Suddenly, with absolutely no warning, one of the team leaders whispered into his ear. “We’re ready here. The big valve is ours.”
And in the next instant, another voice—the translated boast from a harum-scarum engineer—announced, “We’re prepared here. Against much greater odds, and unseen, and ahead of schedule.”
Pamir let himself think: It’s going to happen…!
His heart responded, swelling and pounding hard against his throat, his voice nearly breaking when he asked the alien beside him, “How are we?”
“Close,” the whistle promised.
A pause.
The next whistle was a curse. “A stranger’s shit,” said the harum-scarum, an instinctive rage rising, then collapsing again.
“What’s wrong?” Pamir asked. “Don’t tell me it’s the pumps…”
His companion said, “No.”
A fat, spike-nailed thumb pointed, showing him that one of the rising vehicles was slowing in front of them, deploying antennae and sturdy lasers, armored soldiers already marshaling inside its injection airlocks.
“My scan—” the harum-scarum moaned.
“Or its a routine patrol,” Pamir offered. “Or someone noticed their power being funneled away.”
The alien moaned, saying, “If it was me, I will shoot myself.”
Pamir said, “Fine.”
He backed away from the viewing port and viewing screens, stepping out onto a gangway that he helped build just a century ago. People were specks, almost unnoticed in the darkest corners. The giant pumps looked close in the ancient gloom, and they were deceptively simple: slick balls and eggs of hyperfiber wrapped around machinery vaster than any heart, and fantastically strong, and durable enough to wait for billions of years before they took their first thunderous beat.
This was the same pumping station that the captains had used as a blind. The Waywards had searched it thoroughly, and with good captainly tricks, they had tried to secure it. On occasion, they sent patrols. But there were only so many soldiers, and there were thousands of kilometers of fuel lines begging to be guarded, and there was a war to wage, and they were always too much in a hurry to dismande the sophisticated camouflage that Pamir had helped install.
In a whisper, he asked his team, “How soon?”
“Ready,” said a few.
“Soon,” others promised.
Then he returned to the port and screens, estimating how soon the Waywards would be shaking his hand.
“Ready,” said another voice. And another.
The harum-scarum remarked, “With what we have now, we can do it.”
Fewer pumps than ideal, and not every valve in their control. But yes, they could do it. What he had dreamed up in Quee Lee’s apartment and what had always felt slippery as a dream… it was a genuine reality now… somehow…
Both of the alien’s mouths opened, and the air-breather whistled, “We must now. Remove these monsters from the universe.”
Pamir said nothing.
Again, he looked through the port, watching the bug-shaped chunk of steel aligning itself for an assault. Then he glanced at a snoop screen. A bright sparkle marked another descending car, this one dropping faster, showing not so much as a breath of caution.
Pamir told his ally, “No.”
Then he told every team in a thousand-kilometer radius, “Finish your preparations. Do it now.”
The alien gave out a sharp, furious whistle, the translator having the diplomatic sense not to explain what had just been said.
“We’re waiting,” Pamir repeated. “Waiting.” Then to himself, under his breath, he muttered, “This crazy trap needs to be a little more full.”
Forty-nine
Nearly five millennia had been spent making the climb to freedom. A strong soul accomplishes what can only be considered impossible, building a society out of nothing, then gaining her destiny as her fair reward. How else could Miocene look at this epic? Yet she found herself suddenly retracing her ascent, making the desperate long fall in what felt like the jump of an eye, the throb of the heart, too quickly to suffer even the littlest doubt. And all because a dead colleague and the closest thing to a friend sent her a few words, promising to meet her and tell her a story.
Plainly, this was someone’s trick.
Miocene saw the obvious instantly, and instinctively.
But even then, she left the security of her station, her decision made. Then the Remoras brought down the ship’s own shields, and she began to understand what an enormous trap this could be. Yet she continued the plunge. Able to lead from anywhere, she spat out orders and directives and fierce encouragements and outright threats, helping make certain that the insurrection would be crushed shortly. Then she arrived victorious at the apex of the new bridge, stepping out of the empty hammerwing and toward the waiting car… and she hesitated, finding herself staring across the swollen gray face of Marrow, if only for an instant…
The guard on duty—a square-faced man named Golden—stepped close and smiled up at the ship’s Master. Then with a proud voice, he reported, “I sent them straight down, madam. Straight on down.”
She had to ask, ‘Who’s that?”
“Locke and his prisoner,” he answered, his tone asking in turn, “Who else do you expect?” Miocene said nothing.
Slowly, slowly, she pulled her eyes closed. But in her mind she could still see the cold lights of Marrow, and its black iron face. She saw them better with her eyes shut. And what she felt, if anything, was an infectious relief. And a jittery, infinite joy.
If this was someone’s ambush, she reasoned, then Washen was the bait. And Miocene reminded herself that she wasn’t without resources, and tremendous power, and oceans of experience and cleverness, and cruelty, too.
Every possibility was reviewed in succession. Then she made the same decision again, with a new resolve.
Opening her eyes, she glanced at Golden, saying, “Good,” without focusing on his smiling and proud and exceptionally foolish face.
Miocene told the earnest man, “Thank you for your help.”
Then she stepped into the sealed, windowless car, sat in the first chair, and with a single word, she was falling again, fast and then faster, the weary old buttresses reaching through the wall and licking at her mind, making her feel, for just those sluggish few moments, wondrously and deliciously insane.
Fifty
The temple administrator will wore the long gray robes of her office and still fought against any force that might threaten to disrupt her life or her day. She rose to her feet, staring at the newcomers with a sputtering horror, then she crossed her arms, took a fierce quick breath, and exhaling with an obvious pain, said to Washen, “No.” She snapped, “You died a hero. Now stay dead!”
Washen had to laugh out loud, replying, “I’ve tried to be dead. I did my very best, darling.”
It was Locke who stepped forward. He moved close enough to intimidate, then spoke with a soft rapid voice that left no doubt as to who was in charge. “We need one of the temple’s chambers. We don’t care which. And you will personally bring your guests to us, then leave. Is that understood?”
“Which guests-?”
“The sad souls locked inside your library.” Washen leaked a smile.
The woman opened her mouth, framing her rebuttal.
But Locke didn’t give her the chance. “Or would you rather be reassigned, darling? Maybe to one of these heroic units heading up onto the hull.”