The door opened. Mike filled the doorway, his suit covered in smoking frost.
She grabbed him and hugged him tightly, despite the cold that seared through her cheek as she laid it against the breastplate of his suit. "You came back."
"Of course." He seemed a bit offended that she had doubted him.
"But the seed… the rebels… don't you want to fight the R.E.?"
Mike sighed, and reached up to smooth back her hair with one icy glove.
"I don't want to destroy, not even destroy the R.E." he said. "I… want to build."
A DAY LATER, Rue joined a large crowd that had gathered around a big inscape window in the larger of the cruisers they had captured from Crisler. The scientific team was here, all talking excitedly about the spectacle unfolding in the window. Someone had found material to make black arm bands in honor of Henry Katz.
"I knew there wasn't enough power in those tethers to launch a cycler!" laughed Herat. "But never in a million years would I have imagined they'd do that!"
That was bright enough to illuminate both Apophis and Osiris like a minor sun. The thousands of conductive tethers that orbited around Osiris normally just drew power out of the brown dwarf's magnetic field. Somehow, they had orchestrated a vast current flow back into the dwarf— and the result was the biggest flare Rue had ever seen burst off a dwarf. It stood out of Osiris's equator like an incandescent spear, and though they weren't visible from here, she knew that a vortex of tethers was amplifying and aiming that flare. The full power of Osiris's magnetosphere was pouring power into an energy beam of astonishing power.
Crisler's cycler rode the crest of that wave of energy like a leaf in a hurricane. The acceleration was enormous; Crisler and his men were either in their hibernation tanks now, or dead from the pressure. The cycler was thriving, though, soaring on wings of magnetized plasma faster and faster, trying its best to catch up to light.
Rue made her way over to the professor, and Mike who was as always next to his mentor. Rue reached out and touched Mike's arm. He turned with a wide smile.
"And so," Rue said very softly, "the halo worlds become able to launch our own cyclers at last." Mike took her hand in his, and squeezed it.
She'd barely had a chance to talk to Mike in the whirlwind of activity that had followed Crisler's escape. When he arrived to rescue her team and she realized he had abandoned the rebels, Rue had felt a rush of happiness that had carried her through the whirlwind. Now, with Crisler's ships secure and dispatches ready for sending to Colossus, New Armstrong, and Crisler's probable destination, she could finally relax for a moment.
The scientists cheered the cycler launch like they were watching a sporting match. Herat turned away, smiling fondly, and said, "Hello, Rue. Are you getting ready to leave?"
She nodded. "There's much to do. Are you staying here, Laurent, or are you going back to High Space? Now that we know they exist, I'm sure you'll be able to find the Lasa themselves."
He shook his head. "No— or rather, we already found them. They are that." He gestured to the vast machinery of the Twins visible through the window. "That and no more. The original Lasa— the species that gave us the name— realized that no species is permanent. Only the ecological niches, the environments friendly to one or another kind of life, have any kind of permanence. They saw that they would rise and fall like every living form. So, instead of trying to extend their existence, like so many other species before and since," he sighed, "they looked to ways of preserving and nourishing an environment that would encourage the birth and growth of species similar to themselves. Cooperative, farsighted peoples."
He turned back to contemplate the view. "I'm going to stay here, and make it my life to study this place. The Lasa, you see, aren't a species. They're an environment— an ecological niche. Bequith, here, explained that to me. And I'm coming to agree with him that humanity would do well to expand into and nurture this niche."
As usual, Rue didn't completely understand Herat. But he smiled at her, and turned back to watch the cycler launch. That smile was enough to tell her he was content.
She turned to Mike, and now her throat was tight again. "And what about you? You came back for us, when you could have gone with Barendts and become the greatest hero of the rebels."
He shrugged. "I just realized it would never stop. We might get Kimpurusha back, but what then? It would never return to what it was when it was part of the Compact. And… and I realized that freeing Kimpurusha wouldn't satisfy me. There was something better I could do."
Rue bit her lip, avoiding his eyes. "So where will you go now?"
He had that mysterious smile again. "I want to help revive the Cycler Compact. Right now, there's nowhere I'd rather be than wherever you're taking the cycler mother seed."
"Why, Mr. Bequith," she said, grinning back at him. "Where else would I take it? It's coming with me to Erythrion."
He hesitated. "And your crew will go with you. That's six, including Rebecca's girlfriend; there's no room in the interceptor for one more…"
Now she laughed. "Evan is staying here. He wants to return to High Space."
"And that means…"
She took his hand and smiled into his eyes. "There is a berth on my ship, Mr. Bequith, if you would like to have it."
28
RUE STOOD AT a window, and the view from it was real, neither holographic nor inscape. Treya shone close by, a sphere of pearly auroral light transfixed by one circle of purest white radiance where the artificial sun was shining today on clouds. The orbital colony where Rue stood had once been the property of the Cycler Compact; it had seemed a fitting place for her to stay, for now.
"You see?" she said to Michael, who stood at her side. "Sunlight, of a sort. Too bright for me, but you'll like it."
Michael rested his hand on hers. The cuffs of their shirts were an identical black; she wore her captain's uniform, and Michael had accepted the high-collared clerical counterpart. He looked good in uniform, especially now that he seemed to have overcome his demons. He radiated authority.
Sounds of debate came from behind them. A long oak table filled the other end of the room. A group of men and women, mostly elderly, were going over a complex set of plans and edicts. They all looked slightly shell-shocked. A week ago none had suspected that their lives would be overturned by the arrival of Rue.
There were fourteen people here; fourteen in all Erythrion who had once held positions of power in the Cycler Compact and who might still be trusted by the people. On Oculus, the Compact had been a living thing, a vast and ancient order that encompassed both government and religion. Oculus had been vibrant, forward looking. Well, Rue was determined that Erythrion would become so too.
Only the monks of Permanence and a few holdouts from the old days had responded immediately to Rue's summons. On her arrival she had exercised the prerogative of a cycler captain in ordering a special session of the Compact executive. The first replies had been angry accusations that she was playing some trick; she had been called disrespectful to the glorious past that the proud few still revered.
Her response to that was to transmit substantial excerpts from Blair's records. The discovery of Jentry's Envy and the proof that Rue had learned to control it was enough to yield a second round of responses. These were respectful and curious. She claimed to come bearing great news, and yet she had not arrived by magsail. Had she come from High Space? And what was this news?
Her first meeting here, a week ago, had begun inauspiciously. The men and women who filed into this office were just civilians— albeit rich and powerful, some of them. They had long ago retired their uniforms and rented out the offices of the Compact to local businesses. Ten people who might have been here had refused to come, citing more important business of one kind or another. Rue suspected that they simply believed the Compact was dead or not worth reviving.