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  Kirsten stepped from the bustling square to a grassy expanse. Shouting children of all ages greatly outnumbered the watching adults. Some children flew kites, some climbed the monkey bars, and many ran about without apparent purpose. Most engaged in team sports. Shading her eyes with a hand—the suns here were directly overhead—Kirsten scanned the park.

  That was Sven, along the sidelines of a football field. Young girls ran from one end of the field to the other, pursuing the black-and-white ball with far more enthusiasm than skill, kicking shin guards far more often than the ball.

  Watching the girls play made Kirsten smile. She had been terrible at football. Citizens discouraged the game, calling it antisocially competitive. Football’s ubiquity across Arcadia was a rare display of independence. Perhaps meeting Sven at a football game was a favorable omen.

  “Which is your daughter?” she asked Sven. The grass had made her approach silent, and he startled.

  He pointed. “Vicky. The tall girl with the curly black hair.” After a long silence, he added, “I don’t recall that you have children.” The unstated question was, “Why are you here?”

  “Then you remember me,” Kirsten said. “Do you recall the rest of our conversation?”

  “We discussed early NP4 history. You said something rather droll about finding the abandoned ship from which the Concordance rescued our ancestors.” Cheers rang out: a goal. Sven clapped enthusiastically. He turned, finally, to face Kirsten. “This meeting is no coincidence, is it?”

  “May we speak in private?” She began walking toward a nearby stand of trees without waiting for an answer. He followed. They stopped beside the copse, Sven waving vigorously as Vicky looked around for her father. “Sven, I have a brief recording for you to review.”

  The video, its projection kept small lest the game-watching parents take notice, came from Kirsten’s dash to and through Long Pass. Sven watched without comment. The recording ended in the cargo bay, in a close-up of the grafted-on stepping disc. He studied the close-up from all angles. When Kirsten was about to burst from frustration, he finally looked at her. “That is quite interesting.”

  The disc? Not the ship? Her mind roiled.

  “Once more please.” Sven waved again at his daughter. “Slower, if you don’t mind.”

  At one-fourth real time, Kirsten relived her too-brief exploration. The cavernous central volume of the GP4 ship. The exposed dash over the walkway to the scarred hull of Long Pass. Corridors and cabins aboard the ship itself, simultaneously ordinary and exotic. The cleared-out storeroom. The few neatly patched bulkheads evoked the same doubt and anger as always. A derelict abandoned in space?

  What a lie!

  “Interesting,” Sven said. Head canted, he again studied the stepping disc through which she had returned to Explorer. He finally acknowledged her confusion. “Video is data. Data can be faked. This disc, though . . . zoom in, please?”

  They needed Sven to believe. “What is so special about this disc? What about the ship?”

  “Zoom in, please,” he repeated. “Closer still. See the controls inset along the edge? Citizens are cautious. They upgrade their technology slowly. The stepping disc in this image is a model hundreds of years out of date. I’ve seen few like it. It lends a scrap of credibility to this recording. May I have a copy?”

  “In confidence, of course.”

  “Of course.” Squeals of glee rose from the field. Sven waved again at the players. “I don’t suppose you will tell me how you came into possession of this recording.”

  “I shot it. I was aboard.” As Sven’s eyes grew round, she slipped off her backpack and removed a parcel wrapped loosely in cloth: the threadwork she had taken from a cabin aboard Long Pass. “Sven, how would you like to analyze a really dusty old record?”

  AMID THE HUSHED clutter of Sven’s laboratory, Kirsten waited anxiously for Omar’s message. The quiet would last only until the next workday and the return of staff. Before then she had to be gone, if not to the meeting Omar sought to arrange, then back aboard Explorer.

  Sven flitted from workstation to workstation, all chewing on scene analyses of the video, and among the lab instruments with which he examined the artifact. About an hour ago, he had begun humming tunelessly. Kirsten allowed herself to hope that the droning denoted good spirits, and his good spirits the onset of belief in her report.

  She had teleported ahead to the lab while Sven took his daughter home. Idly, Kirsten wondered what excuse he had given his family for returning to work. An archival emergency seemed so unlikely.

  Then again, so did archival laboratories.

  Sven shushed her when she asked about his progress, and tsked whenever she lost focus while answering one of his many questions. How long had it been since she last slept?

  And still no word from Omar. He must be encountering the same skepticism as she.

  Kirsten paced, eyeing lab equipment. Some she recognized: microscopes, both optical and electronic; spectrometers; chromatographs; crystallographic imagers. Some were mysteries.

  A discreet buzz interrupted her survey. Her communicator, finally. It was Omar, and he looked exhausted. The backdrop of the holo told her nothing. “Kirsten, how is it going?”

  From the minimal privacy behind a tall and unrecognized bench instrument, she brought Omar up to date.

  “Is Sven convinced?”

  “I think he’s getting there. At least he seems excited about that framed art I brought from Long Pass. He refuses to say why. How are you doing?”

  “I contacted some people I know in the Self-Governance Council,” Omar said. “That led to a very exclusive meeting. I’ve been answering questions nonstop for hours.”

  “And now?” Kirsten asked.

  “Now it’s your turn.” He transmitted a stepping-disc address. “Finish what you’re doing and come here.”

  She could have asked if Sven were welcome—and didn’t. Why ask, when she might not like the answer? “Sven.” He looked up from a holo display in which cryptic codes slowly scrolled. Genomic data? “Sven, I need to go.” She related what little she knew about the government meeting. “I would like you to join me.”

  Sven shook his head. “Not until I know more.”

  She could hardly drag him to the summit. He might even be correct in his priorities. “Here is the address, if you change your mind.”

  Kirsten stepped through into a dimly lit shed. Well-used farm equipment surrounded her, vaguely familiar from childhood tours of the factory where her parents worked. She had not known what to expect. Not this, certainly. An overhead door rattled open.

  She blinked in the suddenly bright light. Omar signaled her to be silent. She followed him into a field that stretched to the horizon in every direction, the crop obviously Hearthian but otherwise unknown to her. Fibrous orange seed clusters pinched the dangling, red-and-yellow mottled tendrils that served as leaves. Combines floated in the distance, spraying orange streams into tiny floating trailers, from which the grain must teleport directly into weatherproof storage. Parallel rows of mulched stems and leaves showed the progress of the combines.

  They topped a low rise. Kirsten blinked again, this time in surprise, at the people who stood below.

  A slender woman with lustrous black hair and striking violet eyes stepped forward. She exhibited the indeterminate age modern medicine eventually bestowed on all Colonists, but she moved with a grace and economy of motion that hinted at advanced years. Her pink-and-red blouse was boldly checked with a matte finish. Her suede slacks had a luxurious nap. Texture and pattern alike bespoke great stature.

  The hand extended to Kirsten bore a massive progeny ring, with four small rubies and at least ten emeralds: tokens of children and grandchildren. “I am Sabrina Gomez-Vanderhoff.” The introduction was entirely unnecessarily. Gomez was the governor of Arcadia’s Self-Governance Council, and the colony’s senior elected official. “My colleague is Aaron Tremonti-Lewis.” He was the minister for public safety.

&
nbsp; Public safety involved putting out fires and dispensing aid after storms and other natural disasters. It had never occurred to Kirsten that the function might extend to protecting Colonial society from its supposed patrons. She pondered where to begin.

  “May I call you Kirsten?” The governor did not wait for an answer. “Kirsten, excuse me for being brusque. We are here,” and her expansive gesture encompassed the broad fields to all sides, “lest we be overheard. Needless to say, we two disappearing for any length of time would raise unfortunate questions.”

  Citizen questions, that was. “I’ll get right to it then,” Kirsten said. “It all began . . .”

  Gomez cut her off. “Omar explained. As interested as we are, for now we must limit the discussion to the review of a few points.”

  The questions came fast and furious, with follow-ups and artfully leading paraphrases repeatedly interrupting Kirsten’s answers. She was being tested. So many overlapping questions and comments kept her too busy to gauge the politicians’ belief or disbelief. Was she telling the story the same way, citing the same facts, as Omar? Was she credible? This cross-examination was meant to shake her, to bare any weaknesses or inconsistencies in their story.

  The governor had had her own dealings with Nike, especially since the last change in government—the Conservative Hindmost refused faces-to-face contact with Colonists. Sabrina’s firsthand knowledge made her questions all the more incisive.

  No wonder Omar looked drained.

  Doggedly persisting through the interruptions, Kirsten conveyed the essential facts. Concern for the Gw’oth evolving into skepticism about Concordance policy to other species—including their own. The quest for hard data in computers aboard Explorer, then on the continent of Elysium, and even later on Hearth. The hunt for the Institute for Human Studies. The lightning visit to Long Pass, hidden in plain sight in orbit around NP5.

  “Thank you for your patience,” Gomez finally said. “Excuse us for a moment.”

  The hint was obvious. From a stream bed at least one hundred feet removed, Kirsten and Omar tried to read meaning into indistinct whispers and veiled expressions. Purple pollinators, Hearthian bees, chirped nearby. “How do you think it’s going?” she finally asked.

  “I honestly don’t know.” Eyes closed, Omar rubbed his temples. “I feel like I’ve been through a meat grinder.”

  Gomez shook her head insistently. Tremonti’s face flushed. They disagreed about something. What? Kirsten resisted the urge to sidle closer. They would learn soon enough what the leaders concluded. “Omar, do they even believe us?”

  Omar looked away, doubt plain on his face.

  The debate ended abruptly. Gomez gestured to them to return. “We find ourselves unconvinced by your report, which has more inferences than facts. Assuming that everything you have reported is correct, it would still remain unclear how best to use the information.”

  “Assuming? Respectfully, Governor, these are facts.” Kirsten shrugged off the hand Omar had laid on her forearm. Obsequiousness and restraint would accomplish nothing. “The Concordance has lied to us about our past. They have kept us from the ship in which we might find answers. For all we know, they obliterated our ancestors’ home world.

  “Don’t you want to know?”

  “Young woman, that’s enough,” Gomez snapped back. “Do you imagine you are the first to worry about the inconsistencies in our history? The first to encounter an anomaly? Don’t flatter yourself. There is a reason your captain has our ear.

  “Speculation and skepticism come easily. Before anyone accuses the Concordance of lying, let alone of whatever heinous scenarios you have imagined, there must be proof.

  “You may be ready to put at risk the unprecedented opportunity of the Colonist scouting program. I am not. What if you found a replica, a recreation, of some sort? What if your loyalty—and by extension, the colony’s loyalty—was being tested? Perhaps you were allowed to find—”

  “Hello?” The greeting floated over the hill, tentative and worried. “Kirsten?”

  Kirsten needed a moment to remember having given Sven this address. Proof? Perhaps he had it. “Over here!”

  Sven crested the hill, clutching the odd artwork from Long Pass. He stumbled as he recognized the high-ranking officials. “Am I interrupting?”

  “I know you. You’re the archivist,” Gomez said. “What brings you here?”

  “I invited him,” Kirsten answered. “He may have the proof you’re looking for.”

  Sven squirmed. “Kirsten asked me to assess her recordings . . . and this.” He waggled the artwork. “It’s very interesting, actually.”

  Tremonti coughed. “First, the data. Does that hold together?”

  “It does, at least through a few hours of inspection.” Handing the framed picture to Kirsten, Sven took a communicator from his pocket. “I’ve downloaded my main tests and correlations. We can access the raw data, if you like. But Governor . . . this artifact is the compelling evidence.”

  “Compelling?” Gomez frowned at the stitched flowers and shells.

  “Let me explain.” Sven straightened. “It’s the materials that matter: the cloth backing, the fibers used in the design, and the wooden frame. Since they’re organic, I carbon-dated them. These materials are thousands of years old.”

  “Thousands?” Omar repeated. “How can that be?”

  “Exactly,” Sven beamed. “Thousands of years seriously predates the official history of the rescue. It would make this artifact much older than all our records.”

  “How do you explain it?” Gomez asked.

  Sven bounced on his toes in scarcely constrained excitement. “By recalling an underlying assumption of the method. Carbon dating is planet-specific. Carbon 14 can be more or less prevalent on other worlds. If this artwork is not an NP4 artifact, it might be any age.”

  Gomez considered. “Any age. Perhaps quite new, fabricated with materials found on a scouting mission.”

  Kirsten winced. Did her souvenir actually hurt their credibility?

  “That would only deepen the mystery,” Sven said. “I ran other tests. The materials are clearly related to materials we use.”

  “Clearly related.” Kirsten was as lost as the rest. “Meaning?”

  Sven tapped the wooden frame. “This is clearly oak—only it is of no species known to the archive. If it doesn’t grow on Arcadia, where did it come from?”

  Kirsten remembered Eric’s disclosure about a human presence on NP3. Did the council know about that? “Could the artifact have come from another world in the Fleet?”

  Sven gestured dismissively. “Calculations using the published atmospheric data for the other worlds gave me different results, but none any more credible. The organics would appear older still if they came from NP1, NP5, or Hearth. And there’s too much C-14 for any of this to have originated on NP2 or NP3.

  “Now consider the cloth fabric. Without a doubt it is linen, meaning its threads are made from the fibers of the flax plant. That’s not merely a comment about superficial appearance, but consistent with what I saw under the microscope. Only . . .”

  “Only what?” Gomez demanded.

  Sven struck a pedantic pose. “You are aware that only a small part of a genome, any genome, serves a purpose? That most DNA consists of inactive segments, partial repetitions, and the like.”

  Tremonti nodded. “Junk genes.”

  “Exactly.” Sven stroked the linen. “Most genes are junk genes, so most mutations have no meaningful effect. Not biologically meaningful, that is. Most mutations occur in the unused segments. The genetic drift rate then makes a fair molecular clock.”

  “A clock timing what, exactly?” Gomez asked.

  “The interval since the harvesting of the flax in this linen.” Sven paused dramatically. “Roughly five hundred years. I also tested several strands of the cotton floss. All imply the same approximate age.”

  Kirsten’s thoughts raced. Five hundred years: scarcely longer than the
supposed age of Arcadia colony. Those were Fleet-standard years, of course, the rotations of the NP worlds having been synched to the preferences of Hearthian biota.

  A great bird soared lazily overhead, clearly Arcadian, undeterred by the extent of the alien fields. An eagle, Kirsten thought. It was majestic.

  She hoped it was an omen.

  Arcadian wood, either not of this planet, or thousands of years old. Flax and cotton as old as the colony. Surely now the politicians would have to accept—

  “Excellent,” Gomez said. “Perhaps there is something to this tale.” She locked eyes with Sven. “You will accompany these two and their other crewman and find out for certain.”

  24

  The summons was not unexpected. The venue was.

  Nike materialized in a vast semicircular room whose great arc of transparent wall overlooked a wooded park. Far below his hooves, the undulating, multicolored leaf canopy glowed by the light of arcology-wall sun panels.

  Abandoning the spectacular view, Nike scanned the room itself. Its floor was lush with meadowplant. Overstuffed pillows and dramatic holo-sculptures had been tastefully scattered all around. The ceiling, extravagantly tall and wasteful for an arcology, soared far above his heads.

  A sinuous masonry partition subtended the clear arc. Water burbled down the rough-hewn rock face into a low, stone-rimmed pool. An unseen force field bent the water around the wall’s central opening, which provided access to a long corridor in which many more doorways could be seen.

  “Welcome.” Eos, the long-time leader of the Experimentalists, capered through the vaulted archway. He was tall for a Citizen, with striking white patches around his eyes. He wore his mane informally today, in elegant waves confined by a few orange ribbons. He brushed heads with Nike in greeting. “Welcome to my new home.”

  New home? When had Eos come to possess such wealth? Nike managed not to react. “Your invitation referred to the upcoming consensualization.”

  “We will speak inside.” There were ample benches and cushions—and privacy—in this room. Proposing somewhere else to talk failed to disguise an unasked-for tour of the residence.