They walked together across the gleaming floor, their voices small in the huge hall. ‘What did they study here?’
‘You know, you’ve been here a month, and this is the first time you’ve shown any real curiosity about this place. I think that’s a good sign, don’t you?’
But he had no wish to be analysed, and he kept silent until she answered his question.
‘The truth is, I’m not sure. The archives have been very damaged. The college probably served two main purposes. First it was a branch of the Library of Futures. The architecture is similar to the central Library on Earth.’ She waved a hand. ‘Once, you know, the air in here, those alcoves and shelves, would have been full of Virtual images of space battles, ships hurling themselves against the enemy in sheaves of unrealised possibilities!’
He barely understood this, but it was a thrilling vision. ‘What enemy?’
‘The Xeelee, of course. What other enemy is there? As for the second function – if I’m to show you that, you’ll have to come outside, just briefly.’
She linked her arm in his, and led him to a walkway that jolted into motion, making Coton stagger. They were swept towards a blank wall at alarming speed. Coton tried not to show his nervousness. All this was grander than anything he was used to on Centre, and more ancient, and he couldn’t help wondering what would happen if the power were to choose today to fail. Vala seemed quite unconcerned.
In the very last instant the wall puckered and opened, to reveal a gleaming corridor. The walkway swept them inside, and Coton tried not to flinch. They passed along the corridor, and emerged in the open air, on a parapet that rimmed this cubical building, under a star-filled sky. Coton’s bare feet were cold.
He hadn’t been outside since he’d been dumped here from the Coalition scow – he did recall it had been night then, always night here on this sunless world – and he only vaguely remembered the landscape, the city. Buildings stood proud as far as he could see, most of them intact, in rows and crescents and great overlapping circles. It was like a museum of architecture. But, under a sprinkling of light globes, most of the buildings were dark, and here and there fires flickered. And between the buildings, though some of the moving walkways evidently still ran, vegetation had broken through the ancient pavement and flourished green and black and purple.
Vala said, ‘You must imagine this university-city as it was in its day, when these lanes were full of flitters and ground vehicles, and Commissaries crowded in their black robes. What a sight it must have been! The college was surely a strategic anchor of the Library of Futures, in this corner of the Sagittarius Arm. And the other purpose was – that!’ She pointed into the sky.
There was nothing much to be seen just where Vala was pointing – but what a sky it was, Coton thought. Stars hung like crimson lanterns before a veil of wispy, glowing gas, where dense knots told of new stars struggling to shine. But behind all that lay a deeper darkness, a profound night that spanned half the sky. That was the signature of the Xeelee – of the Scourge.
‘Do you recognise what you’re seeing? Which way is Sol, for example?’
He jerked his thumb over his shoulder, away from the Scourge darkness. ‘That way.’
‘Yes. About nine thousand light years away, in fact. Sol is in the next spiral arm out from the centre of the Galaxy – and opposite the Scourge, the darkening of the stars. The Xeelee are only a few hundred light years out from us now, and they’ll be here in a millennium or so. Before they pass on towards Sol itself.’
‘Not if the Second Coalition can stop them. The Marshals have a plan. The crew told me on the freighter.’
She snorted. ‘I’d like to hear it . . . As for the young stars, we’re in the Carina nebula, one of the Galaxy’s great stellar nurseries.’
‘They won’t last long—’
‘No. Even the youngest star in the Galaxy is infested by photino birds. And it is the action of the photino birds that was, I believe, the second subject of the college’s study . . .’
Photino birds: creatures of dark matter that swarmed in the hearts of stars, subtly manipulating their evolution. Subtly killing the light. Meanwhile the Xeelee, creatures of the light themselves, were opposing them, or trying to. Throughout human history, and for long ages before, a war in heaven had raged, all unobserved by mankind.
Vala pointed again. ‘Up there is a neutron star. When it was discovered by astronomers on Earth, it was one of the brightest stars in the Galaxy – as massive as a hundred Sols, and a million times as luminous. Its catalogue number was HD93129A.’
‘It must have imploded. A supernova—’
‘Yes. But it popped too quickly. The photino birds had tinkered! And under the old Coalition, the college was established here to study how that supernova process differed from the usual, whatever might be strange about the remnant neutron star, and whatever could be learned of the birds themselves.’ She smiled, and the coal-black tattoo on her forehead glinted in the red starlight. ‘What a sky! I sometimes think you can see all of human history summarised from this spot – and our future.’
‘So why are you here now? You and those you work with.’
‘We’re still studying the neutron star – but from a different point of view. We’re looking for relics of a later age.’
‘Relics?’
‘Weaponised. In the course of the Xeelee war, a post-Coalition government called the Integrality threw a breed of Weaponised humans into neutron stars, so they could turn those stars themselves into engines of war. Direct their flight, so they became like huge cannonballs. There are some in our neutron star, we think.’
Weaponised people – as Coton was, and his grandmother. ‘What will you do when you find them?’
‘Try to save them.’ She smiled. ‘We Weaponised must stick together. There are many of us here – a few Adepts like us, and other kinds on this world – even a few exotic types around the neutron star—’
‘Around it?’
‘As knots in the magnetic field. When it came to creating human-analogues as weapons of war, the Integrality was nothing if not ingenious. We’ve organised ourselves for the rescue work; it is a project run by Weaponised for the benefit of Weaponised. No government supports us, and nor would we want it. We consult, trade, research, even farm, to support those who do the work of rescue; some local populations even pay us a tithe, for they recognise the worth of what we’re doing. I’ll show you what we’re planning for the Starfolk – the inhabitants of the neutron star. We’ve even created a vivarium to hold them, when we retrieve them.’
‘A vivarium?’
‘A tank of neutron superfluid . . . The Starfolk are creatures of nuclear forces, Coton, and they scale accordingly. To them we’re misty giants.’
He rubbed the inverted-tetrahedron tattoo on his own forehead. ‘You know, I’ve grown up knowing I’m Weaponised. But I never knew what our special skill was supposed to be.’
‘It was bred out of us – though some of us still have gravity dreams, when young. It’s generally thought best if children don’t know. They get into less trouble that way.’
She led him back into the building, along the corridor with its eerily dilating doors, and to the Map Room.
‘I know you didn’t want to leave home, Coton. You didn’t want to come here. But you understand there was no choice.’