Corporal Rodzhensky lay with his back against the black library wall. Before him were scattered ration packets and tins, some Russian, most American. He snored lightly and regularly.
Beside him, Major Garabexlian had squatted to eat an American dinner of ham and potatos all gratin, imported from the fourth chamber as part of the as-yet-unratified treaty agreements.
As he ate, he kept a wary eye on the American soldiers lounging several dozen meters across the quadrangle. The forces were exactly equal; ten Russians, ten Americans, all armed with rifles but without lasers.
There would be no silent assassinations.
Tensions had calmed slowly after the Americans had arrived at the behest of Corporal Rodzhensky and the Chinese man and woman. The library had been sealed ever since, with Lieutenant General Mirsky, Colonel Vielgorsky, Majors Belozersky and Yazykov and Lieutenant Colonel Pogodin held incommunicado. There had been some suspicion at first that American trickery was involved; Garabedian had decided otherwise after several hours of talks with Pritikin, Sinoviev and the American civilian leader, Hoffman.
No one knew what had happened within the library, although Hoffman had expressed an all-too-plausible theory that made no one happy.
Garabedian still mulled the theory over, shifting his eyes between the implacable black wall and the American soldiers.
The Zampolits, Hoffman suggested, had tried to kill General Mirsky.
Whether or not they succeeded, the library building had sealed itself off to prevent further violence and perhaps preserve evidence.
All they could do was wait.
It had been a week. During that time, Garabedian and Pletnev had managed to keep the Russian troops from doing anything unwise—factionalizing, spreading agitation or unfounded speculation.
Work had proceeded on construction of their quarters in the fourth chamber. A few Russians—fifty-two, at last count—had simply left the camps and vanished into the fourth chamber woods. Five had been found so far, well fed—the woods were full of various edible plants.
But three of those five had been fetal-curled and withdrawn in delayed shock.
American psychologists had offered to help; there had been similar cases among the Americans, most notably Joseph Rimskaya, who had been stricken just three days before. He had wandered into the main Russian camp in the fourth chamber, weeping uncontrollably, his clothes and back in shreds from self-flagellation. He had been returned to the Americans. But Garabedian did not think it wise to allow Russian soldiers access to American psychologists.
What he felt, above all, was sadness, a sense of loss which almost overwhelmed his sense of duty. He—like Mirsky and most of the young officers—had been part of the new Russian military experiment, begun to fix the problems highlighted by the manifold failures of the Little Death. They and their colleagues had worked with each other as a team, not as brutal antagonists in a throwback nineteenth-century system.
They had achieved great things, increasing efficiency and decreasing alcoholism, desertion, violence and suicide.
They had been the new breed, and their successes had made them cultural heroes. The conquest of the Potato would have brought them untold glory; instead, through some error he could not yet comprehend, they had failed miserably, and their heritage was now ashes.
Garabedian understood all too well the pressures which drove his comrades to swim to the fourth chamber islands and lie down on the forest floor, pulling humus and mold over their soaking fatigues.
The director of the Infinite Hexamon Nexus, Hulane Ram Seija, could trace his ancestry back to the Greater East Asian Geshels who had first returned man to space, thirteen centuries before; yet he looked less human than the Frant. In this, he was typical of many neomoph citizens occupying Central City.
Ram Seija was round, one-half of his body brushed silvery metal, the other half an elegant black-and-green-swirled mineral shell from the worlds accessible through the 264 gate.
His face, which could be projected to any of three different positions on the sphere, had large, inquiring eyes and a sharp-toothed grin which was definitely not designed to mask his basic aggressiveness. His two muscular arms had the twin advantanges of human appearance and prosthetic adaptability; they could stretch two meters if need be.
He had no legs, using his arms and the ubiquitous traction fields to get from place to place.
He was less than a century old and this was his second shape; for his first thirty years, he had been as homorphic as any orthodox Naderite.
It was in those years that Ram Seija had made his contacts and learned the basic political skills. To Olmy, he exemplified the quintessential Journey Century Twelve Radical Geshel.
Ram Seija was number four in the power hierarchy of the Hexamon, behind the President, the Presiding Minister of the Nexus and the Minister of the Joint Axis Council.
In the Nexus Sphere, located just outside the flaw passage near the core of Central City, Ram Seija had convened twenty-three corporeal representatives and five senators in a discovery session. Twenty of the Nexus members were present incarnate, which was a word that had lost much of its meaning centuries before; now it meant little more than being in primary physical form. Such form did not necessarily include much flesh. By law, no partial personalities were allowed in the chambers however convenient that would have been for those still confined to the Jarts conference, being held on Tunbl, the Frant home world.
Ram Seija guided himself to the middle of the sphere and took on the golden armillary bands of light to announce the meeting’s start.
Olmy drifted at the outside, the Frant curled up beside him, only neck and head extended. Olmy had ended an exchange with Corprep Rosen Gardner some minutes before, on an apparently disputatious note; the New Orthodox Naderite leader of the Korzenowi faction had wanted a little preliminary testimony, and Olmy had resisted. Gardner was one of the few corpreps who broke procedure often and was tolerated nonetheless; he was also one of the few Korzenowski factioners who was reasonable in a debate. In the eyes of the radical Geshels, this—and his large following of Naderites—made him a particularly dangerous opponent.
“In the name of Star, Fate, Pneuma and the Good Man, who sought equality and fair deals for all consumers, and who sought the end of overwhelming and inhuman technology, this meeting of the Infinite Hexamon Nexus convenes. There is news, gentlepeople,” Ram Seija Announced, “there is news.
“Our testimony is from Ser Olmy. We also have corroboration from one of our valuable allies, who helped Ser Olmy with his investigation.”
Olmy and the Frant advanced to the center and received their armillary bands.
“I have spent the past year in the Thistledown, at the request of the Presiding Minister,” he said. ”This Frant accompanied me. Together, we investigated an unusual intrusion. Do we have permission to playback our records and to testify by picting?”
Ram Seija gave his permission.
For each of the senators and corpreps, the seven chambers of the Thistledown were displayed in considerable detail. In a few minutes, they became acquainted with the new human occupants of the Thistledown’s chambers. Olmy and the Frant had managed to record some five hundred individuals on their instruments. The compounds were shown, along with a few building interiors. Olmy then demonstrated that the various languages spoken by the new occupants derived from pre-Death Earth.
The point of view of the picted testimony took a dizzying climb up the south polar cap of the first chamber and zoomed down the bore hole.
The reactivated rotating docks and staging areas were briefly shown, and then the point of view emerged from the bore hole.
At a distance of some thirty thousand kilometers, the crescent Earth dominated the darkness, the sun emerging from behind its limb in the west.
The reaction in the Nexus chamber was extraordinary.
Homiform corpreps gasped; all registered strong emotions in various ways.
Gardner spoke first. ”Blessed Konrad,” he said. ”He found a way to bring us home again.”
“Stricken; not testimony,” Ram Seija decreed abruptly.
“It is truly Earth,” Olmy said. ”The Thistledown has returned to its construction orbit, automatically and without our knowledge. The creation of the Way did not remove us from all familiar spaces. It is possible that the Thistledown could have completed its intended journey. It did not. Instead, it sought out the sun and altered its course to return home.
“But we did not escape all effects of the Way’s creation. The Thistledown was indeed shifted into a neighboring continuum, but also into the relative past. It entered its current orbit some three centuries before its launch.”
The chamber was silent, stunned by the implications of what Olmy was saying.
The picted testimony continued. In less than four minutes, it showed the beginning of the Death and concluded with the spectacle of Earth covered with a thick gray pall of smoke, on the threshold of the Long Winter.
The stillness in the chamber was profound. Olmy quickly pushed on.
“I returned to the city with one of the new occupants, a corporeal woman named Patricia Luisa Vasquez. Subsequently, four others violated the axis flaw by riding a vehicle near the city. They have been acquitted and made guests of Axis Nader. All of them, of course, are corporeal and primitive, of primary form and unsupplemented mentality. They are our predecessors.”
The armillary bands now glowed around the first senator assigned to speak. She advanced. Olmy recognized Prescient Oyu, daughter of the still-regnal Gate Opener Ry Oyu. Senator Oyu had worked with SI Ram Kikura, two years before, to exempt victims of sex-retrovirus from the limit of two incarnations; she was known to have Naderite sympathies, though her background was moderate Geshel.
She was a homorph with elaborations designed to heighten both sexual and leadership traits.
“The Thistledown returned to Earth at the precise moment of the Death?” she asked.
“That is in testimony,” Ram Seija reminded her.
“Not precisely,” Olmy said. ”The Thistledown entered the solar system five and a half years before the Death. I have evidence—presented in subtext—that our arrival in fact triggered the Death. It is possible that without the Thistledown’s presence in orbit around the Earth and Moon, the earth in this continuum would have escaped the Death.”
Gardner raised his hands in horror. ”This is an abomination,” he said. ”Blessed Korzenowski could never have intended this.”
“All credit to the Hexamon Nexus,” Prescient Oyu continued, “but a question arises as I look over the precis on the agenda. Why has this news not been broadcast through the entire city? I suggest we make an unequivocal report public and convene an emergency full Nexus convention.”
Her bands of light changed to amber and she receded a meter. Ram Seija extended both arms and spread his fingers wide to have Nexus attention.
“The news is startling and important, but it also could have adverse social consequences. We wish to release the news in the most constructive fashion.”
Corprep Enrik Smys, a moderate Geshel with past service to the Hexamon in a capacity similar to Olmy’s, objected that the Jarts conference certainly held precedence. The Jarts showed every sign of preparing to advance beyond 2 ex 9. “And even our subject today, compared to that, is trivial.”
“Perhaps not, Corprep Smys,” said Rosen Gardner. ”All these questions may yet be tangled.”
“Did you find evidence of deliberate reprogramming of the Thistledown guidance system?” Ram Seija asked.
Olmy rotated to face the center. ”I did not,” Olmy said. “But the system erased all instructions immediately after arrival. There is no way of knowing.” Gardner formally requested the armillary bands. Ram Seija, with some hesitation, assented.
“It is time once more to ask for a search in City Memory,” he said. “There is one who can tell us all we need to know—”
“The Engineer is dead!” Ram Seija objected vehemently.
“We are aware he is inactive,” Gardner said with uncharacteristic control. ”But Blessed Korzenowski knew of the danger to his patterns when he retired his corpus. We must authorize a search for any parts of his personality not purged by the assassins.”
“Overruled,” Ram Seija said.
“I request a hearing before the full Nexus,” Gardner persisted.
“Disallowed.”
“Procedural inquiry?” Gardner said coolly. Ram Seija’s face rose to the top of the mineral half of his sphere and he glowered at the corprep. Only in extremus was a procedural inquiry called for; he had played right into the corprep’s hands by going beyond his jurisdiction.
“Seconded,” Senator Oyu said, turning her elegant eyes to the surprised Gardner.
“Procedural inquiry,” Ram Seija assented; he had no choice. But his expression—now in the middle of his sphere—made it clear Corprep Gardner’s standing in the Nexus would be weakened by any means in his power.
Olmy listened to the discussion without much interest from that point on and, when his release was given, left the sphere with the Frant to return to Axis Nader. He took a rapid lift to the circle and quadrant where the terrestrials were being secluded.
Escorting the Frant into the kitchen lounge area, he credited an open meal for his companion.
“You are gracious, Ser Olmy,” the Frant said, eyes narrowing as it surveyed the feast possibilities. ”I assume I am to remain here for a time.”
“We’ll introduce you to the others a little later,” Olmy said, his thoughts far away.
“I am content.”
Olmy keyed open the entrance to the secluded sector. The Frant squatted at the arena of shelves which was a traditional Frant dining table, then turned to blink at Olmy.
“You did not expect so much trouble, did you?” the Frant said.
Olmy smiled at the Frant from the dilated doorway.
“You’d be surprised,” he said and entered the sector with a wink.