“And now he’s ramrodding this—” Yur looked about at the group and gave out an incredulous snort. “I don’t even know how to describe it. ‘Ragtag’ makes it sound like more than it is.”
“He led them out of a difficult situation,” Arjun said.
“A difficult situation for which he’s partly responsible, sir,” Yur shot back.
“And at the moment he knows more about the Diggers, and the situation on the ground, than anyone. I assume he requested those objects for a reason, which will be explained as we go.”
Ty held up a hand. “Sergeant Major Yur doesn’t trust me because my allegiance isn’t clear to him. Fair enough.”
Yur’s face softened a little, and his gaze flicked to one side for a moment. Taking advantage of this break in the staredown, Ty turned to face Esa Arjun.
The Ivyn made the tiniest movement that was still recognizable as shaking his head no. Once he was certain that Ty had caught it, he looked at Roskos Yur. “Sergeant Major,” Arjun said quietly, “there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
Yur snorted. “Is that a fancy way of saying it’s above my pay grade, sir?”
“Yes.”
“I just want to know if it’s some kind of fucking dukh shit, sir.”
“Oh, is that all?” Ty asked. “Why didn’t you say so?”
“No,” Arjun said, the tension suddenly gone from his voice. “There’s no dukh involved.”
“Because that bar he works for—”
“It’s not connected with any established kupol.”
“Then who the hell is it connected with, sir?” Yur demanded. “I made some inquiries with friends of mine in intel. That bar makes no fucking sense as a business proposition. Its ownership structure is . . . unusual. Connections to Red, I’m told.”
“One of the Owners happens to be of part Aïdan ancestry,” Ty admitted, “but be careful of making unwarranted assumptions about where his loyalties lie.”
“Does this have something to do with the Purpose?” Roskos Yur demanded.
Neither Ty nor Arjun answered. After a few moments of this silence, Yur heaved a sigh, then continued in a more moderate tone: “Never mind. I see it now. It’s some kind of Purpose thing. Above my pay grade. You should have just told me.” He drew himself up and saluted. “What are my orders, sir?”
“We march to the sea,” Ty said, “following the Cyc’s directions. And moving as fast as we can. Complicating matters is that our Moiran may have to be carried.”
“Actually,” said Langobard, who had been loping in their direction and was now in earshot, “we may have to work rather hard to keep up with her.” He extended one long arm, pointing down the slope of the meadow.
The first thing they all saw was the huge form of Beled, charging downhill at the near-sprint that, as they all knew, he could maintain for hours. Far ahead of him, then, they saw Kath Amalthova Three, moving even faster.
HOPE’S DRUGS AND PROBIOTICS HAD SETTLED KATHREE’S MOOD A bit and reduced the nausea to the point where she could almost ignore it. This had been resolving on its own, but she was glad of any pharmaceutical assistance she could get; her body had become ravenous and she needed to keep her food down. But the most important drug in her system right now—so important that Hope had strapped a little pump to Kathree’s arm, the better to keep dribbling it in—was one designed to home in on her amygdala and put the brakes on any slow neurological train wreck that might be under way there in reaction to the trauma she had seen four days ago. As such it was reaching her brain a few days too late—but apparently it was one of those “better late than never” things. It might help interrupt a vicious cycle in which her brain would keep replaying that little horror movie over and over, deepening the damage a little bit each time. The fact that she’d spent so much time asleep might also be helping her in that regard. Some tangible and biologically measurable benefit might have accrued to her as a result of having spent most of that time physically strapped to Beled, her cheek on his shoulder, all but sucking him into her nostrils. For his part the Teklan had shown no particular reaction to having an indolent, vomit-scented coma patient on his back during the day, and curled up against his belly during the night. The two of them had still never had sex, but she feared now that once she was cleaned up and feeling better she would be on him like a succubus. It was a well-known POTESH symptom, which had produced colorful and legendary results in Moiran communities that had survived collective trauma.
But since having rampant sex with everything that moved wasn’t really an option today, she sought other outlets for her surging physical energy. The hike from the meadow down to the sea was longer than it had appeared and she ended up ranging far in front of the others, obliging Beled to push himself hard just to keep her in sight. She could not see him because he was behind her, but she could sense his footfalls through the ground. She could hear his breathing and the faint clicking of the ambots that he carried on his person, and when the wind was from behind she could smell the institutional wipes that he had been using for hygiene, and the detergent that had been used to clean his uniform, the lubricant in his kat, his most recent meal. Her ranging so far out in front of the others was partly a way to burn off a physical energy that threatened to make her crazy but as much an effort to get into a place where she was not taking in an equal amount of sensory data from everyone in the group. One was enough.
She stormed through a hedge of whippy plants that had been seeded in a dune above the beach and broke out onto the wet sand. Waves were breaking half a kilometer out and washing up toward her in fizzing sheets. The smell in her nostrils spoke of an incalculable density of marine life, akin to what she had scented when she had stood on the top of the bridge in Cradle, but much more finely resolved now. This despite the chemically induced suppression of her amygdala. Without Hope’s drugs in her system she might have spiraled into a sort of panic attack. As it was she felt her body overheating and looked down at her bare arms as if expecting them to crack open like sausages on a grill. Dropping from a run to a stride, she marched straight down the beach peeling off clothes as she went and depositing them in a ragged career over her footprints. Soon, but not soon enough, the surf was washing her ankles, then her shins. She dropped to her knees and let herself topple forward into an onrushing wave that caught her fall and let her down easy. Naked, she was floating facedown in the water, whose icy cold only made the exposed parts of her skin—buttocks and shoulder blades—feel as if they were under a broiler.
Pressed for a rational explanation of why she was lying facedown in the Pacific, eyes open, gazing at a starfish, she could not have answered. But it was having an effect. Her heart, which had been thumping out of control, dropped to something much closer to a normal rate, and a surprising amount of time passed before she felt obliged to plant her hands and knees in the sand, push herself up on all fours, and suck in a breath of air.
She got her legs under her and squatted, then pivoted so that her back was to the sea. Her legs and buttocks were still submerged, cooling off from the run.
Beled Tomov was standing a few meters away, surf washing around his ankles, breathing heavily, looking as though a dip in the icy Pacific might do him some good. But this was not his intent. He had been ready to pull Kathree out if she had gone too long without breathing.
They looked at each other, Kathree’s gaze saying I would do you right now, right here and his saying I know and hers saying I know that you know.
“Did you hear anything?” he asked.