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  “Don’t touch that control.”

  Pirius snapped back to attention.

  “My name is Marta,” the captain said. “This is a base at the heart of the Quintuplet Cluster. We know it as Quin.” Pirius knew that this was indeed a long way from Arches. “Let me begin your reeducation right now. This is an Army base, and I am an Army officer. You are still Navy personnel, attached to what we call the Navy Division, but you are under my command. You will be trained for work in the Service Corps.”

  Pirius’s heart sank. The Service Corps: the shit-shovellers. He said, “Sir, what will our duties—”

  “Shut up.”

  “Sir.”

  “That is the last question I want to hear from you. It is not important what you know, only what you do. And you do only what I tell you. Is that clear?”

  The three of them mumbled a reply. “Sir.”

  She took a step closer to them, and Pirius saw that she walked, not stiffly, but a little unnaturally; the systems that had replaced her left side worked smoothly, but not quite as an intact human body would. “Lethe, you’re unfit.” She prodded at Enduring Hope’s belly. “I’m truly sick of having you fat wheezing flyboys dumped on me.”

  She stood back. “Let’s get this straight from the start. I don’t want Navy rejects here. Nobody wants you. But here you are. The work you will be assigned will be the dirtiest of dirty jobs, and the most dangerous. I’ve no doubt you’ll foul it up, but soon you’ll die, and then you’ll be out of my hair. Until then you will do what I tell you without question or complaint.”

  “Sir.”

  She had a data desk in her shining left hand. “Let’s check you are who you’re supposed to be. Pirius.”

  “Pilot Officer Pirius, sir.”

  “You’re not a pilot anymore. Pirius.”

  “Sir.”

  “Cohl.”

  “Sir.”

  “Tuta.”

  Enduring Hope didn’t reply.

  Marta didn’t look up from her desk. “Tuta.”

  “Sir, my name is—”

  Pirius broke in. “He’s Tuta, sir.”

  Marta tapped her desk. “Fine. So you’re loyal to each other. You can all share Tuta’s punishment.” She touched a control at her chest, and suddenly the pull of false gravity on Pirius climbed, reaching twice standard. “Three circuits,” she said. It turned out she meant them to run three circuits of the crater rim; Pirius guessed it would amount to ten kilometers. “Your fitness work starts here,” she said.

  Pirius said, “Sir. We’ve lived in these suits for days already.”

  “Four circuits,” she said evenly. And she turned her back and walked toward her transport.

  Without another word Pirius turned away and began to plod toward the crater wall. Cohl and Hope fell in beside him. He saw that Hope was already sweating. Hope mouthed silently, I’m sorry.

  The way wasn’t hard to follow. All around the eroded rim of the crater, there was a path where the asteroid ground had been beaten flat by the passage of uncounted feet. But to run under the false weight of their belts was brutal, and their skinsuits, designed for the comparatively light use of greenship crews, were not intended for this kind of hard labor. Soon Pirius’s feet started to blister, and the suit chafed at his groin and armpits.

  Enduring Hope managed two circuits before his legs gave way. Pirius and Cohl had to support him the rest of the course.

  When their punishment run was done, Pirius, Cohl, and Hope, exhausted, their skinsuits covered in charcoal-gray asteroid grime, were shoved through a hatchway in the ground.

  They found themselves in a shabby underground receiving area. Here orderlies briskly stripped them of their skinsuits, and the rest of their clothing. Uncomfortable as their skinsuits had become, they were unhappy to see these last contacts with their past disappear into the black economy of this nameless Army Rock.

  Shivering, naked, they were put through a brisk barrage of showers and radiation baths. Every hair on their heads, faces, and bodies was burned off, and the top layer of skin turned into a powder that they could brush away with their fingers. Clumsy, aged bots probed at them, working at their teeth and ears and eyes. Fluid was pumped into their mouths and recta, only to spill out from both ends, humiliatingly, bringing the contents of their guts with it. After that they were subjected to a battery of injections that went on until their arms and thighs ached.

  Pirius understood the need for such precautions. The human bases studded around the Front were closed communities, isolated by light-years, and tended to develop their own strains of bugs and mites. Pirius and the others could easily pick up a disabling plague from Arches, to which they might have no immunity. But despite all these injections, he suspected that a lot more care was being taken to ensure that Quin Base wasn’t infected by them.

  When the cleansing was done, the three of them were led out of the receiving area. Then they were pushed out through a bulkhead hatch into a much larger chamber beyond. It was a barracks, a noisy high-roofed chamber crowded with people—and they were still naked, to Pirius’s sudden horror; the medics hadn’t given them so much as a blanket between them.

  A grinning cadet, female, very young-looking, met them at the bulkhead. She wore a bright orange coverall, and she greedily eyed Cohl’s breasts, which the navigator vainly tried to cover with her hands. “Come on. I’ll show you your pit.” And she turned and led them into the big chamber.

  Pirius tried not to be self-conscious, to give a lead to his crew. But of course it was impossible; he walked hunched over, his hands clamped over his genitals.

  This underground habitat was basically a barracks, like the Barracks Ball at Arches. But it was much less orderly, crammed with tottering heaps of bunks that climbed from floor to rough-hewn ceiling. The air was hot and muggy, and stank of stale food and sewage.

  And everywhere there were people. They crowded the alleys, they clambered on the bunks, they stared as the flyers passed. Some of them wore official-looking coveralls, like the girl who had met them, but others were bare to the waist, or wore shorts and shirts improvised from worn-out coveralls or blankets. And some of them just ran naked, as unashamed as the flyers were mortified. They ran and shouted, they wrestled on the floor, and couples and threesomes enjoyed noisy sex in the bunks, skin against glistening skin. And they all looked young, even compared to the population of Arches Base.

  It was a swarming mass of youth and energy, an animal mass; Pirius had never seen anything like it. It was more like a nursery than a barracks. But some of these children were already veterans of combat. You could tell, he was starting to learn, by the gleam of metal in their eyes.

  They reached a little block of bunks. One of the bunks was occupied by a man who lay on his back, hands locked behind his head. He said, “Welcome. Pick a bunk! It doesn’t really matter which… .” He was old—at least twenty-five, old compared to the population of this chamber anyhow. He even had a little gray at his temples.

  On three of the bunks sat small stacks of clothing: coveralls, underwear, a skinsuit each. The clothing was clearly ancient, much patched, and lacked any sentience whatsoever, just a one-size-fits-all design with crude expansion joints at elbows, knees, waist, and neck. You even had to do up the fastenings yourself. But the coveralls were at least clothes, and the flyers grabbed at them.

  The swarming cadets crowded around, grinning, curious, malicious, heads shaven, their faces slick with sweat. Pirius towered over them. Some of them were so young he couldn’t tell if they were male or female. As small hands plucked at his coverall, he forced a grin. “Sorry to disappoint you. The surface crew took everything we had—hey!” Somebody had grabbed his balls. He backed up quickly and closed his coveralls.

  Although the others were just as mortified, neither of them had raised a hand at the swarming cadets, which really would have been disastrous. He felt obscurely proud of them.

  The older man on the bunk swung down his legs, stood up and clapped h
is hands. “Come on, give them a break.”

  “Fresh meat,” one cadet giggled. She, or maybe he, had sharpened teeth.

  The man stepped forward, arms extended. “Yeah, but they’ll be almost as fresh tomorrow. Come on, come on …” He herded the recruits away, like guiding unruly children, and they reluctantly acquiesced. But a circle of them stayed, staring at the newcomers and whispering.

  “You’ll get used to it,” the older man said.

  “I doubt it,” said Enduring Hope, as he struggled into a coverall that refused to fit.

  Cohl was investigating her blankets. “These aren’t clean. Lethe, they’re warm.”

  “You’ll get used to that, too. There’s a rather high turnover here.”

  Cohl said, “What happened to her?”

  “Who? Oh, the last person to sleep in those blankets? … You don’t want to know.” He wore a green-gray coverall, open to the waist; his body was taut, fit. He was handsome, Pirius supposed, with a lean, well-drawn face, a small nose, thick hair he wore swept back from his brow, and a quick smile. Pirius’s immediate impression was of weakness, oddly, despite his appearance. But his manner was relaxed as he welcomed the crew. And, like the other veterans here, his eyes shone silver.

  Pirius walked up to him, hand extended. He introduced himself and his crew.

  “I used to be a flyer too,” he said, “before I found my calling shovelling shit on this Rock. My name is Quero.”

  Hope was staring at him. “No, it isn’t.” He lumbered clumsily up to Quero, and, hesitantly, touched his sleeve. “I know your true name. Everybody does.”

  Cohl growled, “I don’t.”

  Quero said, “I call myself This Burden Must Pass.”

  Cohl said, “Oh, terrific. Another Friend.”

  Burden laughed. “Why do you think I got busted down here? And why I keep on being busted back?”

  “You’re a heretic. You deserve it.” Cohl threw herself back on her bunk bed. She covered her face against the glare of the drifting light globes, turned on her side, and curled up.

  “If you say so,” Burden said gently.

  Hope was captivated. “Pirius, you don’t know who this is, do you? This Burden Must Pass is the leader of the Friends.”

  Burden admonished him gently. “Now, you know we don’t have leaders. But I’m flattered you know me.” He placed a hand on Hope’s shoulder, and gazed into his eyes. “You’ve had a tough time. I can’t promise you it’s going to get any easier. It never does. But just remember, none of it matters. And at timelike infinity—”

  Hope’s eyes were wide. “Yes. This burden must pass.” Pirius saw his lower lip was trembling.

  Burden turned to Pirius. “I take it you’re not a believer.”

  “No. And you’re very trusting to break Doctrine in front of three strangers.”

  Burden shrugged. “Look around. What else can they do? And are you going to inform on me?”

  “No,” said Pirius. He glanced at Hope, who was sitting on his bunk, face blank. “If you can keep him happy, that’s fine by me.”

  “You’re loyal to your crew. And wise. I like that.”

  “I don’t need your approval.”

  “Of course you don’t.”

  “And if I was wise I wouldn’t be here… .”

  Cohl yelped and sat up. She pointed at a row of bunks opposite. “Did you see that?”

  Pirius turned, saw nothing. “What?”

  “A rat!”

  Burden laughed gustily. “Oh, you’ll soon get used to the rats!” A klaxon sounded harshly, and the lights briefly dipped to green. Burden said, “Have you eaten? How long were you traveling? … Well, it doesn’t matter. I’d advise you to get some sleep.”

  “Why?”

  Burden started pulling off his coverall. “You’ll need it. In the morning your training will start in earnest. It’s usually quieter in here at this hour; you created a stir.” He glanced at Pirius warningly. “This isn’t a pilot school. It’s not exactly intellectually demanding. But—”

  “We already had a taste of it.” Pirius began to explore his grubby blankets, and wondered how he could get them washed.

  He checked on his shipmates. Cohl, still curled up, might not have been sleeping, but if not she was faking it well. Enduring Hope, physically exhausted and now apparently emotionally drained by his meeting with this enigmatic spiritual leader, slumped into his bunk.

  Pirius lay back and closed his eyes. But the light was shifting and bright, the noise clamoring and disorderly. He had never thought of an Arches Base Barracks Ball as particularly peaceful, but so it seemed compared to this. He forced his aching muscles to relax, and he tried not to count down the minutes until he had to rise again.

  In the hour before reveille, the general clamor seemed to subside. The talking, screwing, and wrestling was done for the night, it seemed, and people were drifting into sleep.

  And in that last still hour, Pirius heard an odd noise. It was a scratching, a rustle, a whisper. Then a soft piping rose up from all around the dorm, a chorus of tiny voices joined in near harmony.

  Later, Burden told him it was the rats, calling to each other from around the barracks. Having traveled with humans twenty-eight thousand light-years from Earth, the rats had learned to sing, and humans who had never heard birds had learned to enjoy their song. For the rats it was a survival tactic; they had become lovable.

  When the klaxon sounded, the soft singing was overwhelmed.

  Chapter 8

  As Nilis’s corvette approached Sol system, even while it was still under FTL, it was bombarded by a whole series of Virtual messages. The Virtuals were like shrieking ghosts, liable to erupt into existence anywhere in the corvette at any time. Some of these messages were sanctioned by the various authorities; others, it seemed, were not, but had been able to punch their way through a Navy ship’s firewalls anyway. Torec was freaked by the whole experience.

  It took Pirius Red some time to understand that many of these clamoring entreaties and demands were aimed, not at Nilis, but at him, the boy who had captured a Xeelee.

  “Don’t let it worry you,” Nilis said with a smile. “You’re already famous, that’s all!”

  Of course that was disturbing enough in itself. Pirius had always harbored a guilty desire to do something spectacular, to be remembered. But he didn’t want to be notorious for something he hadn’t done, and, now that history had been edited, never would.

  And anyhow, personal fame was utterly non-Doctrinal. Pirius had expected that here, close to the center of humanity, adherence to the Doctrines would be stronger than ever. But that, it turned out, was naive.

  “In many ways, things are simpler out where you come from,” Nilis said gently. “Here in Sol system, and especially on Earth—despite the best efforts of the Commission for Historical Truth—everything is very crowded, very old, and very messy. Nobody is in control, really, and never could be. You’ll see!”

  Like much of what Nilis had to say to him, Pirius found it best not to think too hard about that. But the messages continued to come, and as the light of Sol grew brighter, his heart beat faster.

  The corvette stopped briefly at Saturn. Pirius and Torec knew that name, for this immense gas giant had famously been requisitioned long ago by the Navy as its largest base in Sol system.

  Pirius peered out in awe. Around the cloud-draped planet, ships and facilities orbited in swarms. Even the moons bristled with factories and weapons emplacements—though it turned out that many of the smaller moons had been broken up for raw materials, water-ice of mantles and rock of cores.

  Nilis waxed nostalgic about this world. He even showed Pirius Virtuals of how it had been before the arrival of humans, when it had been circled by a spectacular system of ice rings. But the rings had been too tempting a mine for the first settlers of the system, and too fragile to withstand the fires of the first wars fought here.

  Scenery didn’t interest Pirius much. As a Navy brat, he was
much more intrigued by military hardware. So he watched a steady stream of ships plunging into the planet’s clouds. Nilis said that the ships were descending to Saturn’s rocky heart, itself a planetoid about the size of the Earth and immersed in a hydrogen ocean thousands of kilometers deep. In the atrocious conditions of that deep murk, out of sight even of the rest of humanity, huge machines were being built.

  Earth, this remote speck of rock at the Galaxy’s rim, was still the logical center of humanity. The Interim Coalition of Governance exerted a tight control on a Galaxy full of human beings, and the epicenter of that control was here, on Earth. If worst came to worst—if the Xeelee ever broke out of the Galaxy’s Core and struck at Sol system itself—Saturn would be the bastion of the last defense of Earth, and those mighty engines would come to life.

  The corvette was here because the Xeelee nightfighter captured by Pirius Blue had been hauled across the Galaxy and placed in orbit among Saturn’s moons.

  “There was really no other choice,” Nilis murmured. “Bringing back a Xeelee has been enough of a sensation as it is. At least here it will be under Navy guard. If we took it deeper into the inner system we’d be asking for trouble.”

  Pirius said, “You mean the risk to Earth would be too great?”

  “Oh, no, Pirius, not that. We have come here not to protect mankind from our Xeelee, but to protect the Xeelee from us.” He winked.

  After six hours, the corvette slid cautiously away from Saturn and its cordon of technology. As it was carrying celebrities of various degrees of reluctance, the corvette’s crew were granted permission to shorten the remainder of the trip by using their FTL drive within the boundaries of Sol system.

  So Pirius saw Saturn wink out of existence, to be replaced immediately by a wall of light, blue-white, that flooded the corvette with dazzling brilliance.

  At first Pirius and Torec couldn’t understand what they were seeing. It was an immense shield of blue-gray, almost like metal, that curved smoothly away on all sides. It even looked polished, for Pirius saw a dazzling highlight from the sun. And yet the surface was subtly textured, and there were flaws, darker masses scattered irregularly across the shining surface. Each such mass was surrounded by a fringe of paler blue, flecked with white. Other objects crawled across the shield, trailing arrow-shaped wakes behind them.