No one in UNSA considered mu-space as anything other than a milieu for sailing-routes along which vessels moved at their direction, for the sole purpose of shifting goods and people among the realspace colonies, research stations and Earth. The idea that mu-space was an entire universe in which Pilots might want to live . . . that had never, it seemed, occurred to them.
Until now, of course, there had been no place for a Pilot to live, no habitable location, except in realspace. But that was changing, and the stolen matter-compiler that Ro was transporting in her hold right now (and whose theft, or at least illegal export, Claude had assisted with) would be one more component in making this so.
But in order to carry out that mission – when everything she did was monitored by UNSA flight controllers, with no reason to go into mu-space except on a designated flight – she had temporarily abandoned a pod containing her VIP passengers, all deep in delta coma, leaving them to float safely in deep space. Then she had picked them up once more, and delivered them here to their destination; but they were late, and the effects of such a long time in coma, with two insertions into mu-space, were unpredictable: severe headaches at best.
‘Look . . .’ Claude’s gravelly Gallic voice took her out of her thoughts. ‘This explorer, Mam’selle Chandri, who has caused so much trouble . . . If you slip away quietly, there will be little fuss. She’s all they’re interested in.’
He was right, but as yet, Ro did not know whether her passengers were OK.
‘What if one of the passengers fails to wake up?’
‘And what if station personnel demand to scan the holds?’ Claude asked. ‘Standard procedure in an accident.’
‘They won’t find any malfunction.’
‘But’ – Claude raised a bushy eyebrow above one metallic eye socket – ‘they might find the matter compiler which MacLean and I stole for you.’
‘Goddamn it, Claude.’ She pronounced his name correctly, Claude-rhymes-with-ode, courtesy of her Zurich upbringing. ‘The passengers are my responsibility.’
He considered this, then nodded. ‘C’est ça. C’est exact, bien sûr.’
So they were in agreement. But as soon as Ro learned that the passengers had woken without medical emergencies, she was taking herself and Claude out of here. It was not just that the matter compiler in her ship’s hold was needed in mu-space – she had also made a binding promise to Claude that he would finally see, after years of blindness on Earth, the secret project-in-progress that select Pilots knew about. No one else in UNSA suspected that such a thing might be possible, never mind that such construction was already being carried out in a clandestine fashion, with volunteers working hard for the sake of the future.
Claude deserved to see the first huge constructions, the oddly growing halls and bays and courts that were already forming in ways that went beyond design parameters, with inherent systems evincing properties that excited the Pilots working there, for they exceeded anything that had been de liberately planned.
Labyrinth was going to be magnificent.
Bittersweet’s eyes changed colour from amber to honey as the light shifted. Her tabard and trews were grey, edged with silver, and there were flecks of grey in her fur. She was accompanied by a broad-antlered male who bowed deeply when Rekka said: ‘Redolent Mint. How are you doing, old friend?’
‘Well, thank you, Rekka.’
It had been a long time since Singapore, when Redolent Mint had been foremost among the bodyguards accompanying Bittersweet; except he had always been more than that, and was now clearly of senior rank.
He withdrew now, leaving Bittersweet and Rekka to talk in private, in a screened-off area of the arrivals/departures lounge. No one else was around: the centre of attention was currently the medical bay, where human passengers were being examined and awakened from delta-coma.
‘We always meet,’ said Bittersweet through her torc, ‘in surroundings your people have built.’
Rekka nodded, knowing Bittersweet understood the gesture.
‘And yet you are family to this Jared Schenck,’ Bittersweet continued. ‘Is that not true?’
‘Friend of the family.’
‘Perhaps, in any case, it is not hereditary.’
‘Excuse me?’ Rekka tried to work this out. ‘Are we talking about Jared?’
But Bittersweet was gesturing around the meeting area.
‘This is official, Rekka. We wish to constrain the relation ships between your people and ours.’
Rekka was not here as a UN ambassador: her objective had been to sort out the mess that Jared had caused, nothing more.
‘Your people that Jared attacked’ – Rekka knew that attack might imply some legal liability, but no longer cared – ‘have refused medical treatment. They insisted, or their friends insisted for them, on returning to the surface.’
‘To where they felt safe,’ said Bittersweet.
More turmoil in Rekka’s head: she had come to rescue Jared only to find him unlikeable at best; and now it seemed the Haxigoji were scared, of Jared or something more.
‘I don’t understand, Bittersweet.’
The reply stopped Rekka’s heart for a moment.
‘Do you not smell the darkness, Rekka Chandri?’
They finally said farewell in a calm, regretful fashion, after Bittersweet had detailed terms which Rekka knew that UNSA would have to agree with: Vachss Station alone to be where humans were based, with no more of the constant traffic between surface and orbital. Human individuals were to be allowed down to the surface only on occasion, after they had been vetted in advance, right here, by Haxigoji officials. The numbers of Haxigoji living on Vachss Station would diminish; and while they were here, they would live in separate quarters, capable of being isolated from the rest of the station, and equipped with drop-bugs that would allow them to evacuate and descend safely to Vijaya’s surface in case of emergency.
No definition of a likely emergency was ever spelt out.
As for Jared Schenck, the Haxigoji wanted him off the station as soon as possible, with no word said about punishment. Rekka felt they needed him to be far away, and that was enough; of course she agreed.
Finally Bittersweet’s double-thumbed hand grasped Rekka’s shoulder.
‘We will not meet again, I think.’
‘No . . .’ Rekka blinked. ‘I need to say . . . about Sharp.’
The grip, which could have crushed her shoulder, tightened just a fraction.
‘What about my brother?’
Rekka sniffed.
‘I loved him,’ she said. ‘I’ve never met anyone as brave.’
‘Neither have I, dear Rekka.’ Bittersweet’s alien eyes softened. ‘Neither have I.’
She bowed and walked away.
THIRTY-SIX
NULAPEIRON, 2713-2721 AD
At one point early in the extended process of self-transformation, something happened to give Kenna pause. Inside the Oraculum, where Lord Alvix’s proto-Oracles, still children, lay dreamily on couches and occasionally muttered fragments relating to future perceptions, the one called Mandia turned her head to stare at the wall – right where Kenna’s main sensors were hidden – and focused her eyes to an unusual extent.
‘Liquid. Crystal. Moving,’ she said, then turned her head away.
Her shoulders slumped into normal listlessness.
No. This tells me nothing new.
In particular, it did not guarantee Kenna’s success.
As for the alpha-class servitors who tended the poor, damaged children, they were unlikely to make anything of those words, for Kenna had hidden her project nicely. And of course the original crystal spearhead was long gone, no doubt in Labyrinth now. She wondered what the Admiralty analysts were making of it; but she had her own concerns, and in truth, she was neither Pilot nor ordinary human these days. She was a cyborg on the threshold of becoming something else.
Except that the transition took another eight years of preparation, by which time Mandia had become a young woman, or nearly so, and her Oracular perceptions had diminished as the rest of her brain rewired itself defensively: a process the researchers had allowed to continue, because it allowed them to analyse the warning signs of such reversal, and the complex neurochemical changes they would need to prevent in order to create true Oracles.