ANCIENT OF DAYS

I ask, “How old are you?”

DJ agrees that’s a good place to start. We seem to sit beside each other in a steady stream of give-and-take, sensual exploration, study. The rest are momentarily irrelevant. I don’t see them. I feel a nudge, hear a word, but do not respond.

I’m deep.

How old are you?

“Not very old,” I answer, along with DJ.

Inquire.

“Do you recognize where we got our education, our training?”

Down near the sun. An old planet or moon.

Inquire.

“Are you older than the archives on that moon?”

Probably not older. Perhaps more complete. Was there damage to those archives?

“We think they’ve been destroyed. Archives on a planet even closer to the sun have either been destroyed or severely damaged.”

Who is responsible for this damage?

“We are, partly. But we’ve been influenced, instructed, by the Gurus.”

We see that. Here they are called Keepers.

“You let them take control of the Antags?”

Follows a search through our memories for associations. Apparently we aren’t going to have any privacy, and that could save a lot of time.

Until recent time, the Antagonists, as you call them, were not aware of the existence of these archives. The Antagonists are from the northern hemisphere. They are the only ones to be infested with Keepers. The searchers are from the southern hemisphere, mostly around the polar regions. They are scholars and aware of the archives, of our history, but neither the Antagonists nor the Keepers have enlisted them as fighters because they are not suited.

They resemble animals familiar to you?

“Yes. Squid.”

Not closely related to you, these squid—perhaps enigmatic?

“Yeah. And probably not great scholars.”

DJ chips in. “We call this world Planet X. What’s your name for it?”

Too old to be important.

Inquire.

“Is this planet natural?”

You know already it is not.

“How old is it?”

Comes a number so vast I stumble around in my head trying to control it. Then I realize the units: vibrations of an atomic particle, maybe an electron in orbit around a proton—a hydrogen atom. Everything in these archives is measured by those beats, those vibrations. Very rational. Could be close to universal. But we’re not that sophisticated.

“What’s that in years?” DJ asks.

The steward of the archives digs deeper into our heads and understands. Four and a half billion years.

“Made by the bugs?” I project my memories of bug appearance and hope for the best.

They were key. Many species contributed to these archives, but the bugs, as you call them, as you show them to us—we recognize their form—completed and organized them.

Inquire.

“Are there any bugs left alive?”

No.

“The bugs were plagued by Gurus as well?”

They were.

“How did they get rid of them?”

They did not get rid of them. They cut the ties that existed at that time. It is very difficult to destroy the Keepers, and almost impossible to be rid of them forever.

“There were accidents, right? Bits of broken moons came down to the inner solar system and seeded Earth and Mars. Does that means that the Gurus, the Keepers, were indirectly responsible for us, as well?”

The bugs emulated an older force. That mysterious influence moves planets, and little else, and five billion years ago, moved several from the realm of comets downward, beginning life in the outer system.

After those long-ago acts, the “bugs” contributed by helping seed the inner planets, by accident, through their long wars with one another.

“Where do the Gurus come from?” DJ asks.

Not known. The Keepers are always looking for systems to develop and preserve, in their way. You and Antagonists share ancient origins, but “bugs” have nothing to do with the origins of Keepers.

“Who controls you now?” DJ asks.

Nobody controls. We work with searchers but they are far fewer now than they once were. And the archives are themselves diminished.

“What’s happening on Sun-Planet?”

Total destruction. We have seen it before. When this time is finished, if the archives still exist, perhaps you can bring scholars back to finish our studies …

The steward seems to fade in a haze of what might be disappointment—if it can exhibit anything like emotion.

Can it?

Or does it echo our own feelings?

We come out of our reverie and look around us.

“Time to get the fuck out of here!” DJ says.

“Amen,” Joe says.

WE RESUME OUR slow, awkward journey, Joe, DJ, and Jacobi telling us what they know and helping smooth our learning curve. Without searchers, moving through the ship is an involved process of trying to make out an available surface in the twisted architecture behind and between decaying, rickety canes, in deep shadow, then launch out with a kick—sometimes connecting, sometimes painfully colliding. Ishida and Borden fly wide, miss the best gripping points, and get snagged in a crumbling spiral. It takes time to pluck them out.

THE VIEWING DISH is dark and now the space around it is crowded with dead searchers. The smell is fierce, like ammonia mixed with dead cat.

We find another Antag, also dead from cutting wounds.

Not Bird Girl—to my relief.

“We won’t follow the tree unless we can get on that rail line,” Joe says. “Too much growth, too fast. And the rail is likely already carrying weapons away to stockpile them.”

“Where’s the line begin?” Borden asks.

“I thought it was at the tip of the tree,” Joe says. Ishida agrees. “But everything’s still changing.”

Pretty soon, we’re almost out of options. There’s nothing but darkness, pieces and tangled clumps of canes blowing aft in the steady breeze, and searcher bodies—dozens of them, maybe hundreds. They’re becoming a hazard, rolling aft or forming their own clumps, a hecatomb of astonishing proportions.

“Cage fighters couldn’t have killed all of them,” Borden says.

“Who, then? Ulyanova?”

I’m biting my inner cheek. I don’t want to answer. I don’t know the answer.

“Is she still human?” Ishikawa asks.

“She’s playing a dangerous game,” I say. “One move here, another there. If she does something really brash or stupid, the ship could flush us all into space—not just the searchers.”

“Do you know that?” Borden asks, and for some reason that infuriates me, but I just hold it in—and keep biting until blood flows.

We’ve reached a section of this new ship where the last of the fragile cane thickets have spread as if to define a wider volume, only to be crushed by the shrinking hull. Last-minute adjustments by the searchers, before the great dying? Futile, either way.

One more body floats in shadows—spiked on a single jutting cane. This one is neither Antag nor human, like nothing we’ve seen before. Difficult from our distance to discern details, but it has a small, knobby head, large, almost froglike eyes, compact body with four ropy limbs—and its torso has nearly been seared in half. It’s still clutching a bolt pistol.

DJ and Ishida move through the canes, swearing, to recover the pistol.

“It’s an Antag weapon, all right,” DJ says.

“Why was it carrying that, if it couldn’t use it?” Ishikawa asks.

“Don’t toss it,” Tak says. “Maybe Bird Girl will let us arm ourselves.”

“I doubt that,” Ishida says.

Nothing but darkness ahead, no clues.

And then the breeze moving aft carries a swirling cloud of fairy glow. Searcher bodies have been sprinkling the surroundings.

“There!” Ishida says. Her eyes are sharper than ours. A few hundred meters ahead, we see a spray of branches blue-green with searcher dust. We grab hands to form a star, calculate how to kick off all at once, and fly across the intervening space. Joe and Borden snag a branch, then we all scramble inboard to what could be a rail line—a corkscrew curve pointing aft. But the corkscrew ends abruptly, and there’s nothing obvious in the way of transport—nothing like the tram car around the screw garden.

We’re contemplating our next move when we find another body—Antag, one of the armored commanders, caught up in an adjacent branch and mostly hidden by the withered arms of a dead searcher. The Antag’s wings have been left half-spread. All four eyes are open and glazed. She apparently bled out through deep slices along her neck and shoulders—neatly skirting the armor on her breast and thorax.

“How many battles can we fight on this tub?” Joe asks in an undertone.

Borden and Jacobi move off a few slender branches to confer. In the light of more dead Antags and uncertainty aft, they’re reassessing our situation, who to protect, who to reinforce—who to put in danger. I’m glad I’m not making those decisions, but I handicap their choices anyway, and I’m mostly correct.

“Four of us will go on,” the commander says. “Three will return to the ribbon space. We don’t know who’s most in danger, or how protected Ulyanova really is. We can’t risk both Johnson and Venn. I want someone who’s linked to the starshina and Bird Girl with each party. I should have thought of that earlier, but … Fujimori, Johnson, Ishikawa. Back to the nests. Good luck.”

We split up. Joe, Jacobi, Borden, Ishida, and I will continue aft. The pistol goes to Ishida.

“We’ll hand it over to Bird Girl,” Borden says. “Make it a peace offering.”