The Night's Dawn Trilogy (428 page)

“You’re right,” the Edenist said. “Providing you add one qualifier: to date. As Monica said, we are dealing with the concept
of potential here. In one respect, the Tyrathca are like us; an external threat will unite them. The arkships themselves are
proof of that.”

“We’re not a threat to them!” Liol was almost shouting.

“We haven’t been until now,” Monica said. “Until now they didn’t know we could become
elemental
. They were so disturbed by the prospect of human possessed they immediately opted for isolation. We have become a danger.
Possessed humans have attacked Tyrathca settlements. Our already superior military strength has been multiplied by an unknown
amount. Remember they do not see humanity divided between possessed and non-possessed. We are one species, that has suddenly
and dramatically changed for the worse.” She pointed to the projection. “And now we’ve seen what happens to xenoc species
which come into dispute with the Tyrathca.”

Liol lapsed back into silence. Scowling, worried now rather than angered by losing the argument.

“All right,” Joshua said. “There’s a potential for conflict between the Tyrathca and the Confederation, assuming we survive
possession intact. It still doesn’t affect our mission.”

“The Confederation should be warned of this development,” Monica said. “We have learned more about Tyrathcan nature than anyone
has before. And with their isolation policy, nobody else is likely to find out. That knowledge is now of considerable strategic
importance.”

“You’re not seriously suggesting we turn back already?” Joshua asked.

“I have to concur with Monica, that’s now a factor we should consider,” Samuel said.

“No no,” Joshua said. “You’re blowing this out of all proportion. Look, we’re forty-two light-years from Yaroslav, which is
the nearest Confederation star system.
Lady Mac
would have to expend a lot of delta-V to match velocities. We’d take over a day to get there, and the same to get back here.
And right now, time is the biggest critical factor we have. Who knows what the possessed are cooking up behind us? They might
even have taken over the Yaroslav system.”

“Not the Edenist habitats,” Monica said. “Voidhawks could distribute our warning.”

“The
Oenone
would only need a day to get to Yaroslav and back,” Ruben said. “That’s not so much of a delay.” He gave Syrinx an encouraging
smile.

She didn’t return it. “I really don’t want us to separate at this point,” she said. “Besides, we haven’t even established
how the search for the Sleeping God is progressing. I think we should at least hear the status review from Parker’s team before
we go making that kind of decision.”

“Agreed,” Joshua said quickly. Monica glanced at Samuel, then shrugged. “Okay.”

Parker leaned forward, permitting himself a small smile. “At least I have one piece of good news for us: we have confirmed
the Sleeping God does exist. There’s a reference in one of the Tyrathca files.”

There were smiles all round the lounge. Ashly clapped his hands together, and let out an exhilarated: “Yes!” He and Liol grinned
broadly at each other.

“The file didn’t tell us what the bloody thing was,” Kempster said gruffly. “Just what it did. And that’s really weird.”

“Assuming it’s true,” Renato said.

“Don’t be such a depressive, my boy. We’ve already been through that aspect. The Tyrathca don’t invent stories, they can’t.”

“So what can it do?” Joshua asked.

“From what we can determine, it transported one of their arkships a hundred and fifty light-years. Instantaneously.”

“It’s a stardrive?” Joshua asked in disappointment.

“I don’t think so. Oski, would you put this in perspective for us, please.”

“Certainly.” She datavised the processor block on her table, clearing the final picture of the Tyrathca invasion from the
AV projection. “This is a simulation of Tanjuntic-RI’s flightpath from Mastrit-PJ to Hesperi-LN, based on what we’ve discovered
in the files from the arkship.” The AV lens projected a complex starchart centred on the colourful smear of the Orion nebula.
A red star on the opposite side of the nebula from the Confederation was surrounded by a swarm of informational icons. “Mastrit-PJ
is now either a red giant or supergiant, and it has to be quite close to the far side of the nebula, which is why we’ve never
seen it before. Now, the Tanjuntic-RI flew right round the nebula. We don’t know which way round; the Tyrathca have never
revealed the location of their other colonies to us, and we didn’t extract enough information from their terminals to determine
them. However, we know for certain that it stopped eleven times en route, eventually finishing up at Hesperi-LN. Five of those
stops were to found colonies; the others were in star systems without a biocompatible planet, so they just refuelled and repaired
Tanjuntic-RI, and carried on.” A thin blue line extended out from Mastrit-PJ, linking eleven stars in a rough curve going
around on the galactic South side the luminescent nebula. “This course is important, because it actually cut the arkship off
from direct line of sight to Mastrit-PJ. Their communication laser simply wasn’t powerful enough to penetrate the dust and
gas that makes up the nebula. So after the fourth star they visited, all messages to and from Mastrit-PJ had to be relayed
through the colonies. Which is also why the latter communiquÉ files were stored in the Planetary Habitation terminal.”

“We think Mastrit-PJ’s stellar expansion must account for the eventual fall off in message traffic,” Renato said eagerly.
“Towards the end of the flight, Tanjuntic-RI was communicating with the colonies alone. Some messages were also forwarded
from colonies established by other arkships, but there was nothing coming from Mastrit-PJ at all.”

“I’m surprised there ever was,” Alkad said. “If it detonated into a red giant, nothing should have survived. The star’s planets
would have been consumed.”

“They must have set up some kind of redoubt in the cometary halo,” Renato said. “Their astroengineering resources were quite
considerable by that time, after all. The Tyrathca who didn’t get to leave on arkships would have made some kind of survival
attempt.”

“Fair assumption,” Alkad acknowledged.

“But that civilization would be finite,” Renato said. “They have no new resources to exploit, they can’t replenish themselves
like the arkships do at every new star system. So eventually, they died off. Hence the lack of messages in the last five thousand
years.”

“But one of the last communiquÉs from Mastrit-PJ was the one concerning the Sleeping God,” Parker said. “A century later,
they finally went off air. Tanjuntic-RI had beamed a message back, asking for further details, but by then they were eight
hundred light-years away. The Mastrit-PJ civilization was probably extinct before the first colony world received the original
communiquÉ.”

“Can we see it, please?” Ruben asked.

“Of course,” Oski said. “We isolated the relevant text from the message, there’s a lot of softbloat garbage about source and
compression. And they repeat each message thousands of times over about a fortnight to ensure the entire chunk is eventually
received intact.” She gave them a file code. When they accessed it, the processor showed a simple text sheet.

INCOMING SIGNAL RECEIVED
DATE 75572-094-648
SOURCE FALINDI-TY RELAY
MASTRIT-PJ REPORTS

FLIGHTSHIP SWANTIC-LI SIGNAL RE-ACQUIRED DATE 38647-046-831.

LAST SIGNAL RECEIVED DATE 23867-032-749.

INCLUDED
TRANSMISSION DETAILS
SWANTIC-LI REPORTS

DATE 29321-072-491. PLASMA BUFFER FAILURE WHILE DECELERATING INTO STAR SYSTEM **********.
MULTIPLE IMPACT DAMAGE. 1 HABITATION RING DEPRESSURIZED. 27 INDUSTRIAL SUPPORT CHAMBERS DEPRESSURIZED WITH ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT
LOSS. 32% POPULATION KILLED. LIFE-SUPPORT FUNCTIONS UNSUSTAINABLE. TOTAL LIFE-SUPPORT CESSATION EXPECTED WITHIN 7 WEEKS. NO
INHABITABLE PLANETS IN STAR SYSTEM. SENSORS LOCATED AN EXTENSIVE SPATIAL DISTURBANCE ORBITING THE STAR. IT IS A DORMANT SOURCE
OF GODPOWER. IT SEES THE UNIVERSE. IT CONTROLS EVERY ASPECT OF PHYSICAL EXISTENCE. ITS REASON IS TO ASSIST PROGRESS OF BIOLOGICAL
ENTITIES. OUR ARRIVAL WOKE IT. WHEN WE ASKED FOR ITS HELP IT TRANSPORTED SWANTIC-LI TO THIS STAR SYSTEM 160 LIGHT-YEARS AWAY,
WHERE THERE IS A HABITABLE PLANET. TO ANY WHO COME AFTER US, WE DEEM IT AN ALLY OF ALL TYRATHCA.

DATE 29385-040-175. SWANTIC-LI POPULATION TRANSFERRED TO HABITABLE PLANET. COLONY GOERTHT-WN ESTABLISHED.

Tagged on to the end of the file were three pictures. The quality was uniformly low, even after passing through discrimination
and amplification filter programs. All of them showed a silver-grey smear against a stellar background. Whatever the object
was, the Tyrathca of Coastuc-RT had reproduced its shape almost exactly: a broad disk with conical spires rising from each
side. Its surface was smooth, without any visible markings or structures, a constant metallic sheen.

“How big is it?” Joshua asked.

“Unknown,” Renato said. “And unknowable. We don’t have any references. There was no focal length given for any of the pictures,
so there’s no way we can put a number on the beast. It could be gas-giant sized, or a couple of kilometres across. The only
clue I have to go on is their claim that it comes complete with an extensive spatial disturbance, which I’m assuming is some
kind of intense gravity field. That would tend to prohibit anything too small. The one object that can qualify as coming near
to filling the parameters we’ve got so far is a small neutron star, but that couldn’t have this shape.”

Joshua gave Alkad a long look. “Neutron stars of whatever size don’t have the properties described by the Tyrathca in that
communiquÉ,” she said. “Nor do they look like that. I think we have to conclude it’s an artefact.”

“I’m not going to quibble with anyone’s theories,” Kempster said. “Plain and simple, we don’t have enough information to determine
its nature. Sitting here trying to second guess what five fuzzy pictures are showing us is completely pointless. What we have
established, is the existence of something with some very strange properties.”

“The term ‘godpower’ is fascinating,” Parker said. “Especially as we’re not dealing with spoken nuances. Plain text gives
our translation a much higher level of accuracy.”

“Ha!” Kempster waved a dismissive hand at the director. “Come off it, we don’t even have an accurate definition of God in
our own language. Every culture assigns different values to God. Humanity has used the term to mean everything from creator
of the universe to a group of big angry men who have nothing better to do than mess about with the weather. It’s a concept,
not a description.”

“However you want to squabble over semantics, God implies an extraordinary amount of power in any language.”

“Godpower, not God,” Ruben corrected pointedly. “That has to be significant, too. It’s definitely an artefact of some kind.
And as the Tyrathca didn’t build it, we’ve probably got as much chance as anyone of switching it back on.”

“It was dormant, and their approach woke it up,” Oski said. “Sounds like you don’t even have to press the button to activate
it.”

“I say it still sounds like a stardrive to me,” Liol said, with a nod to Joshua. “The communiquÉ said it assists the progress
of biological entities, and it shunted that arkship a hundred and sixty light-years. That seems pretty clear cut. No wonder
the Tyrathca thought it was bloody miraculous. They don’t have FTL technology. And a stardrive big enough to transport an
arkship is going to be built on one hell of an impressive scale. It was bound to astonish them, even with their fatalistic
phlegmatism.”

“They said a lot of things about it,” Joshua said. “None of which quite match up. What I mean is, none of the qualities they’ve
given it are aspects of a single machine. Stardrives don’t observe the universe, nor do they control physical existence.”

“I could add several questions,” Syrinx said. “Like what is it doing in a star-system with no biocompatible planet? It would
also appear that there’s some kind of controlling sentience. Remember the Tyrathca asked it for help, they didn’t just switch
it to stardrive function and fly away.”

“They couldn’t have anyway,” Samuel said. “It sent Swantic-LI to a system with an inhabitable planet. In other words, it knew
there was one there when the Tyrathca didn’t.”

“That makes it benign, as well,” Kempster said. “Or at least, friendly; presumably to biological entities. And I’m just arrogant
enough to believe that if it was co-operative with the Tyrathca it really ought to extend the same courtesy to us.”

Joshua looked round the group. “If no one has anything to add about its abilities or nature, I think we’ve learned enough
to confirm we should continue with this mission. Monica, you want to say no?”

The ESA agent pressed her head into her hands and stared at the decking. “I agree this thing sounds pretty impressive, but
I wasn’t just drawing attention to the Tyrathca to be a pain. They do worry me.”

“Not on any timescale we have to worry about,” Oski said. “Even assuming you’re one hundred per cent right, and they now see
the human race as a dangerous plague to be wiped out. It would be decades before they can even contemplate such an action.
Take the worst case, and assume they’ve already travelled from Hesperi-LN to the other colonies Tanjuntic-RI founded. They
still won’t be able to build ZTT starships for years to come, not in any quantity. Frankly, I have my doubts they would ever
manage it. Retro-engineering our systems would be extremely difficult for them, given their lack of intuition. Even if they
did crack it, they’d have to build production stations. So even if this flight takes us a couple of years, we’ll still be
back well in time to warn the First Admiral.”

Monica consulted Samuel. “I think that’s reasonable,” he said.

“All right,” she said reluctantly. “I admit I’m curious about this Sleeping God.”

“Good,” Joshua said. “Next question, where the hell is it? You left the star system location blank.”