by Gary Gibson
'You know what happened to it, then.'
'If you're afraid of punishment, don't be. The knowledge it carried was not unique; each one of us carries the same data in our stacks. You were merely trying to prevent it falling into the wrong hands. In fact, you did no less than many Magi navigators did when confronted by the Shoal's betrayal.'
'I have a question. Why did it go to Night's End?'
'Your escape from Nova Arctis system was difficult, dangerous, and driven by necessity. It made the logical decision to try and get you as close as possible to the next and nearest Magi ship.'
'But it didn't make it all the way.'
The figure shifted slightly in the gloom. 'Given the circumstances, it's surprising it got anywhere at all, Dakota. Necessity forced you to jump out of the Nova Arctis system before the ship was absolutely ready.' The shadowy figure spread its hands. 'But now you're here.'
'So I am.' She caught herself fidgeting, and folded her hands over her knees. 'Do you know why I'm here?'
'I believe you want to stop Immortal Light and the Emissaries from reaching me first.'
'I need to take control of the scout-ship I'm currently aboard – its defensive drones as well, just so I can try and stay alive. You know I can't do that without using you as a go-between. Why didn't you let me assume control?'
'The answer to that question is… complicated. There are other candidates for control of the Magi ship of which I am part.'
''What candidates?' She desperately wanted to get up, walk over and stare into the face of whatever was interrogating her But she couldn't move. She wasn't physically trapped, but she simply couldn't summon up the will, or even the strength, to lift herself up from the chaise-longue and take the necessary steps.
She was, in fact, helpless.
'First things first,' the Librarian continued, leaning forward, its face tantalizingly close to becoming visible. 'Look around you.'
The Librarian waved a hand to indicate the onion-dome above and the carpeted space around them. In a brief moment, the building and its shafts of light dimmed until the chaise-longue, the chair and the orrery were isolated in a pool of light that came from no particular direction. Beyond was only darkness.
Just then, another pool of light appeared a considerable distance away, revealing a second orrery. Dakota stared at it, and, as she did so, her mind's eye seemed to zoom towards this second device until its components and levers were as clear as if she was standing next to it.
The second orrery represented little more than a single world, a sphere of dense blue glass hiding a darker core. Bright points of light like tiny stars floated high above its surface, as it sailed alone, seemingly through a spray of diamond dust.
'This is the Shoal home world,' the Librarian explained, 'and it is a very long way off. This is where they maintain their Deep Dreamers – technological oracles designed to predict both near-and far-future events.'
Beneath the thick blue glass – Dakota understood without being told that this was an ocean world – something enormous and tentacular shifted as if alive.
'The Shoal predicted all this happening? That's why Trader followed us to Nova Arctis – is that what you're saying?'
'The Dreamers predict many possible futures, while Shoal-members like Trader try to manipulate key events solely for the Hegemony's benefit – often regardless of the cost to other species.'
'Do the Emissaries have anything like this?' Dakota now realized that other, more distant orreries were starting to appear all around them, each illuminated by its own pool of directionless light. One in particular featured a writhing, smoke-like shape that was difficult even to look at.
'Fortunately no,' the Librarian replied. 'The Emissaries are exemplary proof of why Maker caches are so potentially dangerous: they can grant enormous power without understanding. The Emissaries are an immature species who haven't had the opportunity to evolve alongside that technology – to make the necessary mistakes only in order to survive them and thereby grow wiser. They were a primitive culture when they first stumbled across a Maker cache, and they still are now. They are, in fact, exactly the kind of creature the caches were apparently intended for – volatile and ultimately self-destructive.'
'Except, the way things are going now, they'll probably wind up destroying everyone else as well as themselves.'
'Precisely.'
'Is that what will happen if I don't get to you first?'
'Almost certainly.'
'I don't want that responsibility,' Dakota moaned. 'It shouldn't just be up to me.'
'Perhaps you'd rather things hadn't gone quite so badly with Yi and her brother,' the Librarian said. 'You might have been able to quietly retire, as you'd been hoping. Isn't that so?'
Dakota felt tears trickle down her cheeks as she sobbed quietly. Get out of my head, damn you.
'Would you like to see how your life would have been instead?'
Dakota sniffed. 'You can do that?'
'There are higher and lower probabilities of outcome but, yes, I can show you the most likely turn of events. Observe.'
Dakota looked up, and saw a world melting as the fires of a dying star reached out to consume it. A fleet rushed away from the nova, slipping into superluminal space a moment before its shockwave caught up with them.
It took a moment for her to understand that she'd just witnessed the destruction of Bellhaven.
'They-'
'Were Freehold ships,' the Librarian finished for her. She'd recognized the red phoenix symbol emblazoned on the hulls of the attacking ships. 'A fast strike against the system responsible for producing the vast majority of machine-heads. Within a few weeks, another occupied system is destroyed, and the Consortium capitulates to the Freehold's demands.'
The Librarian shrugged with an affectation of world-weary cynicism. 'But, of course, things didn't actually turn out like that.'
Dakota lowered her gaze, her throat dry. 'And what would have happened to me?'
'Dead by now, I fear. At first there would have been an amnesty for machine-heads as the Consortium desperately tried to muster a military response to the Freehold. You yourself would have taken up arms, driven to fanatical anger by the destruction of your home world.'
'And the Shoal – what would they have done?'
'Against a fledgling would-be interstellar empire on their doorstep, but without the resources and reach of the Emissaries?' Another shrug. 'Wiped your entire species out of existence, of course.'
Dakota sat very still. 'I don't need to believe any of this. You could make me see anything you wanted, and you assume I'd just believe it. You're saying that if I hadn't taken that derelict out of Nova Arctis, this is what would have happened.'
'Tell me then, Miss Merrick, if Senator Arbenz, instead, had retrieved the derelict, what do you think would have happened?'
'Let me out of this chair,' she whispered. 'Give the job to someone else.'
'I can do that,' the Librarian quietly replied, 'if you really want.'
Then she remembered. 'You said… there were other candidates. Who?'
'You already know who they are. One told you himself, and the other's presence you sensed only quite recently.'
'Tutor Langley.'
'And Hugh Moss, of course.'
'You can't let him-'
'If you refused to merge with me – to become my navigator – I would have little choice.'
'Why?' Dakota screamed. 'Why wouldn't you have any choice?'
'The answer to that requires another history lesson. Look-'
'No! Just tell me why you-'
More images suddenly filled the air above them. Some, demonstrating the Magi empire at its prime, were already familiar to Dakota; but for the first time, as fresh knowledge dawned, she realized that some avenues had previously been closed to her. She was now seeing and discovering things the Magi entities had never revealed to her before.
She saw how the Magi ships had originally been nothing more than weapo
ns – autonomous, intelligent, and highly destructive. They were the last terrible legacy of the Nova War that had consumed the Magi, and they had roamed the Greater Magellanic Cloud in search of inhabited systems simply to destroy them. But eventually these star-killers had been retooled to a new purpose by the very minds they had been created to destroy, reprogrammed to become utterly dependent on the presence of a conscious, biological mind to guide them.
The myriad images began to fade, till Dakota was once more alone with the Librarian. 'We each need a navigator,' the Librarian insisted. 'Without a guiding mind – a conscience, if you will – we are entirely unable to act. With a guiding mind, however, we are compelled to obey. But you could not have controlled the Nova Arctis ship in the way you did without first physically bonding with it. That means you have an immediate advantage over men like Moss or Langley, who are unable to speak to me in this manner, or to engage directly with the information preserved in my stacks in the way you do. But the choice is up to you.'
Dakota suppressed a shiver. 'Maybe you'd be better off with Langley. He couldn't possibly make a worse mess of things than I already have.'
'Are you certain of that?' asked the Librarian. 'I can show you the most highly probable outcomes of either option.'
'All right.' Dakota felt something lurch deep within her chest. 'Show me.' She remembered Langley less well than she was prepared to admit even to herself, as obviously she'd blocked out a lot of her old life – those happier days before the massacres on Redstone.
It hurt to watch what the Librarian now showed her. She saw her old tutor successfully retrieve the Ocean's Deep derelict on behalf of the Consortium – and as a result, all the settled worlds of mankind were smoking ruins within a century.
And as for Moss… that was a unique nightmare all on its own.
'You mean he's not even human?'
'The Shoal have a somewhat whimsical term for it: "Involuntary Re-Speciation".'
'Christ and Buddha, it's…'
'Barbaric, indeed. Trader in Faecal Matter of Animals was very insistent about reviving the techniques involved. I believe he wished to make a very visible and powerful statement to his detractors.'
Minutes earlier, Dakota had watched as Moss flew the Magi ship right to the heart of the Emissary empire. Within months the Shoal home world was destroyed, followed by a thousand-year war during which these two rival powers finally succeeded in destroying each other – along with most of the Milky Way.
'And me?' she asked, when the last of the visions had faded. 'If I make it to the station before them, what's going to happen?'
She imagined the shadowed face was smiling as it framed its reply. 'I can't show you that, Dakota. You'd change your own future just by looking at it.'
'But you know how things will work out?'
'I still can't help you with the decision you need to make. It has to come solely from you.'
This isn't what I want, Dakota thought miserably.
'All right, say I win the day, and nobody else gets near you. Does that stop a full-blown war from starting?'
'The war has already started, and millions of lives are already gone. The conflict will inevitably spread, and trillions will die.'
'Then what's the point of any of this?' she exclaimed.
'To limit the ultimate damage,' the Librarian replied. 'Trader has already launched an illegal pre-emptive strike he believes will bring the war to an acceptable end.'
'Then maybe we should be helping the Shoal.'
'An acceptable end for the Shoal; a disaster for everyone else. Much of the galaxy would be left uninhabitable – and humanity extinct. The Shoal would rule over an empire of ashes.'
'How can you know all this?' Dakota demanded.
'I am as powerful in my own right as any Shoal-level civilization. I have found my way into every part of the colony at Leviathan's Fall. I have penetrated the coreship that brought you here, along with every Shoal craft, every Consortium or Bandati vessel throughout Ocean's Deep. Before long I will have penetrated to the core of the Emissary Godkiller. I am a powerful and dangerous weapon, Dakota, so be careful how you use me.'
'The Shoal wanted to wipe you out because you were too powerful?'
'They infected our navigators with a deadly phage. Some few survived, but their minds were enfeebled by the disease. We ourselves were each programmed to run and hide in the event of our navigator's death… and that's what we did, but not before the last of the Magi raised the Shoal out of their oceans and gave them the stars. They were already civilized, but primitive in the technological sense – trapped by their own evolution.'
'So… in effect, you yourselves created the Shoal Hegemony?'
'Our navigators believed they could control the Shoal.'
'They were wrong, weren't they?'
'Desperate times, Dakota. Mistakes were made.'
Dakota found she could stand at last. She walked past the orrery and stepped towards the seated Librarian. The face remained in shadow.
'The Bandati never figured out a way to get inside you, after all this time,' she reflected. 'But it took hardly any time for Corso and the Freehold to penetrate deep inside the derelict at Nova Arctis. Why is that?'
'That ship had been seriously damaged. I'm rather better defended, and the Bandati never developed the equivalent of machine-head technology.' The figure shrugged. 'Fortunately.'
Dakota thought she saw the hint of a smile beneath the shadows. 'Before you go,' the Librarian said. 'There's one last thing I have to show you – to help you towards the decision I know you will make. Look behind you.'
Dakota turned. Yet more pools of light began to appear beyond the orrery of Ocean's Deep; dozens at first, then hundreds…
'You see?'
'I do,' Dakota breathed. 'I – I already knew, in a way, but I couldn't bring myself to believe it.'
'You suspected there were many more Magi ships, but all lacking navigators.'
'Yes, but…' she glanced again at the oases of light, close on a thousand now, that stretched through a darkness far more extensive than the onion-domed building she had originally found herself in. 'So many?'
'Then you know what it is you have to do.'
It was so obvious now: a way to foreshorten the Nova War that wouldn't destroy the Consortium, and also a possible means to redemption not just for herself but for all the machine-heads who had suffered the fall-out from Redstone.
'Now look at me,' the Librarian commanded.
She stepped further towards the seated figure, and the shadows dropped from its face.
Dakota fell into an infinity of stars. Twenty-four Corso was led back out of the domed building by a Bandati warrior. He stared at the human-built ground transport now parked next to the truck that had brought him and the rest of the Bandati to the maul-worm's lair. Most of Honeydew's warriors were gathered a short distance away, busily clicking and chittering amongst themselves. A few others circled high overhead, presumably on guard duty.
The bodies of murdered station-Bandati still lay scattered all over the plaza.
His attention was riveted by four humans, all wearing battle armour, who were deep in conversation with Honeydew.
The Bandati guard's grip on his arm still firm, Corso could only stare at the newcomers: real, live people. One of them, he soon realized, was Sal, but at first he almost didn't recognize him. The man looked so different, as if Corso hadn't set eyes on him in decades. It was a shock to remember it had actually been barely a couple of months.
For a moment, Corso allowed himself to imagine that his troubles were finally over, that he'd been rescued and nobody was going to torture, kill, interrogate or eat him.
It didn't take long before he was stripped of that hope.
The four of them, along with Honeydew, appeared to reach some form of agreement. As they broke off, Corso was pulled forward and left standing next to the transport. Honeydew twittered something at his guard, who then climbed back on the open-bed truck
along with the rest of the Bandati. They drove back down the hill in the direction of the spoke-shaft they'd first emerged from.
Honeydew remained behind, however, while Sal climbed up into the transport, being careful to avoid looking at Corso as he did so. One of the three soldiers took Corso by the arm and nudged him inside.
Corso sat meekly in the back of the transport, as silent as a lamb, his gaze focused a long way off. The vehicle started to move, crashing down the slope of the hill and continuing along a different trail from the previous one. Corso stared fixedly at the floor of the transport, too scared to even close his eyes in case he opened them to see the inside of the maul-worm's throat. A little while later, and a couple of kilometres further around the ring's circumference, Corso found himself sitting at a table with several other humans, the lower end of another spoke-shaft towering high overhead.
In the back of the transport one of the men had already introduced himself as Corporal Roche, but revealed only that they were heading for a 'command post'. That turned out to be basically a conference-sized table set in the centre of a shallow open-air auditorium perched strategically atop yet another hill.
Around the same table sat four other people, seated on lightweight aluminium deckchairs. Several heavily armoured Consortium troopers stood nearby, constantly scanning the terrain below, while another two watched vigilantly beside a pulse-cannon mounted on a second ground transport.
In the centre of the conference table sat a simulation projector with a map of the Ocean's Deep system floating above it. One symbol marked the presence of a Shoal coreship, while a black, spiked monstrosity clearly indicated the Emissary vessel that he'd arrived on.
Corso stared around the table, and those seated at it, with haunted, disbelieving eyes.
'I said, do you know who I am, Mr Corso?'
It took a moment for Corso to realize the woman seated directly opposite was addressing him.
'Why, yes, I do,' he replied, sounding half-dazed. 'Senator Marion Briggs.' She was a member of the Freehold Senate, and had been decorated during the war with the Uchidans. The flesh just below her right ear was mottled and the ear itself looked half-melted, a legacy of some long-ago battle.
