Heineman squirmed in the V/STOLs pilot seat, listening to the exchanges in Russian, English and German.
Transponders in the bore holes were automatically carrying radio signals from chamber to chamber and down the corridor; why hadn’t they been switched off? Perhaps they had—perhaps he was picking up signals from Russian transponders.
He had propelled the tuberider beyond any conceivable danger; he was now a thousand kilometers down the corridor, stationary on the singularity, feeling useless. He had programmed communications processors to track on multiple bands and retrieve all messages, storing concurrent messages for separate playback. He had a ringside seat; there was even some video coming down the bore hole.
He witnessed the crown fire sweeping the Earth before the signal gave out.
It was purely by accident that be looked over his shoulder and spotted the moving glimmer of white. It swung smoothly over his head and to the opposite side. Whatever it was, it seemed to be spiraling around the plasma tube, staying within the plasma layer; its wake was a visible shadow within the Senem slow. There were no other aircraft within the Stone—none that he had heard of, at any rate. He doubted the Russians had anything sophisticated enough to follow such a difficult course.
What was it, then?
A boojum. In the middle of all the excitement, he had seen his first boojum. That’s always the way, isn’t it? He switched on the aircraft’s tracking systems.
For a moment, he had a clear blip on the screens and even a computer-enhanced magnification of the craft’s general outline.
It was sleek and resembled a blunted arrowhead. He recorded about five seconds of information on it before the trackers suddenly wheeped and lost the target.
Patricia felt icy cold inside. She stared through the transparency in the side of Olmy’s craft, watching the even tan and pale gray landscape passing below. Two personalities conflicted within her; one, by far the stronger, forbade any motion or outward reaction. the second was a normal, fascinated, even slightly amused Patricia. If she spoke, she knew the second Patricia—the distant, uninvolved one would try to be funny and make light of what was happening. But the first had grown to a position of control and she did not speak. She did not even move her head. She simply stared at the walls of the corridor turning and passing behind them.
“Are you hungry or thirsty?” Olmy asked. She did not answer.
“Are you tired, do you need to sleep?”
Nothing.
“We’ll be some time. Several days. The Axis City is a million kilometers along the Way—the corridor—now. Please let us know if you’re in need ... “ He glanced back at the Frant but received only an outward-turning of one eye, indicating nothing to suggest.
Patricia could feel it all coming apart; all the tight-wound ambition and hope could not hold back this inevitable shattering. Her shoulders began to shake. She looked around at Olmy and quickly turned away.
Her eyes seemed to float; tears gathered and broke away when she shook her head, drifting around her. She slowly raised her hands and held them before her face; the teardrops touched and spread on her fingers and palms.
All going now, all the glue going—her chest heaved. ”Please,” she whispered.
They’re dead. Really gone. You didn’t save them.
“Please.”
“Miss Vasquez,” Olmy reached across to touch her, then drew his hand back as she flinched away.
“Ah, Jesus y Maria.” Her body jerked and her legs shook with the force of her sobs. Each tore something out of her chest and pierced the dark behind her eyelids with jagged red.
She clutched her shoulders with her hands and rocked back and forth in the couch, back arched, teeth clenched and lips drawn back.
Her spine reversed of its own will and she curled her chest and knees together, is this a fit?
This is grief.
This is loss. This is awareness. This is not fooling yourself.
Olmy did not try to reassure her. He watched the woman weeping for a world lost to his kind for many centuries.
Ancient woman, ancient agony.
Patricia Luisa Vasquez grieved for dead billions and ways of living unknown to him.
“She is an open wound,” the Frant said, moving forward to crouch by Olmy’s shoulder. ”I wish to help, but I can’t.”
“Nobody can help,” Olmy said. Even across thirteen hundred years, the Death bent and hobbled his people with scar tissue. That became clear to him, looking at her, gauging her differences; the Nexus had been forged in the Death, the Naderites had come to power as a result ...
And how many of their prejudices, how much of their willful blindness, was a drawn-out echo of Patricia’s pain?
“If help is impossible for her, then it hurts me to think,” the Frant said.