“I don’t know,” I answered. “It’s the Eschaton Artifact. Whatever that is!”
A string of nouns.
“Unsettling nouns.” Connla, atypically quiet, cocked his head and looked at me.
Briefly, I described what I had noticed about the anomalies in the dark gravity, starting from quite early on in my development of superpowers: a pattern. A change—an intentional alteration—to the structure of the universe itself that, as far as I could tell (which admittedly was not very far) had no effect at all on how it functioned. But rather, just served to point attention at one not particularly interesting bit of intergalactic space.
A bit of intergalactic space that, once I was moved to check it out, turned out to have a significant gravitational anomaly parked in it. An anomaly, say, something on the order of a very large star. And yet, emitting no light or other radiation that I or Singer could detect at all.
An anomaly that we had been headed right toward, before the Ativahikas pulled us down.
I expected Cheeirilaq to take a few moments to contemplate this when I finished my recital, but it seemed to make up its mind very quickly—and in accordance with mine.
Do you know that means, Friend Haimey?
“No,” I said. Frustration was making me tense and grumpy.
Well, whatever lies at those coordinates, Farweather and by extension Habren want it. Cheeirilaq’s mandibles moved ominously.
I laughed out loud, both at the implicit threat, and at the close parallel between the Goodlaw’s thoughts and my own. Then I said, “I’m pretty much of the opinion that anything those two want, they’re not allowed to have.”
Again we are of like mind, Friend Haimey.
It paused again, settling itself in an elegant folded configuration amid the glossy strands of its web. It had assured me that the web was not sticky—that it had spun dry silk, only, because what good was a bed that wound up stuck full of bits of cat fluff and stray humans and random cookware and possibly entire cats, for that matter—but I didn’t feel like taking any chances with it. My ancient alien tattoo was reminder enough not to go sticking your hand into alien booby traps.
When it spoke again, my senso gave its words the air of grave and certain determination. So we must “get there first,” as I believe the aphorism goes among your species.
“Have you forgotten our stowaway? The one we haven’t managed to ferret out yet? The one who wanted to go to these coordinates in the first place?”
Not at all. But with my presence, and the assistance of six other constables as a prize crew, I believe I will be able to justify the position that being trapped on a ship with that many law enforcement officers constitutes a form of custody.
Singer said, “Unless she escapes and kills us all.”
Well, yes. Cheeirilaq admitted. One must consider all the possibilities.
It’s always hard to tell when aliens think they’re being funny—half the time it turns out they have no concept of humor, and the other half they turn out to have the concept but they’re just not very funny. But I was pretty sure Cheeirilaq was laughing, or doing whatever its species did when amused.
“I see.”
Well, it isn’t as if we’re going to stop looking for her.
I found myself saying the sort of sentence that you can’t even really believe while it’s coming out of your mouth: “I’m still worried about Farweather exploding. I hope she’s staying far away from the machine rooms. And the hull.”
Said Singer, “Connla and I discussed that. And we are pretty sure she’s lying.”
I wasn’t certain I agreed with them, but I also didn’t feel like arguing with a shipmind and my best friend, both of whom were cleverer than I was. The giant bug was cleverer than me, too, though.
Not to be contentious, friend fellow sentients, Cheeirilaq said, but actually Friend Haimey may be correct. We have prior records of Freeporters and Freeport sympathizers engaging in suicide bombings or booby-trapping operatives. Rigging an emissary or agent to explode as a terrorist device is exactly the sort of thing that the Freeporters historically will do to control them. Or simply to assassinate whomever they are negotiating with.
I appreciated that it didn’t look at me while it recited that.
“So much for their ideals of self-determination,” Connla said.
I laughed bitterly. “Total freedom for the ones who can enforce it, until somebody comes along and murders them to take their stuff. Slavery for everybody else. Pretty typical warlord behavior in any society, and one of the reasons we have societies in the first place.”
Connla looked at me. Singer probably would have, if he’d had eyes.
I said, “Well, we’re taking her in the right direction, anyway. But it’s a risk.”
Living is a risk, Friend Haimey. And this one isn’t yours to shoulder, for I am commandeering this ship in the name of Synarche Justice. Let us go hurtling around the galaxy thwarting evil, shall we?
That grin got so wide it hurt. “I thought you’d never ask.”
You wouldn’t think it would be possible that getting Connla and Singer in line on such a harebrained project would be even easier than recruiting Cheeirilaq. But you would be wrong. Connla was immediately ready with absolutely no argument to take off for parts unknown in a starship he’d been on for more than a dia and with a pirate possibly plotting sabotage hidden somewhere in its bowels. Well, at least she was unlikely to detonate if we were headed in the direction she was supposed to be going in. Assuming Habren or the Freeporters really had planted a bomb in her body. Assuming there was any functional difference between Habren and the Freeporters.
What really surprised me was how eager Singer was, too: if anything, more eager than Connla. It was as if being able to follow the rules and go haring off across the galaxy in search of adventure simultaneously released him from some set of internal constraints. All he required to develop a flamboyant sense of adventure was permission. Well, and the opportunity to satisfy a raging curiosity that was probably, oh, 60 percent scientific in its genesis.
After that, it was just a matter of logistics.
We conferred, and decided that the Interceptor SJV I’ll Explain It To You Slowly would return to Synarche space without delay, bearing copies of all our logs, all our senso data, and samples of the Koregoi tech—at least what we could recover from the Prize without damaging it. They would also take back the coordinates of the anomaly, and the information that we were headed there. They’d fly straight and hard, making the run in as short a time as possible.
We too would fly straight and hard. Habren and other coconspirators couldn’t know—we didn’t think—that Farweather was no longer in control of the Prize. But they might have been planning to meet her at the anomaly, or there might be even more complex machinations brewing.
So we would go hell for leather into the dark, seeking we knew not what, and hope we got there faster than the pirates did. A lot of uncertainty, but there always was in interstellar travel. The distances were just so big. Fortunately, it wasn’t going to be such a soul-crushingly long journey this time, since we’d already come the bulk of the distance.