Because it was easier to lead than follow, Gavin preceded his necromancer up the spiral stair to Rule, bobbing between heavy wingbeats as he rose through a central shaft twined past bubbling algae tanks. He paused at the landing, tail twisted through the balustrade, and waited for Mallory to catch up.
The space at the top of the stair was vaulted and oddly proportioned, higher at one end than the other. Waste space, moist and dark, with walls composed of long bales of compost held in place by netting. Smelling of clean, sour earth, edible mushrooms festooned every bale in fans, spikes, and streamers. Some were broken, their thick stems weeping fluid, but enough remained intact to give Gavin hope for the survival of anyone left within Rule.
Engine lay at the outskirts of the world, isolated for the protection of everything that would have been threatened by its reactors. Rule lay cupped inside the arch of the wheel, protected by the world's many struts and habitats and active defenses, armored like a heart inside a rib cage. The only place more sheltered was the bridge, at its hub.
Safety lamps still burned dim behind translucent panels by the door, illuminating the landing. The hallway--or mushroom farm--tapered down to the far end. A great double portal loomed in the shadows, lit only by bioluminescence and the filtered light from outside. It was the external aperture of the air lock into Rule.
They had climbed a long tunnel of a spoke to end here, but despite the stairs Mallory's breath still came easy when at last they were side by side at the top. Gavin stretched his neck to slide his beak along the satiny skin of a lightly flushed cheek. Mallory responded by gliding fingers under Gavin's blue-tinged crest, rubbing until the basilisk twisted this way and that to maneuver the scratch to all the itchy spots. Gavin replied with grooming in kind, pulling mahogany ringlets taut and letting them slide through his beak like disordered feathers.
Mallory cast about, frowning. "There should be a guard upon the stair. Why have we not been stopped? Or if they died at their posts"--as they should have, Mallory's tone implied--"where are the bodies? I'd like the answer."
"Well, you know. I'd also like a shuttlecraft," Gavin answered. "A rasher of bacon, and a mined-stone brooch. But you don't hear me complaining."
Mallory offered him a mocking head-tilt. "What's a rasher of bacon?"
"A strip of cured animal flesh," he said. "Meant for eating."
The necromancer made a face like a nauseated cat. "What would you want that for?"
Gavin could not answer. Instead, he turned to groom the feathers on one wing into alignment. While so diverted, he asked, "What shall we examine first?"
"Is there no one to greet us?" Mallory craned stagily from left to right. "Can it be that the Chief Engineer is correct and all Rule has perished? Familiar spirit, what do you sense in this place?"
Gavin fanned his wings to stir the air, hoping there might be lingering scent in some still corner. But the breeze he generated brought only cold traces. "Not a damned thing," he said. "Shall we travel into Rule?"
Flourishing, Mallory bowed and swept Gavin forward with a gesture. He arrowed past, tail and neck extended, and circled twice before the great doors into Rule, buying time until his patron should catch up.
Radio echoes told him the shape of the space, and that the portal before them was shielded. He could have cut his way in, but there was no benefit in destroying the air lock.
Mallory had ways of opening doors when it was needful.
The necromancer drew up and consulted the controls beside the gate. "Thumb lock, code lock, DNA lock. Ancient tech."
"From the Builders," Gavin replied, circling again.
"Light," Mallory said, without looking up from intent consideration of the lock. Gavin dropped to a forward-bent shoulder. "Ooof," Mallory said. "That's not light."
"This is." A moment's intention, and a fine azure glow, crisp and bright, radiated from Gavin's breast and wings. He focused the light on the lock, so Mallory could lean back a little. Exalt eyes were fine in dimness, but detail work in the dark could challenge even a Conn. "How will you win past?"
"Dead men's memories," Mallory answered, and pressed a thumb to the lock. What would happen now, Gavin knew, was that thumb skin would shape itself into the patterns of some long-dead Conn's print. Mallory's symbiont would manufacture a synthetic approximation of the relevant sections of the dead man's DNA. And finally, the necromancer would reach into the racked archives of untold partial memories and draw up the appropriate response to the blinking challenge lights.
A moment, no more, and the massive, well-maintained doors glided whispering into their housings. Gavin fanned his wings for balance as Mallory stepped forward, saying absently, "Watch the claws."
"I never crush anything I don't mean to."
A pass of the necromancer's hand, and the outer air lock closed behind them. There was no second lock inside. All Mallory needed to do was cycle the lock--a manual command again, crude and robust--wait for the hiss of exchanged air as the inner doors slid wide, and step forward into Rule.
Here, the air was full of information. Without the light of the waystars, the cavernous lobby blazed with full-spectrum lamps that illuminated the repair of ravaged fruit trees. As they paused inside the air lock to orient themselves, a shattered olive humped itself and heaved, straightening a trunk that had twisted when it fell. With a vast creaking and splintering, the rustling of unfolding branches, its colony drew it upright. Gavin thought perhaps the world itself colluded in the righting, because the limbs sprung and swayed as if gravity luffed for a moment in the vicinity, and when they sagged again a patter of unripe olives struck the earthen deck.
"The lights are wasteful," Mallory said. "We'll need to check the resource load and what our intake is. And perhaps advise the Captain to dial them back."
"The trees need them," Gavin said.
"The trees need not to freeze on the Enemy's breath," Mallory rebutted. "We haven't a waystar to mine for energy now. Consumables are consumed." A pause, a listening flick of eyes, and Mallory continued. "The Chief Engineer has heard from Prince Benedick. He no longer believes the fugitive is coming here."
"A pity," Gavin said, "when we invested so much in arranging a reception."
Mallory's shoulder moved under his talons, rise and fall of a shrug. "At least we heard before we fetched the party favors."
"And the snacks."
Somewhere a bird sang, and Gavin detected the heavy aroma of blossoming jasmine. He could smell people, too, and death, but those scents were cold. Arianrhod and Ariane's engineered disease had done its work; there was no sign of living habitation--or even the bodies of the dead.
Mallory walked forward through air scented with the musky green sap of olive trees. "What good is an apocalypse without snacks?"
Gavin resettled his wings. "Does that mean Tristen won't be meeting us here after all?"
"No. Caitlin says his ETA is only a few hours now. It will be easier to connect here."
Gavin bobbed his head at the end of his neck like the ball at the end of a flexible rod. "We'll have to work fast, then."
The necromancer only kicked a clod of earth, gesturing at the empty orchards. "I could have saved these people."
"As you did Perceval and Rien. If you had been here, the flu might not have killed so many."
An angry nod moved curls against Gavin's wing. He cupped it wide, as if to shelter Mallory's head, angry in his own turn that all he had to offer was a useless protective gesture. "They were Conns. Would they have accepted your help?"
"It's not the Conns. It's the servants." A declaration Gavin met with silence, until Mallory added, "We should examine the house before deciding everyone is dead." That last was said desultorily, as if Mallory assumed already what they would find.