Shelud was surprised when Aelin offered his support for the idea. “Green priests should go out, explore the Spiral Arm, share new information with the verdani. That is our reason for existence.”
Olaf’s brow furrowed. “But we don’t want our location known. If you come with us, then all the green priests will know where we are and what we’re doing. We don’t need a spy among us.”
“A spy?” Shelud shook his head. “A green priest gives to the worldforest only what he wishes to give. If green priests weren’t trusted to keep information in confidence, who would ever hire our services?”
Dale Reeves whispered something in his father’s ear, and the bearded man gave a grudging nod. He said in a warning voice, “You have other skills as well?”
“And all the knowledge contained in the worldforest. Anything you might need, access to any expert. Do you have that on your ships?”
Olaf huffed, looked around the lush forest. “It’ll be a very different life from your forest here, green priest. A hard life, but a satisfying one.”
“I am a green priest, but my name is Shelud. With a treeling, I am with the worldforest, no matter where I am. And I would rather have a satisfying life than an easy one.” The bearded clan leader grudgingly agreed.
Aelin embraced his brother and shook his head. “I never thought you would be the first of us to leave Theroc!”
With a start, Father Idriss sat up in his observation chair, looking around. “Has the festival begun yet?” He blinked. “Or is it over?” With great effort, he rose. “I need to rest.”
FIFTY-TWO
GARRISON REEVES
Taking Seth with him in his repaired ship, Garrison left Rendezvous and his sour memories behind. The clan engineers had completed the overhaul on the battered Iswander vessel, repaired the engines, fixed the hull, and provided a fresh alloy coating.
They also painted over the Iswander Industries logo and renamed the ship Prodigal Son. Olaf Reeves hadn’t asked Garrison for his approval, but the name did seem oddly appropriate. His father wanted him to carry the reminder with him, and Garrison embraced the Prodigal Son as his identity and as his ship.
Now he needed to find a new life for himself. For a man of his background and abilities, there were numerous options, but Garrison wanted to find a stable place and make sure he could send his son to Academ. Previously, Elisa had shut down the idea whenever Garrison suggested it, no matter how badly Seth wanted to go there. He had done his best to teach Seth what he could during their evenings off shift, while Elisa had arranged for computer tutoring on Sheol. She had thought that was enough. But their son longed to be with other Roamer children—and, of course, all the compies.
With Elisa gone and Sheol devastated, however, Garrison was starting from scratch. Aboard the Prodigal Son after Seth was asleep in his bunk, he pored over images of the Sheol disaster. The public records of the catastrophe were disjointed and uncertain, many parts censored. Even so, the images were so horrific he could barely watch. Those people had been his friends and coworkers. Fifteen hundred and forty-three workers had lost their lives.
He heard a gasp and a quick sob behind him, and realized that Seth had been watching silently over his shoulder. Garrison blanked the screen, but his son stayed where he was. “No, I want to see what happened there.”
Garrison could not shield his son from the reality of what had happened, nor could he sanitize the images. Seth had been through an ordeal, and needed to know why his father had been desperate to take him away from Sheol. Garrison muted the sound and showed some of the general images so Seth would understand. . . .
Garrison decided to apply for a job mining and shepherding the rubble belt of Earth’s ruined Moon. When he sent his application to the Lunar Orbital Complex, the work crew supervisors saw his qualifications and hired him without hesitation. His father would have been particularly infuriated that Garrison was working for Earth. He could almost hear Olaf’s voice: “I didn’t give you skills and expertise so you could help Those People out of the problems they created for themselves.”
Garrison would have pointed out that few people on Earth had any influence on why the faeros had destroyed the Moon, but that was an argument his father never would have let him win. Fortunately, clan Reeves was pulling up roots and heading away from civilization. Olaf would never know.
After his work briefing in the lunar rubble belt, Garrison moved into a company-provided habitation unit in the civilian section of the Lunar Orbital Complex. Although concessions were made to allow for daycare and schooling, most LOC workers either had other arrangements or no families at all. That was all right; Garrison didn’t expect Seth to remain there long.
His son searched for new educational loops recorded by Orli Covitz and her Friendly compy DD. Garrison had begun to realize how much Seth enjoyed them, counted on them as distant friends even on Sheol where there were no other children, and while he traveled alone with his father. Seth seemed disappointed. “I think Orli stopped making the loops. I haven’t found a new one in a long time. Do you think something happened to DD?” He was genuinely worried.
“A lot of things can happen in a person’s life,” Garrison said. “Relleker is far away, though, and we have no way of knowing.”
Soon, Seth would be much happier. Garrison told his son the news after he finished filing all the proper forms. “It’s set, Seth. We’ll stay here another two days while I finish my work arrangements, and then I’ll fly us off to Newstation. You’re already approved.”
Seth beamed. “Academ? I’m going to be with the Teacher compies?”
“And the other Roamer children.”
His son was visibly thrilled. “But will it be all right? I could help you with your work here. I know how to suit up, and how to drive a cargo pod and operate machinery. That’s all you need.”
He didn’t doubt Seth was as qualified as many of the workers assigned to the LOC worksites. “Yes, but it’s not all you need, and you’ll learn a lot more with intensive Roamer instruction. I need you to be educated, not just trained. Training will only get you so far. Education will make you wise.”
“Grandfather Olaf said experience makes you wise.”
“That too,” Garrison admitted. “But let’s get you an education before you experience too many things. You need friends your own age.” He softened his voice, “Your grandfather did say one true thing—a knife loses its edge unless it is sharpened.”
“And I’ll get my edge at Academ?”
Nodding, Garrison realized that he needed to get his own edge back too. He called up images of the Roamer school and showed Seth the interior of the hollowed-out comet, where waterfalls flowed from all directions with wental-charged water. From the sparkle in the boy’s eyes, Garrison knew he had made the right decision.
FIFTY-THREE
LEE ISWANDER
A few months ago, Lee Iswander could not have imagined such an ambitious new start, the possibilities as numerous and bright as all the stars in the Spiral Arm. After losing everything at Sheol, he had doubted he would ever recover. But now, thanks to Elisa’s discovery of the bloaters, he had a tremendous opportunity, and he did not intend to waste it. Iswander Industries would rise like a phoenix from the ashes of the lava-processing disaster.
Elisa had led him out to the new cluster of drifting sacks, thousands of them on the far outer edge of a solar system that was so obscure it had no name, only coordinate numbers. The silent bloaters were as marvelous as they were mysterious.
Alec Pannebaker ran an analysis, trying to understand what the swollen nodules were, where they were drifting, and why they had clustered together in ways that gravity could not explain. They were possibly organic, but with very little structure. A comparison to giant plankton seemed apt. Most important, the membrane-enclosed globules were filled with ekti that could be easily drained and processed. That was all Iswander needed to know.
Most of his assets had been tied up in the Sheol facility, his pri
mary accounts impounded, pending legal actions. Accusations and criminal charges flitted about as the investigation continued, but Roamers were loathe to fall into what they saw as “old Hansa ways” of pointing fingers, looking for scapegoats, and solving problems with lawsuits. The history of the gypsy clans was filled with instances of life-support failures, dome breaches, asteroid collisions, structural collapses. Sometimes the universe lashed out, and people paid the price. Roamers tended to stick together.
Even so, they were not convinced the industrialist was really a Roamer, in his heart.
When Iswander tried to buy the equipment he needed for his new secret operations, many Roamer businessmen refused to deal with him, blaming him for the Sheol catastrophe. One particularly intractable supplier of storage silos told Iswander, “You’d never be able to meet my price.”
Iswander met the man’s gaze. “Name your price—I’ll meet it.”
The supplier crossed his arms over his chest. “Fifteen hundred and forty-three lives.”
Iswander went elsewhere. He managed to liquidate some of his other assets, scraping together enough funds to buy the basic equipment he needed, though he told no one what it was for. Over the course of a month, he set up his operations in the new bloater field under tight security, inviting a small group of workers who were willing to take another chance on Iswander Industries, the few faithful who had stuck with him even in his darkest hour.
The drifting cluster of bloaters soon developed into an ambitious ekti-extraction outpost: a cluster of big ships, modular stations, industrial storage tanks, pumping vessels, and six cargo shuttles that would soon begin distributing stardrive fuel. Iswander was optimistic, and expected he would need more ships soon enough. These thousands of bloaters held a wealth of ekti for the taking, and no one else knew the source.
Fifteen of his modular habitats were linked together, comprising a headquarters, an admin module, living quarters, landing bays, and a small medical center in case of accidental injuries. At the moment, only sixty people worked out at the site, but once Iswander began making a profit he could hire more employees, all carefully vetted. Before long, Lee Iswander would restore his wealth and, more important, his reputation.
His wife and son were glad to help him make a fresh start. Though they were lonely out here, both Arden and Londa believed him when he said he was going to make his name and his fortune all over again. Elisa Reeves got to work, as she always did.
Pannebaker and two other engineers modified existing equipment to drain bloater sacks. The ekti was easily obtained, the operation far more efficient than the huge and expensive traditional skymines that processed mind-boggling quantities of hydrogen into small amounts of stardrive fuel. Iswander knew that his new ekti source would change the Confederation, change the whole Spiral Arm—but he did not intend to reveal his secret.
Best of all, tests confirmed that the ekti from the bloaters had a higher energy potential than traditional stardrive fuel. The difference was so remarkable that Iswander decided to call his product ekti-X. There would be much consternation among the Roamers who now shunned him, because they wouldn’t be able to figure out his source.
Occasionally, the nodules sparkled and flashed, but no one understood why, how to predict the sequence, or what it meant. The discharge caused problems with electronic circuitry nearby, and Iswander’s engineers installed significant shielding where necessary. Because he knew how explosive the bloaters could be, having seen the images Elisa brought back, he also instituted extreme safety measures.
Otherwise, Iswander was happy to let scientific investigations continue so long as they didn’t interfere with the extraction work. He had a lot of ground to make up.
Ships flitted around the bloaters, and tankers filled with purified ekti-X hung near the clustered spheres. By now, fifteen of the giant sacks had been drained, and the empty membranes hung like husks in space. As he watched the workers tow another flaccid membrane out beyond the traffic areas, Iswander was reminded of old sailing ships on the seas of Earth, hunting whales for the blubber. He knew he was anthropomorphizing the nodules, which certainly weren’t alive, weren’t aware. They were just gas bags filled with stardrive fuel. They weren’t even biological, as far as anyone could tell.
Elisa stood with him in the admin module looking out the windowports. “As soon as possible, we will bring clan Iswander back to prominence, sir.”
“Your confidence is contagious—as well it should be.”
Her smile was hard. Elisa Reeves was not soft by any measure, but she was a beautiful woman. Elisa Enturi, he corrected himself; she no longer wanted to be known by her married name.
“Garrison is gone,” she had reminded him when she took her maiden name again. “He was dead to me before the explosions killed him and my son. I don’t want to carry his name around like old luggage. We both need a fresh start, sir—and this is the place to do it. Once you begin supplying limitless cheap ekti-X for the Confederation and the Ildiran Empire, the Sheol disaster will be forgotten. Everything else will be seen as a mere setback.”
“Thank you for that, Elisa,” he said—but he wouldn’t soon forget the 1, 543. Nevertheless, he realized that reliability and loyalty were very attractive qualities.
Alec Pannebaker loved zipping around in an inspection pod while the extractors plunged nozzles through the tough bloater membranes and began pumping out the murky contents. It was like protoplasm inside a gigantic cell, and each bloater contained an amorphous dark structure at its core, like a rudimentary nucleus. Iswander’s processing stations centrifuged the base material to remove unwanted compounds and then filled hundreds of canisters of ekti-X.
Ten years ago, Pannebaker had served aboard a Roamer skymine, and he understood ekti processing. He made sure Iswander understood that draining bloaters was a thousand times more efficient than traditional stardrive fuel operations.
Elisa said, “Once we start distributing our ekti, sir, the Roamers are going to go nuts. We’ll have to be very careful not to let anyone else discover where our operations are.”
“We’ve got plenty of reasons to keep a low profile,” Iswander said. “And I can’t trust anyone more than I trust you, Elisa. I want you to handle the distribution. Our first major shipment should be ready to go soon.”
“I’ve already started making plans, sir. If we bring our ekti-X to a central point—say, Ulio—I can hire pilots to distribute it from there.” She looked out at the expanding operations, the extraction and refinery. “This is something we both needed.” The bitterness in her voice had not faded.
“A new start,” he said. “Everybody loves a redemption story.”
FIFTY-FOUR
EXXOS
Trapped in an incomprehensible pocket behind the universe, Exxos and his black robots struggled to understand the Shana Rei’s hatred and capriciousness. Was it curiosity, or just a penchant for destruction? The cold inkblot creatures had offhandedly dismantled two more robots for no comprehensible reason, unless they were bored or frustrated.
“How can you help us fight?” the Shana Rei demanded.
“We have abilities that you cannot know,” Exxos bluffed. “We will demonstrate them—when necessary.”
With racing thoughts, he collated everything he had learned, including unreliable knowledge from his databases of Ildiran myths. He needed to comprehend the Shana Rei before he risked offering further answers.
The robots drifted in a netherworld of darkness surrounded by a cloud of debris from their dismantled ships. Suddenly a flicker of light rippled through the void, and all the inkblots flinched. The representational eyes flickered and blurred, then blazed more intensely.
“What was that?” Exxos asked. “Please explain.”
“Pain. More pain. It grows worse.”
“Where does the pain come from? What hurts you?” Exxos said.
“Pain comes from the evolving universe. Pain comes from the stain of life, from thoughts and order being imposed upon
the natural state of chaos.”
“My robots are powerful, but our sentience causes you no agony. We are different.”
“You are different.”
“We are powerful.”
“That remains to be seen.”
The black blots swelled and closed in on Exxos, and he thought they might call his bluff and dismantle him, but the Shana Rei kept talking in their vibrating portentous voices. “In the beginning, all was silent, all was black, all was peaceful. But now the chatter of thoughts, the burning of stars, the outcry of gravity is one endless scream in our minds. We cannot unmake it fast enough.”
“Our goals are aligned,” Exxos immediately pointed out. “We wish to destroy as well.”
“We intend to destroy everything—including you.”
“No, not us. My robots are unique. Do not underestimate what we can do.” Exxos had to convince them. “Listen—and hear our silence amid the scream of creation. A powerful silence. We know how to create the silence you need. If you destroy us, you will lose an opportunity to win your battle.”
“We will not destroy you. Yet.” The eye in the inkblot vanished, then reawakened. “The greatest agony is caused by the frenzy of life, the pulsing of minds, the energy of thoughts. We are exploring, reaching out. We have found an Ildiran ship and swallowed it. We have found the hydrogues and will systematically eradicate them. But they do not cause us the worst pain—there is something new, something greater.”
The surviving black robots floated motionless in the entropy bubble, unable to escape. Exxos calculated their probability of survival as . . . very small. “We know the Ildiran race fought you long ago,” he said. “You failed. You lost. You need our help.”
Another flicker of light rippled through the void, causing the Shana Rei to flinch. Exxos observed, but remained unable to draw useful conclusions. Something in the outside universe was disturbing them, but he did not understand what it was.
The Dark Between the Stars Page 28
