Chill

Holdes, through the belly of the world, braving long-abandoned spaces. She'd trusted him in habitats she had no names for, in domaines so empty they held no atmosphere through which sounds could echo. And now she looked out into the breast of the Enemy, the bottomless dark made radiant in its evanescent mourning veils.

The skeleton wheel of the world rolled on, stripping through the ghosts of dead stars, but that wasn't what drew Arianrhod's attention uneasily into the depths. Beyond the portal she stood within, taut dark cables of bundled monofilament stretched into darkness. Non-reflective, they would have been completely invisible had not some cautious engineer of ancient times webbed each cable with tiny lights--a few of which still burned. If Arianrhod let her colony do the math, she could reconstruct what the pattern once had been. A few calculations allowed her to superimpose an image over the existing remnant, but it seemed like a simple warning device rather than an elaborately coded message.

She stepped back from the port. 'What's on the other side, Asrafil? Why do we have to go there?'

He stirred, his wings silent when she thought they should rustle.

'This is as far as I can see,' he said. 'This is as much as I know.'

'You don't know why you brought me here?' That was more interesting than the Enemy, certainly. She turned to face him, though it gave her a chill to turn her back so blatantly to what lay outside. Asrafil stared back at her, intentionally impassive, but she could imagine from his hooded gaze and the way he glowered that he was hiding what passed for intense emotional upheaval in an angel.

'I brought you here--' He hesitated. 'I brought you here because it is my program to bring you here, once the world again was under way ...'

Arianrhod blinked. 'Your program? Me? Me in particular?'

'No.' He shook his head. 'You in genetic particular. A descendant of Prince Tristen and Princess Aefre, through their daughter Sparrow. I chose you for that reason, but more particularly I chose you because you have long been my helpmeet, my sweet. My ally, my servant, and my friend.'

She had trusted him, loved him, this far. If all were lost now, well--all was lost. She had sacrificed all else on the altar of her angel. If he had deluded her, she might as well die of his love as live without it.

You did not love an angel to be safe, or in the interests of survival, or even because you thought the angel might ever love you back. You did not love an angel because you thought you could tame an angel, change it, make it safe. You loved an angel because to love an angel was to touch something larger than yourself, and because the process of that touch enlarged you as well.

'What's on the other side?'

'I don't know.' When he shook his head, at least it made more noise than the wings, though she knew it was because he thought it should. 'But it's writ in my bones that I must go there, beloved. Will you accompany me?'

'Across the very bosom of the Enemy.' She touched the scabbard across her back. Its plain exterior concealed a monomolecular skin and the magnetic bottle that contained Charity's virulent, half-compiled revenant. The blade within the sheath was too much an absence for the touch to reassure.

He said, 'It is far and cold, my darling.'

Far. Too far for an Exalt? What if there was no warmth nor oxygen at the other end of those lines? She could survive a plunge into the Enemy, yes, but she could not live there long. 'If I die--'

'Kiss me and be saved,' he offered.

She lifted up her mouth to his, and let their breaths commingle. She raised her hands. Where they pressed the sculptured bones of his temples, his skin felt moist, warm. Fragile. Human. But that was only camouflage.

His mouth covered hers and he breathed in deep, breathed out, let their tongue tips touch. She felt the tingle as carrier was established, the momentary rush as her colony communed with the angel, passing along her memories and thoughts, the concentrated residue of her life.

--I keep you safe inside me.--

When he drew back, she kissed his cheek in gratitude. Then she turned, inside the circle of his arms, his coat, his wings, and faced the unadulterated Enemy. It was one thing to dip into the shallows, to skip from domaine to domaine within the sheltering embrace of the world.

But this was darkness in its person, the stronghold of the Enemy. There was nothing there to shelter her. She was about to leave the river for the sea, and she wondered if even a sea could seem so vast and strange. Surely there was a limit to how cowed the human soul could be.

Asrafil could infiltrate her, warm her, oxygenate her blood--within limits. Until his own resources were exhausted. Which would not take long. But then again, you did not love an angel if you were easy prey to fear.

'All right,' she said. 'Let's go.'

Behind them, the lock door cycled. Ahead, the portal slid aside. Arianrhod fell forward into emptiness.

Reactive mass, she thought, but with Asrafil's wings around her there was no need of such primitive stopgap technology. He cast them out like a net, the colony using the world's trailing cables to speed them along. They glided low and quick, so close to the light-delineated filament that Arianrhod imagined she could reach out a hand and touch it. It was cold in the depths of the Enemy, as she had imagined it would be, but the cold could not freeze her. Inside the envelope of her angel, she felt it as a caress. The lights racing beneath her, the world vanishing behind, a blur quickly disappearing into the glow of the nebula--in Asrafil's presence, these things were exhilarating rather than terrifying.

He hesitated once, and whispered through the colonies,--This is the point of safe return.--

--Go on.--

Unease filled her as the cables stretched further. Whoever had set them here had done so intentionally, to make this place inaccessible, even to the Exalt. Arianrhod wondered what danger weighed the chain: weapon? engine of war? Even the embrace of an angel could not remove the fear and awe she felt as they approached the end of the lines, and the thing that dragged them out straight and stiff in the wake of the world.

At first, Arianrhod saw only a looming shape outlined in the sparkle of running lights, blue and green and gold photophores shimmering through occluding dust. As Asrafil brought her closer, though, she could make out the gleaming ceramic and metal of a massive framework or scaffolding.--What a waste of energy all those lights are, out here in the dark.--

--What the Builders did, they did for a purpose.--

--Are you sure that was the Builders, Asrafil?--How would the Builders have known that the world would be stranded? How would the Builders have known that a descendent of the line of Sparrow would come forward through time to be here when it sailed again?

He did not answer, just glided closer, silent and dark. It was only when he banked to follow the line of the scaffolding that she realized the scaffolding caged something, illuminated it, pinioned it on long, ice-shiny spears.

The thing at the heart of the structure was a lumpish brown-black stone, space-pocked, rough and potato- shaped, kilometers across. As big as a Heaven.

--An asteroid?--

--It is,--Asrafil said quietly,--electrically active.--

Tentatively, Arianrhod reached out through his colony, feeling it for herself. Electrical activity--and more. --Asrafil, the thing is swarming.--

--I do not take your meaning, my sweet.--

--I mean,--she said,--it's infested with colonies. Can't you feel them?--

He paused. She felt him check, like a balky transmission sticking. --No.--

If she could sense something he couldn't, then was it because whatever long-untriggered program directed them here also blinded him to the proliferation of the nanotech infesting the goal object--or was it because something more complex and sinister was involved? --If it's not an asteroid, Asrafil, what is it? When you say it's showing signs of electrical activity, are you suggesting it might be alive?--

He made a sound in her head like a man humming in his throat, and quoted:--He maketh a path to shine after him; one would think the deep to be hoary. Upon earth there is not his like, who is made without fear.--

The cold gnawed in Arianrhod's blood and bones now. She felt the light-headedness of dropping oxygen