The influx of new material from the abandoned station had slowed dramatically, every database and store having been raided and transferred over to theย Gilgamesh. Holstenโs cataloguing duties were mostly done, and now he was merely an on-call translator for when the engineers needed help in getting something working.
Most of his time he spent on Vrie Guyenโs private project, and if he didnโt, Guyen would soon be round wanting to know why.
The ark ship was crawling with unaccustomed life, given that several hundred of its cargo had found themselves prodded back into a waking state light years away from their last memories, given hasty, unsatisfactory explanations of where they were and what needed doing, and then set to work. The ship wasย noisy, and Holsten found himself constantly baffled by the din. Not only was there the shudder and bang of the actual works, but there was the unceasing murmur ofย peopleย doing things likeย livingย andย talkingย and, not to put too fine a point on it, having a good time in a variety of ways. It seemed that everywhere Holsten went he saw impromptu couplesโcould they be anythingย butย impromptu, given their circumstances?โclinched in some manner of embrace.
They made him feel very old, sometimes. They were all so young, just like all theย Gilโs cargo, save for a few tired old specialists like himself.
They were refitting the ark shipโand if I feel like this, how old does theย Gilgameshย feel, eh?โwith all manner of toys ripped out of the station. Not least was a new fusion reactor, which Vitas reckoned would prove more than twice as
efficient as the far more recently built original, and be able to sustain economic acceleration for far longer with the fuel available. Other technology was merely being extrapolated, theย Gilโs systems being fine-tuned after the ancient model.
In Holstenโs mind ran that same litany:ย Coat-tails, coat-tails. They were still clutching at the receding train of the Old Empire, still twisting themselves into knots to stay securely in its shadow. Even as his compatriots celebrated their newfound bounty, all he saw was a people condemning their descendants to evermore be less than they might have been.
Then the message came from Lain: she wanted him over on the satellite. โSome sort of dangerous translation or something,โ to be precise.
Between Guyenโs constant pressure and the aggressively exclusive youth of the rest of the human race, Holsten was feeling quite sorry for himself by that time. He was not particularly looking forward to being made fun of, which was apparently what Engineering thought he was there for. He seriously considered ignoring Lain if she wasnโt even prepared to ask him properly. In the end it was Guyen that decided him, because a trip to the station would give Holsten some blessed relief from the commanderโs vulture-like presence.
He signalled to her that he was coming, and found a shuttle and pilot were ready for him in the bay. On the journey over, he turned the external cameras towards the planet and stared moodily at the fungal grey orb, imagining it reaching upwards, vast building-sized towers of fruiting bodies bloating into the upper atmosphere to seize the tiny intruders that had dared to dispute its complete mastery of the world.
A pair of engineersโfrom Lainโs original Key Crew, he reckonedโwere waiting for him at the station end, assuring him that he wouldnโt need to suit up.
โAll the parts weโre still bothered about are stable,โ they explained. When Holsten asked them what the problem actually was, they just shrugged, blithely unconcerned.
โChiefโll tell you herself,โ was all he got from them.
And finally he was almost unceremoniously shoved into a chamber in the second rotating ring segment, where Lain was waiting.
She was sitting at a table, apparently about to start on a meal, and for a moment he hovered in the hatchway, assuming that his timing was off as usual, before noticing that there were utensils for two.
She raised her eyebrows challengingly. โCome on in, old man. Got some tens-of-thousands-of-years-old food here. Come and do history to it.โ
That actually got him into the room, staring at the unfamiliar food: thick soups or sauces, and greyish chunks that looked uncomfortably as if they might have been hacked from the planet below them. โYouโre joking.โ
โNope, food of the ancients, Holsten. Food of the gods.โ
โBut thatโs โฆ surely it canโt still be edible.โ He sat himself across from her, staring down in fascination.
โWeโve been living on it for almost a month now, over here,โ she told him. โBetter than the pap theย Gilย churns out.โ
A loaded pause came and went, and Holsten looked up sharply as she gave a bitter little laugh.
โMy starter gambit worked too well. Youโre not supposed to actuallyย beย that interested in the food, old man.โ
He blinked at her, studying her face, seeing in it the extra hours she had put in, both here on the station, and in sporadic waking days during the journey from Kernโs World, while making sure the ship didnโt consume more of its precious cargo by malfunction and error.ย Weโre a good match now, Holsten realized.ย Look at the two of us.
โSo this is โฆโ He made a gesture at the assortment of bowls on the table and ended up getting some sort of orange goo on his finger.
โWhat?โ Lain demanded. โItโs nice here, isnโt it? All the conveniences: light, heat, air and rotational gravity. This is the lap of luxury, believe me. Hold on, wait a moment.โ She fiddled with something at the table edge, and the wall to Holstenโs left began to fall away. For a heart-stopping moment he had no idea what was happening, save that the dissolution of the entire station appeared to be imminent. But there was a somewhat clouded transparency left behind after the outer shutters groaned open and, beyond it, the vastness of the rest of creation. And one more thing.
Holsten was staring out at theย Gilgamesh. He had not seen it from the outside before, not properly. Even when being returned to it after the mutiny, he had passed from shuttle interior to ark ship interior without even thinking about the great outdoors. After all, in space the great outdoors existed mostly to kill you.
โLook, you can see where weโre putting the new stuff in. All looks a bit tatty, doesnโt it? All those micro-impacts on the way, all that vacuum erosion. The old boyโs certainly not what he was,โ Lain remarked softly.
Holsten said nothing.
โI thought it would be โฆโ Lain started. She tried a smile, then began another one. He realized that she was unsure of him, nervous even.
He navigated his way across the table to touch her hand, because frankly neither of them was good with those sort of words, nor were they young enough to have the patience to fumble through them.
โI canโt believe how fragile he looks.โ The future, or lack of it, decided by the fate of that metal eggโtatty, patched and, from this vantage point, howย smallย theย Gilgameshย looked.
They ate thoughtfully, Lain progressing from brief moments where she talked far too fast, trying to force on a conversation for the patent reason that she felt they should be having one, then subsiding into longer stretches of
companionable quiet.
At last, Holsten grinned at her, out of one of those periodic silences, feeling the youth of the expression stretch his face. โThis is good.โ
โI hope it is. Weโre shipping tons of the stuff over to the
Gil.โ
โI donโt mean the food. Not just that. Thank you.โ
After they had eaten, and with the rest of Lainโs crew tactfully out of sight and out of mind, they retired to another room she had carefully prepared. It had been a long time since their previous liaison on theย Gilgamesh. It had been centuries, of courseโlong, cold spacefaring centuries. But itย seemedย a long time, also. They were part of a species that had become unmoored from time, only their personal clocks left with any meaning for them while the rest of the universe turned to its own rhythms and cared nothing for whether they lived or died.
There had been those back on Earth who claimed the universe cared, and that the survival of humanity was important, destined,ย meant. They had mostly stayed behind, holding to their corroding faith that some great power would weigh in on their behalf if only things became so very bad. Perhaps it had: those on the ark ship could never know for sure. Holsten had his own beliefs, though, and they did not encompass salvation by any means other than the hand of mankind itself.
โWhatโs he after?โ Lain asked him later, as they lay side by side beneath a coverlet that had perhaps been some ancient terraformerโs counterpane thousands of years before.
โI donโt know.โ
โI donโt know either.โ She frowned. โThat worries me, Holsten. Heโs even got his own engineers doing all the work, you know that? He took his pick from the cargo, woke up a bunch of second-stringers and made them his own personal tech crew. Now theyโre installing all that stuff youโre helping him with, fitting theย Gilย with it. And I donโt know what it
does. I donโt like having things on my ship that do things I donโt know about.โ
โAre you asking me to betray the commanderโs trust?โ Holsten was joking as he said it, but then he was suddenly stung by the thought, โIs that what this is about?โ
Lain stared at him. โDo you think that?โ โI donโt know what to think.โ
โWhat this isย about, old man, is me wanting to scratch an itch without messing up the way my crew works and โฆโ He could hear her trying to harden the edge in her voice, and hear it crack a little, even as she did so. โAnd you know what? Iโve been on my own a lot over the last โฆ what? Two hundred fucking years, is what. Iโve been on my own, walking around theย Gilย and keeping him together. Or with some of my crew, sometimes, to fix stuff. Or sometimes Guyen was there, like thatโs better than being on your own. And there was all that mad stuff โฆ the mutiny, the planet โฆ and I feel like I forget how to talk to people, sometimes, when itโs notโnot the job. But you โฆโ
Holsten raised an eyebrow.
โYouโre fucking awful at talking to people too,โ she finished viciously. โSo maybe when youโre around it doesnโt feel so bad.โ
โThank you very much.โ โYouโre welcome.โ
โGuyenโs thing, itโs for uploading peopleโs brains into a computer.โ It felt oddly good for him to no longer be the sole custodian of that information. Otherwise, only Guyen knew, as far as Holsten was aware. Even his tame engineers were just working to rote, each on their own piece.
Lain considered that. โIโm not sure if thatโs a great thing.โ โIt could be very useful.โ Holstenโs tone of voice did not
even convince himself.
Lain merely made a soundโnot a word, not anything reallyโjust to show him sheโd heard him. It left Holsten turning over in his mind what little he had learned about the device from the technical manuals Guyen had set him to work on. They had all been written for people who alreadyย knewย what the device did, of course. There was no handy moment when the authors had stopped and gone back to explain the basics for their unthinkably distant monkey descendants.
Holsten was becoming sure that he now knew what the upload facility was, though. More, he thought that he might have seen the result of one, and what happened when someone was mad enough to make themselves its subject.
For out there, in the distant dark around another world, in her silent metal coffin, was Doctor Avrana Kern.