The Dying Light (27 page)

“You’re sure it
is
him?”

“Of course,” said Byrne. “I oversaw his healing myself.”

Roche wondered whether Byrne had actually seen the boy in the flesh or operated through his all-suit. She also wondered how Byrne could be so sure he was who he said he was since he’d come from another spine. It would be all too easy to hide in an all-suit and pretend to be someone who was actually dead.

But she decided not to push the issue any further, for now. Byrne seemed convinced of the boy’s identity. Instead Roche promised herself she would try to talk to the boy herself, later.

“Is there nothing new you can tell me about the Sol clone warrior’s activities?” she said.

The spinning of Lud’s striped all-suit slowed. “No.”

“He speaks the truth.” Byrne’s voice was regretful. “By the time we knew something was wrong, the clone warrior had gone into hiding; and before we could escape, the system was enclosed. We are trapped here as surely as he is.”

“Perhaps not any more,” said Lud.

“True.” Byrne’s tone was thoughtful. “Morgan Roche, although I have said that I trust you, that does not mean that we will help you freely, or at all. The clan as a whole needs to consider everything you’ve told us. Your actions and those of Linegar Rufo could be interpreted many ways, and I must consult with my people before making any decisions.”

“How long will that take?” Roche asked.

“Several hours. The debate will be thorough, with as many attending the Plenary as possible. You may attend the summation, if you wish.”

“Thank you. I’d like that.” Roche was curious to see how the outriggers would attain consensus on such a complex issue in so short a time, and was naturally concerned that its outcome would be in her favor. “But first I’m going to have to contact my ship from the surface. I told my crew that I would report in.”

“Idil and Yul will escort you.”

“I have no intention of escaping.”

“I believe you, Morgan Roche,” said Byrne. “They will act more as your guides than your guards.”

Nothing was said, but Byrne’s words still carried an implicit warning. Mok’s labyrinth was extensive and difficult to navigate, and should Roche choose to attempt to elude her guides, she knew she would quickly become lost. If that happened, it was possible they would not be able to find her again. If they even tried.

To Roche’s nominated guides, Auditor Byrne added: “Perhaps you could show her the central chamber on your return.” Roche neither saw nor heard any kind of acknowledgment from either Idil or Yul, yet something seemed to be conveyed to the auditor. A second later she said: “Excellent, then you can join us from there.”

With that, the outriggers led Roche out of the chamber, while the quorum assumed its former configuration, only with Auditor Byrne at the center and the remaining seven around her.

Roche’s guides took her along the corridor outside at a more sedate pace than before. Roche couldn’t tell if they were retracing their steps. The many turns and lack of reference points had her thoroughly confused, substantiating Byrne’s unspoken warning.

“How do you know where you’re going?” Roche asked.

Yul’s gruff voice answered: “Breeding.”

“Our internal guidance systems are highly specialized,” Idil chipped in. “Much more sophisticated than yours. You could sever us from all our senses and take us anywhere across the system. Set us adrift, and we could find our way to within a kilometer of where we started.”

“What’s that got to do with breeding?” Roche asked.

“Some of us are third- or fourth-generation clan members,” said Idil. “We gestated within and were raised as part of our suits; its systems are ours, although naturally the interface is not perfect. With every generation, however, we improve.”

Roche was reminded of Uri Kajic. This wasn’t so different. The ancient Dato Ataman, for whom the Marauder was named, might’ve saved herself a lot of trouble if only she’d talked to outriggers before launching the Andermahr Experiment.

But traditionally no one talked to outriggers. Did business with them, yes, but did not converse as equals. They were regarded with the same sort of suspicion and contempt as nomads were on some backward worlds. That they were capable of great technical skill didn’t especially surprise Roche, but their sense of honor and integrity did. Auditor Byrne and Idil had both demonstrated clearheadedness and willingness to trust under difficult circumstances—something Roche’s former colleagues in COE Intelligence were not renowned for.

“How many of you come from outside the clan?” she asked.

“About half,” Idil replied. “We see a lot of disaffected types as we travel. Jaded combat soldiers; criminals looking for somewhere to hide; sociophobes. Most we reject out of hand. The ones we keep are those who demonstrate an ability to maintain group integrity over vast distances. It’s a difficult thing to manage; some never do come to terms with the isolation. But once accepted, the lifestyle does have its rewards.”

“Do you give preference to those who come from the same place as others within the clan? Or to groups of applicants? I notice that you and the auditor have a similar accent.”

“We do, but our relationship is not what you might think. I joined Long Span as a teenager when it passed through the fringes of Gwydyon seventy-eight subjective years ago—one hundred and twenty of yours. My all-suit used to belong to the woman whose clan name I took after my tenth year as a member. She died of old age six months before I joined. In my twentieth year I elected to have a child, conceived parthenogenetically from my own tissue. I gave her the name of my mother, back on Gwydyon, and designed her all-suit myself. Auditor Byrne is my daughter.”

Roche pondered this as Idil and Yul led her toward the surface of the strange, alien moon.

* * *

“I’m sure it’s okay, Ameidio.”

“Damn it, Morgan!” The annoyance was obvious in Haid’s voice. “You’re taking an awful risk.”

“Only because I need to. You know that. I’ll be away a few hours longer, and the suit will need a top-up. If I had a choice, I’d let you come down, but I don’t trust Myer and Disisto alone in the ship. So you’ll have to send Disisto with everything I need.”

“Why don’t you just come up here? You can be here and back within an hour.”

“Because it’s not just about supplies. I might need someone else down here if the decision doesn’t go our way. They’ve said we can trust them, but I’m not willing to believe everything they say just yet.”

Haid was silent for a second. “Besides which, you want to have a look around, right?”

Roche smiled to herself. “You got it.”

“I guess I can’t blame you, Morgan. From what the suit recorded, I can’t say I’ve seen anywhere like it before.”

“Disisto will be interested in it too, given his association with Rufo’s work. Another reason to send him down. And maybe I can work on him a little, get him to change his mind.”

“Okay, okay,” Haid said with a mix of resignation and levity. “Besides, it’s getting a little crowded up here. Mavalhin’s awake, and if I hear one more complaint out of him, I swear I’m going to put him in the airlock.”

“Any particular issue?”

“He wants to talk to you.”

“Naturally. But if it’s not important, he can wait.”

“That’s what I keep telling him. Unfortunately, I’ve run out of reasons to keep him under sedation, and he gripes about being tied up.”

Roche chuckled to herself. She could sympathize, but there was little else she could do. “Any other news?”

“A tightbeam from the Box arrived not long ago, bounced off a drone near Herensung. We have an ETA with the
Ana Vereine
in five days. The Box says we’ll be able to contact it safely in twenty-four hours. It’ll send us coordinates before then.”

“That’s progress, I guess.” Since their last exchange of messages to arrange the rendezvous point, they had maintained strict radio silence. “Good to know the ship evaded capture.”

“The Box never seemed to have any worries.”

“It wouldn’t.” Roche scanned the sky for any sign of
Daybreak,
but it wasn’t visible. “Myself or one of the outriggers”—she forwarded him the unique frequencies Idil had given her—”will stay on the surface to wait for Disisto. The sooner he leaves, the better. Call me if there are any problems.”

Haid signed off and Roche returned her attention to the world around her. She was resting in the very low local gravity near one of the hairlike spikes protruding from the surface of the moon. The soil below her seemed to glitter faintly—an effect magnified by the crackling of the ion bridge high above her. When she bent to touch it, she learned that it was only a centimeter or two deep; below that was black rock, inert to all the suit’s sensors.

“You’ll find it difficult to chip,” said Idil, balancing on her main thruster not far away. “Some of us tried to analyze it when we arrived, but didn’t have much luck. It might be some sort of artificial material we haven’t come across before. Designed from the molecules up.”

“Any idea who made it?”

“That’s hard to say. There are living quarters off one of the central chambers. We can’t get into them ourselves, but we managed to get some of our remote probes in.”

“Did you find anything? Any reason why the builders left? Any bodies that might help identify the Caste?”

“Nothing. In fact, the quarters were never inhabited. They were possibly intended as a shrine, or a museum perhaps.”

Roche considered this. An ancient, unknown Caste, close enough to Transcendence to no longer need its hereditary form but not so removed to have lost all affection for it, might have modified or built the small moon for purposes that had become meaningless over time. Mok might have drifted far from its origins before being captured by the double-jovian, or—and this was an area Roche hardly dared venture into—the entire arrangement could have been artificial. The two gas giants, the ion bridge, and the single moon were an unlikely combination to have formed naturally. Although the possibility was daunting, the universe had a capacity for surprise far exceeding Roche’s own imagination and she knew better than to base any opinions on what she considered normal.

The aspirations and achievements, and even the whereabouts, of the Caste responsible for the artifacts were as impenetrable as the artifacts themselves. And that only made her more curious. Assuming the outriggers joined her cause, she would have days before the Box arrived. Which would be plenty long enough to have a decent look around.

* * *

Disisto complied readily with her instructions, and was suited and able to go within the hour. Half an hour after that, he had joined Roche on the surface with a utility containing the requisitions her suit needed to remain operating for an extended period. While it looked after itself, she introduced him to the two outriggers.

Mil’s voice was frosty. “You’re from the Galine station?”

“I ran dock security.”

“How much say do you have regarding policy?”

“None, really. That’s all handled by the chief.”

“Linegar Rufo?”

“Yes.”

If Mil was appeased by that, Yul was not. “Your people stood by while a clan was murdered.”

‘That’s simply not true—” Disisto began.

“You deny that you had observers in the area of Aro when the spine was attacked?”

“No, but—”

“They did nothing.”

“What
could
they have done? They were only a handful. If your people couldn’t do anything, how could mine?”

“At least you could’ve talked to us afterwards,” said Idil. “Traded information.”

“To have broadcast like that would have given away our location!”

“You’re lying,” said Yul. “You broadcast regularly on the old channels.”

“Through relays.”

“Exactly. That must be safe enough. Whoever it is you’re talking to can’t be any less dangerous than us.”

Roche noted the comment. It seemed the outriggers also suspected Rufo of trying to contact the Sol warrior.

“This is all irrelevant,” she interrupted. “Disisto is here because he’s interested in the ruins you’ve found. He’s not here as my ally, or yours. Far from it. If you object to his presence, I’ll happily send him back.”

Yul grunted, the waldoes on his all-suit twitching uncertainly.

“We will suffer his presence,” Idil decided. “But if he gets into trouble, don’t expect us to help.”

“At least we know where we stand.” Disisto’s voice was stiff and formal.

Roche didn’t trust herself to comment. “Shall we get on with it?” she suggested.

They descended into the moon, this time via another shaft. Roche had no way to tell this one from the rest, apart from its map coordinates. Again she had to rely on the outriggers to navigate for her and Disisto as they zigzagged through the tunnels.

“There are four thousand two hundred seventeen entrances on the surface of Mok,” Idil said as they traveled. “The tunnels themselves extend for many thousands of kilometers within the moon. We haven’t even come close to mapping them all. Some go nowhere or loop back on themselves; others end in chambers like the one you saw earlier; still others lead to museums, or what might be machines of some kind. It’s hard to tell. But I get the feeling that we haven’t touched upon the stuff that actually matters. It’s hidden in some recesses of this moon we haven’t discovered yet.”

“You think this is just a smoke screen?” Disisto asked.

“It’s a possibility. A labyrinth designed to make
it difficult for intruders to get in.”

“Or out,” Roche added quietly to herself.

“They could’ve built a door out of the crust material and kept just about everything out,” said Yul.

“Perhaps that wasn’t enough,” Idil ventured. “Depends how fearful their enemies were, I guess.”

“It seems like you picked a good place to hide, then,” said Roche. “Too good, almost.”

“When the clan of Wide Berth died,” said Yul, “it was an obvious place to seek shelter: distant, relatively secure, and belonging to no one else. We were hoping we’d go undetected.” The outrigger’s all-suit rotated slightly on its axis. A shrug, Roche intuited. “We have ruins similar to these recorded in the spine’s archives. Other clans have found them and passed on the knowledge. This one was unrecorded because we are the first outriggers to come here. Until DAOC announced that they were seeding the inner belts with prowling mines, the system was never considered worth looking at. It wasn’t until Thin Trunk spine passed on the word that there was a vacant turf large enough for two spines, and Wide Berth was free at the same time as us, that we decided to come...”