Neal Stephenson - Seveneves

“Can you put her on your back or something?”

Beled nodded and dropped to one knee. He had been carrying a pack on his back. He emptied its contents on the ground and began slashing leg holes in its bottom corners so that Kath could just be inserted into it, like an infant into a carrier.

“We can’t rule out that our guys will show up in force,” Ty said, referring to Blue military. He looked south over the mountains, but didn’t see anything coming. Nor would he, of course; anything headed their way from Qayaq would be running dark. “Have you been in touch with them?”

“Yes,” Bard said. During this little pause he had been rooting a multitool out of his belt. He approached Ty, who held out the broken stake. Bard got his tool clamped around the head of the bolt and began to twist it out.

Ty nodded wearily. On one level, he had just asked a stupid question. But the Diggers’ attack — hell, for that matter, their existence —had taken them by surprise, and since then he’d been preoccupied with being a prisoner under conditions so primitive as to verge on slapstick. He ought to have been thinking about the larger picture.

Blue might bomb this whole valley into the Stone Age. But probably not. It was already in the Stone Age.

Bard and Beled had gotten a message up to Denali, which was the closest major Teklan military habitat to 166 Thirty. Everyone of consequence in Blue would now be aware that the Diggers existed, that the initial contact had been botched, and that there was a hostage situation. The Thor would have made it clear that Red was a step ahead of them. The descent of those drop pods, a few minutes ago, would have made it clearer. The brilliant pool of light in which the Red delegation moved was as much for the benefit of long-lensed video cameras peering down from orbit as for the Diggers.

It was a fait accompli that Red would make formal contact, in about thirty seconds, with the Diggers, and that it would go a lot better than yesterday. Ariane would have prepped them, told them what to say: Yes, of course we accept your claim to the Earth’s surface. Its justice is self-evident. We have plenty of room in orbit. No need for habitations on the planet. Of course, as you’ve already learned firsthand, you can’t trust those people from Blue. We might be persuaded to install a discreet military presence just to keep them from encroaching on your territory. As long as we’re there, some cultural exchange programs might be in order. We could offer medicine. Dental care. Technical advice in rebuilding your civilization. How may we be of assistance?

“Blue isn’t coming tonight,” Ty said. “It would just play into their hands.” He nodded down at the procession, which was only a few meters away from making first contact with an equally sized group of Diggers. “But some members of that peloton might come after us. They’d look like heroes if they could march us back into camp in shackles.”

“Or carry our heads in on spikes,” Bard suggested in a casual tone.

“Shh!” Ty said, with a glance toward the newest member of their band. But the Cyc looked unconcerned.

“Sonar,” Ty said, “we are going to have to move. Get away from any patrols those guys might send out, while it’s still dark. Can you do that? Move rapidly over rough terrain, in the dark?”

“Sure,” Sonar said, a little too blithely for Ty’s taste. But before he could press her, she added: “Guess we’ll be going north then?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because the main group is going south. Probably as soon as the sun is up.”

“How far south were they thinking of going?” As it was, they were less than a hundred kilometers from the southern coast of Beringia.

“To the sea,” Sonar said, as if this were self-evident.

“What’s going to happen then?”

The question seemed simple enough, but it led to an outburst of chuckles from Sonar. “They’re going to wonder what became of me, that’s what!” she said, when she could get her mirth under control.

“They’re probably wondering that already,” Einstein remarked.

“No, I mean they’ll be needing me then!”

“Why?” Einstein asked.

“It’s a riddle.”

The bolt had been removed now, freeing the end of the chain, which Ty pulled clear of his collar. He opened the thing up and tossed it on the ground. The gesture caught the eye of the Cyc, who probably saw it as a shocking way to treat valuable metal. Ty was now free, holding the massive stake fragment and managing to control a certain natural impulse to bash her head in. This was not a time for riddles.

Einstein got the chain out of his own collar, then carried it in the direction of Kath so that he could help her.

“The purpose of your expedition — before we blundered into your path, that is — was to go to the edge of the water and make contact with the Pingers,” Ty ventured.

“Pingers?” Bard asked.

Ty ignored him, maintaining his focus on the Cyc. “You, by virtue of your mastery of volume seventeen of the Encyclopædia Britannica, are the closest thing your folk have to an expert on the only technology capable of summoning them.”

“Oh, I’m an expert on other topics as well!” Sonar said. “Sophism, South Carolina, Pope Sylvester II. .”

Ty decided to let the witticisms go by without positive or negative reinforcement. “What were you guys going to say to them?”

“It’s they who want to talk to us!” Sonar said. “They left us a message — a cairn on the beach. We are coming to respond.”

The ensuing silence lasted a long time: long enough for the final stanza of “Bread of Heaven” to stop reverberating from the mountain walls, long enough for the Aïdan leader’s opening greeting — written and pronounced in flawless pre-Zero English — to move through a solid paragraph of awe-inspiringly sycophantic salutations. Long enough for Bard to get the unchained Kath socketed into his backpack.

“We move south,” Ty announced. “Bard, you keep pace with the Cyc. If she slows us down, carry her. I’m going to need your radio.”

“My what?!” Bard exclaimed.

“An electromagnetic communications device—” Sonar began, but Ty cut her off.

“The thingamajibber you use to talk to Denali. I’m going to tell them we have a second chance.”

“A second chance to do what?”

“To make friends with the natives of this planet.”

THEY CRESTED A PASS IN THE COASTAL RANGE THE FOLLOWING DAY and began making their way down toward the sea. When the going became easy enough to allow for something like normal conversation, Ty asked, “How many Cycs are there in total?”

Sonar’s little head snapped around, like a bird’s, to regard him curiously. She would never look you directly in the eye, but she would lurk in your peripheral vision and sneak peeks all day long.

“I know,” Ty said. “As many as there are volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica . But I don’t know what that number is, because we no longer have copies of it lying around.”

“Well, there are the Ten, the Nineteen, and the One,” Sonar said. “The Ten are the Micropædia. Many short articles. The Nineteen are the Macropædia: longer, more in-depth articles. The One is the Propædia, the Outline.”

“Which category do you belong to?”

Einstein, walking ahead of them down the slope, wheeled around. “She already told us she was volume seventeen!” Normally good-natured, he was being unusually chippy all of a sudden. He returned his attention to the rocky terrain in front of him, displaying a flushed neck beneath his ponytail.

“Excuse me,” Ty said. Then, turning back to the Cyc, he asked, “Is that just luck of the draw? Or—”