Alice said, “Resume translation, Jeeves.”
“A day thereafter, all Patriarchy ships must be withdrawn at least to a distance of a Hearth light-year. Any Patriarchy vessel found not in compliance will be destroyed. You have been warned.”
“Finagle,” Louis repeated. “It’s only a matter of time until — ”
“I see lens-shaped ships moving. Kzinti.” Something flared in the tactical display, and Alice started. “What was that?”
“A gamma-ray burst, rendered into light waves you can see,” Jeeves said. “I believe a drone intercepted an antimatter warhead.”
Like so many fireflies, lights winked across the display. Louis watched in fascinated horror. In little more than a minute the light show fizzled.
Achilles had his war.
35
Colors surged. Coruscated. Transformed.
So this is death, Nessus decided. He could put no name to any of the individual colors. Death must have come suddenly, for he had no memory of the end.
Already he was bored with the experience. And confused. Had not Concordance scientists determined that Citizens had no undying part?
Indifferent to his skepticism, the colors waxed and waned, blended and separated, ebbed and flowed. Pure color, unhindered of objects or boundaries. More the idea of color than the color of anything. It was like, like …
The nearest he came to a comparison was the amorphous shimmering of a sunlit oil slick. If he were, somehow, within the slick. And if a thousand suns somehow illuminated it.
He shut his eyes and nothing changed. No, one thing changed: he felt the muscles of his eyelids protest. His eyes were closed.
Encouraged, he tried to perceive more.
As from some astronomical distance, he sensed a caress. A gentle kneading. It all suggested a body to be massaged.
The afterlife was improving. His thoughts drifted away.…
“HOW MUCH LONGER?” Nessus sang.
“A few more seconds,” Voice answered imperturbably. “I detect something, but its dimensions and boundaries remain indistinct.”
As the ruby-red light of countless lasers poured into Long Shot, Nessus doubted that the ship had many seconds left.
“Target acquired,” Voice sang. The holo he opened revealed a ghostly sphere. Only the tiny blinking speck below the pale surface revealed the sphere’s rotation. That speck was their objective.
Baedeker did not answer, for he no longer could. Within the confines of his stasis field, time had stopped. If this ploy failed, he would never sing again.
“Is Endurance safe?” Nessus asked. He feared it was not, that Louis and Alice had thrown away their lives. As, perhaps, he and his beloved were about to do.
“Unclear,” Voice sang. “Endurance did withdraw somewhat.”
“And our status?”
“We have drifted into the singularity,” Voice answered.
As per plan — and, according to everything Nessus knew, preparing to commit suicide. But Baedeker had insisted otherwise.
Terrified, Nessus waited.
“Our hull has failed.” By the third chord, Voice’s calm voice was in competition with a wailing alarm. The red light of the lasers dimmed momentarily, scattered by the dust that was the sole remains of their once unyielding hull.
Though cabin pressure had had only seconds to drop, Nessus felt starved for oxygen. “Final course correction,” Nessus ordered.
The artificial gravity still worked, for he did not feel the kick of the ship’s fusion drives. Already the ruby light brightened as hull dust blew away.
“Correction made,” Voice sang.
“The ship” — what remains of it — “is yours,” Nessus sang back. Transferring control to an AI … insanity upon insanity.
“Jumping to hyperspace,” Voice sang.
From within a singularity!
Baedeker had warned what that was like, so Nessus knew what was coming. He commanded himself to keep his eyes averted. But could he bear this Kzinti instrument panel being the last thing he ever saw?
No. His necks tilted up.
The world dissolved into an impossible swirl of colors …
“YOU MUST BE PRECISE,” Baedeker had lectured them repeatedly.
“Yes, Hindmost,” Voice would sing in response.
Precise? Mere precision would kill them! Even downshifted to standard mode, hyperdrive flung Long Shot — now unencumbered of its hull — kilometers every microsecond. They were hurtling toward the scarcely glimpsed, more-or-less cylindrical volume perhaps two kilometers in diameter and a tenth of a kilometer high. While, like some human carnival ride, that target whirled around two independent centers of rotation. And while, ruled by physics Baedeker had just discovered and still did not fully understand, that Nessus would never understand, the normal-space equivalent velocity of hyperdrive changed dynamically as they plunged deeper and deeper into the Fleet’s gravity well.
Only a computer could dare such a feat — and in hyperspace, computers were blind. Dead reckoning, humans called navigation in such situations.
And here he was: dead, on his day of reckoning.
“The ship is yours,” Nessus remembered having sung —
Impossible colors washed over him. He must crumple into a ball, hide beneath his own belly. Maybe he had. Had the stasis field gone on? Time stopped in a stasis field. Sensation and thought stopped.
I think, therefore I am not in a stasis field.
In some unknowable dimension, from an impossible distance, firm lips massaged him. Of course he only imagined the gentle, loving, kneading touch, just as he only imagined voices.
The faint melodies were more pleasant than endlessly reliving the manner of his death.…
“NESSUS. NESSUS. NESSUS,” the muffled voices crooned.
Muffled, why? Because I am rolled so tightly? Nessus wondered. That would make sense only if he had been catatonic, not dead.
He untensed just a bit.
The harmonics changed. “Nessus?”
Was that Baedeker? Nessus relaxed a trace more.
“Nessus!” the voices sang. They were Baedeker!
Somehow, they had survived. Nessus pushed away the awful memories enough to sleep.
NESSUS DRIFTED AWAKE, nestled among mounds of soft cushions. A clear blue sky hung overhead. A single large sun warmed him. Meadowplant carpeted gently rolling terrain that stretched as far as the eye could see. To his left, halfway to the horizon, a herd of Companions calmly grazed. In twos and threes, Citizens strolled about. At a respectful distance: Nike, his spotless white hide distinctive, stood deep in oratorio with four aides. Nessus even saw children gamboling!
He struggled to his feet. “I had not truly believed,” he trilled to himself.
Around a nearby hummock cantered — Baedeker. His beloved looked well. He had brushed and combed his mane, cleaned his hide, found a utilitarian pocketed belt.
“Welcome to the Hindmost’s Refuge,” Baedeker sang, extending both necks. They stood close for a long while, necks entwined. “I am relieved beyond melody to have you back.”
With a sigh, Nessus released Baedeker to look around. Examined more closely, the “sky” was an illuminated ceiling and the “sun” a radiant circle upon it. The ground extended only to the appearance of a horizon, with holographic details rendered indistinct as though with distance along the arc of wall.