She smiled softly. "He's still at the docks, booking us passage to New Dawn. I'm inclined to go out with a bang."
Perivar squeezed Iyal's hand tightly and nodded to Aria. "Come on. I'm inclined to show the Vitae who they're really up against."
10—The Hundredth Core, Kethran Encampment, 09:46; 12, Core Time
"It is the vigilant of our grandchildren who will find the world we lost. The rest are as doomed as we are."
—Fragment from "The Beginning of the Flight," from the Rhudolant Vitae private history Archives
The right half of Winema's world gleamed. Her witness's camera was calibrated to respond to radiation both above and below the spectrum that her natural eye could detect. Through her right eye, she saw the trace glow from the optic matter, the lusterless patches of traditional solids, the distinctive auras around each of the core inhabitants as they passed her respectfully by.
Through her left eye, she saw the faces and the artworks and the walls that made up the core to the rest of the Vitae that she walked among.
There are two worlds, she was told when the tests determined her memory good enough to allow her to train as a Witness, the constructed world and the chaotic world. It is the eyes of a Witness that bring them together.
The Memory Holding was at the center of the cores, just outside the axis. The Holding's door registered Winema's active camera the way other security systems registered non-Witness retina or fingerprint patterns. The camera's security wires were clones of her nervous system. It was powered by her heart and mind, just like the rest of her body. If she was not the one wearing it, it would not be functioning.
There were technologies that would have allowed a camera to be implanted inside her eye. Her mind could have been altered to act as a recorder. But then she would have no longer been Vitae. She would have been Aunorante Sangh.
The door was a layer of solid that slid away from a layer of optical matter. Winema stepped through the shimmering stuff, causing its minute crystals to ripple through the light curtain that held them in place. No one but Witnesses saw the inside of the Holding.
The twenty-four Witnesses ringed the chamber, standing in their specially customized alcoves. Each body was encased in a metallic skeleton that made sure its limbs were properly supported regularly and exercised. The polymer tubes that fed into their veins kept internal nutrient and waste levels constant. If the power failed, or even fluctuated, they would all be released and the Holding evacuated. The only process that could not be circumvented was age. At 120, the Witnesses still died and had to be replaced from the mobile ranks.
Winema walked into the center of the circular chamber, tracked by twenty-four cameras and twenty-four eyes. She stood straight and proud under the gaze of the Memory. She did not have to hand them her name. They already knew her better than she knew herself.
"I have the names for the chain of Imperialists in my line of sight," she said.
Witness 14 opened his mouth. There was a delicate hiss as the joints on his skeleton responded to the movement. "Recite." The eyes blinked, but the cameras did not.
"Wife Caril Hanr Sone of the Grand Errand, Ambassador-Beholden Paral Idenam Or of the Grand Errand, Bio-technician Uary Nearch of the Grand Errand, Contractor Kelat Hruska of the Hundredth Core." Winema enunciated the names clearly, adding each traitor to the Memory.
"Ambassador Basq Hanr Sone of the Grand Errand?" asked Witness 20.
"No connection," said Winema. "They have been using him as a cover and blind for their activities. He is guilty only of being unobservant."
"Exile Jahidh Hanr Sone?"
"Still in operation on the Home Ground. Believed to be seeking and sorting useful artifacts in addition to delaying the Unifiers' actions."
The eyes blinked again. The delicate threads between the alcoves could not carry thoughts, but they could carry impressions. Their hunches ran from Witness to Witness like the electric current ran through the room, carried between the cameras using neurografted transmission wires that were even more sophisticated than Winema's own. It was the closest the Vitae had been able to come to mastering telepathy.
"Which of these are necessary to the Reclamation in their current positions?" asked Witness 24.
"Uary Nearch, Kelat Hruska, Jahidh Hanr Sone."
"Justify Jahidh Hanr Sone," said Witness 1.
The camera eyes reflected Winema's face and form twenty-four times as the Memory watched her carefully.
"His efforts discovered the artifact Stone in the Wall and began the understanding of the relationship between the mechanically derived and human-derived artifacts. He is motivated to make the final connection and it is highly likely he has leads into the truth that our Contractors and Ambassadors yet lack."
The Memory absorbed her statement. The silence was a comforting weight on Winema. Her camera eye tracked the room. The lines between the alcoves glowed violet as the Memory communed with itself. She was being considered seriously.
"Recommend disposition of Caril Hanr Sone and Paral Idenam Or," said Witness 10.
"It is my recommendation that they be collected publicly. This will slow current Imperialist activities within the Vitae Encampments. I further recommend that they be given to the Shessel World Enclave for their permanent exile in order to reinforce the impression of the Vitae's willingness to cooperate fully in Quarter Galaxy civilization now that we have returned to the Home Ground. We will require resources and diplomatic connections until emigration and settlement is completed."
The glow she saw with her right eye intensified. The camera eyes clicked back and forth as the Memory listened.
"The Memory concurs with this assessment," said Witness 1. "Formal Witness Winema Avin-Dae Uratae, you are assigned to the collection of Caril Hanr Sone and Paral Idenam Or. The Memory shall transfer their new status to the Assembly."
Winema closed her eyes and made full obeisance to the Memory.
Uary pressed the recorder sheet into the park wall and watched while the tidy lines of green text printed themselves across the milky grey surface. The park and the corridor were filled with the amber lights that created ship's dawn. No shadows except his own crossed the wall and the only sound in the whole park was his breathing.
Technically, there was no punishment for writing anything in a public park. Technically, many things were true. Technically, by now he should have been smuggled onto Kethran and into an Imperialist lab, where the female artifact recovered from the Home Ground waited for him. Technically, Jahidh should have already mapped the relationship between the mechanically derived and human-derived artifacts on the Home Ground.
What is going wrong? We are the Rhudolant Vitae. We are the First Life. We are the architects of the Quarter Galaxy…He peeled the recorder sheet off the wall and rolled it into a tight cylinder. Optical matter flowed into the square where it had lain and solidified to become a section of blank wall. That is, of course, the problem. We've gotten so used to manipulating governments and corporations, we've forgotten that individuals will still work betrayal, and that our own land are capable of grotesque mistakes.
Our entire history is based on the fact that we were betrayed and we still forget to watch out for it.
The problem also was that now that events were truly moving and moving fast, there was no time for individual implications to sink in.
The Home Ground was not some far-off paradise anymore, but it wasn't just a ruined hulk to be recolonized, either. There was technology there that had survived longer than the memory of its function had. The Vitae would learn to use it. Nothing could stop that, but the blind still prevailed in the Reclamation Assembly. They would not see that if the power was not directed outward from the beginning, it would turn inward. Those who were now Imperialists would find something closer to home to raise arms about. With knowledge of the Ancestors' technology, the arms would draw more blood than words, and the blood would be Vitae. It would spill itself out while the rest of the Quarter Galaxy looked on in mild curiosity.