Chill

it moved, and what it used in place of muscles. Air-filled cells? Carbon filaments?

'How is it you speak our language?'

The rustling peaked. It seemed the orchid could talk and laugh at the same time, because it answered, 'Television.'

The next time Jsutien awoke, he was lucid. Caitlin breathed a sigh of bright relief when he blinked and said, 'Chief Engineer?'

'You remember?'

'It's confusing,' he said. 'I remember a lot. I remember dying.'

'Do you remember why my brother woke you?'

He nodded. 'I was the astrogator. He told me the ship was under way again.'

'The world is under way, and badly damaged.' There was no grace in hiding the truth. 'Do you remember why we chained you?'

He nodded once more, eyes closed, and winced as he probed his forehead, though his colony had long sealed the injury. Instead of commenting on Arianrhod's escape, however, he swung his legs over the edge of the cot. The stretch webbing sank under his thighs as he grounded his feet. 'It's cold.'

'We're conserving power.'

He glanced around, frowning, obviously assessing how desperate their situation really was. His hands chafed together. 'Were you--were we derelict a long time?'

'More than five hundred years,' she said flatly. It was wanton cruelty and could have sickened her. But in this case, she told herself, ethics would wait on survival. She set her jaw against any revealing expression and waited for the news to strike through his facade.

He must have already suspected, because, though the corners of his eyes tightened, he only nodded. No protests of bereavement, no questions as to the disposition of his family and friends. Of course, the angel could be telling him some of that even now, and Caitlin would not know it.

Clear-eyed, he said, 'So why did you bring me back?'

'We've lost our navigation, all our star charts, any information on our destination. We are mobile, but our resources are extremely limited. We need your help, Astrogator.' She leaned back and spread her hands, fingers crooked. 'We don't know where we're going, where we should be going, or what to expect, should we reach either destination.'

'It wouldn't matter if you did,' he said.

'What do you mean?'

His smile, when he got around to finding it, sat crooked across his face. He looked older than Oliver when he did that, as old as he--Damian Jsutien--must have been before he died.

But even when his face smoothed to neutral, she had no urge to call him by his old name. And not because she had not known Oliver: she had only just recognized him by sight. She had told her colony to prevent such accidents, and set it so that it would not even allow her to think of him as Oliver in error.

She wondered what it would be like to make that mistake. She wondered what it would be like to know you were capable of making such a mistake. People must have been so hesitant in the past, so guarded in their speech. No wonder, she thought, that Means were so closemouthed around Exalt.

Maybe Jsutien had the habits of a Mean, still, because he just blinked at her.

She said, again, 'What do you mean?'

'This body. Who was he?'

So many answers, all of them bad. She'd never met Oliver. She'd wanted to. Benedick had liked him. Alasdair, it seemed, was easier on the younger ones. Age had mellowed or exhausted him, or they had been so distant from his power that he found no threat in them. 'My brother.'

'Oh,' Jsutien said. 'And what's that like for you?'

She shrugged. 'Complex. But you knew that. You are avoiding the question, Jsutien.'

He laid his unshackled hand across his right eye socket and pressed hard enough to raise the tendons striating the back. He said, 'You are asking me to violate a sacred vow.'

Whatever she had expected, it wasn't that. Oh, Ben. What were you thinking when you resurrected this one? She had to resort to her symbiont to keep the surprise from her voice as she said, 'Are you devout?'

His lips curved. She'd caught him out. He laced his fingers in his lap. 'I am an astrogator. Of the Ancient Order of the Astrogator-priests. Sworn to uphold the mysteries, and teach only those who serve an apprenticeship and take up vows of rectitude and secrecy.'

'Again, the revealing un-answer. Your secrets died with you, Jsutien. Records were lost in the Breaking. Everything was lost, even the libraries. Your vow is to a dead order.' She paused. 'How ancient is that Ancient Order, anyway?'

'Built with the ship,' he admitted. 'Ritual and tradition, from the ground up. We were not supposed to know that, but the library knew.'

The library. 'Yes,' she said. 'I met him--what was left of him, anyway. Jsutien--' How do you break it to someone that he's the last of his kind? Oh, but he must know, mustn't he? There was no other reason for Ben to have brought him back. 'There are no more astrogators. You are the Ancient Order. So it seems to me that the only person who can absolve you of your vows is you.'

He grinned. 'Honestly, I was always pretty sure Ng knew the dirty truth. No matter how we obscured our calculations, he could do his own math.'

'Dirty truth?'

'It is a deep mystery of the Ancient Order of Astrogators,' he said archly. 'There is no destination. There never was.'

Caitlin wanted to call Ben, but wanting to call Ben was a sort of dull, constant ache that she was used to by now. So instead she called the bridge, because Nova and Perceval needed to know, and the angel could pass on the information to Ben or anyone else who might be in need of it.

But when she made the connection, Perceval's face, stark under her shaven scalp, drove everything Caitlin was going to say about Jsutien's revelation from her lips. She flinched when she saw her daughter, but schooled her expression. She opened her mouth, intending efficient business--

And said, 'When was the last time you ate something, honey?'

Perceval's avatar blinked, and looked over her shoulder at Nova, who had taken shape just behind her. A guilty glance--had the angel been pressing her to eat, or had she warned it off the topic? Her own symbiont would tell her how long it had been, so the glance was not for information's sake.

Perceval returned her attention to Caitlin. 'The angel is fetching food now.'

No one answers me directly. Something else that could make her homesick for Ben, if she would let it. Why the hell did he have that insane need to placate their father? Why couldn't he have stood up to the old bastard?

'When it comes,' Caitlin said, 'try to eat it.'

Apparently, being Captain didn't remove the urge toward adolescent eye rolls. 'Mom? The angel said you had something urgent?'

Caitlin said, 'Your father reincarnated the high priest of astrogation from the Moving Times.'

'The news is bad,' Perceval said, and went from daughter to Captain in an instant, 'or you wouldn't be groping around telling me things I already know.'

'The news is interesting,' Caitlin corrected. 'He confirms the angel's information from Dust. There was never any destination. The world never had a goal.'

Perceval's eyes narrowed. She swallowed hard enough that Caitlin could see her thin throat flex. Behind her, Nova leaned forward. 'Why would anyone get on a starship with no destination?'

Caitlin felt her lips flex around the knowledge. 'It was a scam,' she said.

Perceval stared, looked aside, nodded. Glancing at the angel, Caitlin thought. Perceval said, 'Like the bodies in the holdes.'

'Excuse me?'

'The holdes,' the Captain said. 'They were full of bodies. Frozen people. The Builders told them they were