"Are you prepared now?" the voice asked.
"Yes," Hoffman said, at a nod from Gerhardt.
The craft at the southern point dropped gracefully to the ground ten or eleven meters from the center of the compound, lowering a single pylon as it touched down. A hatch in the nose dilated.
A man in a black suit stepped from the hatch and quickly examined the compound, then focused on Hoffman. He had walnut-colored hair cut in three stripes, with shorter fuzz between; he lacked nostrils and his ears were large and round.
"My name is Santiago," he said as he approached. He held out his hand to Gerhardt, who was closest; Gerhardt took it and shook it once, then backed away. The man approached Hoffman and offered his hand again. Hoffman grasped it lightly; the man squeezed no harder than she did. "I apologize for your distress, whatever the necessity. I am instructed to tell you that all of your people are now honored guests of the Axis City," he said. "I'm afraid you can't stay in the Thistledown much longer, however."
"We don't have anyplace else to go," Hoffman said, feeling overpowered, more helpless than she had felt even when leaving Earth on the shuttle.
"You are in my care," Santiago said. "We must gather everybody together—your researchers, soldiers, your people in the bore holes—the Russians. And we must do it soon."
Mirsky disembarked from the craft and blinked at the bright tubelight. The interior of the craft had been quiet and dark, in sharp contrast to the bright glow of the seventh chamber. For the first time, he stared down the length of the corridor and felt as undeniable truth what he had hitherto only heard described. There had been so little time; the library had taken up whatever effort he had spared from being a leader. . . .
Five other Russians disembarked behind him. All had been deserters in the woods near the 180 line in the fourth chamber. They, too, blinked and covered their eyes. They, too, stared in awe down the corridor, the implications of that vast distance becoming more and more clear.
A kilometer to the west, hundreds of people gathered near the zero tunnel. They were mostly NATO personnel, Mirsky saw, also being evacuated. The Potato was being cleared, for whatever reason hardly mattered right now.
The Russian he had met in the woods touched Mirsky's arm and pointed east. Hundreds of Russian soldiers squatted in a square, flanked on all sides by at least a dozen crosses and three people he didn't recognize, dressed much like the woman who had taken him captive.
More blunt-arrowhead craft descended and landed near the chamber's southern cap, disgorging more people. Mirsky wondered idly if they were all going to be killed. Did it still matter? Having died once? He decided it did.
He still wished for the stars. Now the possibility of attaining that wish was remote, yet the wish itself informed him he was essentially Pavel Mirsky. He still had a connection with the five-year-old boy who had stared up at the stars over winter-bound Kiev. In fact, that memory was pure, not reconstructed but original; Vielgorsky had not blasted that most basic experience from his head.
He wondered idly if Vielgorsky and the other political officers were in the crowds of captives. What could they do to him now? Nothing.
Only a Russian, Mirsky thought, could draw a free breath in such a situation as this.
Senator Prescient Oyu joined them at the resort and informed Yates and Olmy that the Frants were planning to close the gate, standard procedure in any temporary emergency involving the Way.
Olmy acted quickly. Before the gate could be closed, Yates requested that a small defense flawship be prepared to ferry the secondary gate opener and his guests. The request was denied, but Yates tested his authority on the Frant side of the gate by appropriating one of the two Axis craft left on the reception field. The human defense forces there—mostly Naderite homorphs—decided to abide by the letter of the law, and not Toller's parting instructions, and gave the secondary gate opener what he asked for, as well as two guards and a mechanical defense worker.
Taking the craft through the gate and up to the axis, they found three flawships that had been disengaged from the singularity to allow Toller's craft passage. One was unoccupied; it had been parked just minutes before and abandoned by its Naderite crew in a near-axis inspection area, tethered to the flaw by traction fields. Again, following the letter of the law, the crew had retired their small flawship for an inspection after a hundred thousand hours of active duty.
Yates's authority easily overrode the flawship's ambiguous instructions.
They boarded and restrung the flawship on the singularity. The flaw passage through the center of the ship simply extended to the outer bulkheads, reshaping the craft's nose-in-profile from an O to a U, and then closed around the flaw. They accelerated toward 1.3 ex 9.
"You have a lot of support, don't you?" Lanier asked Olmy as they watched the Way blur into black and gold.
"More than I would have gambled on," Olmy said.
"Radical Geshels have walked on the edge for decades," Senator Oyu said. "They have not been bad leaders, but they haven't prepared adequately for the fulfillment of their plans. And they have exacted a kind of revenge on the orthodox Naderites by benign neglect. Now you see some of the results."
"Are you all orthodox Naderites?" Patricia asked.
"No," Olmy said. "I've long since given up that heritage, and Sers Yates and Oyu were raised Geshel."
"Then why are you doing this?"
"Because there is a way for both sides to achieve their goals—if reasonable people intervene," Senator Oyu said.
The small flawship was designed for speed and rapid acceleration. They averaged some 4,900 kilometers a second, and reached the first defense station at 5 ex 8 within 28 hours.
The stations were located at three points along the Way from 5 ex 8 to 1.3 ex 9. Each was a solid fifty-meter-thick black layer hugging the corridor's floor for a hundred kilometers, the surface dimpled with weapons emplacements and field generators.
At all three stations, the crews requested their mission and authority. Yates identified himself, and since the station personnel had no orders to prevent craft from moving down the Way, they were allowed to pass. A hundred thousand kilometers beyond each station, mechanical flaw defense vehicles cleared the Way for them, then resumed their posts on the singularity, vigilant for Jart flawships or flaw-riding weapons.
Within fifty hours, Olmy decelerated their little craft and approached the atmosphere barrier at 1.3 ex 9, passing through the axial hole at little more than a crawl—a few dozen meters per second. What lay on the other side of the barrier was unexpected—and enchanting.
For as far as the eye could see, the Way resembled the fourth chamber in the Thistledown. If anything, it was even greener and more luxuriant. Clouds drifted at leisure beyond the plasma tube, over a landscape of forested hills partaking of a palette of greens and grassy golds. Rivers cut bright paths through the hills, reflecting the tubelight at every point to take on an aspect of shimmering silver.
Patricia floated in the nose of the flawship, arms crossed. Prescient Oyu explained that this segment of the Way was being adapted for eventual human settlement. The project had been started by those who wished to relieve the tensions arising from overcrowding in the Axis City. Even City Memory's enormous capacity was being filled and would soon need extensions.
The Way had other, smaller segments adapted for human living, but on the whole it had been reserved for commerce. The segment at 1.3 ex 9 was to have been devoted to homorphs and their special needs—in short, it had been chiefly intended for orthodox Naderites.
A year before, the settling of this segment had been delayed by a Jart incursion beyond 2 ex 9. Now the delay was indefinitely extended; the Jarts and their allies had grown in strength, and it seemed they might break through to 1.3 ex 9. Still, the humans did not pull back. They did not settle the segment, but they conducted other activities—including opening a gate at 1.301 ex 9.
The verdant areas of the segment extended for only a few thousand kilometers.
The flawship passed over a terminal building covering the gate through which the segment's soil and atmosphere had been brought into the Way; they were accelerating again, over a stretch of sandy, barren territory much like the region just beyond the seventh chamber, and then through another atmosphere barrier.
There was no commerce in the next segment. No other gates had been opened; except for three more defense outposts, the Way was a featureless, darkly bronze tube along the entire million-kilometer stretch. Patricia contemplated the geometry of this undisturbed section of corridor. The geometry stacks would be of a different configuration without gates to bunch them, but they would exist—in fact, this segment might be ideal for her search. . . .
"Would you like to test your ideas here?" Olmy asked her quietly. She turned, startled, and nodded.
"Ser Yates and I have been discussing your theories," Olmy said. "We feel you should present them to Ser Ry Oyu. . . .”
Patricia's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Would this have anything to do with Korzenowski?" she asked, deciding now was as good a time as any to probe Olmy's secrets.
Olmy lifted a finger to his lips conspiratorially. "If you wish to test your ideas. . . perhaps. But no more talk until our audience."
At 1.301 ex 9, they passed through another barrier. Beyond, a segment barely sixty kilometers long lay velvety green under a thick and hazy atmosphere. Four small terminal buildings—little more than a hundred meters on each side—were spaced around the as-yet-unopened circuit at the middle of the segment.
A disk a third as wide as the one that had transported them to the Timbl terminal ascended from a white landing field near the zero terminal, climbing toward the flawship.
Patricia's jaw hurt. She realized she was clamping her teeth and forced herself to relax. What was Olmy up to—and what would he and the gate openers possibly want with her? What could she exchange in return for the opportunity?
They descended to the surface in the smaller disk. This disk was clearly more utilitarian in design; its bottom half was opaque, and its only illumination was the steady glow of traction fields.
A pie-shaped segment of the disk slid aside, and traction field chutes lowered them gently to the landing area. Olmy disembarked last. Prescient Oyu led them toward the terminal.
"We can walk," she said. "I think it would be best to meet with Ser Ry Oyu immediately."
They crossed the white pavement and then stepped on thick, fine-bladed grass. Oaks and maples were spaced evenly around the park-like grounds; beyond the trees, the yellow terminal pyramid possessed only four steps, each twisted in relation to the one below.
To one side of the terminal, a series of four traction pipes, each about three meters in diameter, wound for several kilometers around the terminal grounds just above head level. Within the pipes, suffused by a faint violet glow, shapes not even remotely human tracted over the landscape.
"Our clients and allies," Olmy said. He pointed to one individual, an eight-legged cylinder with a mane of fuzzy antler-like appendages surrounding its bifurcated, round "head." "Talsit," he said. "Tertiary form. They're a very old race—their history goes back at least two billion terrestrial years. You'll meet another Talsit soon—one serves as assistant to the primary gate opener."
The terminal was little more than a shell, about 100 meters high and 150 wide at the base. Within the terminal, a series graceful gun-metal-blue scaffolds curved above the smooth-lipped pit about 50 meters in diameter.
Hanging from the center of the scaffold in an intersecting radiance of traction fields was an object tiny in comparison, no broader than three hands. To Patricia, it resembled an old-fashioned Japanese pillow, with its neck-receiving curve. The base was forked, however, like the handlebars on a bike. She stopped by the edge of the scaffold to inspect it, knowing almost by instinct what it was, and how important it could be to her.
To Lanier, it looked like a divining rod with a radar dish attached.
"What is that?" Patricia asked, her voice small.
"That is what a gate opener uses to dilate the Way manifold," Olmy said.
She seemed to shudder. "What's it called?" she asked.
"A clavicle. Only three exist. Ry Oyu has charge of this one."
"Where's yours?" Patricia asked Rennslaer Yates. "Inactive," Yates said. "Each is tuned to a gate opener. When the gate opener is not performing his official function, the clavicle is deactivated."
She reluctantly looked away from the suspended clavicle and followed the others to the western end of the terminal building. There, under an incomplete cupola roughly sketched from racing black and gold lines, a tall, thin man with close-cut Titian-red hair stood next to a data pillar. Patricia looked first at the man, then at the cupola.
"Friends," Prescient Oyu said, "this is my father, Ser Ry Oyu." She introduced Olmy and Lanier. The primary gate opener nodded to each in turn.
"And this is Patricia Luisa Vasquez," Yates said, hand on her shoulder.
"I've learned the old language just to speak with this woman," Ry Oyu said. "And the old cultures and ways. Yet she gives me such a peculiar look!"
Patricia straightened and cleared a slight frown from her face.
"You were expecting something more impressive, weren't you?" Ry Oyu said. "Not the Wizard of Oz, I hope." He extended his hand to her, eyes narrowed in amusement. "I am deeply honored."
Patricia shook his hand, her thin black eyebrows drawn together.
Ry Oyu patted her hand paternally and glanced uneasily at Olmy. "Now this branch of the conspiracy is gathered. My researchers are at the first-quarter location now; they'll join us in a few hours. They have no idea what's happened here. I'm not sure how I'll explain it to them—a person in my position, engaged in petty intrigues. Miss Vasquez—"
"I prefer Patricia," she said, voice still small, subdued.
"Patricia, do you have any idea what we've brought you here to discuss?"
"Some idea," Patricia said.
"Yes? Tell us."
"It involves my work on the corridor—the Way. And it somehow involves Konrad Korzenowski."
"Very good. How did she discover these things, Olmy?"
"I arranged for a rogue to visit her."
Patricia stared at him in shock, eyes square, touched with anger.
"I see. And?"
"The rogue revealed certain facts to her."
"Something of a risk, don't you think?"
"A very minor one," Olmy said. "She has the Mystery, after all."
"Does she, now." Ry Oyu approached Patricia. "Do you know what he's talking about—the Mystery?"
Patricia shook her head. "No."
"Do you know how important this might be to us? No, of course not. Too many questions. . . Patricia—"
"Olmy knows where a complete record of Korzenowski is," Patricia said abruptly. It was a wild guess—but she hated appearing completely ignorant.
"Actually, I doubt that," Ser Oyu said. "There are no complete records—not since the assassination."
Olmy tied together what she had already heard bits and pieces of: the story of Konrad Korzenowski. Called the Engineer, he had designed the inertial damping systems for the Thistledown, and had overseen the in-flight maintenance of the Beckmann drive. Working from inertial damping theory, he had then designed the sixth chamber machinery that created the Way.
That project had taken thirty years, and had been accomplished by forging an alliance between the largely Geshel governing bodies of the Thistledown, and the orthodox Naderites inhabiting Alexandria in the second chamber. Korzenowski himself—like Olmy—had been a Naderite by birth, and had given his word that Naderite wishes would be carried out. What the Naderites demanded was that the creation of the Way not alter the original mission, which was to find an Earth-like planet circling the distant star Epsilon Eridani. The Naderites believed their principal mission of settling distant worlds in the name of Earth was a sacred obligation, the only truly acceptable reason for venturing beyond the
Solar System.
But Korzenowski had not reckoned with a number of problems. First, he had not known that the linking of the way with the Thistledown's seventh chamber would, in effect, whip-snap the asteroid starship out of its native universe, and into another. And he had not figured on the incredibly bad luck of having the experimental gates, opened by remote manipulation before the connection, allow Jarts into the Way and give them centuries to exploit their position.
Korzenowski had retired his corpus into Thistledown's City Memory soon after the first Jart wars, in the wake of the ensuing scandal. Even there, he had been harassed. Finally, radical Geshels, judging him to be a Naderite traitor, had arranged for the purging of his personality records—in effect, assassinating him.
"Then he is dead?" Patricia asked, confused.
"No," Olmy said. "In City Memory, he was supervising the construction of the Axis City. To do that, he placed partials of himself in different locations, to carry on his work more rapidly. The most extensive partials were retrieved by his fellow engineers and entrusted to a woman, who placed them in secret storage. This woman died in an insurrection in Alexandria, a century after Korzenowski's assassination. She was an orthodox Naderite, and at that time her sect did not allow implants. Her death was final.
"A century after that, the final Naderites were driven from Alexandria, and for a time some were kept in Thistledown City. I was born there. And while I was experimenting with the abandoned private memory banks of our apartment building, I discovered the hidden partials of Korzenowski. I was very young then. I only had a few years to become acquainted with the Engineer. But in that time. . .”
Olmy glanced at Ser Oyu. He had kept this secret for centuries and was reluctant to reveal it even now that the time was right. Ser Oyu nodded encouragement.
"In that time, I learned that the Engineer had sought to repay his people for the injury he had done to them, however inadvertently. After the Jart wars, the Geshel-ruled Hexamon decided it was unnecessary to proceed to Epsilon Eridani; the Thistledown's course was uncertain, and, to be truthful, they simply thought there was more potential for settlement and exploration in the Way. They were right, but that did not satisfy the orthodox Naderites. They had lost not their mission in life, but their Earth, and their home universe. So before retiring his corpus, Korzenowski secretly reprogrammed the Thistledown guidance systems. The ship sought out and located the home Solar System, and began a return journey."