Dem Lia’s eyebrows rose a trifle. “And how long would it take our systems to lance more than three hundred thousand such targets?” she asked softly.
“Two-point-six seconds,” said Ryôkan.
Dem Lia shook her head. “Ryôkan, please tell Patek Georg that you and I have spoken and that I want the containment field not at a hundred-klick distance, but maintained at a steady one kilometer from the ship. It may remain a class-twenty field—the Ousters can actually see the strength of it, and that’s good. But the ship’s weapons systems will not target the Ousters at this time. Presumably, they can see our targeting scans as well. Ryôkan, you and Patek Georg can run as many simulations of the combat encounter as you need to feel secure, but divert no power to the energy weapons and allow no targeting until I give the command.”
Ryôkan bowed. Basho shuffled his virtual clogs but said nothing.
Lady Murasaki fluttered a fan half in front of her face. “You trust,” she said softly.
Dem Lia did not smile. “Not totally. Never totally. Ryôkan, I want you and Patek Georg to work out the containment-field system so that if even one Ouster attempts to breach the containment field with focused plasma from his or her solar wings, the containment field should go to emergency class thirty-five and instantly expand to five hundred klicks.”
Ryôkan nodded. Ikkyû smiled slightly and said, “That will be one very quick ride for a great mass of Ousters, Ma’am. Their personal energy systems might not be up to containing their own life support under that much of a shock, and it’s certain that they wouldn’t decelerate for half an AU or more.”
Dem Lia nodded. “That’s their problem. I don’t think it will come to that. Thank you all for talking to me.”
All six human figures winked out of existence.
Rendezvous was peaceful and efficient.
The first question the Ousters had radioed the Helix twenty hours earlier was, “Are you Pax?”
This had startled Dem Lia and the others at first. Their assumption was that these people had been out of touch with human space since long before the rise of the Pax. Then the ebony, Jon Mikail Dem Alem, said, “The Shared Moment. It has to have been the Shared Moment.”
The nine looked at each other in silence at this. Everyone understood that Aenea’s “Shared Moment” during her torture and murder by the Pax and TechnoCore had been shared by every human being in human space—a gestalt resonance along the Void Which Binds that had transmitted the dying young woman’s thoughts and memories and knowledge along those threads in the quantum fabric of the universe which existed to resonate empathy, briefly uniting everyone originating from Old Earth human stock. But out here? So many thousands of light-years away?
Dem Lia suddenly realized how silly that thought was. Aenea’s Shared Moment of almost five centuries ago must have propagated everywhere in the universe along the quantum fabric of the Void Which Binds, touching alien races and cultures so distant as to be unreachable by any technology of human travel or communication while adding the first self-aware human voice to the empathic conversation that had been going on between sentient and sensitive species for almost twelve billion years. Most of those species had long since become extinct or evolved beyond their original form, the Aeneans had told Dem Lia, but their empathic memories still resonated in the Void Which Binds.
Of course the Ousters had experienced the Shared Moment five hundred years ago.
“No, we are not Pax,” the Helix had radioed back to the three-hundred-some thousand approaching Ousters. “The Pax was essentially destroyed four hundred standard years ago.”
“Do you have followers of Aenea aboard?” came the next Ouster message.
Dem Lia and the others had sighed. Perhaps these Ousters had been desperately waiting for an Aenean messenger, a prophet, someone to bring the sacrament of Aenea’s DNA to them so that they could also become Aeneans.
“No,” the Helix had radioed back. “No followers of Aenea.” They then tried to explain the Amoiete Spectrum Helix and how the Aeneans had helped them build and adapt this ship for their long voyage.
After some silence, the Ousters had radioed, “Is there anyone aboard who has met Aenea or her beloved, Raul Endymion?”
Again the nine had looked blankly at each other. Saigyô, who had been sitting cross-legged on the floor some distance from the conference table, spoke up. “No one on board met Aenea,” he said softly. “Of the Spectrum family who hid and helped Raul Endymion when he was ill on Vitus-Gray-Balianus B, two of the marriage partners were killed in the war with the Pax there—one of the mothers, Dem Ria, and the biological father, Alem Mikail Dem Alem. Their son by that triune—a boy named Bin Ria Dem Loa Alem—was also killed in the Pax bombing. Alem Mikail’s daughter by a previous triune marriage was missing and presumed dead. The surviving female of the triune, Dem Loa, took the sacrament and became an Aenean not many weeks after the Shared Moment. She farcast away from Vitus-Gray-Balianus B and never returned.”
Dem Lia and the others waited, knowing that the AI wouldn’t have gone on at such length if there were not more to the story.
Saigyô nodded. “It turns out that the teenage daughter, Ces Ambre, presumed killed in the Pax Base Bombasine massacre of Spectrum Helix civilians, had actually been shipped offworld with more than a thousand other children and young adults. They were to be raised on the final Pax stronghold world of St. Theresa as born-again Pax Christians. Ces Ambre received the cruciform and was overseen by a cadre of religious guards there for nine years before that world was liberated by the Aeneans and Dem Loa learned that her daughter was still alive.”
“Did they reunite?” asked young Den Soa, the attractive diplomat. There were tears in her eyes. “Did Ces Ambre free herself of the cruciform?”
“There was a reunion,” said Saigyô. “Dem Loa freecast there as soon as she learned that her daughter was alive. Ces Ambre chose to have the Aeneans remove the cruciform, but she reported that she did not accept Aenea’s DNA sacrament from her triune stepmother to become Aenean herself. Her dossier says that she wanted to return to Vitus-Gray-Balianus B to see the remnants of the culture from which she had been kidnapped. She continued living and working there as a teacher for almost sixty standard years. She adopted her former family’s band of blue.”
“She suffered the cruciform but chose not to become Aenean,” muttered Kem Loi, the astronomer, as if it were impossible to believe.
Dem Lia said, “She’s aboard in deep sleep.”
“Yes,” said Saigyô.
“How old was she when we embarked?” asked Patek Georg.
“Ninety-five standard years,” said the AI. He smiled. “But as with all of us, she had the benefit of Aenean medicine in the years before departure. Her physical appearance and mental capabilities are of a woman in her early sixties.”
Dem Lia rubbed her cheek. “Saigyô, please awaken Citizen Ces Ambre. Den Soa, could you be there when she awakens and explain the situation to her before the Ousters join us? They seem more interested in someone who knew Aenea’s husband than in learning about the Spectrum Helix.”
“Future husband at that point in time,” corrected the ebony, Jon Mikail, who was a bit of a pedant. “Raul Endymion was not yet married to Aenea at the time of his short stay on Vitus-Gray-Balianus B.”
“I’d feel privileged to stay with Ces Ambre until we meet the Ousters,” said Den Soa with a bright smile.