‘I understand. Everyone will,’ she told the Hanni. ‘If it’s time for you . . .’ Some human part of her kicked in then, as she thought, But you’ll die. Don’t go. Don’t do it. Yet that was a human interpretation. Kit was the product of a different world and culture.
Kittering was still and quiet for a while, his arms moving about one another without touching. His screens were a lucent grey that steadily lightened, as though a dawn was coming.
‘Soon,’ he said. ‘Soon-ness is relative. It is unsatisfactory to leave behind more questions than answers. When there are answers, perhaps then it will be the time.’
Kris was surprised at the sudden spike of happiness she felt, that Kit wouldn’t be leaving them just yet.
They were out in the deep void now, and at that very moment Olli was cutting the Oumaru loose. It was, after all, the most recognizable piece of space junk in the Colonies right now. Olli would mark its position, so they could come back for it if necessary. In the infinite wastes of vacuum, away from the Throughways, the odds of anyone locating it here were infinitesimal.
*
‘Jericho is out on a limb, location-wise,’ Idris told them. ‘Only one Throughway goes to it, kind of the opposite to Tarekuma. Even if I took us direct, it’s a long jump.’ They were gathered in the command pod again, all five of them, and he looked from face to face. ‘This is what we all want, is it?’
Kris touched his arm lightly, for a little solidarity. ‘This Trine is an old friend of yours, aren’t they?’
‘Acquaintance. Maybe. It was a long time ago . . . You know Hivers. But Solace says they never re-instanced.’
‘For, what, fifty years or more?’ Olli frowned. ‘You’d think they’d go nuts or something.’
‘They’re something of a test case.’ Solace was being careful around Olli after their previous clash, speaking softly, not facing her head-on. Kris was surprised how shaken the Partheni had been by it all. Not what you expected from the genetically engineered elite.
‘What have you told your people?’ Idris asked Solace frankly.
‘That I’m following up a lead that may be of great import to us – connected to the wreck of the Oumaru.’ Solace didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. ‘I have not mentioned the regalia. I don’t like the omission, and I am going to have to report this properly, but right now they might be fake, and then . . . what would be the point in stirring things up? If Trine confirms the provenance then I have to tell them. I have a duty. I’m sorry.’ She looked around defensively.
‘Great talks are required between us in that case,’ put in Kittering. ‘Parthenon has deep pockets, see right?’ The last two words were given Rollo’s exact bantering spin and Kris felt a catch of loss in her chest.
‘The wreck’s disengaged. And the Joan’s secured to us,’ Olli put in. ‘If we’re going to Jericho, then let’s go.’
*
The first thing Kris knew, Idris was triggering her pod’s emergency wake-up protocol. They’d dropped into the Jericho system and were being hailed by a Hugh military frigate, demanding to know their business. It was, they were being told, not the best time to visit the system.
Jericho was the last habitable world to be found by explorers from Earth, before there was no longer an Earth to be from. A survey team exploring a dead-end Throughway burst into a virgin system. They found a planet a little closer than Earth to a sun a little cooler than Earth’s. Then they found a biosphere crammed full of riotous life whose biochemistry overlapped with Earth by at least forty per cent. An Eden! surveyors crowed. Then the planet’s biochemistry ate two of the landing party and they quickly revised their estimate to A monstrous death world! But there were still scientific grants for that, and a permanent research presence was established only months before an Architect appeared over the skies of Earth. That research team was intended to be the sole presence on Jericho: an opportunity to conduct pure research into a thriving alien ecology, untouched by humanity save for the luckless surveyors.
Then Earth fell, the Polyaspora began, and Jericho received its shipments of refugees – same as everywhere else. Establishing a colony on-planet was not the nature-red-in-tooth-and-claw experience everyone had expected. Desperate humans in need of a home could tooth-and-claw right back, and twice as hard. Soon enough, settlers and scientists were developing crops for the Jericho soil and curing all the problems caused when the local life messed up human bodies. The planetary population climbed to about a hundred thousand, concentrated around the city that had by then given the planet its name. ‘Jericho’ seemed fitting, because the first thing people had focused on – given the ravenous nature outside – was walls.