Sarah Zettel - Reclamation

I wish I was Lu, she thought suddenly. I wish the important things were wires and generators and transmitters and keeping everything up and running. I wish I thought people were all basically the same and that if they weren’t acting like it, they would as soon as they had things properly explained to them. I wish I didn’t think we were in way, way over our heads.

“Hey, Diajo-Cor.” Lu made her name into the Averand diminutive. “Are you all right?” He wrapped a skinny, cord-muscled arm around her shoulders and she thought she felt him relax for simply having someone he could touch without panicking them.

She squeezed his hand. “Yeah. Yeah.”

Except that I’m too tired for this. I’m too cold, and all the gods come to my aid, I am too scared.

She walked out from under Lu’s arm and stood over Trail and Cups. Trail’s sobbing had quieted to a hoarse, intermittent noise.

“Notouch,” said Cor. “Get up that ladder into the white room. You can sleep by the fire until she’s well enough to talk. Get out of here.”

“As you command, this despised one shall do,” said Cups and there was no mistaking the relief in her voice. Trail moved, jerkily, reflexively, but at least she moved. A lifetime of following whatever orders she was given got her to her feet so she could walk out into the dark tunnel behind her cousin.

Lu watched them leave. “I don’t know for sure what happened to her, but she didn’t like it and I don’t think she’s going to do it again.”

“She’s going to have to,” said Jay.

Cor felt a cold flare of anger go through her. She remembered the sound of gunfire and the sight of blood. “I don’t care who you think you are, Jay, but you can’t make this decision without orders from May 16.”

Jay stabbed a finger down the tunnel. “If King Silver can’t hold Narroways, we’re going to lose any chance of creating a coherent power base before the Vitae arrive. The only other thing we can do is get control of this place.” He leaned forward and Cor saw his jaw shake. “If we don’t, we’re lost. Everything is lost!”

The force of his blunt statement took Cor back. “We have to get the go-ahead. We don’t know what we’re dealing with—”

“We’re dealing with the Vitae.” Jay cut her off. “Listen to me, Cor. Listen hard. Do you know what they’re going to do? They’re going to come in here, round everybody up, sort out the useful ones, and pen them up. While they’re doing that, they’ll be analyzing everything they can get their hands on down here. When they’re done with that they’ll put the two together and see what happens. They’ll measure and they’ll record and they’ll study until they understand it all. Then, while the Unifiers are flailing around out there trying to make political hay in this particular patch of sunshine, they will bring what they’ve learned out into the Quarter Galaxy and do whatever they please!”

“Cor,” said Lu gently, “I don’t like this either, but I’ve got to agree with Jay.” Lu shook his head. “There’s too much power here. But what we need to do first is get those two to introduce us to the rest of Stone in the Wall’s family.”

Cor hadn’t been expecting that, and neither had Jay. His brow furrowed.

Lu sighed exasperatedly as they both obviously failed to comprehend his reasoning. “You both talked to her. Her family’s got an oral tradition handed down from oldest daughter to oldest daughter along with those three arias they carry. It’s garbled as all hell, but we could probably interpret it with a little work.” He paused. “It probably won’t be a whole lot, but it’ll be the closest thing we’re likely to get to an operator’s manual for this…” He waved his hand vaguely toward the tanks and the gleaming arias. “Maybe we can figure out how to get it to work without jumping the people we need straight into shock.”

Jay’s shoulders sagged. “All right,” he said at last. “But we send a message out to May 16, right now, and explain the situation. We get permission to go ahead with what needs doing, no matter what it is or who we need to drag down here.”

There was danger in his voice, almost fanaticism. Cor swallowed her fear because she knew he was right. The war they’d started was going to swallow them up if they didn’t get it settled. The idea was making her sick to her stomach and weak in the knees, but they were running out of merciful options.

Jay still looked grim. “You’re going to find the rest of Stone in the Wall’s family, Cor, so we’re ready when word comes. I’m going with you. I don’t like the way you’ve been talking.”

Cor just nodded. This was wrong. This was not the way it went. If it was necessary to ride out a civil war, that was what you did, ride it out. You didn’t slam your hand down over them. But there was too much at stake here.

Whatever the Family does with the People will be better than what the Vitae will do, she reminded herself.

It has got to be.

Walls towered solid and insurmountable on all sides, leaving only one tiny chink for Dorias to squeeze anything through. He extended his arm, slowly and painstakingly. There was barely enough room inside to grope for useful pathways without disturbing the existing network. Still more walls hemmed him in. Dorias strained, stretching out his fingers as far as they would go, carefully feeling his way along the quivering veins that carried packets of information. All of the veins threaded their way straight into the walls. They left no space wide enough for Dorias to even attempt to fit through. Dorias withdrew his arm and sent a probe back to the storage space to see if there were any explorer modules ready and waiting. Dorias seldom moved his entire self. It was an uncomfortable, unwieldy process. He had to squirm his way into fibrous paths and drizzle his consciousness into processors that were so loaded with their own data that each thought would become a leaden weight dropped without any accuracy. As he let his thoughts go, they would vanish completely, and he could only hope for their return.

Instead of enduring that, Dorias had designed a retinue of mobile parts that could travel the networks for him. Smaller and quicker than he was, they could bring back information, or perform tasks that required the manipulation of machines and datastreams light-years away from the direct line of thought from his den.

The probe came back. Luck. A module had returned today and its information had been emptied into storage, waiting for assimilation. Dorias sent the probe to fetch the explorer. When it arrived he lifted it into the newly discovered space. The explorer was smaller than his hand, but it was still a tight fit. As Dorias watched, the explorer began to methodically catalog and examine each vein where it met a wall, looking for patterns, vulnerability, usefulness. The explorer automatically posted a sentry for itself. If anyone watched it too closely for too long, it would withdraw to storage with its report.

PING!

Dorias shrugged aside to make room for the incoming signal.

PING!

The signal shot into his path and Dorias caught it neatly. It proved to be one of his wanderers. Wanderers piggybacked out on ships or stations, sometimes with preassigned tasks, sometimes just to wait quietly in case he needed a presence there.