Ione gave him a kiss. “Thank you, too.”
“Any time.”
They ate the rest of their breakfast in companionable peace. Ione was debating what to do for the rest of the day when Tranquillity called. That was the thing with being the absolute ruler of a bitek habitat, she reflected, you don’t really have to do anything, thoughts were acted on instantly. But there was the human side to consider. The Chamber of Trade was nervous, the Financial and Commerce Council more so, ordinary people didn’t know what was going on. Everybody wanted reassurance, and they expected her to provide it. She had done two interviews with news companies yesterday, and there were three delegations who wanted personal audiences.
Parker Higgens is requesting an immediate interview,tranquillity told her as she was finishing her coffee. I recommend you grant it.
Oh, you do, do you? Well, I think there are more important things for me to attend to right now.
I believe this to be more important than the Laton crisis.
What?it was the ambiguity which made her sit up straighter on the furry bed. Tranquillity was emitting a strong impression of discomfort, as if it was unsure of a subject. Unusual enough to intrigue her.
There has been some remarkable progress with the Laymil sensorium recordings in the last seventy hours. I did not wish to trouble you with the project while you were involved with upgrading my defence and soothing the residents. That may have been my mistake. Last night some of the researchers made an extremely important find.
Which is?she asked avidly.
They believe they have located the Laymil home planet.
The path leading from the tube station to the octagonal Electronics Division building was littered with ripe bronze berries fallen from the tall chuantawa trees. They crunched softly as Ione’s shoes helped flatten them further into the stone slabs.
Project staff emerging from the stations gave her the faintly guilty glance of all workers arriving early and finding the boss already in.
Oski Katsura greeted her at the entrance, dressed in her usual white lab smock, one of the few people in the habitat who never seemed perturbed by Ione’s escort of serjeants. “We haven’t made an announcement yet,” she said as they went inside. “Some of the implications are only just sinking in.”
The hall where the Laymil stack was kept had changed considerably since Ione’s first visit. Most of the experimental electronic equipment had been cleared out. Processor blocks and AV projectors were lined up along the benches, forming individual research stations, each with a rack of fleks. Workshop cubicles behind the glass wall had been converted into offices. The impression was one of academic endeavour rather than out and out scientific pioneering.
“We use this mainly as a sorting centre now,” Oski Katsura said. “As soon as they have been decrypted, the sensorium memories are individually reviewed by a panel of experts drawn from every discipline we have here at the project. They provide a rough initial classification, cataloguing incidents and events depicted, and decide if there is anything which will interest their profession. After that the relevant memory is datavised to an investigatory and assessment committee which each division has formed. As you can imagine, most of it has been sent to the Cultural and Psychology divisions. But even seeing their electronics used in the intended context of mundane day- to-day operation has been immensely useful to us here. And the same goes for most of the physical disciplines— engineering, fusion, structures. There’s something in most memories for all of us. I’m afraid a final and exhaustive analysis is going to take a couple of decades at least. All we are doing for now is providing a preliminary interpretation.”
Ione nodded silent approval. Tranquillity’s background memories were revealing how hard the review teams were working.
There were only five other people in the hall, as well as Lieria. They had all been working through the night, and now they were clustered round a tray from the canteen, drinking tea and eating croissants. Parker Higgens rose as soon as she came in. His grey suit jacket was hanging off the back of one of the chairs, revealing a crumpled blue shirt. All-night sessions were obviously something the old director was finding increasingly difficult to manage. But he proffered a tired smile as he introduced her to the other four. Malandra Sarker and Qingyn Lin were Laymil spaceship experts, she a biotechnology systems specialist, while his field was the mechanical and electrical units the xenocs employed in their craft. Ione shook hands while Tranquillity silently supplied profile summaries of the two. Malandra Sarker struck her as being young for the job at twenty-eight, but she had her doctorate from the capital university on Quang Tri, and references which were impeccable.
Ione knew Kempster Getchell, the Astronomy Division’s chief; they had met during the first round of briefings, and on several formal social occasions since then. He was in his late sixties, and from a family which lacked any substantial geneering. But despite entropy’s offensive, leaving him with greying, thinning hair, and a stoop to his shoulders, he projected a lively puckish attitude, the complete opposite to Parker Higgens. Astronomy was one of the smallest divisions in the Laymil project, concerned mainly with identifying stars which had Laymil- compatible spectra, and searching through radio astronomy records to see if any abnormality had ever been found to indicate a civilization. Despite frequent requests, no Lord of Ruin had ever agreed to fund the division’s own radio-telescope array. They had to make do with library records from universities across the Confederation.
Kempster Getchell’s assistant was Renato Vella, a swarthy thirty-five-year-old from Valencia, on a four- year sabbatical from one of its universities. He acted both excited and awed when Ione greeted him. She wasn’t quite sure if it was her presence or their discovery which instigated his jitters.
“The Laymil home planet?” Ione asked Parker Higgens, permitting a note of scepticism to sound.
“Yes, ma’am,” the director said. The joy that should have been present at making the announcement was missing, he seemed more apprehensive than triumphant.
“Where is it?” she asked.
Parker Higgens traded a pleading glance with Kempster Getchell, then sighed. “It used to be here, in this solar system.”
Ione counted to three. “Used to be?”
“Yes.”
Tranquillity? What is going on?
Although it is an extraordinary claim, the evidence does appear to be slanted in their favour. Allow them to complete their explanation.
All right.“go on.”
“It was a recording that was translated two days ago,” Malandra Sarker said. “We found we had got the memory of a Laymil spaceship crew-member. Naturally we were delighted, it would give us a definite blueprint for
