Michael had petitioned the Compact to allow Barendts and himself to return to the R.E. It was absolutely critical that the rebels learn about the weapon Crisler hoped to find at Osiris and Apophis. Rue knew that, and she had the ear of the highest officials in the government.
The petition had been turned down, without explanation.
Every day that passed, Crisler drew closer to the Twins, and to escaping with the Chicxulub weapon. Frustration had drawn Michael back to the autotrophs as much as curiosity. Frustration drove him now as he closed in on the distant lights, for the university had refused to allow him to visit the green men again. Herat could; Michael was only partially mollified by the knowledge that even Herat had not been allowed to visit the autotrophs themselves.
He took a roundabout route, hiding behind the softening outlines of buildings, confident in his destination because the glow was constantly visible. Finally only one building separated him from whoever it was; he took a chance, and swam into the crumbling structure itself.
The walls were peeling, the floor covered in a layer of hazy mud. The feeling of desolation here was overwhelming, and he could feel his NeoShinto implant stirring, finding echoes of the kami of lost lives here. Michael ignored it, and made his way to a room at the front of the building.
The wall here had numerous holes in it. Light shone strongly through them, and he could hear a thrumming sound through the water now. Michael swam slowly over and put his goggles against one of the lower holes.
Not three meters away, a thing like a giant silver scarab was lowering boxes and canisters off its back, and arranging them carefully in the silt. There was no recognizable head to the thing, nor any sense organs he could see. But drifting around and above it were hundreds of tiny bright beads.
Michael recognized them: They were like the ones that had swarmed around him and Herat during their visit to the autotrophs four months ago. The swarm had spoken to them; it was an integral part of the autotrophs' artificial intelligence.
Michael had recovered some dead beads from other autotroph trash sites. He'd taken one apart, and figured he knew how they were powered. And the aliens didn't seem to keep good track of the things— which sparked an idea.
Some of the beads were hovering very close to the wall. Michael rose up on his haunches and peered through another crack. One hovered not twenty centimeters away. Its little black head was pointing down and away— watching the silver thing deposit its cargo, no doubt.
Months of anger at his betrayal by his companions made Michael unwilling to hesitate: He simply reached out and grabbed the bead, popping it into the metal mesh bag he carried at his waist. Then he put his eye to the crack and watched to see what would happen next.
Nothing happened. He heard a faint bzzt come over his radio, but the beads outside didn't move and the silver thing went on arranging its trash. The metal mesh probably blocked the thing's signal. And there were more of the beads hovering within reach.
In seconds he had a dozen of them in his sack. They circled lazily inside it, as if made lethargic by the cold water and high pressure. Maybe that was true. Michael eased back from the cracked wall and made his way to another building some distance away. There he found an interior room and turned up his headlight.
He opened the sack while tuning his radio across frequencies. The beads swirled lazily inside the mesh; after a minute he hit on the right frequency. A complex, sonorous hum came from the little things.
"Hello?" he said through the radio. "Do you guys speak Anglic?"
"Ph-ph-ph-phage," said a pipsqueek voice in his ears. "You eat us now."
"No," he said. "I just want to talk."
"No talk," said the tiny AIs. "We leave now."
"I'll let you go after we talk. How's that?"
"No. We leave planet. Ancient weapon in hands of phages. Must warn others of the Real."
"You're leaving Oculus? Leaving this planet?"
"Here to make preparations. Leave caches where phages not find."
Michael chewed his lip, thinking hard. "You know there's humans going after the Chicxulub weapon. You're going to pull up roots here— warn the autotroph empire?"
"We warn. Destroy phages before weapon built."
Michael raced back to where he'd left Barendts. The marine was startled when he ducked back over the wall; Michael had come from an unexpected direction.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"We're done here, at least for now," said Michael. "We've got to get these things back to Lux."
"But there's a veritable trove of stuff there—"
"Which we can come back for later."
"Are you crazy? The green guys might find it."
Michael swam determinedly toward the black maw of the elevator shaft. "Forget about the trash. Something more important's come up."
As he swam, he heard faint flashes of radio from the mesh bag. The little beads were clamoring to be let out.
Soon, he thought. When we have the right audience.
A CONSTANT WIND soared through the towers of Lux. It flooded in across the mountains and wound sinuously around the hills, coming from the dark hemisphere of Oculus. Sometimes, when Rue stepped out onto the balcony of her apartment high above the city, she had a momentary panic reaction: hull breach! This reaction was never more than a flash, but it always left her jammed with adrenaline. Lux held no outlet for the jagged energy of fear; not now that Crisler and Mallory were gone.
She didn't miss the bastards, of course; it was Max she longed for. And (though she tried not to admit this to herself) Mike.
So, at times like this she walked. Walking was a luxury she'd never known on Allemagne, but on Treya she had learned to associate walking with freedom. On this occasion, as commonly happened, her steps had taken her into the Night City.
Since Colossus never moved in the sky, day and night were conventions on Oculus. The day was defined by three eight-hour shifts, and social networks arose chiefly among people who shared shifts. Soon after their rescue from the ocean depths, Rue had taken care to move her «day» shift to correspond with Michael Bequith's "night." That way, she could minimize the chances of their meeting.
Sometimes, as she walked here, Rue would think about Dis. She had only visited Michael Bequith's nightmare one time, on board the submarine; but it had been enough. In its loneliness and isolation that frozen scrap of world had been akin to Allemagne and the Envy. Yet, of all Mike's kami, those of Dis were not spirits of a place, but echoes of an ancient species. Rue had felt them— present, yet fading, like a dying ember. They were merging back into the all-encompassing sky of stars— yet Rue had not felt that they were vanishing. Rather, they were expanding, like the sphere of light from a star, gradually becoming one with the vast and eternal stillness of space itself.
All her life Rue had thought of herself as small and singular, like a mote of dust battered to and fro by fate. In one moment of understanding the kami of Dis had shown her fragile individuality to be an illusion. The reality of who she— or anyone— was, was infinitely greater.
The Night City was a vast sprawling complex of arcades and sub-ice warrens, all windowless. There were huge caverns here, their ceilings studded with lights to simulate stars. The city held markets, restaurants, theaters, and the inevitable prostitute's quarter. The constant murmur of crowds was seductive, the press of bodies allowing a reassuring anonymity— but Rue often walked the darkest streets, because what was pitch-black to others was perfectly visible to her. She could easily avoid those who lurked in what they thought were shadows.
After two years of struggling to better herself and her people, Rue found herself alone again. The remnants of her crew were scattered, Rebecca, Blair, Evan, and Corinna back aboard the Envy, but as prisoners; Max forever dead; and Michael Bequith exiled into the streets of Lux. The only soul who knew even the slightest thing about Rue or her dreams was the academic Herat, and though she saw him during their regular sessions of militia training, she didn't feel close to him.