I found her cushioned within one of the roomier passenger cells near my own. The air in here was chilly, to aid in slowing down the metabolism of human travelers. Valeska looked quite pale, slung in a sort of hammock that in turn was held between two enormous cushions like a pair of plush hands. I bent over her and placed my finger against her throat, seeking a pulse. I found none. Then I held my hand above her mouth, watching to see if her breath would cloud the metaclass="underline" nothing. Were it not for the monitor beside her that showed a thread of silver, indicating her heartbeat, one would think her dead.
On the wall across from her one of the vessel’s robotic crew was plugged in, and observed me with three unblinking red eyes.
“We recommend that all passengers remain in their cells until we arrive at our destination,” it announced in a breathy voice.
“I am not a human passenger,” I said shortly. The construct’s eyes swiveled as I crossed the room to the door.
“We recommend this for all passengers,” it went on. “This is for your safety as well as ours.” Ignoring it, I let the door slam behind me.
I found Nefertity in a neighboring cell, also cushioned as though she were a human traveler. Her light had dimmed to a very dull pewter gleam, and her eyes were closed. It was perverse, but in that state of hiatus she looked more human than she ever had before. She might have been a woman sculpted of ice, and suddenly I felt a pang, one of those rare tugs of emotion that reminded me that I now had more in common with this beautiful machine than with the Aviator dreaming in the next room. I turned and left, fleeing that notion as much as the sight of the nemosyne, so unnervingly vulnerable where she slept.
The crew roster for the elÿon had listed only a handful of constructs to support its solitary adjutant. Since the Izanagi had been a freighter, there was little need for human staff. I wandered alone through its spiraling corridors, all of them twisting inward to where Zeloótes Franschii was suspended within his web of dreams and ganglia.
The polymer walls had a roseate cast that changed color, deepening to red and a deep lavender. While the walls appeared amorphous and soft to the touch, they were in fact quite strong. I could see through them to where nucleic fluids pulsed within transparent conduits, and the elÿon’s immense ganglia floated past, like blood-colored stars. All of this and more—storage bladders, pressure chambers, hivelike cells filled with neurotransmitting fluid—was contained behind those walls. The habitable space within an elÿon is actually quite smalclass="underline" a series of tiny chambers branching off from the corridors coiling into the heart of the ship. From inside, it resembles a nautilus more than anything else. I was always conscious of strolling warily within a thing that has sentience, even if it is not quite alive.
I walked for a long time, never really going anywhere. Because of the Izanagi’s utilitarian purpose, there were few windows, no signs, no pictures, no holofiles; nothing to relieve the sense of wandering within a huge, rosy ventricle, like the cavity of a human heart. There was, however, a viewing deck, and it was to this I was headed. On all my previous ventures aboard the elÿon, I had been undisturbed by the dreamy light, the thick air scented faintly of saline and ozone. As a rasa, I assumed I would be truly impervious to the subtle lunacies that could stalk you through those blood-warm tunnels.
Instead I felt a growing unease. I had checked a map posted outside Nefertity’s cell to determine the location of the viewing deck. Surely I should have arrived there by now; but the corridor kept winding away in front of me, unbroken by doors or windows, an endless labyrinth pulsing softly with every shade of red. The clicking of my metal feet upon the floor grew louder, and with it another sound, like blood thumping at my temples. Only, of course, I am a bloodless construct, but still that noise hammered at me. It seemed to come from everywhere, and finally I thought it must be the pulse of the elÿon itself that I heard, the rhythmic mindless beating of a thing that has no heart but is itself a viscus, floating through the firmament. I began to hurry, until I raced down those corridors, the echo of my footsteps nearly drowning out that other infernal noise.
Finally the hallway started to widen. The roseate glow grew darker, tinged with blue like a bruise. I had reached the viewing deck.
Before me opened an immense plaza, set with rows of columns of softly glowing steel and jet. To either side a huge window curved upward, to form a domed peak that seemed to open onto the heavens. All was cloaked in a deep, soft, embracing darkness. From ventricles in the floor and walls, tiny jets of air hissed. Probably the ventricles released some mild sedatives or euphoric incense, Pangloss or Ecstasy; but of course I smelled nothing. Overall it was a soothing place, and I walked to the window. If I had still been a man, I would have laughed with relief, to see framed there familiar stars.
They hung unmoving in the darkness, brighter even than I remembered them. Old stars with new names: Cadillac, Wilson, Miguel Street, Goring. But most of that curved glass was filled with the Earth. My world, the old world where I had lived and died.
From here it did not seem so diseased a place. You could not see the continents that had been glazed to deserts of glass and sand, or those parts of the oceans where the water had turned red with decaying diatoms and plankton. You could not tell where the Emirate had set the Arabian Ocean aflame, or where mutagens had turned the great northern steppes between Calgary and Monis into a wilderness of twisted tick-pines, haunted by the howls of aardmen and dire wolves. From here the Earth seemed as it ever had, a calm marbled eye gazing into the firmament. From here it was beautiful.
I thought of the energumens, looking upon a place they had never seen, except in the implanted memories of a fifteen-year-old girl. Could they really dream of conquest, of launching war upon their masters? And would the Earth welcome them, if they returned to claim it?
I don’t know how long I stood there, staring back into that blue-green orb. Hours, certainly; though it could have been days. I had no need for food or water, and there was nothing within the Izanagi to mark the passage from day to night. But finally I did draw away from that window—mindful, perhaps, of Commander Wyeth and his enraptured crew.
I turned and walked across the plaza. Overhead, stars glittered within the domed ceiling, so brightly that their scattered reflections shone in the polished floor at my feet. It was cool here—I could see condensation on my torso’s outer casing. The light was dim and diffuse, spilling from slender indigo torchieres set between the steel and black columns. Quite a grand viewing deck, considering the Izanagi’s freighter status. But it had been a Nipponian vessel, and they set great store by beauty and ritual. I had attended formal moon-viewings on other elÿon in the Nipponian fleet, and sat with their Emperor as he composed delicate verse to honor an eclipse. It seemed a noble thing to me, to think they had provided such a fine deck for those few men and women who might ever have cause to use it. I let my hand linger upon the smooth brass curves of a torchiere, then took the last few steps to the far side of the chamber.
With no home planet to fill it, this window seemed more immense than its twin. Distant stars bloomed and reeled, distorted by the energy fields surrounding the elÿon. The constellations looked different here, and it took me a moment to realize why.
The HORUS colonies, of course. The stations were gone that would have filled the gaps in Osaka-O and The Circuit of Ten. The stray stars that were actually MacArthur, Sternville, Campbelclass="underline" gone, all gone. There should have been at least ten of the colonies visible from here, if you knew where to look. I spotted only one, a flicker of blue where immense solex panels candled into flame as it tilted toward the sun. That would be Advhi Sar. I tried to remember what the adjutant had told me about that station—had it fallen to the energumens as well? And there was another celestial orb that I did not recognize, a rather hazy, whitish mass, so pale and amorphous, it might almost have been a dimple or blemish upon the window. Surely it should not have been there? But my thoughts were confused. Old dreams and memories had been tossed together by the intrusion of the adjutant overmind; I could remember nothing clearly.