“Svoboda,” said one of her two male siblings.
Nemes nodded. None of the four spoke again until the archangel was in orbit and the dropship detached and howling through thin air.
“He’ll be here?” asked Nemes.
Microfilaments ran from her temples directly into the dropship console.
“Oh, yes,” said Nemes’s twin sister.
A few humans lived on Svoboda, but since the Fall they had huddled in forcefield domes in the twilight zone and did not have the technology to track the archangel or its dropship. There were no Pax bases in this system. Meanwhile, the sunward side of the rocky world boiled until lead ran like water, and on the dark side the thin atmosphere hovered on the edge of freezing. Beneath the useless planet, however, ran more than eight hundred thousand kilometers of tunnels, each corridor a perfect thirty meters square. Svoboda was one of nine Labyrinthine worlds discovered in the early days of the Hegira and explored during the Hegemony. Hyperion had been another of the nine worlds. No human—alive or dead—knew the secret of the Labyrinths or their creators.
Nemes piloted the dropship through a pelting ammonia storm on the dark side, hovered an instant before an ice cliff visible only on infrared and amplification screens, and then folded the ship’s wings in and guided it forward into the square opening of the Labyrinth entrance. This tunnel turned once and then stretched straight on for kilometers. Deep radar showed a honeycomb of other passages beneath it. Nemes flew forward three klicks, turned left at the first junction of tunnels, dropped half a kilometer from the surface while traveling five klicks south, and then landed the ship.
Here the infrared showed only trace heat from lava vents and the amplifiers showed nothing on the viewscreen. Frowning at the return on the radar displays, Nemes flipped on the dropship’s exterior lights. For as far as she could see down the infinitely straight corridor, the walls of the tunnel had been carved into a row of horizontal stone slabs. On each slab was a naked human body. The slabs and bodies continued on and on into darkness. Nemes glanced at the deep radar display: the lower levels were also striated with slabs and bodies.
“Outside,” said the male sibling who had pulled Nemes from the lava on God’s Grove.
Nemes did not bother with the air lock. Atmosphere rushed out of the dropship with a dying roar. There was a hint of pressure in the cavern—enough that she would not have to phase-shift to survive—but the air was thinner than Mars had been before it was terraformed. Nemes’s personal sensors indicated that the temperature was steady at minus 162 degrees centigrade.
A human figure was outside waiting in the dropship’s floodlights. “Good evening,” said Councillor Albedo. The tall man was impeccably dressed in a gray suit tailored to Pacem tastes. He communicated directly on the 75-megahertz band. Albedo’s mouth did not move, but his perfect teeth were visible in a smile. Nemes and her siblings waited. She knew that there would be no further reprimands or punishment. The Three Sectors wanted her alive and functioning. “The girl, Aenea, has returned to Pax space,” said Albedo.
“Where?” said Nemes’s female sibling. There was something like eagerness between the flat tones of her voice. Councillor Albedo opened his hands.
“The portal…” began Nemes.
“Tells us nothing this time,” said Councillor Albedo. His smile had not wavered. Nemes frowned at this.
During all the centuries of the Hegemony’s WorldWeb, the Three Sectors of Consciousness of the Core had not found a way to use the Void portal—that instantaneous interface that humans had known as farcasters—without leaving a record of modulated neutrinos in the fold matrix. “The Something Else…” she said.
“Of course,” said Albedo. He flicked his hand as if discarding the useless segment of this conversation. “But we can still register the connection. We feel sure that the girl is among those returning from Old Earth via the old farcaster network.”
“There are others?” said one of the males.
Albedo nodded. “A few at first. More now. At least fifty activations at last count.”
Nemes folded her arms. “Do you think the Something Else is terminating the Old Earth experiment?”
“No,” said Albedo. He walked over to the nearest slab and looked down at the naked human body on it. It had been a young woman, no more than seventeen or eighteen standard years old.
She had red hair. White frost lay on her pale skin and open eyes. “No,” he said again.
“The Sectors agree that it is just Aenea’s group returning.”
“How do we find her?” said Nemes’s female sibling, obviously musing aloud on the 75-megahertz band.
“We can translate to every world that had a farcaster during the Hegemony and interrogate the farcaster portals in person.”
Albedo nodded. “The Something Else can conceal the farcast destinations,” he said, “but the Core is almost certain that it cannot hide the fact of the matrix fold itself.”
Almost certain. Nemes noted that unusual modifier of TechnoCore perceptions.
“We want you…” began Albedo, pointing at the female sibling. “The Stable Sector did not give you a name, did it?”
“No,” said Nemes’s twin. Limp, dark bangs fell over the pale forehead. No smile touched the thin lips.
Albedo chuckled on the 75-megahertz band.
“Rhadamanth Nemes needed a name to pass as a human crewmate on the Raphael. I think that the rest of you should be named, if just for my convenience.” He pointed at the female. “Scylla.” Stabbing his finger at each of the males in turn, he said, “Gyges. Briareus.”
None of the three responded to their christenings, but Nemes folded her arms and said, “Does this amuse you, Councillor?”
“Yes,” said Albedo.
Around them, the atmosphere vented from the dropship curled and broiled like a wicked fog.
The male now named Briareus said, “We’ll keep this archangel for transport and begin searching all the old Web worlds, beginning, I assume, with the River Tethys planets.”
“Yes,” said Albedo.
Scylla tapped her nails on the frozen fabric of her jumpsuit. “Four ships, the search would go four times as fast.”
“Obviously,” said Albedo. “There are several reasons we have decided against that—the first being that the Pax has few of these archangel ships free to loan.”
Nemes raised an eyebrow. “And when has the Core asked the Pax for loans?”
“Since we need their money and their factories and their human resources to build the ships,” said Albedo without emphasis. “The second—and final—reason is that we want the four of you together in case you encounter someone or something impossible for one of you to handle.”
Nemes’s eyebrow stayed up. She expected some reference to her failure on God’s Grove, but it was Gyges who spoke. “What in the Pax could we not handle, Councillor?”
Again the man in gray opened his hands. Behind him, the curling vapors of fog first obscured and then revealed the pale bodies on slabs. “The Shrike,” he said.
Nemes made a rude noise on the 75-megahertz band. “I beat the thing single-handedly,” she said.
Albedo shook his head. The maddening smile stayed fixed. “No,” he said. “You did not. You used the hyperentropic device with which we supplied you to send it five minutes into the future. That is not the same as beating it.”
Briareus said, “The Shrike is no longer under the control of the UI?”
Albedo opened his hands a final time. “The gods of the future no longer whisper to us, my expensive friend. They war among themselves and the clamor of their battle echoes back through time. If our god’s work is to be done in our time, we must do it ourselves.” He looked at the four clone-siblings. “Are we clear on instructions?”
“Find the girl,” said Scylla.
“And?” said the Councillor.
“Kill her at once,” said Gyges. “No hesitation.”
“And if her disciples intervene?” said Albedo, smiling more broadly now, his voice the caricature of a human schoolteacher’s.