working out a cramp.
Recollecting herself, she continued. 'You've passed the test. We will guide you across our Heaven, and show you the fastest path to your destination.'
'You know it?'
'We built it,' she said. His eyes must have widened with the surprise and disbelief he felt, because she smirked--turning her head to include Mallory and Samael in its arc--and said, 'What did you think the Go-backs were, exactly, Tristen Tiger?'
Tristen glanced at Mallory; the necromancer nodded. Not that it mattered--he suspected Dorcas was interested in his opinion, not that of his companions.
He could have given her the snap answer, the dismissal. And maybe he would have, not too long gone by. To alienate the enemy was a useful defense. But he thought now of ancient history, the thin, perfect memories of his colony predominating over the richer, chemical, organic ones. They had been Engineers, convinced that the best means of survival was to cannibalize what could be saved of the world and return to Earth in a smaller, stripped- down vessel, leaving behind everything designed for colonization and terraforming as useless ballast. Many of them had also been heretics of another stripe: they had believed in the perfection of the human form as a reflection of God's will, and had refused inoculation with Cynric's then newly invented colonies, or any physical augmentation whatsoever.
Alasdair Conn, the Commodore, had opposed them.
Alasdair had believed passionately in the goals and edicts of the Builders: that the purpose of God's creation in Man was to confront harsh environments, to master them, to evolve to meet any challenge. That the ultimate expression of faith was to subject one's self and one's offspring to ever harsher challenges, ensuring survival of the fittest through mortification of the flesh. Of all the species of God's creation, only man had the power to reshape himself in God's image, and Alasdair--whatever his other failings--had not been a hypocrite. A deeply religious man, as moral and spiritual leader of his people he had believed in that obligation with all his heart.
And, as Benedick had pointed out at the time, given conditions when the Builders left, there was no guarantee that Earth was any more able to support life than would be a smoking cinder.
Tristen--a dutiful son, and a dutiful soldier--had gone to war to drive the Go-backs from Engine. He had been doing what he was bid, and in every way that mattered to his father, he had succeeded. If Sparrow died in the war, well, that was the cost of selection. In any case, she'd already passed along her genes to Arianrhod, so it would be easy for Alasdair to fix the line. That the result had been Ariane, Alasdair's eventual murderer, gave Tristen a bitter little frisson of complicated pleasure--his own history with his great-granddaughter notwithstanding.
Whatever Tristen had been about to mouth, unthinking, died upon his tongue. He eased his shoulders in his armor, feeling it resist and settle as he pushed against the gel interior.
'I think you were right,' he said.
Dorcas led them through the Heaven like a woman showing them around her house. The snakes and sycophants had mostly dispersed, returning to their tasks in the near-vertical rice paddies, and Mallory came up to walk beside them, Samael trailing like a wisp of smoke behind. Dorcas acknowledged Mallory with a nod, but otherwise continued to speak chiefly to Tristen. To judge by smirk alone, Mallory was more amused than offended.
'Soothe my curiosity,' Tristen said. 'Why in the world are you willing to help us?'
'Is it not the role of a dutiful daughter?' She must have seen his wince, because she looked away, as if scanning the moss-draped boughs, and gave him a moment to recollect himself. Neither Sparrow nor Aefre had ever had need of such social manners, so the gesture carried with it a hard freight of reminder that Dorcas was not Sparrow.
Again.
Tristen was still working to swallow that when she said, 'The reason for our existence as a sect is gone, you know. We are under way again. A solution has been implemented, and in any case, we no longer have the option of abandoning the world and returning home. We have been infected with your symbiont, against our wills; the purity of our form is compromised.'
Tristen was tempted to comment on the fact that Dorcas herself had enjoyed the benefits of her symbiont for the last five hundred years, without apparent ill effect to her rise among her church--but under the circumstances he considered the wisdom of discretion and bit his tongue.
She continued, 'Which means that if we are to survive in the world to come, we must make some choices. Assuming we live to reach a planetfall, it's likely to take all of us working together. And toward that end, I can think of worse allies than the world's First Mate.' She paused. 'So, to put it in plain terms, you have passed my test. And whatever I have done today to earn your enmity, I hope that it will be balanced against the aid I offer now.'
'I see,' he said. 'You will understand if I make no promises?'
She smiled and glanced aside. 'What will you do with Arianrhod when you find her?'
'Bring her to justice,' Tristen said. Unable to resist, he raised his eyebrows and added, 'You know all about that.'
Maybe it was too early to tease her--though after all, she had started it. Or maybe not, because the sharp glance she gave him modulated smoothly from irritation to amusement. Dorcas, Tristen suspected, was a person who took quiet pride in not becoming irritated.
She said, 'I don't suppose you know where you're going?'
Gavin's long neck rose above Mallory's frizzy curls. 'South,' he said. 'Into the belly of the beast.'
Dorcas chuckled. 'It's possible you speak truer than you know. I can get you to the bottom of the world, to the Broken Holdes. Can you find your way from there?'
'Inasmuch as we know where we are going,' Tristen said. 'Something down there has interfered with the world-angel's sensory apparatus, and we are only guessing based on another tracking party's information that her destination is somewhere in the null patch.' He would not tell her, just now, how long it had been since his team had had contact with Benedick and Chelsea, or with Nova and Perceval.
'The null patch,' Dorcas echoed. 'You really have no idea what lives there?'
Samael mimicked a few quick strides and came up between them. 'You do?'
'We know all sorts of things,' Dorcas said. 'Many of us--we were Engineers, remember? After I was a soldier, I became an Engineer, inspired by the memory of Hero Ng.' She lowered her voice and spoke conspiratorially. 'Some of us are more cynical than others when it comes to the question of the will of God.'
Tristen glanced at Samael, at Gavin, at Mallory--each by turn. All three avoided his gaze. 'Some of us learned our cynicism the hard way,' he replied. 'So what's in the null zone?'
'Cynric's last weapon,' she said. 'A captive monster. A demon so terrible that, after she captured it, Captain Gerald concealed its existence from all but a few. When Alasdair became Commodore after him, Alasdair hid it even from his children, for fear of what they would do with the information.'
'For fear of what he'd made them, you mean.'
She smiled. 'Perhaps that, as well. In any case, Cynric caught two of them. One she took apart, and made things of the pieces. The other she kept captive, held in reserve.'
'She used it,' Gavin said, craning his neck around to stare at Samael. 'Do you really claim no knowledge, Poison Angel, of what it was your mistress wrought?'
'My memory is incomplete,' Samael said drily. 'Do enlighten us.'
Tristen wondered if the basilisk's glance at Dorcas was meant as a request for permission. She made no move to interrupt, and he continued, 'She built on it, the way she built on everything she touched, everything she knew. As Dorcas said, she created it a weapon.'
'Something to fight our father,' Tristen said. 'Well, I guess if anyone would remember that--'
Gavin flipped his wings, tail coiling and uncoiling along Mallory's spine so that Tristen wondered what social discomfort looked like on a power tool.
'Those memories are not mine,' Gavin said. 'And they are ... also incomplete. So you have a route that will take us there, My Lady of the Edenites?'
'We have more than that,' she said. 'We have regained some limited control of the world's musculature. I can
In unison, Mallory and Samael said, 'Musculature?' which made Tristen feel somewhat more comfortable in his own ignorance.
