? ? ?
Singer had also worked out a projected flight plan for the Prize, and he wasn’t happy with it. He projected it for the three of us meat-types, noting that it led off into intergalactic space. Not that we were particularly surprised by that. We were discussing the possibilities when Singer broke in to say, “I am unwilling to commit to these projections.”
So I said, “What do you mean?”
“We have no record of any Freeport activity in this region. Standard models would suggest that there is very little likelihood of a colony here, and small reason for an outpost.”
I stared up at the ceiling, since we had one for a change and all. I wondered if it would annoy me less when he made pronouncements like this if he were wrong occasionally. “You’re kidding me. Anyway, what if she was bringing us to the”—I winced, but there it was in the book code—“the Eschaton Artifact?”
Eschaton is an old religious word meaning, more or less, “the final event that God has lined up for the universe.” It was used to describe the crisis in pre-white-space history that sent the first slower-than-light ships scrabbling on a one-way trip to the stars, because there were a lot of religious cultists in those diar. Of course, I didn’t think whatever this was could have had anything to do with Terra’s historic Eschaton, being most of the way across a rather large galaxy. And since a book code is limited to words actually in the book in question, Eschaton might just have been the closest thing Niyara could find to whatever the original, presumably alien, text had indicated.
But anything advertising itself as an artifact relating to the final event in a Grand Plan made me justifiably nervous. You wouldn’t just walk up and pinch the Ragnarok Thingummy.
Well, Farweather probably would. And she was the one who had known how to find it, unless the Prize was just taking us there automatically. What she hadn’t had, though, was the description of the object at the other end. That was what Niyara had given me, or at least given me the key to.
That ridiculous antique printed book.
There just aren’t any planets out here, Cheeirilaq said.
“In that case why did Farweather drag me halfway to Andromeda? Anyway, who says it has to be a planet?”
“It seems likely to me that there’s a well-hidden outpost out here somewhere. If I were a pirate and I were going to mass forces, I’d want to do it off the beaten track. The resources to get here are a problem, but once you’re here you’re pretty safe.” Connla, taking the strategic view.
“That’s a good idea,” I told Connla. “But I think that’s not where we’re going.”
The giant insect stridulated, I was wondering if you had an idea about what the destination might be.
It cocked its head at me, segmented antennae questing forward. For a moment, it reminded me of Halbnovalk and their eyestalks, but the antennae were part of a whole different sort of sensory system, and I realized I couldn’t even probably visualize what the information they provided felt like. The Goodlaw, conversely, would probably have the same problems with my simple, noncompound eyes . . . and my ability to sense the contours of space-time, come to think of it.
I grinned. The Goodlaw probably would not know what grinning meant, and generally savvy humans were significantly habituated not to show our teeth around systers, as so many of them were likely to interpret it as a threat display. But I just couldn’t help it—the joy, the response, was so intense that my cheek muscles contracted utterly involuntarily.
I couldn’t resist. “We’re following a pirate map to a treasure!” I said.
Cheeirilaq didn’t seem in the least nonplussed by my gratuitous display of natural weaponry (not, admittedly, that my blunt little nippers were likely to register as anything but innocuous by the standards of a Rashaqin whose forelimbs were two meters long and murderously barbed). It simply paused, and then quite sensibly asked, What sort of a treasure?
“I don’t know,” I answered. “It’s the Eschaton Artifact. Whatever that is!”
A string of nouns.
“Unsettling nouns.” Connla, atypically quiet, cocked his head and looked at me.
Briefly, I described what I had noticed about the anomalies in the dark gravity, starting from quite early on in my development of superpowers: a pattern. A change—an intentional alteration—to the structure of the universe itself that, as far as I could tell (which admittedly was not very far) had no effect at all on how it functioned. But rather, just served to point attention at one not particularly interesting bit of intergalactic space.
A bit of intergalactic space that, once I was moved to check it out, turned out to have a significant gravitational anomaly parked in it. An anomaly, say, something on the order of a very large star. And yet, emitting no light or other radiation that I or Singer could detect at all.
An anomaly that we had been headed right toward, before the Ativahikas pulled us down.
I expected Cheeirilaq to take a few moments to contemplate this when I finished my recital, but it seemed to make up its mind very quickly—and in accordance with mine.
Do you know that means, Friend Haimey?
“No,” I said. Frustration was making me tense and grumpy.
Well, whatever lies at those coordinates, Farweather and by extension Habren want it. Cheeirilaq’s mandibles moved ominously.
I laughed out loud, both at the implicit threat, and at the close parallel between the Goodlaw’s thoughts and my own. Then I said, “I’m pretty much of the opinion that anything those two want, they’re not allowed to have.”
Again we are of like mind, Friend Haimey.
It paused again, settling itself in an elegant folded configuration amid the glossy strands of its web. It had assured me that the web was not sticky—that it had spun dry silk, only, because what good was a bed that wound up stuck full of bits of cat fluff and stray humans and random cookware and possibly entire cats, for that matter—but I didn’t feel like taking any chances with it. My ancient alien tattoo was reminder enough not to go sticking your hand into alien booby traps.
When it spoke again, my senso gave its words the air of grave and certain determination. So we must “get there first,” as I believe the aphorism goes among your species.
“Have you forgotten our stowaway? The one we haven’t managed to ferret out yet? The one who wanted to go to these coordinates in the first place?”
Not at all. But with my presence, and the assistance of six other constables as a prize crew, I believe I will be able to justify the position that being trapped on a ship with that many law enforcement officers constitutes a form of custody.
Singer said, “Unless she escapes and kills us all.”
Well, yes. Cheeirilaq admitted. One must consider all the possibilities.
It’s always hard to tell when aliens think they’re being funny—half the time it turns out they have no concept of humor, and the other half they turn out to have the concept but they’re just not very funny. But I was pretty sure Cheeirilaq was laughing, or doing whatever its species did when amused.
“I see.”
Well, it isn’t as if we’re going to stop looking for her.
I found myself saying the sort of sentence that you can’t even really believe while it’s coming out of your mouth: “I’m still worried about Farweather exploding. I hope she’s staying far away from the machine rooms. And the hull.”
Said Singer, “Connla and I discussed that. And we are pretty sure she’s lying.”
I wasn’t certain I agreed with them, but I also didn’t feel like arguing with a shipmind and my best friend, both of whom were cleverer than I was. The giant bug was cleverer than me, too, though.
Not to be contentious, friend fellow sentients, Cheeirilaq said, but actually Friend Haimey may be correct. We have prior records of Freeporters and Freeport sympathizers engaging in suicide bombings or booby-trapping operatives. Rigging an emissary or agent to explode as a terrorist device is exactly the sort of thing that the Freeporters historically will do to control them. Or simply to assassinate whomever they are negotiating with.
I appreciated that it didn’t look at me while it recited that.
“So much for their ideals of self-determination,” Connla said.
I laughed bitterly. “Total freedom for the ones who can enforce it, until somebody comes along and murders them to take their stuff. Slavery for everybody else. Pretty typical warlord behavior in any society, and one of the reasons we have societies in the first place.”
Connla looked at me. Singer probably would have, if he’d had eyes.
I said, “Well, we’re taking her in the right direction, anyway. But it’s a risk.”
Living is a risk, Friend Haimey. And this one isn’t yours to shoulder, for I am commandeering this ship in the name of Synarche Justice. Let us go hurtling around the galaxy thwarting evil, shall we?
That grin got so wide it hurt. “I thought you’d never ask.”