13
Coton at last drifted to sleep.
Vala returned to the Marshal’s cabin. Fold-out seats had been set up by the main observation window, and Sand sat there, cradling a cup of hot tea, Virtual status displays hovering around her head.
Behind a partition Sand’s crew controlled the flitter with military competence. And in another cabin Croq the antiquarian was adjusting his ancient Ghost teleport equipment, complaining about the challenge of interfacing systems from technological traditions separated by hundreds of thousands of years. But in this lounge the atmosphere was calm.
Vala sat down with Sand and picked up her own cup – which, when it sensed her presence, began to fill up with tea, a minor miracle bequeathed by some long-dead engineer of the deep past.
Sand asked, ‘Is the boy sleeping?’
‘Badly. The dreams—’
‘How sweet it is to hear their conversation,’ Sand said. Vala had arranged a pickup so that Coton’s sub-vocalising of Lura’s speech could be heard. ‘Boy chatting to girl, an eternal story. They aren’t so far removed in age, are they, Academician? Maybe if this girl is successfully retrieved through your lashed-up teleport, they’ll fall in love! How fitting that would be. If she isn’t turned into some grotesque protoplasmic mass, or if a million years in Beta’s super-gravity hasn’t turned her kind into monsters. And if the process doesn’t burn out his frontal lobe. Does Coton fully understand the risks for himself, by the way? I imagine not – I imagine you haven’t fully informed him – for Coton might have refused, and then you might have had to face the inconvenience of forcing him to obey your will. That wouldn’t fit your image of yourself at all, would it, Vala, as an Academician or a grandmother?’
Guilt swirled in Vala, under a crust of denial. But she had lived a long time and was in control of her emotions, she believed; and she clung to the principle that higher purposes sometimes required sacrifices. Yes, she thought. If she’d had to force her grandson into this, she would have done it. ‘Does it give you pleasure to jab at me in this way, Marshal?’
‘I am interested in people. I could hardly fulfil my role otherwise. And you are quite an extraordinary specimen, Academician. So much conflict! You seethe with ambition and resentment.’
‘Resentment? I am a Weaponised, Marshal Sand. And I am highly educated. The more a Weaponised learns of her own past and the past of her kind, the more resentment deepens, I would say. A natural reaction.’ She savoured her anger, as she savoured the tea’s exotic flavour on her tongue. ‘Why, we Weaponised don’t need the Xeelee Scourge. We have you normals, and that’s enough.’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Vala. You have hardly been persecuted, have you? You make an inappropriate martyr! And besides – what is “normal”? Humanity has been engaged in interstellar war for a million years. After such a history perhaps we are all Weaponised. It’s just that with some of us it isn’t so obvious—’
A faint alarm chimed, and Sand pointed to one of the Virtuals fluttering around her head. It expanded to show a schematic of the ship, with lenticular forms sweeping around it.
‘The mag-field creatures again,’ Vala said.
‘Yes. They don’t seem able to keep away. They beat against the hull like butterflies battering against a window.’
Vala wondered what this stern Marshal knew of butterflies. ‘Military goals were rarely achieved with these projects, you know. The Weaponising. When you read the records of that period, you sometimes think the Integrality scientists created such beings simply because they could . . . And certainly little thought was given to those abandoned when the military projects were over.’
‘How do we look to them, do you imagine, the mag-field butterflies?’
Vala shrugged. ‘Cages of electromagnetic and molecular forces. Perhaps like themselves, but made of clumsy, dense stuff, rather than their own graceful plasma wisps. That’s if they perceive such different creatures as ourselves as intelligent entities in the first place. It’s interesting – there may be forms in universe Beta that don’t exist here, that perhaps we would have trouble recognising as sentient, or even alive. Like the “beasts of gravitic chemistry” that supposedly swarm in accretion surfaces surrounding their great black holes . . .’
‘All that complexity. And all implicit, I suppose, in the knotted-up strangeness that was the universe Beta Big Bang – as our own existence was implicit in our own singularity.’ Sand studied her own hand, and the Virtual displays’ green and red light reflected in her clear eyes. ‘How strange it all is.’
Vala realised she knew nothing of Sand’s background. Did she have children of her own, for example? ‘You are in a reflective mood today, Marshal. I’ll admit that you are not the person I took you for, when we first met in this very flitter down on Delta Seven.’
‘Well, there you are. How can we expect to make sense of the universe if we can’t understand each other – eh, Academician?’
‘I haven’t wished to push the issue, for fear it would drive you off. But I’m not sure I understand why, in the end, you’ve diverted resources to support this project of mine. Unlike the Starfolk, I can’t see that the Beta castaways will be of any use to you as a weapon.’
‘I wouldn’t be so sure.’ Sand gestured, conjured another Virtual, and with a wave sent it spinning through the air to Vala. ‘Here’s a conceptual study on how we might use Beta itself as a source of gravitons, perhaps of gravity waves . . . After all, the ancient starbreaker weapon is essentially a gravity wave cannon. Could Beta work as a universal energy source for such weapons? Or, as you said yourself, Beta is a messy, porous spacetime. Perhaps it could be used as some kind of cosmic interchange, a wormhole junction. The Xeelee might use it that way already. Maybe we could even tap into the energies of Beta’s Big Crunch, which is coming soon.’
Vala smiled. ‘You would weaponise an entire cosmos? You think big, for a soldier.’
‘We are fighting a big war.’
‘But I don’t buy any of that as a personal motive for attempting this rescue, of Lura and her people. What is it, Marshal? Humanitarianism?’
Sand shrugged, unperturbed. ‘Call it that if you want. We are a species who once won a Galaxy. I believe that even now we should aspire to do more than simply retreat – that even as the darkness closes in, at least we can help each other.’ She was looking steadily at Vala, with a hint of that cold humour in her eyes. ‘And what about you, Academician? I hardly think you’re here for reasons of warmth and kindness. Oh, it might have started out that way, when you first heard of the plight of these Beta castaways through the mouth of Coton. But it’s gone beyond that now, hasn’t it? The risk you’re prepared to take with Coton has convinced me of that.
‘You scientists are all the same. You don’t want to make this transfer to save the castaways. You want to do it because you think you can. And the cost is irrelevant. Why, you’re as bad as the Weaponeers of the Integrality, who made your ancestors and whom you affect to despise. You’re nothing but a crucible of ambition. And into this crucible your own grandson, young and smiling, is to be thrust.’
Vala glared at her. But she was the first to turn away, her face hot. The Marshal laughed.
Another alarm sounded, a gentle chime.
Croq rapped on the door and opened it. ‘The Beta castaways have powered up their booth. We’re ready to attempt the transfer.’
Sand looked Vala in the eye, and the Academician knew what she was thinking. Last chance to back out.