Finally Syl came to two descending staircases. Both had steep, worn steps carved from the rock, gray on the outer edges yet black in the middle, stained and worn down by aeons of footfalls. Syl took the steps to the left, for it seemed like the most sensible course of action: if she kept going left and then on her return she reversed this, and stayed to the right, she’d have less chance of becoming lost, or so she hoped. Down she went, spiraling and twisting, deeper and deeper into the moon. The light was dim, no more than flickering service bulbs, and the air smelled stale as she descended, fusty and forgotten. The stairs petered out into a narrow, uneven passageway, the walls rough-hewn but the edges of the rock cuts smoothed by time. It was very quiet, and her feet left vague prints in the dust on the floor as she tiptoed along, hearing herself breathing in the silence, hearing the blood thundering in her ears.
Ahead, dual archways opened into the walls, and Syl stopped and peered inside. Each room was a mirror image of the other, two large, gloomy caves, both with shelves piled onto boulders, each shelf stacked with higgledy-piggledy piles of books and documents, some held down by rocks, others fallen over and shuffled accidentally across the floor. Everywhere was grime and grit, and a small rockfall seemed to have flattened an old cabinet in the middle of the room on the left. Crushed exhibits spilled from it: frayed fabric, torn leathery parchment, and chunks of sinewed brown matter that Syl preferred not to think about too much. Instead, she went into the room on the right and peered at the nearest pile of documents.
“Damn it,” she said, jumping slightly as her voice hissed back at her, damn it, damn it, damn it. The documents were in an unfamiliar language. No, not just an unfamiliar language but a completely foreign script; an alphabet she had never seen before, the jagged symbols set down in spiral form, utterly incomprehensible. She brushed the dirt from another document. While different, it too was completely alien in the truest sense of the word, clearly from another world entirely. The parchment felt almost sticky under her fingers, as if it was sucking at her skin, and she quickly pulled her hand away. She moved farther into the room, blowing dust off here, wiping away grime there, but it was all much of the same: impenetrable, and clearly packed away here to be all but forgotten, an archive created by Sisters long since dead.
Then she saw a garniad scurrying up a nearby wall, and she almost screamed. She only recognized it because they’d studied these armored, spiderlike creatures in biology, staring into a glass case while inside a lone garniad tapped its hard legs angrily against the glass, and she knew they had a nasty bite. The biology lecturer, Amera, had explained that garniads were the scourge of the Marque of old, but now their numbers were controlled.
“Yet beware, for you will still find them in the most ancient parts of the Marque. Even when you become full Sisters, with wide access to our buildings here, I recommend you stay away from the disused tunnels, for a garniad sting hurts, and several garniad stings in tandem can be deadly, particularly to small children, and the elderly,” Amera had said.
With a shiver, Syl took her leave. She headed up the corridor a little farther just to be sure she’d missed nothing, but the light faded away around the next curve, and up ahead Syl could clearly make out the reason why: a massive roof collapse blocked the way ahead, boulders the size of cars piled from floor to crumpled ceiling. She’d heard how some older parts of the Marque had caved in a long time ago, and suddenly something occurred to her: hadn’t Elda said her friend had been killed by a rockfall too? What was she called? Kosia, yes, that was it, Kosia. Now Syl wondered where exactly Kosia had been when she had died, for the Realms where the Novices and Half-Sisters resided were relatively new, and free of such dangers.
So first Kosia died, and then her apparent friend, the otherwise solitary Elda, was killed too, one in a rockfall, the other by suicidally leaving the Marque at night. The first death was no doubt categorized as an unfortunate accident, while the second had been covered up with lies about a young Novice who was unhappy, so was allowed to go home. And yet Syl had seen what had spilled from the cascid’s belly. Clearly Elda had been so much more than she seemed.
Could Kosia have been a spy too?
And rockfalls would surely take place only in the oldest sections of the Marque, the deepest, darkest ones such as this. What would Kosia have been doing nosing around in the ancient Realms? As she looked at the barricade of boulders laced with frayed “caution” tape, Syl felt she was finally getting somewhere, although where exactly that might be she could not say.
Anyway, this was the end of the line, for now. She must return to her quarters, for she had been away too long.
Syl retraced her steps, past the forgotten archives and up those wretched stairs again, being sure to keep her hands tight to her sides for fear of garniads. At the top she stopped to catch her breath, and found herself staring down the second set of steps. They were wider than the ones she’d just come from, and the light seemed brighter—or perhaps that was just her imagination.
Tomorrow she would be ill once more, she decided; tomorrow she would return.
CHAPTER 45
It was all very well that the universe appeared to be peppered with wormholes, thought Paul—at least relatively speaking—but their existence was useless without a minutely accurate map of their locations.
When the theory of wormholes—or Einstein-Rosen bridges, to give them their proper name among human scientists—was first proposed, the very idea of them was extraordinary enough without anyone giving thought to what they might actually look like. The reality, as it turned out, was that they were inconsistent in appearance, to the extent that many were not visible at all. True, the largest of them—but not necessarily the most stable—distorted the fabric of space, like a lens placed against the stars, but the smaller ones were virtually undetectable unless one was in their immediate vicinity, which in terms of the size of the universe, meant less than a million miles away. Even then, one had to know where to look, and so a ship could pass within a stone’s throw (again, in universal terms) of a wormhole without actually knowing that it was present.
Put simply, decided Paul, it was a little like trying to fit a pin through a previously existing pinhole in a sheet measuring millions and millions of square miles. No, make that a three-dimensional sheet, although he figured that all sheets were three-dimensional, so that particular analogy didn’t work. Science had never been one of Paul’s strong points in school.
He was standing in what had once been the captain’s quarters on the Nomad. The small room contained a bed, a desk, and not much else. The artificial intelligence system kept a screen permanently activated over the bunk, displaying system details alongside real-time images from every section of the ship, allowing the captain to monitor all activity from his cabin. The screen could be dimmed with a sweep of a hand, but Paul had not found a way to deactivate it. Perhaps it couldn’t be shut down. He had tried to find mission information on the system, but to no avail. He suspected that no such information existed, just in case the ship was captured.
Now, once again, he was lost in the middle of a section of the wormhole map, marveling at the intricacy of it. This map was the basis for the Illyri Conquest. Without it, the Illyri would just have been a more advanced version of humanity, limited to their small corner of the universe, even with their combination of advanced fusion engines coupled with localized mining of hydrogen, helium, and sulfur for fuel, like little filling stations dotted throughout galaxies. The knowledge of the wormholes had made them conquerors, but how had they come by it?
He traced a wormhole with his finger. It reminded him of something, but whatever it was danced away like a butterfly every time he tried to grasp it. For some reason, the image brought Syl to mind: the grace of her, the exoticism. With it came an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. He wanted to rescue her, but instead he was stuck on a strange ship about to enter a series of wormholes, a journey that would, if they su
rvived, lead them to a cordoned-off system, and no one isolated an entire planetary system without both good cause and a means of protecting it from intruders.
Paul turned in a slow circle. Wormholes swirled around him like frayed threads in the fabric of the cosmos.
Threads. Filaments.
He had arrived in the cellars of Dundearg just in time to see Consul Gradus destroyed by what was inside him, but Syl had told him of the consul’s transformation beforehand: the images of an insectoid organism attached to his brain stem, and his body’s reaction to his captors’ attempts to probe it. The filaments that the organism had spread throughout his system erupted from Gradus’s skin until his entire form was masked by them, his every pore extruding a fine thread.
What if . . . ?
Paul closed his eyes, even the beauty of the wormholes now becoming a distraction to him. He recalled his grandfather Jim, whose pride and joy was his council garden. Unlike his neighbors, Granddad Jim did not grow vegetables on his little patch of land. Instead he bred roses, and the bane of his life was spider mites, tiny reddish creatures that spun their webs beneath the rose leaves and merrily wreaked havoc on his blooms. According to Granddad Jim, spider mites could be found almost everywhere in the world. They were hitchhikers, floating on wind currents to find new plants to colonize. They were also able to detect the coming of winter, which caused their systems to enter a period of dormancy called diapause, from which they emerged only when the weather improved. Paul had a vague memory of certain spiders being able to do something similar, and mud-dwelling fish too, shutting down their systems in order to survive the most inhospitable conditions.
From this, Paul made another mental leap. Before the coming of the Illyri, and the subject races that fought for them, most human scientific speculation had centered on the likelihood of the first alien life being discovered in the form of microbes. He had a strong memory of a dispute arising over a fragment of meteor in which microscopic filaments had been found, with the scientist responsible for its discovery arguing that they represented some form of extraterrestrial life, now long dead.
But what if—and there were those words again—a similar life-form were capable of surviving in space, semidormant but somehow aware, storing the details of its travels through the universe, information that could later be retrieved? Was such a thing even possible? How could a primitive organism retain such knowledge?
A primitive life-form could not, but an advanced extraterrestrial life-form could, perhaps the kind that could also latch on to an Illyri brain stem and experience the outside world through the responses of its host.
Paul opened his eyes. Rizzo stood before him.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“Yes. No. Possibly.”
Rizzo cocked an eyebrow at him.
“Are you sure you should be in charge?”
“Yes. No. Possibly. What is it?”
“We’ve arrived at the first wormhole.”
CHAPTER 46
The following morning, Syl made her way to the top of the dual staircases once more and, without hesitating, down she went.
This second staircase was shorter, and definitely seemed brighter as Syl descended. The steps widened at the bottom into a corridor similar to the one she’d been in the day before, only this was certainly much cleaner, without the dusty, scuffed floors or the stale smell of the other. And it was in use, of that there was no doubt, for cleaning equipment had been left along the wall, and rags and mops hung from makeshift hooks. A tap stuck out of the rock face, dripping gently into a bucket placed beneath it to catch the droplets. Syl took a few tentative steps away from the stairwell, and realized the air really did smell different here—familiar even, but in a good way. She breathed deeply, trying to place it, for it was a fragrance she knew. That was it: laundry. It smelled like detergent, and as she walked onward the smell became stronger until she stood outside what was clearly a washing hub, wide and whirring, stacked with shiny machinery that buzzed and clicked as it cleaned and dried its multiple loads, red silk flashing within. She didn’t go inside, for several Service Sisters buzzed around too, busy and efficient, folding piles of vivid red robes.
The closest Illyri looked up and saw Syl, and confusion clouded her face.
“Excuse me, but who are you?” she said, and the others stopped what they were doing and stared at her. Plastering on her most winning smile, Syl immediately started her inner mantra again.
We are the same. I am one of you. I. One of you. The same.
“Never mind,” said the Sister, shaking her head, befuddled, as Syl turned and walked away as fast as she could without looking too conspicuous.
She passed rooms stacked with chairs, and piled with folded bedding. One was stocked with bedsteads, and another was filled to the ceiling with drum upon drum of fresh water. There were stores of soap and chemicals, and heaps of crisp towels, and several neat supply rooms lined with tools of the sort a handyman might put on his belt, only far sleeker and slighter, made for precision work.
Clearly the secrets of the Nairene Sisterhood were not going to be down here with the scullery maids and washerwomen of the order, so Syl quickened her pace, sticking to what appeared to be the main route upward, passing chutes in the wall and service trolleys, and even what were apparently the lowliest of sleeping quarters, windowless, gray, and grimly lit.
Onward she went, understanding that she was probably losing her bearings, but she felt relatively secure in her white robes as she brushed deferentially past red Nairenes, more and more of them the farther she ascended, and yet they paid her no heed. She was swept along on occasional waves of Service Sisters too, and no one questioned her, or even looked at her. She tried to keep to routes that the Red Sisters favored, for surely it was along these that the truth of the order would be found. And yet she could not help but stare in wonder at all she saw.
Libraries as cavernous as any cathedral soared off to either side, so very many libraries, and there were Scriptoriums reaching several stories high, where Sisters squinted and scribbled or tapped earnestly on screens, many wearing white gloves to protect the rare and precious volumes they transcribed and translated. There were dining halls and gymnasiums, and giant greenhouses flourishing with life, and chambers full of silvery mirrors and lights. She saw a small orchestra practicing, picking on ethereal string instruments, and she found the zoological department she thought had been a figment of some Novice’s imagination. Through one window she thought she briefly glimpsed a unicorn.
Strangest of all, however, was the stone-walled grotto she stumbled into at the point where several corridors came together in a star shape. It was dim in the grotto, while being unusually cold for the Marque, and candles glimmered on rough-hewn shelves and in crevices. At the heart of the space were four plinths of rock upon which rested a large, flat boulder, pockmarked and jagged at the edges, but otherwise resembling a medieval banqueting table. But the boulder itself wasn’t particularly strange; what was odd was that it was protected from curious hands by a large glass dome and, odder yet, as Sisters skirted around it, without fail they would kiss their fingertips, and then press them to the dome. A Service Sister was on hand, regularly stepping forward to rub away the smears they left on the clear surface. Just to be safe, Syl kissed her own fingers too, then trailed them curiously along the glass, but she didn’t dare stop to investigate, for the rock was at a busy juncture and Sisters scurried by like ants, absently dropping their kisses as they went about their business.
As Syl left the grotto, there came a low, sweet chiming, growing louder and more insistent, and gradually the Sisters finished what they were doing and drifted in the direction of the numerous dining halls. What? It was already lunchtime?
Syl knew she shouldn’t stretch her luck by tarrying any longer, but frankly, she was now spectacularly lost.
• • •
“E
xcuse me, Sister, but I seem to have lost my bearings. What Realm is this?” said Syl, awkwardly approaching a young Illyri in white robes just like her own.
We are the same, she thought. The same.
“Oh, I know, it’s so easy to do. This is the Ninth. Where are you trying to get to?”
“The Twelfth Realm.”
“Really? You’d think after training there you’d remember that much at least, wouldn’t you, but I still get confused too. Have you not got your cartograph?”
Syl looked at her feet, a little frightened. What was a cartograph?
I am one of you.
“No. I forgot it.”
We are the same.
The Sister chuckled. “You’re having quite a day! Well, here, look at mine. My name’s Lista, by the way. I’m from the Eighth. Who are you?”
“I’m, uh, Tanit. From the Seventh.”
“Really?” said Lista. “I didn’t know there were any of us in the Seventh.”
“No.” Syl laughed a little too hard. “I mean that’s where I just came from. I live in the Fifteenth.”
I am like you.
“Right. Okay, then.”
Lista pulled her lanyard from under her robes. Attached to it, next to her keys, was a small black card. She squeezed the edge between her thumb and forefinger and immediately a labyrinth of lines spread across the surface. A blue light flashed in the center. She held it in front of Syl, who did her best not to look surprised.
“So you’re here,” she said, pointing at the blue light, “and you need to be here.”