The architecture of the megastructure was fascinating, and Singer frequently had to make me sleep because I’d gotten so involved in trying to plot the individual orbits of billions of orbiting structures. The swarm, we discovered as we spiraled in, was comprised of more or less flat or slightly curved plates with the diameter of small moons. They did not orbit on a plane or an ecliptic; rather they overlapped in a patently artificial manner that must have taken constant and elaborate microadjustments to maintain, with the end result that they utilized 98 percent of the photons that the dying sun produced.
It had probably, I realized, been every photon, before the star began expanding. I wondered if they had individual agendas and competed for the light like plants. I wondered what they did with all that energy. Less energy now than when they were built, but still an incomprehensible amount.
The cats, meanwhile, had discovered one thing about gravity that pleased them, which was that they could sleep on top of humans, who were cushiony and warm.
It’s good to serve a purpose, even if you can’t figure out what the alien tech is for.
? ? ?
My denial was operating gloriously well, and I was actually starting to wonder if Farweather—who, let’s face it, didn’t exactly have a stellar shop safety record—had carelessly gotten herself killed in some gruesome mishap and was desiccating in an inconvenient corner. It was comforting to imagine that the reason neither Singer nor I had managed to locate her was because her corpse was crammed into a crawlway somewhere in this vast underpopulated ship, decomposing quietly.
We probably would have smelled her, though. Or maybe she’d accidentally spaced herself—poetic justice—and we’d never noticed. Ancient alien utility fogs could be tricky, after all. There was no predicting what they might do if mismanaged.
I kept telling myself that it was too much to hope for. But deep in my heart of hearts, I really wanted the Prize to have taken a dislike to her. It was that most atavistic and sophipathic of human emotions, jealousy.
And I was enjoying it far too much to tune it out.
Worse things happen in space, is all I’m saying.
Sadly, just as I was becoming most fully engaged with my very satisfying fantasy world, that was when we got a little evidence that Farweather was still with us.
The Prize’s alarm klaxons were just that: real, old-fashioned, audible klaxons. Useless if she lost air pressure. Not like a proper klaxon that you feel in your bones.
When they went off, though, every one of us jumped.
“Singer!” I yelped. “What the Well is that?”
“Collating.” He liked classic entertainment, too.
“You’re still not fucking funny.”
“I actually was collating,” he said. He sounded hurt. “But I know you’re under a lot of stress, so I won’t make the obvious crack about, if you’re in such a hurry, analyze it yourself. Preliminary indications are that Constables Grrrs and Murtaugh encountered a booby trap, most likely set by Farweather, while on patrol. Murtaugh is injured but not killed. The explosion did some structural damage to the ship, which the ship is repairing. Thus the alerts. Cheeirilaq and the others are responding.”
“What?” I yelled. “No! I know how she thinks! It’s a trap! She’s got to be luring them in. It’s textbook—”
“Of course it is,” Singer said soothingly. “You’re not the only professional on this boat.”
I spared a moment to feel good that he thought I was a pro.
“She could be luring them away.” Connla poked his head out of his sleeping bag. “That way she can have a clear shot at Ops, and at us.”
I stared at him.
He sat up and spread his hands appeasingly. “Sorry. But it’s what I’d do in her place. After all, what does she have to lose?”
“Battle stations!” I said.
Only about half a second before Singer did.
? ? ?
They missed her.
That was the bad news. The bad news could have been a lot worse, though, because we got Murtaugh back in one piece and probably repairable—and definitely capable of being stabilized—with the materials on hand. Which was good, because it meant we didn’t have to make the terrible decision between letting Murtaugh die, or turning right around and trying to chase down the I’ll Explain It To You Slowly, which had cryo tanks that might get a seriously wounded person back to the Core still capable of being revived.
Sergeant Halbnovalk stabilized Murtaugh and brought them back to the observation deck. The other four constables continued on, and in the process found and disarmed three more devices without anyone else being injured.
Murtaugh would live, despite some acid burns and a little shrapnel. They were already treated, sedated, and resting comfortably in a hammock, nursed by Bushyasta. Halbnovalk was apparently not a hoverer, as she’d gone right back out to rejoin her team once Murtaugh could be left.
She’d given me the gels of pain medication and instructions on how to use them. At least I was good for something.
I sort of wished I’d been with them for the chase. We got senso and their ayatana—they were also backlinked into ours, just in case Connla was right and Farweather came gunning at Ops, as we’d started calling our converted observation deck slash HQ. But it would have been fun to be out there on the hunt alongside Cheeirilaq and the constables. It was probably antisocial, but adrenaline raged through me at the thought.
The adrenaline was a symptom of something still not quite right. It got me to tune myself back without even Singer’s suggestion once I noticed how atavistic I was feeling. It definitely had a little too much of a smell of Farweather’s influence for me to feel comfortable letting that desire to be in on the kill possess me.
That didn’t attenuate the disappointment when there wasn’t any kill. I felt it like a punch when she slipped away from the constable teams and didn’t even bother to show up and try to take control of Ops.
“So what was all that in aid of?” Connla asked, once we were all pretty confident the excitement was over. The teams had given up their search and were on the way home.
“It obviously wasn’t to pick us off,” I said, “unless her plan malfunctioned somehow.”
“I think it was to distract us,” Singer said.
I asked, “But from what?”
“If I knew that,” the shipmind responded dryly, “it wouldn’t be much of a distraction, would it?”
That was when the hull began to sing.
CHAPTER 26
IT STARTLED ME BUT DID not at first surprise me. It had been a long time since I heard Singer belting out opera or show tunes or classical metal, music that used the full range of his synthesized voices, but it wasn’t as if his singing had been an unusual thing. I paused in my work a moment to appreciate the music and noticed that the constable on duty in the command cabin seemed unsettled by it.
Opening my mouth to reassure them, I realize that I was unsettled too. The song I heard was no relation to human voices or familiar instrumentation.
In a word, it was . . . alien.
It was also pretty, and it scared the ever-loving shit out of me. The cats flat-out hated it. So much so that Bushyasta woke up and sat bolt upright on her haunches, ears pinned back and forelegs dangling. Her little head swiveled as she tried to pinpoint the source of the noise—but the noise was omnidirectional.
Bushyasta’s eyes, I noticed, were bright green, flecked with amber. I didn’t usually get to see them enough to have remembered how striking they were.
Mephistopheles, as always more direct in her methods (and a creature of action), zipped around the observation deck twice, putting holes in my calf as she ricocheted off me in huge, low-gravity bounds before bolting to refuge under one of the ledges near the windows that might have been benches or might have been plant stands.
The music was not so much atonal as layered in weird harmonies and intervals that didn’t quite mesh. Or maybe they worked, and it was just that they were so very different from my experience and expectations. The hull reverberated and chimed and the music grew. It had patterns within it, but not rigid ones. Instead, they were the various and periodic patterns of speech, of solar systems, of biological systems, of galaxies.
“Music?” Connla asked. “Are we on hold?”
Bushyasta, in the most exuberant burst of energy I had ever seen her betray, swarmed up my leg and huddled into my arms. She buried her face in the crook of my elbow and shivered piteously.
“Damn it, Singer,” Connla snapped, “you’re scaring the cats.”
“It’s not me,” Singer said.
“Music,” I said.
Every sentient head in the room swiveled toward me.
“Music,” I said again, excitedly. “Talk! Sing! I think the star is talking to us.”
“By setting up a sympathetic vibration in our hull?” Connla asked.
“It’s all Koregoi tech,” Singer said, following my line of thought. “How am I supposed to know what they thought was a reasonable means of communication?”
“Well, fix it,” I snapped.
“If it was easy, I would have done so already.”
The closest constable clutched the back of a seating frame, looking faintly nauseated. If their species became nauseated, which I suppose is questionable. My own hands were over my ears, but the vibrations crept up my leg bones, so it didn’t help much.