The ghost of Samael spread his arms wide like a conjuror and made a bow complete with the scrape of one foot across the earth. Beetle shells and ant thoraxes glimmered, tumbling, in his boot. He said, "I am the Angel of Life Support, First Mate. I serve the world and the life within it--above anything."
"And how did you survive?"
"I found electrically sealed pockets of the world." Samael's shrugs had grown no less expressive for all their transparency. "And I hid in them like a snail, First Mate. The kitchens here had reinforced gravity, for safety's sake, and with those resources I helped preserve Head and hir people. And before you grow angry with your allies, there's something you should consider. What I can do, so can another angel."
The chill that ran the length of Tristen's spine would have made him shudder had his concentration not been so absolute. Voice level, giving away nothing except what the very question itself offered, he said, "Dust?"
Samael folded his arms. "Asrafil."
Not the worst news, then. But bad enough. Both angels had opposed each other, and both had tried to choose the next Captain. While Dust had allied himself with Perceval, going so far as to kidnap her, Asrafil had been the power behind Arianrhod and Ariane. Tristen would take Asrafil over Dust only because Dust had been the cleverer and more political of the two, being as he was wrought of the remains of the world's library. Asrafil, the Angel of Battle Systems, however, was quite challenge enough. All assuming that Samael could be trusted--but if there were one thing to be said for angels, it was that they did not generally lie. Tristen bit his lower lip and turned to Head. There was something he needed done to make this place his. And it should be done immediately, with as little ceremony as possible, as if all it were was the setting right of something misplaced.
"Head?" He knew he was working up to it by stages.
Head colluded, because that was what friends do. "Yes, Prince Tristen?"
"Before anything else, please turn my sisters' portraits to the light."
"Yes, Prince Tristen."
He didn't need to move his head to see that sie was smiling. He heard hir sharp intake of breath. "And Ariane?"
"Is there crepe to be found?"
"There is."
He nodded. "Then we shall do her memory all honor. Meanwhile, it appears yon angel has made some work for my undertaking."
"I am sorry, First Mate," Samael said. "Please consider my powers--diminished though they temporarily are--to be yours to direct, and my services under your command."
"I will," Tristen said. "You understand that I am going to report this first to Perceval."
"And her angel," Mallory added, with widened eyes.
Samael shrugged. "The one thing amounts to the other, necromancer."
8
everything their father had told them
As for the instance of gaining the secure and perpetual felicity of heaven by any way, it is frivolous; there being but one way imaginable, and that is not breaking, but keeping of covenant.
Whatever Perceval had expected of her Captaincy, it was not quite so much schoolwork. But there were schematics to learn, diagrams, navigational mechanics, logistics of supply. And while Nova could spoon-feed it to her, being told something was not the same as understanding it.
So Perceval sat in the Captain's chair, eyes closed, hands resting open on the arms, and studied. With Nova's help, the experience of her indwellers, and the help of her colony, she came quickly to understand the numbers. The numbers did not comfort her.
"Engineering," she said--or thought of saying; when it came to Nova, what Perceval said or thought were much the same.
"The First Mate has arrived safely in Rule," Nova said. "I'm putting you through to the Chief Engineer now."
Perceval opened her eyes. Her mother's image resolved between her and Nova. The angel had caught Caitlin in the act of glancing up from her work, pushing her auburn hair left-handed from her eyes. Her lips were pale with exhaustion and her skin wan and stretched--her colony no doubt still overstressed with repairing acceleration and radiation damage, and she appeared not to have been eating enough.
She still managed a smile for Perceval. Exactly the sort of smile that made Perceval feel bigger and stronger than she knew herself to be, and maybe capable of doing what had to be done. "Hi, Mom," she said. "We have a problem."
"We have more than one," Caitlin answered. "Start with the most serious, and I'll see what I can do about it."
She didn't mention Rien, and Perceval, grateful, did not either. "Resources," she said. "Shortages are critical throughout the world. The Enemy has claimed--"
Caitlin nodded. "I know. There are options. We can recoup significant resources from the nebula. Some of that material must be used for fuel, but the rest--well, it will all have to be scrubbed. But we have radiovores. We'll manage. Unfortunately, it all means time."
"Repairs to the world?"
"Under way." Caitlin spread her hands, fingers expanding as if she meant to brush her way through cobwebs. "The more pressing problem is that we can't afford to wake up everyone in the tanks, and we can't afford to maintain them there until we've reached cruising speed and the engines are running at capacity. For the time being, they're wasted mass."
Caitlin wouldn't make the suggestion. And if she did, Perceval wouldn't accept it. But they both knew the option existed.
"We need to downsize," Perceval said, hoping it was her own will talking and not the subtle insinuations of an Ariane or an Alasdair. "And reallocate those resources. Dammit, a convenient star system would solve everything. We'd have sunlight, possibly planetesimals for mining."
"Five hundred years ago," Caitlin said, "somebody in exactly your position said exactly the same thing."
Perceval winced. "Touche."
Think, she told herself, and rubbed her hands together to remind herself of her body. It was too easy to get lost in Nova's proprioception of the world, to abandon herself to the sense that the world's great spans and knobs and tendrils, its interconnections and ghosts and memories, were her own body. Which made the creeping blankness she felt through sectors of it all the more disconcerting, and she had to remind her body that it was not her own fingers and toes going numb. "How much are we actually gaining by keeping them tanked?"
"If we cut life support to nonessential sectors, we gain back 90 percent of the world's resources. Everything that's not going to the engines, the tanks, and life support for Rule, the bridge, and Engineering."
"Except those nonessential sectors are our biodiversity," Perceval said. "Five hundred years of accelerated evolution. There is no telling what might be down there. Shipfish. Sentients. Weirder things. They should be preserved if possible."
"Cryo will hold," Caitlin pointed out. "We're already accelerating out of the shock wave. Environmental cooling will be rapid as we leave it behind, which leaves us material available for cloning."
"Tell me you're playing devil's advocate," Perceval said, "and not presenting me with your inescapable conclusion of what we must do to survive, Chief Engineer."
Caitlin half smiled. Perceval wondered if it was because she had addressed her as her Captain, not her daughter. She said, "The Builders would have cannibalized."
"We're not the Builders."
Caitlin scratched her chin. "We could broaden the ramscoop. It would cost energy."
"And return more?"
"It's a significant initial investment." The Chief Engineer slid hands through her holographic controls, shaping something Perceval couldn't see. "It's a risk. But if we can maintain the magnetic bottle, the return on the investment should be worth it. It might give us the resources to go see what's in those blacked-out spots."