I shook my head. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand …”
“Please understand this, Raul Endymion,” said Dem Ria, her fingers squeezing my wrist almost painfully. “If you do not escape this place, the Pax will have your soul and body. And the One Who Teaches needs both these things.”
I squinted at the woman, thinking that she was jesting. But her pleasant, unlined face was set and serious.
“Please,” said little Bin, setting his little hand in my free one and pulling. “Please hurry, Raul.”
I hurried down the stairs. One of the men in green handed me a red robe. Alem Mikail helped me fold and wrap it over my own clothes. He wrapped the red burnoose and cowl in a dozen quick strokes. I would never have been able to arrange it properly. I realized with a shock that the entire family—the two older women, teenaged Ces Ambre, and little Bin—had stripped naked from their blue robes and were arranging red ones around them. I saw then that I had been wrong thinking that they were like Lusians—for although their bodies were shorter than Pax space average and heavily muscled, they were perfectly proportioned. None of the adults had any hair, either on their heads or elsewhere. Somehow this made their compact, perfectly toned bodies more attractive.
I looked away, realizing that I was blushing. Ces Ambre laughed and jostled my arm. We were all in red robes now, Alem Mikail being the last to pull his on. One glance at his heavily muscled upper torso told me that I would not last fifteen seconds in a fight with the shorter man. But then, I realized, I probably would not last more than thirty seconds with Dem Loa or Dem Ria either.
I offered the flechette pistol to Alem but he gestured for me to keep it and showed me how to tuck it in one of the multiple sashes of the long, crimson robe. I thought of my lack of weapons in the little backpack—a Navajo hunting knife and the little flashlight laser—and nodded my gratitude.
The women and children and I were hurried into the back of the windcycle wagon that held my kayak and red fabric was pulled tight over the stays above us. We had to crouch low as a second layer of fabric, some wooden planks, and various crates and barrels were set in around and above us. I could just make out a glimpse of light between the tailgate and the wagon cover. I listened to footsteps on stone as Alem went up front and crawled onto one of the two pedaling saddles. I listened as one of the other men—also now in a red robe—joined him on the cycling seat on the other side of the central yoke.
With the masts still lowered above us, fabric sails reefed, we began rolling up a long ramp out of the garage.
“Where are we going?” I whispered to Dem Ria, who was lying almost next to me. The wood smelled like cedar.
“The downstream farcaster arch,” she whispered back.
I blinked. “You know about that?”
“They gave you Truthtell,” whispered Dem Loa from the other side of a crate. “And you did speak in your sleep.”
Bin was lying right next to me in the darkness. “We know the One Who Teaches has sent you on a mission,” he said almost happily. “We know you have to get to the next arch.” He patted the kayak that curved next to us. “I wish I could go with you.”
“This is too dangerous,” I hissed, feeling the wagon roll out of the tunnel and into open air. Low sunlight illuminated the fabric above us. The windcycle wagon stopped for a second as the two men cranked the mast erect and unfurled the sail. “Too dangerous.” I meant them taking me to the farcaster, of course, not the mission that Aenea had sent me on.
“If they know who I am,” I whispered to Dem Ria, “they’ll be watching the arch.”
I could see the silhouette of her cowl as she nodded. “They will be watching, Raul Endymion. And it is dangerous. But darkness is almost here. In fourteen minutes.”
I glanced at my comlog. It would be another ninety minutes or more until twilight according to what I had observed the previous two days. And then almost another full hour until true nightfall.
“It is only six kilometers to the downstream arch,” whispered Ces Ambre from her place on the other side of the kayak. “The villages will be filled with the Spectrum celebrating.”
I understood then. “The Twice Darkness?” I whispered.
“Yes,” said Dem Ria. She patted my hand. “We must be silent now. We will be moving into traffic along the saltway.”
“Too dangerous,” I whispered one last time as the wagon began creaking and groaning its way into traffic. I could hear the chain drive rumbling beneath the buckboard floor and feel the wind catch the sail. Too dangerous, I said only to myself.
If I had known what was happening a few hundred meters away, I would have realized how truly dangerous this moment was.
I PEERED OUT THROUGH THE GAP BETWEEN WAGON wood and fabric as we rumbled along the saltway. This vehicle thoroughfare appeared to be a strip of rock-hard salt between the villages clustered along the raised canal and the reticulated desert stretching as far north as I could see. “Waste Wahhabi,” whispered Dem Ria as we picked up speed and headed south along the saltway. Other windcycle wagons roared past heading south, their sails fully engaged, their two pedalers working madly. Even more brightly canvased wagons tacked north, their sails set differently, the pedalers leaning far out for balance as the creaking wagons teetered on two wheels, the other two spinning uselessly in the air.
We covered the six kilometers in ten minutes and turned off the saltway onto a paved ramp that led through a cluster of homes—white stone this time, not adobe—and then Alem and the other man furled the sail and pedaled the windcycle slowly along the cobblestone street that ran between the homes and the canal-river. High, wispy ferns grew along the canal banks there between elaborately fashioned piers, gazebos, and multitiered docks to which were tied ornate houseboats. The city seemed to end here where the canal widened into a waterway much more riverlike than artificial, and I raised my head enough to see the huge farcaster arch a few hundred meters downstream. Through and beyond the rusted arch, I could see only fern forest on the riverbanks and desert waste to the east and west. Alem guided the windcycle onto a brick loading ramp and pulled under the cover of a copse of tall ferns.
I glanced at my comlog. Less than two minutes until the Twice Darkness.
At that instant there was a rush of warm air and a shadow passed over us. We all crouched lower as the black Pax skimmer flew out over the river at an altitude of less than a hundred meters; the aerodynamic, figure-eight shape of the thing clearly visible as it banked more steeply and then swooped low above the ships headed north and south through the arch. River traffic was brisk here where the river widened: sleek racing sculls with rowing teams of four to twelve, gleaming powerboats throwing up glistening wakes, sailboats ranging from single-person jitabouts to wallowing, square-sailed junks, canoes and row-boats, some stately houseboats churning against the current, a handful of silent electric hovercraft moving within their haloes of spray, and even some rafts that reminded me of my earlier voyage with Aenea and A. Bettik.
The skimmer flew low over these ships, passed over the farcaster arch headed south, flew back under it headed north, and disappeared in the direction of Lock Childe Lamonde.
“Come,” said Alem Mikail, folding back the fabric tarp above us and pulling at the kayak. “We must hurry.”
Suddenly there was a rush of warm air, followed by a cooler breeze that kicked dust off the riverbank, the fernheads rustled and shook above us, and the sky grew purple and then black. Stars came out. I glanced upward just long enough to see a beaded corona around one of the moons and the burning disc of the second, lower satellite as it moved into place behind the first.
From north along the river, back in the direction of the linear city that included Lock Childe Lamonde, there came the most haunting and mournful sound I had ever heard: a long wailing, more human-throated than siren-caused, followed by a sustained note that grew deeper and deeper until it fell into the subsonic. I realized that I had heard hundreds—perhaps thousands—of horns played at the same inst
ant that thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of human voices had joined in chorus.
The darkness around us grew deeper. The stars blazed. The disc of the lower moon was like some great backlit dome that threatened to drop on the darkened world at any moment. Suddenly the many ships on the river to the south and the canal-river to the north began wailing with their own sirens and horns—a cacophonous howl, this, nothing like the descending harmony of the opening chorus—and then began firing off flares and fireworks: multicolored starshells, roaring St. Catherine’s Wheels, red parachute flares, braided strands of yellow, blue, green, red, and white fire—the Spectrum Helix?—and countless aerial bombs. The noise and light were all but overwhelming.
“Hurry,” repeated Alem, pulling the kayak from the wagonbed. I jumped out to help him and pulled off my concealing robe, tossing it into the back of the wagon. The next minute was a flurry of coordinated motion as Dem Ria, Dem Loa, Ces Ambre, Bin, and I helped Alem and the unnamed man carry the kayak down to the river’s edge and set it afloat. I went into the warm water up to my knees, stowed my backpack and the flechette pistol inside the little cockpit, held the kayak steady against the current, and looked at the two women, two young people, and two men in their billowing robes.
“What is to happen to you?” I asked. My back ached from the aftermath of the kidney stone, but at the moment the tightening of my throat was the more painful distraction.
Dem Ria shook her head. “Nothing bad will happen to us, Raul Endymion. If the Pax authorities attempt to make trouble, we will simply disappear into the tunnels beneath Waste Wahhabi until it is time to rejoin the Spectrum elsewhere.” She smiled and adjusted her robe on her shoulder. “But make us one promise, Raul Endymion.”
“Anything,” I said. “If I can do it, I will.”
“If it is possible, ask the One Who Teaches to return with you to Vitus-Gray-Balianus B and the people of the Amoiete Spectrum Helix. We shall try not to convert to the Pax’s Christianity until she comes to speak to us.”
I nodded, looking at Bin Ria Dem Loa Alem’s shaven skull, his red cowl flapping around him in the breeze, his cheeks gaunt with chemotherapy, his eyes gleaming more with excitement than reflected fireworks. “Yes,” I said. “If it is at all possible, I will do that.”
They all touched me then—not to shake hands, but merely to touch, fingers against my vest or arm or face or back. I touched them back, turned the bow of the kayak into the current, and stepped into the cockpit. The paddle was in the hullclamp where I had left it. I tightened the cockpit skirt around me as if there were white water ahead, bumped my hand against the clear plastic cover over the red “panic button” that Aenea had shown me as I set the pistol on the cockpit skirt—if this interlude had not caused me to panic, I was not sure what could—held the paddle in my left hand, and waved farewell with my right. The six robed figures blended into the shadows beneath the ferns as the kayak swept out into the middle current.
The farcaster arch grew larger. Overhead, the first moon began to move beyond the disc of the sun but the second, larger moon moved to cover both with its bulk. The fireworks and siren sounds continued, even grew in ferocity. I paddled closer to the right bank as I came close to the farcaster, trying to stay in the small-boat traffic headed downstream but not too close to anyone.
If they are going to intercept me, I thought, they will do it here. Without thinking, I raised the flechette pistol onto the curve of hull in front of me. The swift current had me now, and I set the paddle in its bracket and waited to pass under the farcaster. No other ships or small boats would be under the farcaster when it activated. Above me, the arch was a curve of blackness against the starry sky.
Suddenly there was violent commotion on the riverbank not twenty meters to my right.
I raised the pistol and stared, not understanding what I was seeing and hearing.
Two explosions like sonic booms. Strobe flashes of white light.
More fireworks? No, these flashes were much brighter. Energy weapons fire? Too bright. Too unfocused. It was more like small plasma explosives going off.
Then I saw something in a blink of an eye, more a retinal echo than a true vision: two figures locked in a violent embrace, images reversed like a negative of an ancient photograph, sudden, violent motion, another sonic boom, a flash of white that blinded me even before the image had registered in my brain—spikes, thorns, two heads butting together, six arms flailing, sparks flying, a human form and something larger, the sound of metal rending, the sound of something or someone screaming with a voice louder than the sirens wailing on the river behind me. The shock wave from whatever was happening on the bank rippled out across the river, almost tumbled my kayak, and proceeded across the water like a curtain of white spray.
Then I was under the farcaster arch, there was the flash and instant of vertigo I had known before, a bright light surrounded me through the flash-bulb blindness, and the kayak and I were falling.
Truly falling. Tumbling into space. A section of water that had been farcast under me fell away into a brief waterfall, but then the kayak was falling free from the water, spinning as it fell, and in my panic I dropped the flechette pistol into the cockpit and grabbed the hull of the kayak, setting it spinning more wildly as it fell.
I blinked through the flash echoes and tried to see how far I had to fall, even as the kayak went bow down and picked up speed.
Blue sky above. Clouds all around—huge clouds, stratocumulus rising thousands of meters above and falling more thousands of meters below, cirrus many kilometers above me, black thunderstorms many more kilometers below.
There was nothing but sky and I was falling into it. Beneath me, the brief waterfall from the river had separated into giant teardrops of moisture, as if someone had taken a hundred buckets of water and hurled them into a bottomless chasm.
The kayak spun and threatened to go stern over bow. I shifted forward in the little kayak and almost tumbled out, with only my crossed legs and the lashing of the little moisture skirt holding me in.
I grabbed the rim of the cockpit in a white-knuckled, hopeless grip. Cold air whipped and roared around me as the kayak and I picked up speed, hurtling toward terminal velocity. Thousands and thousands of meters of empty, open air lay between me and the lightning-darted clouds so far below. The two-bladed paddle ripped from its bracket and tumbled away in freefall.
I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances. I opened my mouth and screamed.
11
enzo Isozaki could say honestly that he had never been afraid before in his life. Raised as a business-samurai in the fern islands of Fuji, he had been taught and trained since infancy to be disdainful of fear and contemptuous of anyone who felt it. Caution he allowed—it had become an indispensable business tool for him—but fear was alien to his nature and his carefully constructed personality.
Until this moment.
M. Isozaki stood back while the inner door of the air lock cycled open. Whatever awaited within had been on the surface of an airless, tumbling asteroid a minute earlier. And it was not wearing a spacesuit.
Isozaki had chosen not to bring a weapon on the little asteroid hopper: neither he nor the ship was armed. At this moment, as ice crystals billowed like fog from the opening air lock and a humanoid figure stepped through, Kenzo Isozaki wondered if that had been a wise choice.
The humanoid figure was human … or at least human in appearance. Tan skin, neatly cut gray hair, a perfectly tailored gray suit, gray eyes under lashes still rimmed with frost, and a white smile.
“M. Isozaki” said Councillor Albedo.
Isozaki bowed. He had brought his heart rate and breathing under his control, and now he concentrated on keeping his voice flat, level, and emotionless. “It is kind of you to respond to my invitation.”
Albedo crossed his arms. The smile remained on the tanned, handsome face, but Isozaki was not fooled by it. The seas around the fern islands of Fuji were thick with sharks descended f
rom the DNA recipes and frozen embryos of the early Bussard seedships.
“Invitation?” said Councillor Albedo in a rich voice. “Or summons?”
Isozaki’s head remained slightly bowed. His hands hung loosely at his sides. “Never a summons, M …”
“You know my name, I think,” said Albedo.
“The rumors say that you are the same Councillor Albedo who advised Meina Gladstone almost three centuries ago, sir,” said the CEO of the Pax Mercantilus.
“I was more hologram than substance then,” said Albedo, uncrossing his arms. “But the … personality … is the same. And you need not call me sir.”
Isozaki bowed slightly.
Councillor Albedo stepped deeper into the little hopper. He ran his powerful fingers over consoles and the single pilot’s couch and the rim of its empty high-g tank. “A modest ship for such a powerful person, M. Isozaki.”
“I thought it best to exercise discretion, Councillor. May I call you that?”
Instead of answering, Albedo took an aggressive step closer to the CEO. Isozaki did not flinch.
“Did you feel it an act of discretion to release an AI viral telotaxis into Pacem’s crude datasphere so that it could go looking for TechnoCore nodes?” Albedo’s voice filled the hopper cabin.
Kenzo Isozaki raised his eyes to meet the gray glare of the taller man. “Yes, Councillor. If the Core still existed, it was imperative that I … that the Mercantilus … make personal contact … The telotaxis was programmed to self-destruct if detected by Pax antiviral programs, and to inoculate only if it received an unmistakable Core response.”
Councillor Albedo laughed. “Your AI telotaxis was about as subtle as the metaphorical turd in the proverbial punchbowl, Isozaki-san.”
The Mercantilus CEO blinked in surprise at the crudity.