Michael started to speak, stopped and finally said, "The kami of Dis showed you that?"
"I've been going like crazy since I left Allemagne," she said quietly. "I couldn't explain why before. Now I know I was running away, all that time. Even going after the Envy, I was running away from having to face myself. I was eager to panic about Crisler, you know to go from crisis to crisis because that meant I could make other people, or just the situation, responsible for what I was doing. Now that I see it, I'm not going to let myself get away with it anymore."
"Rue, you're being unfair to yourself," he said. "You've been a voice of reason all through this expedition. You found out how to control the Envy! You've taken good care of your crew. I think you've acted responsibly all along."
She grimaced. "I did okay. But it was all reacting. Max was the one who planned things. I just went along for the ride. Not anymore, though. Crisler's killed Max. He and that bastard Mallory have a lot to answer for. I'm going to stop them, Mike." Her gaze was level and serious now; the pendant was forgotten in her hand. "We're going to bring them down."
Michael stared at her. This Rue was a person he had never seen before. She had always shown hints of iron strength, in her determination and unwavering focus on her goals. She had been charismatic, before. Now, she seemed unstoppably sure of herself.
She hung the pendant around her neck. "We need to plan what we'll do when we get back," she said. "You're good at politics. Who do you see as the most influential people in the Compact now?"
He started to protest— she must need his comfort, he was sure of it. No one could have faced the kami of Dis and come out intact. And yet it seemed she had.
Seeing her calm alertness, all sense of shock and fear gone, the words died on his lips. He had thought he knew the mind behind her face; now he had to admit he didn't understand her at all. Even if she was wearing a mask over her emotions, it was seamless. She had work to do, it seemed, and nothing was going to dissuade her from it— not even the kami of Dis.
He knew of no way to respond other than to accept the mask for what it appeared to be.
Michael took a deep breath. "First of all," he said, "you need to tell me how your meeting went yesterday afternoon…"
22
ALL THE BAD feelings remained: guilt, grief, a sense of horror at how senselessly life could end. Rue would not let them prevent her from acting, now or ever again.
The others were not so easily entertained. Rue knew her responsibilities, so she convened strategy sessions with Mike and Barendts. At the first one she started off by saying, "How was Crisler going to explain our deaths? Or were we to disappear?"
"Disappear," said Barendts. "I don't know how he was going to explain it."
"He wouldn't," said Mike. "If none of you were seen and if the inscape spoofing worked, there would be no evidence to point at him."
"Rebecca would finger him," Rue pointed out.
"Maybe, but would she be heard? And what proof would she have? I think Crisler's working with some of the pro-R.E. factions here. They would lend support," said Mike. "What they would do is put a spin on the whole event— blame it on some rival faction, produce a patsy even."
"So we'll nail him as soon as we get back," said Rue. "After all, we have the proof." She nodded at Barendts.
Michael sat back, shaking his head. "Except that the assassination didn't go off as he'd planned. He knows Barendts botched the inscape spoofing. If that was detected, suspicion will point straight at Crisler, because the R.E. military has the most sophisticated inscape technology. Hell, he might have been arrested already. Even if he hasn't been, he can't be sure we're dead, unless the other marines lied about what they saw when the sub sank."
Barendts shook his head. "They wouldn't lie. It's their necks on the line too."
"So he's on the hotseat," said Mike. "What's the best thing he could do now?"
"Retreat to the Envy," said Rue bitterly.
"Yes. He'll probably take your man Mallory with him. The deal would be Mallory helps Crisler out here on Oculus and in return Crisler publicly pledges the R.E.'s support for the plan to integrate the halo with the R.E. In your absence, Mallory takes command of the Envy and when they get there Crisler lets Mallory take the Envy away to form the new cycler ring he's been wanting. Meanwhile Crisler himself takes the Banshee and heads for the Twins."
Rue cursed. It made an awful kind of sense. The worst part was, trapped as they were, there was nothing she could do about it.
Well, that might be true. But she'd be damned if she would let herself be bullied anymore.
"We need to plan our response," she said. "How are we going to head Crisler off, assuming we get out of here?"
Mike and Barendts glanced at one another; she saw a faint smile hover around the marine's lips for an instant. Then they leaned forward and started scheming.
TWO MORE DAYS passed before they got the opportunity they were looking for. By that time the air in the submarine was growing stale, the recyclers pushed to their limits. There were signs that the ship's power was fading. Herat said it had a typical muon-catalyzed fusion reactor, little more than a tank of hot hydrogen gas surrounded by muon-generators. Not much could go wrong with the generator itself; power must be bleeding off into the water around them. The oxygen recycling system also worked well; its pedigree was hundreds of years of closed system spaceship design.
More immediate was the fact that they were out of food. The sub continued to drift under the vast ice-sheets of Oculus. Rue watched that strange ceiling pass overhead for hours at a time, feeling frustrated and angry beyond any means of description. She felt now like anger was all she would ever feel. Mike's presence was comforting, but until all of this was over, she couldn't let herself give over to grief. She held his hand and drew on his silent strength, but that was as much as she would allow for now.
In turn, he seemed to be keeping her at a distance. He seemed guarded, as though she had offended him somehow. Once she saw him holding his offline datapack, contemplating it as though debating what to do with it. When he saw her looking, he quickly put it down with a hurried smile.
Strangely, it was Herat whose conversation helped pass the time best during the long hours of waiting. It was now clear that a whole ecology flourished down here and he was studying it as best he could in the illumination of their dimming floodlights. At its base were kilometers-long filaments, rich in metals, that drew electricity from the global currents that the magnetic field of Colossus sent through Oculus's oceans. The filaments used electricity the way plants elsewhere used light, so they formed a robust basis for the flourishing of thousands of species of plant and animal. Herat could sit rapt for hours, staring at the clouds of krill and the icicle-like holdfasts that hung from the glacial ceiling.
Naturally, then, it was he who first saw the lights in the deep.
"I knew there'd be something," he said, after calling them all to the front of the vessel. Where he pointed, Rue could see a deep, diffuse blue, radiating up from the depths. They had switched off the external floodlights to conserve power, so the light could not be reflecting back from some submerged mountain.
"Why is it below us and not above?" asked Barendts. Herat shrugged.
"Mining, maybe? The only way to get many minerals and metals on this planet is to dredge the bottom."
The lights slowly resolved, like waking ghosts, into spotlights that illuminated giant gantries. Taut cables hung from the gantries, disappearing into the gloom below. The gantries were mounted into the glacial ceiling, but they could see no sign of control stations or submarine docks there. What exactly these cables did remained a mystery.