Karl Schroeder - Permanence

"Your little rebel friend? I don't know," she snapped.

"But he was one of the first ones out," said Mike.

She sighed. "So?"

Mike took her by the shoulders— she was about to protest, when he said, "Rue. Where is the cycler mother seed? "

"Look, I think we have more important things to think about right now."

"No, Rue, I don't think we do," said Professor Herat, who had come up behind Mike.

"The seeds are the key— they're the real treasure of this world, Rue. With them, Crisler might learn how to make his self-reproducing warships. And with them, you could make any number of Jentry's Envys …"

Corinna and Evan had detached their side of the door through which Rue had entered this hab. The whole hab shifted a bit; it was now hanging from the cycler only by the other door.

"Barendts took the seed," said Mike.

"Took it?" Rue laughed wildly. "Took it where?"

Mike looked at her. A look of shocked comprehension dawned on his face. "Of course!"

He dove for the hab's other door, elbowing Corinna aside as he closed his faceplate. Before Rue could react, he had opened the door and swung through.

The door hissed shut. Rue turned, gaping, to Professor Herat. Herat had put a hand over his mouth, fingers trembling.

"Laurent? What is it?"

"Crisler's not the only one who might be able to resurrect the Chicxulub weapon," said Herat. "The rebels could do it… if they too had a seed…"

Suddenly the hab let loose and began to tumble. Rue barely felt the motion. Barendts was making for one of the interceptors with the seed in tow. And Michael Bequith had gone to join him.

MICHAEL FOUND ANOTHER airlock and cycled through it. He was too busy inventorying his supplies to think about what would happen next. He had a laser rifle, reaction pistol, and those autotroph bees that had survived their diversionary attack. Those huddled in one of his belt pouches now as he opened the outer airlock door to hard vacuum.

Osiris loomed above him. Below he saw nothing but stars— no, that wasn't quite true. One bead of the necklace of habs had fallen from the cycler. He watched it tumble, intact so far, away into the dark.

Between them, he knew Rue's crew and the science team would be able to find a way to signal her interceptors. They would be all right, he told himself as he braced himself, preparing to leap into the void.

Funny— not too long ago, he had stood on Dis, facing just such an empty sunless sky. Then, Michael had made sure he was tethered at all times; the prospect of drifting off into endless space had terrified him.

There was not a whisper of that old terror now as he stepped off the cycler into the void.

The cycler shot up past him, a moving graffiti-scrawled wall visible only by faint starlight. Michael got the light-enhancers in his helmet working, and turned away from the now-bright starship.

The stars were sharp points; as the cycler passed, the exhaust from its engines was blinding. He jetted away from twin columns of light that speared into the night. As he turned again he saw the oval glow of an aurora crowning Apophis.

He knew in general where he was going, so began jetting toward the ruins of the Banshee . Barendts wasn't visible yet; he might never be unless Michael got a lucky glimpse of his reaction pistol firing. Uncomfortably, that suggested that Michael might miss him and go to the wrong interceptor.

He couldn't afford to think about that. Michael recited a mantra to calm himself as he flew through the darkness. All was silent, and he had no sense of motion at all. Only the faint whirring of his suit's systems, and his own breathing, told Michael that he was still real, a physical man and not a spirit drifting in the void.

Part of him was bracing for an onslaught of despair from the kami of Dis. Surely they were still there? But no, they had gone silent. Michael realized this with a kind of shock— when had that happened? When had his constant companions, who had dragged him down all these months, evaporated?

It must have been his decision to rejoin the rebels— to take back Kimpurusha, or die trying. Was that it? He tried to remember his days on Oculus… but no, they had been there then.

Perhaps it was the battle that had just passed. The immediacy of it, the adrenaline. Wasn't this his natural environment now? The battlefield?

Michael frowned, and shook his head. He was no soldier. He might make a credible spy, but he'd had no stomach for hurting anyone, even the marines who had tried to kill him today. Barendts, a trained fighter, had carried most of the attack that got them out of Crisler's clutches.

Far ahead of him a tiny star flared to life, then died. That must be Barendts. Michael lined himself up and made the difficult course correction that would take him that way.

They were approaching the construction shack now. In enhanced light, he could see the white spindle-shapes of the interceptors. Barendts was making for the one on the right. Good.

If both Crisler and the rebels had the secret of the Chicxulub ships, at least there would be a level playing field. Maybe the ships would clash among themselves, ignoring the humans until there was a victor in space. Maybe they could spare lives, not take them that way.

Sadly, though, the halo worlds would lose either way. Without more Jentry's Envys , they were doomed to increasing isolation and irrelevance. Rue's civilization, which he had been born into and still loved, would come to an end.

Barendts was a faintly visible star-shape struggling with a cylindrical white seed at the airlock of the interceptor. The marine hadn't spotted Michael yet.

He knew he shouldn't have left Rue and the others helpless in the balloon-hab. He cast about for something to take his mind off of that in these last minutes of free fall. Fear… Yes! He still couldn't remember when the kami of Dis had left him. He tried to focus on that. It hadn't been in battle, he knew that now. Before that, then… and he had it.

When Irina Case told him that his kami might be the means for reviving the spiritual life of New Armstrong, something had changed in Michael. He'd had no time to think about it then; he'd been arrested immediately afterward, but his kami were powerful and despite what he'd said to Irina, he now believed that he had not simply found them, but had created them; they were not real entities with lives of their own, they were his Art. With them, he had somehow strengthened Rue through her grief. Maybe his kami really could heal a whole world.

And then, as the interceptor fell into the fiery maw of Colossus, he'd had a momentary flash when he thought he understood Rue's Supreme Meme. Somehow, in that moment of insight, the dark whispering voices of Dis had departed for good.

This realization was so astonishing that he almost missed the interceptor. He made a frantic last blast with the pistol, and was actually able to touch the magnetic soles of his boots to the hull of the interceptor and grab the back end of the seed, before Barendts noticed him.

The marine whirled, laser raised.

"It's just me," said Michael. "Brilliant move, skiving off with this thing."

"Bequith!" Barendts laughed shakily. "Quick, let's get it inside. I think I know enough to pilot one of these through the drop; say, how'd you like a holiday on Kimpurusha?" He holstered the laser again.

Michael felt his heart leap at the name of his homeworld. "Kimpurusha? Is that where you're taking it?"

Barendts laughed again. "You never knew, did you? — That's where I was trained. Years after your people tried their insurrection— but they still knew you. I knew who you were when you first came on board the Spirit of Luna !"

"How?" Had rebel cells continued to exist on Kimpurusha after Michael's own uprising failed? No, that wasn't possible; they would have tried to contact him, surely.