“Did you know the array has failed?” the administrator squeaked. “That’s the city’s plate had already shifted five meters?”
Miocene considered, then said, “I know. Yes.”
“Do I put key staff’ on the cars? To save them?”
The woman meant herself, naturally. And with a quiet indifference, Miocene told her, “Yes. Of course. But remain here until the others can assemble. Understood?”
“Yes, madam. Yes—”
They boarded the largest car. Washen sat between Miocene and Locke, and she took a half-breath before the car jumped skyward, the air squeezed out of her. Then the entire bridge jerked sideways. The car’s walls scraped against the tube. Someone gave a shout, and Washen realized that it was her own voice. She had cried out. And Locke reached up against the acceleration, finding the strength to lay a massive hand on her hand, a sad sturdy voice telling her, “Even if we die, we might win.”
“Not good enough,” she replied. “Not nearly’ Again, the bridge bucked and rolled around them. Miocene made a sound, a low voice whispering to someone.
Washen let her head fall sideways. But no, the old bitch wasn’t speaking to her. She was muttering to someone only she could see, her face simple and composed, and in a strange, chilling way, happy.
Washen started to ask, “What are you doing-?”
But then they were inside the buttresses, and insane, and the car was yanked and kicked, and an unreal screech dwarfed every holler and curse, the tube surrounding the car twisted by the shaking, and slowing, nearly stopping entirely before some auxiliary system found the muscle to carry them to the top.
Doors opened with a soft, anticlimactic hiss.
Captains vomited bile and unfastened themselves, then vomited bile-scented air when they stood. Then everyone staggered out onto the open diamond platform, into the dim gray light of the nearly deserted base camp.
Two men stood waiting. Virtue wept without dignity or the smallest composure. Till, in perfect contrast, was staring at Miocene, his cold expression growing colder as he quietly remarked, “You don’t have any appreciation for what you have done, Mother. None.”
“What I’m doing,” Miocene replied, “is saving the ship. My ship. That’s all that matters here. My ship!”
The boyish face stiffened.
Then, softened.
The bridge screamed beneath them, and it pulled, and the platform plunged a full meter, then caught itself.
Washen looked down. What resembled rain clouds at first glance were billowing columns of smoke, countless fires started by the brutal, endless quakes that were tearing through the thick crust, shattering the iron plate along every weakness.
She looked up again.
A comforting hand fell on Virtue’s shoulder, and Till said, “Into the car.” He gave a soft shove, then added, “If you wish, Locke. You can return with us, too.”
Locke straightened his back. He didn’t reply.
“Then die here,” was Till’s pronouncement. “With the rest—”
Miocene lifted a hand.
Stuck into that swollen mass of flesh and nexus and bone was a small laser. It looked insubstantial. Worse than useless. Almost pathetic. But Washen knew that it could incinerate a man with a shaped flash, leaving nothing. And she knew from Miocene’s face that she meant to kill her son.
The shot was never fired.
Another bolt of light came from above, evaporating her weapon and her hand. But instead of shock or pain, Miocene seemed filled with a wild, indestructible power. Bending forward, she screamed and drove with her legs, with her new bulk, slamming into her son exactly as the bridge twisted again, a seering of purple light obliterating her trailing leg.
Washen dropped down.
Then looked overhead.
She saw the Wayward soldier. Golden, was it? She saw him standing on a high catwalk, aiming the big laser with a professional calm. Quick bursts, too fast to count. Then she looked back at Miocene, watching as the woman wailed, vanishing in whiffs of boiled blood and white-hot ash.
Dying, she clung to her son.
Near death, she still managed to mutter, “Till,” with a desperate voice. Soft, in the end. Doomed, and sorry. “Please,” her boiling mouth whispered. And then, nothing.
A last surgical burst of light obliterated the head and the Masters mirrored cap, and late by a half-moment, her son turned to see the car and its sole occupant drop away without the slightest warning.
The bridge’s machinery was failing. A safe-mode took Virtue racing downward, trying to save the precious car.
Miocene had delayed her son just enough.
Washen stared at Till, watching an impossible thought play itself out on that appealing face. How could this happen? What great purpose did it serve? In a voice meant for someone else, Till asked, “Now what do I do?”
If there was a reply, Washen didn’t hear it.
But something must have been heard, or at least thought. Because without hesitation, Till flung himself into the open door, and a moment later, the door closed and the bridge jerked sideways one last time, it and the Spine shattering just beneath the camp’s diamond blister, plunging sideways toward the burning face of Marrow.
Eventually the liquid hydrogen would fall.
Captain spoke about making plans. About taking cover, or perhaps finding a car that might survive the storm. But Washen didn’t take part in the plan-making, occupying herself by sitting with her legs crossed, watching nothing but the slow patient turning of her clock’s little hands.
Asaleen thought she was crazy.
Again, to himself, Locke spoke comfortably about death’s embrace.
Promise, then Dream, tried to thank Washen for pulling them off Marrow. “We never thought we’d be anywhere else again,” they confessed. “And you did your best.”
Even Golden joined them, offering his weapon in surrender, then spending the next few minutes watching Marrow boil and explode.
Finally, Washen closed her clock.
And with a nonchalant importance, she rose.
Everyone watched as she stepped out into the open and looked up. But wasn’t it too soon for the cold rain? Then they saw her waving at something overhead, and every captain and both of the Waywards looked up together, watching in stunned silence while a fleet of whale-shaped vessels began to slow, making ready for a hard landing.
Pamir was first to step out.
Perri and ten armed harum-scarums followed.
Aasleen immediately recognized Pamirs craggy face, and she laughed, and she said, “What is this? Don’t you know there’s a flood coming?”
Pamir lifted his eyebrows, grinning. Then he took his first good look at Marrow.
“Oh, I turned off that flood.” he remarked in a casual voice. “Long ago,” he said. “A lake of hydrogen inside that big long tube of vacuum… well, it evaporates as it falls. Believe me, we swam through what’s left of it, and we probably won’t get two drops here.”
Sounding insulted, Dream asked Washen, “What about your threat? About sending down that killing flood?”
“I’m not that cruel,” Washen replied. “I don’t murder helpless worlds.”
Pamir shook his head and threw a long arm around Washen, pulling her close. “You wouldn’t have?”
“I just like to tease worlds now and again,” she added, smiling and weeping in the same instant, thinking that never in her long, strange life had she ever felt so tired…
THE BUILDERS
Each of my engines screams and spits fire, and those titanic, withering energies translate into the gentlest of nudges. I hear nothing but a quiet coaxing voice trying to whisper me nearer to that swollen, dying sun. And I obey the voice. I obey even when I foresee a collision with its tenuous atmosphere. Even as I feel pricks and little deaths within my body, I obey the simple laws of motion and force and inertia, dipping nearer to the sun, and nearer… a bracing, wondrous fear taking hold of me…