In the first silence, the hummingbird dancer raised his arms, lifting one foot. As he did, the white mantle stiffened, conforming to his muscular arms, and the ends extended, becoming proper wings.
Stamp! His bare foot fell, striking the platform. In the same instant, Oc Chac struck the drum again. BOOM!
Thus the youth danced, first in an irregular pattern which wended this way and that, each light footstep ringing in the tubeway with the slap of his bare feet swallowed by the deep voice of the drum. Watching him, seeing the rapt faces of her crewmen and feeling a tension singing in the air, Susan felt chilled. Back and forth along the section of rail, the Huitzitzilnahualli danced as though flying, an irregular, swooping motion. From one end of the watching crowd he passed to the other, sometimes spinning, sometimes leaping in short, tightly controlled hops. The walls of the tubeway began to vibrate in time with the drum-faster now, as the dancer pushed himself, speeding through the intricacy of the pattern-and both of the Mayan’s hands were a blur on the huehuetl.
Suddenly, as the hummingbird dancer completed a high leap, the drum stopped cold.
The boy landed, instantly still, wings draped over his face, covering his head and shoulders.
Not even a breath disturbed the silence. Susan could feel her heart thudding in her chest.
A new sound entered-the soft wail of a conch-bellied mandolin-and the dancer contorted, flinging back his wings, exposing his iridescent chest to the roof of the tubeway. Kosho stiffened and more than one crewman gasped aloud. A thick crimson streak had appeared over the boy’s heart. It seemed as if blood were leaking from beneath the feathers, pooling under the green and gold. The Huitzitzilnahualli leapt straight up, flinging himself backward in a stunning reverse, and as he did so, the white mantle and the gleaming wings became speckled with irregular black spots.
He landed square on both feet, but now his stance had changed. No longer did he move with such delicate grace-instead he spun, wings inward, showing his broad back and mantle to the watching men-and with every revolution, swinging into ever tighter circles, the whiteness was pierced again and again by black, corrosive streaks. In a flurry of motion, the dancer was suddenly prostrate before Chac and Kosho at the end of the lines of watching men-and his mantle, his chest, his legs were all but consumed by stippled gray-on-black darkness, as though his limbs had washed away in a tide of corruption.
BOOM. The drum sounded fully one more time, the boy head down on the platform before them, his breath coming in audible gasps. Then Oc Chac struck the sides of the drum sharply with stiffened fingers, drawing everyone’s attention away from the Huitzitzilnahualli and onto himself.
“A poet once said:
Be joyful, there are intoxicating flowers in our hands. Put on these necklaces of flowers, flowers from the season of rain, fragrant flowers opening their corollas. Here flies a bird, he chatters and sings, he comes from the house of the Risen Lord. With flowers in our hands, we are happy. With songs upon our lips, sadness disappears. O great-hearted ones, in this way, your sorrow is put to flight. The Giver of Life, the Sacrificed One, he has sent them. He invents them, the joyous flowers, These put your sorrow to flight.”
When the Mayan’s basso voice fell silent, Susan realized the hummingbird dancer had vanished like smoke among the fir trees and the faces of all the engineers and Backbone kashikan-hei were open and glad, empty of fear or fatigue. Even she felt refreshed, in a strange way, as though some of the weight upon her shoulders had been lifted.
Several hours later, after taking her station in Command, Kosho saw Oc Chac enter, once more in his usual Fleet uniform. She beckoned him over, her expression curious. “ Sho-sa, my thanks for this morning’s invitation.”
The Mayan nodded grudgingly. “You were most welcome, kyo.”
“Did you need me to be present?” She tilted her head to one side, watching him closely. “Should the commanding officer attend these ceremonies?”
“ Chu-sa… No, it is not necessary. Most captains do not appear.”
“Was my presence helpful?” Kosho leaned back a little in the shockchair. “You let me stand-you made me part of the ritual. Were I absent, would you have taken my place?”
Chac shook his head. “No, kyo. The officer in charge of the damaged area would usually represent the Risen Lord-but Goroemon was off-watch, having stood in for mine, and I thought… I thought you might find it interesting.”
“It was.” She looked him up and down, nodding to herself. “I am glad to see you back on duty, however. Look at this.” Kosho turned to the executive ’well displayed by her console, stylus light in her hand, and marked a semicircular area deeper into the Pocket, partway between the Naniwa and the singularity and its attendants.
A dark mass emerged from the scan as the ’well zoomed in.
“There is an enormous amount of debris,” Susan said, “between us and the event horizon. Shoal after vast shoal of matter, all of it dark and cold. The dispersion pattern is very stable-only in a few places have we been able to pick out infall from the cloud towards the black hole. And it seems to be old.”
“Ancient!” Oc settled at his own console, keying up a copy of what she was looking at. He grimaced at the figures displayed on the sidebar v-panes. Other displays unfolded, showing him the results of the latest navigational scans. “We’re not receiving much data from deeper in the system, either, but look at the initial analysis on this formation: very heavy-metals, radioactives, high-order elements. And the size of the field-I wonder if the planetary systems from those brown dwarves made this up-after something pulverized them into rubble.”
Kosho nodded, rubbing her chin. “Or something cut them up into tiny pieces.”
Thai-i Holloway, who had been poring over the same data, hoping to find some clue in the pattern of dust clouds to indicate another Pinhole-like exit, looked up and caught Susan’s eye. “ Chu-sa, I think there’s something solid down at the horizon.” He stepped to the main threatwell and jabbed his stylus deep into the projection. “I can see just a faint ghost-here-on my long-range plot.”
The Chu-sa nodded. It must be enormous to show up at this range, but what else could we expect? All of this didn’t come into being by accident.
Kosho straightened her uniform, keyed up her own image in a v-pane looping from the comm system, and then tapped open a channel to Prince Xochitl in Secondary Command.
“Lord Prince?” she said briskly, when his grim visage appeared. “Status update. Still no way out, but we’ve confirmed the pocket is just more than six light-years across. We have also found indications of an artificial structure very near the event horizon of the singularity.”
Xochitl frowned, his expression impassive, as though carved from stone. “All of this was built, you say? The whole of the kuub and this hidden realm as well?”
“Almost certainly, Gensui.” Susan remembered the raw greed on Gretchen’s face very clearly. “I will keep you-”
“Let us consider our situation carefully, Chu-sa Kosho.”
The cold formality in the Prince’s voice stood the small hairs of Susan’s neck on end.
“The Khaid will have summoned reinforcements,” he continued. “They will not abandon the watch at our badger-hole. Indeed, they will be aggressively seeking a way in after us. A six-light-year-diameter surface will take years to search properly, and I do not believe we have years of supplies aboard this ship. If all of this is a ‘made-thing,’ then the structure at its core will be a control apparatus of some kind-”
“Or cheese!” Kosho interrupted in irritation. “Or the hostile fortress all of this was built to protect! Certain destruction in any case, as it will be defended-”
“Make course for the structure, Chu-sa,” the Prince growled. “Every recording device aboard on continuously. Dispatch message drones with the contents every half-hour.”