Tides of Light (12 page)

“What’s your point?” Killeen demanded. Though the Aspect talk streamed through his mind blindingly fast, he had no patience
for the smug, arched-eyebrow tone of Arthur’s little lectures. Equations fluttered in his left eye. They were leakage from
Arthur; or maybe the Aspect thought much mumbo jumbo would impress him. Killeen grimaced. The Aspect had now assimilated Grey’s
memories and was working with them. Grey’s dusty presence faded as Arthur continued crisply:

Simply that the cosmic string is clearly employed here in some sort of civil-engineering sense. Shibo detects the strong inductive
electromagnetic fields generated by its revolving, but surely this cannot be the purpose. No, it is a side effect.

“Why slice in when the cut seals up right away?”

Indeed. A puzzle, surely. Still, I can admire this object for its beauty alone. Grey tells me that they ascribed the very
formation of the galaxies, and even whole clusters of galaxies, to immense cosmic strings, at the very dawn
of our universe. Rings were once truly, cosmologically huge. Galaxies formed from the turbulence of their passing, like whorls
behind a watercraft. As time waxed on, cosmic strings twisted on themselves, breaking where they intersected. Coiled strings
did this repeatedly, proliferating into many lopped-off loops—such as this magnificent fossil, apparently.

“Look, what’s that thing
doing?
” Somewhat miffed, Arthur said coolly:

We will have to deduce its function from its form, obviously. Note that the absolutely straight inner edge of the hoop stops
short of exactly lying along the planet’s axis. This cannot be a mistake, not with engineers of this ability. Clearly this
offset is intended.

The hoop revolved faster and faster. Through Shibo’s comm line he could hear the distant
whump-whump-whump
of magnetic detectors in the control vault.

“Why line up along the poles?” Killeen persisted.

I would venture to suppose that this quick revolution evokes a pressure all around the polar axis. The faster the string revolves,
the more smoothly distributed is this pressure. It slices free the rock close to the axis. This liberates the inner core cylinder
it has carved away, frees it from the planetary mass farther out. The results of this I cannot see, however.

“Humph!” Killeen snorted in exasperation. “Let me know when you have an idea.”

He returned to the labyrinth of corridors within the station’s disk. Over comm he summoned two more squads to explore the
Flitters. They met him at the bay and he gave instructions for trying to revive the craft. The Family might need to flee soon.
How they could get past the revolving hoop to reach New Bishop, though, he had no idea. Maybe the cosmic string would go away.
Maybe it would stop. All he could do was be sure the Family had the capability to move swiftly and then pray that some opportunity
came from that.

Around him midshipmen and other crew hurried, searching for the right cables, calling raucously on the comm lines for input
from the
Argo’
s ancient computer memory. Commandeering mechtech was always chancy, dangerous business.

Killeen saw that the first squad had breached the incoming Flitter’s hold. They were prying forth crates. No time to see what
these held; he ordered the space cleared in case they should need it. He was uncomfortably aware that they had taken the station
at a particularly lucky moment. Some vast experiment was going on around New Bishop, and they had sneaked in while attention
was focused on that. Whatever called the tune in this star system was distracted. But for how long?

Killeen fell to helping one work gang unload cargo. He enjoyed the heft of real labor, using his hands, and it cleared his
mind for some unsettling questions.

Had the course settings of
Argo
somehow taken this cosmic string into account? He remembered that the Mantis, years ago, had conferred with the recently
revived intelligences buried in
Argo
—human-programmed machine
minds of undoubted loyalty to humankind. Had the Mantis set this course for
Argo
, knowing that they would arrive when the golden hoop was at work?

It seemed fantastic, so specific a prediction at such a range, like describing the clouds over a particular mountaintop five
years hence—but not, he supposed, truly impossible. Such ability, if real, simply underlined again the unreachable heights
of machine intelligence. Killeen accepted this without a second thought; he had never known a time when the predominance of
mech minds was not obvious.

Killeen thrust speculations aside. Events rewarded the prepared, and he intended to act.

“Come on,” he called to one of the newly arrived squads. “These ships—try figurin’ them out.” He led them toward the Flitter
which had just arrived. The squad unloading it had been forced to rejack the ship into the power cables from the station in
order to get the cargo-hold doors to open.

“Cap’n, put me in charge,” Jocelyn said at his elbow. “I’ll get this one up’n runnin’.”

About her eyes there was a concentrated look of unbending discipline. She was one officer he could rely on to do a job on
time and without error. Lean and fit, the
Argo
years had not softened her. She was trouble only when she got to talking with the others.

“Good,” he said. “I want as many Flitters running as we can manage.”

“Enough so can carry all the Family?” she asked.

“Yeasay.” She had already guessed his intention. They were too exposed here. The station was some sort of shipping nexus in
an economic scheme he could not imagine, but he knew that whatever truly ran the station would not long tolerate them. Their
victory over the mech attendants
had been exhilarating but too easy. The true governing intelligence was elsewhere.

As if to confirm this, Shibo broke in on comm.—I’m picking up another ship coming at us. Moving fast. It’s a lot bigger, too.—

“Time to pay the piper,” Killeen said, repeating a mysterious phrase his long-dead mother had used. The last musician had
vanished from the Family a century ago.

Jocelyn had heard the comm on overlap circuit. “Think it’s a boarding party, Cap’n?” she asked sharply.

“Um-hmm,” Killeen said. He did not like being prompted by crew, especially when they were right.

“We can take them right here, when they come into the bay,” she said.

He shook his head. “They won’t be that dumb, whoever they are. Even ordinary defensive mechs, barely better than navvys, would
see that.”

“We can catch ’em as they come in over the disk,” she persisted.

“
If
they come that way. Suppose they dock up at the end towers?”

“There?” She frowned. “We haven’t got out there yet. Hadn’t thought…But what’d be the point, puttin’ a dock that far away?”

“Boardin’ when there’s trouble down here, that’s why,” Killeen said irritably. He disliked discussing tactics with crew, even
officers, because they kept him from clearing his mind of all extraneous ideas. He needed to concentrate, decide on the best
odds in the battle he knew was coming. There could be no other meaning to another, larger ship coming along the same trajectory
that the Flitter had followed.

“Got that first craft up and running?” he asked.

“Uh—” Jocelyn touched her left temple and conferred
with her squads over comm. “Yeasay, Cap’n. The other Flitters will take a while. Y’know—rev up, check out, things like that.”

“But the first one?”

“It’s ready.”

“Good. Let’ s move it out from the station.”

Jocelyn blinked, surprised. “Uh, why?”

Killeen gave her a mirthless smile. “Just do it.”

“I don’t—”

“
Do
it, Lieutenant.”

“Yessir!”

Killeen made his way up through the open cargo hold of the Flitter just as the doors began to close behind him. He wanted
to get a full view of the station, and this was a quick way. It would be a while—he checked with Shibo and got an exact figure,
1.68 hours—before the large craft could arrive.

He wanted to see what he could use for maneuver, what the station could do as a defensive fortification. The immense crackling
energies that worked over the disk surface would presumably not hinder the humans as they moved and fired at the incoming
antagonist, since they had not reacted to the
Argo
as it approached. But he could be sure of nothing.

He wormed his way through narrow dark passages and soon he was in the cramped control room, a geometrically precise cylinder
densely rimmed with electronic gear.

Jocelyn was floating beside some complex mechtech. “I’ve just ’bout got it revved up, Cap’n,” she began. Then something abruptly
shifted. Killeen could feel ratcheting signals course through his own sensory net.

The Flitter moved under him.

“What—?”

Jocelyn’s eyes widened. “I—I dunno. This ship’s movin’—but I didn’t start it.”

Killeen sprang to the end of the long cylinder. It was transparent and showed the wide loading bay beyond…which was drifting
silently away.

“We’re pulling out.”

Jocelyn cried, “But I didn’t—”

“I know. Something else is.”

The loading bay coasted away and he saw that they were backing out the entrance tube. The Flitter buzzed and clicked under
them, finding its head.

Killeen switched to general comm. “Unjack all Flitters!”

Faint confirming replies came back.

“What’s doing this?” Jocelyn asked, punching in commands on her wrist module. They had no effect.

“That big ship coming toward us. It’s overriden our work.”

“Maybe we can get out.” Jocelyn tried to open the cargo-bay doors. No response.

“We’re trapped,” Killeen said. His mind raced through possibilities. Did the approaching ship know humans were inside here?

There must be an emergency exit from this craft, something manually activated. The design of the Flitter was strange, seeming
to follow no pattern of bilateral symmetry even though the exterior features and hull did. He would have to explore it carefully
and see what resources they could marshal.

Whatever was coming would probably unlock the Flitter to see what sort of vermin it had caught inside. He had a quick image
of himself and Jocelyn being plucked forth and held up to the light by something immense and terrible.

Jocelyn gazed with a pale, stricken expression out the viewport. They were out of the bay now and the Flitter had
made a powered turn. Now it accelerated steadily away from the station, which turned in luminous silvery glory below them.

Jocelyn gritted her teeth but did not give way to excitement. She was a good officer. Killeen knew she thought she should
rightfully be Cap’n. Women had usually led the Family, and Jocelyn had been Cap’n Fanny’s best lieutenant.

But her normally brisk voice shook slightly as she turned to him. “Why’s…why’s it want this Flitter?”

“We’ll find out,” Killeen said.

PART TWO

Starswarmer

C
linking

clacking

jittering,

Quath strode the slashed land.

A final hill loomed between her and the Syphon. Quath articulated widely, legs grating, yawning—and surged over the apex.

A stone outcrop shattered against her underbelly and ground away with a brittle shriek. Quath tuned out the wail of tearing
metal, even as she felt the alloy rip. A storage vat popped, the sulfuric mix gurgling out.

She peered ahead. There, blooming skyward in golden plumes, would grow the Syphon.

came a burst in Nimfur’thon’s sweet-sour tongue.

Quath spat in reply, though hissing with warm friendship to take the sting from her jibe. To
call anyone one-legged was a deep insult within the elaborate status-conventions. But the image of anything hopping about
on one pod was also funny enough to be a joke among friends.

Nimfur’thon sent.

Quath rumbled on, edging closer to the place where the Syphon would come. Already clouds writhed red and tortured overhead.
The golden carving line had already passed once within view. Soon it would reappear, casting stark shadows. It could sear
if Quath and Nimfur’thon got too close.

warned
us! Modes of the jet can snarl outward.>

When she and Nimfur’thon had boasted and challenged each other to come out here they had both been brave beyond question.
Now Quath felt timid strains lacing her speech, fed from her subminds. Those were always cautious. They demanded incessant
consultation. They made basso doubt and hesitation ride out beneath her carrier wave. She hated how these unwanted clues to
her inner nature slipped through her filters, making her easy to read.