A brilliant white flash washed out the whole screen. It faded, and a crater kilometres across was left. Debris spread everywhere like a flower’s seed-head, just ready to shed, caught in a sudden hurricane. The interior of the crater was white, yellow, orange, red. The debris continued to spread. It looked like most of it would stay in more or less the same orbit as Third Fury itself.
They both watched in silence. The moon had changed shape. It wobbled, seemed to partially collapse in on itself, slowly, plastically resuming a spherical form after losing so much of its earlier mass. Yellow cloud tops came up in a near-flat line to meet it and the small glowing globe spun under the horizon.
Fassin let the recording play out and start to loop. He stopped it. The screen froze on the recording’s first image of Third Fury, almost overhead, just after the first impact.
· That did not look like a survivable event, the colonel sent.
Her sent voice sounded quiet.
· I think you’re right.
· I am very sorry. How many people would have been in the Shared Facility base?
· A couple of hundred.
· I saw no sign of your Master Technician’s craft, or of the attacks on us once we quit the drop ship.
Fassin compared the recording’s time code with the gascraft’s own event list. — Those happened after what we saw here, he told the colonel. — Over the horizon from where this recording was taken, anyway.
— So much for back-up or reinforcements. The colonel turned towards him. — We still go on, though, yes?
— Yes.
· So, now what, Fassin Taak?
· We need to talk to some people.
“So you want to communicate with your own kind?” Y’sul asked. “Via a relay at a remote site,” Fassin said.
“Why haven’t you done so already?”
“I wanted to get your permission.”
“You don’t need my permission. You just find a remote dish and send away. I suspect any vicarious effect on my kudos level will be too small to measure.”
They were in an antechamber of the city’s Administrator. The antechamber was a sizeable room furnished with wall hangings made from ancient CloudHugger hides, all yellow-red and whorled. A few sported the holes where the creatures had been punctured. One curved section of wall was a giant window, looking out over the vast floating scape of wheels that was Hauskip. Evening was starting to descend and lights were coming on throughout the city. Y’sul floated over to the window and caused it to hinge down by the unsubtle tactic of bumping into it reasonably hard. He then floated out over the impromptu bow of balcony so produced, muttering something about liking the view and maybe moving his own house up here. A breeze blew in, ruffling the old CloudHugger hides as though their long-dead occupants were still somehow fleeing from their hunters.
Colonel Hatherence leaned over towards Fassin. — This kudos thing, then, she sent. — It is really how they calculate their worth?
· I’m afraid so.
· So it’s the truth! I thought it was a joke.
· Distinguishing between the two is not a Dweller strong point.
Y’sul wandered back, failing to shut the window. His vanes made a quiet burring noise as he roted through the gas towards them. “Give me the message,” he said. “I’ll forward it.”
“Via an out-of-the-way transceiver?” Fassin asked.
“Of course!”
“Well, just send to Sept Bantrabal, letting them know I’m all right and asking whether they’re okay at their end. I imagine they already know what happened to the Third Fury moon. You might ask them whether anything has been heard of Master Technician Apsile and the drop ship which escaped the moon’s assault, and what happened to the ships supposed to be protecting Third Fury.”
“Ahem,” the colonel said.
They both looked at her. “Is this wise?” she asked.
“You mean should I pretend to be dead?” Fassin said.
“Yes.”
“That did occur to me. But there are people I’d like to know I’m alive.” He thought of that glimpse of a flash which might have been something hitting ’glantine while Third Fury was being bombarded. “And I’d like to know my friends and family are all right.”
“Of course,” the colonel said. “However, I wonder if it might be more sensible for me to communicate with my superiors first. We might ask Dweller Y’sul here to let me use this remote relay. Once a more secure link had been established, perhaps via one of the warships, which I assume are still somewhere around the planet, a message might be sent to your Sept to let them know you are well. None of which need take long.”
While Hatherence had been speaking, Y’sul had floated right up to her, seemingly intent on peering through the front plate of her esuit, which was in fact completely opaque, and indeed armoured. Eventually he was within a centimetre of her, towering above the oerileithe. The colonel did not retreat. One of Y’sul’s rim limbs tapped — more delicately this time — on the colonel’s esuit casing.
“Would you mind not doing that, sir?” she said frostily.
“Why are you still inside that thing, little dweller?” Y’sul asked.
“Because I am evolved for higher, colder levels with a different gas-mix and pressure gradient, Dweller Y’sul.”
“I see.” Y’sul drew back. “And you have a very strange accent and way with grammar. I swear this human speaks better than you do. What were you saying again?”
“I was asking you kindly to refrain from making physical contact with my esuit.”
“No, before that.” .
“I was suggesting I make contact with my superiors.”
“Military superiors?”
“Yes.”
Y’sul turned to Fassin. “That sounds more interesting than your plan, Fassin.”
“Y’sul, two hundred of my people died yesterday. If not more. I’d like—”
“Yes yes yes, but—”
“I might have to signal ’glantine direct, if no satellites are left,” Hatherence was saying, as a tall door swung up in one wall and a Dweller in ceremonial clothes poked its rim out.
“I’ll see you now,” said the City Administrator.
The Administrator’s office was huge, the size of a small stadium. It was ringed with holo-screen carrels. Fassin counted a hundred or so of the study stations, though only a few were occupied by Dwellers, mostly fairly young. There were no windows but the ceiling was diamond leaf, with most of the sections slid round to leave the place open to the rapidly darkening sky. Floatlamps bobbed, casting a soft yellow light over them as they followed the Administrator to her sunken audience area in the centre of the giant room.
“You are pregnant!” Y’sul exclaimed. “How delightful!”
“So people keep telling me,” the Administrator said sourly. Dwellers were, for want of a better term, male for over ninety-nine per cent of their lives, only changing to the female form to become pregnant and give birth. Becoming female and giving birth was regarded as a social duty; the fact that the obligation was more honoured than not made it unique in Dweller mores. It contributed mightily to one’s kudos tally and anyway had a sort of sentimental attraction for all but the most determinedly misanthropic members of the species (statistically, about forty-three per cent). Still, it was undeniably a burden, and very few Dwellers went through the experience without complaining mightily about it.
“I myself have thought of becoming female, oh, several times!” Y’sul said.
“Well, it’s overrated,” the City Administrator told him. “And particularly burdensome when one had an invitation to the forthcoming war that one is now apparently morally obliged to turn down. Please; take a dent.”