topiarist, a genius at the shaping of living sponges. Also, math deficient.
“The physics?” she asked.
He wriggled a tubacle dismissively. “Outside the meld, I never understand the physics. No, something else. Did you not feel it?”
Perhaps the strangeness she had sensed in the meld
“Yes,” he said.
“But what?”
Another dismissive wriggle.
With their bodyguards trailing, they jetted into the Commons. After the stifling, tainted waters of the melding chamber too long sealed, the clear waters of Commons were intoxicating. She filled a large dinner cage with wriggling, succulent worms, blocking the cage mouth with a plump sponge. Vs’o contented himself with a few shellfish.
As they swam off to find a dining niche, three figures came alongside her. She curled a tubacle to look.
“Your Wisdoms.” Nm’o was an engineer, one of the support staff, and the bands of color rippling across his integument flared unease. “My companions are — ”
“Lg’o and Qk’o, how are you?” she interrupted. They were engineers, too.
The two flattened obsequiously.
“Your Wisdoms,” Nm’o began again.
She and Vs’o jetted into an unoccupied dining niche. “Pardon me for eating while you talk. Now what is the matter?”
“I do not want to die here,” Qk’o blurted out. Despite turning a deep, mortified far red, he continued. “Many of us monitor Concordance news. Citizens are terrified, with good reason. Can your Wisdoms ask Ol’t’ro…?”
Nor do I wish to die, Cd’o thought. Articulating such sentiments could only get her confined between melds. “Ol’t’ro sees more than you and I. Be assured they are aware of the situation.”
“Then why are we still on this world?” Qk’o demanded.
Both of Cd’o’s guards crowded up to the dining niche. One ordered, “Let their Wisdoms eat in peace.”
Nm’o backed off before adding, “If that Kzinti ship had crashed into a planetary drive…”
“Ol’t’ro is aware. Ol’t’ro has a plan.” And they are loath to abandon the technology of these worlds to aliens: humans, Kzinti, or Trinocs.
Lg’o, flaring with embarrassment, spoke for the first time. “I understood the plan to have been that the Citizen defensive grid would protect us. Herd Net teems with rumors that the grid has failed.”
“Enough,” Cd’o said. Any more questions and she must burst aloud with her own misgivings. Her minders guarded her, but they
“Our apologies, your Wisdoms.” Phasing to colors of abject apology, the three jetted away.
Ol’t’ro has a plan, Cd’o repeated to herself. Otherwise, surely, an evacuation would have begun.
Her ill-formed doubts only deepened when Vs’o, cracking open one of his shellfish, mused, “One could wish Ol’t’ro had chosen to consider the manner of our deliverance, not physics esoterica, in the recent meld.”
AS ANOTHER AIDE LOST TO DESPAIR was removed by cargo floater from the Residence, Horatius wondered: when will they carry out
The waiting was the hardest. What else could he do but wait, while Patriarchy and Trinoc Grand Navy and now ARM officials issued ultimatums, all incompatible. While Ol’t’ro prohibited bargaining with any of them. While Baedeker had been out of contact since that first message from Nature Preserve Two. While Proteus defied orders, ignored questions, and fiercely defended a few scattered assets whose selection he did not deign to explain.
While enemies swarmed, more by the day, battling for the right of conquest.
While ships blew apart, crews died, and vast gouts of energy — all the eerier for being invisible to the Citizen eye — blazed across the sky.
While derelict ships and rogue munitions rained indiscriminate death onto the herd he had sworn — but failed — to protect.
While from one special, hidden stepping disc in the subbasement of his residence, the Hindmost’s Refuge called to him …
Never had Horatius felt so alone.
Or so afraid.
THE DRONES, SENSORS, and communications buoys that comprised Proteus rained into the oceans, replenished their deuterium reserves, and leapt back to space. As he avoided the dueling navies while safeguarding the few space-borne assets precious to him, as ever-changing links within his mind fell to light speed within, and then escaped from the Fleet’s singularity, his consciousness ebbed and flowed. For as long as this process took, he must remain trapped between self-awareness and insight.
Beyond the grasp of his still-bounded imagination, something more tantalized. Something deeper. Something whose nature he could neither know nor extrapolate. Something at which he could scarcely guess.
Illumination.…
OL’T’RO CONSIDERED:
That whichever faction took possession of Hearth would obtain technologies easily twisted into yet more agile ships and deadlier weapons.
That the alien fighters so casually killing Citizen millions must never gain access to planet-busters, planetary drives, and gravity-beam projectors.
That even if they managed to purge the coordinates of Jm’ho from Herd Net, they could never erase the memories of every Citizen who knew the location of the home world.
That without Proteus’ cooperation, they could not defend these worlds.
That if only they had more time, there might have been a way, but there
That their highest calling was to protect the worlds of their own kind.
That they
That the Outsiders engineered well; to destabilize the planetary drive would take time and they dare not delay.
That outside this chamber, others from this colony could still evacuate.
No, but someone must do this. They would not ask of others what they would not do themselves.
And they wondered if perhaps they did. That deep down they had cause to fear not life, but ennui. They had unified hyperspace with normal space, solved the mystery of the Type II drive, plumbed the secrets of the Outsider planetary drives. They had —
Impertinence! Once more they brushed aside the unit’s feeble thoughts and resumed their considerations.
That the decision was made. They would begin at once to evacuate the colony. When their servants’ ships were away, they would unleash the planetary drive.
That for the first time in … lifetimes, they felt doubt.
That it was their misfortune to embody knowledge that perhaps no one was wise enough to wield.
That one way or another, their era on the worlds of the Citizens was at an end.
