Especially with Dale Scott still running his mouth. “Does this make sense to you?” Dale said. “To any of us?”
Zack was clearly tired now, almost dopey, but still about to lose patience. “What’s your problem?”
“First Dash says its big enemy is its connate”—he made a big show of using the term—“but now it’s this other enemy the Architects are at war with.” He laughed. “This reminds me of Earth! Interstellar civilization my ass. They’re like…fucking Somalia.”
“Why would you expect it to be any better than Earth?” Makali said.
“Didn’t they have to learn to get along in order to travel between the stars?”
“That’s always been an entirely human assumption,” Makali said. “Based on hope and zero information. Maybe they needed fear or war to make them travel between the stars.”
Zack laughed. “Worked for getting us to the Moon. No Sputnik, no fear of Soviet domination, no Apollo.”
“You mean, none of us would be here,” Dale said.
“Right.”
“If I ever get a time machine, I’m going to look up the guy who launched Sputnik and strangle him—”
“All right, everybody,” Makali said. “We have larger problems, such as this: Are we going to help Dash or not?”
“I don’t know why we should,” Dale said.
Zack looked at Dale. “This surprises me as much as it does you, but me, neither.”
It actually surprised Makali more than Dale. “I thought you were a huge proponent of brotherhood of intelligence and all that.”
Zack looked at the ground, but shook his head. “In theory, sure. But I’m not sure I trust these beings. And every moment we spend here, with Dash, is a diversion from the mission.”
“And what is that mission?” Makali said.
“Finding a way off the NEO.”
“Do you really think that’s possible? Not as a vague way of motivating us, but as a concrete goal. Because I don’t see how—”
“I’m convinced that if Keanu had the means to grab a couple of hundred humans and bring them here, it has the means to send them back. Yes. Though, realistically, the first goal should be getting control of the whole operation. Dash ought to be able to help with that….”
“But Dash is a prisoner. And his people aren’t flying this thing now. Why would we expect that to change because of us?”
“Hey, we’re the human race,” Dale said, sarcastically. “We rule, don’t we? We kick alien butt. We’re the meanest, smartest—”
Valya slapped Dale on the arm to shut him up. “Enough!” She turned to Zack and Makali, saying, quietly, “I think we should join forces with Dash.”
“In spite of my objections?” Zack said.
“Because our other options are poor,” she said, “and because I believe Dash can help us return to Earth.”
“He doesn’t have a vesicle,” Makali said.
“But he does,” Valya said, looking surprised.
“What do you mean?” Zack said. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the pool. “The Sentry prisoner has a vesicle?”
“Of course not,” she said. “But when we learned how we’d arrived here, he told me all about them: the way they’re ‘grown,’ the fact that there are usually three of them in storage…he said something about the Builders doing everything in threes, but I’m not sure that wasn’t a joke—”
Zack was on his feet. Makali said, “What are you planning to do? Dive in there and wake it?”
Zack hesitated, then grinned. “That would be pretty pointless, wouldn’t it?”
Dale spoke up again. “Yeah, some people really hate being awakened.”
Zack slumped with the rest of them. “So we wait,” he said, them smiled grimly. “Conserve oxygen, okay?”
ZHAO
“You’re quiet,” Rachel Stewart said.
Pav, Rachel, and Zhao had been following the wandering, uncertain lead of the being that called itself Yvonne Hall through a maze of structures. They were too blank, too solid, too lacking in architectural style to be called buildings. They were just big blocks towering over them.
“Is anyone talking?”
“No, but you’re the closest thing to a functioning adult we have…I was hoping.”
It had taken him several hours to learn to properly hear this girl’s voice. She continued to say things that were frivolous and inappropriate…until you realized that her tone was actually quite serious, and that she might even be voicing what everyone was thinking—and afraid to say aloud. He couldn’t decide whether it was immaturity or a supreme wisdom beyond her years.
Or, possibly, the voice of her father. Zhao’s research had suggested that Rachel was, in manner at least, clearly Zack Stewart’s child.
“Try her again.” He nodded at Yvonne’s back.
“No, thanks,” Rachel said. “I figure she’ll tell us what we need to know, when we need to know it.”
The resurrected woman—“Revenant,” as Rachel and Pav called her—had simply given them orders and marched off. She was a bit unsteady on her feet, and every few dozen meters she was forced to stop, retching or just trying to steady herself.
The young man, Pav, had tried to help. “Do you want to rest?” he’d asked her, only to be waved away. “We’ve given you the only water we’ve got—”
“You have to follow me,” Yvonne had said, her voice as raw as that of a lifelong smoker.
“Where?” Pav had demanded.
“Where they tell me!” she said, an answer that was incomplete, thus unhelpful, and a little disturbing, especially when she said, “It’s like I’ve got a GPS in my head. Someone is telling me where to go, and it kind of hurts when we stop or go off course.”
That had been fifteen minutes ago. Zhao hoped that wherever they were headed, they were closer. He was about to collapse from lack of water, lack of food, and exhaustion.
As he trudged next to Rachel, he saw Pav stopping ahead of them. He turned carefully to his left, bent as if trying to see or hear.
Then quickly back to Rachel and Zhao. “Did you hear that?”
Zhao had heard nothing.
Then it didn’t matter, because the missing dog emerged from an “alley” and launched itself at Pav. “Cowboy!” Rachel shouted, running to join the scrum.
Yvonne Hall stopped and turned back. For a moment, Zhao feared some kind of biblical rebuke. But she blinked, shook her head, and, sounding for the first time like a normal human being, said, “Is that a dog?”
The dog seemed to think Yvonne was perfectly normal, because it trotted over to her. She bent for the ritual licking and patting as Rachel explained, “He’s a Revenant, like you.”
Which left Yvonne almost smiling. “Whatever you say.”
Zhao was emboldened, gesturing to the habitat around them. “Do you know what this place is?”
Yvonne raised her head from the canine interaction and looked at him for a long moment, the way one responded to a query about directions from a stranger on a street.
“They tell me it’s for ‘processing,’” she said.
“I wish you’d tell us who ‘they’ are,” Pav said.
“Whenever I…put that question in my own head, what comes up is ‘Builders.’”
“Architects?” Rachel said.
“Yeah.”
“My dad said that’s what happened when my mom came back. She was kind of channeling the Architects.”
“Let me tell you,” Yvonne said, “it isn’t easy. It’s like having…five earbuds and a bunch of direct neural inputs all going at the same time. It’s making me sick, for one thing, and I’m not really getting what I want to know, not in any coherent fashion.”
She blinked again, but this time there were tears. “I was really dead.”
Rachel looked to Zhao, as if to say, What do I tell her?