Incandescence

template manipulation, but she was the only one who really grasped Neth’s ideas. When her mind grew stale and she needed a diversion to clear her thoughts, Haf did his best to cheer her up, babbling away about his schemes for the future.

“When we’re past the Wanderer, we should build a wall around the Hub,” he suggested. “To make sure that whatever happens, no future generation ends up where we are.”

“A wall around the Hub?” Sen made a sound of delighted incredulity. “Made out of what, exactly?”

“I don’t know yet,” Haf replied. “But we should move right outside the Hub’s curvature, and put the wall so far out that there’s no chance of the Hub capturing anyone again.”

“How can we go past the Hub’s curvature?” Roi protested. “Even if the Incandescence stretches that far, the wind will be too weak to move us.”

“We’ll capture it and push it out ourselves,” Haf insisted.

“How?” asked Sen. “What can push the wind, if not curvature?”

“What moves our legs?” he countered. “Curvature’s got nothing to do with that.”

“So we’ll capture the wind. and push it out with our legs?” Sen asked.

Haf said, “Now you’re just being silly.”

Sen’s confidence grew, and she completed her calculations. They tested a set of configurations for the baffles, switching between them as the tunnels swung in and out of alignment with the wind. They would have to wait several shifts for the void-watchers to notice any change in their motion compared to the distant lights, but there were people stationed close to the tunnels’ walls who could measure the difference in flow coming through the rock, and the general plan did seem to be working: the wind was striking the walls at the right times and places.

Roi began to feel hopeful again. The deaths and the damage had scarred them all, but it was not the end of the Splinter. If they could realign the tunnels, Kem’s calculations gave them a good chance with the Wanderer; they would not need to add to the existing three tunnels, risking more fissures in the rock.

Confirmation arrived from Ruz; the wayward spin was growing measurably smaller. In each report from the void-watchers that followed, the news became ever more encouraging. They would have to take care as the spin approached zero to ensure that the tunnels ended up in the right orientation, but since each successive prod was only delivered when they were already more or less aligned with the wind, it would take a combination of very bad luck and very poor judgment to end up with the tunnels stranded in a position where they could deliver no power at all.

It was many shifts after the accident before Roi began thinking about her own work again. There had been too many distractions and responsibilities; a part of her had also been hoping that a long break from the calculations would see her return to them with fresh ideas.

It was not a new insight that set her back to work, though, but a worrying postscript to one of Ruz’s reports on the dwindling spin. “Dark phase shrinking faster than ever,” his message said. “Perhaps eighteen shifts left.”

Roi had expected more time. Whether the accident, or their response to it, had somehow hastened their re- immersion, or whether the plane of the Incandescence itself had grown thicker as they moved away from the Hub, the opportunities the Jolt had granted them were about to come to an end.

The power the tunnels could extract from the wind would be a little stronger, and their worries about food a little less. Since she had no choice in the matter, Roi tried to dwell on the benefits that would flow as the Incandescence reclaimed them.

The greatest change that was coming, though, was too stark to ignore. The void-watchers could pack up their instruments and start tending crops and herding susk. However great Cho’s ingenuity, once the dark phases were gone, surely nothing could enable them to see into the void through the glow of the Incandescence itself.

One part of their fate was clear now. By the time they approached the Wanderer, the Splinter would once again be blind.

25

Rakesh sat in the kitchen of Lahl’s Promise, rearranging the rice in front of him with his fork, unable to bring himself to eat. He’d already missed three of his usual after-shift meetings with Zey, and the fourth one was looming. Without a clear answer to her plea, he did not know how he could face her.

“The Aloof knew all of this, I swear,” he told Parantham. “Maybe they followed the trail from the meteor, like we did, or maybe they already knew where it would end. But I don’t believe they brought us into the bulge because of dead microbes in a rock. They brought us here to see the state of the Arkdwellers. They brought us here to resolve this problem.”

“That might be true,” Parantham conceded. “But what does it change?”

“It makes me feel used, that’s what it changes.” Was this the reason Lahl had singled him out, back at the node? She had drilled straight into his soul, seen to the heart of his boredom and frustration, and known how powerfully a request like Zey’s would resonate for him?

“Used, how?” Parantham replied. “You think the Aloof are so morally finicky that they’d decline to throw this genetic switch themselves. but so morally bankrupt that they don’t mind contriving a situation where you feel pressured to do it for them? If they wanted to do it, they’d do it. If they were capable of understanding the Arkdwellers’ plight, they’d be capable of fixing it.”

“I’m not talking about technology,” Rakesh retorted. “Of course they could throw the switch if they wanted to. But they preferred to wash their hands of the matter, and make it someone else’s responsibility.”

Parantham seemed genuinely puzzled. “You mean, they asked for a second opinion on a difficult ethical question, from someone who they hoped would be better qualified? From a cousin of the Arkdwellers, a child of DNA?”

Rakesh wanted to strangle her.

Actually, what he wanted most of all was for Parantham to tell him that he had no right to intervene, and that he should leave the Arkdwellers to sleepwalk in peace. It was what he’d expected her to say when she heard Zey’s plea. Unfortunately, she’d failed to oblige.

He tried to back away from all the things that were frustrating him, and analyze the situation calmly one more time.

“The Arkdwellers had this genetic mechanism forced on them by their ancestors,” he said. “But it wasn’t done blindly or gratuitously; it carries some very clear advantages. It keeps them satisfied with the status quo when the status quo is working. It spares them the boredom and claustrophobia that they’d otherwise suffer, cooped up in a rock, orbiting a neutron star, with no other safe place to go. But when something comes along to threaten them—a challenge of cosmic proportions, the kind of thing their ancestors faced all the way back to the Steelmakers—their intellectual powers come out of hibernation, and they get the Enlightenment on overdrive.”

Parantham said, “Which is fine as far as it goes, but if some other kind of opportunity comes along—a chance to enlarge their horizons that isn’t accompanied by stress and danger—how can they even assess it properly, let alone take advantage of it?”

“They can’t,” Rakesh replied. “It’s impossible.”

“Except for Zey, and those like her.”

“Yes.”

“But the question then,” Parantham said, “is do the exceptional cases have the right to speak for the whole Ark? Zey has her own interests. If she wants to come visit the Amalgam, we can try to oblige her. But is she entitled to drag the whole of her society, without their consent, into her own state of mind?”

“Were the Arkmakers entitled,” Rakesh replied, “to sentence their children to fifty million years of docility? Yes, their intentions were impeccable, and yes, they were acting under pressure, desperately hunting for a way to keep their children alive while a neutron star was bearing down on them. But they couldn’t anticipate everything that the future would bring. Maybe they thought that when the next apocalypse-cum-