Mallow (12 page)

Washen was suddenly aware of her own sweat.
A sweet oil, volatile and sweetl
y scented, rose up out of her nervous pores, then evaporated, leaving her flesh chilled despite the endless heat.

Then the Master, immune to the quake, lifted her wide hand, announcing in a smooth, abrupt way, 'We need to discuss your timetable.'

What about the bioteams?

'You're being missed up here. Which is what you hope to hear, I'm sure.' The woman laughed for a moment, alone. Then she added,
'Our delegation fiction isn't clever enough, or flexible enough, and the crew are getting suspicious.'

Miocene nodded knowingly.

Then the Master lowered her hand, explaining, 'Before I have a panic to fend off, I need to bring you home again.' Smiles broke out.

Some of the captains were tired of the discomforts;

others simply thought about the honors and promotions waiting above.

Washen cleared her throat, then asked, 'Do you mean everyone, madam?'

'For the moment. Yes.'

She shouldn't have been surprised that the cover story was leaking. Hundreds of captains couldn't just vanish without comment. And Washen shouldn't have felt disappointment. Even during the last busy weeks, she found herself wishing that the fiction was real. She wanted her and her colleagues off visiting some high-technology exophobes, trying to coax them into a useful trust.
That would a difficult, rewarding challenge. But now, hearing that their mission was finished, she suddenly thought of hundreds of projects worth doing with her little lake — enough work to float an entire century.

As mission leader, it was Miocene's place to ask:

'Do you want us cutting our work short, madam?'

The Master set one hand on one of the busts. For her, the room and its furnishings were genuine, and the captains were illusions.

'Mission plans can always be rewritten,' she reminded them.
'What's vital is that you finish your surveys of both hemispheres. Be sure there aren't any big surprises. And I'd like your most critical studies wrapped up. Ten ship-days should be adequate. More than. Then you'll come home again, leaving drones to carry on the work, and we can take our time deciding on our next important step.'

Smiles wavered, but none crumbled.

Miocene whispered,
'Ten days,'
with a tentative respect.

'Is there a problem?'

'Madam,' the Submaster began, 'I would feel a little more at ease if we could be sure. That Marrow isn't a threat. Madam.'

There was a pause, and not just because the Master was thousands of kilometers removed from them. It was a lengthy, unnerving silence. Then the captain's captain looked off
into the illusionary distance, asking, 'Considerations? Any?'

It would be a disruption.

The other Submasters agreed with Miocene. To accomplish that work in ten days, with confidence, would require every captain's help. That included those with the support teams. The base camp might have to be abandoned, or nearly so. Which was an acceptable risk, perhaps. But those mild, conciliatory words were obscured by clenched hands and distant, unsettled gazes.

The Master absorbed the criticisms without comment.

Then she turned to her future Submaster, saying, 'Washen,' with a certain razored tone. 'Do you have any considerations to add here, darling?'

Washen hesitated as long as she dared.

'Perhaps Marrow was a flywheel* she finally allowed. Ignoring every puzzled face, she nodded and said,'Madam.'

'Is this a joke?' the Master responded, her voice devoid of amusement. 'Aren't we discussing your timetable?'

'But if this was a flywheel,' Washen continued, 'and if these magical buttresses ever weakened, even for an instant, Marrow would have thrown itself to pieces. A catastrophic failure. The hyperfiber blanket wouldn't have absorbed the angular momentum, and it would have shattered, and the molten iron would have struck the chamber wall, and the shock waves would have passed up through the ship.' She offered a series of simple, coarse calculations. Then avoiding Aasleen's glare, she added, 'Maybe this was an elaborate flywheel. But it also might have made an effective self-destruct mechanism. We just don't know, madam. We don't know the builders' intentions. We can't even guess if they had enemies, real or imagined. But if there are answers, I can't think of a better place to look.'

The Masters face was unreadable, impenetrable. Giant brown eyes closed, and finally, slowly, she shook her head, smiling in a pained fashion.
'Since my first moment on board this glorious vessel,' she proclaimed, 'I have nourished one guiding principle: the builders, the architects, whoever they were, would never have endangered their marvelous creation.'

Washen wished for the same confidence.

Then that apparition of light and sound rose to her feet, leaning across the golden busts and the bright pearl-wood, and she said,
'You need a change of duty, Washen. You and your team will take the lead. Help us explore the far hemisphere. If it's there, find your telltale clue. Then once your surveys are finished, everyone comes home.

'Agreed?'

'As you wish, madam,' said Washen. Said everyone.

Then Washen noticed Miocene's surreptitious glance, something in her narrowed eyes saying, 'Nice try darling.' And with that look came the faintest hint of respect.

Eleven

On three distinct
occasions, flocks of pterosaur drones had intensively mapped this region. Yet as Washen retraced the machines' path, she realized that even the most recent survey, completed eight days ago, was too old to be useful. Battered by quakes, a once-flat landscape had been heaved skyward, then split open. Torrents of molten iron ran down the new slopes. Over the hushed murmur of the engine, she could hear the iron's voice, deep and steady, and massive, and fantastically angry. Washen flew parallel to the fierce river, and where three maps showed a great oxbow lake, the iron pooled, consuming the last of the water and the mud. Columns of filthy steam and hydrogen gas rose skyward, then twisted to the east. As an experiment, Washen flew into the steam. Samples were ingested by the car's airscoops, then passed through filters and a hundred sensors and even a simple microscope, and peering into the scope, Diu started to giggle, saying, 'Wouldn't you know? Life.'

Riding inside the steam were spores and eggs and half-born insects, encased in tough bio ceramics and indifferent to the blistering heat. Inside the tip of one needle flask, too small to be seen with the naked eye, were e
nough pond weeds and finned beetl
es to conquer a dozen new lakes.

Catastrophe was the driving force on Marrow.

That insight struck Washen every day, every hour, and it always arrived with a larger principle in tow:

In one form or another, disaster had always ruled the universe.

The steam could disperse abruptl
y, giving way to the sky's blue light, the chamber wall hanging far overhead, and beneath, stretching as far as Washen could see, lay the stark black bones of a jungle.

Fumes and fire had incinerated every tree.

Every scrambling bug.

The carnage must have been horrific. Yet the blaze had passed days ago, and new growth was already pushing up from the gnarled trunks and fresh crevices, thousands of glossy black umbrellalike leaves shining in the superheated air.

Diu said something in passing. Broq leaned over Washen s shoulder, repeating the question.'Should we stop? And have a look, maybe?'

In another fifty kilometers, they would be as far from the bridge as possible. The proverbial end of the world. Chilled champagne and some stronger pleasures waited for that symbolic moment.
T
hey would have to wait patie
ntly
, Washen decided, and through an implanted subsystem, she asked the car to find a level cool piece of ground where six captains could enjoy a little stroll.

The car hovered for a thoughtful
instant, then dropped and settle
d.

The outside air was cool enough to breathe, if only in quick little sips. Following the mission's protocol, everyone took samples of the burnt soil and likely rocks, and they cut away pieces of things alive and dead. But mostly this was an excuse to experience this hard landscape, once strange and now, after weeks of work, utterly familiar.

Promise and Dream were examining a broad white tree stump.

'Asbestos,' Promise observed, fingers rubbing against the powdery bark. 'Pulled from the ground or out of the air, or maybe just cooked up fresh.
Then laid around the roots, see? Like a blanket.'

'The trunk and branches were probably lipid rich,' her brother added. 'A living candle, practically'

'Meant to burn.'

'Happy to burn.'

'Born to burn.'

'Out of love.'

Then they giggled to themselves, enjoying their
little
song.

Washen didn't ask what the words meant. These ditties were ancient and impenetrable; even the siblings didn't seem sure where they came from.

Kneeling beside Dream, she saw dozens of flat-faced shoots erupting from the ravaged trunk. On Marrow, blessed wit
h so much energy and so li
ttle peace, vegetation didn't store energy as sugars. Fats and oils and potent, highly compressed waxes were the norm. Some species had reinvented batteries, stockpiling electrical energies inside their intricate tissues. How much time would it take for chance and caprice to do this elaborate work? Five billion years? At the very least, she guessed. There weren't any fossils to ask, but the genetic surveys showed a fantastic diversity, implying a truly ancient beginning.
They were in a garden that could be, perhaps, ten or fifteen billions years old. With that latter estimate verging on the preposterous.

Whatever was true, leaving Marrow was wrong.

Washen couldn't stop thinking it, in secret.

To the siblings, she said, 'I'm curious. Judging by their genes, what two species are the two most dissimilar?'

Promise and Dream grew serious, unwinding their deep, efficient memories. But before either could offer a guess, there was a hard jolt followed by a string of deep shudders, and Washen found herself unceremoniously thrown back on her rear end.

She had to laugh, for a moment.

Then somewhere nearby, two great masses of iron dragged themselves against each other, and piercing squealing roars split the air, sounding like monsters in the throes of some terrific fight.

When the quake passed, Washen stood and casually adjusted her uniform.Then she announced,
'Time to leave.'

But most of her team was already making for the car. Only Diu waited, looking at her and not quite smiling when he said, 'Too bad.'

She knew what he meant, nodding and adding, 'It is,'

their eight-day-old
map was a fossil, and not a particularly useful fossil, at that.

Washen blanked her screen, flying on instinct now. In another ten minutes, maybe less, they would reach their destination. No other team would travel this far. Drawing a sturdy little satisfaction from the thought, she started to turn, ready to ask whoever was closest to check on their champagne.

Her mouth opened, but a distorted, almost inaudible voice interrupted her.

'Report
...
all teams . . . !' 'Who's that?' asked Broq.

Miocene. But her words were strained through some kind of piercing electronic wail.

'What do
...
see . . . ?' the Submaster called out.

Then, again, 'Teams
...
report
...
!'

Washen tried for more than an audio link, and failed.

A dozen other team leaders were chattering in a ragged chorus.

Zale boasted, 'We're on schedule here.'

Kyzkee observed, 'Odd com interference
...
otherwise, systems nominal . . .'

Then with more curiosity than worry, Aasleen inquired, 'Why, madam? Do you see something wrong?'

There was a long, jangled hum.

Washen linked her nexuses to the car's sensor array, finding Diu already there.
With a tight
little
voice, he said,'Shit.' 'What—'Washen cried out.

Then a shrill roar swept away every voice, every thought. And the day brightened and brightened, fat ribbons of lightning flowing across the sky, then turning, moving with a liquid purpose, aiming straight for them.

From the far side of the world came a twisted voice:

'The bridge
...
is it
...
do you see it . . . where ...?'

The car lurched as if panicking, losing thrust and lift, then altitude, every one of its AIs failing. Washen deployed the manual controls, and centuries of routine drills made her concentrate, nothing existing now but their tumbling craft, her syrupy reflexes, and a wide expanse of cracked earth and burnt forest.