The great intertwine of tram lines, the foremost station, begins about a hundred meters behind the spike ball.
How many times before has this ship gone through metamorphosis? Across four billion years? I can’t believe any ship could last so long. But the ship, as DJ pointed out, has aspects of a cell—a living thing. Maybe it’s a cancer cell and can go on forever.
“Any idea how much Ulyanova had a hand in designing this?” Borden asks.
“I’d guess she’s just letting the ship follow prior instructions.”
“Which means sending the Antags down to Sun-Planet?”
“That’s what she says.”
“Where there’s nothing left for them,” Joe says.
“And after they’re delivered?” Jacobi asks. “What happens to the ship then?”
“A long trip back to the other side of the Kuiper belt,” I say. “Or … a short deviation, right into the sun.”
“With or without Ulyanova?” Jacobi asks.
“Which would you bet on?” Borden says, and they look at each other with the sublime pessimism of having to anticipate the worst.
I don’t like being put in this spot. “With,” I say.
“All right, then,” Borden says. “Brother and sister of the tea have exchanged confidences.”
“Something’s coming,” Ishida says, and points down the shadowy, spiky center of the tree. A narrow, insectoid car with jointed, grasping limbs at each end is rolling in our direction. It pauses for a moment and reaches out to adjust the angle of a thicker branch, showing considerable persuasion or strength, and then more slowly approaches us. Faceted eyes at the end of long stalks seem to measure and observe.
The car stops a few meters away, ticking.
“Is it alive?” Borden asks.
Before I can hazard a guess, the car starts to move in the opposite direction—aft. We each take hold of a black arm and swing our legs into the cab, trying to hang on as the car picks up speed. We’re on our way, slammed this way and that as it swerves to avoid the thickest and most productive branches.
All around us there’s growth and noise, branches rearranging, more cars passing on the opposite side of the trunk, bundles of raw materials being ferried and delivered to the other branches …
The cell is metastasizing. The ship feels more and more like a gigantic, cancerous lump, producing death and destruction a million tons at a time.
Farther aft, huge objects, the embryonic beginnings of big ships, hang on the outer branches, some hundreds of meters long and still expanding, their hulls not yet closed over. Other, larger grapplers and industrial organelles move new components toward these ships, through gaps in their unfinished skins, and into what I have to assume are the proper positions.
The whole Guru war machine is in full gear, getting ready for a voyage across the solar system and beyond, to a far world where humanity’s new enemies are being fed the old line of imminent conquest and domination …
Recycle whatever you can, right?