In Chowdari, Churry contacted Shan Damzel to tell him that finding the answer to his question would have to wait, possibly for a very long while.
“But it’s growing,” cried Shan. “In Ahabar. I’m sure.”
“Use a sleep inducer and forget it,” snapped Churry. He was out of sympathy with Shan Damzel. “Let me tell you, Baidee. Now that I’ve had the experience, it seems to me the people on Hobbs Land behaved almost exactly as I would have if some uniformed troop came plunging through a Door at me. If those people have been swallowed by anything, I can’t see that it has hurt them in the least.”
Shan gulped and tried to protest, but Churry shushed him with a few brusque words and without offering explanation. Churry was too furious with both Shan and himself to offer explanations or excuses or even information. As a result, Shan had no idea what had happened on Hobbs Land.
• On Hobbs Land, shallow under the soil, the net had spread across the escarpment, beneath the ancient villages, beneath the ruined temples, toward and around and then deep, very deep, beneath the strange radial growths which had been dismissed as “dormant” by the team from Thyker.
In the network was Maire Girat, remembering Voorstod of her childhood, every day, every detail, faces and words spoken, rain that had fallen, sun that had shone, rocks foamed with spray at the side of the sea, all there, all in the network, what Maire was and what she knew of others’ being. In the network were Jep and Saturday and Sam, everything they had done or been upon Hobbs Land, everything they had seen or heard while they were upon Ahabar, all saved, tucked away, kept as though in an Archive—every thought, every response, every recollection. What had happened to them in Voorstod, as well. What they had felt. What they had feared.
There, buried deep in the escarpment was Emun Theckles, walking the gloomy halls of Enforcement, looking into the red lenses of violence, taking out his tools, smelling something wrong, sniffing death and destruction. The network sniffed with him, remembering. Everything was there, every soldier he had worked on, every maintenance diagram, every schematic, everything he had learned from his colleagues about their work on other soldiers, all there, deep, buried, waiting.
Buried deep were Flandry and Pye and Floom and what they had planned while they had visited Hobbs Land. Buried deep were Shan Damzel and his horrified dreams of Ninfadel, his hopes concerning Howdabeen Churry, his fear, his rage.
Buried deep was the Baidee soldier who had been left behind when The Arm of the Prophetess fled, everything he knew, everything he thought.
There had been time for each set of information to be added in orderly fashion. There had been time for every eventuality to be accommodated. The recent great sorrowfulness had been part of the pattern. There had been death and grief, but death and grief had stayed within acceptable limits, and no critical damage had been done. Those beloveds no longer living on the surface lived still in the network beneath. The network grieved only for what they might have become. What they had been, the network still possessed.
Each thing had happened in its time. Each inevitability had been set up, quietly and mechanically and without waste. Paths had been smoothed for some; obstacles had been overcome for others; bait had been set out for the vermin; and traps had been set, to be tripped in the fullness of time.
But there was to be no fullness of time. There was only now. Now, when something unremembered came heaving into the light, like a rotting body emerging in the jaws of a digger, shockingly and without warning. The network had not accounted for that unremembered thing, had not planned for it, had not known of it. None of the Voorstoders had thought of it, while they were on Hobbs Land. Sam Girat had not thought of it, not until now. It was something he had known, but had not known he had known. One of those oddities, one of those unaccountables.
The network was not perfect. Still, it did not engage in recriminations. Such were wasteful. Such were inefficient. When action was wanted, action was all that could happen. All orderly growth was abandoned. Shapes heaved and changed, cells ramified, structures shuddered and expanded like storm clouds, boiling with almost visible motion. Now all order was lost in this burgeoning growth.
The inevitable had been assumed. The immediacy of the inevitable had been underestimated. The network, even while it roiled with frantic life, was no longer sure it could grow fast enough.
SEVEN
• The Archives link, on which Mysore Hobbs had insisted when Hobbs Land had first been settled, announced itself in the middle of the night, and Mysore Hobbs II became the first person outside the invading force and Hobbs Land itself to learn what had happened, who had died, and who else was likely to. Dern Blass’s image was there, on the stage, a little incoherent at times, but clear enough to be shockingly understood. Though Dern Blass didn’t tell Mysore what had motivated the Baidee, not precisely, his message did offer intriguing hints as to what might have moved them to do such a dangerous and provocative thing. There was no question that it had been Baidee who had made the raid. The
