‘Not what we came for, but I’ll turn a profit, if I can manage to get off this moon.’
‘It’s not as if you need to do this, to rob me,’ I said bitterly.
He nodded. ‘True. You actually have the stronger motive here. Which is why I have to destroy you.’ He spoke patiently, as if instructing a child. He raised the bone, its bulging end thick, hefting it like a club, and he moved towards me, his movements oily, powerful.
I felt weak before his calm assurance. He was better than me, and always would be; the logic of the situation was that I should just submit.
In desperation I jumped onto the lift palette – it was like standing on a bobbing raft – and stamped on the button. I rose immediately, passing beyond the reach of his swinging club. I had been too fast, faster than his reactions. The advantage of youth.
But L’Eesh easily prised another palette out of the wall and followed me up into the darkness.
My palette accelerated, bumping against walls that were as rough as sandpaper. L’Eesh’s green glow followed me, bioluminescent signals flickering.
Thus our ascension, two dead people racing into the sky.
On an interplanetary scale the tunnel arched, but from my petty human point of view it rose straight up. All I could see was a splash of bio light on the crude brickwork around me, sliding past, blurred by my speed.
L’Eesh tried to defeat me with words.
‘Imagine, Raida,’ he said softly. ‘They must have come here from across the moon, carrying their mud bricks, a global pilgrimage that must have lasted generations. What a vision! They sacrificed everything – abandoned their farms, trashed their biosphere down to the slime on the rocks … And you know what? The two populations must have worked together to build their bridge, so they could continue their war. I mean, you couldn’t build it just from one end or the other, could you? They cooperated so they could get at each other and carry on fighting. In the end, the war became the most important thing in their universe. More important than life, the continuation of the species.’
‘Insane,’ I whispered.
‘Ah, but once we built vast structures, waged terrible wars, all in the names of gods we have long forgotten. And are we so different now? What of our magnificent Galaxy-spanning Expansion? Isn’t that a grandiose folly built around an idea, a mad vision of cosmic destiny? Who do you think we more resemble – this moon’s warmongers or its peacemakers?’
I was exhausted. I clung to my scrap of ancient technology as it careened up into the dark.
That sleek voice whispered in my ear, on and on. ‘You can never live up to Hily’s memory, little Raida. You do see that, don’t you? You needn’t feel you have failed. For you could never have succeeded … I saw your mother die.’
‘Shut up, L’Eesh.’
‘I was at her side—’
‘Shut up.’
He fell silent, waiting.
I knew he was manipulating me, but I couldn’t help but ask. ‘Tell me.’
‘She was shot in the back.’
‘Who?’
‘It doesn’t matter. She was killed for her catch, her trophies. Her death wasn’t dishonourable. She must even have expected it. We are a nation of thieves, you see, we hunters. You shouldn’t feel bitter.’
‘I don’t feel anything.’
‘Of course not.’
His brooding glow was edging closer.
I closed my eyes. What would Hily have said? Use your head. There is always an option.
I took my hand off the button. The palette rocked to a halt. ‘Get it over,’ I panted.
Now he had nothing to say; his words had fulfilled their purpose. He closed, that eerie green glow sliding over the crude brickwork.
And I jammed my hand back on the button. My palette lumbered into motion. I watched the exhaust gather into a thick crimson mist below me.
L’Eesh hurtled up into the mist, crouching on his palette – which abruptly cracked apart and crumbled. Stranded in the air, he arced a little higher, and then began to fall amid the fragments.
I sat there until my heart stopped rattling. Then I followed him down.
‘My fall is slow,’ he said, analytic, observing. ‘Low gravity, high air resistance. You could probably retrieve me. But you won’t.’
‘Come on, L’Eesh. It’s business, just as you said. You know what happened. These palettes extract their energy from the vacuum energy sea.’
‘Leaving some kind of deficit in their wake, into which I flew. Yes? And so we both die here.’ He forced a laugh. ‘Ironic, don’t you think? In the end we’ve cooperated to kill each other. Just like the inhabitants of these desolate moons.’
But I was thinking it over. ‘Not necessarily.’
‘What?’
‘Suppose I head up to the midpoint of the bridge and burn my way through the wall. Pohp ought to see me and come in for me. I’d surely be far enough out of the vacuum field for the Spline to approach safely.’
‘What about the quarantine ships?’
‘They must primarily patrol the moons’ low orbits. Perhaps I’d be far enough from the surface of either moon to leave them asleep.’
He considered. ‘It would take days to get there. But it might work. You have something of your mother’s pragmatism, little Raida. I guess you win.’
‘Maybe we both win.’
There was silence. Then he said coldly, ‘Must I beg?’
‘Make me an offer.’
He sighed. ‘There has been a sighting of a school of Spline. Wild Spline.’
I was startled. ‘Wild?’
‘These Spline are still spacegoing. But certain of their behavioural traits have reverted to an ancestral state. They believe they swim in their primordial ocean—’
I breathed, ‘Nobody has ever hunted a Spline.’
‘It would be glorious. Like the old days. Hily would be proud.’ It was as if I could hear his smile.
I was content with the deal. It was enough that I’d beaten him; I didn’t need to destroy him.
Not yet. Not until I knew who killed my mother.
We argued percentages, all the way down towards the light.
The human victory was probably always inevitable. We were better at waging war: after all, we had spent a hundred thousand years practising on each other.
But the war transformed humanity too. After seventeen hundred years of conflict the Coalition’s grip on mankind, body and soul, was total.
We undying kept out of sight, tending our own long-term concerns. But we never went away.
The Expansion swept on across the face of the Galaxy, centralised, united, purposeful, ideological, purified by war.
It was not healthy to be in its way.
PART THREE: ASSIMILATION
LAKES OF LIGHT
AD 10,102
The Navy ferry stood by. From the ship’s position, several stellar diameters away, the cloaked star was a black disc, like a hole cut out of the sky.
Pala was to descend to the star alone in a flitter – alone save for her Virtual tutor, Commissary Dano.
The flitter, light and invisible as a bubble, swept inwards, silent save for the subtle ticking of its instruments. The star had about the mass of Earth’s sun and, though it was dark, Pala imagined she could feel that immense mass tugging at her.
Her heart hammered. This really was a star, but it was somehow cloaked, made perfectly black save for pale, pixel-small specks, flaws in the dark mask, specks that were lakes of light. She’d seen the Navy scouts’ reports, even studied the Virtuals, but until this moment she hadn’t been able to believe in the extraordinary reality.