The Braided World (44 page)

She had made such a simple mistake. Thinking that his gun had only the range of hers.

Not hesitating this time, he fired. As he should have done that time, despite Maypong's plea, that one time, on his dock, when she had been so terribly wrong.

Oleel fell with a look of bafflement. A cry went up from the barge.

At the same time his canoe pulled forward, away from the uldia canoe, which fell away, bearing a cargo of dead.

Peering through the scope at the scene on the barge, Anton saw a huddle of uldia around their fallen leader. And toward the back, a very tall man with his hair rolled on top of his head.

Anton aimed, but missed in the wildly pitching canoe. Then the smog came rushing back, closing off vision.

“Zhen,” Anton called, wanting to hear her voice.

“Sons of bitches,” Zhen yelled back.

“Daughters, actually,” Anton said. His heart was still pumping hard, his senses acute. He drew up closer to Zhen's canoe, saw her sitting upright, unscathed.

Moshani turned back from the prow to meet Anton's gaze. He was holding the pistol Anton gave him by the muzzle, having used it to bludgeon the attackers. Anton nodded to him, conveying,
Well done.

And then, exhausted, they made their way upriver. Anton took a paddle from the man in front of him, and they went forward as best they could, coming into the landing site on the last of their adrenaline.

Huvai's islet began with a tangle of undergrowth by the bank. Once through, the group climbed the path leading up the long slope to the landing site, a flat rock formation, scoured of trees, jutting above the forest. As some of the soldiers stayed on the bank to care for their wounded, the rest of them carried the contents of the canoes up the long slope. Vidori's guard met them partway down, helping them with their loads. That boded well; the ship was still under guard.

At the top, he saw the bivouac of Vidori's soldiers, who had held this place secure in the weeks since their landfall. And there, the shuttle craft, looking denuded and sterile, amid the liana vines draped in the background.

The leader of the king's guard said that before Anton entered the craft, he must see a prisoner confined in a nearby thatch hut. So, after being led to a makeshift brig, Anton finally found Nick Venning.

The Dassa soldier said, “He claimed the air barge was his, and he must take it.”

Securely bound with rope, Nick looked up at Anton, his eyes flat, with no flicker of recognition or even surprise.

“Shall I kill him?” the soldier asked.

Just what Anton was asking himself. Here was the man who had tried to abandon his crewmates, and scuttle the mission. He searched Nick's face for some sign of the old officer, but the man had fled. “No,” Anton said. “Carry him on board.”

Then he and Zhen turned to their hard-won cargo, stowing it securely on the shuttle.

Excusing the king's soldiers, and waiting for them to vacate the rock plateau, Anton began prelaunch procedures. They were going home. Finally, and at last.

Some of them.

Bailey was in the river room when a pillar of light lit up the western sky. She hurried to the steps of the great room where it joined the Puldar, and watched the shuttle rise from the forest. In the clotted air, she couldn't see the craft itself, only the torch of propellants on which it rose.

It took her by surprise, how hard it was to watch it go. Her throat cinched tight as she followed the shuttle's path up from the Olagong. After the roar faded, a quiet descended on the river, as though the Dassa along its length had stopped fighting long enough to note this event, the departure of the born to bear. She wondered what they felt, whether relief or dismay

She had gone down the river steps, and found that she now stood up to her knees in the water, to no particular purpose, but still watching through the smoke for the pinpoint of light that was the human craft. Leaving. Well, of course it was leaving. Silly old woman, to find tears at such a moment.

She leaned down and dipped her hand in the river, splashing her face clean.

Deep in the forest, Gilar's band was effectively blind. They had no view of the river or the horizon, so when the thunder
came, they stopped and looked at each other in consternation.

One of the three dozen hoda who had joined them as they made their way through the outskirts of the nearby compounds sang, The human captain flies up to his great barge. Then, seeing the expression on Gilar's face, and mistaking it for confusion, she added: He is going back where he came from.

As they made their way toward the Nool, Gilar and Mim found scattered hoda who had run away from their mistresses. Many of them made common cause with Gilar. Others were running west, to the Voi, despite rumors that Oleel had a blockade on the Sodesh to prevent them.

She looked up, past the treetops, expecting to see the ship fly right over them, so loud was the noise of Anton's craft.

Are you sure? Gilar asked.

The hoda was sure. She'd been on the river, and had seen Anton's boats racing up the Sodesh.

Gilar was still gazing up. Closing her eyes, she held on to the receding thunder of the craft. It seemed very long ago that she had been a young girl dreaming of Erth. But the old longing still held power, as old things often did. Like having a mother of the Olagong, who'd taught her how to live with courage and die for something worthwhile.

The thing that made her saddest of all was that Maypong was not on that ship.

After a moment, someone sang, Bailey stayed at the palace, though.

Gilar looked at the woman for a long moment. Why had they not told her this before? And why should it matter, when it was only an old woman with a good singing voice?

Her smile, when it came, was broad enough that everyone in the group caught it.

Bailey stayed.

On the
Restoration
, the hum of the ship surrounded Anton, louder than he remembered it. The bulkheads seemed closer now, too, with their systems pulsing just beneath the metal plates. A strange place—tight, and colorless. The faces of the crew, many of them haggard, seemed new, too.

Webb had been a welcome sight. After a lengthy debriefing with the sergeant, Anton had gone to the medical suite. Of the crew of nineteen, five remained unfit for duty, but were recovering on a cocktail of drugs designed for each crew member's particular gene patterns. The therapy was only possible because the virus was in a stable consensus sequence, not creating new versions. By Anton's side was the burly medic, Spence Norval, one of the hale ones. But all of the patients, no matter how weakened, wanted to know the story of the genetic sequence and what they were bringing home from this world. Anton repeated it, down the line of beds.

He looked down at a patient, Ensign Petty once a strapping boy of twenty.
Boy.
Anton could call him that, being four years his senior, and his captain.

Spence said, “Petty held down engineering for the past weeks, Captain.”

Petty nodded at Anton. “Welcome back, sir.”

“Good work, Leo,” Anton said. “We'll need you back on grease detail, as soon as you can stand up.”

“I'm ready, Captain. Let me at ‘em.” He grinned, showing reddened gums.

“We could fit Nick in here, Captain,” Spence said as they continued down the line of beds. Corporal Norval was a friend to Nick; a friend to most of them on this ship. A likable man, and competent. The
Restoration
had been lucky to keep this one upright.

Nick was isolated and bound in an end cabin, where he was improving with the help of a tailored pharmacoge-nomic concoction. But it would be a slow recovery.

The tour completed, Anton faced Spence in the mid-deck corridor. Clean-shaven and pasty-faced, the man
looked fresh compared with Anton, who, despite a shower and a new uniform, was haggard from lack of sleep.

“We got what we came for then, I guess,” Spence said.

Anton nodded. “It's in the hold, as much as we could gather.”

“Zhen said it's a food. Like a tuber. And all wrapped up in the DNA. That about it?”

“Yes, that's about it.” Through the cabin door, Anton could see the rows of his crew, lying amid sheets and tubes and blinking monitors. All that they had endured on this ship had come to mean something. He was thankful to be able to say so. Leaning against the bulkhead for a moment, he took a moment to let Spence know that it
had
been worth it.

“It's a legacy,” he said. “Might take us a hundred years to read everything that's there, and then do something with it. The technology is far beyond us—
how
far, we don't know.”

“And there's stuff from other worlds,” Spence said. “Have we translated anything?”

“We don't even know if we
can
translate it.” Anton paused. “But if we succeed, then it's a back-door chance to learn about other beings, what their civilizations are—without the space voyages that the Council opposes. Without the risks of space travel.” He didn't need to elaborate on
risks
, not to this man who was lucky to be walking under his own power.

Nexus world
was a concept they had barely had time to discuss, much less assimilate. Neshar held a priceless inheritance, one that would challenge Earth culturally, scientifically Anton thought of the ways that Earth had to change. He'd fled from some of those things, fled to the haven of military service. Now the
Restoration
would bring back more than human diversity. Maybe too much diversity. He was looking forward to it.

Spence said, “Call themselves the Quadi, then? Is that what I heard?”

“Actually, they never named themselves, in what Zhen has translated so far. That's the name the Dassa gave them.”

“And maybe they haven't even survived.” Spence shook his head, as though being both
advanced
and
dead
seemed contradictory “That's what Nick said.”

Anton cocked his head. “Nick?”

“He's dying. And raving. I stopped in, sure.” Spence looked away. “I wish I hadn't.”

Anton remembered how small a ship this was. “Post a guard, Corporal. Outside his door.”

Spence raised an eyebrow. “A guard? We don't have anybody extra for a guard.” And then, at Anton's continuing gaze, “Yes, sir.”

Anton clapped a hand on the man's shoulder. “A tough duty. You've done well, Spence. Just a little longer now.”

He was continually urging people to
hold on.
From the look in Spence's eyes, he thought some of them were damn tired of it.

Webb turned to greet him on the bridge. The big man had a comforting heft, and a stolid demeanor—indeed, he'd brought the crew back from the brink of mutiny during the bad weeks of Anton's absence.

Beside Webb, Lupe Rodriguez ran the linguistic sequences, checking the satellite broadcasts. The ones they'd once thought were noise.

“Corporal,” Anton said, returning the salute.

Lupe gave a nod, a coldness in her eyes. She was one who had voted to go home. But then, to be fair, they had
all
voted to go home. Except Webb.

The room, kept cool for the main on-board tronics, made Anton shiver. Or perhaps it was from seeing the bridge, formerly with a component of six, now stripped to two.

Webb said, “Lupe's been working on the radio broadcast codes, sir.”

She looked up from the screen where she sat. “True,
Captain. They've got a grammar, at least the two I've been working on.”

Webb shrugged.
“Come find what you have lost.”

“I don't know if this is right,” Lupe said, “but some of these are diverting to Kardashev tunnels, and it could be they're packeting through them. As radio waves. Don't ask me how.”

Anton considered this. So perhaps aliens would show up sooner than he'd thought. Perhaps Oleel did have reason to worry—not that her revolt could stop any of it.

Lupe busied herself at her work screen. Webb had shown good sense in having crew involved in these translations, enlisting them in the work, the cause.

Looking at Anton, Webb urged him to sit down. Anton hadn't slept for two days, and by now he knew it showed. He sat next to Lupe as she keyed the board. There were three satellites, broadcasting in two directions each. While she worked, Anton gazed out a portal, where the stars burned, near and far. It was a view he'd often used in the past to let his mind wander. With no wandering moments for many days now, he longed for that state, with nothing to decide or unravel. So when his thoughts went to Maypong, Anton let them. His thoughts went so far as to bring Maypong onto the bridge, where she would be looking out the very same portal as he was now. Where she would perhaps join Webb and him in thinking,
All those worlds …

As Anton made his way back to his cabin for a much-postponed sleep, he realized how carefully he had avoided looking out the other portal, the one that held the view of Neshar.

Gilar stood in the great wood hall. It was the river room of the judipon, with the Nool River flowing over its steps. Incredibly, not a single person defended the compound, now lying nearly empty of judipon. Nirimol had required his people to leave their ink pens and take up arms instead. The
few old men remaining behind looked surprised to find a group of hoda entering the place, led by a young hoda wearing a headband of yellow.

Now the sisters possessed a great pavilion, one with stores of food, and even a few guns and dart tubes left about. Through the halls, smoke drifted, causing a scrape in their throats, and a murk even with the luminaries blazing. Floors strewn with paper rounds gave evidence of records hastily bundled away, those numerations the judipon deemed crucial to the business of the Olagong. Gilar smiled to herself. She didn't think Nirimol understood the real business of the Olagong. How his spindles must record a new power, and a new world.

Gilar still felt like an imposter, leading the hoda. Mim was of an age that might command respect, but she was content to stand behind. So here Gilar was, striding through the judipon realm, commanding her thirty-two soldiers. Although she knew nothing of fighting and tactics, nothing of leading people, Gilar had begun to accept her role. Because of one thing: her vision in the forest ravine, that the hoda were to be the Fourth Power, with their own pavilion. That their color would be yellow, for Maypong.