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  Of course Citizens work here, she reminded herself. How dangerous could it be?

  Omar and Eric were exchanging a look. “Now that you’ve brought up smell, did you know how badly it was going to stink?” Eric asked. “Did that detail make it into your research?”

  The brief stop was encouraging her muscles to assert themselves: They were tired. Tough. There was a long way to go before anyone rested. Bending forward slightly at the waist, she shrugged her backpack into a more comfortable position. “I’d like to find someplace more suitable for camping before dark.” They all knew she had a very specific spot in mind.

  Grumbling, Omar retrieved his own backpack. “Someone explain again why we didn’t step there directly and set up camp? First flying here and then all this walking . . . it seems so primitive.”

  “There’s a limit to how much kinetic energy a stepping disc can absorb or impart.” Despite having agreed to this adventure Eric looked embarrassed, as though admitting to a limitation in Citizen technology were somehow disloyal. “Simple example: We’re on the equator. Half the world away on the equator is where we want to be. Both locations, being at the same latitude, rotate at the same speed—but their instantaneous velocities are in opposite directions. Do the math: We’re dealing with big numbers.

  “Across much of Arcadia, and surely all over Hearth, the huge number of stepping discs avoids the problem. If the velocity difference between two locations is too large for a single-disc jump, the system moves you through intermediate discs. It happens so quickly you never experience the intermediate points. We flew here because the ocean is too wide for a disc-to-disc jump. We’re hiking now because this wilderness Kirsten is so keen to get us eaten alive in is sparse on discs.”

  Omar peered dubiously into purple underbrush where a scurrying something had set ground-hugging fronds rustling. “What’s the limit?”

  “Two hundred feet per second,” Kirsten answered him. No one understood why Citizens had come up with English units of measure to accompany the English language they had invented. Maybe they only used them with humans. She had had to master standard Concordance units to fly Explorer.

  “Let’s get going.” She lobbed a pebble beyond the rustling. Something resembling a cross between a Citizen and a koala, but smaller than her hand, burst from the bushes to rush past them. “If that creature isn’t too scary for you.”

  That brought the laughter she had hoped for. They resumed their hike through the transplanted Hearthian woods.

  Their path was mostly west. Until the final circle of suns set, the north-south line was unmistakable. She pushed briskly forward, leading them to the true objective of this outing.

  KIRSTEN FELT HERSELF beginning to tire; her crewmates, who lacked her considerable hiking experience, were staggering. Around them, branches creaked and leaves rustled. Unseen animals chattered and scuttled in the brush and high in the trees. NP4’s suns had long ago set for the day. The only illumination to augment their flashlights was Fleet light dimly filtered through the many-hued forest canopy.

  Their goal was a safety shelter deep in the woods. She had wondered how visible the structure would be amid such a variety of foliage colors. Now her concern seemed foolish. The blinking lights that outlined the building would have been unmistakable even without their rapid but random color-hopping. This was a Citizen refuge—she should have known better than to worry.

  The shelter sat in the center of a clearing, bathed in the light of worlds. Three were presently visible: a crescent NP2, a full NP1, and Hearth.

  Sunless Hearth was a world like no other. Between oceans as dark as pitch, continents sparkled like a million jewels. Each of those lights was a city larger than any on Arcadia. No matter how often Kirsten saw it, the sight was humbling.

  “Whenever you’re done gawking,” Omar panted. A smile took the sting from his rebuke. “Even a Citizen’s padded couch will feel good about now.”

  “Or a padded floor,” Eric agreed.

  A fifteen-mile hike through the wilds entitled them to be weary. They had gone farther than was rational given their mid-afternoon arrival on Elysium. Had it been important to get specifically here, a stepping disc from the airport, or from a shelter closer to their departure, would have made much more sense—to a Citizen. Tomorrow, after a hike back out, none would ever suspect they had been here. Except—

  “We’ll be limping tomorrow,” she said. “We’ll take it easy. I know massage, I’ll do you both.” She waited for their nods.

  Unlatching the door activated the inside lights. Kirsten led them inside. “All the comforts of home, my friends, and no records in the stepping-disc system.” Were records kept of who went where when? She did not know, and asking might raise suspicions.

  Wincing, Eric dropped his backpack. “I ache in places I didn’t know had muscles. Maybe food will help.”

  “It never hurts,” Omar said. He was sitting on the floor, boots off, massaging a foot. “Besides, whatever we eat will make someone’s pack lighter.”

  “Good point.” Eric started digging through his backpack. “Kirsten, any requests?”

  “Whatever sounds good to you,” she answered distractedly. Where was the comm terminal? No Citizen shelter could possibly be without one. “Remember to pack up the wrappers and any waste.”

  The terminal was behind her, immediately next to the door. With a second head, she would have found it sooner. “Here it is. I’m going to work.”

  The questions that obsessed her could be answered nowhere on Arcadia. She could not prove that assertion, but even if there was something there . . . how likely was she to uncover secrets that had eluded Sven, and all the archivists before him? No, it made more sense to search on the public Citizen data net.

  That was her theory, anyway. This was her chance to test it.

  With fingers interlaced, Kirsten cracked her knuckles. Eric’s queasy expression made her chuckle. “I only have hands. This keyboard is meant for a Citizen’s lip nodes.”

  “Then it does have keyboard input,” Eric said.

  “As backup to the voice-command mode, like aboard Explorer.” A pleasant aroma began to make itself known. Beef stew, she thought, from a self-heating pouch.

  “Eat, Kirsten.” Omar held out an open pouch. “Can you operate the terminal?”

  Suddenly she was ravenous. She devoured a third of the contents before responding. “It’s like Nessus’ console on Explorer. Yes, I can use it.” Barely. An experimental button push brought up the greeting screen she had expected. “Welcome to . . . Herd Net,” she translated. Nessus had decided it was easier to teach his crew to read Citizen than to translate the shipboard library into English. “We’ll know soon if I read well enough to make sense of the public databases.”

  Her first accesses were for the benefit of any logging software at the unseen public data center. They retrieved information any Citizen on Elysium might request. She navigated slowly through holos describing NP4 geography and climate, the flora and fauna of Elysium, and a brief history of the reshaping of the planet to resemble an archaic Hearth. As she read, she finished her stew and burrowed into her own backpack for a juice pouch.

  Omar stood behind her, looking over her shoulder. “It’s kind of interesting. Maybe we should save some of it. Agreed?”

  “Uh-huh.” She snapped a memory cube into the download slot. “If nothing else, copying this might make it less obvious which subjects really interest us.” She returned to a previously viewed summary of NP4 history. Now she drilled down to Arcadia, the human settlement, rather than Elysium.

  “Look at that.” Eric crouched for a closer look. “I count far fewer links than before. Was Elysium settled before Arcadia?”

  “Let’s see.” She tuned her requests to consider just the past two hundred years. “No, there’s still more information about Elysium.”

  “Apparently Colonists aren’t interesting.” Omar sounded insulted. “Is anything new here about Arcadian history? It might be my lan
guage skills, or lack thereof, but I see nothing surprising.”

  Nothing caught Kirsten’s eye either. “In the details, maybe. To be fair, there are words I don’t know.” She waited until Eric shrugged. “Regardless, I’ve downloaded all of it. Time for the big experiment.”

  She carefully entered a refined query: pre-Arcadian Colonist history.

  After an agonizing few seconds, a list of topics materialized before them. Kirsten struggled with unfamiliar terms. Some struck her as English transliterated into Citizen characters. “Earth, humans, Long Pass, ramscoop, United Nations.”

  “Ramscoop sounds promising,” Eric said. “Our ancestors’ starship supposedly scooped interstellar hydrogen for its fuel. We’re told they didn’t have hyperdrive.”

  She selected ramscoop. Another multisecond delay got them only a “restricted” disclaimer. She tried Earth: restricted. Long Pass: restricted. Humans: restricted. She began timing the delays on her wrist clock implant. Her earlier, for-show searches had gotten near-instantaneous responses. “That’s interesting. The time lag is consistent with a light-speed round trip to Hearth.”

  “Not an unexpected place for the Concordance to keep its secrets,” Omar said. “Unfortunate, but not surprising. I guess it doesn’t really matter, since the data are restricted.”

  Aboard Explorer, she had watched Nessus access restricted files. However clever they got, she saw no way to mimic a Citizen tongueprint. “No, I guess . . .

  “Or maybe I can do something.” The display was in its default mode, a format that efficiently allocated viewing volume to minimal file descriptors. With a few keystrokes, Kirsten changed visual layouts to a maintenance mode—and shivered. The inaccessible files were now time-stamped and sorted by their creation dates. “Whatever these are, they predate the founding of Arcadia colony.”

  12

  Recent bravery was taking its toll.

  Nessus cringed in his personal quarters, swinging between exhilaration and panic, too keyed up from his rendezvous with Nike to sleep. Their time together had been everything Nessus had dreamed. More. And yet . . . Nike was surely destined for great things. How dare a motley loner like him aspire to union with a likely future Hindmost?

  Nessus plucked two-headedly at his mane, the few decorative touches he had so recently worn already picked apart. In all honesty, it had never been much of a decoration: a scattering of ribbons and a few lopsided braids. Nike’s coiffure had been a work of art. What could Nike possibly think of him?

  And so much for his principled rejection of mane adornment.

  It had never before occurred to Nessus, but the quest to become Hindmost, to seek responsibility for the entire Concordance, demanded its own type of courage. The dangers to be faced were not physical, but the duty was surely unending. How could he possibly hope to conjoin with such a partner? And yet . . .

  Their time together had been fabulous.

  Fifty dancers, gliding and twirling in ever more intricate patterns, their hooves clicking ever faster in a frenetic crescendo. Afterward, a bejeweled gathering he could never have imagined, where he brushed flanks with some of the most powerful figures of the Concordance. Broad rows of grazing tables covered entirely with grown fare: grains and roots and freshly squeezed juices, without a speck of the synthesized food that sustained most Citizens.

  All of it experienced with Nike.

  Quivering muscles bespoke another swing back into depression—and Nessus rebelled against his instincts. He stepped to a place that always calmed him.

  The visitor gallery was always crowded at Harem House.

  In Nessus’s stage of life, Harem House was something of an abstraction. He could be on any of a thousand floors, in any of a hundred physical locations. Until he entered a registered union, until that pairing was awarded a license to mate, the stepping-disc system would continue to deliver him to a random viewing area. However often he returned, he was unlikely to observe the same Companion herd twice. Social convention held this was for his own good, lest he form an unseemly attachment to a specific female.

  Where a Citizen arcology would enclose living units and offices close-packed like blocks, Nessus now saw an open, naturelike expanse. Meadowplant spread before him, interrupted occasionally by shrubs and stands of trees, by ponds and bubbling streams. Digital wallpaper extended the rolling heath to the distant virtual horizon, beneath a hologram blue-and-scudding-cloud sky. The mating fields were, of course, elsewhere and not viewable.

  Nessus pressed through the milling throng toward the soundproof, one-way viewing wall. He tried to ignore the pitying looks from doting couples. The singles in the room were in the clear minority, and most were younger than he. Someday, Nessus thought, it could be Nike and me here, awaiting the birth of our child. It will be Nike and me.

  The judgmental whispering stung. On past visits Nessus had occasionally lied that his partner had been detained, speaking a bit overloud to some sympathetic-looking pair of observers. His mood now was too complex for such pointless subterfuge.

  “There is our Bride.”

  A new couple had edged up to the window to Nessus’ left. The lovers stood side by side, their adjacent necks entwined. The one who had spoken was tall, with bright blue eyes and a lush, simply groomed red mane. His partner was nearly as tall, with a handsome tan-on-cream patterning that reminded Nessus of a panda. Both wore brooches suggestive of an avocation in abstract art.

  Using his free head and a straightened neck, one was pointing toward a cluster of three Companions. Their sides heaved slowly as they cropped the thick blue-green mead-owplant.

  “The middle one?” Nessus guessed. She was the thickest of the three, so most likely with child. There had been no introductions; Panda and Red were serviceable labels.

  “That’s her,” Panda agreed. “She bears our child.”

  “Prosperity for you and your family,” Nessus said. The traditional answer was the safest.

  “She looks strong, don’t you think?” Panda continued proudly.

  “Very.” Nessus said. In truth, Companions always seemed delicate to him. The tallest of them scarcely reached half the height of a Citizen. That was not the only difference, of course. The torsos of Companions, although brown-and-white patterned like those of Citizens, were entirely covered in fur.

  Panda and Red prattled on about the intelligence of their Bride, oblivious to Nessus’ torment. He wondered if he would lose all objectivity if—when—his own turn came. Size was only the most obvious difference between Citizens and Companions. Another differentiation was in the mane-covered cranial dome between the shoulders. In Companions, the hump was much flatter—because there was far less brain under the dome. Companions could not speak, nor were they capable of learning much, although the brightest among them, Nessus had heard, could understand a few words, and seemed to grow fond of their husbands.

  That was far short of sentience.

  There were times when Nessus thought the structured and unthinking life of the females was idyllic, and not only for the unimaginable luxuries of natural foods in this meadow-like setting. How liberating it must be not to strive, not to wonder for most of one’s life whether he would ever be deemed worthy of siring children. But introspection was his doom; the diminutive and unthinking creatures before him faced their own. . . .

  Panda and Red eventually departed. Nessus watched the Companions for a while longer, until being there without a mate became too awkward and painful.

  All the while the possibility that had come to him in Nike’s office continued to sharpen in Nessus’ mind.

  NIKE ROAMED DISTRACTEDLY about his office. Scouts are a precious commodity, he assured himself. They are exceedingly rare, no more than a very few identified each generation. Why, but for such scarcity, would he, a deputy minister, have studied the personnel records of all of them? Why else would he have deigned to meet one? Each scout was aberrant in his way, needful of coddling, jollying, and other distasteful encouragement. Their missions i
nherently relied upon self-direction, exercised in isolation, far from the Fleet.

  Only a motivated volunteer could perform such duty.

  How could it be otherwise? Safety in numbers had been wired into Citizen genes long before the first glimmer of intelligence. Beyond the herd waited predators patiently stalking, ready to pounce on anyone too young or too old, too infirm or too inattentive, to keep pace with the herd. Yet what if none were to scout ahead for new pastures? The whole herd might starve.

  Hearth had long been purged of its native predators, but more sinister dangers lurked. Spacefaring alien races surrounded them. Hearth’s once-yellow sun had swollen into a red giant, generations ago, initiating the planet’s first epic voyage. The galactic core itself had erupted into a storm front of lethal radiation thousands of light-years thick. If none ventured ahead, who would warn the Fleet of new perils? Without scouts, how would the Concordance know where to flee from danger?

  It was all a rationalization, of course. A secluded walk on the shore, the ballet, the private party after . . . Nike knew he had crossed a line with Nessus. The wild-eyed, mangy-maned scout was all too obviously smitten with him. Without shame, Nike had exploited that infatuation.

  There was ample shame now, however belatedly, and Nessus had requested urgently to see him again. Nike had agreed. Very soon he must ask Nessus to undertake another mission. For the safety of all, no other race must ever locate Hearth.

  What Nessus must do in Human Space was horrible.

  A buzzer interrupted Nike’s dark thoughts. “Yes?”

  “Deputy Minister, your visitor is here,” an assistant said over the intercom.

  “Show him in.” Reflexively, Nike found some minor details of his coiffure to straighten. His assistant appeared at the door with the scout. “Please come in.”

  Nessus was bursting with scarcely restrained enthusiasm. Two uneven braids offered a token acknowledgment to social norms. Faint compression marks hinted where a few ribbons might once have been found. “I have an answer!”