The lead guard slowed, then muttered something to someone around the bend. A full squad waited in the library, all armed with heavy-caliber weapons, all watching with a decidedly unscholarly interest as a boyish man, dressed in common clothes and a Gordian wig, paged his way through a dense technical synopsis of the ship.
According to his interrogators, he was named for the tree.
He went by Virtue.
Miocene said the name, just once and not loudly. The man didn’t seem to hear, eyes focused on a diagram of an antimatter-spiked fusion reactor. Instead of repeating his name, she stood on the far side of the table, and she waited, watching as the gray eyes absorbed the meaningful words and the elegant lines, these intricate plans drawn from memory by one of her colleagues.
Slowly, slowly, the defector grew aware of the newcomers.
He lifted his gaze, and as if emerging from some private fog, he blinked a few times, then said, “Yes.” He said, “This is wrong.”
“Excuse me?” Miocene inquired.
“It won’t work. I’m certain.” He touched the black corner of the page, and the book moved to the next page. The same reactor was pictured, conjured from the same memory but a different vantage point. “The containment vessel isn’t strong enough. Not by hall.”
Like so many grandchildren, he was a difficult genius.
With a look and a slashing gesture, Miocene told the guards and soldiers to leave the two of them alone.
The temple administrator had to ask, “How long will you need the library?” Then to explain her boldness, she added, “Researchers are coming from Promise-and-Dream’s biolabs. They’ve got some priority project—”
“Make them wait,” she growled.
“Yes, madam.”
Then Virtue told everyone, “I don’t know if I’d trust a word in this place.” He spoke loudly and without a hint of charm. “I thought I’d be drinking from some fucking fountain of wisdom, or something. But I just keep finding mistakes. Everywhere I look, mistakes.”
Mildly, the Submaster told him, “Well. Then it’s a good thing that you happened by.”
The defector closed his current volume, in disgust.
To her personal guards, Miocene said, “Out of earshot. Wait.” Then to the administrator, she said,’Go downstairs. Go down and tell all those worshipers that the Submaster would appreciate a long and very loud song.”
“Which song?” the woman sputtered.
“Oh, that’s their choice,” Miocene replied. “It’s always theirs.”
The defector was an emotional alloy: two parts arrogance, one part fear.
It was a useful combination.
Sitting at the table with Miocene, Virtue seemed to recall that smiles were a helpful gesture. But he wasn’t particularly skilled with the expression, his smile looking more like a pained wince, his light gray eyes growing larger by the moment.
“I told them that I absolutely had to see you,” he reported. “Only you, and as soon as possible.”
“Madam Miocene.”
His genius wavered. A stupid voice said, “Pardon?”
“I am your single hope,” she replied, leaning back in the tall chair as if disgusted by the creature before her. “You live out the day if I let you. Otherwise, you die. And I think that I’m entitled to hear my name used in the proper fashion, at the proper times.”
He looked at his own hands.
Then, quietly, “Madam Miocene.”
“Thank you.” She showed him a narrow grin, then with a slow, almost indifferent set of motions, she opened the bright chromium case of her electronic file box, pretending to read what she already knew by heart. “To my associates, you claimed that you had something to tell me. News fit only for my ears.”
“Yes… Madam Miocene…’ He swallowed hard, then said, “It has to do with this world of ours—”
“This isn’t my world,” she interrupted.
Virtue nodded, and waited. His eyes couldn’t have been larger.
Miocene pretended to concentrate on the screen. “It says here… that you’re a second-generation descendant of Diu—”
“He was my grandfather, yes. Madam.”
“And your father…?”
“Is Till.”
She looked up, staring as if she had never noticed the familial resemblance. After a lengthy pause, she mentioned, “Many Waywards are Till’s children. As I understand these things.”
“Yes, Madam.”
“No real honor to it, since there’s so awfully many of you.”
“Well, I don’t know if I would…’ He hesitated, then said, “No, madam, I suppose there isn’t a specific honor, no.”
She touched a key, then another, scrolling through the transcripts and the written accounts of each interrogator. Every entry gave clues to this man’s character, or lack of it. And none could be trusted as the final word on anything concerning him.
“So our texts are inaccurate. You’re claiming.”
Virtue blinked, and he held his breath.
Souls were a fluid alloy. The arrogance hid deep inside him, replaced on the surface by a growing, strengthening sense of fear.
“Are they inaccurate, or aren’t they?”
“In places, I think so. Yes.”
“Have you built a fusion reactor like the one in those diagrams?”
“No, madam.”
“Are there any reactors like it in the Wayward nation?”
“No.”
“You’re certain?”
“I can’t be absolutely certain,” he admitted.
“And we haven’t built them, either,” she confessed. “Our geothermal plants are quite sufficient for our very modest demands.”
The defector nodded, then attempted a compliment. “This is an amazing city, madam. They let me see pieces of it on my way here.”
“That was their mistake,” she replied.
He hunkered, a little bit.
Then she gave him a smile, inquiring, “Do you Waywards have cities this large? With almost a million people in one place?”
“No. No, madam.”
“We’ve mastered some marvelous tricks,” she continued. “The crust beneath us is thick and solid, and we keep it that way. Quakes are diffused or bled away. The fluid iron is steered into managed zones. Artificial vents, in essence.”
Sensing her wishes, he allowed, “The Waywards don’t have that technology.”
“You’re still nomads, aren’t you? Basically”
He started to answer, then hesitated. “I’m not a Wayward anymore,” he finally offered. Then with a tight little voice, he added, “Madam.”
“But you could tell me much about them. I would imagine.”
A cursory nod.
“You know about their lives,” she continued. “About their technologies. Perhaps even their ultimate goals.”
“Yes,” he said. “And yes. And no, madam.”
“Oh? You don’t know what Till wants?”
“Not in any clear way, no.” He swallowed as if in pain. “My father… well, Till doesn’t exactly confide in me…”
Again, Miocene touched the keys. “Maybe that’s why you lost the Wayward faith. Is that a possibility?”
“I’m not sure that I ever believed.”
“All that noise about Builders and Bleaks and ancient souls entombed inside those hyperfiber coffins…?”