She wondered how much Concordance would give for access to the room. If they could destroy the memories it contained, those and any others still strewn around the galaxy, then the past they wished to eliminate effectively wouldn't exist anymore.
He returned after a week away without any announcement or greeting. Only a subsonic rumble through the stone walls told her that a ship had decelerated to dock. She wanted to ask him about the flecks and discs and books, as well as give voice to the many other questions that jostled in her brain. She found him in his laboratory, hunched over his latest discoveries. The room was one of the larger atria, and from the map she'd built in her mind, it had to be right at the heart of the asteroid, directly above the data storage room and maybe five hundred metres in every direction from vacuum.
He didn't hear her approach. He was often engrossed in his work, attempting to decrypt the incomplete records he'd retrieved from his crash sites. The laboratory was a strange jumble of humming machinery and lush plant life. Ondo liked to be surrounded by greenery; he'd explained that Sintorus had been abundant in flowering plants and he found the greenery conducive to his work. There was also running water in the laboratory: channelled along a network of open gullies, partly to provide irrigation for the plants, and partly to fill the air with their white-noise tinkling.
She stepped up behind him, wary of interrupting him. She imagined the interior of his mind was something like the Vault: a strong room, well protected, full of ancient mysteries and secrets, but also open to her if she chose to explore it. He'd grown used to his long solitude, but he was willing to share what he knew and suspected. She had only to pick this fragment off a shelf, or this one, and ask about it, and he would tell her.
A large rig set across two benches held both ends of a ten-metre length of a microscopic filament, something he often experimented with, sending electromagnetic radiation of various wavelengths through it. He'd explained to her that its purpose and function remained a mystery to him, but that he'd recovered lengths of it in many different star systems.
A jewelbug, an iridescent insectoid apparently made of knotted strings of beads, had stopped in its foray upon the tip of a nearby leaf, one foot held warily in the air over the plummet to the ground. A stab of pain cut through her, then passed. She ignored it. She had more important things to concern herself with: what was going on, what she should do.
She held out her left hand to the jewelbug which, warily, after a few moments, stepped into her palm. She could feel the patterns of the microscopic hairs covering its pin feet upon her artificial flesh. She held it to her eye, studying the beautiful dazzle of its multifaceted eyes, then set it down at the base of a cluster of lush, rubbery fronds where it might find more to eat.
Ondo insisted on using old-fashioned screens and manual keyboard controls for his work. It was hugely inefficient, but he claimed that having to type slowly and deliberately helped him to lay out his thoughts methodically. His screen depicted some planetary landscape. There were the ruins of old buildings, but they were blackened and blasted by fire or explosion, scoured by screaming winds. Many were little more than piled rubble. The entire scene was one of utmost desolation, some ancient scene of planetary destruction. The images were two-tone: infra-red, perhaps. This was the planet at night-time.
Her control over her lips and facial muscles was improving; her words were less and less slurrily sibilant each day. “Is this where you've just been?”
He turned in surprise, completely unaware she was there, too wrapped up in studying his latest treasures. Perhaps he'd completely forgotten she was even on the Refuge. He peered at her through his elaborate multiglasses. “Selene! Yes, this is where I've come from. You don't recognize it?”
“Should I? You forget I lived my whole life on Maes Far.”
His reply was strangely quiet. “I didn't forget that.”
She grasped what he meant a moment later. This was Maes Far. Her homeworld looked as though it had been desolate for centuries. Her voice was shaky when she spoke again, some of her muscle control gone. “You went back?”
“I left nanosensors in the atmosphere and in orbit, and I've been there to harvest their recordings. I was going to ask you whether you wanted to see them. It would be understandable if you didn't.”
“Are there any signs of life?”
“I'm sorry, but I've seen none, other than a few small insectoids scurrying in the shadows. Microscopic life survives too, no doubt, but there is nothing of any great size or complexity.”
“No people?”
“None that I've been able to find, although I haven't been down to the surface. Perhaps there might be one or two holed up somewhere, eking out dwindling supplies, but I doubt it. It's been nearly a year since your escape and the planet's biosphere was already at a tipping point when you left. It also appears some areas of the surface have been scoured by Concordance planetary destruction weaponry: seismic devices and air-burst nukes.”
“Which areas?”
“Specifically, the ship crash site your father was excavating. That's been utterly demolished.”
Now that she studied the pictures, she could see that it was, indeed, her home. They were looking at Caraleon, the capital city, streets and plazas she knew well. If she tried, she could overlay the shattered ruins with memories of the soaring architecture she'd loved. A ragged ruin in the centre of the screen had to be all that was left of the central Sunrise Campanile, the tower that had chimed the hours across the city for over 250 years.
It chimed no more. She turned away. She didn't want to see what Maes Far had
