But the light is so dim, the sun so far away.
“Old moon,” Ulyanova says dismissively, then gestures for us to look forward, to where the strips converge, creating a kind of asterisk. Something large blanks the stars out there, in front of the ship, no way of knowing how far. The silhouette is all we’ve got to go on.
“Looks like a gift pack of railroad ties,” DJ says. “But how big?”
“Is that the transmitter?” I ask Ulyanova.
“No,” she says. “This not even Gurus know—I do not know. Something interested only by comets, moons, sometimes planets. Every few thousand years, it moves them around—but nothing else. Brain has records of its activity going back a billion years.”
“Who made it?”
She shakes her head. “Ship does not know,” she says.
“Really?” DJ says. “None of you know all there is to know?”
She diverts her glare but does not push him away. “Really,” she says. “It is always here—always avoided. Brain does not like it. Old ghosts do not like it, either.”
“How big is it?” I ask.
“No size,” she says. “We see it, maybe it sees us—but it has always ignored everything Guru, all the little wars—ignored even bugs, the ghosts say.”
“Older than the bugs?”
“Much older.”
“Cool!” DJ says. “I like it. Maybe it explains Planet X.”
I shiver, and not just because of the cold. Something to deal with even if we shed the Gurus?
Or something that makes all of this, all of us, possible?
Looking between DJ’s enthusiasm and my dismay, Ulyanova seems to soften. She raises her hand to touch and comb her straw-stiff hair. “All will sleep soon,” she says. “Ship will make leap to transmitter, then to Antagonista world. Long leaps. Out beyond is realm of madness—madness and birth.”
DRIFTING BETWEEN THE ribbons and staring forward at the asterisk where the ribbons meet, for no reason I can fathom, I spend my relaxation time keeping track of that unknown object.
“Are you God?” I murmur.
No answer. The object is alone. It does not care. It does what it does, nothing more.
Keep looking, grunt.
Joe joins me and I try to explain, but he shakes his head. “I’m full up with weird shit,” he says. I know he’s not an atheist, but he’s never told me what he thinks or believes.
“Ulyanova says it isn’t Guru,” I say. “That’s got to be important!”
“Maybe she’s lying. Maybe it’s all Guru.”
“What do you want, out here?” I ask, angry.
He touches my shoulder. “There’s so much shit I got wrong,” he says. “It’s going to take a while, I know, but I just want to make it right and get us home.”
AFTERBIRTH
Days, maybe a week. Who can keep track?
For the time being, we’re still parked tens of thousands of klicks beyond Pluto, in sight of that ancient mystery. Looking doesn’t give me any more information, though that moon-shifter out there does look remarkably like a Christmas ornament assembled from model railroad parts.
No motion, no alarms.
Bird Girl has been gone for some time and no other Antags have come forward to visit. Maybe Budgie is keeping them busy.
The squad has been rearranging quarters, as I thought we would, as if that might help pass the time and make a difference. DJ and I share one sphere, where he appears to be fast asleep, curled up in a ball. But his eyes are flicking. Neither of us is sleeping if we can avoid it. We’re waiting for that forced sleep that hasn’t arrived. We all want to be awake when it comes.
Every few hours, I emerge from our cubby to study the views available through the ribbons, which keep us from being completely blind, like cave fish, up in this needle snout. The clock faces, even when not occupied by a searcher or two, are too cluttered, too abstract—not for the likes of us.
DJ joins me, rubbing his eyes.
“Shit, I fell asleep,” he says. “Anything different?”
“Not a thing.”
More of the squad emerges, or returns from excursions aft. Going aft makes all of us nervous. Jacobi returns first and looks around with her sharp-eyed squint. She shakes her head. Nothing new there, either. No threats.
“No sign of fighters,” she says.
“Tracking Antags?”
“They’re busy down south somewhere, close to the clover lake. Still not interacting.”
Negatives are mostly good, I think.
Now Kumar, Tak, Joe, and Litvinov join us. Kumar’s quiet, as usual. Litvinov just seems depressed.
“Do starshina and efreitor still control?” he asks for the third or fourth time. “Behind smoke?”
I say, also for the third or fourth time, “Probably.”
“Great and powerful wizard,” DJ says.
A searcher waits nearby, in case we need help. We don’t.
Borden joins us next. “Doesn’t seem solid,” she says, looking at the curtain. “Probably not hard to penetrate. Anybody been behind?”
Ninth or tenth time for that question. As if we won’t announce it loud and clear, when—if—it happens.
“Not yet,” I say.
“And you don’t want to force the issue?” the commander asks.
“She allows us to see a little of what they’re doing, not much,” I say.
“They’re redecorating,” DJ says, and makes room between the ribbons for Ishida and Ishikawa. We’re a knot of people holding hands and footing off against the ribbons.
“Steam heat and hot soup,” I say. “I think we’ll be invited in when Ulyanova is happy with the results.”
“Do you guys understand how irritating this is?” Borden asks. “Having to get everything through you!”
“I’ve never believed it would work,” Jacobi says.
Kumar says, “Using the Ice Moon Tea and crystals, taking a chance that one of us could channel a Guru, was the best hope we had.”
“Did that work?” Jacobi asks, facetious.
“Maybe,” I say after a long silence. “We have to trust that the bugs knew more about Gurus than we do.”
“A hundred billion years ago!” Ishida says.
“Not that long,” DJ murmurs.
“Well, then, you tell me!”
He shrugs. “A long time, not that much.”
“This ship has been cruising around the solar system, and outside, for ages,” I say. “The most important question is whether the bugs rid themselves of the Gurus way back when… and if they did, whether their tactics can work again.”
“Any sign we’re being watched by cage dudes?” Joe asks.
“Nothing yet,” Borden says.
Litvinov says, “I am curious about screw gardens. Whole ship is filled with them. Maybe we become fertilizer for all the green.”
That’s a new idea, to me at least. I don’t like it, but it touches key biological points well enough.
“Any idea what they are?” Borden asks us.
I shake my head, to her disgust.
Joe says, “If the bugs got rid of the Gurus, how did they come back? Where are they from originally? What can Ulyanova tell us about that?”
“She’s communicated bits and pieces about the ship,” I say. “But there’s lots of stuff that either the Gurus don’t know or the ship doesn’t know.”
“I find that truly dismaying,” Kumar says.
“Huh!” Jacobi says.
“How closely connected are the Gurus and this ship?” Borden asks. “How much do they need it to get around and survive?” That may be the smartest question yet.