'Quite. They were lucky, Marshal.’ their ancestors stumbled into Beta when that universe was very young.'

  'You'd think people would know they didn't belong there.' Coton blurted. 'They wouldn't have to remember by repeating nursery rhymes.'

  'How so?' Sand asked.

  'Because they can't eat the native life, for one thing. Lura told me. And then there's evolution.'

  He glanced at Vala, uncertain, but she nodded encouragement. 'It took billions of years for complex life to evolve on Earth. But if universe Beta is only a million years old, there hasn't been enough time for humans to evolve.' Mother thought struck him. 'Or the trees, or the whales. Where did they come from?'

  Vala smiled. 'Good thinking, grandson! Of course you're right. I can only conclude that the whales and the trees and whatnot are refugees like the humans—not from our universe, but from others linked by wormholes to Beta, from universes Gamma and Delta and Epsilon! Beta is a particularly porous place, I suspect. Gravity has surely twisted it up on a large scale, and has torn holes in it everywhere...Perhaps it's no surprise that it was Beta that the Constancy crew fell into; in the greater Bulk of universes this sponge-like cosmos must be something of a sink. That's not to say Beta couldn't host native life of its own,' she mused. 'Fast-living creatures of exotic physics, perhaps, down in the highly stressed spacetime around those big black holes. Lura says there have been observations of something like that. But nothing biochemical like our own.'

  'And still the castaways linger on,' Sand said. 'A minor, but remarkable, story of human endurance. Perhaps after all this time we should leave them be. Beta is, by now, their home. Ah, but it is dying.'

  'I'm afraid so. They have surely had to flee before—Lura has fragmentary tales of stars dying and nebulae becoming exhausted. But when the last stars go out there will be nowhere left to run.

  'And things may get worse yet, and quite quickly. Unlike our universe, which seems destined to endless expansion, Beta, dominated by gravity, will collapse back to a Big Crunch. I don't know when this will be—we need better data and subtler modelling—but not long! Not compared to our own cosmological timescales.'

  'So is it a coincidence that we have made contact with Lura just as her universe is failing?'

  'No,' Vala said. 'Remember, it was the Mole that called us. A component of the starship. Despite its "massive sensor dysfunction" it seems to have perceived the problems ahead.'

  'And it sent a distress message out of its own universe? That seems quite a conceptual leap.'

  'Actually it seems to have sent its messages inwards towards the Core of Cores. As I said, there may be concentrations of complex matter there. That was its best bet in seeking help, perhaps. But that's also where local spacetime is most distorted, and its message leaked into the wider Bulk—'

  'To be picked up by the alien thing in your grandson's head.'

  Coton felt that phantom ache deep in the core of his brain.

  'The question now is how we proceed,' Vala said.

  Sand frowned. 'Proceed to do what?'

  'Why, to help them, of course. They are humans, Marshal Sand, whose ancestors became castaways following their duty!'

  'Their "duty" was to a government that has long vanished, in a long forgotten war—'

  'Against the same enemy,' Vala said quietly.

  The Marshal stared at her. Then she paced, impatient, one hand slapping her hip. 'All this is a curiosity. I can see your motivation, Academician. You have spent your life trying to save other relics of dead wars, such as the Starfolk. But what, in the end, can you actually do for these people? They are in another universe—and I have other priorities. I'm under pressure to tidy up here—'

  '''Tidy up"?'

  'I'm aware of the cultural and historical sensitivities.' Sand said wearily. 'But the military priority is to fall back to the Orion-line Wall zone, before the pressure of the Scourge in this region becomes overwhelming. And at the Wall itself, where the demarcation lines are being drawn, there is already some trouble among the displaced and the refugees...' She took off her elaborate peaked cap and rubbed her stubbly hair. 'Yet I am not without compassion, Academician. And curiosity. You may continue with this, for now. But whatever you intend to do, get it done quickly.' And she placed her cap back on her head and walked out.

  Vala sighed. She came to sit beside Coton. 'Well, we're going to have to get on with it-and so are Lura and her people.'

  'Get on with what?'

  Vala smiled and rubbed his back. 'To retrace their steps through Bolder's Ring is out of the question...I suppose teleportation is a possibility. I'll have to look into it. Go poking around the museums again...Do you feel up to talking to the castaways some more? Whatever we do is going to depend on having some kind of anchor at their end. They need to get hold of more high technology, more relics of the ship. There must be some. Perhaps they can find this "Raft" Lura spoke of—'

  He cut through the torrent of words. 'Grandmother, I don't understand. What do you intend to do?'

  She smiled. 'Well, that's simple. I'm going to bring them home.'

  Her plain words stunned him.

  She stood up. 'I've a lot to do. You rest, and when you feel up to it try to contact Lura again.' She patted his shoulder and walked off across the floor of the Map Room. Wild ideas whirled in his head.

  9

  The riders were becoming increasingly disturbed by the Mole's pronouncements. They went off towards the whale's vast inverted face, so they could talk away from their captives.

  But Lura was confused too. Coton had told them they needed to find the Raft. It was as if they had been told to chase a child's fantasy! Even Pesten looked baffled.

  Lura and Brother Pesten sat side by side, somewhere near the whale's midriff. They had been left unbound for a few shifts now, and Pesten had been given a coarse, ill-smelling blanket to cover his nakedness. They drank water from sacks made of the skin of sky wolves. The Mole sat on the slippery skin-floor between them, silent for now, its transparent 'eyes' gazing out at what they had learned to call universe Beta.

  The whale appeared to be feeding. A series of ill-defined lumps was passing down the huge digestive tract that spanned its diameter, from face to anus, passing above their heads.

  Lura watched the whale riders. The effective gravity imparted by the whale's spin was weakest near its axis, and as Anka and Otho and the other half-dozen riders argued they drifted in the air and spun around, and they kept cluttering together under their mutual gravity and pushing each other away. They were like squabbling children, she thought.

  In the shifts since they'd been taken she had seen something of how the riders lived. All she'd known of them before was their ferocity during raids. Now she had watched them eat, sleep, laugh, squabble, shit-they respected the whale, and kept their waste in containers that they dumped out though hull lesions. They lived naked, for the whale's body cavity was too hot for them to need clothes. Their life seemed shabby, featureless, unfulfilled between bouts of raiding, and when they weren't attacking somebody else they'd often fight each other. Otho, who seemed a deeper-thinking individual than she'd imagined, sometimes broke this up, but not always; maybe he liked to keep his riders combat-ready. And they rutted, coupling randomly, in shadowed corners of the whale's body cavity. There seemed little tenderness in the sex. Lura wondered what became of their children.

  Now Coton's mention of the Raft had sent the whale riders into a spin. Pesten said, 'I wonder if they regret taking us in the first place. We've brought them nothing but trouble.'

  Lura murmured, 'Do you believe all it says? The Mole. About the other "everything', and all the people there—'

  'Well, I have no idea how it is saying these things to us—how your friend Coton can use it to speak to us at all—and, given that, I don't see why anyone would go to all that trouble to lie to us. And it does fit what we know of our history. Humans don't belong here.'

  'A history you Brothers have been beating out of us for generations. You know, my uncle used to argue with my father. He used to say that we know mankind evolved here because our gods are here, living in the Core of Cores.'

  He winked at her. 'That was a particularly good lie, wasn't it? Silenced a lot of doubters, such as your uncle...'

  Thinking of her father and uncle reminded her how far she was from home. She glanced around, at the smoky sky that rotated grandly around the spinning carcass of the whale. 'J wonder if I'll ever see the Forest again.'

  The Brother took her hand. 'You will. If only because they'll have to go back if they're to ransom me. I'll make sure you get off when I do—'

  The blunt end of a spear slammed down between them, and they flinched away. Anka loomed over them. 'Making promises you can't keep, Brother, to add to a lifetime of lies?'

  'Oh, leave them alone, Anka.' Otho and most of the others came towards them, moving with big low-gravity footsteps.

  Anka ground her spear butt into the floor. 'Maybe we should truss them up again. What could your boyfriend Coton do about that, Lura? Oh, come on, Otho. It's all just some kind of trick. A voice in a box!'

  'It's more than that.’ said one of the other riders-a woman who looked away from Lura and Pesten as she spoke. Most of the riders kept their distance, evidently spooked by the Mole. After so many shifts since her capture, Lura didn't even know their names. The woman said now, 'If it's just some trick, why would he tell us to go to the Raft? No tree pilot or kernel-grubber has ever seen the Raft. It's just a story to them.' Pesten frowned. 'Wait—are you saying you've seen the Raft for yourself?'

  'I saw it.' Otho said. 'Long ago—as a kid.' He waved a hand vaguely. 'In a dead nebula, choked up, a few whale hops away from here.' Lura tried to take this in. She really had always imagined the Raft was just another legend, a detail in the half-myth saga of the Ship and its crew. 'So when Coton said we should go there—you could take us?'

  Anka loomed again. 'What right have you got to make demands? What do you wooden tops know about riders, and how we live?'

  It all swirled inside Lura, her anger and fear, the strangeness of the words that had come out of the Mole-the extraordinary fact that the whole universe was dying. And in the middle of all that she had to deal with this ridiculous woman. She snapped back, 'Oh, we know all about you and your kind.'

  Pesten murmured, 'Lura—'

  'I've had enough of this, Brother! Let her kill us if she wants-it can't be worse than hearing her droning voice. We work to feed the Core of Cores, and you prey on us like rats, or fleas that bite the skin. That's all you are—rats and fleas.'

  'Why, you—' Anka raised her hand, but did not strike. She turned to Otho. 'Is she to speak of us like that?'

  'Oh, shut up, Anka, and let me think.' Otho said, and he jammed his fists against his temples.

  'Of course you're right, Lura.' Pesten murmured smoothly. 'The riders need us. But here's another unwelcome truth. We need them.'

  'Rubbish.'

  'It's true. When this nebula dies we'll have to abandon it for another, as we have many times before. The only way we know to do that is to ride the whales, for the whales can pass through the airless spaces between the nebulae, as we can't. Then we'll need the whale riders' skills, as we did before—and forgot!' He shook his head. 'Maybe it's always like this. Riders and Forest folk fighting out the generations, until it's time to move again. What a depressing picture of humanity. But we don't forget—we Brothers. And I think you haven't forgotten either have you, Otho?'

  'Perhaps it will be different this time.’ snarled Otho. 'Perhaps we'll leave you behind, to choke.'

  'No, you won't. Because—what will you eat? How will you live? And who will take your babies?' Otho turned away, and Lura saw, at last, what became of the children of whale riders.

  Pesten shifted so he was kneeling with his blanket around his shoulders, and he gazed at Otho, intent. 'And there's more. Think about what Coton has told us, about the end of the universe. You must have seen it. You must have travelled to the edge of the nebula, and maybe beyond. I know you riders take your whales between the star clouds, once or twice a generation—else you would forget how it's done, when it's needed. I think you have seen that Coton is right.'

  'The stars are going out,' Otho said bitterly. 'The nebulae are all choked. You hardly ever see the yellow spark of a new star...Even in my grandfather's day it was different, so he said, before I killed him. It's true enough.'

  'Coton is right.' Pesten repeated. 'And we have to do what he says. We have to go to the Raft—for in the end it's our only hope. And you could do it, couldn't you? Oh, come on,' he said, grinning. 'I've spent my life watching you people control these beasts—and envying you, if you want to know.'

  Lura said, 'Pesten!'

  'I wasn't always a dried-up old teacher, you know. And there is a certain romance about the whale riders.'

  'You don't know what you're asking, Brother.' Otho said. 'You're talking about a dive deep into the nebula—to the very core, where we'll scoot around the black hole. It's dark and hot and thick down there. Half the whale's flesh burns off, and it shits away a chunk of its mass to drive itself out of the gravity well, and it doesn't care if we live or die in its gut or not. And then we'll have to plunge into another nebula, and do it all over again.' Anka said, her anger nearly choking her, 'I can't believe I'm listening to this. Brother, you weren't brought in here to tell us what to do.'

  'She's right.' Otho said. 'I only brought you two in for a quick shag and a fat ransom. And now it's all this.'

  Pesten sat back on his heels. 'Well, I've said all I can. What's it to be, Otho? Steep yourself in blood and die like the rest of us—or live on, a hero?'

  Otho snapped, 'I'd shut up if I were you, Brother, before you go too far.' But he hesitated, his face twisted, and Lura could see the Brother's persuasion was working. He snapped, 'Let's do this, and get it over, and we can get back to what we're good at—riding and robbing. Start the singing, Anka.'

  'You can't be serious.'

  He held her gaze for long heartbeats. Lura wondered if Anka was deciding whether to challenge him. Then she broke away.

  And she began to sing, a wordless melody, and walked back towards the whale's face. One by one the others walked with her and joined in, repeating the melody in an overlapping round. By the time they had reached the inside-out face of the whale the song was eerie, discordant, but it pulsed with a compelling rhythm.

  'Some say this is how the riders really control their whales,' the Brother said, fascinated. 'With song-not with goads. Once there were no riders, just hunters who learned to call the whales down from the sky. Some say the whales can read our minds...'

  The riders gathered behind the whale's eyes, and sang on and on. Lura and the Brother could do nothing but sit and listen. And the whale turned. Lura could feel the shifting acceleration, and the shuddering of its skin as the great flukes beat at the air.

  10

  Croq, a small, plump, confident man, was Vala’s contact at the Palace of the Assimilation. 'Welcome to our Palace, Academician, Marshal! I regard myself as something of a scholar, though I have no formal qualification, but I could hardly do my job without acquiring a little learning! Come, come, follow me.'

  Coton, Vala, Sand and a single Coalition guard followed him into the grounds of the ruined complex. The Palace of the Assimilation had been built on a massive tetrahedral frame, as had many of mankind's greatest buildings. Though the frame survived, much of the facing, a kind of foam-concrete with a golden patina, had crumbled away to leave huge gaps open to the sky, and where the weather had got in the internal partition walls and floors had rotted away. The ground floor was littered with chunks of debris and choked with weeds. In the lee of the surviving walls Coton could see people inhabiting lean-tos and shacks. Some had fires burning on the remnants of the polished floor. Croq had his own staff here, younger men and women in purple robes similar to his own, with weapons at their waists and antique-looking data slates under their arms. They nodded to Croq as he passed.

  'You can see we have our share of the dispossessed.’ Croq said. 'Well, they do no harm here, for little has survived of the Palace's treasures above ground level. Let them stay, as long as they don't disturb the customers!' And he smiled, showing gappy teeth.

  Vala, picking her way through the rubble, looked faintly embarrassed.

  Marshal Sand strode more impatiently, her head swathed in a Virtual bubble where update reports scrolled in the air. Coton was surprised to find Sand spending so much time on Vala's projects, which were surely peripheral to her main objectives. Yet here she was. Her guard kept a heavy rifle cradled in his arms—or hers; it was impossible to tell the sex under the gleaming green body armour.

  And Coton was fascinated by Croq. He was bald with a thick black beard, and his sweeping purple robe, ancient and much patched, was a kind of imitation of Vala's Academician robe-which was itself a homage to the learning of the past, especially the famous Commission for Historical Truth of the First Coalition. But Croq's purpose was not scholarship but selling. Coton thought he had seen his type in the markets of Centre, smiling, hustling, dealing. Yet those vendors of bread and second-hand shoes would have looked crude beside this man, who clearly had expensive wares to sell to a much more discerning set of customers.

  They came to a small cylindrical chamber which stood directly under the pinnacle of the tetrahedral frame, Coton saw, looking up. A couple of Croq's assistants waited here, weapons visible, evidently keeping the refugees out. Croq waved his party inside. They filed in, the door closed, and a single light globe lit up the space. Coton heard the hum of ancient engines and felt a subtle acceleration. Sand grunted her annoyance as her Virtuals flickered.

  'An elevator.' Vala murmured.

  Croq said, 'Since the Palace was built whole civilisations have washed over it like breaking waves. I'm afraid that it's only in the deepest basements, tucked away in caches, hidden purposefully or simply lost, that you'll find much of value nowadays. Of course it gives you some idea of just how much was piled up here that there is still something left, even after all this time.'

 

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