The Quiet Pools

face. “So you are here, after all,” he said.

“Shut up,” Christopher said. “I want to talk to the Director. Conference, three-way, full video. You, me, and her. You can arrange it, or we can put out the call on Aurora Freenet, all hundred thousand watts’ worth.” He saw Anna X’s eyes widen. “You decide. Thirty seconds.”

“No.”

“Bad choice. Because if I don’t talk to Sasaki, Freenet is going to start broadcasting everything we know about the Chi Sequence and Memphis. Which is quite a lot.”

Dryke’s expression did not change. “What the hell is that to me? Just come out, McCutcheon. It’ll be a lot easier to clean up around here if you do.”

Christopher tried to keep the surprise off his face. Dryke didn’t know. Dryke doesn’t know. For just that moment, Christopher’s confidence wavered. Mother of Gaea, if I’m wrong—

“You’d better check with the Director and see if she cares,” he said weakly.

“I’m not playing the game, McCutcheon. You’ve got nothing to bargain with.”

“You’re a chump, Dryke, d’you know that? A first-class no-brain chump. You don’t know what this is all about. You don’t know what you’re defending. You don’t even know what you’re fighting.”

“You’re not earning any points, McCutcheon.”

“You couldn’t keep count if I was,” Christopher said. “The hell with you. We’re taking it to the air.”

“We’re already on the air,” Anna X said.

Christopher shot her a surprised sideways glance, and then a pleased smile. “My name is Christopher McCutcheon,” he said, looking straight into the camera. “My father was Jeremiah, of the Homeworld. The first reason that I’m here is to tell you that he’s dead.”

He swallowed, dropped his eyes for a moment, and then drew in a breath to proceed. “He’s dead now, but I’m still learning from what he taught me. You have something to learn, too. That’s the other reason I’m here—to tell you a story. It’s a story about a great river and the animals who explored it. The river is called Time and Destiny and God. The animals have many names, including Man.

“So you’re part of the story, and so am I. It’s a story about where we came from and where we’re going. It’s all of our stories, from before the beginning of history, all wrapped in one. Because it’s the story of who we are. Some of you won’t like the ending—I’ll warn you about that now—”

“Christopher?” interrupted one of the women. “Someone heard you. It’s Hiroko Sasaki.”

“Switch,” he said. “Director? Can you hear me?”

“Yes, Christopher. I hope you can hear me, as well. Mikhail, are you listening?”

“Here, Director.” From his expression, he was eating his face off from the inside.

“Very well. Christopher, what is it that you want?”

“I want to see you. I want the truth about the Chi Sequence and Memphis.”

“Nothing more?”

His chest rose and fell with several breaths before he knew his answer. “There’s more, but it will keep until I see you.”

She nodded. “Mikhail.”

“Yes, Director.”

“If he ends his broadcast now, bring him to me.”

All eyes in the room were on Christopher. He sought out Deryn’s with his own.

“It’s a good beginning,” she said, answering the question in his look. “And I know how to finish it. If you can’t, I’ll tell the story, when the time is right.”

He nodded. That was enough. “I’d like a promise of safe conduct from Mr. Dryke,” he said to Sasaki.

A moment later, he had the promise. He hugged Deryn and thanked Anna X, then turned and left, his steps curiously light. Alone, he climbed up to Entry and walked out through the door of Shelter 24 with his shoulders straight and his head high. As he did, the two staff women rushed by him, escaping into the safety of Sanctuary.

“You don’t have it yet,” Dryke said, glaring across the room.

“Wrong,” Christopher said. “I always had it. I was just the last to know.”

Christopher did not try to talk to Dryke in the shuttle, not even to ask where they were headed. Instead, he thought about the questions he wanted to ask Sasaki. There were fewer than he would have expected. Confirmation, correction, validation— those he still needed. But the unknown detail was irrelevant. The synthesis embodied the detail. The general implied the specific.

The flight was long even in objective terms, long enough that it could have only one destination. Finally, they docked at a satland which, from the glimpse Christopher got through the pilot’s port and the kanji signage in the transfer chute, could only be Takara.

“The Director’s on Memphis!” Christopher asked, turning as he walked and throwing the question back over his shoulder to Dryke. Dryke’s only answer was a straight-arm, flat-palm shot to the middle of Christopher’s back, shoving him forward.

Dryke and two of the soldiers escorted Christopher to a med station, where he was stripped, scanned, sampled, searched inside and out, and, finally, given new clothes—a rigger’s pajamalike skinsides. He endured the exercise stoically, refusing the humiliation he might have felt.

Then he was bustled aboard another spacecraft, this one cavernous and buslike, with low, extra-wide seats that were actually uncomfortable without the work suits they had apparently been designed for. Their party of four was scattered among the forty seats—Christopher and Dryke at opposite sides of a middle row, the soldiers at opposite ends of the center aisle.

As on the shuttle, Dryke never took his right hand off his shockbox or his eyes off Christopher. The level, unflinching gaze had in it something of a carrion bird’s hopefulness and something of a timber wolfs watchfulness.

For the most part, Christopher ignored him. All of his surroundings were new, and he managed enough curiosity about them to divert himself by attending to the novelty. But he could not stop his mind from thinking, from trying to weave in the last few threads. And one of those threads involved the security of Memphis, which meant it involved Mikhail Dryke. It was hard to offer anything, even a thought, to the man who had shot down his father. But Sasaki might not be the best to face the question he wanted to ask.

“Is Roger Marshall coming up to Memphis, too?”

Dryke’s gaze never wavered, and his expression never changed.

“He never went through Selection, you know.”

Still there was no response.

“I hear that a lot of people are going to be on Memphis who never went through Selection or Training. If Marshall’s one of them, you might want to pay attention to whether his freight gets here before him. And if it does, you might want to make sure it gets the ‘A’ inspection—the kind you’d give something belonging to me.”

Almost five minutes passed in silence.

“Why?” Dryke said, as though a complicated equation had ground through his mind without generating a solution.

“Because I’m not the new Jeremiah—which means that someone else is.”

Another long silence. Christopher understood that it was as hard for Dryke to accept anything from Christopher as it was for him to offer it.

“Why Marshall?” Dryke asked finally.

“Do you know a good reason why he would call my home and wonder to Loi how I was dealing with my father’s death?”

“Do you?”

“Maybe. It was two days after I disappeared, and two days before the attack on Memphis. Maybe he’d lost track of me and needed to make sure I wasn’t on board somehow.”