Dust jl-1

by Elizabeth Bear

  The place he brought them to, finally, suited Rien's perception of what Engine should be. It was a long wide room, divided into near-corridors by rows of pillars and banks of interfaces. Engineers sat, sprawled, or curled in bowl-shaped chairs, some with eyes closed and fingers twitching in concentration, others in hushed conversation with their neighbors.

  Despite this, Rien's attention was drawn inexorably to the image in a central hologram tank. The waystars shone and twisted at its center, illuminated in gradations of color invisible to the naked eye, and Rien realized that in the tank, she could see pressure and temperature readings, maps of convection currents, real-time diagrams of changing stellar structures, and estimates of the time remaining before the system collapsed into supernova. She realized also that she could read those numbers and gradients, by the courtesy of Hero Ng.

  Arianrhod stood beyond the tank, her white hair shining in the light of the conjured stars.

  Rien could not walk forward, as if maintaining her distance from the information in the tank could protect her from the reality of their danger.

  "Days," Rien said. "That's just days."

  Benedick touched her elbow. He was tall; she tipped her head back to look up at him. "It could be instants," he said. "Or a month. We won't have much warning, once the conflagration starts."

  Rien shook her head. "We can't survive that."

  "Not without a unified A.I.," Samael said quite calmly. "And a captain. And a mobile ship. And a crew that can fly her."

  "None of which we have."

  "All of which we can get," Rien said—or her voice said for her, though the intonation and the words were not her own. She pressed her fingertips over her mouth; her lips kept moving. "If you will trust me."

  "Rien?" Benedick, staring at her as if he expected a possessing demon to rise up from her.

  "I was Conrad Ng," she said. "Chief Engineer. Your daughter consumed me. She is my vessel."

  When Perceval returned to her body, and Dust reclaimed his avatar, Perceval asked to talk to Rien. She expected a negative answer, some temporization.

  She didn't expect Dust to spread his made-up hands helplessly and say, "I am sorry, beloved. Engine is beyond

  my grasp." But he did, and—perhaps foolishly—she believed his admission of defeat.

  And then he tilted his head and said, "But with your assistance, I hope my reach may soon exceed." "It's all you think of," she said. "Seducing me." "Your acquiescence," he said plainly, "is my survival." And then he dusted his hands against his waistcoat and finished, "But if you prefer to wait for Ariane, or for a supernova, that is the lady's privilege."

  Rien understood everything Hero Ng was saying, which surprised her either more or less than it should have. The knowledge was there, deep knowledge, divorced of his personality. As if she had once upon a time studied and learned it herself.

  There were other things as well, memories she would rather not pursue—a wife and children and all the bits and bobs a life was made of. Ac least he was a good man, she thought. A decent man. And a brave one.

  She would have hated to share her head with someone like Alasdair or Ariane, no matter how wickedly smart they made her.

  Maybe it took a monster to run things. Maybe you could only be a princess until you were in charge.

  She could believe that. But she didn't want to think about it. Instead, she listened to Hero Ng explain his plan.

  There was a good deal of the world, in his estimation, that was dead or damaged beyond repair. There was a good deal of raw material in the holdes. The world now had stored energy it had not contained when it limped into orbit around the waystars.

  And there were the library trees, and the resurrectees.

  If he could take hold in Rien, he reasoned, then his fellow crew members, preserved in the library, could inhabit the resurrected. "Ethically, we might quail at this necessity, but we have come down to a matter of life or death. There is a vast body of knowledge preserved there, and it is useless to the ship while maintained in stasis, unaccessed."

  Rien stole a glance at Benedick. He did not appear to be quailing, and neither did her mother. Instead, Arianrhod had come around the hologram tank and now leaned against its corner, ankles crossed and arms folded, listening.

  "We have a pair of immediate problems," Hero Ng said. "One is surviving an impending stellar death. The other is getting the Jacob's Ladder under way again, sustainably. It seems to me that the solutions to these problems must be linked. It will require a good deal of nerve, however, and will not be without risk. And we must begin at once, for we have no idea how long we have for preparations."

  And while they waited, he explained.

  Simply put, Chief Engineer Ng proposed that the Jacob's Ladder wait until the waystar went supernova, then catch a ride on the magnetized wave front of the exploding debris.

  Theoretically (Ng said), embedded among the debris would be bubbles of magnetic field, created in the death throes of the star during the process of reconnection, the melding of opposing magnetic fields into a single line. It was possible—if the unused stores and the damaged ship itself could be spun into carbon monofilament tubes and computronium and symbiote colonies, if the repurposing of the ship's artificial gravity worked—that the world could net one of those bubbles and surf the cresting wave.

  And maybe not be crushed. As long as they caught the leading edge. As long as they accelerated fast enough to stay with it. As long as they could reinforce the world, and locate enough acceleration tanks that the augmented crew stood a chance of survival. "There's no hope for the Mean," Ng said. "They will have to be Exalted immediately; there's no point in maintaining controls only to see them perish."

  It was possible, as long as the world did not tear itself apart at the seams from the strain. The whole ship would have to accelerate evenly. The whole ship would have to stay ahead of the line of debris. Or they would be reduced to a smudge along the edge of the newly forming planetary nebula.

  "And then what?" Arianrhod said, the first words Rien had heard her speak since fainting on the stretcher. "We fly blindly into darkness until we freeze? That seems to be a jump from the fire into the icebox, if I may stretch a metaphor."

  Rien felt her lips stretch around Ng's smile. It was a nice smile, she judged, if a little smug. "If we live that long? When we're up to speed, we deploy a ramscoop. We find a better star, one that looks to have habitable worlds. And we steer for it."

  "Simple," Arianrhod said, unfolding her arms. She glanced over her shoulder at the auburn-haired, snub' nosed woman who had been at her side now both times Rien had seen her. "Chief Engineer?"

  She didn't mean Ng.

  Which meant that was Caitlin Conn. Perceval's mother. Who was looking at Rien with far more concentration than was Arianrhod, though perhaps that was self-protection or embarrassment on Arianrhod's part.

  "I think it could work," Caitlin said, without shifting her gaze. Maybe she was looking at—assessing—Hero Ng. He was the one wearing Rien's face, just now. "If it doesn't kill us. Of course, sitting here waiting for the boom will kill us, too. There's just one problem ..."

  Rien found control of her own voice, or Ng relinquished it to her. She stepped away from Samael and, incidentally, Benedick. Gavin fanned his wings on her shoulder, for balance, and she remembered that he was Samael's creature.

  And so was Mallory.

  Which meant, so was Ng.

  There was no one to trust. Except Perceval. Because if she didn't trust Perceval, there was nothing worth fighting for.

  "What's the problem?" Benedick asked.

  Rien knew the answer. "We'd have to unify the world's A.I. to do it. The angels don't work together without a guiding intelligence."

  She would not look at Samael.

  She couldn't bear to watch him preening.

  At least, she thought, he wouldn't consume Hero Ng, and all his fellows from the moving times. No: they could be rehomed in the resurrected. Whose persons h
ad been devoured by other Exalt, in the present day.

  It all comes around again, Hero Ng whispered. Be of good heart and good patience, brave Rien.

  25 Vault

  Yes, I have a thousand tongues,

  And nine and ninety-nine lie.

  — STEPHEN CRANE, The Black Riders and Other Lines

  A little later, Rien sat alone except for Gavin, feeling small and lost behind a table in the corner. She watched the adults, whom she was still tempted to call the Exalt, performing their mysterious dances of conversation, moving from place to place around the big room like ants touching antennae and sharing pheromones, passing news of the death of an old queen or the ascension of the new. She had slipped away from Samael—or at least, from Samael's avatar—and Benedick was talking to someone she didn't know while ignoring Caitlin and being ignored right back.

  Like two cats on a bed, she thought. She fiddled with her fingers and thought about what she knew through Hero Ng.

  His plan might even work.

  Samael, Mallory, and Gavin. She told herself she'd only been using Mallory, that she had never trusted or liked Gavin. The basilisk still roosted on her shoulder, baleful eyes tight shut. She poked him with a finger. "Wake up."

  "Do I look plugged in to you? I'm not sleeping."

  "Good," she said. "Because I'm sending you home."

  "Rien—"

  But she stopped him with a raised hand. A funny awkward gesture when one made it to someone whose head bobbed beside one's own. "Someone needs to fetch Mallory and the fruits of the library tree. And you are the obvious choice. Can you find your way EVA?"

  "I can." He billed her cheek. She ordered herself not to be charmed and turned her face away. "You think I serve Samael," he said.

  "Don't you?"

  He shrugged, both wings. "Do you?"

  "No." As flatly as she could say it. "I don't see the point in angels. Or in reuniting angels. Or in choosing one angel over another; it's like asking if you would rather be scourged or boiled in oil. They're all full of shit and self-importance."

  She must have spoken louder than she intended, because her words made someone—other than Gavin— laugh. She craned her neck to see over his back.

  A young woman somewhat smaller and slighter than even Rien stood against the wall. She'd call her a woman, anyway, though she was covered in a soft spotted coat of gray-gold fur. Her wings—folded tight, long-boned, with grasping fingers at the joint—were what caught Rien's eye and made her breath short, though, because in seeing them, she could imagine what Perceval's wings had been like.

  It came to Rien that even if she got her sister back, she would never see her whole. In breathtaking unfairness, the Perceval-who-had-been was maimed before Rien had ever met her.

  She wanted to reach out and rub one hand down the velvet-furred bones of the stranger's wing, to see if it felt— as it appeared—like the velour skin of a peach. Instead, Rien made herself look at her face, and register a fine nose and wide mouth, unbalanced by heavy brows.

  "Rien," she said, by way of introduction. Her hands were cold, and she chafed them on her trouser legs.

  "Jordan," the stranger answered, and held out a fine-boned hand. She was as slender as Perceval. Rien wondered if they were related.

  Rien took her hand, reminding herself that falling for strangers simply because they looked a little like Perceval was stupid. Although Perceval would never want her, and wouldn't holding on be stupider, still?

  There was no fur on the stranger's palms, or the backs of her fingers. The skin there was black, like the skin on her face where the fur did not cover, and Rien thought of the hands of lemurs. The fur made sense; Jordan had no apparent body fat, and she was small and thin. You'd need some kind of insulation.

  "You don't like Samael," Jordan said.

  "I don't like being manipulated." Rien gave her hand a squeeze and released it. "I guess that means I don't like angels."

  Then she held up one finger for a moment of quiet, and tapped Gavin on the wing. "Will you do what I asked you to?"

  "Your wish is my command," he said, with abject dryness, and kicked off with more force than was needful.

  Heads turned as he swept across the room with long, rowing strokes of his wings, tail snaking behind. A tall man ducked, though Gavin never came with a meter of him. Samael, speaking quietly with Benedick, affected either boredom or oblivion; he didn't even lift his head.

  Rien wanted to hit him.

  And maybe Jordan noticed her clenching hands, as the door slipped open in front of Gavin and he vanished into the corridor beyond. Because she touched Rien's wrist lightly, and when she turned, smiled. "Tell me more."

  "More what?"

  "More of why you don't like angels."

  Too much, too fast, maybe. She shrugged and drew inward. "Not right now." And then, at Jordan's fallen face, wondered; maybe she had been flirting.

  "Maybe some other time," Rien continued, reopening the door. "It looks like the party is breaking up, and they'll have work for me."

  Or for Hero Ng, which amounted to the same thing.

  As if Gavin's departure had been a trigger, people were dispersing—to consoles, or out of the room. Rien stood, looking around for Benedick.

  "Nice to meet you," Jordan said.

  Rien gave her a slantwise smile. "Nice to meet you, also."

  After the council of war, Rien's mother brought her cookies. She set the plate at Rien's elbow and sat down beside her at the console upon which Rien—or Hero Ng, more accurately—was working. Rien watched him, though, and she was learning.

  Rien's left hand moved across the controls without pause as, with the right one, she selected a cookie.

  "Thank you," she said, through a mouthful of sweet carbohydrates.

  It was the first thing she'd eaten since they began their run through Inkling's cavern. She stuffed the other half in her mouth.

  "You feel I abandoned you," Arianrhod said.

  Rien mumbled something unintelligible, unbearably grateful for the excuse of snack foods. Sugar cookies. She could live on them.

  Ng took her hand back while she chewed, and typed faster. She let him, watching her fingers dance.

  Arianrhod cleared her throat. "I had to leave you, Rien. But I gave you my name for a reason. I didn't know—"

  Her voice creaked.

  "Gave me your name?" Rien asked, forgetting to watch her fingers.

  "Rien," Arianrhod said. "It's a part of my name."

  She licked her lips, and Rien became aware that she was staring. She looked quickly away. "Your name."

  Arianrhod touched her arm. "I would have done more. But the contract was—"

  "Contract." Surely Rien had something better to do than echoing everything Arianrhod said. Whatever it might be, however, she could not think of it. She was thinking, instead, of names. And not just her own name.

  "How else are children born, between Rule and Engine?" Arianrhod shrugged, and appropriated a cookie. If appropriated was the right word, when she had provided them. Her hair fell over her blouse, a waterfall of silver that could not have been more different from Inkling's deadly river.

  "I thought I was named for nothing," Rien said, and having said it, frowned. Arianrhod.

  Rien.

  Arianrhod.

  Rien.

  It was on the tip of her tongue. She bit her lip. To buy time, she corrected a faulty spectrograph of the waystars.

  Rien.

  Arianrhod.

  Ariane.

  "Tristen," she said, too quickly, stammering. "Is he out of the tank yet?"

  "Not yet," Arianrhod answered. "Did you want to visit him?"

  Rien let Ng have her hands back. At least it kept them from shaking. "Yes," she said. "After."

  Ariane was her half sister. Maybe. Ariane was also Arianrhod's daughter, by Alasdair. Possibly.

  Did it matter?

  Did it matter that Perceval was her half sister?

  No. It matt
ered that she loved Perceval.

  "After?"

  "After we talk about what we're going to do for Perceval."

  Whatever the bonds of blood, Arianrhod was no more willing to help Rien reclaim her sister than anyone else might have been. When Arianrhod excused herself, Rien did not complain.

  She'd intended the request as a test—a test that, if Arianrhod failed it, would give either of them a reason to end the conversation.

  A game, yes.

  Rien might not like these ruling monsters, but if playing their games was what it took, well, she would prove that she could learn. She would be a master manipulator in no time, among this crew. And her mind was spinning over those three names—Arianrhod, Ariane, Rien—and the implication that there were layers and layers of allegiances that she did not even begin to understand.

  She was glad she had Hero Ng to keep her hands busy.

  Because she was thinking about Tristen, and his claim on the Captaincy—not as good as Perceval's, perhaps, because of the archaic rules under which the world labored, but better than Ariane's, except Ariane had eaten their father—and she was thinking about the chamber of bats, and Tristen warehoused there until Ariane could get around to eating his mind and experiences. As Rien had eaten Hero Ng.

  And she was thinking about the healing tanks.

  Whether the Engineers trusted Hero Ng to keep her out of trouble—after all, he was one of their own—or whether they were too busy themselves to watch her closely, Rien found herself working alone. It wasn't as if she was invisible; the Engineers didn't look through her as they bustled around their operations center. Instead, it was as if she had been sprayed with a frictionless coating, or perhaps as if she sat in the visual equivalent of an electromagnetic bottle.

  What do they know that 1 don't? she wondered.

  She watched Hero Ng work, and she studied what he did, and she worried. She understood it all, at least—his knowledge was her knowledge, too. That was some comfort, though the familiar/unfamiliar texture of the control panel under her hands was disconcerting, if she let herself think about it.