The Ousters handled this confusion of geometries, red lines of magnetic-field lines, yellow lines of ions, blue lines of cosmic rays, and rolling spectra of crashing shock fronts with seeming ease. Dem Lia glanced once out to where the surging heliosphere of the red giant met the seething heliosphere of this bright G8 star and the storm of light and colors there reminded her of a multihued, phosphorescent ocean crashing against the cliffs of an equally colorful and powerful continent of broiling energy. A rough place.
“Let’s return to the regular display,” said Dem Lia, and instantly the stars and forest ring and fluttering Ousters and slowing Helix were back—the last two items quite out of scale to show them clearly.
“Saigyô,” said Dem Lia, “please invite all of the other AIs here now.”
The smiling monk raised thin eyebrows. “All of them here at once?”
“Yes.”
They appeared soon, but not instantly, one figure solidifying into virtual presence a second or two before the next.
First came Lady Murasaki, shorter even than the diminutive Dem Lia, the style of her three-thousand-year-old robe and kimono taking the acting commander’s breath away. What beauty Old Earth had taken for granted, thought Dem Lia. Lady Murasaki bowed politely and slid her small hands in the sleeves of her robe. Her face was painted almost white, her lips and eyes were heavily outlined, and her long, black hair was done up so elaborately that Dem Lia—who had worn short hair most of her life—could not even imagine the work of pinning, clasping, combing, braiding, shaping and washing such a mass.
Ikkyû stepped confidently across the empty space on the other side of the virtual Helix a second later. This AI had chosen the older persona of the long-dead Zen Poet: Ikkyû looked to be about seventy, taller than most Japanese, quite bald, with wrinkles of concern on his forehead and lines of laughter around his bright eyes. Before the flight had begun, Dem Lia had used the ship’s history banks to read about the fifteenth-century monk, poet, musician, and calligrapher: it seemed that when the historical, living Ikkyû had turned seventy, he had fallen in love with a blind singer just forty years his junior and scandalized the younger monks when he moved his love into the temple to live with him. Dem Lia liked Ikkyû.
Basho appeared next. The great haiku expert chose to appear as a gangly seventeenth-century Japanese farmer, wearing the coned hat and clog shoes of his profession. His fingernails always had some soil under them.
Ryôkan stepped gracefully into the circle. He was wearing beautiful robes of an astounding blue with gold trim. His hair was long and tied in a queue.
“I’ve asked you all here at once because of the complicated nature of this rendezvous with the Ousters,” Dem Lia said firmly. “I understand from the log that one of you was opposed to translating down from Hawking space to respond to this distress call.”
“I was,” said Basho, his speech in modern post-Pax English but his voice gravel-rough and as guttural as a Samurai’s grunt.
“Why?” said Dem Lia.
Basho made a gesture with his gangly hand. “The programming priorities to which we agreed did not cover this specific event. I felt it offered too great a potential for danger and too little benefit in our true goal of finding a colony world.”
Dem Lia gestured toward the swarms of Ousters closing on the ship. They were only a few thousand kilometers away now. They had been broadcasting their peaceful intentions across the old radio band-widths for more than a standard day. “Do you still feel that it’s too risky?” she asked the tall AI.
“Yes,” said Basho.
Dem Lia nodded, frowning slightly. It was always disturbing when the AIs disagreed on an important issue, but that was why the Aeneans had left them Autonomous after the breakup of the TechnoCore. And that was why there were five to vote.
“The rest of you obviously saw the risk as acceptable?”
Lady Murasaki answered in her low, demure voice, almost a whisper. “We saw it as an excellent possibility to restock new foodstuffs and water, while the cultural implications were more for you to ponder and act on than for us to decide. Of course, we had not detected the huge spacecraft in the system before we translated out of Hawking space. It might have affected our decision.”
“This is a human-Ouster culture, almost certainly with a sizable Templar population, that may not have had contact with the outside human universe since the earliest Hegemony days, if then,” said Ikkyû with great enthusiasm. “They may well be the farthest-flung outpost of the ancient Hegira. Of all humankind. A wonderful learning opportunity.”
Dem Lia nodded impatiently. “We close to rendezvous within a few hours. You’ve heard their radio contact—they say they wish to greet us and talk, and we’ve been polite in return. Our dialects are not so diverse that the translator beads can’t handle them in face-to-face conversations. But how can we know if they actually come in peace?”
Ryôkan cleared his throat. “It should be remembered that for more than a thousand years, the so-called Wars with the Ousters were provoked—first by the Hegemony and then by the Pax. The original Ouster deep-space settlements were peaceful places and this most-distant colony would have experienced none of the conflict.”
Saigyô chuckled from his comfortable perch on nothing. “It should also be remembered that during the actual Pax wars with the Ousters, to defend themselves, these peaceful, space-adapted humans learned to build and use torchships, modified Hawking drive warships, plasma weapons, and even some captured Pax Gideon drive weapons.” He waved his bare arm. “We’ve scanned every one of these advancing Ousters, and none carry a weapon—not so much as a wooden spear.”
Dem Lia nodded. “Kern Loi has shown me astronomical evidence which suggests that their moored seedship was torn away from the ring at an early date—possibly only years or months after they arrived. This system is devoid of asteroids, and the Oort cloud has been scattered far beyond their reach. It is conceivable that they have neither metal nor an industrial capacity.”
“Ma’am,” said Basho, his countenance concerned, “how can we know that? Ousters have modified their bodies sufficiently to generate forcefield wings that can extend for hundreds of kilometers. If they approach the ship closely enough, they could theoretically use the combined plasma effect of those wings to attempt to breach the containment fields and attack the ship.”
“Beaten to death by angels’ wings,” Dem Lia mused softly. “An ironic way to die.”
The AI’s said nothing.
“Who is working most directly with Patek Georg Dem Mio on defense strategies?” Dem Lia asked into the silence.
“I am,” said Ryôkan.
Dem Lia had known that, but she still thought, Thank God it’s not Basho. Patek Georg was paranoid enough for the AI-human interface team on this specialty.
“What are Patek’s recommendations going to be when we humans meet in a few minutes?” Dem Lia bluntly demanded from Ryôkan.
The AI hesitated only the slightest of perceptible instants. AI’s understood both discretion and loyalty to the human working with them in their specialty, but they also understood the imperatives of the elected commander’s role on the ship.
“Patek Georg is going to recommend a hundred-kilometer extension of the class-twenty external containment field,” said Ryôkan softly. “With all energy weapons on standby and pre-targeted on the three hundred nine thousand, two hundred and five approaching Ousters.”