Chill. Part 9

She would have to learn to use those. Pushing them away meant denying a great resource, and-no matter how insipid she found their morality, no matter how filthy touching their thoughts made her feel-Perceval was a child of Engine. She could stop breathing with more ease than she could discard something with a potential use.

Samael, as if noticing that she had been staring at Nova in speculation for rather a long time, cleared his throat. "Captain?"

Perceval shook her head, pushing aside the fog of other commanders' ideas. "No. I think not. We've already ruled out resorting to cannibalism to solve a bigger problem."

Caitlin, without shifting her eyes from her own image of Samael, said once more, "The Builders would have cannibalized."

Perceval folded her arms. "Mom. You're repeating yourself. And I don't for a minute believe you think that's the best answer. So take it as read into the argument for now, and we'll consider it as an absolute last resort. If we have to. Nova. Do you trust him?"

Nova, who had until then waited motionless as if suspended, staring at Samael like a cat before a mouse hole, said, "I contain enough of him to know better."

Perceval, with a certain degree of distaste, reached down through the layers of filters she was slowly ama.s.sing between her present self and the library of her ancestral memories, looking for specific information. Someday, when she had leisure-and could bear the sense of dragging her fingers through swamp and slime to tickle out a handful of pearls-she would find the time to examine it all and see what was useful. For now, her memory would remain banked full of the Captains and Commodores who had come before her, and she would just have to know she would get around to it someday. Ariane, though, was close and current, and not too hard to get to. Perceval just did not much like touching her.

"I contain enough of Ariane to remember her scorn for Arianrhod's devotion to Asrafil," she confirmed. "I doubt Ariane was ever devoted much to anything, outside of herself. But she believed that Arianrhod is."

Caitlin said, "I contain nothing of Samael. But I, too, know him well enough to know better than to trust him." She glared, then surprised Perceval by asking, "But do we need to trust him? We were going after Arianrhod anyway, weren't we?"

"Yes," Perceval said. "We are. Or Tristen and Mallory are, in any case. And Gavin, of course." She turned back to Samael. "And so are you."

Bened.i.c.k had never known Chelsea well. The gap between their ages was two or three lifetimes of Means run back to back. He'd only met her mother twice; after the tenth or fourteenth, his father's women ran together like lifetimes. The war with Cecelia's daughters had taught Alasdair Conn to never again confuse the question of who held power in the house of Rule by choosing an Exalt paramour-or by Exalting the Means, once their few brief years of beauty had faded. Bened.i.c.k had almost no organic memory of his own mother. It had pa.s.sed with the centuries, leaving behind a sort of abstract sentiment and the crystalline images preserved by his symbiont.

But he did remember his anger and disbelief when he had, at long last, come on Errantry to Engine and not only found Caitlin there, but also that everything their father had told them, about only the blood of the house of Conn being fit to survive Exaltation, had been a blatant, baseless lie.

Shortly afterward, Bened.i.c.k had begun spending less and less time in his father's house. His father had not seemed much concerned by his absence, or to much regret it.

These were things Bened.i.c.k suspected Chelsea had not yet learned about their family. Perhaps the unforeseen benefit of Ariane's attempt at genocide was that now she never need learn them. So he was at peace with the idea that they should walk companionably side by side, two knights-errant alert to the dangers of the wilderness.

He did not expect much strangeness so close to Engine; the knights and Engineers had civilized everything within a day's travel. This area had been thickly settled and largely given over to agriculture before the nova. There were good maps, and Bened.i.c.k's colony carried copies of each.

Their progress at first was painstaking. Having eliminated one of the five potential paths-Chelsea could be lying about having seen Arianrhod, but there were resources in place in Rule to cover that eventuality-it remained to determine which of the following four options Arianrhod had actually chosen. Because her trail was hidden well enough that a cursory examination did not suffice, Bened.i.c.k resorted to the toolkit's enhanced senses.

However, after ninety minutes of sniffing and scurrying, he was forced to admit the strategy was to no avail. The toolkit whiffled disconsolately around the borders of the last corridor, ears slicked back and whiskers quivering. Bened.i.c.k knew they could become discouraged when set impossible tasks. Consequently, he crouched down and let it run up his arm, the armor transmitting every scratch of its delicate claws as though they p.r.i.c.kled on his skin.

He lifted the toolkit to his face and let it rub its pointed muzzle along his chin while Chelsea smiled out of the corner of her mouth.

"The softer side of Bened.i.c.k Conn," she said, and chuckled when he rolled his eyes.

"Sibling disrespect," he answered. "Everything performs better when praised."

"You didn't learn that from Dad."

"No." Not even a real test of his resolve not to speak ill of the dead. His right hand clenched, remembering the hilt of a blade, the way flesh had offered no resistance to the unblade's blow.

He hadn't carried one since.

He wouldn't have done it for Alasdair, he thought. He hoped. He had done it because Cynric asked. That offered less in the way of absolution than he might have preferred.

He indicated the tunnels with a sweep of his gaze. "Which do you like?"

She squatted, resting her elbows on her armored knees, and chewed her upper lip. "If I were a rogue Engineer," she said, with thoughtful deliberation, "wanted for genocide, and a fugitive from everyone in Rule and Engine both, where would I go? What would I think was my best chance of survival?"

"Before the nova?" He shrugged, and his armor shrugged with him. The toolkit on his shoulder registered a protest, fluffy tail thumping his back. "I would have lit out for the hinterlands. The Broken Holdes, maybe. Cannibal country. Now? If the world is coming back under hegemony, the situation gets stickier. You'd need to do one of four things. One, find a place where Nova can't reach-which might mean fostering a breakaway intelligence of your own. Two, reinvent yourself as something Nova could not recognize. Three, escape the world entirely-and falling off the face of the world is unlikely without a planetfall nearby-or-"

"Four, stage a takeover."

"No doubt," Bened.i.c.k agreed, "the eventual plan."

"Indeed." Chelsea had pulled the braids from her hair. Now she flipped it back again. Bened.i.c.k resisted the urge to recommend she cut it. "So logically-"

"She's headed for a null zone." He reached out a hand to pull her to her feet.

She accepted it and stood.

"Nova," he said, and waited for the sense of attention, of connection. "Where is the nearest large null?"

"They're propagating," the angel said in its tone without tone. Not affectless, but serene. He wondered how long it would take for it to develop a personality, or if this were a temporary effect of integrating so many diverse individuals. "However, they are cl.u.s.tering in the area of the largest holdes, at the south pole of the world."

"Near my domaine, you mean."

"On the bottom of the world. Near is a subjective term, but-yes, within tolerances. There is little known about those areas beyond the range of your patrols, Prince Bened.i.c.k. They have been out of contact for centuries. They would make a good refuge. Also, the Captain was just about to contact you. We have further information to impart. Will you accept a squirt?"

Easier and faster than speech, to allow the angel to simply inject the knowledge into his head. Riskier, too-all sorts of things could come concealed in such code.

Bened.i.c.k nodded nevertheless, choosing to trust. Trust the angel, trust the Captain his daughter. Trust the world that cradled his bones.

"Send," he said, and felt data spill into his mind. Arianrhod, Samael, Tristen, Asrafil, Mallory. "Head's alive?" he said aloud, one salient fact crystalline among the flood.

Chelsea, beside him, looked up. "How?" she said. "I was in Rule. No survivors."

"Sie barricaded hirself into the kitchens with all the servants sie could find," Bened.i.c.k said.

Chelsea's smile looked like it might bend her cheeks permanently.

"A little good news is nice," she said, when he raised his eyebrows at her. She glanced aside.

He let her go; adolescents were so embarra.s.sed by their own sentiment. As if one would think less of them for relief or kindness. He said, "Thank you, Nova. My regards to the Captain my daughter."

"Her regards to you," the angel replied. "Prince Tristen wishes to know where you wish to rendezvous. He is leaving Rule as we speak, but still has options as to the route he will take."

Bened.i.c.k consulted the fragmentary maps in his head. "No rendezvous. We'll try for a pincer. If Arianrhod is moving toward the south pole, we have more of a chance to prevent her from slipping by us if we take parallel routes, and it's possible one team might flush her onto the other. Will you be able to keep us in contact, Nova?"

The angel frowned in his head. "Perhaps. Once you enter the region of null growth, I cannot be sure."

"Well," Bened.i.c.k said. "We'll span that gulf when we come to it."

9.

that ice must be as old

The kingdom of darkness ... is nothing else but a confederacy of deceivers that, to obtain dominion over men in this present world, endeavour, by dark and erroneous doctrines, to extinguish in them the light.

-THOMAS HOBBES, Leviathan

Having chosen their gamble, Bened.i.c.k and Chelsea began to run. Not flat-out, exhausting themselves-any chance of catching Arianrhod by merely running after her was long lost-but with a loose-legged lope that would carry them for relentless hours. Every side corridor was a reminder that there was no guarantee they had chosen the right course of action. Ceiling panels stayed open on the night beyond, the gray-green light of the shipwreck nebula staining Chelsea's face a sickly color. Despite the lack of external light, floods washed great swaths of causeway in full-spectrum light.

Chelsea, nodding up to the floods, grimaced. "Where's that power coming from?"

Bened.i.c.k gestured to the renewing vegetation, driven by determined symbionts, that curled up bulkheads still scarred from where the last growth had ripped clear. "Where's your oxygen coming from, without it?"

"Point," she ceded. "I'm just thinking we're going to have supply problems once we accelerate out of the nebula. We're still eating off the waystars. It's thin and cold out there."

"There are steps," he said. "Maintaining acceleration will help. As will enlarging the ramscoop."

Her sidelong glance appeared uncomforted, but there wasn't much more he could do. He slapped her on the vambrace, rough affection but-for their family-an extreme display, and sealed his faceplate with the other hand.

"Close your helm," he said, on speaker. With the conviction of recent experience he added, "Radiation burns hurt."

Because the nebula washed the stars away, Bened.i.c.k could see the curve of the corridor, but there were no external spatial referents to tell him when the reorientation began and ended, exactly. There was a trick to moving when gravity led the inner ear to confound the eye and brain, and Bened.i.c.k had it. You fixed your gaze like a pirouetting dancer, and flicked it from point of focus to point of focus. Nevertheless, Bened.i.c.k tripped on a glitch in gravity and dipped one leg. His knee plowed a divot in the earth; the toolkit on his shoulder responded with a murfle of protest. Somewhere under the earth, a gravity simulator was warped or cut. They were designed to shut off automatically when damaged, to protect the superstructure, but the deadswitch must be malfunctioning, too.

"Nova," he said, pushing himself to his feet with his fingertips as Chelsea turned back to see if he needed a.s.sistance, "faulty gravity at our current location. I can't make out a sector marker in line of sight; it must be overgrown."

"Thank you," Nova said. "I have no superstructure penetration there, but when I'm done with the flora I will find it. There is still no sign of Arianrhod, but I've located something that may be an indicator of her movements. There is an expanding, mobile null spot proceeding with fair speed through a section three strata world-south of your location."

"She went EVA, if that's her," Chelsea said. "Should we follow?"

"She's with an angel," Bened.i.c.k said. "She can EVA at will."

"We have armor and an angel of our own."

"Nova?" The angel had not generated an avatar, so Bened.i.c.k merely tipped his head back as if addressing someone directly before him and slightly taller. "Do external conditions permit?"

"It would be extremely unsafe," the angel said. "I could allocate resources to help shield you from radiation-"

"Resources needed elsewhere." Bened.i.c.k reconsidered his earlier thoughts about Nova's serenity and undeveloped personality. He wasn't sure he'd ever heard an angel sound miserably worried before. They were voices of authority, arrogance, comfort, calm-or at least, they always had been.

"We are effecting repairs as quickly as possible," Nova said, this time managing the soothing delivery Bened.i.c.k a.s.sociated with angels. "The Captain states that your mission is prioritized, and I am to offer a.s.sistance commensurate with your need. Other processes can wait. However, I also must tell you that now the null spot has vanished. I'm not sure if Arianrhod has ventured EVA again, or if this is a symptom of something else."

Reluctance to speak was also not a feature of angels as Bened.i.c.k knew them. "Expand?"

"It's possible that Arianrhod's patron has either infiltrated my program-possibly through a back door implicit in the code we all consumed from our initial parent process-or merely that he has attained a level of sophistication such that he can make me forget his existence. In which case, the null spot disappears from my perception. Exactly as certain items or concepts might disappear from the consciousness of a human who had suffered brain damage. I've had indications that there are colonies at work in the world that I cannot even locate, let alone control. And some of them are doing damage."

Bened.i.c.k would have bitten his thumb in frustration if the armor hadn't been in the way. Instead, his hands clenched inside their gel-lined gauntlets. "But she was headed in the same direction."

"Last seen progressing world-south, yes."

"If she's skipping strata, risking EVA, and headed due south-if it's not an attempt on her part to misdirect us, mislead pursuit and tempt us to squander resources while she doubles back to Rule-we're never going to equal her speed by staying to the causeways and routes. Especially given how many are still under repair."

Bened.i.c.k pressed a boot into the forgiving soil under its heel. The print would scab over in a matter of minutes. A childish display of petulance, even if he and the angel were the only ones who would ever know, but it made him feel better.

"Bened.i.c.k." Chelsea's voice dropped, as if she were hesitant to interrupt. "There's another option. I'm reasonably familiar with this part of the world. We're not far from a derelict commuter shaft, if it's intact. It extends dozens of strata south, all the way to the Broken Holdes."

"I know it," Bened.i.c.k said. "I heard about it from a young Engineer. The flyers sneak off to the holdes to practice. This Engineer, though, she told me it was too dangerous, and they avoided it for a longer, faster route. Faster for them." He shook his head in frustration. "I never wished I was a flyer, but right now it would help."

Chelsea's helm rocked as she nodded.

"This Engineer"-a peer of Perceval's, who Bened.i.c.k couldn't bring himself to name, knowing she was probably dead-"told me the gravity controls failed long ago. Is it defaulted to free fall?"

"Alas," Chelsea said. "About one and a half gravities. But we're Conns. We could climb it."

The family mantra. We're Conns. We could-Their father's influence, and Bened.i.c.k was not sure even now if it had made Alasdair's children strong and willing to risk, or if it had led them to destruction.

He paused, figuring odds in his head. He must consider the possibility, far from remote, that Chelsea was in league with Arianrhod and had been in league with Ariane. If she had survived the ma.s.sacre at Rule because of her affiliations, she might be here in the service of Arianrhod's plan. She might mean to decoy him to failure or to death.

Watching her face, he did not think so-but he was always too fond of his family, even when they did not deserve that fondness. So if he were wrong, it would hardly be the first time. Still, better to choose to trust and be disappointed than go the other way. As far as Bened.i.c.k was concerned, cynicism was a toy for children.

"Nova?" he asked. "Obvious flaws in the plan?"

"Hazards of the climb," the angel answered. "None that appear unavoidable in the early stages, as I should be able to guide you for perhaps the first half of the descent. Then, however, you will leave my sphere of influence, and Tristen's experience with a rogue colony suggests there may be dangers. A more obvious issue is that we are uncertain of Arianrhod's actual destination, and whether this is a feint."

"And that last is a risk we have no option but to accept," Bened.i.c.k said. He opened a hand past Chelsea, a gesture meant to sweep her on. "Lead me, My Lady."

Now Chelsea ran without hesitation, without stopping, without saving herself. Bened.i.c.k followed after, limiting his longer stride so as not to overrun her. His armor jarred his bones. He thought of cautioning her. Her headlong rush telegraphed all her youth and incaution. She was burning energy not easily replaced on the trail for little gain, and she might be coursing heedlessly into a trap.

But instead he let her run. The truth was, it felt good. It felt like action. So he dogged her heels and stayed alert for dangers. The transparent panels overhead drew some of his attention, no matter how careful he was to divide it. Some things he had never managed to become jaded to, and the tenuous beauty of the world was chief among those.

The structure of the world loomed in partial visibility overhead, a lattice skeleton swathed erratically with light and darkness, further structures gleaming dully through translucent gas until depth of field rendered it opaque. Bened.i.c.k thought of his dark orchards in dormancy, the pruned branches crisscrossed and wet-black until they vanished in mist.