Dust

'When you captain me, you will need to know. Close the door, beloved. There is more.'

She shut it, and let him lead her on. Farther in there were glass-topped caskets. Never, she thought, a good sign.

Of course, the crystal faceplates were bearded with hoar, and of course they were cold to the touch. 'And open this as well?'

'There is no need,' Dust said, and cleared the frost from the nearest with a sweep of his hand.

She bent over it, expecting the staring face, the frozen eyes. But again he surprised her: what lay within the casket was a sad bundle of scarlet feathers, resting on something like an ivory jaguar pelt. 'What are these?'

'Extinct species,' he said. 'DNA. That is a frozen scarlet macaw, and the pelt of a snow leopard.' He gestured along the bank. 'I have umbrella stands made of rhino legs, and hats decked with the feathers of the passenger pigeon.'

She breathed a sigh, half relief and half frustrated adrenaline.

He smiled. 'You seemed worried.'

'I was having visions of Snow White,' she admitted.

His smile widened and he gestured, sweeping. 'Oh. The frozen people are down here.'

She thought he must be kidding, and she thought she should really be beyond the capacity for shock by now. But when she caught sight of the banks of drawers, like an oversized apothecary's cabinet, she sat down on the edge of the casket, impervious to the chill. 'What people are those? Your enemies?'

'Volunteers.'

'You tell me they... volunteered to be frozen? Can they be thawed?'

'Well.' His shrugs were quite artistic, really, she thought—and quelled the thought. 'We have not developed the technology to bring them out of cryogenic stasis alive. But their DNA is still fresh. And that's what matters.'

'So what, they're ... dead from Earth? They're suicides?'

He shook his head. 'They signed on to the voyage. They may not have known what they were signing consent for.'

She had been rising to her feet. She caught her arm to steady herself. 'They didn't know?'

He touched her temple tenderly, a gesture that would have been the tucking of her hair, if she had any. 'Of course not. Not really. They knew that they were the chosen ones, that they would be remade in the image of God in their cold voyage among the stars. I doubt if any of them appreciated the technical challenges.'

'Oh, space.' She staggered. She would have fallen if he had not held her up. 'There must be thousands of them.'

'In all the cryogenic facilities in the world? Beloved, there are close to seven hundred thousand.' He shrugged, an even more elegant one. 'With Metatron dead, I cannot be certain how many of the freezers have failed, and Samael has had to use some for raw material. For their water and carbon and amino acids. We were not meant to be trapped here so long, and the damage from the explosions caused cascading failures.'

Perceval had always thought that being dumbstruck was merely an expression. She shook her head, and tugged herself away from Dust. He let her go, but not too far, and Pinion was always there behind her. 'You killed seven hundred thousand people?'

'I did not kill them. Nor did Israfel. The builders killed them. Froze them and sent them to the stars.'

'What gave you the right to choose for them? For us, goddamn you?'

'I didn't,' Dust said. 'I only served those who chose for you. As I was made to do. As I shall serve you.'

'Be that as it may,' Perceval snapped, frustrated. 'Who gave them the right?'

'No one gave them anything.' He drew a glittering object from his waistcoat pocket, flipped it open, and glanced at the face of the ancient analog watch within. 'The passengers and engineers had the need. The builders had the power, beloved. It's the way of the world.'

'It's not the way of mine,' Perceval said. But watching his hands as he tucked the watch back into his pocket, it was all she could do to make her voice sound confident.

'Oh, child,' he said, all sorrow. 'Who do you think your forebears were?'

22 inward and down

The lights begin to twinkle

from the rocks:

The long day wanes:

the slow moon climbs: the deep

Moans round with many voices.

Come, my friends,

'Tis not too late to seek

a newer world.

—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON,'Ulysses'

And a voice spoke out of the tall grass, and bade Rien to come forward, and not to fear.

The first was the easier. She glanced over her shoulder, to where Tristen and her father stood as if petrified. Benedick noticed her glance, though, and nodded once, so Rien wondered why he thought she required his approval. And then wondered why she had turned to look for it.

'Gavin?'

'Do as you are bid,' he whispered, but he did not leave her shoulder. So Rien stepped forward, because after years of living in Rule, while fear could impel her to follow orders, it could no longer paralyze her.

A few steps, and her eyes began to water with a scent she had been too angry before to notice. It was the scent of hot water, rich in metal and minerals, and she followed it in. Now she heard footsteps behind her, Benedick and Tristen trailed at a respectful distance, and she was struck between gratitude for the company and a trickle of wrath, that they did not think her competent enough to handle whatever lay ahead.

Whatever lay, she now saw, at the bottom of a crevasse. The deck was torn and furrowed before her, the air so sultry that beads of lukewarm water condensed upon her skin. She saw the curled edges of metal, eroded and friable; the wheat stalks nodding over the cavernous hole. Rien's symbiont ticked away; the water was hot, radioactive. Not into the redline, though; her colony still believed it could handle the dose, and Hero Ng was inclined to support it.

Given how he died, Rien thought she should respect his judgment.

'Climb down,' spoke the voice—deep, many-threaded, with holing overtones echoing up from the cavern. 'Rien Conn, climb down.'

Rien steeled herself and called back, 'Sir, I am afraid to. You are very hot, and would burn me.'

'Know ye not that the spirit of God like a fire is burning? In immolation are ye freed.'

'This may be so,' said Gavin, from her shoulder, 'but the lady has work to do before anyone 'frees' her. Come up, if you please.'

That provoked a chuckle, and an answer. 'Then I shall come up. And perhaps scald you less. Small ones, shield your eyes.'

Rien obeyed, her symbiont darkening her vision- She could not see if Tristen and Benedick followed suit, but she hoped so. Because what rose from the corroded rent in the decking was a muscular pillar of blue-white luminescent heat, a flare near worthy of the waystars. The thing twined like a snake, its tiger's head wreathed in lashing ribbons, its clawed hands flexing. Steam rolled like a fog bank from its hide, which was striped like a tiger's, incandescent blue on blinding white.