And she had jumped right down the dragon's gullet. Like some silly sacrificial virgin.
Personnel egress from the bay was sealed but not locked. The corridor beyond was empty of air and light too. Surface paint was cracked, chipped, peeling. There was dust everywhere.
"Is it deserted?"
"Somebody shot at our drones."
"Somebody opened that bay."
And closed it again, too.
Valerena took the lead.
Hours passed. Nothing changed. Was it all for show? A test to nervous destruction?
Maybe. She was riding the edge of getting spooked. They came to a huge hall. It was dark but there was a trace of atmosphere. "We'll break here. Feed ourselves."
Valerena swallowed a mouthful of liquified slop. Four hours already.
"Hey!"
"What?"
"I saw something. Over by that display."
Six lights beamed that way. Valerena examined the instrument pack she carried.
"There!"
"I didn't see anything."
"I saw it, but I don't believe it. He was naked."
"Put the weapons away," Valerena cautioned. "Sit tight. See what happens." The pack said there was somebody out there.
The watcher hung around the edge of the light, shy as a fairy. Valerena glimpsed him once. A young him. He wore no protection against cold and vacuum.
Fed, rested, less rattled despite the improbable observer, Valerena said, "Let's catch him."
Ten minutes later, she knew they were being watched more closely than was possible for one pair of eyes. She could not surround him. She was being led. That imp stayed right there at the edge of the light.... She let the chase continue because he was the only contact they had made. Impossible as he was.
He left bare footprints in the dust.
Valerena saw the boy slip through a hatchway a hundred meters ahead. "I'm ready for another break."
Someone said, "I feel like I'm caught in a fairy tale."
The adventure became more unreal by the minute.
Valerena stepped through the hatchway—into intense light, acceptable warmth, decent atmosphere. The place appeared to be a battle command center. "Spread out and squat. This is the place." A minute later, "This is getting too weird. Did I have some damn fool reason for coming here?"
Time passed. Some of the Others cracked their suits. The boy flitted, watching. He grew more bold. But not much.
"The hell with this shit. I'm crapping out. Long as we're all right don't wake me up."
— 70 —
Turtle glanced up as Midnight bustled in. "What is it?"
"We're going to Tregesser Prime. A Voyager just came for Blessed. He's taking us with him."
He just looked at her.
"Aren't you excited?"
"No."
"Oh."
He had explained his moral quandry. She understood but was not worried. He was Turtle, and Turtle did not hurt people.
He wished he had faith in himself. Temptation and rationalization had him back-against-the-wall. "Have you seen Amber Soul?"
"Yes. She wasn't excited, either."
"I'd better pack if I'm going traveling."
It worked. Midnight said, "Oh! Me too!" and fluttered out.
Turtle did no packing. He had none to do. He settled back to ponder an odd question Blessed had asked recently. Had he ever heard of a stardrive, overdrive, hyperdrive, whatever, that ignored the Web?
He had. But in no context suggesting such a thing was possible. It was the intellectual toy of fantacists who carped against the restraints imposed by the Web.
Turtle had asked why.
"Curiosity. My hobby is trying to figure out where the human race came from. It didn't evolve on any of the worlds it occupies today. It didn't migrate into Canon space on the Web. Its first contact with the Web came a thousand years before Canon's founding, when the Go visited M. Vilbrantia in the Octohedron. All eight systems there had been occupied for several thousand years before that.
"Pity about the Go," Blessed had said.
In its first millennium on the Web, humanity fought eighteen wars with its benefactors. There was no need for a nineteenth. The Guardships came onto the stage of the Web in triumph complete and absolute.
Blessed scowled at Nyo. "Let the bastards grumble. I don't move till everything is set. I want nothing left for Provik's scavengers or the Guardships. Cable."
"Yes?"
"What's the data situation? They haven't come back, but that doesn't mean they didn't get something. Did they?"
"I don't think so. I can't find a hole that would've caught their attention."
"What're you doing now?"
"Trying to figure out how to get our guests into Tregesser Horata."
"Anybody going to get suspicious if I turn up with an artifact for a playmate?"
"No."
"There's one covered."
"Artifacts come and go. Ku warriors don't."
"It's your competence. Where's Tina, Nyo?"
"Fussing around trying to get everything on the lighter."
"And I've got everything loaded but live baggage," a voice said from Nyo's wrist. "Will you come on?"
Blessed glanced around. "I always feel like I'm forgetting something."
Nyo grunted. Cable did not say anything till they were on the launch platform. And that was something Blessed did not want to hear. "We'll have to bring Provik in on this eventually. There's no way around it."
"That means handing the whole damned thing over."
"He'll have somebody on the Voyager. He'll have somebody around us every minute. There won't be any way to hide the Ku."
The first person Blessed saw aboard the Voyager was that woman who had been Provik's companion that last day in the Pylon.
She smiled her enigmatic smile.
— 71 —
N. Etoartsia 3. Tregesser Hyxalag High City. Myth Worgemuth sneered. He had seen DownTowns that pleased him more.
The High City was bedecked with special effects. It was some damned holiday he did not understand and had no intention of understanding, though he was hosting a gala for Tregesser Hyxalag's cream.
Be barely better than scum in Tregesser Horata, he told himself, and kept smiling.
He looked out at the High City, sneered again, glanced at his guests. The locals ignored him. He could slide out for a dip without anyone noticing.
He slipped.
He was dipping from a jar of Jane—the finest True Blue—when he realized he was not alone. A figure in black moved toward him. "Who the hell are you?" The figure unnerved him. He backed toward the doorway.
"Go ahead and snort, Myth."
"Valerena? What're you doing here?"
"Take it, Myth."
He looked down the half-meter barrel of a hairsplitter. Its compressed sodium bullet could cook his brain beyond hope of reclamation.
He snorted a dip. The euphoria started immediately.
"Do one on the other side."
Voice frightened but growing languorous, he protested, "That would put me out of it."
"Do it, Myth."
He did it. He had no choice, did he?
Two minutes later he needed help standing. The woman in black helped. She led him to the rail of the balcony, where he could support himself. She dropped his jar of Jane. A fortune spilled across the balcony. He did not notice.
"Goodbye, Myth." She squatted, lifted his ankles, flipped him over the rail.
He giggled for a while, having fun flying. Then he stopped doing anything at all forever.
— 72 —
The Trajana ghost bustled around WarAvocat, babbling, straining his patience. But he was learning more than he wanted to know about phantom phantoms.
The ghost never did catch on.
He found no breech in the closure of IV Trajana's Core. Trajana, having subsumed its crew into a single character, had become neurotic and lonely but not diseased. The Core tissue remained safely sterile.