ocean and then coast above the surface, bobbing now and then like a skipping stone. She remained still for several more minutes, convinced that something of significance had happened and yet also aware of how subjective the experience had been; how unimpressive it would seem if she tried to explain it to Mina tomorrow. Anyway, Mina was the one with the special bond to the ocean, wasn’t she? Mina was the one who scratched her arms at night; Mina was the one who had too high a conformal index to be allowed into the swimmer corps. It was always Mina. It was never Naqi.
The antenna’s metre-wide dish was anchored to a squat plinth inset with weatherproofed controls and readouts. It was century-old Pelican technology, like the airship and the fan. Many of the controls and displays were dead, but the unit was still able to lock onto the functioning satellites. Naqi flicked open the fan and copied the latest feeds into the fan’s remaining memory. Then she knelt down next to the plinth, propped the fan on her knees and sifted through the messages and news summaries of the last day. A handful of reports had arrived from friends in Prachuap-Pangnirtung and Umingmaktok snowflake cities, another from an old boyfriend in the swimmer corps station on Narathiwat atoll. He had sent her a list of jokes that were already in wide circulation. She scrolled down the list, grimacing more than grinning, before finally managing a half-hearted chuckle at one that had escaped her. Then there were a dozen digests from various special interest groups related to the Jugglers, along with a request from a journal editor that she critique a paper. Naqi skimmed the paper’s abstract, judging that she was probably capable of reviewing it.
She scrolled through the remaining messages. There was a note from Dr. Sivaraksa saying that her formal application to work on the Moat project had been received and was now under consideration. There had been no official interview, but Naqi had met Sivaraksa a few weeks earlier when the two of them happened to be in Umingmaktok. Sivaraksa had been in an encouraging mood during the meeting, though Naqi couldn’t say whether that was due to her having given a good impression or the fact that Sivaraksa had just had his tapeworm swapped for a nice new one. But Sivaraksa’s message said she could expect to hear the result in a day or two. Idly, Naqi wondered how she would break the news to Mina if she was offered the job. Mina was critical of the whole idea of the Moat and would probably take a dim view of her sister having anything to do with it.
Scrolling down farther, she read another message from a scientist in Qaanaaq requesting access to some calibration data she had obtained earlier in the summer. Then there were four or five automatic weather advisories, drafts of two papers she was contributing to, and an invitation to attend the amicable divorce of Kugluktuk and Gjoa, scheduled to take place in three weeks time. Following that there was a summary of the latest worldwide news-an unusually bulky file-and then there was nothing. No further messages had arrived for eight hours.
There was nothing particularly unusual about that-the ailing network was always going down-but for the second time that night the back of Naqi’s neck tingled. Something must have happened, she thought.
She opened the news summary and started reading. Five minutes later she was waking Mina.
“I don’t think I want to believe it,” Mina Okpik said.
Naqi scanned the heavens, dredging childhood knowledge of the stars. With some minor adjustment to allow for parallax, the old constellations were still more or less valid when seen from Turquoise.
“That’s it, I think.”
“What?” Mina said, still sleepy.
Naqi waved her hand at a vague area of the sky, pinned between Scorpius and Hercules. “Ophiuchus. If our eyes were sensitive enough, we’d be able to see it now; a little prick of blue light.”
“I’ve had enough of little pricks for one lifetime,” Mina said, tucking her arms around her knees. Her hair was the same pure black as Naqi’s, but trimmed into a severe, spiked crop which made her look younger or older depending on the light. She wore black shorts and a shirt that left her arms bare. Luminous tattoos, in emerald and indigo, spiralled around the piebald marks of random fungal invasion that covered her arms, thighs, neck and cheeks. The fullness of the moons caused the fungal patterns to glow a little themselves, shimmering with the same emerald and indigo hues. Naqi had no tattoos and scarcely any fungal patterns of her own, and could not help feel slightly envious of her sister’s adornments.
Mina continued: “But seriously, you don’t think it might be a mistake?”
“I don’t think so, no. See what it says there? They detected it weeks ago, but they kept quiet until now so that they could make more measurements.”
“I’m surprised there wasn’t a rumour.”
Naqi nodded. “They kept the lid on it pretty well. Which doesn’t mean there isn’t going to be a lot of trouble.”
“Mm. And they think this blackout is going to help?”
“My guess is official traffic’s still getting through. They just don’t want the rest of us clogging up the network with endless speculation.”
“Can’t blame us for that, can we? I mean, everyone’s going to be guessing, aren’t they?”
“Maybe they’ll announce themselves before very long,” Naqi said doubtfully.
While they had been speaking the airship had passed into a zone of the sea largely devoid of bioluminescent surface life. Such zones were almost as common as the nodal regions where the network was thickest, like the gaping voids between clusters of galaxies. The wake of the sensor pod was almost impossible to pick out, and the darkness around them was absolute, only occasionally relieved by the mindless errand of a solitary messenger sprite.
Mina said: “And if they don’t?”
“Then I guess we’re all in a lot more trouble than we’d like.”
For the first time in a century a ship was approaching Turquoise, commencing its deceleration from interstellar cruise speed. The flare of the lighthugger’s exhaust was pointed straight at the Turquoise system. Measurement of the Doppler shift of the flame showed that the vessel was still two years out, but that was hardly any time at all on Turquoise. The ship had yet to announce itself, but even if it turned out to have nothing but benign intentions-a short trade stopover, perhaps-the effect on Turquoise society would be incalculable. Everyone knew of the troubles that followed the arrival of the Pelican in Impiety. When the Ultras moved into orbit there had been much unrest below. Spies had undermined lucrative trade deals. Cities had jockeyed for prestige, competing for technological tidbits. There had been hasty marriages and equally hasty separations. A century later, old enmities smouldered just beneath the surface of cordial intercity politics.
It wouldn’t be any better next time.
“Look,” Mina said. “It doesn’t have to be all that bad. They might not even want to talk to us. Didn’t a ship pass through the system about seventy years ago, without so much as a by-your-leave?”
Naqi nodded-it was mentioned in a sidebar to one of the main articles. “They had engine trouble, or something. But the experts say there’s no sign of anything like that this time.”
“So they’ve come to trade. What have we got to offer them that we didn’t have last time?”
“Not much, I suppose.”
Mina nodded knowingly. “A few works of art that probably won’t travel very well. Ten-hour-long nose-flute symphonies, anyone?” She pulled a face. “That’s supposedly my culture, and even I can’t stand it. What else? A handful of discoveries about the Jugglers, which have more than likely been replicated elsewhere a dozen times. Technology, medicine? Forget it.”
“They must think we have something worth coming here for,” Naqi said. “Whatever it is, we’ll just have to wait and see, won’t we? It’s only two years.”
“I expect you think that’s quite a long time,” Mina said.
“Actually…”
Mina froze.
“Look!”
Something whipped past in the night, far below, then a handful of them, then a dozen, and then a whole bright squadron. Messenger sprites, Naqi diagnosed. But she had never seen so many of them moving at once, and on what was so evidently the same errand. Against the darkness of the ocean the lights were mesmerising: curling and weaving, swapping positions and occasionally veering far from the main pack before arcing back toward the swarm. Again one of the sprites climbed to the altitude of the airship, loitering for a few moments on fanning wings before whipping off to rejoin the others. The swarm receded, becoming a tight ball of fireflies and then only a pale globular smudge. Naqi watched until she was certain that the last sprite had vanished into the night.
“Wow,” Mina said quietly.
