Washen was sitting in the front. She noticed that Miocene wasn’t paying attention, which was why she took it upon herself to ask, “What do you mean?”
“Madam,” he replied, “I mean what I say.”
Sarcasm caused the Submaster to lift her head. “But I didn’t hear you,” she growled. “And this time, darling, talk slowly and look only at me.”
The young engineer blinked and licked his lips, then explained. “Even the best hyperfiber ages, if stressed. As I’m sure you know, madam. By examining cross sections of the vault’s shell, at the microscopic level, we can read a crude history not only of the vault, but of the world that embraced it, too.”
“Marrow,” the old woman growled.
Again, he blinked. Then with a graceless cleverness, added, “Presumably, madam. Presumably”
With her quietest voice, Miocene advised, “Maybe you should proceed.”
Pepsin nodded, obeyed.
“The hyperfiber has spent the last several billion years bobbing inside liquid iron. As expected. But if there were no breaks in that routine, the degradation should be worse than observed. Fifty to ninety percent worse, according to my honorable grandmother.” A glance at Aasleen; no more. “Hyperfiber has a great capacity to heal itself. But the bonds don’t knit themselves quite as effectively at several thousand degrees Kelvin. No, what’s best is chilly weather under a thousand degrees. Deep space is the very best. Otherwise, the hyperfiber scars, and it scars in distinct patterns. And what I see in the microscope, and what everyone else here sees… measuring the scan, we have evidence of approximately five to fifteen hundred thousand distinct periods of high heat. Presumably, each of those periods marks time spent in Marrows deep interior—”
“Five to fifteen billion years,” Miocene interrupted. “Is that your estimate?”
“Basically. Yes, madam.” He licked his lips, and blinked, and conjured up a wide contented smile. “Of course we can’t assume that the vault was always thrown to the surface, and there surely have been periods when it was submerged several times during a single cycle.” Again, the lips needed moisture. “In different words, this is a lousy clock. But being a clock whose hands have moved, it points to what we have always assumed. For my entire little life, and this last brief chapter in your great lives…”
“Just say it,” Aasleen snarled at her grandson.
“Marrow expands and contracts. Again, we have evidence.” He grinned at everyone, at no one. Then he added, “Why this should be, I don’t know. And how it does this trick is difficult for me to conceive.”
Miocene couldn’t leave those mysterious words floating free.
With a quiet certainty, she said, “Our standard model is that the buttressing fields squeeze Marrow down, then relax. And when they relax, the world expands.”
“Until when?” asked Pepsin. “Until it fills the chamber?”
“We shall see,” the Submaster conceded.
“And what about the buttresses?” he persisted. Foolish, or brave, or simply intrigued, he had to ask the great woman, “What powers them?”
It was an old, always baffling question. But Miocene employed the oldest, easiest answer. “Hidden reactors of some unknown type. In the chamber walls, or beneath our feet. Or perhaps in both places.”
“And why go through these elaborate cycles, madam? I mean, if I was the chief engineer, and I needed to keep Marrow firmly in place, I don’t think I’d ever allow my fancy buttresses to fall halfway asleep. Would you, madam? Would you let them fall partway asleep every ten thousand years?”
“You don’t understand the buttresses,” Miocene replied. “You admitted it just a few breaths ago. Nobody knows how they refuel themselves, or regenerate, or whatever is happening. These mysteries have worked hard to remain mysteries, and we should give them our well-deserved respect.”
Pepsin hugged himself, nodding as if the words carried a genuine weight. But the eyes betrayed distance, then a revelation. Suddenly they grew wide, and darker somehow, and with an embarrassed grin, he said, “You’ve already had this debate with my grandmother. Haven’t you?”
“A few times,” the Submaster conceded.
“And does Aasleen ever win?” the young man inquired.
Miocene waited an instant, then told Pepsin, and everyone, “She always wins. In the end, I always admit that we haven’t any answers, and her questions are smart and valid and vast. And sadly, they are also quite useless to us here.
“A waste of breath, even.”
Then Miocene pulled a new piece of paper to the top of the pile, and dipping her head, she added, “Get us home, darling. That’s all that matters. Then I will personally give you the keys to a first-class laboratory, and you can ask all these great questions that seem to be keeping you awake nights.”
A quiet little party followed Pepsin’s announcement. Talk centered more on new gossip than grand speculations: who was sleeping with whom, and who was pregnant, and which youngsters had slipped away to the Waywards. Washen quickly lost interest. Claiming fatigue, she escaped, walking past the security stations, and alone, walking home to the newest Hazz City.
A rugged metropolis of eighteen thousand, the Loyalist capital lay in the bottom of a wide, flat, and well-watered rift valley. Every home was sturdy but read)’ to be abandoned. Every government building was just large enough to impress, bolted to its temporary foundation of bright stainless steel. With the late hour, the streets were nearly empty. Thunderheads were piled high in the western sky, stealing heat from a dying lava flow; but the winds seemed to be shoving the storms elsewhere, making the city feel like a quiet, half-abandoned place being bypassed by the world’s great events.
Washen s house looked out over a secondary round. It was smaller than its neighbors, and in the details, was a duplicate of her last five houses. Blowing fans kept the air fresh and halfway cool. With shutters closed, a nighdike gloom took hold, and Washen allowed herself the wasteful pleasure of a small electric lamp burning above her favorite chair.
She was in the middle of a report projecting coming demands for laboratory-grade glassware. The utterly routine work made her fatigue real. Suddenly it seemed, ridiculous to look three centuries into the future, or even three minutes, and Washen responded by yawning, closing her eyes, then dipping into a hard, dreamless sleep.
Then she was awake again.
Awake and confused, she reached for the mechanical clock dangling from her belt on a titanium chain. The clock was a gift from various grandchildren. They had assembled it themselves, using resurrected technologies and patient hands. The overhead lamp still burned, and the wasted energy flowed over the delicately embossed casing, its bright silver mixed with enough gunk to lend it strength. She opened the round case and stared at the numbers. At the slowly turning hands. This was the middle of the night, and she sleepily realized that what had awakened her was a slow, strong pounding against her front door.
Washen turned off the lamp, rose and opened the door. The harsh glare of the sky flowed over her. She blinked, aware of two figures waiting for her, wearing nothing but the light. Then her eyes adapted, weakening enough for her to see two welcome faces.
In the middle of the night, apparently unnoticed, Washen’s son and his father had strolled into the heart of the city.
Diu offered a wry grin.
He looked the same as always… except for the breech-cloth and a leanness that ended with his strong thick legs. And his skin had the smoky tint that Marrow gave everyone. His scalp was shaved free of every hair. And after years of hard wandering, his feet had been pounded into wider, flatter versions of their old selves.