“We should release him,” Omar insisted. “The fleet has been destroyed or turned back; it doesn’t matter what he does now.”
“Spiral Out need to know what happens to traitors,” Lisa replied. “He set New Passengers free among us. He put everyone in danger.”
Another Circler, Silas, said, “You saw their technology; they could have escaped anyway. Whatever Spiral Out do, we’re never going to be sure that we’re safe, that we’re alone. That’s the reality now, and we need to find a way to live with it.”
Half a dozen other Circlers responded to this angrily, swimming around the chamber in tight, anxious loops. “We need to kill him,” Judah declared. “We need to draw a clear boundary between the right of Spiral Out to make their plans to leave Tallulah, and our right to live here safely and defend our own world.”
Omar said, “If we kill him we’ll start another war. Do you know how many people died in the last one?”
“Better a million die than we lose the whole world to the New Passengers,” Lisa replied.
“Better nobody dies,” Omar retorted, “and we spend our efforts on something that can help us all. We’ve been living like fools. We don’t deserve to feel safe, and killing our own people won’t change that. We don’t even know with certainty where the closest world really lies! And we have no idea what kind of life there might be around the bright stars; I doubt that the aliens were telling us the truth, but none of us really know what’s possible.”
“We’ve been caught sleeping,” Judah conceded. “That much is our fault. But what do you suggest we do about it?”
Omar said, “We need to work together with Spiral Out to explore the nearest worlds, before any more of their inhabitants reach us themselves. If we send out small robots to gather information, the results can serve everyone: defenders of Tallulah, and those who want to leave.”
Lisa was scornful. “After this, you’re going to trust Spiral Out as our allies?”
“Jake freed two aliens that you were threatening to kill,” Omar replied. “They had done us no harm, and we don’t even know for sure that they were lying. Because of that, we should slaughter all of Spiral Out? Or treat them all as our enemies? If everything that’s happened wakes them from their sleep the way it should wake us, we can benefit from each other’s efforts.”
Azar looked to Rahul for a reading of the situation, but he was motionless, his posture offering no verdict. Jake’s fate could go either way.
After 40 minutes of discussion with no clear consensus, Omar said, “I’m releasing him.” He paused for a few seconds, then left the chamber. Lisa squirted wordless, dissatisfied noise, but nobody moved to stop him.
Omar entered the chamber where Jake was being held and spoke with the Circlers who were standing guard.
“I don’t agree,” said Tarek. “You’ve come alone to demand this. Who else is with you?”
Omar and Tarek went together to the other Circlers. Omar said, “I repeat, I’m releasing Jake. If anyone here wants a war, I will be an enemy of the warmongers, so you’d better kill me now.”
Judah said, “No one’s going to kill you.” He swam with Omar to Jake’s chamber and spoke with the remaining guards. Then all five of them departed, leaving Jake alone.
Jake circled the chamber nervously a few times, then headed out of the burrow. Azar sent a swarm of scouts after him, but they had no data channel back to the fiber, and Jake was soon out of sight.
Almost an hour later, a message came through from the scouts; Jake had reached a nearby colony where the scouts could tap into the fiber again. Azar told Rahul their location.
Rahul said, “He’s safe, he’s with friends. It’s over for now.”
Azar sat on the flight deck weeping, hiding her tears even from Shelma.
10
Launched from a rail gun on Tallulah’s highest mountain, Mologhat 3 spent six seconds plowing through the atmosphere before attaining the freedom of space. Its heat shield glowed brightly as it ascended, but if the Old Passengers’ machines noticed it they found no reason to molest this speck of light as it headed out of harm’s way. When it reached an altitude of 1,000 kilometers it fired its own tiny photonic jet, but the radiation was horizontal and highly directional; nothing on Tallulah had a hope of detecting it.
Jake, Tilly, Rahul, Juhi and a fifth delegate, Santo, swam across the flooded observation deck, looking down on their world for the first time. Azar swam among them, but not as a lizard in anyone’s eyes. Her words would come to them as familiar chemicals, but they could cope with the sight of her as she really was.
As Azar gazed upon Tallulah, she dared to feel hope. There would be no war, no pogrom, but there was still a daunting task ahead for the millions of Spiral Out who remained. They would need to prepare the Circlers for the truth: for the eventual return of this secret delegation, for trade with the Amalgam, for a galaxy that was not what they’d imagined at all. For a future that didn’t follow their script.
Jake said, “Do you think we’ll ever meet Shelma again?”
Azar shrugged; he wouldn’t recognize the gesture immediately, but he’d soon learn. “She once told me that she could choose for herself between solitude and a connection with her people. If she wants to come back, she’ll make those connections as strong as she can.”
“No one’s ever returned before,” Jake said.
“Did Spiral In ever really want to?”
When the moles finally hit pay dirt beneath the ocean floor, their mass spectrometers had detected more than a hundred billion variants of the hoop, and that was only counting the stable forms. The deep rock was more complex than most living systems; no doubt much of that complexity was fixed by the needs of the heating process, but there was still room for countless variations along the way-and room for a new passenger hitching a ride on the hoops as they turned iron and nickel into heat.
If you had to become deep rock in order to understand it, Shelma had decided, she would become it, and then come back. She’d drag the secrets of the hoops out of the underworld and into the starlight.
“What if you can’t?” Azar had asked her. “What if you lose your way?”
“There’s room in there for a whole universe,” Shelma had replied. “If I’m tempted into staying, don’t think of me as dead. Just think of me as an explorer who lived a good life to its end.”
Jake said, “Tell me more about your world. Tell me about Hanuz.”
“There’s no need,” Azar replied. She gestured at the departure gate. “If you’re ready, I’ll show it to you.”
“Just like that?” Jake twitched anxiously.
“It’s fourteen quadrillion kilometers,” she said. “You won’t be back for 3,000 years. You can change your mind and stay, or you can gather your friends and swim it with me. But I’m leaving now. I need to see my family. I need to go home.”
Table of Contents
TROIKA
RETURN TO TITAN
THERE’S A GREAT BIG BEAUTIFUL TOMORROW/NOW IS THE BEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE
A GLIMPSE OF THE MARVELLOUS STRUCTURE [AND THE THREAT IT ENTAILS]
ALONE
HOT ROCK
Godlike Machines Page 48
