“Comes clean down through the whole atmosphere?”
Killeen could scarcely believe these frames from a stop-motion simulation.
I must say I find this information more than a bit doubtful. Grey must be addled. Consider the engineering difficulties of such a project! The strength of materials required! Further, no planet is a perfect sphere. Bulges would attract any such orbiting cable, causing it to drift in longitude and latitude. Moreover, there must be severe torsional vibrations induced by its passage through the atmosphere. And how can such a dynamical system overcome the drag of the atmosphere? No—it would crash to the ground in short order.
“How you explain what we saw, then?”
I am formulating a model at this moment. It will require work, of course.
“Look, just do the calc’lations, yeasay?” After a pause Arthur’s nettled voice said:
I cannot disprove these vague memories, of course, but I feel called upon to point out that the speed of such a thing would be more than a kilometer per second when it entered the atmosphere. Such—
“Yeasay, that’d make those booms we heard.”
You miss my point. How could a plant withstand such forces? I find it impossible to believe—
Killeen let the faint, often garbled and heavily accented voice of Grey come through.
Many historians… even those of the Chandeliers… thought the same. But we knew that… starfarers spoke of them… pinwheeling over worlds of grass and forest… beneath far suns…
“What for?”
Concept of motivation… in biology… complex. Life seeks to reproduce… to fill as much… of its environment… as it can.
“But this thing, it lives in space.”
Could fill… whole galaxy… in time…
“Seems like mechs’d be better at that. They can take vacuum and cold.”
True… and perhaps in reply to that… somehow… someone… made biological materials… could survive cosmic rays… drift among stars… spread.
“Who?”
Historians of… Chandeliers… spoke of earliest humans at Galactic Center… of the Great Times. Thought… perhaps… pinwheels made then…
“They could do that… I mean, humanity?”
We were… so grand… not like my own age… of pitiful… crude… Arcologies… that were no larger than this mountain… mere tiny things… compared with the Chandeliers….
“Uh… I suppose.” Killeen tried to imagine a city as big as the great slabs of rock that spread so far around him. If those were what Grey considered small, trivial constructions… “The Chandeliers, sure, they were the best we ever did, so—”
Oh no, never… there were grander works… far grander… before… in the Great Times…
Killeen wondered whether he should believe the disconnected rememberings of the little Aspect. Maybe Grey was just repeating old stories. Humanity had subsisted for a long time now on little more than scavenged food and glorious lies.
He shook his head and started to get up, his joints protesting. Time to look after his duties. Then the singular fact hit him once more—that he was no longer Cap’n. Simultaneously he felt elation at the burden lifted and depression at his reduced role in the Family. In all, he decided, they came out even.
Which meant he could forget Family business for a moment. He got up without waking Shibo and went to see how Toby’s wounded
hand was doing.
TEN
Quath lay in wait for the approaching podia. They came up through a long, rumpled valley in which dust haze settled like a dull gray blanket. Stands of the curious spindly trees obscured their approach, but Quath could see them plainly by the pulsing, pale electro-auras they could not help but emit as they communicated.
Here on the lower flanks of the mountain the land was turned and crumpled. All the humans had retreated to higher ground. An ominous quiet prevailed all down the range of tossed rock. The shards of broken hills gave countless hiding places for enemies.
Were there already podia out there, sent by the Illuminate factions? The Tukar’ramin had warned that some were coming. Then her signal had fallen behind the curtain of static.
<Hail and stand!> she called sharply. The party was still at a great distance, but she was cautious.
<What? Who’s that?>
Quath tasted spiked emissions and recognized their familiar signature. <Beq’qdahl! The Tukar’ramin sent you?>
<Yes. She implied that you were in a tangle, monopody.>
<I have pursued a particular Nought, and very nearly have it in my grasp.> Quath brought her high-resolution sensors to bear. <And you?>
<I have come to aid you.>
<And the others?>
<They march under my direction.>
<Your fiery blue ossicles can command such a company?>
