He could tell they were disappointed and it made him ashamed to be so useless, so ignorant of his own workings. Then Robellin was there, putting a hand on his shoulder. Not a spacer’s usual quick tug for attention, but an attempt to give comfort.
‘It’s okay, mate,’ the man said, and Idris realized he’d been shivering like a hypothermic. ‘Fuck me, I just thought Ints went through a secret training thing, or . . .’
‘I’m sorry.’ Idris actually sniffled, like a child who couldn’t do his homework. ‘I wish I could tell you more about it.’
‘Look, it’s good. Just the idea that the site works that bloody way at all, mate,’ Robellin said. ‘I’ll make sure you get your comms time . . .’
Idris just felt more wretched with every word, as though the comms was a consolation prize. A trophy for turning up, no matter how dismally he’d performed. Desperately, he burst out, ‘If it’s any use, I can show you where the other ruins are.’
There was a loaded silence, and then one of the archaeologists asked, ‘You . . . can . . . what now?’
‘The rest of the ruins. Unless you’ve found them, but just haven’t got to them yet?’
‘Menheer Telemmier, my old acquaintance, what precisely are you offering to impart?’ Trine asked, stalking over.
‘Only, when I met the groppler, there was a moment,’ Idris went on awkwardly. ‘I just felt . . . like a radar pulse went out from us. It sent a wave across the planet, and pings came back, mapping out . . . For example, there’s a long avenue that way.’ He pointed, knowing the direction without needing to think. ‘And there’s another place at the end of it. Must be . . . a hundred and nineteen klicks that way. And . . . look, is there a map, a satellite map?’
An hour later, and he’d drawn what he thought might be out there. If they could get a geophysics scanner working or even manage a flight over the jungle, then they’d see the truth of it. And he still couldn’t say how he knew it. In the Intermediary Program’s labs, they’d used every damn instrument invented to search for how the information flowed from the universe into their heads. Nothing had worked. What they did was happening on some unknowable other level, just like unspace.
After this revelation, the dig staff told Solace she could take as much time as she wanted on their comms channel, and she set about hailing Olli up on the Vulture God. For the first fifteen minutes she was just shouting into the staticky void; frustrating for her but downright chilling to Idris. Because, sitting at her feet in the comms tent, he felt like he could hear the whole planet listening, breathing down the open channel.
The EM interference that was screwing with their transmissions was just the visible portion of a shifting buzz of chatter. The cacophony tugged at the edges of his mind, the local life exploiting the channels opened to it by the Originator presence. He wondered about the uniquely plastic form of life that had been evolving around these ruins for millions of years, supremely able to exploit its environment. Jerichan biology might be more unique than even Robellin had thought . . . It might be the only known biosphere that had developed to exploit unspace on a local level.
‘Let me help.’ He pulled himself to his feet and Solace moved away from the transmitter, annoyed by her failure. He skimmed the frequencies, trying to ride a conflicting tide of EM babble from the jungle – tree shouting over tree, monster over monster, tiny bugs screaming at each other and a trillion other calls. There was a path through it, he knew, though it kept shifting. Solace had to fumble for it, blindfold. But if he just let his hands do their thing on the transmitter, without his conscious mind intruding . . .
‘Anchortown to Gold City, receiving, over.’ It was the distorted voice of the transmitter operator, tiny and far away. Solace lunged in to speak, as Idris did his best to keep the connection open. She almost asked that they be put up the wire to the Vulture God before remembering their Jenny Kite alias. A few touch-and-go moments later and they had Olli’s voice on a slight delay.
‘About time!’ the drone specialist snapped the moment she had them. ‘What the fuck are you doing down there?’ There was more but she cut out for a moment before Idris retrieved her.
‘Jenny Kite, this is Gold City. We have Trine but need evac, over,’ Solace said, as clearly and carefully as she could.
‘Yeah you sure do,’ came Olli’s static-mushed voice. ‘Look, guess who Kit and I found docked right here. Remember the Raptorid? Belongs to that Magdan bastard who got Idris and the captain arrested.’