Kosho woke to the sound of a reminder chime from her comp. Lying in the dimness of her cabin, she felt perfectly fine for approximately three seconds-then she moved her head, looking over at the screen to see what needed doing-and every muscle, joint, and tissue in her body complained. Oh Queen of the Heavenly Mountain, she thought blearily, did I take that many meds in the last two days?
The bone-deep achiness in her back, legs, and shoulders argued that she had, in fact, taken way too many stayawakes for her body to process in only four hours of sleep. Regardless, she swung out of her bunk and padded on bare feet to the comp.
Ventral end of magazine conveyor thirty-two, in fifteen minutes? Susan scratched her head, feeling an irritating graininess in her scalp, and realized she’d collapsed into bed without even washing her face. The sensation of grime clogging every pore on her body made the Nisei woman shudder, so she tapped a quick “acknowledged” into the comp and fled to the shower.
Fourteen minutes later, in a fresh uniform and with a bulb of tea in her hand, Kosho stepped out of the tube-and nodded in greeting to a junior engineer waiting for her in the little offloading station. Socho Juarez had attached himself to her as soon as Susan had left her cabin.
“ Kikan-shi Ige, good morning. Sho-sa Chac is waiting for me?”
“They all are, kyo. This way please.” The Mixtec engineer gestured for her to precede him.
They all are? Curious, Kosho drained the rest of the bulb and followed along. What is Chac up to now?
Almost immediately they descended a gangway passing through two layers of battle-steel and stepped out onto a hexacarbon walkway running the length of a railway tube. Susan recognized part of the Backbone from all the work they’d done during trials to get the maglev system up and running, but the number of crewmen standing along the sides of the tube ahead of her was surprising. There were at least thirty kashikan-hei with logistics flashes on their z-suits lined up along the walkways on either side of the rail. At the far end of the group, she could see Oc Chac’s polished visage watching for her, though the slim figure at his side was unfamiliar.
The Mayan’s companion was young, no more than a cadet, and what she could see of his face indicated he was straight from the Center, possibly from Tenochtitlan itself, with shining black hair like smoke tied back behind a smooth copper-colored neck. What piqued her interest, however, was the elaborate and beautiful costume he was wearing. A classical Nahuatl mantle formed of tiny gleaming white feathers was draped across his shoulders and back, leaving the front open to reveal a fitted shirt ablaze with green and gold and iridescent yellow. The shirt was also made of feathers, even smaller and more downlike than the mantle. Most of his face was hidden by a hummingbird mask figured in black and red and green-and the mask itself seemed to be formed of beaten gold inlaid with semiprecious stones and jade. His feet were bare on the platform, though tiny conch shells were braided around his ankles. As she approached, the kashikan-hei lining the side walls bowed respectfully, their caps pressed over their hearts, and Oc Chac saluted smartly.
The Mayan officer had set aside his z-suit and uniform and was wearing a hooded cotton cloak and tunic. Like the young man, his feet were bare, though unadorned.
“ Chu-sa on deck,” Juarez announced, his voice echoing in the tubeway. With a rustle, everyone knelt save the Huitzitzilnahualli and Susan. She glanced questioningly to Oc Chac, who motioned for her to step to the edge of the tube beside him and remain standing. When she had done so, the Mayan squatted down with a drum between his legs. A flat, calloused palm struck the stretched leather and a deep, basso boom-boom sounded. In the rail tunnel, the sound reverberated in each direction, generating a skin-tingling vibration.
In the first silence, the hummingbird dancer raised his arms, lifting one foot. As he did, the white mantle stiffened, conforming to his muscular arms, and the ends extended, becoming proper wings.
Stamp! His bare foot fell, striking the platform. In the same instant, Oc Chac struck the drum again. BOOM!
Thus the youth danced, first in an irregular pattern which wended this way and that, each light footstep ringing in the tubeway with the slap of his bare feet swallowed by the deep voice of the drum. Watching him, seeing the rapt faces of her crewmen and feeling a tension singing in the air, Susan felt chilled. Back and forth along the section of rail, the Huitzitzilnahualli danced as though flying, an irregular, swooping motion. From one end of the watching crowd he passed to the other, sometimes spinning, sometimes leaping in short, tightly controlled hops. The walls of the tubeway began to vibrate in time with the drum-faster now, as the dancer pushed himself, speeding through the intricacy of the pattern-and both of the Mayan’s hands were a blur on the huehuetl.
Suddenly, as the hummingbird dancer completed a high leap, the drum stopped cold.
The boy landed, instantly still, wings draped over his face, covering his head and shoulders.
Not even a breath disturbed the silence. Susan could feel her heart thudding in her chest.
A new sound entered-the soft wail of a conch-bellied mandolin-and the dancer contorted, flinging back his wings, exposing his iridescent chest to the roof of the tubeway. Kosho stiffened and more than one crewman gasped aloud. A thick crimson streak had appeared over the boy’s heart. It seemed as if blood were leaking from beneath the feathers, pooling under the green and gold. The Huitzitzilnahualli leapt straight up, flinging himself backward in a stunning reverse, and as he did so, the white mantle and the gleaming wings became speckled with irregular black spots.
He landed square on both feet, but now his stance had changed. No longer did he move with such delicate grace-instead he spun, wings inward, showing his broad back and mantle to the watching men-and with every revolution, swinging into ever tighter circles, the whiteness was pierced again and again by black, corrosive streaks. In a flurry of motion, the dancer was suddenly prostrate before Chac and Kosho at the end of the lines of watching men-and his mantle, his chest, his legs were all but consumed by stippled gray-on-black darkness, as though his limbs had washed away in a tide of corruption.
BOOM. The drum sounded fully one more time, the boy head down on the platform before them, his breath coming in audible gasps. Then Oc Chac struck the sides of the drum sharply with stiffened fingers, drawing everyone’s attention away from the Huitzitzilnahualli and onto himself.
“A poet once said:
Be joyful, there are intoxicating flowers in our hands. Put on these necklaces of flowers, flowers from the season of rain, fragrant flowers opening their corollas. Here flies a bird, he chatters and sings, he comes from the house of the Risen Lord. With flowers in our hands, we are happy. With songs upon our lips, sadness disappears. O great-hearted ones, in this way, your sorrow is put to flight. The Giver of Life, the Sacrificed One, he has sent them. He invents them, the joyous flowers, These put your sorrow to flight.”
When the Mayan’s basso voice fell silent, Susan realized the hummingbird dancer had vanished like smoke among the fir trees and the faces of all the engineers and Backbone kashikan-hei were open and glad, empty of fear or fatigue. Even she felt refreshed, in a strange way, as though some of the weight upon her shoulders had been lifted.
Several hours later, after taking her station in Command, Kosho saw Oc Chac enter, once more in his usual Fleet uniform. She beckoned him over, her expression curious. “ Sho-sa, my thanks for this morning’s invitation.”
The Mayan nodded grudgingly. “You were most welcome, kyo.”
“Did you need me to be present?” She tilted her head to one side, watching him closely. “Should the commanding officer attend these ceremonies?”
“ Chu-sa… No, it is not necessary. Most captains do not appear.”
“Was my presence helpful?” Kosho leaned back a little in the shockchair. “You let me stand-you made me part of the ritual. Were I absent, would you have taken my place?”
Chac shook his head. “No, kyo. The officer in charge of the damaged area would usually represent the Risen Lord-but Goroemon was off-watch, having stood in for mine, and I thought… I thought you might find it interesting.”
“It was.” She looked him up and down, nodding to herself. “I am glad to see you back on duty, however. Look at this.” Kosho turned to the executive ’well displayed by her console, stylus light in her hand, and marked a semicircular area deeper into the Pocket, partway between the Naniwa and the singularity and its attendants.
A dark mass emerged from the scan as the ’well zoomed in.
“There is an enormous amount of debris,” Susan said, “between us and the event horizon. Shoal after vast shoal of matter, all of it dark and cold. The dispersion pattern is very stable-only in a few places have we been able to pick out infall from the cloud towards the black hole. And it seems to be old.”
“Ancient!” Oc settled at his own console, keying up a copy of what she was looking at. He grimaced at the figures displayed on the sidebar v-panes. Other displays unfolded, showing him the results of the latest navigational scans. “We’re not receiving much data from deeper in the system, either, but look at the initial analysis on this formation: very heavy-metals, radioactives, high-order elements. And the size of the field-I wonder if the planetary systems from those brown dwarves made this up-after something pulverized them into rubble.”
Kosho nodded, rubbing her chin. “Or something cut them up into tiny pieces.”
Thai-i Holloway, who had been poring over the same data, hoping to find some clue in the pattern of dust clouds to indicate another Pinhole-like exit, looked up and caught Susan’s eye. “ Chu-sa, I think there’s something solid down at the horizon.” He stepped to the main threatwell and jabbed his stylus deep into the projection. “I can see just a faint ghost-here-on my long-range plot.”
The Chu-sa nodded. It must be enormous to show up at this range, but what else could we expect? All of this didn’t come into being by accident.
Kosho straightened her uniform, keyed up her own image in a v-pane looping from the comm system, and then tapped open a channel to Prince Xochitl in Secondary Command.
“Lord Prince?” she said briskly, when his grim visage appeared. “Status update. Still no way out, but we’ve confirmed the pocket is just more than six light-years across. We have also found indications of an artificial structure very near the event horizon of the singularity.”
Xochitl frowned, his expression impassive, as though carved from stone. “All of this was built, you say? The whole of the kuub and this hidden realm as well?”
“Almost certainly, Gensui.” Susan remembered the raw greed on Gretchen’s face very clearly. “I will keep you-”
“Let us consider our situation carefully, Chu-sa Kosho.”
The cold formality in the Prince’s voice stood the small hairs of Susan’s neck on end.
“The Khaid will have summoned reinforcements,” he continued. “They will not abandon the watch at our badger-hole. Indeed, they will be aggressively seeking a way in after us. A six-light-year-diameter surface will take years to search properly, and I do not believe we have years of supplies aboard this ship. If all of this is a ‘made-thing,’ then the structure at its core will be a control apparatus of some kind-”
“Or cheese!” Kosho interrupted in irritation. “Or the hostile fortress all of this was built to protect! Certain destruction in any case, as it will be defended-”
“Make course for the structure, Chu-sa,” the Prince growled. “Every recording device aboard on continuously. Dispatch message drones with the contents every half-hour.”
“Of course, Lord Prince.” Kosho closed the comm connection, then stifled a sigh and picked up a stylus to lay in a new plot. “So, down into the black heart of the kuub,” she muttered. “And then out again as quickly as possible.” Grubbing for something to show his beneficent father, some prize to buy back favor. There’s a cold thread of fear in his heart now… and we’ll all likely pay for it. I should not have suggested he’d been sent out here to die.
Holloway and Oc Chac were waiting, faces pensive, when she looked up again.
“Yes, Sho-sa?”
The Mayan made a disgusted face. “And where, kyo, does he expect these message drones to go?”