Eternity's End (75 page)

YZ/I stopped in the middle of lighting his cigar. "You don't know why you did what you did?"

"We know why we made certain decisions. But in the larger sense—it all happened so fast that by the end we were operating almost wholly on instinct."

YZ/I puffed. "And once it was over, and you had some time to reflect back on it?"

Legroeder snorted. "Once we got out of the flaw, we had a little something else to think about—a ship named
Hunter
. I presume Captain Glenswarg informed you about our brush with KM/C?"

"Yes, he did," YZ/I said. "It was exactly as we feared—Carlotta did not take kindly to having their prize lure taken out of the water."

"No." Legroeder reflected back on the discovery that his former captain was trying to kill him. "No, they did not."

"Well, I'm glad our people were able to take care of it without too much trouble," YZ/I said casually. "I understand you people were very good in the fight, too."

"Thank you," said Palagren with, Legroeder noted, a dry Narseil sarcasm that YZ/I almost certainly missed.

"But back to what you were saying—about your findings."

"Well—" Legroeder drew a deep breath "—we don't have a definitive picture of the quantum flaw yet. We do have a huge amount of information that we're still analyzing."
And mapping? Is that what's going to come out of all this?

YZ/I stared at him for a moment. "Still analyzing. Okay. But tell me this: are my ships in danger of disappearing into the quantum flaw the way
Impris
did? If you recall, that was one of the things I sent you to find out." He rippled with white light, flicking his gaze from one rigger to the next.

Legroeder's head hurt, buzzing with a sudden burst of activity from the implants. "I think they are," he said at last.

"You
think
they are? You
think
they're in danger?"

Legroeder drew another slow breath under YZ/I's glare, and caught a slight nod from Palagren and Cantha. "Let me rephrase. The danger exists, definitely. It can happen again, and probably will. But I can't tell you—
yet
—exactly
where
the dangers exist..." He shook his head; it suddenly felt full of cobwebs. He wasn't purposely being vague. And yet his thoughts... what the devil was going on?

"Why not?" YZ/I demanded, puffing smoke. "Are you saying you don't
have
the knowledge? Or that you aren't planning to
share
it with us?" His voice was suddenly full of needles.

"Uh—"

Palagren raised a hand to interrupt. "May I be so bold as to ask a question in return?"

YZ/I cocked his head, frowning. "You may ask."

"Thank you. I was just wondering, what would we expect in return for providing that kind of information?"

YZ/I's eyes narrowed. He clicked his teeth together, though whether in surprise or admiration of Palagren's bluntness wasn't clear. "Well, I promised you the ship, and your freedom, didn't I?"

He paused a beat, and Palagren said, "When?"

"
Eventually
. What do you want? Some kind of preferred treatment?"

Palagren opened his mouth and closed it. "Could you define 'eventually'? And 'preferred treatment'?"

YZ/I glared around his cigar. "Better than nonpreferred treatment. Let's quit screwing around. How useful
is
your information?"

Legroeder felt his own lips tighten, as Palagren made a soft hissing sound.
Useful isn't the right word,
he thought.
Indispensable is more like it, if it's what I think it is
.

"Look," YZ/I said. His eyes flicked from one to another. "You all went out and risked your lives to bring this ship back, on the strength of my promise to release you. Right? Well, if I repeated that promise now, would it make any difference? I could still renege just as easily, if that's what you're afraid of."

How reassuring, Legroeder thought, noting that YZ/I had
not
repeated the promise. The Narseil seemed to be waiting for Legroeder to respond; this was human psychological territory. He cleared his throat.

"What?" YZ/I asked.

Legroeder let his breath escape. "We're not trying to hold out on you. But until the information is processed—which we cannot do overnight—there's only so much we
can
share. Right, Palagren? Cantha?"

Palagren's neck-sail rippled in agreement.

YZ/I squinted through the cigar smoke. "All right, then—let's back off a little. Tell me what you
do
know. Tell me what it felt like." He waved his hands, inviting elaboration. "You were caught in this fold. Tell me what your
instincts
told you was going on..."

Palagren made a hissing sound, and began to describe the riggers-eye view of their flight out through the quantum flaw...

"The passage was utterly harrowing," the Narseil concluded.

"To say the least," Legroeder muttered.

Palagren glanced at him. "And I don't know how repeatable it would be. I think we were very, very lucky."

YZ/I looked troubled, as they by turns described their experiences. He questioned each of them with urgency, and a surprising degree of technical understanding. Legroeder was struck by how similar their impressions were in general, and yet how different in detail. Deutsch, in some ways, had the most interesting experience, since he'd been leading a team of human riggers who were wholly unprepared mentally. "Those men had some images during the transit that I would not want to see again in the net," Deutsch murmured, the modulated tones of his synthetic voice belying the emotions that Legroeder guessed he was feeling. "If we had not been so closely linked to
Phoenix
, I doubt we'd have made it through."

"I must speak with these
Impris
riggers," YZ/I mused, when Deutsch finished. "But gentlemen—I'm still waiting to hear what caused
Impris
to fall into the fold in the first place. Was it just bad luck—or did they do something wrong, eh?" He squinted through the cigar smoke boiling in the air, and suddenly his manner seemed to suggest that they were old friends, catching up. "Was it because they'd rigged together too many times? Or was it their route?" He held out his hands. "
Tell me why
."

It was Cantha who replied. "We don't know for sure. We had only a brief time with the
Impris
riggers, before the time distortions forced us to act." Cantha's dark-green cheeks puffed out, and his oval eyes stretched even further, vertically, making him look like a large cobra.

"You have no opinion on why she was trapped, then?"

Cantha flicked his fingers. "If you want my
opinion
—I believe there was an element of bad luck in the route they followed. They may have frequented a route that took them—perhaps over and over—close to the folds, and the underlying flaw, without their ever being aware of it. They may have been perilously close on those occasions when they reported difficulty. And then, one time, they didn't just come close."

"They fell in?"

"Precisely." Cantha paused. "This flaw is extremely long, and possibly infinite, and branches through several dimensions. I doubt it's an isolated cosmological phenomenon. Other flaws may be closer to the surface in some places and farther in others. But in any case, difficult to detect, with our current state of knowledge."

Legroeder stirred. "Cantha's being way too conservative. Coming out of the flaw, I saw
quite clearly
... that space is
full
of these things." He gazed hard at YZ/I. "If you want to find them the hard way, the surest thing you can do is send a whole fleet through the underflux."

A long silence followed, during which YZ/I seemed frozen. Then he breathed again, and rose slowly to his feet. "Gentlemen," he said, "I want to show you something." As he turned, the back wall of his command center paled, and a doorway opened. "If you would follow me, please..."

Legroeder and the others exchanged glances as they followed YZ/I down a darkening passageway. The only light, for a few seconds, came from YZ/I's body, and the tip of his cigar. Then all the darkness around slowly came to life with stars, a sprinkling at first, and then a multitude. The stars were below them as well as above, and on all sides. They seemed to be standing on a narrow catwalk, suspended in space. Legroeder's pulse quickened as he saw the swirl of the galactic spiral arm; then the stars slowly wheeled until they were looking directly into the Sagittarian sector, in the direction of the galactic core. Out in those clusters of stars and nebulas, he knew, lay the Well of Stars, the next great sector of space to be colonized. By the Free Kyber, if YZ/I had his way.

"You know why I've brought you here?" YZ/I asked, his voice reverberating softly among the stars. No one answered. YZ/I raised a hand, and the stars slowly softened to a blur, until they were looking at a vast chart of the Flux, of the territory between where they were now, and the Well of Stars. The view changed gradually, reflecting a descent into ever-deeper levels of the Flux. "Gentlemen, I have only one overriding interest. And that is for you to show me: where are the quantum flaws that endanger my fleet?" He turned and his eyes burned with light. "Rigger Legroeder, you say you saw them. Can you put them on the map for me?"

Legroeder hesitated. He thought about the information that the implants had displayed to him—arrays of spacetime splinters that stretched out toward infinity through the underflux. He felt his implants continuing to buzz as they sifted through the mountains of information. He felt near-certainty that he would, in time, be able to produce just such a map. But not yet. Not until the implants finished their work. For a moment he reached out, as though to touch the Flux. Then he stopped and shook his head. "Not yet. But later, I think—after we've analyzed the information—"

"Later," YZ/I echoed. "I see. And where
is
all this raw data that you need to analyze?"

Legroeder felt himself unable to speak.

"Some of it is in our data records," Cantha volunteered. "But most—"

"Is where?" YZ/I growled.

Legroeder felt a shortness of breath. Why couldn't he just say it?

Freem'n Deutsch floated forward. "It is in our minds, YZ/I. And our augments. That is probably where the most important part of it is." He glanced at Legroeder. "And Legroeder here... well, you seem to have seen more of it than the rest of us. That talent of yours..."

Legroeder started to speak, but something caught in his mind. He felt as if a fog were settling back around his brain, as if some part of him were resolutely determined not to share with anyone.

"I believe," Cantha said, "that the only way to wholly clarify the information is to bring
Impris
and her crew to the Narseil Rigging Institute for study. There, I am certain, we will find the answers we need."

A circlet of light slid up YZ/I's body like a ring on a pole. "The Narseil Institute." YZ/I looked as if he were involved in a long inner dialogue, against the swirling colors of the Flux. He was silent a long time. Finally he said, "No, I don't believe that will do. I believe what we will do is study the ship
here
, quite thoroughly. And see if we can't learn the answers ourselves. Eh?"

The Narseil riggers stiffened. Legroeder tried not to betray the tension in his own throat as he said carefully, "You did promise to release the ship to return home."

YZ/I looked faintly amused. "And so I shall... in due course. But we have extremely capable people here, and here is where the study will be done. After all—would you expect me to believe that the Narseil Institute, if it had custody of
Impris
, would gladly hand over all of its findings to the Free Kyber Republic?"

The Narseil were silent.

YZ/I leveled a gaze at Legroeder. "And what about the knowledge in
your
head?"

Legroeder studied the palms of his hands for a moment. "I've... already told you what I saw and felt."
Threads of light, a web work of flaws... the beginnings of the map that would come
...

"But the rest of it... the
hard data
..."

Legroeder swallowed.

YZ/I was flickering like a ghost come alive.

Legroeder felt behind his ears. That buzzing vagueness... a feeling of cotton stuffed between himself and the implants. "I don't... know. These are Narseil implants. I'm... having a little trouble getting access to some of the information myself." His voice sounded stupid even to himself, as he said it.
What are these damn implants doing to me?

YZ/I pulsed as if he were about to explode. "You're having difficulty gaining access? Well, then—" he glanced at the Narseil "—maybe we can
help
you get access. We have people here who are quite expert in that sort of work." Legroeder recoiled in alarm, as YZ/I closed his eyes for a moment and appeared to subvocalize. His eyes opened. "Some of my people will be coming to take you to our labs. We'll see what we can do, eh?" He took a puff from his cigar, blew the smoke out into the Flux. "Just helping, you understand. All right?"

Legroeder stared at him, appalled.
Helping,
he thought, images of DeNoble flashing in his mind. Indoctrination... reinforcement... punishment...
I know how the Kyber like to help
. "Oh, no you don't," he whispered, barely aware of his own voice speaking.

YZ/I smiled chillingly. "Oh, yes I do." He raised his chin slightly and spoke past him. "Yes, Lieutenant—in here with your men."

Chapter 37

Final Analysis

The room didn't look that terrible, really; it was a plain white laboratory, with a couple of high-backed, padded seats that might have been in a dentist's office. But when the tech pointed toward one of the seats, Legroeder found himself thinking of the outpost's maintainers working in their little artificial world in a vault, and the guards and med-techs who kept them there.

Legroeder kept his gaze implacable and stood unmoving in the center of the room. He wished to hell now he'd fought this business in YZ/I's office, but it hadn't seemed a smart idea at the time. And now his Narseil friends had been whisked away elsewhere, supposedly to report to their own commander.
I may have no choice about this, but I'll be damned if I'm going to just step into it for them
.