materials from unknown sources. Jupiter had almost died when one such plague destroyed Nesseleth’s original crew. That had been a long time ago, maybe over a hundred years. Jupiter had been the only survivor and it had been the Well that healed him.
Lot’s gaze shifted, to a point some fifteen thousand miles beyond the swollen end of the elevator. There, circling the Well in an independent orbit, was a silver torus the size of a small moon. Lot pointed to it. “That ring is a weapon,” he said. “Will the Silkens use it against us?”
Jupiter scowled, and Lot felt his heart quail. He looked down at his hands, while Jupiter’s soft menace bedded itself in his sensory tears. “The Chenzeme war isn’t over. We all carry the seeds of destruction within us. Boys grasp for weapons as soon as they have learned to make a fist. The war erupts again.”
Lot felt a hot flush burning in his cheeks. It was true. The weapon had beguiled him. He knew it to be a swan burster, an artifact of the ancient war. Swan meant something like darkness. Swan was the direction in which the looming silhouettes of molecular clouds occluded the star fields of the Orion Arm. It was the direction from which the Chenzeme had come. Had it been functional, the ring would have had the capacity to destroy all the life-forms of the Well . . . and deep down Lot had wanted to see that happen, just for a moment, to see what such a thing might be like, how it might feel.
“What is the proper name of this world?” Jupiter asked, still with that edge in his voice.
Lot swallowed hard. He wanted so much to please Jupiter. In the great ship’s records the world was called Deception Well. But Jupiter spoke of it as—
“The Communion,” Lot whispered.
Jupiter nodded, though he did not seem pleased, as if he knew Lot always thought of it by its other name. “Within the Communion all life is sacred,” he said, his voice soft, so Lot held his breath to catch every word. “No species is sacrificed to the greed of another. Within the Communion we will learn the ways of cooperation and peaceful coexistence, just as the Chenzeme were forced to learn. We will forget our yearning for weapons, and for power. We will become part of a greater whole that has endured despite the lingering evil of the ancient war for over thirty million years.”
“We will be safe,” Lot whispered.
Jupiter nodded. “We will be home.”
He woke to a sense of dire fear. It seeped through his sensory tears and into his veins. It forced its way past the membranes of each one of his cells. He cried out softly, and felt a responding ache in his lungs.
Jupiter.
A hand touched his shoulder. “Shh, Lot. It’s all right.”
He turned his head at the familiar voice. “Alta?”
She sat beside him in the half-light. Alta was Captain Antigua’s daughter, and already eleven years old. She was good at commando games. Sometimes she treated Lot like a baby, but she’d partnered with him once, and that time he’d lived.
Now she looked nervous. She kept glancing to the side. “You have to wake up quick, Lot. The medic doesn’t know I took the sedative patch off. She’ll be back soon.”
Lot remembered the medic, but he didn’t remember falling asleep. “I feel scared.” His voice was a hoarse croak. He coughed softly to clear his aching throat.
“I feel scared too. Everybody’s scared. The Silkens want to panic us. They’ve bombed the air with a psychoactive virus. It’ll clear soon. We’ll be all right.” She glanced again to the side. She had black eyes and black, wispy hair that clung to her chin and her throat above her armor. Her skin was very pale.
“You look funny in armor,” Lot said.
She frowned at him. “You look funny asleep, so get up, before the medic slaps another patch on your neck.”
Her anxiety pried at him. Coughing softly, he pushed himself to a sitting position. They were in the cavernous loading bay, though it was almost empty now. Light spilling in from the corridor was augmented by a few headlamps on the floor. Nearby, five women sat cross-legged, infants cradled against the hard breastplates of their armor. One of them rocked gently, her eyes squeezed shut. Lot could hear his heart running fast. “Why are we still here? We’re supposed to follow Jupiter.”
Alta leaned close. Her lips moved beside his ear as she spoke in a barely audible whisper. “Not everyone’s going to make it down.” She sat back a little. “That’s why you have to wake up. We have to go now. Only a few elevator cars are running below the city. The corridor is packed with people waiting for a turn. It can’t last. We have to get to the lower terminus before it’s too late. Don’t be afraid. I’ve waited for you. We can do it together.”
His sensory tears grappled with her scent. A sticky, pervasive fear seeped out of her, but that was undercut by a gleam of confidence, delightful in its unexpected presence. He fed on it, and felt his own mood lighten. “Where’s the medic?”
“In the corridor. She’ll try to stop us—”
A strange sound stirred in the far distance, a muffled roar blended of deep bass notes and high-pitched accents that set Lot’s nerves on edge.
One of the huddled women muttered, “Oh, I hate that sound.” Someone else hushed her. A baby fussed.
Alta surprised Lot with a quick hug. “Don’t worry. That’s nothing. Just the Silkens, trying to scare us.”
Lot thought she might be wrong. “I want to look.” He got to his feet and edged toward the door. Alta followed, her approval sliding coolly over his sensory tears.
In the corridor Lot saw more people—several hundred armored troopers sitting on the floor, their backpacks on. There wasn’t room to walk between them. They were silent, but their anxiety spoke loudly in the absence of words. They stared vacantly: at the walls, at their hands. Lot knew they were listening. He listened too.
The distant roar grew louder, the keening overnotes more strident. Lot could almost believe he heard Jupiter’s name in that wail. Alta nudged his elbow. “If we stay calm, we’ll be all right.”
“Something’s wrong down there.” He could taste it on the air, panic and terror like dark sparks flashing against his cheeks.
“It’s not good,” Alta admitted. “But Lot, you could get through. The troopers will let you pass, and I’ll take care of you. We can get there together—”
A startled voice interrupted her. “Lot, what are you doing awake?”
He looked up, recognizing the medic who’d taken him away from Jupiter. Sweat glistened on her cheeks. He could smell her quiet terror. Still, she tried for a reassuring smile. “Come back inside. You’re not well. You should be sleeping. You need to give your medical Makers time to heal you.”
“I don’t like to sleep.”
“He can’t dream,” Alta said. Lot could tell she didn’t like the medic.
The medic didn’t seem too fond of her, either. “We all have our duties, Alta Antigua, and mine is to keep the two of you safe. Come inside. We’ll be following Jupiter before too long.”
Alta caught Lot’s hand. He looked in her eyes, and knew she wanted to run. But there was no room to run in the packed corridor, and the sense drifting up from below was only growing worse.
“Let’s go inside, Alta. Just for now.”
Her anger cut sharply across his senses. He felt suddenly self-conscious. The troopers were watching them. He felt their tension climbing, a cloud of flammable emotions building over their heads. He didn’t want it to ignite. “Please, Alta.”
Accusation lay in her eyes. But she went with him back into the loading bay, where the medic gave them both a drink and a ration packet before taking up a protective position at the door.
Lot ate standing up, listening to the murmur from the corrid
or. The wailing had faded, but the fear was thicker than ever. Lot could feel it tripping through his heart. He tried hard to ignore it. “I saw your mama,” he told Alta. “She went down ahead of Jupiter.”
“I know. If I were nine years older, I could have been in the advance troops too.”
Lot remembered the flash of the incendiary grenade and felt glad that she was only eleven. But he didn’t say it out loud.
He thought about his own mother. She was a captain too, and had her own troops to look out for. “They’ll wait for us in the Well.”
“Hey.” Alta’s mood suddenly brightened. She stuffed the last of her ration packet into her mouth, then caught Lot’s hand. “Come with me. I want to show you something.”
She wouldn’t say what it was, but her gaiety was infectious, so he ran with her across the loading bay’s open floor, toward a faint glow of white light. As they drew closer, he could see that the light was seeping up from a crescent-shaped pit. It lit the surface of a massive, curving wall on the pit’s opposite side. A narrow channel ran in a vertical path up the wall’s face.
Lot edged closer. A transparent shield surrounded the pit, sealing it off from floor to ceiling. He stood with his hands against the shield, looking down. Alta stood behind him, grinning.
The curved wall descended deep into the pit. Several levels below, a bright light shone against it. Lot could see a scoring, a warping of the wall’s surface there, as if it had been partially melted. Below the damaged section the wall was dark. But he could see it again farther down—much farther down—where it plunged into a glowing green crescent. Except it wasn’t a wall anymore. Distance had resolved it into an infinite silver cylinder.
“The elevator column!”
“You’re right, Lot. They’ll be waiting for us. They’ll be waiting down there.”
He stared into the pit, knowing he was looking at a two-hundred-mile drop into Deception Well.
Into the Communion, he corrected himself, feeling a nervous tingling on the back of his neck, as if Jupiter might overhear him.