When Arsibalt showed up, and made for his hamper like a piece of earth-moving equipment, I waited until his mouth was crammed before raising my glass and saying, “To Fraa Jad. Even as we think of the four Valers who died, let’s not forget the one who sacrificed his life in the first ten minutes of the mission, before he even made it out of Arbre’s atmosphere.”
“To the late Fraa Jad,” Jesry echoed, so quickly and forcefully that I knew he must be thinking along similar lines.
“I’ll never be able to erase the memory of his fiery plunge into the atmosphere,” Lio added with a patently fake sincerity that almost made me blow the libation out of my nose. I was keeping an eye on Arsibalt, who had stopped chewing, and was staring at us, eyes a-bulge, trying to make out if this was some kind of extremely dark and elaborate humor. I caught his eye and glanced up: an old signal from Edhar, where we would, by a flick of the eyes at the Warden Regulant’s windows, say shut up and play along. He nodded, letting me know he had taken my meaning, but the look on his face made his shock and confusion plain. I shrugged as a way of letting him know he was in good company.
Sammann showed up, dressed in the traditional Ita costume, and, showing remarkable self-control, went around and shook our hands and gave each of us a squeeze or pat on the shoulder before tearing open his hamper, full of infinitely better- and spicier-smelling foods than anything we had. We let him eat. He went about this in the same quiet, contemplative style I had once grown used to, watching him take his lunches on the top of the Pinnacle at Edhar. His face showed no curiosity as to why there were five people and five hampers, instead of some other number. In fact, he was altogether reserved and impassive, which, combined with his formal Ita garb, stirred up all sorts of old habits and social conventions that had long since settled to the bottom of my consciousness.
“Earlier we were raising a toast to the memory of the late Fraa Jad and the others who died,” I told him, when he paused in his eating and reached for his glass. He gave a curt nod, raised the glass, and said, “Very well. To our departed comrades.” Yes, I know too.
“Am I the only one who suffers from funny neurological sequelae?” Arsibalt asked, still a bit rattled.
“You mean, brain damage?” Jesry asked in a helpful tone.
“That would depend on whether it is as permanent as what ails you,” Arsibalt fired back.
“Some of my memories are a little sketchy,” Lio offered.
Sammann cleared his throat and glared at him.
“But the longer I’m awake, the more coherent I seem to get,” Lio added. Sammann returned his focus to the food.
Jules Verne Durand stopped by, took in the scene, and beamed. “Ah!” he exclaimed. “When I saw the five of you, out of your spacesuits, gasping for air, like beached fish, in the observatory, I feared I would never be able to look on a scene such as this one.”
We all raised glasses his way, and beckoned for him to join us.
“What of the others—I mean, what was done with the four corpses?” Jesry asked. Five sets of Arbran eyes went to the Laterran’s face. But if Jules noted any discrepancy in the figures, he didn’t show it. “This became a topic of negotiation,” Jules said. “The bodies of the four Valers have been frozen. As you can guess, there are those of the Pedestal who wish to dissect them as biological specimens.” A cloud passed over his face, and he paused for a few moments. We all knew he was remembering his wife Lise, whose body had been subjected to the biological-specimen treatment at the Convox. After getting his poise back, he went on: “The diplomats of Arbre have said in the strongest terms that this would be unacceptable—that the remains are to be treated as sacred and handed over, undisturbed, to this delegation of which you are now a part. This will occur at the opening ceremonies, which are to take place in Orb Four in about two hours.” The Pedestal doesn’t know yet about the Everything Killers lodged in your bodies, and I haven’t spilled the beans—but it’s really making me nervous.
Had even more Everything Killers been brought up by the delegation? Were hundreds, thousands of them now salted around the Daban Urnud? Were there some in the delegation who had the power to trigger them? I “remembered”—if that was the right word for something that had not happened in this cosmos—the silver box in Fraa Jad’s hand. The detonator. Who of the four dozen were carrying them? More to the point, who would press the trigger? To a certain kind of mind, this would make for an acceptable trade. At the cost of four dozen Arbran lives, the Daban Urnud would be sterilized, or at least crippled to the point where its survivors would have no choice but to surrender unconditionally. Much cheaper than fighting a war with them.
For more than one reason, I was no longer hungry.
Everyone else was thinking similar thoughts, and so conversation was not exactly sparkling. In fact, it was nonexistent. The silence became conspicuous. I wondered what a blind visitor would think of the place, for the sonic environment was distinctly odd. The air didn’t move much in these orbs. Each was warmed and cooled on a different diurnal schedule so that the expanding and contracting air would slosh back and forth through the portals and stir faint breezes down below. But it never blew hard enough to raise waves, or even to blow a leaf from a table. Sound carried in that still air, and it ricocheted strangely from the ceiling of the orb. We heard someone rehearsing a tricky passage on a bowed instrument, children arguing, a group of women laughing, an air-powered tool cycling. The air felt dense, the place closed-in, deadening, stifling. Or perhaps that was just the food catching up with me.
“Orb Four is Urnudan,” Lio finally said, waking us all up.
“Yes,” Jules said heavily, “and all of you will be there.” Nothing personal, but I want you walking bombs out of my orb as soon as possible.
“It is the highest-numbered of the Urnudan orbs,” Arsibalt observed, “meaning—if I understand the convention—the farthest aft, the most residential, the, er…”
“Lowest in the hierarchy, yes,” said Jules. “The oldest, the most important stuff, the highest in the Command, are in Orb One.” That’s the one you’d want to nuke.
“Will we be visiting Orb One?” Lio asked. Are we going to have an opportunity to nuke it?
“I would be astonished,” said Jules, “the people there are very strange and hardly ever come out.”
We all looked at each other.
“Yes,” said Jules, “they are a little like your Thousanders.”
“Fitting,” said Arsibalt, “since their journey has lasted for a thousand years.”
“It is doubly unfortunate that Fraa Jad perished during the launch, then,” I said, “since Orb One sounds like a place he would make a beeline for—that is, in a Narrative where he had made it here with someone like me to open doors for him.”
“What do you imagine he’d do once he reached it?” asked Jesry, keenly interested.
“Depends on what kind of reception we got when we came in the door,” I pointed out. “If things went badly wrong, we would not survive, and our consciousnesses would no longer track that Narrative.”
Sammann chopped this off by clearing his throat again.
“How long will it take for us to get from here to Orb Four?” Jesry asked. I think he was the only one capable of speech; Lio and Arsibalt were gobsmacked.
“We should leave as soon as convenient,” Jules replied. “An advance party is already there.” Everything Killers are already in Orb Four, nothing can be done about it.
We began wrapping up our food, repacking our hampers. “How many Orth interpreters are there?” Arsibalt asked. Do we get to hang out with you?
“With my level of skill, there is only I.” I’m about to become extremely busy, I won’t be able to talk to you after this.