Элизабет Бир - Ancestral Night

“Okay. Fair. How did the Freeporters know to go steal the Koregoi senso that the Jothari were refining from the Ativahikas? And how long have they been working on this plan, if Niyara was in on it back when I was… nineteen?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He turned back to the window. “I can guess that they knew about the senso from… from that history you discovered, about how the Jothari were navigating to begin with. I don’t know if we’ll ever know the rest of it. But I do know one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Somebody in Freeport space knows the answer, and they have a hell of a story to tell.”

“It’s a tune,” Singer said, in a tone of voice that made me think he’d be hitting himself upside the forehead if he had hands.

“A… song.”

“Yes. Whoever crafted the code was extremely clever. Not only does the code seem to correspond to words , but if you interpret it backward, it also corresponds to a series of letters and spaces. These letters and spaces seem very likely to indicate musical notes, in one form of Terran notation. I am assuming that when the same letter is repeated without spaces in between, that is an indication of the duration of the note. So four Es would be an E whole note, and two would be an E half note, and so on.”

“Brilliant!” I said. “So you can sing it?”

“There are complications.”

“…Of course there are.”

“I have no idea what sort of time signature we’re dealing with here. Or if the pitch of the notes matters, as the same letter can be used to signify a number of different absolute frequencies that bear a particular relationship to one another, which is to say that the interval is defined as the ratio between two sonic fre—”

“Singer,” I said. “Please assume that Connla and I both have the same ability to parse musical theory as this cat here.” I demonstrated Bushyasta, who wasn’t quite snoring yet but was purring in her sleep.

“Cut to the chase?” Singer asked.

“Cut to the chase,” I confirmed.

“I’m going to have to experiment.”

“Right.” I gestured to the windows. “Experiment fast. Because those look like countermeasures.”

“I shall endeavor to. What are you going to do in the meantime?”

“Help the constables hunt Farweather.” I glanced at Connla. “And I guess we can start preparing for the worst by battening down the cats.”

Right. This is where busywork came in handy. When you’re facing down something bigger than you are, that you can’t do anything about, and you’re waiting for your shipmate to finish a series of possibly life-or-death experiments in carrying a tune, you need to keep… well, busy. And thinking about it isn’t helpful, because there aren’t any immediate solutions, and thrashing just to be doing something would make it worse. And dwelling on it isn’t going to accomplish anything except for making you miserable.

So you try to keep yourself out of trouble until the time for action comes, because what else are you going to do?

It’s a theory, anyway. I wonder how often it worked, back in the olden days, before rightminding?

Right now, I wanted to do something—anything—to deal with the alien armada coiling inexorably toward us from the dim, almost infrared old sun. I wanted even more to do something—anything—to help bring Farweather into custody. I was taking that one personally, because I’d had her and I’d let her get away.

We were getting real-time updates from Cheeirilaq and its able-bodied constables, and the busywork I found for myself (once the cats were secured) was trying to help them locate Farweather through the Koregoi senso. It still wasn’t working, even though we had a better fix on her location now that she’d launched those drones.

They hadn’t been Koregoi drones. They’d folded themselves into white space quickly, but not so quickly Singer hadn’t gotten footage of them, and they looked perfectly representative of Freeport tech. They hadn’t been among her gear when I searched it, so she must have hidden them somewhere on this vast, ridiculous ship. Someplace I hadn’t thought to look.

Well, she hadn’t thought to look in the places where I’d hidden the bits of her gun, either. They’d all been there when I’d gone and retrieved them. It was still DNA-coded to me too.

I hated the thing, but it seemed wise to hang on to it, so I reassembled it, pulled out the power supply, and hid it under a jacket I borrowed off a human constable about twice my size.

Murtaugh, actually, since they weren’t going to be needing the coat for patrols.

They were bored, but there was no sign of infection setting in. They probably could have used some busywork to keep their mind off their injuries, too.

Void and Well, where was she hiding ?

A little while later, I said, “Singer, I have a terrible idea.”

“Well,” he answered, after a Singer-model Significant Pause. “I’m out of good ones.”

“So Farweather has a hiding place somewhere that we can’t locate. Several hiding places, possibly. She must have concealed the drones in some of them—”

“Thank you for the recap,” Singer said blandly. “I’ve grown so forgetful in this massive alien ship with all its room to stretch out in.”

“You know hominids like to listen to ourselves talk,” Connla said.

Murtaugh, from their pallet by the windows, snorted. By this point, I had them figured for the strong silent type.

“The actual point I was actually making,” I said, “is that we can’t know what other equipment she has access to. More projectile weapons, maybe. Another suit. She could have caches all over the ship.”

“Okay,” Connla said. “Valid.”

“And?”

“And I’m sorry I doubted you.”

“Thank you,” I said.

“So how terrible is your terrible idea?” Singer asked.

“Well.” I gestured to the swarm of dark motes, glittering dully in the inflamed glow of the dying star, that were inexorably closing in. “I’ll tell you.”

“Zanya Farweather,” Singer intoned. His voice reverberated strangely through the empty corridors and chambers of the Prize. I’d never heard him broadcast through the whole hull before, and it overlaid and interacted strangely with the still-wordless, still-echoing alien melodies.

“Zanya Farweather,” Singer repeated. “If you are within the sound of my voice, this is shipmind speaking on behalf of the Synarche prize crew currently in possession of this vessel.”

I looked around while he repeated the message. Ops—I still couldn’t bring myself to call it a command cabin on a vessel this size, or a bridge when it didn’t have any stuff in it for, you know, driving a ship or anything—Ops had enough people in it to actually seem crowded.

I glanced over at Murtaugh, who was freshly installed in their suit and grumbling something uncomplimentary as they heaved themself up.

“Wait, you can talk?” I teased.

They rolled their eyes at me. “Don’t chatter; won’t whine,” they said easily. “Better for everybody.” They leaned on a crutch and grinned.

As part of our plan, the constables had all come back up and were variously cluttering up the place. I missed my quiet and privacy. Funny how there’s a fine line between too much alone, and not enough. At least Cheeirilaq had retreated to its web in the corner, and the cats weren’t underfoot, having been captured (more of a trick with Mephistopheles than Bushyasta) and tucked up in their kitty carrier–cum–life pod.

We were all suited now, just in case, though not helmeted up. The alien swarm was getting too close for comfort.