Part 12 (1/2)

Negligently, Samael raised one hand and made a scooping gesture. Tristen knew it was the colony, but there was still something unsettling about dozens of ripe, velvety fruits gliding through the air to hover before him.

Tristen also knew better than to let the angel see he was disconcerted. He just produced a mesh from his armor, bundled the figs-except a slightly crushed one-into it, and handed them back to Mallory, who accepted without comment.

Tristen was contemplating splitting that last bruised fruit with the necromancer when a shrill, panicked sound cut the green chatter. A long trumpeting, harsh and hollow, echoed to a sharp fall.

The jungle was far too dense for running. With a glance at the others, Tristen tossed the fig away and broke into a careful canter, bouncing from foothold to foothold, twisting between trunks. Sound echoed confusingly in the confines of the Heaven, bouncing back from a ceiling invisible through the canopy overhead, m.u.f.fled and refracted by verdant greenery and the hard shapes of tree trunks. He cupped his hands to his ears as it faded, hoping to hear enough that his colony could help triangulate location and distance for the source.

”Fan out,” Tristen said, as Samael's avatar vanished in a swirl that glittered like sun-struck dust, leaves and bits of insect carapace bouncing gently off the turf.

If this were a lure to ambush, it was hard to say if staying together or parting company would be safer-but it was definitely the more effective means by which to search.

Tristen hoped the angel was already doing what he ordered. For himself, he moved light-footed in the direction from which he estimated the cry had come. It repeated; this time he was closer, he thought, and he got a better fix.

”Here,” Samael said in his ear.

He turned, and found himself looking through a curtain of leaves at the back of Mallory's head. Vigilant, he moved toward it, his nostrils full of the steam of the jungle and some ranker scent. Heavy, musty. Musky.

”d.a.m.n,” he said, as he came up beside the necromancer, and the object of Mallory's attention cried again in obvious fear and distress.

The quadruped was the largest animal Tristen had ever seen. He estimated the weight at over two hundred kilograms, though it was hard to tell precisely because its body was covered with a coa.r.s.e, grizzled coat of strands as long as Tristen's forearm. It stood approximately chest height, its high, double-domed head decorated with two small, flapping ears and a prehensile appendage that groped frantically toward the nearest fig tree.

Its broad, splay-toed, hind foot, Tristen saw, was jammed between two angled, overgrowing roots, and in its panic it was only wedging itself further.

”What in the world is that?”

”A baby wooly mammoth,” Samael said, coalescing beside him. ”If it were to become full-grown, it might weigh in excess of fifteen tons.” The angel shook his head.

”But where did it come from?”

Samael glanced at him, long, droopy face rearranging itself in surprise. ”Biosystems failure,” he said. ”It's an emergency option.”

”You're responsible for this?”

”Oh, no,” Samael said. ”It's autonomous. When the world is so damaged that its habitats are in danger of collapse, it is programmed to go into a recovery mode that includes releasing a selection of random cloned species, to see which become established.” He gestured to the mammoth. ”Apparently, some of them are truly random.”

Tristen stared at the mammoth. Confronted with the apparent intractability of its situation, it had quieted, but he did not think that quiet in this case equated with calm. Instead, it cringed back against its tethering foot, trunk coiling and uncoiling nervously as it watched them through its fringe.

”A mammoth,” he said, glancing to the silent Mallory for confirmation, as if repeating it would help him concretize. ”A mammoth.”

Samael nodded. ”There's no way to support her, of course. She'll have to be sacrificed.”

The sword on Tristen's hip murmured, Save her.

11.

aimless angels

Shall the companions make a banquet of him? Shall they part him among the merchants? Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? Or his head with fish spears?

-Job 41: 6a7, King James Bible

Caitlin would have far rather returned Jsutien to an acceleration bay or, failing that, a hospital tank, but he was awake now and she was stuck with him. Well, technically the hospital tank was still an option, but an Exalt didn't need that much resource support for a simple skull fracture, and Caitlin thought Jsutien would require little attention while sleeping off his injury.

Also, she needed him and she didn't trust him, and she didn't really want him out of her sight. So she left him tucked in a corner of Central Engineering, one arm nanoshackled to the magnetized leg of his cot. While he snored she directed survey operations and created prioritized lists of existing damage, impending damage, and available consumables for Nova's convenience.

Status one was to repair, patch, or at least seal off catastrophic injury to the world-anything that represented an immediate danger to integrity, biosystems, or consumable or static resources. The irony being that many of those consumable resources would be consumed in the process of effecting the necessary repairs.

A quandary, but if G.o.d had made the world perfect, there would be no need for evolution.

Pursuant to those goals, Caitlin inst.i.tuted protocols geared toward halting the expansion of null zones and the establishment of new ones, diagnosing the source, and regaining control of existing ones as rapidly as possible. Reinforcing the superstructure, collecting raw material, and choosing an immediate harvestable destination were also driving priorities.

Further down the list fell niceties such as stabilizing the world's biosystems. Caitlin ranked crew comfort close to last. They could stay in the acceleration pods.

And if it came to pa.s.s that she needed to sacrifice some percentage of them to keep the rest alive-an eventuality she was not yet prepared to face as anything but a hypothetical-it would be easier to make the decision if they were still in suspension.

Seated at the console Bened.i.c.k had repaired, Caitlin rested her forehead against the backs of her fingers and sighed in exhaustion.

”We're still bleeding atmosphere and water?” She rubbed her aching hands. Her overstressed colony wasn't managing much damage control against the small aches and agonies of life. For a moment Caitlin thought of Bened.i.c.k, the strength of his hands and how they could ease the ache. She bit her cheek and swept memories aside.

The angel's voice was soothing and neutral. ”Faster than we can replenish them, Chief Engineer. At this point, we are mostly losing consumables by capillary bleed, though the Captain has caught two more catastrophic unmakings, though only by having the Captain review feeds from external video motes. Generally a tiny leak is harder to locate and seal than a vast one, but-”

”You're still having problems seeing things?”

”It is a concern,” the angel admitted.

Caitlin was already learning to determine the new angel's moods, despite its tendency to sound more methodical than personable. A matter of integration, she thought. As it brought its shattered personalities closer to consensus, it might find more range and depth of response. In the meantime, much of the processing power that could otherwise have gone to independent action and autonomous thought was bound up merely continuing the process of integration. And Perceval was a relatively inexperienced Captain, which meant that much of the executive guidance and disaster response had to come from Caitlin, the Chief Engineer.

A Chief Engineer who right this instant bitterly missed Susabo, the former Angel of Propulsion. Or even Inkling, who would not have had to be so carefully led. The most frustrating part was that she knew Susabo and Inkling were both present there inside Nova, somewhere-just not yet entirely compiled into the whole. Caitlin itched to pound her fists on the console and scream ”Integrate faster!”

But such additional pressure was unlikely to net her good results.

She took a deep breath and said, ”Nova, at this point would it be more efficient to allocate those resources to increasing our speed, thus feeding the ramscoop faster? If we can counterbalance the lossage with increased input-”

”My calculations indicate that that is a viable option,” the angel agreed. ”We will still be limping, and eventually we will outstrip the blown-off gas coc.o.o.n of the supernova, at which point collectable resources will become more spa.r.s.e. We will need to be ready with other options. Chief Engineer, not to interrupt myself, but-”

A hesitating angel was never a good sign. ”Spit it out.”

”Samael wishes to speak to you.”