A dark look crossed his face. “They’re gone, and I’d like to keep it that way. That’s what matters. So what, you’ll be happy if we just let you loose on our planets?”
She glanced at Sanako. “I suppose I want to meet your scholars.”
They frowned a bit, and Sanako offered them a similar-sounding word that they seemed to understand better. Senjat made to speak, but Izha Derrat cut him off, her voice growlier than the human’s. “I’m sure our scholars will want to meet you as well. But there will be time for that after.”
“After what?”
“Someone will fill you in soon.” Senjat was looking at a small screen in his hand. “You didn’t provide a blood sample. It says - Ensign, you commanded the doctor to skip the blood sample?”
Sanako’s face suddenly started to redden. “I - it was my understanding that we needed her to be cooperative, sir, and the blood draw was making her anxious -”
“We need biological samples.” He laid the device down on the table and stared at Sanako. “You had no right to pull rank on the doctor to break protocol, Ensign. Report to disciplinary processing immediately. We can’t tolerate this kind of -”
He was wasting everybody’s time at this point, most importantly Ada’s, so she cut him off with words as clear and straightforward as she could. “I’m keeping my blood. I told her I’d kill them if they tried anything.”
He turned away from the ensign, glancing between Ada and Sanako for a moment, and huffed. Izha flicked her ear in annoyance. “Ensign Oshimi, disregard that last command. Crew safety takes priority, of course; I just wish the note in the doctor’s report were a bit more clear. We’ll arrange for something.”
Sanako breathed an obvious sigh of relief. “Yes, Admiral, thank you, sir.”
Senjat stood up, visibly trying to control himself. “This is a waste of time. Ensign, keep a leash on the savage.”
Ada hated him already, more than anything because he himself seemed predisposed to dislike her. Perhaps he was merely unhappy about not being in control. Either way, she was glad to watch him walk out the door.
Izha Derrat was still sitting there, her slitted pupils carefully sliding between Sanako and Ada. “Ensign, you’re here as part of Derksen’s staff, correct? Report to her immediately if you run into any more trouble. We’ll be anchoring over Daneer in thirty-eight hours and the Presidency will be waiting. Delegates are landing to convene as we speak. We need her presentable and communicative. We have neurolinguists banging their heads on their desks trying to figure out how she’s learning to speak so quickly, but all I know is she’s obviously learning it from you. Keep doing whatever you’re doing so well.”
Sanako stood up and held a closed fist over her left shoulder, the reddish tint seeping out of her face. “Yes, sir, thank you, sir.”
Ada watched the mirran admiral carefully, but though their gazes crossed, the admiral didn’t address her at all as she left the room. Sanako breathed a clear sigh of relief as she turned to face Ada. “Thank you.”
Ada blinked. “For what?”
“For telling him you threatened us.” Sanako glanced aside. “I shouldn’t have convinced Cheren to skip the blood draw. It’s not my place.”
She raised an eyebrow. Had she spared Sanako some kind of retribution? What in the worlds were they so fussy about? “It’s not anybody’s place to take my blood. I wasn’t going to give you any choice. And Senjat talks too much about nothing.”
Sanako blinked. “Well - thank you anyway. I think he likes you even less now.”
She bared her teeth. “Let him.” Then her stomach reminded her what teeth were usually for. “Uh, I’m hungry. Can we eat?”
The ensign made an expression like she’d just been hit in the face by wind. “I - uh - yes, I have rations in my bunk. Follow me.”
They reached the bunk fairly quickly and shared the dense, flavourless food Sanako seemed to eat all the time. Did the Union eat anything aside from these crumbly bars? Sanako insisted they did have identifiable food on their planets, so that gave Ada at least some measure of hope.
Their conversation grew smoother and smoother as they talked, and over the hours Ada learned a great many superficial facts about the planets of this Union. Sanako was especially fond of her own homeworld, Vesta, and Ada took several opportunities to ask about her mothers, which seemed both relaxing and strange for Sanako to talk about.
Unfortunately, little Ada learned about the Union was very hopeful. She got the sense that people lived intolerably strict lives of constant trade and rules and toil. But sitting in front of a person born with the blood of two mothers continued to fill her with a quiet sense of wonder and hope, and a collection of twelve worlds living together as a whole was undeniably impressive. This was the sort of unexpected thing she had come out here to find. Perhaps there was more, all of it seeming so normal to the Union that Sanako wasn’t even mentioning it.
They kept her isolated from Zhilik and the other outers, aside from a few supervised visits, but that was tolerable - they needed time to process the news about Mir, after all. She hoped it helped that their ancestors had had another homeworld for a thousand years prior.
When they finally neared the end of their journey, they were all brought to the observation room together. She found Zhilik and he rested a hand on her shoulder, and together they stared out the window at the first truly living alien world they had ever seen. Freyja.
At such close range, the planet dominated the view. It was a vast, incredible sphere swathed in long, swirling white clouds that obscured much of the ground. On what surface she could see, pale blue lakes and seas in oddly circular clusters peppered vast, flat-colored plains of pale greens and pale blues, with blotches of darker green and ridges salted with deep greys and pure white anchoring the rest of the world around them.
The planet’s infrastructure was on full display as well. Pillars of Heaven; Ada counted six long, thin structures stretching from the surface out into space, all of them arranged in a line as though circling the planet’s waist. They were quite evenly spaced, and Ada imagined there were others on the far side of the planet as well. All around these pillars were swarms of spacecraft, with a few scattered ships landing on or leaving the planet directly.
Ada breathed a sigh, and smiled a little. “It’s no Earth, but it’ll do.”
Zhilik hissed in hollow laughter. “You do not sound confident.”
The ships she could see came in all sorts of sizes, but their shapes and colours were remarkably uniform - monochrome boxes jutting with angular protrusions here and there. They did not look elegant or sleek or anything else Ada might have associated with ancient technology. Worrisomely, it was almost as though the Union had regressed.
Zhilik pointed to Freyja. “The Haints have been gone for hundreds of years. It is possible any threat to the Union, and to Earth, is over. This civilization has obviously been prospering.”
Ada gazed at the planet, and at the space dock they were rapidly approaching, feet-first. She rolled the locator stone around in her hand. “Prospering? Zhilik, everything here is so… primitive.”
Zhilik bobbed his head. “You say, standing in an interstellar starship.”
“More primitive than Earth, at its peak. You know what I mean. If this is their prosperity… what if I’m wasting my time?”
Zhilik looked back at her, and down at the hand that held her locator stone tightly. He sighed. “They will not be bringing you back. They told us as much.”
“That doesn’t mean I can’t get myself back.”
His ears twitched. “You are too quick to judge.”
She put her other hand on the glass. “There’s good out here. They have some ancient powers we don’t, some knowledge of how to create new life. But is that it? Is everything else just a pale shadow of Earth? I’m not sure how I feel about a city with eighty-six million people in it, either. That’s…”
Zhilik nodded, his voice low. “I am also concerned. My people ha
ve not taken well to the news that Mir was destroyed - I think many imagined a world full of people like them, where they would be understood and welcomed. Instead we will be landing on a planet equally shared by our brethren and yours, hoping only that these colonies somehow substitute for our homeworld.”
There was a gentle cough behind her, and Ada turned to find Sanako standing there with that mirran ensign Orrosk. Sanako addressed them both. “Ada, Zhilik, we’ll be docking shortly. We’ll be in microgravity again, so be prepared. Admiral Ashur would like Ada to join the rest of the human crew in descending after the mirrans. You’ll be brought to the same accommodations on the planet, though, so don’t worry about being separated.”
She nodded, and patted Zhilik on the shoulder. “Go on, then. I’ll see you down there.”
“Yes. Do not do anything rash, Ada.”
“Do something rash. Got it.”
He hissed and followed Orrosk away, down the ladder and out of sight. Ada stood with Sanako on the observation deck, finally noticing that the ship seemed to be slowing down.
“Did the… medical tests tell you anything?”
Sanako shrugged. “I was told you were cleared to land, and that blood wouldn’t be needed after all. All I know is you’re unnaturally tall and heavy, especially for a woman.”
Ada frowned. “What do you mean, for a woman?”
Sanako blinked. “Well, you know, men are bigger than women, usually.”
Ada tilted her head. She had seen more than enough humans in her life to know that was not the case. “No they’re not.”
“They are.” Sanako’s brow furrowed. “Out here, at least. Maybe on Earth things are different.”
Ada glanced around the observation deck, at the human crewmembers who were also watching the approach. Good gods. Now that she had been alerted to it, she absolutely saw it - there were more taller colonial men than women. Had someone tried to genetically destroy the female half of the species, perhaps? “Taller or not, your men are still very short.”
Sanako laughed. “Well, yes, to you.” She was looking at Ada’s height, but suddenly she seemed to remember something. “Ada, you don’t have any weapons, do you?”
“Weapons? No.” She had code, of course, but there was nothing they could do about that. No need to remind them.
Satisfied, the ensign nodded. “Good. They’ll be inspecting you before you leave, just so you know. People are a bit worried about you.”
“Why did you let me on the ship?”
Sanako briefly glanced at her eyes. “Zhilik told us you weren’t affected by the technophage. Tests on the samples showed the technophage doesn’t seem to exist outside of human bodies, so if you were immune, you seemed safe to bring on board. The admirals made the call.”
Ada blinked. She hadn’t expected that, though in truth she couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to let her on. Her memories of that moment… she shook her head. “Big risk.”
“Yes, well. It was a tense moment. Probably a rushed decision.”
Ada wondered at that. Senjat had not seemed happy at all to have her, and Izha had seemed quite neutral, so which had brought her on-board and why? It didn’t seem to make sense.
Yellow lights suddenly bathed the observation deck, and Sanako took Ada’s arm. “One-minute warning. You start floating as the ship stops decelerating. Come on, grab a handrail.”
Ada followed Sanako as she and the rest of the crew on the observation deck moved for the handrails snaking across the walls and ceiling, and sure enough Ada soon felt herself grow lighter and then drift up into the air. Her hair floated in front of her eyes like a tangle of seaweed, and there was an eerily dreamlike quality to all the crew’s hair and fabrics, wavering in the absence of a planet’s might.
They started pulling themselves along the handrail, and Ada followed Sanako into the ladder that led down the ship, to another large storage area that was filled entirely with humans. They clambered along the handrails to where Senjat Ashur and Felisha Derksen were floating, fairly far from what she assumed to be the exit.
“Miss Liu.” The admiral looked at her less angrily this time, though she still wanted nothing to do with him. Felisha nodded at her and watched them, but said nothing. There was a loud metal clanking and a deep hiss somewhere just under the floor.
“Now this may be confusing to you, so let me explain.” The admiral spoke with unwarranted confidence. “We have a large port in space above the planet, a cheaper way to arrive and leave than burning ship fuel. It’s connected to the planet by a long sort of cable, and we use that to -”
Ada cut him off. “Yes, I know, I used one on Earth to meet the gods. We call ours the Pillar of Heaven.”
He smirked a little. “Gods, eh? Yes, well, very well then. It won’t be long.”
Ada knew full well the gods were just machine intelligences on the ring, but she felt a strange pang of defensiveness now, so far from home and in the face of people who just didn’t understand. They were perhaps bumbling and incompetent, in the grand scheme of things, but they were still her gods.
Except for the fact that they had betrayed here. And were worthless. And she had never worshipped them in her entire life.
Still. “Are there no gods here?”
Senjat, Felisha, and Sanako all looked at her with differing and bizarre expressions. Senjat chuckled contemptuously without looking at her, while Felisha looked concerned and Sanako looked confused. The ensign was the only one who thought to ask. “What are your gods, Ada?”
“Machines that live on the ring. They manage… a lot of things on Earth and in the space around it.”
“They worship the damned AI battlestation.” Senjat’s apparent humour faded, and he let slip something under his breath in another alien language that sounded like derision.
Sanako pulled herself closer on the handrails. “Ada, it might be best if you… don’t talk about intelligent machines too much. Definitely don’t call them gods.”
“Why not?”
“They’re dangerous. Unsafe, no matter how carefully we build them.” She looked distressed. “And gods are very serious. I’m sure you’ll understand once you learn more about how things work.”
Ada wasn’t sure what that might mean - the gods were certainly stupid, as far as she could tell, but they did a reasonably competent job at what they were built for. They had simply not be built to be lone custodians of the planet; it was almost unfair to expect it of them. And Cherry, as intelligent a machine as she had ever met, had never once failed her. At least until she left the atmosphere and never responded to Ada’s calls.
She shook her head and sighed. More rules and expectations growing around her like an ugly social crust, but she had to endure. Once she landed, she could hunt down information on where the technophage came from, why Venshi and her crew had wanted to destroy civilization, and who had helped them. If she understood those problems, she could go back and help rebuild a civilization that would not fall to the same illness.
She reached into her pocket and pulled out the locator stone, pressing it firmly into her palm with her thumb. Maybe she could find Isavel again. She missed her, even though their lives had only recently intersected. She missed the hope of seeing her again.
The clanking quieted, and a voice spoke through a machine, presumably from the other side. “The mirrans from the lower deck are all through. Humans, rank up for processing. Bring the earthling in last.”
Ada grinned. Earthling? What a strange word.
Suddenly everyone in the room lined up along the ceiling, shifting along the handrails and forming a long, winding line of floating humans. Ada shuffled after Sanako, who followed the admiral and vice admiral. What were they doing? As she tried to puzzle it out, Felisha grabbed her arm and looked her in the eye. “Do whatever they tell you to. Ask Ensign Oshimi if you need help.”
She didn’t like the old woman’s iron grip, and shook it off. “Fine.”
Suddenly the door snapped up, and she saw
a dozen human shapes mostly covered in light black armor with insignia printed across them, as well as fairly intricate-looking headpieces that fit into an ear and across an eye. They bore strange weapons on their hips, and were wielding other device in their hands that they waved over each crewmember.
“Who are those?”
Sanako smiled a bit, as though something were funny. “Customs.”
“What?”
“They just want record who’s arriving on the planet and make sure there aren’t any unexpected weapons. We’ve already done medical tests and sent that data, so this should be quick.”
It wasn’t especially quick, though, and after a while Ada grew bored of watching the same procedure applied to every crewmember as they left the ship. They were patted down, scanned with a small rectangle, spoken to for a few moments, and let through. She noticed that for whatever reason, female crewmembers were only patted down by female customs officers, and males only by males. She wondered if that was somehow related to the height difference Sanako had pointed out, though she couldn’t imagine why height would matter, especially when they were all floating.
There were dozens of human crewmembers, so it took a while before Ada was up. After the last few humans went through there was a pause, as though the people checking entry had to wait a moment and prepare for Ada. They stared at each other uncomfortably, until one, a woman with a label on her chest that read S. Guirrez , made a hand gesture and spoke. “Come here.”
Ada noticed how carefully Sanako, Felisha, and Senjat were watching her from the other side, not to mention every other human within her line of sight. She felt the pressure of those stares, and advanced floating along the handrails, trying not to think about it. “What do you want from me?”
“Ma’am, do you understand me clearly?”
Ada didn’t know what ma’am meant, but otherwise she did. “Yes.”
“Can I get your full name?”
Ada smiled. She could use her titles! And she could be a bit creative with them, since there were no other Earthlings here to deny anything. “Ada Liu, Arbiter of the Gods and First Sorceress of Earth.”
The Broken Third (Digitesque Book 4) Page 3
