Then—
It’s a reality.
The new voice is startlingly sweet, like birdsong in a forest. It rises and drops, and then finds a kind of level range, and I know it for the first time—like Coyle, female, but very different. I’m about to confront the new user, but between us rises again that master steward of the ancient memory stores, the thing whose existence has scared the living fuck out of the Gurus and the Wait Staff.
Inquire.
“What do we say to each other?” I ask. “How do we do this?”
“What are they, Vinnie?” Joe asks. He sounds remarkably scared. “Bug descendants? Natives of Titan?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Captain Coyle isn’t in the picture anymore.”
You have the music. You are suitable as users.
I think this through quickly. I feel like an idiot. I feel as if my lips are moving as I try to read a book.
“You’re mumbling again,” Jacobi says, irritated.
I open my eyes. Ishida is watching me. The silvery void wraps across her concerned face.
“Steady keeping. Ice torpedoes still wait to crush us.” This is Ulyanova.
My focus shifts. I stare into the infinite silver at the resplendent, uncertain outline of the other user, the mind that is also here, and by golly, there is a certain something, an awareness that we are related, maybe more distantly than a snail or a cockroach, but still…
Inquire.
Like playing a TV game show. I sat next to my grandmother on that old-dog-stinky, Afghan-covered couch in Fresno while she watched her favorite game shows, and she knew the rules, the routines. I need to be as smart as my grandma.
I try to stay away from the new user and focus the silver on the master steward. Don’t want to say something stupid or be rude.
“Are we both descended from those who made you?” I ask.
Yes.
Inquire.
“Another mind?” I ask. “Something else affected by the tea? DJ!” I say.
“With you, bro,” he says. His voice has changed. “This is a joint and a half, ain’t it?”
“Can you see the other one? The other user?”
“Yeah.”
“What do you think?”
“I think I should resign my commission.”
DJ is a noncom.
“Tell me!”
“Well, this much is obvious,” DJ says. “It’s not Coyle, it’s not a bug… and it’s not human.”
“You guys are driving me nuts!” Joe shouts. “Give me some actionable!”
After all Joe has done to and for me, I feel a weird moment of justification.
“Those folks out there, they don’t want to kill us,” DJ says with a deep sigh. “Not anymore. We need each other.”
“What the fuck does that mean?” Jacobi asks sharply. She looks stretched and exhausted. We’re twelve klicks beneath the icy crust of Titan, within sensor range of a grove of massive, crystalline pillars that rise from the cross-ridged floor of the saline sea to the frozen roof. The ice torpedoes are poised between us and a flotilla of huge weapons—overwhelming force.
I break through the silver and look steadily at Jacobi. “Captain Coyle has handed me over to something else,” I say to her. “Someone new.”
She gives me a conspiratorial squint. “What sort of someone?”
“Still trying to find out,” I say.
Inquire.
“What do we do now?” I ask the steward.
Use the sense your music gives you. Speak to your partner.
“We need to surrender,” DJ says softly.
“Is DJ nuts?” Joe calls back. “Vinnie—is he nuts?”
“I don’t know!” I say. “Maybe they want to take us someplace safe. Someplace where we can meet and talk.”
I still can’t see the other clearly. Maybe she doesn’t want to be seen clearly. Maybe there’s not that much trust despite our common music and the master steward.
Inquire.
“Where do they want to take us?” I ask. I feel the archive lightly brush parts of my mind.
Use the sense the music gives you.
Great. I’m sitting on top of the most massive data store in the local universe, and it’s a stickler; I’m the user. I make the decisions. I could spend the next million years working through inquiries about limitations and rules, but all I got in my head is an image of that Antag helm on Mars, cupping a broken bird-head with four eyes and a raspy tongue.
And based on what I’m learning, remembering that, remembering all the dead and the dying and all the blood on my hands, all the friends and fellow soldiers now gone and all the blood on their hands, and all the bird-heads we’ve broken back there on Mars and Titan and everywhere else…
Nearly all female…
And then I get it. I understand. I know who’s out there, who’s driving those weapons. We’re both descended from the bugs.
And we’ve both been deceived.
That’s huge.
I simply want to break down and cry.
I rise above my confusion and try to figure out my strategy. What do I believe? What’s the truth, and how liable are we to counterintelligence, cointelpro, whatever the fuck you call it? I’m not a very good juggler. Maybe this is one ball that’s primed to explode.
Inquire.
“What went wrong? How did this happen? Who are the Gurus and what do they want to do to us, for us?”
The others hear me. They’re stunned into murmurs and prayers. Jacobi is trying to stifle sobs. Skyrines have sharp and sometimes predictive senses. Some of us already know the shock that’s coming. I feel sure that Joe knows. Has known for some time. Like Kumar and Mushran and even Borden. Division Four. Traitors all.
One inquiry at a time.
“Yeah—why are the Gurus doing this and telling us these things?” This seems to be simple enough, related enough to deserve an answer.
For billions of years, they and their kind have sold war to the outer stars.
I’m not sure I understand what that means. “Our war, you mean? Sold it how? How do you know this?”
One inquiry at a time.
“How do you know this?”
Long ago, they convinced us to fight with our brothers.
It lets me experience more directly what it’s saying—I see data feeds and communications radiating from our solar system. We’re being televised. We’re being recorded and spread around the galaxy….
“It’s a business for them? We’re entertainment?”
They transmit your fighting and dying, your wars and pain, out to far worlds. It fits an old pattern that to these forces, advanced into decadence and boredom, your people and troubles, your murder and pain, are amusing.
Inquire.
“Bugs fought for them?”
Many did. Those wars destroyed four moons. The final archive that preserves that history is this one.
Inquire.
Damn right. There’s a big question here. “Where did the moon come from that hit Mars and sprayed Earth?”
At the last, in desperation, one moon from this system was flung inward toward the sun, toward the young inner worlds. It failed to arrive as planned, and struck the fourth planet.