by Wil McCarthy
She noticed there was an opening in it spilling out purple light. It was well below the level of the platform and slightly off to one side, and suddenly her brain kicked in at full power. Despite appearances, the Waister ship was not hovering at all, but accelerating in a mad circle that kept it parallel to the ever-retreating face of Holders Fastness. Her binocular vision engaged as well, so that the range and size of the opening became clear, as well as its purpose.
No citizen of a spin-gee world could survive for long without a clear grasp of coriolis forces, and this was doubly true of the police, who must after all learn to fire projectile weapons accurately, no matter which direction they were facing or which level they were on. One simply developed an instinct for it, and right now Malye's instinct was clear on the fact that a leap from this platform would carry her right into that open doorway.
Lately she'd been having a problem with impulse control anyway, so she motioned for everyone to follow her, and then went ahead and jumped.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
220::01
HOLDERS FASTNESS, GATE SYSTEM:
CONTINUITY 5218, YEAR OF THE DRAGON
Events followed one after the other with a dreamy-soft focus, and afterward Malye was never quite sure of the order in which they'd occurred. There was much moving from place to place, much communication between Gateans and Waisters. At some point, the refugees had all taken off their breathing masks, though they kept the orange emergency suits on.
Much later, Malye would begin to understand how carefully orchestrated their rescue had been, how inevitable, really. They had begged the Waisters to pluck them from Artya's equator, which seemed the easiest place for it, but they'd neither expected nor received any reply. From the beginning it had been a gamble, based on her intuition, and Ken Jonson's, and everyone else's for that matter, even the children's. They had tried doing nothing, after all, and that hadn't worked, so what was left?
For a while, it had seemed this mad plan couldn't work either, that they were doomed no matter what they tried, but in fact they had been under close observation all the while, and their rescue would have been that much easier if they'd simply thrown themselves into empty space.
But on that morning, in the Holders throne room thronged with Gateans and Waisters and orange-suited Sirian refugees, Malye knew nothing of this, knew only that they had been brave, that though the probabilities were stacked against them they had pressed on, suffering losses and yet emerging alive from their ordeal. Most of them. In truth, she suspected the hand of Ialah, and even years later, when the facts were well known, this suspicion lingered within her. Twice they had survived against all odds. Twice!
The chamber in which they all had gathered was a high, vaulted space, a single octohedron with three smaller copies branching off to the sides. In its center was a hexagonal dais, flat and smooth and empty. This might have been the same throne room in which Malye had confronted and surrendered to Queen Tempe and the rest of Holders ring, or it might not. These things were hard to tell with Gatean architecture.
In any case, the Waisters had caused a gathering to take place here, with representatives from most of the major rings inhabiting Holders Fastness. Tempe was here, and Wende and Crow, and the Worker, Chain, from Talkers ring. Nobody else that Malye recognized, but as on the earlier occasion, Queens were disproportionately represented in the Gatean crowd.
Not so for the Waisters, who had brought along a single Queen, plus her Dog and two Workers, all dressed up in peculiar, awkward-looking pressure suits. The rest were Drones, dozens of them, standing huge and imposing in the gray battle armor they had worn outside on the surface. Their alien, bubble-enclosed faces were near the floor, it was true, but their bodies and arms rose high into the air, and even without the high gravity it seemed they could smash any being to pulp, any time they wished. Even the Gatean Drones, with their marble-gray Olympian physiques, looked feeble by comparison.
Fortunately, though, the Waisters did not seem to be in a hostile mood any longer.
The chamber was deathly silent. Every little creak of space armor or shuffling of sandaled feet echoed and rang off the high walls. Everyone was looking at the Waister Queen, waiting for her to do or say something. Surprisingly, though, when she spoke it was not in Waister but in Standard, the words leaping crisply and without inflection from a translation module of some sort built into the bottom of her helmet bubble.
“WE,” she said, and then paused, waddling her fat body around in a quarter circle, so that she was facing Malye and the other humans. “WWE LEARN NOT ONLY FWHEEESH BUT WWAR FROM HUA PEOPLE. HUA ATTACKED US WWITH THIS MANNER. IT MEETS CLEVER LOGIC UNSUSPECTED. OUR METHODS WASTE NEEDLESSLY. WWE DREAM OF HUA PEOPLE, UNCLOTHED AND NAIVE, PILING STONES BESIDE THE WWATER. DO HUA DREAM?”
She paused, looking around with her brown, stalk-mounted eyes. No one felt like speaking.
“ABSENCE OF STABILITY WWITHIN THIS CULTURE PRECLUDES PRACTICE OF FWHEEESH.” She paused, tried again: “OF PFEACE. STABILITY HAS BEEN IMPOSED. WWE OCCUPY ALL INHABITED BODIES WWITHIN THIS STAR SYSTEM, AND WWE HAVE DESTROYED THOSE WHO RESIST OR THREATEN. THIS WWE LEARN FROM HUA. FROM HWWUMAAN. FWHEEESH WWILL NOW OCCUR.”
Somewhere in the crowd, one of the Gateans began to laugh. Others turned that way with sharp looks, though, and the disturbance was quickly silenced.
Peace will now occur? Peace will now occur? The Waisters were ordering peace within Gatean society? The idea was too strange for Malye to know what to think about it. Or for anyone else, it seemed; there was more shuffling and fidgeting, a bit of whispering here and there in what she was pretty sure must be the Teigo language, but as a population the Gateans appeared utterly at a loss. Had they never faced a superior enemy before? Had they never received an order? Perhaps not.
Konstant was elbowing her in the side, sharply, but when she turned to glare at him she saw a only look of urgency on his face. He looked at her, then up at the empty dais, then back at her again, nodding his head sideways. Behind him, Sasha was nodding, and so were Vere and Svetlane, the sole remaining adults of the human population. What did they want of her now?
“Get up there!” Konstant snapped in a low whisper. “Now, you idiot! This is our chance!”
Get up on the dais?
Suddenly, their reasoning was clear: the Waisters had in effect forced the surrender of all of Gate, but having obtained it, did not have any idea what else to do. “FWHEEESH” was an alien concept, after all, with which they had no prior experience. Thus, a power vacuum had been created, and all Malyene Andreivne Kurosov'e had to do to fill that vacuum was climb up there and start talking.
Well, that was easy enough. With hands and elbows and glaring eyes, she cut herself a hole in the crowd and strode toward the dais with slow dignity. Even the Waister Queen edged out of her way, as if afraid somehow of giving offense. The dais was barely half a meter high, and Malye hopped up onto it easily, even at two gees. The crowd was at her feet, silent, watchful. A little curious, she thought, and a little afraid. How right they were, to be afraid.
“All right,” she said, looking around at the Gatean Queens and Drones. There was no question in her mind about what she would say. A little speech had written itself in her mind, and all that remained was to recite it. “It's time we all had a talk. Names of Ialah, people, what kind of society are you trying to run? You want to live like the Waisters, well, I suppose there are reasons to do that. I suppose a lot of good can be accomplished. But do you think the Waisters live like this? Stabbing each other in the back, cutting each other's knees off at every opportunity? I don't think so. Even as they destroyed Sirius system around us, they seemed a single entity, bent on a single purpose. With themselves at least, they operated in harmony.
“Let me explain something to you, all right? It's something my friend Viktor said, before you people had him killed. He said, 'these Gateans really have shit for brains, don't they?' And indeed, that appears to be the case. You know how to imitate Waister host
ility and human fractiousness, and you think somehow that this will bridge the gap between the two species? These are the very worst attributes of us both. Better that you had chosen human kindness and Waister determination, or even drunkenness and apathy, or greed and reticence. There are a thousand other ways to do what you are attempting.
“The first step toward reform, I think, would be to shuffle the membership in these damned rings. Maybe that kind of society works for the Waisters, I don't know, but it doesn't work here; your brains are simply too human for it. How long has it taken humanity to shrug off the curse of tribalism? To return to it, as you have, like a bunch of youth gangs... We should see half the membership of every ring scattered throughout all the others. Let's level out the gravity contours, let everyone become everyone else's best ally and worst enemy all at the same time. If this doesn't work, we may need to phase out the rings altogether.”
A storm of quiet protest met that remark, and a single voice rose up above the crowd. Crow's; he stepped forward from Wende's side, his copper eyes and flattened nostrils flaring wide. “You cannot do that!” he cried. “Who are you, a human whom we rescued from death, to tell us what to do?”
Confronting the monster directly was always a mistake, for it was here that her greatest strengths came into play. In this particular case, she simply stared down at Crow as if he were no more than a minor distraction. She was surrounded by armored Waister Drones, and she was up on this pedestal, and she was the only one in this great chamber to whom anyone was paying any attention. And in addition, she was being “contributive” in precisely the Gatean style, sharing crucial insight and plans for the benefit of all, and yet doing so in a fundamentally self-centered, self-aggrandizing way.
The combination was irresistible; she felt their acceptance, felt power and influence flowing into her like a chorus of enthusiastic notes, filling her, confirming and vindicating. Just like that, an entire society was under the monster's thumb. Her father's laughter blossomed inside her. Ialah's names, did these people know what they'd done? Did they know whose monstrous ideas they had just agreed to submit to?
For a moment the anxiety was a blinding yellow wave, but it passed quickly, leaving a kind of purity behind it. It boils down to a single unknowable question, Viktor had told her: the existence of the soul, of free will, of metachronic perturbation at the quantum level. We cannot know, and yet we must, for why else do we even exist?
If the Waisters could change so dramatically, could Malye not change as well? If she occasionally heard and saw things that others did not, even if she'd somehow inherited the twisted instincts of Andrei Brakanov himself, did that mean she must behave as he did? Her life thus far indicated otherwise. Her presence here, among the Waisters, indicated otherwise. And suddenly, she knew the answer to Viktor's riddle: free will not only existed, but outmatched the power of instinct by orders and orders of magnitude. Only if she wished it to be so, of course, but that was the whole point, now, wasn't it?
If she were sufficiently determined to stop the madness here, to mete out justice, to dig a tunnel toward lasting peace, would these things not occur? Who, exactly, was going to stop her?
“Citizens,” she said to the crowd, in a quieter voice now, “the Waisters are correct. Peace will now occur. Together we can create a new Gate, with—” what was that old Earth saying? “—with liberty and justice for all. Oh, and speaking of justice, will somebody please arrest Shim and Vent of Striders ring? They are, ah, suspected of the murders of at least five people.”
EPILOGUE
017::23
ARTYA PEACEHOLD, GATE SYSTEM:
CONTINUITY 5220, YEAR OF THE HORSE
“Mother,” Vadim said as he entered, “the festival is about to begin. They're asking for you before they open the swimming tank.”
“Well,” Malye said good-naturedly, “tell them to start without me. #Hthw# has something she wants to talk about, and we'll be at least a few minutes here.”
“Oh,” he said. “Very well, I'll tell them.”
And he turned on his heel, and slipped out through the door membrane.
“HE MATURES RAPIDLY,” #Hthw# said, watching the door. “OUR YOUNG, WHO ARE RARE, GROW AND LEARN VERY SLOWLY. EVERYTHING ABOUT HUA HAS BEEN ACCELERATED. WE FIND IT STRANGE.”
Malye and the Waister Queen were separated by no more than a thin, clear membrane through which they could speak, and even pass small objects back and forth. Once upon a time, they had come here often, but the passage of months had placed increasing and mutually incomprehensible burdens on them both. Being back here again gave Malye a reminiscent feeling that only served to remind her how very far she'd come from her old life. It seemed she'd always been here in the future, and the time before was nothing but a kind of dream, or a practice life where she might learn a few of the skills she would need when her real one came around.
Not that she didn't miss it; even now, she'd awake from bad dreams and expect to find Grigory's comforting presence there beside her. Or Viktor's—the two had gotten very mixed up in the part of her mind that dreamed. But the ache had faded with familiarity, becoming simply another part of her new life, one burden among many.
Speaking with #Hthw# was another. The conversations were rarely fascinating; things tended to wander rather quickly toward the obscure and ambiguous, and while there was a learnable trick to keeping them in the comprehensible realm, to creating the illusion of free, unfettered conversation, it required considerable effort. Still, Malye thought the common ground of their understanding grew a little wider every year, which probably meant she was slowly becoming more alien, and #Hthw# more human.
The Gateans, pulled equally toward both poles, had begun to grow stubborn, prideful, independent. This is what we are, they seemed to say. If we change, it will be for our own reasons. They were almost a species unto themselves anyway, with their own unique history and ideals, and Malye found herself welcoming the return of their confidence. Better that they find their own sort of peace, than that humans or Waisters find it for them.
Probably, they would all remain strangers forever. But they weren't fighting anymore, which was a lot to be thankful for, and Malye herself was happier, more fulfilled than she'd ever been. She'd been a diplomat at heart for all those empty years, and never once suspected it! What would her father think?
“You know,” she said to #Hthw#, “sometimes I feel like you people came all the way back here just to help me make peace with myself.”
She knew right away what a dumb thing that was to say to a Waister. #Hthw# thought for a long time before replying, “FWHEESH IS FOR ALL OTHERS. FWHEESH IS NOT EXCLUSIVELY FOR YOURSELF. HAS THIS NOT BEEN UNDERSTOOD?”
Sighing, Malye smiled and shook her head. “It's just... it's a figure of speech, an idiom. I apologize; I'm out of practice for this. Peace for all, yes. Obviously that's understood.”
“I COMPREHEND. PFEACE FOR ALL. HOWEVER, ADDITIONAL REASONS EXIST FOR OUR RETURN.”
“Really?”
“BLUE STAR DISEASE. HAS THIS BEEN DISCUSSED?”
Malye sat up straighter. Something in the Queen's body language alerted her; this was more than an idle question.
“Blue star disease? What is that?”
“ERR, DISEASE, NO. BLUE STAR... CONTAMINATION? GALACTIC REGION WHERE STARS CHANGE COLOR AND LOSE LIGHT. VERY DISTANT. SLOW LIGHT IMAGES HAVE NOT REACHED THIS PLACE.”
“#Hthw#, what are you talking about?”
“IN OUR HISTORY THERE HAVE BEEN EIGHT CAIRN BUILDERS. ALL DIED. THERE HAVE BEEN STUPIDLINGS, WHOSE BODIES WERE MANY-HANDED AND SMALL, WHOSE MINDS WERE MANY-HANDED AND SMALL. ALL DIED. ONCE THERE WERE FAINT VOICES FROM GALACTIC CORE, BUT THEY STOPPED SO LONG AGO. SO LONG AGO. WE BELIEVE THEY DIED. ONLY HUA HAVE NOT DIED, AND SO CLOSE TO TIME OF HUA ARE THE BLUE STARS.”
“What are the blue stars?” Malye asked, feeling the hairs prickle erect on the back of her neck.
“THEIR LIGHT WILL ARRIVE IN SIX-POWER-THREE ORBITS OF THIS WORLD.”
&
nbsp; Malye calculated. Twelve hundred orbits of Artya... four thousand standard years? Something like that. “What are they?” she asked again, “Why are they blue?”
“SURROUNDING OF WATER. LIQUID. THIN LAYERS OF LIQUID WATER ORBIT THESE STARS IN WAYS THAT CANNOT OCCUR UNINTERVENED. SOMEONE IS THERE. DO YOU COMPREHEND?”
“Someone is surrounding the stars with water? That's crazy. How could they do that?”
#Hthw# didn't answer.
“You came here because of that? Is that what you said? I don't understand what you're talking about.”
The Queen's face pudged in and out. Her breathing was heavy for a moment, her eyes pinching together and then relaxing.
“BLUE STARS LIGHT WILL ARRIVE, BUT THERE IS NO QUICKLIGHT TRACE. WE AND HUA AND STUPIDLINGS AND CORE-SINGERS VIBRATE UNIVERSALLY. QUICKLIGHT EMITS, DO YOU UNDERSTAND? BLUE STAR SICKNESS EMITS NO UNNATURAL QUICKLIGHT. THUS WE COMPREHEND NOTHING.”
“Huh,” Malye said. This was starting to worry her more than a little. “So there's something very strange happening, yes? What makes you think we can help you?”
“NOT HELP,” #Hthw# said quickly. “HELP LEARN. IN SIX-POWER-SIX ORBITS OF THIS WORLD, BLUE STAR SICKNESS WILL ARRIVE. IN TWO-SIX-POWER-SIX ORBITS, BLUE STAR SICKNESS WILL COMPLETE GALACTICALLY.”
Malye couldn't immediately convert those numbers, but they were large. Millions of years, she thought. Huh. What matter if something new came along in a million years?
“That's a long time in the future,” she said.
#Hthw# became visibly agitated. “NOT LONG, NOT LONG. FOR US, ALWAYS THERE IS A CONFRONTATION AND A COMPLETION. ALWAYS THERE IS ANNIHILATION OF THOSE WE ENCOUNTER, EXCEPT FOR HUA. BUT BLUE STAR SICKNESS WILL BE TOO LARGE. NOT CONFRONT, NOT ANNIHILATE.”
