pretty sure we know what kind of vehicles are vulnerable. And under what circumstances. We'll have a couple of technicians look at every ship before we proceed. You should be safe.”
“Anything else?”
Apparently not. Shara passed out formation assignments, another two or three questions, and that was it.
“Okay,” said Michael. “I guess we have something to tell the grand-kids about.”
Dot lifted a glass to Alex, Shara, and me. “This,” she said, “is a proud moment. I'm delighted you guys decided to trust us. And we will give you our full support.” She laughed. “Let's hope we come home with some company.”
Afterward, as things quieted back down, she took me aside. “I've changed my mind,” she said.
“About what?”
“Charging you for one of the ships. I can't do that. Just cover our expenses. That's all I ask.”
Taiulus Zeta was, in fact, well past Antares. It was another long ride. Almost six days each way, several more days getting organized, plus however long we had to wait for our apparition.
We packed up and left the country house at midmorning on a beautiful day, birds singing, tree branches swinging gently in a soft breeze. As we lifted off, Shara called my attention to an elderly couple visiting the old graveyard just across the property line. “I hope,” she said, “that's not an omen.”
Four hours later, we launched from Skydeck, sixteen vehicles counting the Belle-Marie. (We'd picked up one more at the last minute.) The squadron reassembled out past the Moon, put identical settings into the drive units, turned in the general direction of Antares, and slipped into hyperspace in as coordinated a manner as we could manage.
Despite all efforts to stay close to one another, we knew we would emerge a substantial distance apart, and we'd need an additional day or two to regroup.
It was maybe the longest six days I've spent in hyperspace. I don't know why. A foreboding of some sort crept over me. I don't usually have a problem simply because there are no stars. Or because I can't communicate with other ships. Maybe it was that Alpha was still hanging over my head, with its terrified radio voice that wouldn't go away. I knew now there were people out there, from a time before anyone had ever come near Rimway, when most of the worlds of the Confederacy were unknown. From an age before Elmer Campbell and his religious engineers had erected the obelisks.
Shara didn't help matters by explaining how the darkness was probably only a kind of wrap, that it extended no more than a few meters beyond us. I told her that was crazy, and she tried to explain to me why MacKenzie's Theory required it. And, of course, MacKenzie was always right, except for one famous blunder. Which I've never understood, either.
I pretty much stayed off the bridge. I didn't want to be looking out the ports at Shara's black wrap. For whatever reason, it didn't bother me when I was sitting in the cabin, where I could push it out of my mind while we argued politics.
And up front somewhere, waiting for us, would be the Antares.
We were talking about languages. Shara stretched out her legs and crossed them. She was wearing a pullover shirt that read PHYSICS MAKES MY HEART BEAT. “Hard to imagine what that must have been like,” she said. “People saying stuff that other people couldn't understand. No wonder they were shooting one another all the time.”
I found myself thinking about Cal, alone in his ship. I'd done it often enough, but I'm not that much of a social type anyhow. But Cal, despite the grumpiness, struck me as a guy who wouldn't be comfortable without company.
Alex periodically left us and wandered onto the bridge for long stretches of time. I'd never known him to do that before. I could hear him talking with Belle, though I couldn't make out what they were saying. When I asked, he said they were “just talking.”
“About the ship?”
“That, too.”
“What else?”
“I don't know. Books. Religion. Whatever.”
“You were talking with Belle about religion?”
“Why not?”
“I don't know. It just seems-”
“She has a pretty wide knowledge of the subject. She knows how most of the major faiths got started. She knows the dogma. The requirements-”
“But-” Shara broke in. “That's not what people usually mean when they talk about religion. Does Belle believe in God?”
“Maybe you should ask her.”
So we did. Belle took a few moments to answer. “The evidence,” she said, “is inconclusive.”
“Then you don't believe,” said Shara.
“You're talking about faith now, Shara,” said Belle. “I prefer not to draw conclusions based on guesswork.”
“Which way,” I said, “does the evidence point?”
“Let me say, first, that it is difficult for a mere Beta, as limited as I am, to conceive of a Being without limits.”
“Then you do not believe?” Shara said again.
“I reserve judgment.”
I thought it would be a good idea to change the subject. “What books were you talking about?” I asked.
“Oh. Chan's Write On, for one.”
“Which is what?” I asked.
“It's a book about why you cannot learn to be a professional writer by reading books on the subject.”
“Good,” I said. “What else?”
“The Life and Times of Malakai Petrona.”
“He's a famous archeologist,” Alex said, for Shara's benefit. “Last century.”
“Anything else?”
“Culture Wars and Points South.”
“Really? You're interested in battles over social issues?”
“Of course. I enjoy watching people argue over whether it's destructive to society to provide food and shelter to those who choose not to work.”
“What's your position, Belle?”
“I'm not sure. I'm not good at these soft areas of knowledge. I can't imagine, for example, why anyone would choose to be inactive. But there are fascinating issues involved. It is the difficulty of grasping some of these issues that makes them intriguing.”
“Tell her about the novel,” said Alex.
“Yes. We also talked about The Last Man.”
“Bancroft's book.”
“Yes.”
Alex had been reading it. It was extremely popular in its time. If you're not familiar with it, it's one of these multigenerational things in which the vices of the parents come back to haunt the kids, whose reactions then serve to create problems for their own children. It's complicated, and everyone thought it was destined to be a classic, but nobody reads it anymore. “Why,” I said, “would you read a novel?”
“I enjoy novels,” said Belle. “I'm a big fan of Vicki Greene.” The writer of supernatural thrillers. I think, if there'd been any doubt in my mind whether AIs were self-aware, it went away at that moment.
THIRTY-SEVEN
