“You told them?” Roshaun said.
“I did,” said Nelaid.
“Then by your leave, royal father,” Roshaun said, “I go. And, Father, I am sorry.”
“My son,” Nelaid said, “the Aethyrs go with you.”
And carefully, as if he wasn’t sure how to do it in front of all these people, Nelaid embraced his son. The sound from the crowd swelled, still confused, but somehow approving.
Roshaun let his father go. “I have to attach this to a substrate,” he said, as he produced his manual again and reached into it, pulling out the compressed darkness that was the subsidized worldgate.
“Go ahead, son.”
As Roshaun made his way back toward the wall near the doors, Dairine saw Nelaid throw her a look that was much less stiff than his regard had been earlier. She bowed her head to him again, not too far for fear of what the tiara would do, and then turned to join Roshaun, with Spot spidering along behind her.
“You were going to have some coordinates for me?” Roshaun said.
“Here,” Spot said.
Roshaun flung the darkness of the worldgate up against the wall; it spread out into a black circle a few meters wide. “One thing,” Dairine said, as Spot fed the temporospatial coordinates of the Motherboard World to the worldgate wizardry.
“Yes?”
“Something you said back there,” Dairine said, as the worldgate’s vacuum-warding subroutine snapped to life. “‘When we come home from this errand’?”
“It was a slip of the tongue,” Roshaun said after a moment.
“And therefore not true?” Dairine said.
Roshaun wouldn’t answer.
Dairine smiled and led the way through the gate.
6: Collateral Damage
Nita looked around her as they materialized inside the vast space of the Crossings Worldgating Facility. It was night there; as usual after sunset, the vast, remote ceiling had apparently vanished, and the milky turbulence of the upper atmosphere had cleared, letting the extravagant night sky of Rirhath B show through.
Automatically Nita did the first thing you do in the Crossings when appearing out of nowhere: she looked down to check whether the transport surface they were all standing on was “dedicated” or not. Fortunately, it wasn’t. “Come on, guys,” Nita said, “everybody out of the zone.”
Filif followed Nita over the line as Kit and Ponch and Ronan were crossing over in a slightly different direction. Ponch bounded past them, lolloping off down the wide central corridor of this part of the Crossings. “Don’t run!” Nita called after him, concerned that he would go crashing into some unsuspecting alien; but there wasn’t much point. They were easily a quarter mile from the nearest other beings who were catching late (or early) gates to their destinations. Ponch galloped along, oblivious, tail wagging, and no one paid him any attention.
Nita looked at her watch as Sker’ret poured past her, heading for one of the many bluesteel information kiosks that rose ten or twelve feet from the floor at intervals all along the length of the concourse. It really is later than we’ve usually been in here before, Nita thought. To her watch, she said, “Crossings time, please?”
The face of the watch restructured itself to show her the thirty-three-hour Crossings day. It’s nearly twenty-nine o’clock, Nita thought. Probably no surprise that traffic’s a little down.
Ronan had stopped just the other side of the line and was standing there staring up at the vast starry darkness overhead. Rirhath’s neighborhood of space was full of variable stars that slowly but visibly shrank and swelled while you watched. “It’s like they’re breathing,” Ronan said.
Beside him, Kit nodded. “You haven’t been here before?” Kit said.
“Once,” Ronan said. “It wasn’t anything like this then.”
Kit smiled. “The daytime view’s interesting, though I always wonder what’d happen to all that levitating stained glass up at ceiling level if they had a power failure. This is a lot less tense.”
He looked after Ponch as Nita and Filif came over to them. “You know what he’s after,” Nita said, looking after Ponch.
Kit shrugged. “Give him a moment to run,” he said. “When he comes back we’ll get down to business.” Then he yawned.
“You and me both,” Nita said, rubbing her eyes. “It’s getting late back home. We ought to think about where we’ll stop for the night.”
“Wherever Ponch leads us,” Ronan said. “My passenger’ll stand guard while we’re sleeping. Everybody’s got their pup tents with them, so they’ll be comfortable enough.”
“And I’ve got my cellphone,” Nita said. “If my dad needs to get in touch, he won’t have any trouble: Tom enabled his for the manual network ages ago.” Or at least at the moment it seemed like ages. She sighed. “I still wish we could sleep at home… I’m getting nervous about what’s going on there.”
“Going back and forth wouldn’t be smart,” Ronan said. “For one thing, it’d make us a lot easier to track. Might as well just send the Lone One an invitation to follow us straight to wherever we’re going.”
“Yeah, I know.” Nita knew he was right; she just hated to admit it.
Sker’ret was reared up against the nearby kiosk, using numerous upper legs to work its controls. Nita went over to him and looked over a couple of his topmost shoulders. Below the kiosk’s translucent surface, in which Sker’ret’s topmost two pairs of legs were partially embedded, several layers of patches of light flowed with characters in the Speech. “Find what you’re looking for?” she said.
Sker’ret curved a couple of eyes backward to meet hers. “Not yet,” he said.
He’s never this terse. What’s going on? She rested a hand on that beautiful candy-glazed metallic-purple carapace, just behind the head segment. “Sker’, are you okay?”
He sagged a little. “Not entirely.” He turned some eyes up to gaze at the deep red charactery now running up and down the kiosk-pillar’s length.
“If you need help—”
“Not at the moment. But thank you.” Sker’ret curved back another couple of eyes toward her. “What about Ponch?”
Down the concourse Nita could see the shiny black shape wandering along toward them, still wagging his tail. “I’ll see if he’s ready to start work,” she said.
Kit was standing there with his arms folded, shaking his head, watching Ponch head toward them. You were trying to overhear what he was smelling, Nita said privately. Any luck?
Kit gave her a resigned look. Motor oil, he said. Cocoa.
Motor oil? Nita turned to look up the concourse at Ponch again; he had paused to sniff at another of the information kiosks. I guess for him those smells symbolize what Ronan and the Champion are after?
That’s my guess, Kit said. He thinks he’s on the right track. All we can do is let him get on with it.
Ponch came ambling over to Kit, looked up at him, and nosed his hand. I’m hungry!
Ronan came back to them and looked down at Ponch. “So when do you get started?”
Ponch gave Ronan a slightly scornful look. I’ve been working ever since we got here. But I’ll need a little more time to sort the scents out. For the time being, you just talk among yourselves.
What amused Nita was that he was looking only at Ronan while he said it. Ronan looked a little taken aback.
Ponch turned his back on him. And while I work on the scent-sorting, he said to Kit, wagging his tail, we might as well get something to eat!