Reclamation

13—Section One, Division One, the Home Ground, Hour 11:13:25, Planet Time

“Need personnel for a thorough survey of the vaults before we begin sealing the walls…” Even though it came through her translator disk, Historian Maseair’s voice was barely audible under the noise around Avir.

Contractor Avir plucked two more greasy oil lamps out of their alcoves in the curving walls of the “Temple.” “Record authorization and time stamp,” she said through gritted teeth as she carried the filthy objects over to the flash disposal unit, sidestepping the Beholden who carried the programmer for the drones cleaning the ceiling.

“Anything else?” She dropped the lamps into the disposal’s open mouth and, as the hatch closed, felt an irrational satisfaction in knowing they had been reduced to ashes faster than she could blink.

The initial plan had been sound; the engineers would string fiber-optic threads over the stone and plaster supports already in place and cover them all with optical matter to make a usable workspace. Eventually the supports could be replaced with more durable steels and polymers.

But now, spiderlike drones crawled across the ceilings, scraping off years of soot and tempera paints that were supposed to represent a night sky. A Beholden was injecting concrete filler into the oil lamp alcoves that studded every square foot of wall space. The tiled floor would have to be sealed and primed against water leakage before a silicate coating could be laid to make it smooth. Then optics had to be laid into the thresholds to allow for the installation of proper doors that might actually be able to shut out the sound and stench drifting in from outside, where the artifacts waited.

There had been a tiny group of telekinetics inside the Temple when her team had arrived, but they had vanished. The search teams of artifacts that Ivale had organized claimed to have found no trace of them, but then, some of the city residents had barricaded a full square kilometer’s worth of the streets and it was possible the telekinetics were hiding with them.

She hoped one day she’d forget what the artifacts looked like when she had stepped out of the transport. Their eyes had been wide and their faces were all contorted with fear. Many had been on their knees or their bellies in the mud, babbling so fast in what was left of the language of the Ancestors that the translator disks couldn’t even make any sense out of it.

She could hear them now through the flimsy walls of this place. They sang or shouted, or moved about without purpose or plan. Lost, all of them lost.

Waiting for her to restore them to use, and she could barely coordinate the restoration of one building. Avir rested her hand on the edge of the flash disposal. The shrieking wind that wormed its way through every niche in the walls carried with it the endless gabble of voices, snatches of devotional songs, the distant shouts of the ones who were confused enough to try to fight the Reclamation. Ivale said he had organized some of the artifacts into a kind of security force, but it seemed to have more holes than the Temple walls did.

“Engineer Faive of the First Cause, Contractor,” said a new voice in her ear. “I am going to need to contract at least three more Beholden to incorporate structural standards in Section eighteen…”

The “High House,” the artifacts called it, for no reason Avir could discern. It had no less than eight conduits to the underground complexes in it. She had placed a priority on having the standing walls upgraded to shelter the teams assigned to study them.

The Beholden sealing fiber-optic cables into a trench carved in the main entranceway scrambled backward to let Bio-tech Nal and two of his own Beholden enter. Behind them waddled an eight-legged drone stacked with an assortment of nameless crates.

“Record authorization and time stamp.” She drew aside so the drone could pass. “Next?”

Her translator disk beeped. “Incoming message on comm line 23A,” said the default voice.

She stood in front of the portable terminal, not wanting to have to perch on the hard stool in front of it. The translator disks alone could not handle transmissions from the dead side. She touched the screen. Kelat appeared, standing with a poise and propriety she envied. Behind him curved the shadowy walls of one of the underground chambers. A team of Engineering Beholden clustered around a bulge in the wall, watching monitors intently and occasionally punctuating their dialogue with a ringer stabbed toward some reading or the other. Kelat, apparently oblivious to the impropriety behind him, made a small, respectful obeisance to her.

“Good Morning and also Good Day, Contractor,” Avir said, making her own obeisance. “How are matters progressing with you?”

Kelat turned a little to indicate the activity behind him. Now she could see the bulge held something that pulsed and pressed star-shaped filaments against the wall. “Slowly, and with much argument between the committees. There are organic artifacts left here, there is no doubt about that, but defining their relationships and purposes is a struggle.

“And how are matters progressing with you?”

Avir glanced around the room. Nal was unloading equipment from the drone with his Beholden hustling to set up an analysis tank assembly. An Engineering Beholden readjusted a cleaning drone and sent it scuttling up the wall. Over it all rattled the noise from the artifacts outside. She did not invite Kelat to take a better look.

“Rapidly, Kelat, but not very smoothly. There was a great deal of chaos stirred up by the Unifiers and a civil war has been going on for a long time between the established power base and some factions that want to split off. Unfortunately, the factions may be less likely to accept that we hold their names than the main power base is. We are proceeding accordingly.

“Has there been any action on the part of the Unifiers?” she asked, more to keep the conversation going than because she really needed the information. Kelat’s presence, even over the lines, was very calming.

“They are raising protests and publicity with a number of the client governments,” said Kelat, “but so far, nothing important. The Reclamation Assembly assessment is that they are simply delaying the necessity of removing their people.” Kelat’s shoulders sagged minutely. “Has any progress been made in locating their base?”

The wind dropped a note in pitch and sent a draft curling around Avir’s ankles. “No. They appear to be maintaining a communications silence and with the limited number of satellites currently deployed and the pervasiveness of the cloud cover…” she broke her sentence off. She was repeating what Kelat already knew. They were not currently equipped for a full scan of the habitable section of the Home Ground. The Assembly had moved ahead of several committees’ scheduling recommendations but had offered no explanations as to why. But she would not be heard to say that aloud.

“We already have given orders to some of the less confused artifacts to search for ‘Skymen’ and bring them into appropriate custody,” she told Kelat instead. “So far they have had no success, but we will reinforce the orders.” Outside, artifacts’ voices lifted in a new song. Whatever it was, it must have been ancient. Her disk couldn’t make anything out of it. “How soon will you be ready for us to start delivering artifacts to your facilities for classification?” she asked.

Kelat looked over his shoulder at the contending trio of Beholden. “It will be some time,” he admitted. “There are many pieces of the Ancestors’ puzzles to be sorted out. It is my opinion your efforts are best spent in gaining and centralizing control where you are and performing what classifications you can.”

Avir felt a flicker of humor cross her face. “It is glorious work, Kelat, but it is work all the same.”

Kelat lowered his voice. “Is there any assistance we can offer you?”

Pride more than confidence stiffened Avir’s shoulders. “Not yet, I don’t think. At the moment, the Assembly is placing a premium on keeping as many of the artifacts as we can functional, so we can only go slowly in restructuring their social groupings. When control is centralized, then we can coordinate our efforts more closely.”

Kelat glanced around himself to make sure no one was listening. “Avir, how does it feel to be a god?”

She pressed her fingertips against the edge of the comm board. “Kelat, I would rather be a Contractor.”

“Understood,” he said, and she heard genuine sympathy in his voice. “This line is being left open for your reports.” Kelat signed off and the terminal went blank.

The sound of voices and shuffling feet made Avir turn around. One of the Bio-tech Beholden led a gaggle of artifacts with scarred hands through the main threshold. They were all female, Avir saw, some of them juveniles, some of them carrying infants in bundles of rags strapped to their chests.

Ivale followed the cluster of artifacts, spreading his hands to help herd them all inside the Temple. Two juveniles took shelter behind the adults as his hands touched their shoulders.

“All is well,” said Ivale in the round, almost-musical tones he’d been cultivating since he’d received his contract to the Reclamation. “There is only new work that we ask of you.”

Despite Ivale’s reassurances, the artifacts all looked at her with identical expressions of fear on their faces.

Avir’s anger at the long-dead Aunorante Sangh deepened. How could you condemn your own kind to this? A life without structure or purpose? Where they can’t even recognize the ones you were made to serve?

It was totally irrational, and though she knew it, she couldn’t help herself.

We will restore them. As soon as we understand how the Ancestors structured this world, we will be able to restore their proper functions to them, and then that fear will vanish.

These, at least, seemed fairly docile. They let Ivale and the Beholden direct them toward the analysis area, where Nal and his other three Beholden were dodging each other as they tried to uncrate and set up the last of their equipment.

A juvenile stumbled on the uneven floor. An adult, old enough to be wrinkled and toothless, stuck out her clawed hand to steady it. Even from where she stood, Avir saw the bones in the adult’s wrist.

“Bio-technician,” she called, unable to take her eyes off the skinny artifact. The artifact noticed her regard and lowered herself humbly to the floor, holding her hands in front of her eyes.

Bio-tech Nal disentangled himself from a coil of fiber optic and came to stand beside her. “Yes, Contractor?” There was no disguising the impatience in his voice.

Avir ignored it. “Once you have completed your classification scans on this sampling, take the artifacts down into the basements. We will need to provide food and warmth for them until the committees meet to determine a coherent separation strategy.”

“We’re going to keep them here?” Nal’s face wrinkled with distaste.

Avir’s temper flared. “You are speaking with disrespect of the work of the Ancestors, Bio-tech. Do you want to explain your reluctance to care for it properly to a Witness and have it added to the Memory?” She spoke too loud and too harshly. The Bio-tech was plainly more shocked than chagrined. He dropped quickly into an obeisance that pressed his forehead against the filthy floor.

“I spoke without thought, Contractor,” he said.

So did I, but Avir just gestured for him to get up.

Avir glanced at the Beholden, but they were all properly busy at their tasks. She wished she wasn’t so certain they were all straining their ears to hear what her next outburst would be. Ivale, though, had his dark eyes leveled at her, and, for a moment, she saw the question in them.

I am not supposed to be feeling like this, thought Avir as she turned away. I am walking on the Home Ground. I am working directly for the Reclamation. This should be glorious. I should be joyous. I shouldn’t be petty and scolding and worn like a student on her first assignment. She rubbed her forehead and gazed at the sprinkling of soot that smeared her palm. I just never thought it would be…

“Skyman!” shouted a voice.

Avir’s head jerked toward the doorway. The songs and shouts had dropped away outside, leaving only the sounds of the wind and of feet squelching in the mud.

“I’ll go,” said Ivale.

“No.” He opened his mouth and Avir raised her hand. “We are all Ambassadors to the work of the Ancestors now. I will see what is happening outside and you will calm the artifacts already in our care.”

Ivale hesitated for a moment, as if testing the seriousness of her order. Then he turned away from her and gestured toward the floor. “Sit, sit,” he said to the artifacts. “You are in the hands of the Nameless. What else can touch you here?”

The artifacts did as they were told. They settled themselves next to the wall, wrapping their ragged clothing around them. They set the juveniles on their laps or took them in their arms. One began to croon a soft, wordless song to an infant. Beside them, the analysis tank began a steady humming, indicating that the Beholden had gotten the generators successfully hooked up.

Avir couldn’t work out why she was staring at them.

“Skyman!”

Avir tore her gaze away from the artifacts. Drawing herself up into a properly poised stance, she pushed past the poorly woven blanket that covered the threshold and stepped onto the flagstone veranda.

A new group of artifacts filled the street below the crude, stone steps. Unlike the crowds that had been there earlier, these stood in relatively straight lines. They had hats of beaten metal covering their heads. In their midst, a smallish female who had been tattooed in red around her face and jaw sat on the back of one of the oxen used as beasts of burden. The shadow from the tether fell across her, creating a broad, black stripe over her chest.

Avir remembered her briefing. This was, in all probability, Silver on the Clouds, the King or leader of this area’s social grouping.

“See how they come when called!” Silver on the Clouds shouted, standing in the ox’s stirrups. “They know who they are! Skymen!”

But even from where she stood, Avir could see the fear in the King’s eyes. Just like she saw in all the others. Endless, reasonless fear.

“You doubt we are the Nameless?” Avir let her voice ring across the plaza. “You are alone, King Silver. The Temples and the Teachers know us.”

“The Teachers are fools!” Silver on the Clouds snorted. “They always have been! You are nothing but Skymen with tricks and lies. Narroways is still my city, Skyman! If you do not leave it on your own, we will drive you over the World’s Wall and into the maw of the Aunorante Sangh!

“You have until the next sunshowing!”

Taking her words as their cue, the helmeted artifacts raised their weapons and began to retreat, one step at a time. Silver backed her ox up to stay in the middle of them. No one tried to stop them as they disappeared between the ramshackle buildings.

Avir felt something whither inside her. I should have let Ivale do this. I don’t know how to handle them. I don’t know what to do. This is not what I’m trained for. This is not what anybody here is trained for.

The remaining artifacts stared up at her with their wide eyes. They were waiting for her to do something miraculous to prove that she really was a daughter of the Ancestors. But she had no proof to offer.

Avir glowered at the herd of artifacts, suddenly furious. They all leaned a bit closer together and ducked their heads in the face of her anger. Avir knew they were not to blame for their own ignorance, but knowing that did not help calm her.

Her translator disk beeped. “Contractor,” said Ivale’s voice, “there is a transmission from the Reclamation Assembly that requires your attention.”

Avir touched her disk to acknowledge him, and, with as much dignity as she could muster, she retreated behind the blanket.

Ivale watched her a little too closely as she crossed the chamber. Did he see the hollowness inside her? She thought she had her face properly expressionless, but she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything right now.

She reached the active comm screen and faced a single Contractor, immaculate in his seamless black robe. Avir suddenly remembered how rumpled and ash-spattered she was.

“Allow me to hand you my name, Contractor.” He had elected to be as bald as an Ambassador and yet as brown as an artifact. Avir wondered what had motivated the juxtaposition. “I am Contractor Cynleah Laefhur, of the Fust Core, and Senior Contractor to the Reclamation Assembly. We have news that will affect your division.”

His quiet, steady voice went straight through Avir , soothing her instantly. She wanted to lean toward the screen and drink in his voice, as a reminder of what she ought to be.

“Bio-technician Uary has confessed himself to be an Imperialist and has volunteered the location of the Unifier base just outside your division. One of their operators is Jahidh of the Grand Errand. He has been transmitting information about the Home Ground to his Imperialist contacts for four years.”

Blood of my ancestors, Avir staggered. There’s been an Imperialist on the Home Ground for FOUR YEARS? Avir felt her breathing go harsh and shallow. “Where is he now?” she croaked. “Do we know that?”

“These are your orders, Contractor Avir,” said Laefhur. “You will investigate the Unifiers’ finds. You will not waste resources hunting for Jahidh.”

“Contractor,” Avir drew her shoulders back. This man might hold a senior ranking and an Assembly seat, but he did not hold her name. “How can…”

“We want him free to continue his researches,” said the Contractor. “He has made great contributions to the understanding of the artifacts. As long as he believes he is undetected, he will continue to do so. The Witnesses will take charge of him if he oversteps the bounds the Assembly has laid down on his conduct.”

Avir could not force a single word out of her throat.

“It is the Reclamation that is important, Contractor. We must not lose time because of lack of skilled hands.”

And it must not be seen that the Assembly allowed Imperialists to slip through their notice. Resolve hardened inside her. “I can make this my work and I will,” she said, giving a properly deep obeisance.

Laefhur’s image was gone by the time she straightened up. Avir realized her hands had curled into fists. Her mind was already racing. Transportation would have to be acquired from the Acquisitions committee, and a security team contracted. The Unifiers’ base would have to be thoroughly explored and cataloged. Extra personnel would certainly be needed once the initial survey of the base was complete.

She would obey her orders, but communication with the artifacts was still at an uncertain stage. Everyone was aware of that. It was well documented and witnessed. If they did not understand they were to cease their search for one particular Skyman, that, surely, was not her fault.

Jay cast another glance at Heart of the Seablade. The Teacher hunched in front of the fire watching the flames in a way that suggested he did not like what he saw. Jay shivered as the wind blew through the tent flaps and, for the hundredth time, he cursed the necessity of bringing the Teacher along. Heart had too many distractions inside his head to allow Jay to predict the outcome of his thoughts. But they needed a Teacher to help bring the Notouch into line in case Cor’s efforts at persuasion were not totally successful, so Jay needed Heart.

Years of practiced acting allowed Jay to put a concerned tone in his voice. “What is it you are worried about now, Teacher?”

Heart picked up a cold lump of charcoal from the meager stack that was their night’s supply of fuel. “My wife was in the High House when they came down, Messenger. What will they do to her?”

Be patient. You need him to keep the Notouch in line. Say it again. Jay wrapped his poncho a little closer around him. “Nothing, Heart. She’s valuable to them. You all are. That’s what’s buying us this time.” That and King Silver’s pride.

“I do hold her in my regard, Messenger.” Heart pitched the charcoal onto the flames. The fire hissed and a flurry of sparks danced above the flames. “She is so unwavering…I fear they will grow impatient with her.”

Jay considered laying a hand on the man’s shoulder, but couldn’t quite bring himself to do it. “I know these people, Heart. They’re born patient. They cannot be rushed. I once…” His translator disk beeped.

Cor’s voice hissed in his ear. “Jay, get your sodden face out here. I’m about to be bludgeoned.”

“Blood of my…” Jay scrabbled at the tent’s laces and tore them open.

It was full night outside. The icy wind drove straight down on his head, making him stagger as he emerged from the tent. The only light was from the four orange watchflres. Everything else was a solid curtain of black.

“Hold your hand!” he bellowed to the world in general.

Jay squinted at one fire after another. The one toward his left flopped sideways in the wind and Jay saw a pair of human shadows, one standing and one kneeling. He took a bead on the fire and, ignoring the violent crawling of the goose bumps rising on his skin, waded through the weeds and reeds toward it

“I speak for her!” he shouted as he approached.

Jay entered the tiny circle of flickering light and saw Cor on her knees with her hands in front of her eyes. A soldier with Bondless tattoos on his hands and a craggy face that Jay didn’t recognize held his metal-studded club over her head.

“What in the sight of the Nameless is all this?” Cor demanded as Jay waved the soldier aside. “An invasion?”

“Hardly.” A fresh wind hit him and Jay shivered. “The Vitae have got that show to themselves.” He brushed the soldier back. The man gave Jay the barest possible salute and tramped off into the darkness.

“I noticed.” Cor stood and picked up her handlight. She seemed oblivious to the cold. “We had word. They’ve started giving orders that the Notouch be rounded up.” She clipped her light onto her belt.

“So you found Stone in the Wall’s relatives?” For a moment, eagerness was stronger than the cold.

“Yeah, I found them.” Cor stretched her hands out to the fire and let the light shine between her fingers. “I thought you were going to King Silver for letters of authority, not for a small army.” She nodded toward the cluster of a dozen tents.

“Cor…” Jay began angrily. He stopped and gripped his temper. “We need protection in case we run into First City troops. They’re working for the Vitae now.”

Cor watched the fire between her fingers.

“Cor.” Jay moved closer. “Where’re the Notouch?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I sent them running.”

Jay’s heart thudded once, hard, against his ribs. “You what?”

“I told them to grab their gear and run like the wind.” She rubbed her hands together. “And not to tell me where they would go.”

“Cor, the Vitae are rounding up Notouch!” Jay shouted. “They know something! We have to find…”

“We have to get out of here!” Cor screamed up at him to be heard over the wild night wind. “We have to get out of here and leave these people alone!”

“They aren’t people!”

Cor didn’t even flinch. “I don’t think they’d agree with you.”

Jay took a deep breath, trying to get control of himself again. It was too much. He had come all this way, he had worked all this time, and now he was so close. He was too close.

“Cor,” he said, hoping she couldn’t hear the tremor in his voice over the sound of the wind and the crackle of the fire, “you’re not thinking straight. If the Vitae find out how this place works, they will rule the Quarter Galaxy.”

“And if the Family finds out how this place works, then what?” Cor shook her head and Jay saw the rock-hard resistance behind her eyes. The fire struck sparks in them. “No. No matter who gets hold of them, they’re never going to be left alone again. The only thing they can do is keep running and fighting us all off.” Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. “With the number of birth defects they’ve got, I doubt the whole place has more than four generations left anyway. Then it’s over with, but they’re at least not being bred into slavery.”

Jay felt the world tilt under his feet. Anger rushed through him, faster than the wind through the reeds, and all of it focused on the woman in front of him, calmly facing him down as if he were no more than a Bonded, or a total fool.

“Then why in all this hell did you come here?” he croaked. “Why didn’t you stay with your Notouch?”

Her chin shifted left, then right. “I wanted to see if you’d be willing to leave. I didn’t want you and Lu hanging around making things hard…harder.” Her green eyes were honest and a little ashamed. “I wanted you to know I’m willing to get you both offworld, but if you decide to keep going on the assignment, then, as of now, you’ve got no pilot and you’d better watch your back, because I’ll be on it.”

The night was suddenly crystal clear to Jay. The fire didn’t even flicker. Cor’s headcloth didn’t stir. He could hear her breathing, even over the rush of blood in his ears.

“And you really don’t know where the Notouch have gone?” he said coolly.

She shook her head. “No. I really don’t.”

Jay lashed out. His fist caught her in the throat and knocked her backward. She choked as she fell. He grabbed hold of her shoulders and flipped her onto her stomach. Her spine was stiff and knobbly under his knees. He pressed all his weight against her back. Her neck muscles corded against his palms as he forced her face into the mud. She clawed at him, raking great long scratches down his hands. She screamed to the ground. Jay held on until her hands fell into the weeds and he felt her neck go limp.

He stood. He thought he would be shaking, but he wasn’t. He was perfectly calm. Cor was nothing but a crooked shadow in the grass. In a moment he’d call the watch back to toss her into the swamp.

Jay fished his translator disk out of his ear and tucked it into its slot in his torque and waited.

“Jahidh? Be quick,” came Kelat’s voice.

“I need you to do a satellite scan of the area about twenty kilometers around this transmission point.” Jay kept looking at Cor’s body, noting how it didn’t move. “Stone in the Wall’s relatives are on the run and I need to know where they’ve gone.”

“It won’t be easy,” said Kelat. “But I’ll make it my work.”

Kelat closed the line and Jay disengaged his disk from the torque.

Do you know, Kelat, he thought toward the canyon wall, you’ve just described this whole fool Reclamation.

Jay whistled and waved to a quartet of silhouettes that he was fairly sure were soldiers. He’d have to tell Heart. He’d have to tell them all that they’d been betrayed. He’d have to, if they were to keep going, and they had to keep going.

Because now there was absolutely nothing else to do.

It was four hours past dark before the transport was towered from the tether’s end. Avir had to order Ivale to come with her and she was ready to swear that if there had not been a host of Beholden to see, he would have balked at the assignment

Sealed in pressure suits, Avir, Ivale, and Nal walked down the steps to meet the transport. Darkness and the accompanying cold cleared the streets of even the most lost of the artifacts.

From the outside, the transport was little more than a computerized box with thick, heavy tires that could grip and climb even the Home Ground’s chaotic terrain. As they approached, a door in the side lifted away, letting loose a flood of clear light.

Nice dressing, thought Avir as she squinted up the ramp that was lowering and tried to find her footing. She wasn’t sure how she felt about a security team leader with a sense of the dramatic.

The door closed behind them and Avir’s eyes adjusted to the light. It was a standard transport: drive boards in the front, seating for a dozen passengers down the middle, comm terminals at the rear, and storage lockers lining the walls. Eight of the seats were filled with the security team; males and females with brown or pinkish skins and all as bald as Ambassadors. The team leader got out of the pilot’s chair as soon as Avir walked up the ramp, but did not make obeisance until her eyes had had a chance to adjust.

The name he handed her was Security Chief Panair of the Hundredth Core. Avir accepted it with a nod. She didn’t trust her voice. It felt too good to be between soundproofed walls breathing air that was free of any kind of reek.

Security Chief Panair was not one to waste time. He accepted her silence as she had accepted his name and returned to his station. He snapped the seat restraints across his waist and passed his hands over the controls. The hum of the engines heightened its pitch.

Avir took the farthest seat on the empty row. Ivale stood aside to let Nal sit next to her. Avir wished she was free to roll her eyes. Ivale was being positively childish.

The transport lurched forward and Avir tried to resign herself to a long, dull trip. Outside the windows, the night brought down lashings of rain and ice carried on a wind that shook the transport. Panair kept his eyes on the boards, Avir noticed. Despite his bright running lights, he was navigating more by the satellite transmission on the terminals than by line of sight.

The journey wore on. The transport lurched and rattled through a landscape that could barely be seen, and Ivale’s silence began to wear on Avir’s nerves. Nal was using the seat’s terminal, absorbed in his own work, but Ivale just sat with his eyes kept rigidly forward, watching the blobs of shadow that passed through the transport’s lights so quickly that it was often difficult to tell if they were trees or mere stones.

Avir sat back and tried to feel sympathy for him. This was not what any of them had been chosen for. They were supposed to convert a series of buildings for use by the Vitae and begin researches on the artifacts. They were not a boarding party, even if the team surrounding them were.

Panair swung the transport to the left and they lurched up a steep incline. The lights showed up nothing but rocks, boulders, and mud.

“Approaching the Unifier shelter,” Panair announced.

Avir looked out the window automatically, but there was nothing there except stone and shadow. The terminal on Panair’s board showed a smooth-sided dome, glowing with incandescent light and heat in the infrared spectrum.

Avir felt her beating heart rise until it filled her throat.

The white dome drifted into view. The transport ground to a halt and the door lifted itself open. The security team leapt out and dived straight for the dome’s entrance, leaving Avir, Ivale, and Nal trailing, a little stunned, in their wake.

“What…!” shouted a man’s voice inside the dome.

Avir stepped under the canopy over the entranceway but couldn’t see anything through the open door except piles of camp equipment and Panair’s back.

“Stand still and be identified,” barked Panair.

“All right, all right, I’m standing. Look, here I am.”

Avir stepped sideways, squeezing between the wall and a stack of storage crates. Panair, dart gun out and ready, faced a bony, brown-bearded man with a hand lamp and a tool belt raised up over his head. Behind him, incongruously, a fire burned in an empty crate. Next to it, an artifact lay on a pallet of blankets, staring at the ceiling. Its mouth moved constantly, but it made no sound, nor was it paying any attention to what was going on around it.

Avir, forgetting dignity and propriety, hurried to the artifact’s side. She knelt and unsealed her glove. She touched its skin. It was clammy and goose bumps prickled its dusky surface. Its eyes were glazed over and flickered back and forth, seeing something, but nothing that was in the room. Nal knelt beside her and also touched the artifact. He measured its pulse and fever with his expert hands and his mouth tightened.

“What did you do here?” Avir demanded of the bony man.

“It’s hard to explain,” he said. “Who in the backwaters are you lot?”

In answer, Ivale removed his helmet. The man saw Ivale’s bald head and the neck of his scarlet rappings.

“Vitae,” the Unifier croaked. “Jay…”

“You will be questioned about him before long,” Avir stood. “But first you will explain what has happened to this artifact?”

The Unifier cast about as if he needed to try to identify what she was talking about. “Broken Trail?” he said finally. “I…” His gaze slid sideways to the security team. Two stood beside the door. Two more stood on either side of the dome and one had stationed herself beside the open hatchway in the floor. Avir wondered for a moment if the Unifier was going to make some escape gesture. She hoped not. If they had to dart him, it would be hours before they got any information at all.

But he didn’t. He just sighed so heavily that his bony shoulders heaved. “It would be easier to show you.” He tilted his head to indicate the trapdoor.

“Do so,” ordered Avir, and she switched to the Proper tongue. “Bio-tech, tend the artifact. Stabilize her if you can.”

“You hold my name,” said Nal absently. He was busy fumbling in his tool belt for analysis patches.

Panair climbed down the rope ladder first, followed by one of his Beholden. After a long moment, he shouted, “Clear!”

“Go,” Avir said to the Unifier.

With another resigned sigh, he fastened his tool belt around his waist and climbed down the ladder like it was something he’d been doing all his life.

Avir envied his poise as she herself descended. The ladder wriggled and wobbled under her weight. She was very glad to see the Unifier didn’t dare to grin at her when she stood beside him. Avir was not surprised to see the string of lights that led down the corridor and glinted off curved walls of translucent silicate that held back drifting shadows.

This was Avir’s first chance to see the shadowy containers up close. She leaned toward the wall, pressing her hands against the smooth, cool surface. She watched the blobs that moved with a fluid grace and random pattern. She swallowed hard. It was as if they stood in a vein the Ancestors had sunk into the world and were now surrounded by the blood the Vitae had sworn by for all their centuries.

Ivale and six of the security team descended the ladder, one by one. Panair waited until the last of them were down before he gestured for the Unifier to lead them onward.

The shadowed corridor was one continuous archway extending toward a second drop. The Unifier took them down another rope ladder and down a second corridor toward a brightly lit arch. Shadows drifted silently past them and Avir felt them like a weight sliding across her skin.

The archway opened into a chamber. Avir’s gaze slid over the more ordinary ruins—the empty tables and rotted chairs. It caught for a moment on the banks of empty sockets and gleaming stones. Then it swept the room, trying to take in everything at once. She saw tanks of gelatinous matter bulging from the walls. Bundles of capillary-like tubes pressed against the chamber’s walls. Blobs and nodules of silicate, all seamless, held viscous liquids that rippled like the shadows in the corridor did. Star-shaped patterns pressed against the skin of what could have been a table. Nerves. The liquid pulsed in the smooth bank of empty sockets against the far wall as if controlled by a heartbeat.

There was no question of it in Avir’s mind. This place was alive.

Avir felt her own breathing become shallow. “How big is this place?” she asked, not caring about the hushed tone the Unifier couldn’t possibly miss.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve mapped out about ten square kilometers’ worth of tunnels. Not that it’s done that much good.” There was a smirk in his voice. “Half the stuff back of the walls and tanks didn’t even show up until we’d had the lights on twenty-four hours. And you should see what’s down there.” He nodded to a second archway.

“Ivale, see what you can find out about this place,” she said, already halfway to the other arch and barely aware that the two Security Beholden had closed ranks to follow her.

Avir knew she was letting herself get distracted. Exploration should wait until they had the proper personnel, but she kept right on going. There was no light, except what was at their backs. One of the Beholden raised a hand lamp to light her way.

Ahead, the corridor curved. A burst of red light flashed off the smooth, clear walls. It flashed again, and again. Avir’s steps quickened. The footsteps of the Security Beholden echoed as they marched behind her.

She rounded the curve and the pulse of light hit her right in the eyes. Dazzled, she dropped her gaze and raised her hand. She saw the reflection of another flash on her own boots. The shadows under the surface of the corridor roiled as if in response. The intensity of the light faded as her faceplate darkened.

At last, Avir could look up again. She stood less than a meter from a cavernous opening. The corridor came out near its ceiling, but the floor, if existent, was invisible. The far wall was likewise lost in shadow. From darkness to darkness stretched more of the Ancestors’ veins. Avir knew they must be enormous, but the cavern around them made them look like silken threads. They crossed each other and spread out again at every angle. It was a geometrician’s dream. It was the work of a thousand spiders over a thousand years. The ruby light flashed down the threads like bottled lightning. A single strand flashed on the edge of her line of sight. A dozen lit up right in front of her. Ten meters below, five, now ten, now twenty, horizontal strands pulsed with light and then blacked out all at once. Pulses of light raced up and down the verticals, chasing each other through the network of threads.

Peripherally, she noticed a platform in front of her, obviously made for movement into the vast network. Flat balconies and bubbles that could have enclosed rooms were supported by the threads. This was a complex. People, the Ancestors or the artifacts, traveled into the heart of this gigantic web of light and…did what?

“There is yet more work in the heart of the Ancestors. May those hearts be revealed to me. May my eyes see the wonder of the work…” It took Avir a moment to realize her voice was reciting the Second Grace. She closed her mouth but her eyes couldn’t stop straining to measure and define the impossible wonder spun out in light and glass in front of her.

Then her heart began to thud heavily against her rib cage. It was too much. It was too big and too incomprehensible. As precisely as she could manage, she turned around and shouldered her way between the Security Beholden. The ruby light pulsed and flickered against the corridor’s curved walls, each beat raising the level of unreasoned panic inside her. She didn’t dare run, but she didn’t know how she’d hold herself to a walk.

They were in a hollow world. A hollow world with veins and nerves, and who could know what else. But it lived. She knew that with an utter certainty. Like the artifacts that grubbed on its surface searching for their lost function, it lived.

Avir almost gasped with relief when she crossed the thresholds into the first chamber again.

The Unifier grinned at her. “Something else, isn’t it? And I’ll tell you what, those lights? They weren’t there when we got here. That didn’t start up until we got Broken Trail down here.”

Avir tried to collect herself, but didn’t feel very successful at the attempt. Her mind was full of light and threads. “Explain what you have done.”

Apparently ready to accept his prisoner status, the Unifier described the hunt for Stone in the Wall’s genetic relatives and how Broken Trail was led to the “control bank” to lay her hand on one of the spheres that still remained in the bank’s sockets. He went on to tell about how the lights had switched on in both the chamber and the cavern, and how the artifact had lain in a stupor since then and he wasn’t sure she was ever going to come out of it.

Avir didn’t realize how chilled her cheeks were until she felt the heat of anger rising in them.

“Do you realize what you have done!” she demanded. “You animal without Lineage!” Her fists clenched. “You played with the work of the Ancestors without even a preliminary test? Without a survey or any kind of analysis! You thought you could just…”

“We were in a hurry,” he said blandly. “We’d had word your lot was coming down like vengeance on this place for no particular reason, except maybe the people.”

Little by little, Avir clamped down on her emotions. This was not just unseemly, it was unacceptable and grossly unproductive. The Unifier had to be questioned thoroughly by experts. The Reclamation Assembly had to be notified of these developments at once. Measures had to be taken to secure the human artifacts, all of them, immediately, from the Imperialist clutches. Teams had to be brought down here as quickly as possible.

All time was gone. It was already too late. The race had started without them and now they could only run to catch up.

I am child of the Lineage. I will not see the work of the Ancestors end at the hands of the Imperialists. I will not.

Now the real work begins.