Sunborn (27 page)

    Lamarr looked sharply at both of them. “You can eat later. What are we waiting for?”

    Julie sighed, drained her soymilk, and stood up. “All right. If we’re in a hurry, let’s go see if it’s in a mood to talk.” Lamarr’s eyes seemed to narrow, but he said nothing as Julie excused herself past him.

    Five minutes later Julie, Lamarr, Henry, and Arlene stood together in front of the translator’s crate. The recorders were running. Jose and Ashmar kept their distance, ready to assist if needed. Even before anyone touched the crate, Julie felt the tickle of the translator in her mind.

   
*We are glad you have come.*

   
Julie relaxed a little. /There are others with me. Are you aware of them?/

   
*Yes. It is time we spoke. All of us. Can we trust the others?*

   
Julie blinked in surprise and tried to maintain her composure. /I...think so. I think you have to try./

   
*Very well. Then we will try. There is much for us to discuss.*

   
She must have reacted visibly, because out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lamarr glance at her questioningly. She nodded as she gathered her thoughts, and finally said, “It seems...the translator is eager to speak to us. To
all
 of us.” She faced the sealed crate again. She felt a more expansive presence in her thoughts, then heard in a well-modulated voice:

   
“Greetings to all of you. Thank you for providing transport. Is it possible to open this container, so that we may see each other?”

   
Had that sound come from her stones? Julie glanced around. “My God!” Arlene said. Behind her, Jose was crossing himself, and Ashmar’s mouth was open in wonder. Henry looked as if he were debating whether he’d actually heard something.

    Even Lamarr couldn’t conceal his surprise. “All right,” he said, “let’s get the crate open.” Henry and Julie stepped up to remove the outer cover. It was secured by three large clamps on either side. They each took a side and released the clamps, then lifted off the protective front panel and set it aside. The translator was now visible, pulsing, behind the archival glass of the primary case.

    “Would you like us to open the inner case?” Julie asked the translator.

   
“Yes, please.”

   
Julie turned to find the toolbox carrying the wrenches that would loosen the large bolts on the front of the case. She heard a gasp from Arlene, and looked back. The bolts were slowly turning, backing out of the threaded holes on their own. They dropped with a
clink
to the deck, and Julie and Henry—exchanging glances—lifted the heavy glass front from the case. Now there was nothing between them and the alien device.

    To her surprise, Julie found the translator less overwhelming here, in a crate, than it had been in the ice cavern on Triton. And yet, as she stared at the revolving, iridescent and black spheres, she felt herself drawn, more than ever, by its presence. She felt a sudden
personal
 connection that had been impossible in a large, frozen cavern where she had been encased in a heavy spacesuit. She had to remind herself to breathe. She stepped back slightly, so that they were all gathered in a semicircle in front of the translator.

    “It’s
different
 in person,” Arlene breathed. “It doesn’t look solid, exactly, does it?”

    Julie shook her head. “It seemed to mass about five hundred kilograms when we measured it in the cavern. But in flight, I was told, it barely registered any inertial mass at all. Is that still true?”

    “That’s right,” said Henry. “We measured it three times for the mass calculations for the ship’s acceleration.”

    Lamarr spoke finally, in a gravelly voice that only just betrayed uncertainty. “These are questions,” he said, “to which we may find answers soon. Ms. Stone, does the artifact appear here as it did on Triton?”

    “As far as I can tell.” Without taking her eyes off the alien device, she said, “May we speak to you now?”

    The answer was startlingly resonant.
“We sense a variety of thoughts. Could we know the identities of those who stand before us?”

    “Of course.” Julie hesitated, wondering if she should introduce Lamarr first, or last. She decided to simply go in order, around the semicircle. “This is Lieutenant Henry Cohn, whose job is to help run things aboard the ship. Next is Dr. Keith Lamarr, Special Envoy of MINEXFO, the organization that is...currently responsible for your safe transport.”

   
*And you answer to Dr. Lamarr?*

   
“Y—” she began, then realized that last question had come inside her head. /Yes,/ she said silently. /I answer to him./ Speaking aloud again, she introduced Arlene, then turned to include the cargo-hold workers, in the background.

    Lamarr stepped forward as though to cut off the last introductions, but she pretended not to notice and finished naming Jose and Ashmar. “I think Dr. Lamarr would like to speak to you directly. Is that all right?”

   
“Of course. Dr. Lamarr?”

   
Lamarr spoke in a gravelly voice. “Welcome to our ship, the
Park Avenue
. And greetings, on behalf of Humanity. I confess—there are many things we’re hoping to ask you.”

   
“We are eager to exchange knowledge,”
 the translator said, its black and iridescent balls squirming hypnotically in the light of the holocams.

    “Excellent!” Lamarr said, tapping his notepad. “May I proceed with some questions now?”

    There was a momentary silence. Then:
“We will try to answer your questions. But first we must advise you—there is urgent business we must discuss.”

    “Urgent business? What sort of business?”

    The translator seemed to spin faster.
“Your homeworld is in danger. Grave danger. It is beyond your technology to protect it—but if you will work with us, we can help. Will you do this?”

    Lamarr’s expression of triumph vanished, replaced by astonishment and dismay.

    The knot hit Julie’s stomach again as she remembered the translator’s words to her, months ago. And she found herself holding her breath again, waiting for the translator to explain itself at last.

Chapter 17

Aftershocks

    In the two days since the encounter with the dying star, Bandicut and his companions on
The Long View/One Way Trip
had spent most of their time recovering, sorting things out mentally and emotionally, and trying to understand what they were going to be doing next. It was clear that Jeaves didn’t really know what to expect. From
*
Brightburn
*
they had learned—or they hoped Deep had learned—the location of
*
Nick
*
, the star that was in most immediate danger. But they still had no idea what to do when they got there.
    Ik had talked little since the encounter, and Antares was visibly worried, sitting with him for extended periods. “I feel a great sadness in him,” she murmured to Bandicut as she touched Ik’s wrist. The three of them had been in the common room for an hour, but Bandicut, hungrily consuming a grilled cheese sandwich, was the only one eating. The Hraachee’an was staring down at the table, lost in either pain or meditation. If it weren’t for the fact that he answered—briefly—when spoken to, Bandicut would have worried that he’d gone into some kind of autistic state. “I think he’s trying to find his way through the star’s trauma,” Antares said. “I think it may have taken him back to his own star’s death.”

    Bandicut stopped eating for a moment and gazed at his friend. “Is there anything we can do for him?”

    Antares sighed softly. “I wish I knew.”

*

   
To Ik, the explosion of
*
Brightburn
*
 had been like a flash of fire across the soul, an eruption of the past into the present. Hraachee’a, too, burned in his mind, his own sun incinerating his homeworld.

   
It was a mad, terrible dive into the exploding blue sun, urged on by two fiery gems in his head. He had no idea what the things were. But moments after his ship had tumbled through a debris cloud, he’d felt a sudden electric twinge in his temples. Removing his helmet, he tried to inspect for injury by studying his reflection on the inside of the cockpit canopy. He saw two glowing stones, one embedded on each side of his head. The stinging ceased, but when he rubbed and picked at them, he felt a wordless rebuke.

    Shortly after, they began talking to him, telling him his only hope of escaping death was to fly his ship into the fury of the billowing sun. He thought he had lost his mind. It was terrible.
Terrible!
But he had little choice, since his ship was tumbling out of control. Had he seen other Hraachee’ans do the same? Had they somehow survived? If so, where were they? Where was his world?
A glowing cinder now. Nothing but a cinder.

   
And now another dying star. Did this one have planets? Did it have people, too?
He thought a long time about those who might have lived on planets circling
*
Brightburn
*
, and he wept for them.

   
Ik was aware of John Bandicut at his side, and Antares. He heard Bandicut saying, “Does anyone know where Li-Jared has gotten to?”

    Without knowing why, Ik suddenly found his voice, and focus in his eyes. He clacked his mouth, once. “I believe, hrrm, that Li-Jared has gone to speak with the AI.”

    “Oh, hell,” said Bandicut.

*

   
Somewhere in the rafters of
The Long View,
in the interstices between the various dimensions of n-space that constituted the structure of the ship, Delilah the halo was resting and thinking...and
frustrated.
Frustrated and a little angry. They had just fled from a situation that might have brought useful knowledge, if they had just stayed a little longer. The matter-beings on this ship were too afraid of taking risks. What was the point of undertaking the mission, if they were going to flee every time things got a little dangerous?

   
Granted, matter-life was more vulnerable than she was. And she, in her halo-phase, was less able to slip through the fractional dimensions spying out information than she might have in her shadow-phase. Despite all that, she
knew
they could have spent more time with that star, and learned not just about the star but about the strange forces acting on it. And the more they knew about
that,
the better their chances of intelligently carrying out the mission. It was all embedded in the star’s memories; Delilah could
feel
 it. But she hadn’t had time to do anything about it, before Jeaves and the AI decided to flee to safety out of deference to the matter-life.

    So what now? After all that, the matter-life seemed fractured and disjointed, trying to put pieces of themselves back together. But the robots, now—they appeared to be on to something. Delilah was watching them with interest. And meanwhile, she was scanning forward along the path through n-space. There was something interesting ahead, though she couldn’t tell yet exactly what. But surely there would come a chance to find out.

*

   
Li-Jared, picking his way through obscure corridors of the ship, could not stop muttering to himself as he walked. How much longer could they continue with Jeaves and the AI in control? It was ridiculous. Their present course seemed certain to lead to disaster. Look at what had happened. They’d nearly been toasted in the explosion of a star, and Ik still hadn’t recovered. It looked as if it was up to him to find a way to wrest control of the mission from the AIs. He might not be ready for full mutiny yet, but he was damn well going to lay the groundwork in case it came to that.

    Now, if he could just locate that input node again, the one Copernicus had led him to before. He hadn’t been able to find either of the robots; they seemed totally absorbed in some kind of research with the ship’s library, and never seemed available when he needed them.

    Rounding a bend, Li-Jared came to a yellow-glowing, three-way intersection. This didn’t look familiar at all. He looked right, left. He turned left. The passage began curving sharply, as though it were going to loop back to the other side of the intersection.
So where are we?
After following the curve for what felt like two full circles he arrived, not back at the intersection, but at the entrance to a chamber.
Control station?
 Drawing a breath, he ducked through the entrance and peered around.

   
Well, it
looked
 like a control station. He was in a small room, surrounded by surfaces that glimmered with patches of variously colored light. There were some recesses that resembled the recessed contacts he’d put his hands into, the last time he connected with the shipboard AI. Were they the same? He scratched his chest for a moment, before deciding that there was only one way to find out. He felt a moment of doubt, because he had told no one of his intentions.

   
The hell with it.
 He inserted his hands and felt an immediate, tingling surge of power. It took his breath away as he felt the AI draw close.

    “Ship,” he said.

   
*Li-Jared,*
he heard, once more in the voice of his stones, slightly raised in pitch. It sounded a little different this time.

    “This is the shipboard AI, isn’t it?”

   
*This is the scout craft AI. You are in the control center for Auxiliary Scout Module One.*