Chill

8 everything their father had told them

Whatever Perceval had expected of her Captaincy, it was not quite so much schoolwork. But there were schematics to learn, diagrams, navigational mechanics, logistics of supply. And while Nova could spoon-feed it to her, being told something was not the same as understanding it.

So Perceval sat in the Captain's chair, eyes closed, hands resting open on the arms, and studied. With Nova's help, the experience of her indwellers, and the help of her colony, she came quickly to understand the numbers. The numbers did not comfort her.

"Engineering," she said--or thought of saying; when it came to Nova, what Perceval said or thought were much the same.

"The First Mate has arrived safely in Rule," Nova said. "I'm putting you through to the Chief Engineer now."

Perceval opened her eyes. Her mother's image resolved between her and Nova. The angel had caught Caitlin in the act of glancing up from her work, pushing her auburn hair left-handed from her eyes. Her lips were pale with exhaustion and her skin wan and stretched--her colony no doubt still overstressed with repairing acceleration and radiation damage, and she appeared not to have been eating enough.

She still managed a smile for Perceval. Exactly the sort of smile that made Perceval feel bigger and stronger than she knew herself to be, and maybe capable of doing what had to be done. "Hi, Mom," she said. "We have a problem."

"We have more than one," Caitlin answered. "Start with the most serious, and I'll see what I can do about it."

She didn't mention Rien, and Perceval, grateful, did not either. "Resources," she said. "Shortages are critical throughout the world. The Enemy has claimed--"

Caitlin nodded. "I know. There are options. We can recoup significant resources from the nebula. Some of that material must be used for fuel, but the rest--well, it will all have to be scrubbed. But we have radiovores. We'll manage. Unfortunately, it all means time."

"Repairs to the world?"

"Under way." Caitlin spread her hands, fingers expanding as if she meant to brush her way through cobwebs. "The more pressing problem is that we can't afford to wake up everyone in the tanks, and we can't afford to maintain them there until we've reached cruising speed and the engines are running at capacity. For the time being, they're wasted mass."

Caitlin wouldn't make the suggestion. And if she did, Perceval wouldn't accept it. But they both knew the option existed.

"We need to downsize," Perceval said, hoping it was her own will talking and not the subtle insinuations of an Ariane or an Alasdair. "And reallocate those resources. Dammit, a convenient star system would solve everything. We'd have sunlight, possibly planetesimals for mining."

"Five hundred years ago," Caitlin said, "somebody in exactly your position said exactly the same thing."

Perceval winced. "Touche."

Think, she told herself, and rubbed her hands together to remind herself of her body. It was too easy to get lost in Nova's proprioception of the world, to abandon herself to the sense that the world's great spans and knobs and tendrils, its interconnections and ghosts and memories, were her own body. Which made the creeping blankness she felt through sectors of it all the more disconcerting, and she had to remind her body that it was not her own fingers and toes going numb. "How much are we actually gaining by keeping them tanked?"

"If we cut life support to nonessential sectors, we gain back 90 percent of the world's resources. Everything that's not going to the engines, the tanks, and life support for Rule, the bridge, and Engineering."

"Except those nonessential sectors are our biodiversity," Perceval said. "Five hundred years of accelerated evolution. There is no telling what might be down there. Shipfish. Sentients. Weirder things. They should be preserved if possible."

"Cryo will hold," Caitlin pointed out. "We're already accelerating out of the shock wave. Environmental cooling will be rapid as we leave it behind, which leaves us material available for cloning."

"Tell me you're playing devil's advocate," Perceval said, "and not presenting me with your inescapable conclusion of what we must do to survive, Chief Engineer."

Caitlin half smiled. Perceval wondered if it was because she had addressed her as her Captain, not her daughter. She said, "The Builders would have cannibalized."

"We're not the Builders."

Caitlin scratched her chin. "We could broaden the ramscoop. It would cost energy."

"And return more?"

"It's a significant initial investment." The Chief Engineer slid hands through her holographic controls, shaping something Perceval couldn't see. "It's a risk. But if we can maintain the magnetic bottle, the return on the investment should be worth it. It might give us the resources to go see what's in those blacked-out spots."

The angel, who had stood silent as a painted backdrop behind Caitlin, unfolded his imaginary arms and laced his imaginary hands behind his back. "If I may interrupt?"

The angel's programmed approximation of polite diffidence made Perceval dream of hitting things. It was too much like Rien. "You do not need permission."

"I have not yet determined the source of all the blackouts. However, the First Mate has reported in, and I do now know why Rule has fallen off the grid. The remnant of another angel has barricaded himself in there."

"Who?" Caitlin said coldly, while Perceval was still assimilating the renewed threat.

The angel, settled into a sort of parade rest, answered, "Samael. Just a scrap of him, however." A pause, during which Perceval wondered if the angel were waiting for her to give away some clue as to her emotional state, or merely reading it and waiting for it to settle.

"Speak," Perceval said, surprised for the moment that her mother had let her take the lead. She wondered if she was grateful.

"I can dig him out," Nova said. He let his hands drop to his sides and flexed them in a manner Perceval would say was subconscious, if she saw it in a human being. "It may mean disassembling a good deal of the infrastructure of Rule. And the necromancer Mallory's familiar, in which Samael has made himself resident. Or you could order him to submit to me, and be assimilated."

"What does he want?"

The angel said, "A safe-conduct and to speak with you. The First Mate is present. He does not believe there to be a threat."

Perceval did not think there was any love lost between Tristen and Samael. Perhaps she could trust Tristen's judgments.

The thought made her unhappy. She had trusted them in the past. Should things be so different now?

They should not. But that did not change the fact that they were. She said, "Give him my safe-conduct. Put him on."

His avatar resolved before her.

The angel's appearance had not changed, except that now he seemed as watery and translucent as Perceval felt. He was not tall, and was as brutally thin as a flyer, the approximation of muscle fiber stripped plain beneath his skin. For an angel, there was no appreciable difference between a projection and going there in person. His awareness and his presence drew her eyes up; she met his bold glance with her own. There was a moment of eye contact before the angel swept a generous, abject bow and said, "My Captain. Bid me; I come to serve, and bearing dangerous tidings."

She should have been taken aback. But perhaps with the Captaincy came some armor or core of reserve, because as if observing from afar she saw herself extend a hand and accept Samael's obeisance. "Tell me," she said.

"It is likely that it is not I alone who survived. I would have concealed my existence longer, in fact, except that I know something you and your angel must also know.

A servant of Asrafil kept a fragment of the Angel of Blades protected, and it is likely that by her intervention he will have respawned by now. As long as she is intact, there will be no destroying Asrafil, and neither you nor your angel will be safe, My Captain. He will not place himself in a position to be ordered by you."

Perceval pressed her hands flat against her thighs, the fingers arched as if by the pressure of her palms she could deny this knowledge. "The name of this servant?"

"Arianrhod Kallikos," he said. From the glance over his shoulder, someone in Rule--Tristen, most likely--had just reacted violently. "I cannot tell you if it has happened yet. But I know Asrafil meant it to happen, planned for it to happen. And if it has not, it is only a matter of time until it does."

"Two rebel angels," Caitlin said. Perceval's focus had been such that she'd almost forgotten that her mother was listening.

"No, Chief Engineer." Samael didn't turn to look at the projection, but Caitlin's eyes flickered, which told Perceval he was providing her with her own copy of his avatar. "One rebel angel. And one who has come to present his bond willingly in service to his world and his world's Captain."

"And if I order you to allow Nova to assimilate you?"

"I am only a scrap," Samael said, glimmers of light falling through the collage of his features. "There is nothing I could do to prevent her." He spread his hands in supplication. "That would not make it any less murder, Captain."

Her, Perceval thought. She glanced at her angel again, the one she'd been thinking of as male. Because Dust was male, because angels were he. Because Rien had been she, Perceval realized, and she did not want to be reminded of what had become of Rien. Rien, who in such a short time had become everything.

But Nova, Perceval saw through clearer eyes, wasn't any of those things. In fact, she thought the angel had seemed much more like a man to begin with, and grew more neutral of aspect with every passing hour. Was she doing that? Or was it simply a natural part of the angel assimilating the various threads of conflicting personalities?

It led Perceval to consider the yammer of voices in her own head, the singular gravity exerted by all those thoughts, opinions, ambitious desires that threatened to consume her every time she gave them a thought.

She would have to learn to use those. Pushing them away meant denying a great resource, and--no matter how insipid she found their morality, no matter how filthy touching their thoughts made her feel--Perceval was a child of Engine. She could stop breathing with more ease than she could discard something with a potential use.

Samael, as if noticing that she had been staring at Nova in speculation for rather a long time, cleared his throat. "Captain?"

Perceval shook her head, pushing aside the fog of other commanders' ideas. "No. I think not. We've already ruled out resorting to cannibalism to solve a bigger problem."

Caitlin, without shifting her eyes from her own image of Samael, said once more, "The Builders would have cannibalized."

Perceval folded her arms. "Mom. You're repeating yourself. And I don't for a minute believe you think that's the best answer. So take it as read into the argument for now, and we'll consider it as an absolute last resort. If we have to. Nova. Do you trust him?"

Nova, who had until then waited motionless as if suspended, staring at Samael like a cat before a mouse hole, said, "I contain enough of him to know better."

Perceval, with a certain degree of distaste, reached down through the layers of filters she was slowly amassing between her present self and the library of her ancestral memories, looking for specific information. Someday, when she had leisure--and could bear the sense of dragging her fingers through swamp and slime to tickle out a handful of pearls--she would find the time to examine it all and see what was useful. For now, her memory would remain banked full of the Captains and Commodores who had come before her, and she would just have to know she would get around to it someday. Ariane, though, was close and current, and not too hard to get to. Perceval just did not much like touching her.

"I contain enough of Ariane to remember her scorn for Arianrhod's devotion to Asrafil," she confirmed. "I doubt Ariane was ever devoted much to anything, outside of herself. But she believed that Arianrhod is."

Caitlin said, "I contain nothing of Samael. But I, too, know him well enough to know better than to trust him." She glared, then surprised Perceval by asking, "But do we need to trust him? We were going after Arianrhod anyway, weren't we?"

"Yes," Perceval said. "We are. Or Tristen and Mallory are, in any case. And Gavin, of course." She turned back to Samael. "And so are you."

Benedick had never known Chelsea well. The gap between their ages was two or three lifetimes of Means run back to back. He'd only met her mother twice; after the tenth or fourteenth, his father's women ran together like lifetimes. The war with Cecelia's daughters had taught Alasdair Conn to never again confuse the question of who held power in the house of Rule by choosing an Exalt paramour--or by Exalting the Means, once their few brief years of beauty had faded. Benedick had almost no organic memory of his own mother. It had passed with the centuries, leaving behind a sort of abstract sentiment and the crystalline images preserved by his symbiont.

But he did remember his anger and disbelief when he had, at long last, come on Errantry to Engine and not only found Caitlin there, but also that everything their father had told them, about only the blood of the house of Conn being fit to survive Exaltation, had been a blatant, baseless lie.

Shortly afterward, Benedick had begun spending less and less time in his father's house. His father had not seemed much concerned by his absence, or to much regret it.

These were things Benedick suspected Chelsea had not yet learned about their family. Perhaps the unforeseen benefit of Ariane's attempt at genocide was that now she never need learn them. So he was at peace with the idea that they should walk companionably side by side, two knights-errant alert to the dangers of the wilderness.

He did not expect much strangeness so close to Engine; the knights and Engineers had civilized everything within a day's travel. This area had been thickly settled and largely given over to agriculture before the nova. There were good maps, and Benedick's colony carried copies of each.

Their progress at first was painstaking. Having eliminated one of the five potential paths--Chelsea could be lying about having seen Arianrhod, but there were resources in place in Rule to cover that eventuality--it remained to determine which of the following four options Arianrhod had actually chosen. Because her trail was hidden well enough that a cursory examination did not suffice, Benedick resorted to the toolkit's enhanced senses.

However, after ninety minutes of sniffing and scurrying, he was forced to admit the strategy was to no avail. The toolkit whiffled disconsolately around the borders of the last corridor, ears slicked back and whiskers quivering. Benedick knew they could become discouraged when set impossible tasks. Consequently, he crouched down and let it run up his arm, the armor transmitting every scratch of its delicate claws as though they prickled on his skin.

He lifted the toolkit to his face and let it rub its pointed muzzle along his chin while Chelsea smiled out of the corner of her mouth.

"The softer side of Benedick Conn," she said, and chuckled when he rolled his eyes.

"Sibling disrespect," he answered. "Everything performs better when praised."

"You didn't learn that from Dad."

"No." Not even a real test of his resolve not to speak ill of the dead. His right hand clenched, remembering the hilt of a blade, the way flesh had offered no resistance to the unblade's blow.

He hadn't carried one since.

He wouldn't have done it for Alasdair, he thought. He hoped. He had done it because Cynric asked. That offered less in the way of absolution than he might have preferred.

He indicated the tunnels with a sweep of his gaze. "Which do you like?"

She squatted, resting her elbows on her armored knees, and chewed her upper lip. "If I were a rogue Engineer," she said, with thoughtful deliberation, "wanted for genocide, and a fugitive from everyone in Rule and Engine both, where would I go? What would I think was my best chance of survival?"

"Before the nova?" He shrugged, and his armor shrugged with him. The toolkit on his shoulder registered a protest, fluffy tail thumping his back. "I would have lit out for the hinterlands. The Broken Holdes, maybe. Cannibal country. Now? If the world is coming back under hegemony, the situation gets stickier. You'd need to do one of four things. One, find a place where Nova can't reach--which might mean fostering a breakaway intelligence of your own. Two, reinvent yourself as something Nova could not recognize. Three, escape the world entirely--and falling off the face of the world is unlikely without a planetfall nearby--or--"

"Four, stage a takeover."

"No doubt," Benedick agreed, "the eventual plan."

"Indeed." Chelsea had pulled the braids from her hair. Now she flipped it back again. Benedick resisted the urge to recommend she cut it. "So logically--"

"She's headed for a null zone." He reached out a hand to pull her to her feet.

She accepted it and stood.

"Nova," he said, and waited for the sense of attention, of connection. "Where is the nearest large null?"

"They're propagating," the angel said in its tone without tone. Not affectless, but serene. He wondered how long it would take for it to develop a personality, or if this were a temporary effect of integrating so many diverse individuals. "However, they are clustering in the area of the largest holdes, at the south pole of the world."

"Near my domaine, you mean."

"On the bottom of the world. Near is a subjective term, but--yes, within tolerances. There is little known about those areas beyond the range of your patrols, Prince Benedick. They have been out of contact for centuries. They would make a good refuge. Also, the Captain was just about to contact you. We have further information to impart. Will you accept a squirt?"

Easier and faster than speech, to allow the angel to simply inject the knowledge into his head. Riskier, too--all sorts of things could come concealed in such code.

Benedick nodded nevertheless, choosing to trust. Trust the angel, trust the Captain his daughter. Trust the world that cradled his bones.

"Send," he said, and felt data spill into his mind. Arianrhod, Samael, Tristen, Asrafil, Mallory. "Head's alive?" he said aloud, one salient fact crystalline among the flood.

Chelsea, beside him, looked up. "How?" she said. "I was in Rule. No survivors."

"Sie barricaded hirself into the kitchens with all the servants sie could find," Benedick said.

Chelsea's smile looked like it might bend her cheeks permanently.

"A little good news is nice," she said, when he raised his eyebrows at her. She glanced aside.

He let her go; adolescents were so embarrassed by their own sentiment. As if one would think less of them for relief or kindness. He said, "Thank you, Nova. My regards to the Captain my daughter."

"Her regards to you," the angel replied. "Prince Tristen wishes to know where you wish to rendezvous. He is leaving Rule as we speak, but still has options as to the route he will take."

Benedick consulted the fragmentary maps in his head. "No rendezvous. We'll try for a pincer. If Arianrhod is moving toward the south pole, we have more of a chance to prevent her from slipping by us if we take parallel routes, and it's possible one team might flush her onto the other. Will you be able to keep us in contact, Nova?"

The angel frowned in his head. "Perhaps. Once you enter the region of null growth, I cannot be sure."

"Well," Benedick said. "We'll span that gulf when we come to it."