He heard her suck in a breath, then the comm followed with rustling movement and more creaking. “I’m here.” Now her voice was cut with the sound of wind. More creaking, followed by a snap, and she gasped.
“Are you all right?”
“The lifeboat shifted,” she whispered.
“Do you see anything within reach?”
“I’m looking . . . There’s a branch below the door. It’s about a meter in diameter.”
“Perfect, can one of you get to it?”
“I don’t know if I—” Her voice was cut off by more rustling and creaking, and Mallory heard muffled voices he couldn’t make out.
“Dr. Dörner?”
“Leon said he can try.”
“Okay,” Mallory sucked in a breath. “What kind of shape is Dr. Brody in? Is he conscious?”
“No. We’ve tried waking him.”
Mallory sucked in a breath. None of the options were particularly good, but they couldn’t stay in the lifeboat. “Can you move him yourself?”
“I-I don’t think so.”
“Then you and Dr. Pak need to move him to the doorway. Then Dr. Pak can go outside and help you pass Dr. Brody through the doorway.”
“You make it sound simple.”
“I know it isn’t,” Mallory said. “Slow and careful. You can’t stay in that lifeboat.”
“Father Mallory?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you pretend to be someone else? Isn’t that a sin?”
Mallory paused and then said, “I’ve only done what the Church asked of me. We’re all sinners looking for God’s forgiveness. Now, please, get yourself and Dr. Brody out of there.”
“I’ll need two hands,” she said. He heard her set down the comm unit. He started walking again, hearing only the protesting tree, grunts, and soft, inarticulate speech. Every passing minute, the groaning wood seemed to get louder, and occasionally something would pop.
He felt his chest tighten when he heard static blare over the comm followed by a horribly loud crashing sound.
“Dr. Dörner!” he shouted into the unit, breaking into a run even though he was still at least nine kilometers away from them. “Dr. Dörner!”
After nearly thirty seconds of panic, the comm came alive again. “We’re fine. The comm fell from my belt while we were moving Dr. Brody.”
Mallory stopped running, the relief almost a physical blow. “Is everyone out?”
“Not me, not yet.”
“Can you make it?”
“Yes. But can I ask you something, Father Mallory?”
“What?”
“Do you know what happened to Xi Virginis?”
“No, Dr. Dörner. But I think God led me here to find out.”
“God or Mosasa?”
“God is free to choose any instrument to work His will.”
She hesitated before asking, “Did you sabotage our communications?”
“No, I didn’t.”
“I’m going out the door now.” She added, almost in a whisper, “Pray for me.”
Mallory did as she asked.
Alexander had never seen the Grand Triad gripped by such chaos. Progress of the Salmagundi government was always slow and deliberative, filled as it was by minds self-selected for their caution and traditional nature. It was always annoying, but now it had verged on the dangerous.
Alexander had, through debate, reason, cajoling, and very subtle threats, brought the Triad around to his position both on eliminating the Protean threat and allowing the Eclipse to land. For a few hours, things had gone smoothly, the Eclipse making no objections to their traffic control directions, maneuvering to approach and limiting their radio traffic as requested.
And, despite the objections of the Ashley Triad and the area lumber interests, Alexander had gotten consensus around the idea of using their limited nuclear arsenal to eliminate the threat from the invader. Once the Eclipse was on the surface and under guard, a single attack would wipe the alien object from the face of the planet. The crew of the Eclipse, whoever they were, would have no need to know that the Proteans ever existed.
Then the Eclipse had exploded.
Alexander had watched the observatory footage as the engines of the ship had blown themselves into space, carrying a good part of the ship with them. Then the lifeboats burst from the skin of the craft, and suddenly their contact with the rest of the universe was less direct and controlled.
Worse, the Eclipse was not alone.
The display above the meeting room showed a schematic view of the space in orbit around Salmagundi. The location of the Eclipse highlighted in red, two other ships showing up blue, one of the two attached parasitically to the wreckage of the Eclipse. An inset showed a map of the area to the west of Ashley covering about a hundred thousand square kilometers. The inset was from a weather satellite, and if Alexander stared at it hard enough, he could see the scar from the alien’s impact about two hundred kilometers into the woods southwest of Ashley. The site was highlighted by a red circle.
Six other circles now dotted the woods southwest of Ashley. One of the Eclipse’s lifeboats had made landfall within a dozen klicks of the city, and would have been in full view of the population if it had landed in daylight.
“We need to secure these landing sites now; it’s been nearly six hours.”
“Calling up a larger security detail will make it impossible to contain this news. There are already unacceptable rumors surrounding the existing incident—”
“And when we detonate a nuclear weapon? Are you going to contain those rumors?”
“We have a limited supply of militarily capable units. We should not risk them—”
“If not on this, what? We’re being invaded. We need to focus on the craft approaching us. Did they see the damage to the Eclipse as an attack?”
Alexander glanced up at the schematic. At the edge of the view, maybe a million kilometers from the planet, a spreading line of blue contacts were edging into view. He counted twelve. Fifteen minutes ago, there had been six.
The Grand Triad had been debating for hours, and for once Alexander could see no hint of consensus coming. We will collapse under the weight of our own arguments. . . .
With the eyes of his ancestors, he watched the room and saw the shape of the coming disaster. If the civilization they’d built on Salmagundi had a weakness, it was this hesitation in the face of the unknown. He knew that it was only going to worsen as the stakes increased. He had seen it growing as they debated the nuclear option, but even then it hadn’t reached the crisis point. Then, the Grand Triad had reached a conclusion.
This was different.
There was no way they could defend themselves if they vested power in the disparate parts of the Triad. As much as they wanted to, there was no way they could emulate the merger of minds and souls exemplified by the Hall of Minds outside of a single skull.
Even knowing all this, the internal debate Alexander Shane underwent in coming to his own personal consensus was almost as long in coming as the nonexistent decision of the Triad. But when his own decision came, he welcomed it and started it into motion.
He checked the chronometer on his comm and it showed 10:00, a third of the way into Salmagundi’s thirty-hour day. He stood up and formally excused himself. The debate around him barely rippled, acknowledging his departure. Harrison took over the chair and did less to rein in the chaos than Alexander had.
Like Alexander, he had the experience of enough lives to know how pointless it was to attempt to force the Triad toward action at a time like this. Unlike Alexander, he was satisfied with the traditional inaction.