A mocking chortle came back at her. ‘Everyone needs a creation myth. Don’t blow it. Messiah.’
‘Oh, crap.’ She composed a gracious smile for Immanueel. ‘It is I who am flattered by this encounter. This ring and what you have done to the neutron star is extraordinarily impressive. You must be rightly proud of your accomplishments.’
‘Thank you. We have built a habitat suitable for you. The congress of determination can be held as soon as you are ready.’
Yirella glanced over at Alexandre, who seemed more entertained than upset that Immanueel was treating her as if she was in charge. ‘I believe we are ready now,’ she said politely.
Immanueel turned and gestured at the portal – a pose Yirella associated with a medieval courtier ushering their royal charge. ‘Then I would be delighted if you would accompany me.’
‘Of course.’ There was the tiniest spectre of doubt itching away in her mind, that this might be some luxurious trap – which made her annoyed with herself. This is what happens when you’re brought up to believe everything outside the fence is your enemy.
*
The habitat that the portal led to might have had a terrestrial environment, but visually Yirella found it disorienting. She’d been expecting to come out in one of the many larger cylindrical particles that the fleet’s sensors had found in the ring. But Immanueel had said: We built a habitat for you.
Should’ve paid attention.
The portal opened onto a wide plaza of stone slabs. Their surface was infused with lichen blooms, while moss was packed tight in the cracks. They looked old, as if they’d been laid many decades ago, if not longer. But then, ordinarily, she would have thought the thick woodland of bald cypress and oak trees surrounding the plaza must have been well over a century old, given their size. Whatever fast-grow genetic tweaks had been made to their seeds had produced an authentically ancient-looking biosphere. We could have done with that on Vayan.
On the other side of the plaza from the portal was a disc-shaped building, suspended thirty metres off the ground on fluted columns. The supports were twirled by wisteria trunks almost as thick as the nearby trees. They swamped the building, decorating it in deep violet flower clusters so that only the disc’s window band rim was visible. It left her with the impression of something sacred that had been abandoned to nature, like one of old Earth’s pre-industrial temples.
Finally, her subconscious hauled her gaze up beyond the tree canopy so she was looking along the bulk of the habitat. A frown crept onto her face. The cylinder bent along its length – a long curve that put the endcaps out of direct sight. So . . . considerably longer than any of those cylinders the fleet had categorized orbiting the neutron star. It took a moment for her to work out what was wrong with what she was seeing. She was standing on the floor of a cylinder with a landscape curving above her in defiance of any planetary geography, its apex hidden behind an axial strand of glaring light. It was the typical layout of big human habitats like Sisaket, which they’d left behind at the start of the FinalStrike flight. Such habitats rotated around their long axis to provide Coriolis gravity on the floor of the shell – except this wasn’t a simple cylindrical geometry. Instead she was standing inside a tube that circled around on itself to form a toroid, so it couldn’t be rotating around the axial sun tube.
‘Saints alive,’ she muttered. This is an artificial gravity field. ‘You can manipulate gravity,’ she said to Immanueel.
‘Yes.’
‘Again: impressive.’
‘I would say thank you, but it is you we should be thanking.’
‘How do you see that?’
‘We exist because of you. If we have built something that impresses you, I am pleased. You are the root from which all we are has grown.’
Yirella just knew she’d be blushing. ‘Ah, right.’
She searched around for other neutron star inhabitants, but the only people on the plaza were ones from the fleet still coming through the portal. ‘Where is your delegation?’ she asked.
Immanueel tipped their head to one side in a distinctly avian motion. ‘I’m sorry. This physical aspect of mine will be present for the congress. Further attendance of my faction colleagues will be through their direct data aspect involvement. Apart from Ainsley; he has manifested as an android.’
‘He has?’
‘Yes.’ Immanueel performed another elaborate gesture, indicating the elevated disc building. ‘If you would join us?’
Together, they walked across the plaza towards the lofty braids of wisteria trunks and Yirella realized she’d misjudged the size. The disc was a lot bigger than she’d thought: a hundred and fifty metres in diameter at least.
‘What is this place?’
‘It is your Hospitality House.’
‘I love the flowers.’
‘Thank you. We timed the blossom season for this moment.’
She saw the blue glow of a portal rim just behind the pillar. They stepped through together, coming out in the centre of the building. It was a single big hall, twenty metres high, walled by the curving rim of windows. Right at the centre was a thick multifaceted crystalline pillar, flared at the base and ceiling. She wouldn’t have been surprised if it was a real diamond; the pristine gleam certainly laid a claim to authenticity. Each of the facets shone with a prismatic lustre that was slowly fluctuating, as if tiny things were moving inside, distorting the light.
‘My colleagues’ aspects,’ Immanueel said formally. ‘Most of them are at analytic.’
Yirella inclined her head to the pillar. ‘I’m delighted to meet you.’
As one, every point of light swung to rose-gold, flooding the spacious hall with a glorious twilight haze. Yirella smiled politely. She was sure she was misinterpreting some of Immanueel’s conversation. When she glanced around, she registered the vaguely puzzled expressions marring Dellian and Alexandre’s faces. ‘And by analytic, you mean?’
‘Ah. The mode my colleagues utilize to encompass this congress will scrutinize and deliberate. When we elevated ourselves out of
