Again that strange look. “I’m afraid not,” Jericho said. “I have someone else I need to meet with. But I wish you the best, Guildmaster. And if you do discover cause for concern, remember, it’s never too late to be cautious.”
Dresden walked him back to the main room, then watched as he crossed it. At one point Jericho paused by a mask-bearer, and Dresden thought he intended to give the black mask to her, but instead he chose another from her tray. How very strange.
Then the music of laughter and the tinkling of glasses caught him up and carried him away, leaving the Guild’s unfounded fears far behind.
SAIMEN
The saimen is an island, untouched by seas of emotion.
The saimen is a rock, unmoved by storms of sentiment.
Standing apart, it gains perspective. Divorced from passion, it gains understanding.
Bereft of illusion, it draws strength from reality.
KAJA: An Outworlder’s Guide to the Gueran Social Contract, Volume 2: Signs of the Soul
HARMONY NODE
INSHIP: ARTEMIS
“RU?”
She awoke so quickly it startled him. Was that a normal outrider reflex, or were her nerves just so on edge that even sleep couldn’t soothe them? He certainly felt that way. “What? Are we there already?” Her eyes unfocused for a second as she consulted her chrono. “Has something happened?”
“We’re passing the harvester. Thought you might like to see it.”
She didn’t glare at him and go back to sleep, so apparently he’d guessed right.
The main display was dominated by the image of an immense ship. At its head was the blunted spire of a deep-space vessel, designed to deflect or absorb any random debris it might run into; at interstellar speeds, even something the size of a grain of sand could do devastating damage. Indeed, the spire was heavily scored and pockmarked, bearing witness to how many such encounters had marked its fifty-year journey. Behind that protective cap, the main body of the ship was long and sleek, able to slip through a gas cloud or even a planet’s outer atmosphere with minimal friction. Such a design was rare in the outworlds, where the only atmosphere was contained within space stations, and free mass had enough value that any spaceborne debris was swept up as soon as it was detected.
Suspended in the darkness of deep space, the harvester looked like a vast marine creature slipping through an ink-black sea. The few small vessels that were flanking it kept perfect pace with it, like pilot fish, with one riding closer, tucked beneath the belly of the beast.
“Vid bots?” Ru asked.
He nodded. “Dresden probably doesn’t want to risk missing the deployment. That’s the money shot for his whole Festival. I’d imagine he’s probably been watching this thing since it slowed down enough for his bots to catch up to it.”
“We’ll stay out of range, then, so we don’t wind up in their broadcast. Though I imagine they’re all focused on the harvester.” She paused. “You do know this kind of thing isn’t a big deal elsewhere, right? Round trip from Tiananmen Station to Guera only takes a year or so, so harvesters make that journey regularly. No one gets excited about it.”
He shrugged. “It’s a good excuse for partying. I think that’s what matters most. But Guera’s harvesters aren’t on the same scale as this one, are they? When you’re in a node that hasn’t got a planetary system within light years, you’ve got to pack all you can into one trip. Including enough excavation equipment to carve up a moon, if need be.” He gazed at the immense ship on the screen and murmured, “I wonder how many swallows there will be?”
“Swallows?”
“The porter ships. When there are enough of them clustered together they look like a flock of birds. I’d imagine in Guera Node you don’t see that many at one time. It’s really something. Mind you, I’m judging that from past vids. Never seen that big a deployment in person.”
“Your last assignment was in an orphan node too, wasn’t it?”
He looked at her. “I do forget sometimes how much you know about my history.” He turned his attention back to the display. “Yeah, I worked on Preservation for a while. But that was between harvests, so this is new to me.” He whistled softly. “Can’t even imagine how much mass that mothership is carrying right now. Maybe even enough to generate its own gravity. Wouldn’t that be something to experience? I hear real gravity feels different than the tractor-field variety.”
“It does, though I’d be hard pressed to describe how.” She cocked her head slightly. “Have you never been dirtside?”
He shook his head. “Station baby, born and raised in deep space.”
She smiled slightly. “I’ll have to take you to visit Guera, before my next mission starts. You can’t imagine how different things are on the surface of a planet. Just being able to see so far without obstruction is amazing. Everything out here is contained in walls, or in shells, or else you’re in deep space, where there’s no sense of scale at all. To gaze at a natural sunset—to see the sky over an entire planet blaze with color and to know just how vast that sky is—is something words can’t capture.”
“I would like to see that someday,” he said quietly. “And an ocean. I’ve always wondered what that looked like, such a vast expanse of water, uncontrolled by anything but nature.”
She chuckled. “It smells of decay. Growing up by the ocean you learn to like that, but I’m told offworlders find it disconcerting.”
“Stink is good,” he reminded her. “Stink is real.”
“I’m going to print that on a T-shirt for you.”
“As long as it’s not pink.” He sighed. “I’d offer to show you my world, but oceans of data aren’t as impressive to look at. Though I could wax poetic about mathematical algorithms shining on the crests of probability waves.”
She chuckled.
They’d be docking at Harmony Station soon, right ahead of the harvester’s arrival. Hopefully they’d be able to pass on a warning to the powers that be, in time for them to head off the immediate threat from Icelus. After that . . . that damn virus had survived two decades of being hunted by humans, and it wasn’t going to go down quickly or easily. He remembered how he’d had to fight for his life against an army of fake Rus, unable to identify the real attackers, and he shuddered. I’m glad I won’t be the one responsible for eradicating that thing.
The console chimed.
INCOMING MESSAGE FROM TYE JERICHO.
“Your contact?” Micah asked.