Requiem (23 page)

Sear explained
that the material was made of silk protein chloroplasts, that they
convert CO2 into oxygen in the same way plants do but unlike plants
they don't need watering, sunlight or nutrients and are much better
at withstanding the constant acceleration and deceleration aboard
the cruiser.

As the lift
ascended to the top floor, the bridge, Seline tried to steal
sideways glances at Sear. She turned away when he looked at her.
She brushed her fringe back from her face. Sear was about to say
something when the lift door opened directly onto a walkway about
two metres wide. There was a methodical humming sound on either
side of the walkway as the cruiser's computer banks tirelessly
worked away.

'Why's it so
dark in here?' Seline asked in a hushed voice, not wanting to break
the quiet that permeated the bridge.

Although Sear
wasn't whispering, Seline still couldn't shake the dim sense of
veneration that the room commanded. 'You'll have to ask Therin,'
said Sear. 'As the pilot, she sets the atmosphere in here.'

Seline couldn't
see Therin from where she was. She could only see that the walkway
led straight to what Seline rightly assumed was the cruiser's main
debriefing station. There was a large circular plinth about four
metres across for the projection of a holographic display much like
she'd seen in the smaller Yurrick ship. It almost commanded the
entire platform with only the thin walkway leading around its edges
and the computer banks outside that. The station was switched off
at the moment. Seline walked around the debriefing station and
found on its far side there was a small flight of steps leading
down to another, much larger circular platform that looked to be in
the direct centre of the room.

She noticed
Therin, surrounded almost completely by a circular console just
under a metre high and about three metres in diameter. The console
projected a holographic display around her, showing the ship
diagnostics. Therin was idly shifting her hands across the display,
running her eyes over the lists and numbers before pushing the
window to the side and examining another page of figures.

There were a
few other consoles on the lower level but none as impressive as the
pilot's station where Therin was working. Seline looked around the
rest of the bridge, her eyes already adjusted to the lack of light.
The majority of the space inside the bridge looked to be dedicated
to computer hardware. Indeed, it appeared that the platforms they
were standing on were only two small islands in a sea of computers;
the ticking of the processors and heat sinks and whirring of fans
all around her. In a strange kind of way, the ship almost seemed
alive. As if to confirm her feelings, Sear told her that a lot of
the computing power on the bridge, which took up about sixty
percent of the room, was powering the rudimentary AI that
co-ordinated the cruiser – the life support systems, the
anti-matter engine, the combat simulators and the rest of the
systems keeping the cruiser functional, hence the need for only a
skeleton crew to operate the ship.

'So what if
something goes wrong?' Seline asked. 'What if something happens to
the AI?'

'Then we fix
it,' Sear replied. 'We aren't so reliant on the AI that we'd be
dead in the water without it. We know how to repair it and we know
how to run the ship without it.'

Seline looked
up. The ceiling wasn't flat like the other rooms but tapered like
the dome of some ancient cathedral. She caught her breath when she
noticed that at the very top of the dome was a circular hole that
showed the empty space that they were charging against. It looked
not just like a clear hole but the eye of the vacuum itself,
staring down on her, threatening to pull her up and devour her.

She swallowed
but didn't take her eyes off the eye in the ceiling. 'Aren't
windows a structural weakness?' she asked, speaking slowly, not
wanting to agitate the eye.

'They aren't if
you make them strong enough' said Sear. 'That window is actually a
form of transparent carbon fibre. You won't be falling out there
any time soon.'

Sear's calmness
was reassuring but the eye had a long way to go before she would
trust it. She looked down at Therin, working at her console.
Tentatively she asked, 'If the ship is moving that way,' she
pointed her finger straight up in the air, 'then shouldn't the
pilot be facing the same way the ship is going? Don't you need to
be able to see where we're going?'

Without a word
Therin hit one of the keys on her panoramic display and the entire
screen changed to an image of space.

'This is a live
feed from the cruiser's external cameras,' she said

Seline walked
down the steps to Therin's platform. 'Doesn't it get disorienting
having to look at a screen that's in front of you when you're
actually heading upwards?' she asked.

'Generally I
don't pilot the ship while I'm standing but... perhaps it'd be
easier if I showed you.' Therin opened another drop box and hit a
few more keys. A buzzing sound came from beneath the floor and a
piece of the floor sunk down and slid away to the side and a chair,
much like the pilot's chair on the smaller planetary ship rose out
of the open floor cavity only this chair was tipped ninety degrees
backwards so the backrest was parallel with the floor. Once the
chair had come high enough the cavity was sealed beneath it. Therin
dropped herself into it and the holo-display that had been circling
around her disappeared.

Seline looked
up at the eye. 'So you have to pilot the ship by looking through
that tiny hole?'

'Not quite,'
said Therin. She was lying back in her chair thinking for a moment.
'Have you ever seen what it's like to pass through one of the Atlas
Gates before? I mean actually
seeing
the wormhole as you go
through it?'

Seline shook
her head. 'I've only ever been through a handful of gates and for
most of those I was stuck in the cargo-hold.'

'Well today is
your lucky day then,' said Therin.

She opened a
drop box on a smaller screen and navigated through the menus. Her
slender fingers moved confidently, deftly shifting between the
windows and on screen commands with the same grace that she carried
herself with.

Where was the
Therin that had interrogated her for almost two hours? Who'd
threatened her and held her back against the wall of that tiny room
that smelt of metal filings? Who'd openly taunted her and demanded
that she answer her questions? Her inquisitions that had cut into
her like a dull cleaver. Self consciously, Seline tucked her right
hand behind her back.

Therin wasn't
trying to be her best friend but she didn't seem angry in any way.
If Seline had hit any other person like that, even Belameir, then
there'd be at least some kind of reaction, swear words, a thrown
shoe, some kind of empty threat but Therin was almost indifferent
to her – completely neutral. Or maybe it was because Sear was right
behind her or maybe what Mercer said was true; Therin wasn't
holding any grudges. Either way, Seline would keep her guard up.
Therin would have a long way to go to prove she was the exception
to any rule.

Seline heard a
loud metallic
thunk
from above her. She looked up at the
ceiling, at the eye. The outer hull of the ship was steadily
retracting back on itself, back from the apex. As the hull's shell
retracted the eye grew until the glass covered the entire ceiling.
The feeling that she should be getting sucked out into the vacuum
was roaring through her body, keeping her muscles tensed and
forcing a cold sweat through the pores of her skin. Dark lines of
fibre reinforcing climbed over the dome like a spider's web with
the circle as its centre. It was like being inside one of the tacky
snow globes she'd seen at the market stalls in Sinn.

When she
managed to look past the windows themselves and out to space she
noticed a harsh glowing light getting closer by the second. Strands
of neon light, wavering between three cumbersome metal hinges. In
the centre of the hinges was an enormous ball of glass ringed by
white light. A lens. Through it Seline could see what lay beyond,
could see into the next system. It was like staring into a
spherical magnifying glass where the light of the next system was
bending and running together at its visible edges.

The sphere and
the light from the Gate was now dominating the view from their snow
globe. They weren't heading for its centre, more for its edge, but
Seline still had an image in her head of the tiny slow globe
colliding with the lens of the Atlas Gate. Tiny fragments of dust
and splints of glass sailing in every direction.

They were
almost at the Gate. Seline looked across at Sear. 'Are- are we
alright just standing here? I feel like I should be sitting down
for this.'

He said
nothing, only pointed up, indicating for her to keep watching.

Her spine had
been dipped in ice. She wanted to close her eyes but couldn't. The
sphere, the wormhole was right above them now, eclipsing the stars
behind it. The ship remained steady, not a jolt, not a shiver –
nothing, but Seline's head felt like it was rattling itself loose.
They hit the edge of the wormhole. The ship seemed to come to a
complete stop, frictionless and without warning, without even
slowing down. Seline's body was rigid and her arms had reached out
to brace herself for the fall but she remained exactly where she
was. She wanted to look down, to check that everything else hadn't
been thrown forward without her but she couldn't keep her eyes from
the surface of the wormhole, from the light, bending away from her,
bending so hard it might snap. The glimmering of the stars smearing
together in thick bands of light, coursing like rivers over the
horizon of the sphere. The light was static, motionless yet it
shone with a beautiful violence.

The moment she
lost sight of the edge of the sphere the light began to diverge, to
split and refract. The ship was moving again, away from the sphere.
The light that had been bent and stretched and moulded was
separating and trickling into tiny droplets. Like water vapour from
the torrent of a waterfall they spread out over the blanket of
darkness decorating it as if with a kind of deliberateness and
purpose. Two of these glints coalesced into the two distinct
objects that comprised the hearts of this new system. One, a
glowing sphere of neon blue and the other a white disc of light
with a black, lifeless centre. Although the ship automatically
tinted the windows to keep out the blinding light, the brightness
was still hard to look at and the size and texture of the blue
giant and the black hole was mesmerising.

Seline's eyes
hadn't shifted from the cruiser's snow globe window.

'Where are we?'
she asked with a dry throat.

'You would've
been through this system at least twice in your life,' said Sear.
'Both Sol and Saranture lead to here.'

'The Yeta
System?'

Sear nodded.
'Also known as Cygnus X-1. A binary system, as you can see.'

'And if we'd
been going any slower when we hit the Atlas Gate, we would be in
Sol right now,' added Therin.

'I can't
believe I've never actually seen it before,' said Seline.

She realised
she was breathless. She wanted to look down at her hand but was
afraid that it might not be there any more, afraid that if she
looked down she wouldn't be able to find herself, that she'd been
fused into the light as they crossed the path of the wormhole. She
looked anyway. From her hand to Therin to Sear, it was all still
here. She craned her neck back up to the ceiling.

There was a
tether of light between the star and the black hole as if the star
was being siphoned off into the black hole, as if the black hole
was holding onto a lead tied to the star's neck.

She looked down
to find Sear. Even with the tinting, the star's light was still
imprinted on her eyes in a giant white spot. Seline turned and
looked up the stairs to see Sear walking towards the lift.

'We've still
got the most important part of the ship to see.'

'And what's
that?' said Seline.

'The mess
hall.'

Seline started
up the stairs and past the debriefing station. Therin had stood
from her pilot's chair and it was sinking back into the floor while
she looked over her holo-display. Seline looked up one last time at
the star and its companion circling one another. One dragging the
other around against its will, draining its strength and life from
it like some kind of vampire. She thought about asking Sear how
long the star could last but something stopped her. She wasn't sure
why but she thought that she'd rather not know.

They stepped
out of the lift onto the fourth level. Seline could hear Belameir's
voice echoing down the hall. They made their way into the main mess
hall. It was a relatively small space but open and sparsely
decorated. The light fittings ran flush with the ceiling but the
whiteness of the room and tables directly beneath made the room
uncomfortably bright. There was a central dining table and two
smaller tables running along the wall. Seline thought the room
looked eerily similar to the inside of a fast food dining court.
The chairs and tables bolted to the floor so no one would steal
them, the overbearing lights that kept you squinting the whole time
and the over ambitious seating arrangement that always had you
jostling for space on the table whenever there was more than two
people sitting at it.

Mercer was
standing at the dispenser at the opposite wall from where she'd
entered. He was filling a cup while Belameir was lounging on the
central table with his legs crossed over and resting on the back of
one of the seats.

'So no one ever
steals anything?' Belameir said to the back of Mercer's head.