The light from the bright outdoors, light that streamed through the jungle known as Aja, poured through the narrow passageway and lit the front room.
The whole jungle swayed as the vibrations rippled through it. From here, looking out on the edges of the Disc arcing up on either side of her, she could see the quake like a wave, moving through the treetops. As the wave moved, birds, thousands of birds, flew up from the green tops. They squawked and hooted and screeched as they fled their branches. Eku hunched low to the ground and growled with every vibration.
In front of her, moving his gaze across the open air of the Disc, floated Blip. His eyes were gone. His facial features were gone. He was simply a white porcelain ball hanging in space, thrumming with a thin blue light that strobed in and out.
“Blip?” Syn said as she walked up to him. Her knees were wobbly, and she could feel the ground move below her. Whatever it was, it had lessened, but the after-effect was still reverberating beneath their feet.
Blip didn’t respond. His blue light shifted to orange. The strobing ceased. He was just an orange glowing orb before her.
“Blip?” she asked again.
Nothing but a hum. She shook her head. Blip’s humming sounded more like the fans that broke down from time to time along the towers that served as radials from the Disc back to the needle. When those were on their last legs, the engines would start to hum just as Blip was now. A wash of worry hit her. Was Blip broken? Had the quake affected him far more than she had thought?
She reached a hand out above him, her palm flat. Her skin was illuminated by the orange light, changing her pigment to resemble a pumpkin. Her voice sounded weak as she tried again to speak, “Blip. Please?” She was scared now. When she woke up every day, he was there. Usually chiding her for sleeping late. And when she went to bed, he was still there. He would sing to her before she slept most evenings. His voice was horrible, she had finally concluded after her binge study of music, but it was still familiar, able to lull her into a deep sleep and reminded her that all was right with the world. What if she never heard that off-key voice again? What if he never sang to her as the light from the sunstrips faded into the late evening? What if she never heard those sour notes again? What would she do?
“Blip? Please!”
Once more, with insistence, she yelled, “Blip!”
The orange light flicked off as if someone had flipped a switch. Only the white sheen of his thick plastic hide lay underneath her outstretched palm. She rested her hand on him.
Blip’s blue face returned in an instant. He shouted, “There’s been an explosion!”
7
INVESTIGATING
“How is it, ye ravens—whence are ye come now with beaks all gory, at break of morning? Carrion-reek ye carry, and your claws are bloody.
Were ye near, at night-time, where ye knew of corpses?”
“An explosion? Where?” The words seemed to be from a fantasy, much like the Tea Party they had pulled from Alice in Wonderland. There had been moments of concern in the past, but the ship was remarkable in its ability to self-repair. If something went wrong, there would be a small army of robotic responders to manage the issue. There had never been an explosion before. The closest was the impact of the companion bot a few days past. And the scurrying robots put out that fire.
For every other incident, she cried out in alarm, and Blip had turned to help her, and then the other robots, most smaller than Blip, were there to manage the problem. There had been the broken water line. Syn’s fault. They had been racing, and she had tripped on a waterhead by a path. It hadn’t been a big emergency, but the water, under pressure, streamed up into the air several meters. Syn had given a sharp laugh, and before she’d stopped, the repair bots were there. They had pushed her away and then went to work. All told, the incident had taken less than a minute.
There had been other problems. Wildlife. Plant disease. But nothing that would alarm Blip like what she was witnessing on his face.
Blip stuttered, “Behind… Behind…”
“Where? What exploded? Is the ship in danger?” It was impossible to grasp anything large enough happening that the entire world could be damaged. But she had watched enough science fiction that she knew that might be a possibility. They were on a ship moving through the stars. Moving from one star to another. An interstellar journey. Perhaps this would be the day the journey came to an end.
The fallen companion bot had invaded her world just days before, and now this explosion was shaking the very walls. Her large world seemed tiny suddenly.
Blip whispered two soft words, “The gate.”
Syn put a hand to her mouth. The gate was in the needle. The gate was the one part of the ship she’d never managed to get past. Blip could open up anything but the gate. Every access panel, every gateway, every room. Blip was the master skeleton key, and the obstacles never daunted him. Oh, he was reluctant, more often than not. The more Syn wanted to explore, the more Blip rejected her decisions. Every door presented a possible threat to him. In the end, he’d open them up, and they’d continue their exploration and scavenging. But then none of them were The gate. She felt like every time she uttered it, it should come out in all capital letters. THE GATE. It was a massive hundred-meter edifice and completely impenetrable. There was a part of her world that she had never seen before. They didn’t know what lay on the other side.
“On this side?”
“Behind the gate. That’s all I can figure out.”
“I thought you couldn’t tell what was happening behind the gate.”
“I can’t.” Blip was already moving up the Disc toward the nearest tower to ascend to the needle around which the Disc revolved. “I simply measured the waves in the Disc and across the rest of the ship. I calculated back the origin of the tremors. Whatever caused that, it’s behind the gate.”
“Wow.” That was the only word that came to her.
“Let’s go,” Blip said.
Syn shook her head, attempting to shake loose her confusion. She stepped after him.
“If it’s the gate, it’s going to take a bit to get there.”
Blip nodded and turned toward her bike. “Twenty-two minutes. At top speed. Probably longer.”
Syn smiled. Even in the face of danger, Blip was still joking.
She had the ship down to pure memory. She knew the closest path from one place to another. Yes, the gate was a bit away from here. They’d have to make it to a tower, and then, if the elevator was working, ascend the massive five-kilometer-high strut that followed the outside of the Disc, alongside the tiered housing units, until it intersected with the needle. Then, they’d have to go up two or three levels in zero gravity and maneuver a few more kilometers. Even with all of that, the trip couldn’t take more than fifteen minutes. He was challenging her. He was hoping that she’d feel the challenge and dart ahead without becoming distracted, which was her usual M.O. His hopes were well-rewarded.
Syn sped toward her bike.
Close behind her, Eku sniffed, and Syn looked back. Syn shook her head. “You can’t keep up. We have to go fast.”
Eku didn’t move. Syn took a few steps and rubbed the cat’s neck. “It’s fine,” she said, “It’s okay. You play. Go have fun.”