Текст книги "The Six Directions of Space"

Автор книги: Alastair Reynolds

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Alastair Reynolds
THE SIX DIRECTIONS OF SPACE
^{Taken from the Short Story Collection “Galactic Empires” (2008) edited by Gardner Dozois}

We had been riding for two hours when I tugged sharply on the reins to bring my pony to a halt. Tenger, my escort, rode on for a few paces before glancing back irritatedly. He muttered something in annoyance—a phrase that contained the words “stupid” and “dyke”—before steering his horse back alongside mine.

“Another sightseeing stop?” he asked, as the two mismatched animals chewed their bits, flared their nostrils, and flicked their heads up in mutual impatience.

I said nothing, damned if I was going to give him the pleasure of an excuse. I only wanted to take in the view: the deeply shadowed valley below, the rising hills beyond (curving ever upward, like a tidal wave formed from rock and soil and grass), and the little patch of light down in the darkness, the square formation of the still-moving caravan.

“If you really want to make that appointment—” Tenger continued.

“Shut up.”

Tenger sniffed, dug into a leather flap on his belt, and popped something into his mouth.

“On your own head be it, Yellow Dog. It certainly won’t be my neck on the line, keeping the old man waiting.”

I held both reins in one hand so that I could cup the other against my ear. I turned the side of my head in the direction of the caravan and closed my eyes. After a few moments, I convinced myself that I could hear it. It was a sound almost on the edge of audibility, but which would become thunderous, calamitous, world-destroying, as they drew nearer. The sound of thousands of riders, hundreds of wheeled tents, dozens of monstrous siege engines. A sound very much like the end of the world itself, it must have seemed, when the caravan approached.

“We can go now,” I told Tenger.

He dug his spurs in, almost drawing blood, his horse pounding away so quickly that it kicked dirt into my eyes.

Goyo snorted and gave chase. We raced down into the valley, sending skylarks and snipe barreling into the air.

* * *

“Just going by the rules, Yellow Dog,” the guard said, apologizing for making me show him my passport.

We were standing on the wheeled platform of the imperial ger.The guard wore a knee-length blue sash-tied coat, long black hair cascading from the dome of his helmet. “We’re on high alert as it is. Three plausible threats in the last week.”

“Usual nut jobs?” I said, casting a wary glance at Tenger, who was attending to Goyo with a bad-tempered expression. I had beaten him to the caravan and he did not like that.

“Two Islamist sects, one bunch of Nestorians,” the guard answered. “Not that I’m saying that the old man has anything to fear from you, of course, but we have to follow protocol.”

“I understand fully.”

“Frankly, we were beginning to wonder if you were ever coming back.” He looked at me solicitously.

“Some of us were beginning to wonder if you’d been disavowed.”

I smiled. “Disavowed? I don’t think so.”

“Just saying, we’re all assuming you’ve got something suitably juicy, after all this time.”

I reached up to tie back my hair. “Juicy’s not exactly the word I’d use. But it’s definitely something hehas to hear about.”

The guard touched a finger to the pearl on his collar.

“Better go inside, in that case.”

I did as I was invited.

My audience with the khan was neither as private nor as lengthy as I might have wished, but, in all other respects, it was a success. One of his wives was there, as well as Minister Chiledu, the national security adviser, and the khan was notoriously busy during this ceremonial restaging of the war caravan. I thought, not for the first time, of how old he looked: much older than the young man who had been elected to this office seven years earlier, brimming with plans and promises. Now he was graying and tired, worn down by disappointing polls and the pressures of managing an empire that was beginning to fray at the edges.

The caravan was supposed to be an antidote to all that. In this, the nine hundred and ninety-ninth year since the death of the Founder (we would celebrate this birthday, but no one knows when it happened), a special effort had been made to create the largest caravan in decades, with almost every local system commander in attendance.

As I stepped off the gerto collect Goyo and begin my mission, I felt something perilously close to elation. The data I had presented to the khan—the troubling signs I had detected concerning the functioning and security of the Infrastructure—had been taken seriously. The khan could have waved aside my concerns as an issue for his successor, but—to his credit, I think—he had not. I had been given license and funds to gather more information, even if that meant voyaging to the Kuchlug Special Administrative Volume and operating under the nose of Qilian, one of the men who had been making life difficult for the khan these last few years.

And yet my mood of elation was short-lived.

I had no sooner set my feet on the ground than I spied Tenger. He was bullying Goyo, jerking hard on his bridle, kicking a boot against his hocks. He was so preoccupied with his business that he did not see me approaching from behind his back. I took hold of a good, thick clump of his hair and snapped his head back as far it would go. He released the bridle, staggering back under the pressure I was applying.

I whispered in his ear. “No one hurts my horse, you ignorant piece of shit.” Then I spun him around, the hair tearing out in my fist, and kneed him hard in the groin, so that he coughed out a groan of pain and nausea and bent double, like a man about to vomit.

* * *

Some say that it is Heaven’s Mandate that we should have the stars, just as it was the will of Heaven that our armies should bring the squabbling lands of Greater Mongolia under one system of governance, a polity so civilized that a woman could ride naked from the western shores of Europe to the eastern edge of China without once being molested. I say that it is simply the case that we—call us Mongols, call us humans, it scarcely matters now—have always made the best of what we are given.

Take the nexus in Gansu system, for instance. It was a medium-sized moon that had been hollowed out nearly all the way to its middle, leaving a shell barely a hundred lithick, with a small round kernel buttressed to the shell by ninety-nine golden spokes. Local traffic entered and departed the nexus via apertures at the northern and southern poles. Not that there was much local traffic to speak of: Gansu, with its miserly red sun—only just large enough to sustain fusion—and handful of desolate, volatile-poor, and radiation-lashed rocky worlds, was neither a financial nor military hub, nor a place that figured prominently in tourist itineraries. As was often the case, it was something of a puzzle why the wormlike khorkoihad built the nexus in such a miserable location to begin with.

Unpromising material, but in the five hundred years since we first reopened a portal into the Infrastructure, we had made a glittering bauble out of it. Five major trunk routes converged on Gansu, including a high-capacity branch of the Kherlen Corridor, the busiest path in the entire network. In addition, the moon offered portals to a dozen secondary routes, four of which had been rated stable enough to allow passage by juggernaut-class ships. Most of those secondary routes led to stellar population centers of some economic importance, including the Kiriltuk, Tatatunga, and Chilagun administrative volumes, each of which encompassed more than fifty settled systems and around a thousand habitable worlds. Even the routes that led to nowhere of particular importance were well traveled by prospectors and adventurers, hoping to find khorkoirelics or, that fever dream of all chancers, an unmapped nexus.

We did not know the function of the ninety-nine spokes, or of the core they buttressed. No matter; the core made a useful foundation, a place upon which to build. From the vantage point of the rising shuttle, it was a scribble of luminous neon, packed tight as a migraine. I could not distinguish the lights of individual buildings, only the larger glowing demarkations of the precincts between city-sized districts. Pressurized horseways a whole liwide were thin, snaking scratches. The human presence had even begun to climb up the golden spokes, pushing tendrils of light out to the moon’s inner surface. Commercial slogans spelled themselves out in letters ten lihigh . On Founder’s Day, drink only Temujin Brand Airag.

Sorkan-Shira rental ponies have low mileage, excellent stamina, and good temperament. Treat your favorite wife: buy her only Zarnuk Silks. During hunting season, safeguard your assets with New Far Samarkand Mutual Insurance. Think you’re a real man? Then you should be drinking Death Worm Airag: the one with a sting at both ends!

I had spent only one night in Gansu, arranging a eunuch and waiting for the smaller ship that would carry us the rest of the way to Kuchlug. Now Goyo, the eunuch, and I were being conveyed to the Burkhan Khaldun,a vessel that was even smaller than the Black Heart Mountainthat had brought me to Gansu.

The BKwas only one lifrom end to end, less than a quarter of that across the bow. The hull was a multicolored quilt of patch repairs, with many scratches, craters, and scorches yet to be attended to. The lateral stabilization vanes had the slightly buckled look of something that had been badly bent and then hammered back into shape, while the yaw dampeners appeared to have originated from a completely different ship, fixed on with silvery fillets of recent welding work. A whole line of windows had been plated over.

As old as the BKmight have been, it had taken more than just age and neglect to bring her to that state.

The Parvan Tract was a notoriously rough passage, quickly taking its toll on even a new ship. If the Kherlen Corridor was a wide, stately river that could almost be navigated blindfold, then the Tract was a series of narrow rapids whose treacherous properties varied from trip to trip, requiring not just expert input from the crew, but passengers with the constitution to tolerate a heavy crossing.

Once I had checked into my rooms and satisfied myself that Goyo was being taken care of, I made my way back to the passenger area. I bought a glass of Temujin airagand made my way to the forward viewing platform, with its wide sweep of curved window—scratched and scuffed in places, worryingly starred in others—and leaned hard against the protective railing. The last shuttle had already detached, and the BKwas accelerating toward the portal, its great human-made doors irising open at the last possible moment, so that the interior of Gansu was protected from the Parvan Tract’s unpredictable energy surges. Even though the Infrastructure shaft stretched impossibly far into the distance, my mind kept insisting that we were about to punch through the thin skin of the moon.

The ship surged forward, the sluggish artificial gravity generators struggling to maintain the local vertical.

We passed through the door, into the superluminal machinery of the Infrastructure. The tunnel walls were many liaway, but they felt closer—as they raced by at increasing speed, velocity traced by the luminous squiggly patterns that had been inscribed on the wall for inscrutable reasons by the khorkoibuilders, I had the impression that the shaft was constricting, tightening down on our fragile little ship. Yet nothing seemed to disconcert or even arouse the interest of my fellow passengers. In ones and twos, they drifted away from the gallery, leaving me alone with my eunuch, observing from a discrete distance. I drank the airagvery slowly, looking down the racing shaft, wondering if it would be my fortune to see a phantom with my own eyes. Phantoms, after all, were what had brought me here.

Now all I had to do was poison the eunuch.

The eunuch answered to “eunuch,” but his real name (I learned after a certain amount of probing) was Tisza. He had not been surgically castrated; there was an implant somewhere in his forearm dispensing the necessary cocktail of androgen-blockers, suppressing his libido and lending him a mildly androgynous appearance. Other implants, similar to those employed by government operatives, had given him heightened reflexes, spatial coordination, and enhanced night vision. He was adept with weapons and unarmed combat, as (I had no cause to doubt) were all Batu eunuchs. I had no need of his protection, of course, but appearances were paramount. I was posing as a woman of means, a well-healed tourist. No women in my circumstances would ever have traveled without the accompaniment of a man such as Tisza.

He served my purpose in another way. We shared the same rooms, with the eunuch sleeping in a small, doorless annex connected to mine. Because I might (conceivably) be drugged or poisoned, Tisza always ate the same meals as me, served at the same time and brought to my cabin by one of the BK’swhite uniformed stewards.

“What if you get poisoned and die on me?” I asked, innocently, when we were sitting across from each other at my table.

He tapped a pudgy finger against his belly. “It would take a lot to kill me, Miss Bocheng. My constitution has been tailored to process many toxins in common circulation among would-be assassins and miscreants. I will become ill much sooner than you would, but what would kill you would merely make me unwell, and not so unwell that I could not discharge my duties.”

“I hope you’re right about that.”

He patted his chin with napkin. “It is no occasion for pride. I am what I am because of the chemical intervention and surgery of the Batu Escort Agency. It would be equally pointless to understate my abilities.”

Later, feigning nervousness, I told him that I had heard a noise from his annex.

“It is nothing, I assure you. No one could have entered these rooms without our knowing it.”

“It sounded like someone breathing.”

He smiled tolerantly. “There are many foreign sounds on a ship like this. Noises carry a great distance through the ducts and conduits of the air-circulation system.”

“Couldn’t someone have crawled through those same conduits?”

He rose from the table without a note of complaint. “It is unlikely, but I shall investigate.”

As soon as he had vanished through the door into his annex, I produced a vial from my pocket and tipped its sugary contents onto the remains of his meal. I heard him examining things, pulling open cupboard doors and sliding drawers. By the time he returned, with a reassuring expression on his face, the toxin crystals had melted invisibly into his food and the vial was snug in my pocket.

“Whatever you heard, there’s no one in mere.”

“Are you sure?”

“Completely. But I’m willing to look again, if it would put your mind at ease.”

I looked abashed. “I’m just being silly.”

“Not at all. You must not be afraid to bring things to my attention. It is what you have hired me for.”

“Tuck in,” I said, nodding at his meal, “before it gets cold.”

* * *

Tisza was moaning and sweating on the bed, deep in fever, as Mr. Tayang appraised him warily. “Did he tell you he could detect poisons? They don’t all come with that option.”

“He can. Isn’t that the point?”

“It could just be a bug he’s picked up. On the other hand, he may have been hit by something intended for you that his system wasn’t designed to filter out.”

“A poison?”

“It’s a possibility, Miss Bocheng.”

Tayang was a steward, a young man with a pleasant face and a highly professional manner. I had seen him around earlier, but—as was the case with all the crew—he had steadfastly refused to engage in any conversation not related to my immediate needs. I had counted on this, and contrived the poisoning of the eunuch to give me heightened access to one or more of the crew. It need not have been Tayang, but my instincts told me that he would serve excellently.

“Then why isn’t it affecting me?” I asked.

“I don’t wish to alarm you, but it could be that it’s going to in a very short while. We need to get both of you into the sick bay. Under observation, we should be able to stabilize the eunuch and ensure you come to no harm.”

This was the outcome I had been hoping for, but some indignation was called for. “If you think I’m going to spend the rest of this trip in some stinking sick bay, after I’ve paid for this cabin…”

Tayang raised a calming hand. “It won’t be for long. A day or two, just to be on the safe side. Then you can enjoy the rest of the trip in comfort.”

Another pair of stewards was summoned to help shift the hapless Tisza, while I made my way to the sick bay on foot. “Actually,” I said, “now that you mention it… I do feel a little peculiar.”

Tayang looked at me sympathetically. “Don’t worry, Miss Bocheng. We’ll have you right as rain in no time.”

The sick bay was larger and better equipped than I had been expecting, almost as if it belonged in a different ship entirely. I was relieved to see that no one else was using it. Tayang helped me onto a reclined couch while the other stewards pulled a screen around the stricken eunuch.

“How do you feel now?” Tayang asked, fastening a black cuff around my forearm.

“Still a bit funny.”

For the next few minutes, Tayang—who had clearly been given basic medical training—studied the readouts on a handheld display he had pulled from a recess in the wall.

“Well, it doesn’t look—”he began.

“I should have listened to my friends,” I said, shaking my head. “They told me not to come here.”

He tapped buttons set into the side of the display. “Your friends warned you that you might end up getting poisoned?”

“Not exactly, no. But they said it wasn’t a good idea traveling on the Burkhan Khaldun,down the Parvan Tract. They were right, weren’t they?”

“That would depend. So far, I can’t see any sign that you’ve ingested anything poisonous. Of course, it could be something that the analyzer isn’t equipped to detect—”

“And the eunuch?”

“Just a moment,” Tayang said, leaving the display suspended in the air. He walked over to the other bed and pulled aside the curtain. I heard a murmured exchange before he returned, with a bit less of a spring in his step. “Well, there’s no doubt that something pretty heavy’s hit hissystem. Could be a deliberate toxin, could be something nasty that just happened to get into him. We’re not far out of Gansu; he could have contracted something there that’s only just showing up.”

“He’s been poisoned, Mr. Tayang. My bodyguard. Doesn’t that strike you as a slightly ominous development?”

“I still say it could be something natural. We’ll know soon enough. In the meantime, I wouldn’t necessarily jump to the conclusion that you’re in immediate peril.”

“I’m concerned, Mr. Tayang.”

“Well, don’t be. You’re in excellent hands.” He leaned over to plump my pillow. “Get under the blanket if you feel shivery. Is there anything you’d like me to fetch from your room?”

“No, thank you.”

“In which case, I’ll leave you be. I’ll keep the analyzer attached just in case it flags anything. The other stewards are still here. If you need anything, just call.”

“I will.”

He was on the verge of leaving—I had no doubt that he was a busy man—when something caused him to narrow his eyes. “So if it wasn’t about being poisoned, Miss Bocheng, why exactly was it that your friends didn’t want you taking this ship?”

“Oh, that.” I shook my head. “It’s silly. I don’t know why I mentioned it at all. It’s not as if I believe any of that nonsense.”

“Any of whatnonsense, exactly?”

“You know, about the phantoms. About how the Parvan Tract is haunted. I told them I was above all that, but they still kept going on about it. They said that if I took this ship, I might never come back. Of course, that only made me even more determined.”

“Good for you.”

“I told them I was a rationalist, not someone who believes in ghosts and goblins.” I shifted on the couch, giving him a sympathetic look. “I expect that you’re fed up with hearing about all that, especially as you actually work here. I mean, if anyone would have been likely to see something, it would be you,wouldn’t it, or one of the other crew?”

“That would make sense,” he said.

“Well, the fact that you obviously haven’t…there can’t be anything to it, can there?” I crossed my arms and smiled triumphantly. “Wait until I tell my friends how silly they’ve been.”

“Perhaps,” he began, and then fell silent.

* * *

I knew that I had him then; that it would be only a matter of time before Tayang felt compelled to show me evidence. My instincts proved correct, for within a day of my discharge from the sick bay (the eunuch was still under observation, but making satisfactory progress), the steward contrived an excuse to visit my quarters. He had a clean towel draped over his arm, as if he had come to replace the one in my bathroom.

“I brought you a fresh one. I think the cleaning section missed this corridor this morning.”

“They didn’t, but I appreciate the gesture all the same.”

He lingered, as if he had something to get off his chest but was struggling to find the right words.

“Mr. Tayang?” I pressed.

“What we were talking about before.”

“Yes?” I inquired mildly.

“Well, you’re wrong.” He said it nicely enough, but the defiance in his words was clear. “The phantoms exist. I may not have seen anything with my own eyes, but I’ve seen data that’s just as convincing.”

“I doubt it.”

“I can show you easily enough.” He must have been intending to say those words from the moment he had decided to come to my cabin, yet now that he had spoken them, his regret was immediate.

“Really?”

“I shouldn’t have.”

“Tell me,” I said forcefully. “Whatever this is, I want to see it.”

“It means your friends were right; and you were wrong.”

“Then I need to know that.”

Tayang gave me a warning look. “It’ll change the way you think. At the moment, you have the luxury of not believing in the phantoms. I know that there’s something out there that we don’t understand, something that doesn’t belong. Are you sure you want that burden?”

“If you can handle it, I think I can. What do I have to do?”

“I need to show you something. But I can’t do it now. Later, during the night shift, it’ll be quieter.”

“I’ll be ready,” I said, nodding eagerly.

* * *

Close to midnight, Tayang came for me. Remembering to keep in character for someone half convinced she was the target of an assassin, I did not open up immediately.

“Yes?”

“It’s me, Tayang.”

I cracked open the door. “I’m ready.”

He looked me up and down. “Take off those clothes, please.”

“I’m sorry?”

He glanced away, blushing. “What I mean is, wear as much or as little as you would wear for bed.” I noticed that he had a jacket draped over his arm, as if he was ready to put it around my shoulders.

“Should we meet someone, and should questions be asked, you will explain that I found you sleepwalking, and that I’m taking you back to your cabin via the most discrete route I can think of, so you don’t embarrass yourself in front of any other passengers.”

“I see. You’ve given this some thought, haven’t you?”

“You aren’t the first skeptical passenger, Miss Bocheng.” I closed the door and disrobed, then put on thin silk trousers and an equally thin silk blouse, the one scarlet and the other electric yellow, with a design of small blue wolves. I untied my hair and messed it to suggest someone only recently roused from the bed.

Outside, as was customary during the night shift of the BK’s operations, the corridor lights were dimmed to a sleepy amber. The bars, restaurants, and gaming rooms were closed. The public lounges were deserted and silent, save for the scurrying mouselike cleaning robots that always emerged after the people had gone away. Tayang chose his route well, for we did not bump into any other passengers or crew.

“This is the library,” he said, when we had arrived in a small, red-lit room, set with shelves, screens, and movable chairs. “No one uses it much—it’s not exactly a high priority for most of our passengers. They’d rather drink away the voyage with Temujin airag.”

“Are we allowed here?”

“Well, technically there’d be nothing to stop you visiting this room during normal ship hours. But during normal ship hours, I wouldn’t be able to show you what I’m about to.” He was trying to be nonchalant about the whole adventure, but his nervousnous was like a boy on a dare. “But don’t worry, we won’t get into trouble.”

“How is a library going to change my mind about the phantoms?”

“Let me show you.” He ushered me to one of the terminals, swinging out a pair of hinged stools for us to sit on. I sat to the left of him, while Tayang flipped open a dust cover to expose a keyboard. He began to tap at the keys, causing changes to the hooded data display situated at eye level. “As it happens, these consoles are connected to the Burkhan Khaldun’sown computers. You just have to know the right commands.”

“Won’t this show up?”

He shook his head. “I’m not doing anything that will come to anyone’s attention. Besides, I’m perfectly entitled to access this data. The only thing wrong is you being with me, and if anyone comes down here, we’ll have time to prepare for them, to make it look as if I caught you sleepwalking.” He fell silent for a minute or so, tapping through options, obviously navigating his way through to the information stored in the computer’s memory bank. “I just hope the company spooks haven’t got to it already,” he murmured.

“Every now and then, someone from Blue Heaven comes aboard and wipes large chunks of the BK’smemory. They say they’re just doing routine archiving, clearing space for more data, but no one believes that. Looks like we’re in time, though. I didn’t see any spooks nosing around when we were in Gansu: they’ll probably come aboard next time we’re back.” He glanced over his shoulder. “I’ll show it to you once. Then we go. All right?”

“Whatever you say, Mr. Tayang.”

“The BKhas cameras, pointed into the direction of flight. They detect changes in the tunnel geometry and feed that data to the servomotors driving the stabilizing vanes and yaw dampers, so that they can make adjustments to smooth out the turbulence. They’re also there as an emergency measure in case we encounter another ship coming the other way, one that isn’t on schedule or hasn’t got an active transponder. The cameras give us just enough warning to swerve the BKto one side, to give passing clearance. It’s bumpy for the passengers when that happens, but a lot better than a head-on collision at tunnel speeds.”

“I take it the cameras saw something,” I said.

Tayang nodded. “This was a couple of trips ago, about halfway between Gansu and Kuchlug. They only got eight clear frames. Whatever it was was moving fast, much quicker than one of our ships. The fourth, fifth, and sixth frames are the sharpest.”

“Show me.”

He tapped keys. A picture sprang onto the display, all fuzzy green hues, overlaid with date stamps and other information. It took a moment before I was sure what I was looking at. There was some kind of pale green smudge filling half the frame, a random-looking shape like the blind spot one sees after looking at the sun for too long, and beyond that, a suggestion of the curving squiggles of the tunnel’s khorkoipatterning, reaching away to infinity.

I pressed a finger against the smudge. “That’s the phantom?”

“This is frame three. It becomes clearer on the next one.” He advanced to the next image and I saw what he meant. The smudge had enlarged, but also become sharper, with details beginning to emerge. Edges and surfaces, a hint of organized structure, even if the overall shape was still elusive.

“Next frame,” Tayang mouthed.

Now there could be no doubt that the phantom was some kind of ship, even if it conformed to the pattern of no vessel I had ever seen. It was sleek and organic-looking, more like a darting squid than the clunky lines of the BK.

He advanced to the next frame, but—while the image did not become substantially clearer—the angle changed, so that the three-dimensional structure of the phantom became more apparent. At the same time, hints of patterning had begun to emerge: darker green symbols on the side of the hull, or fuselage, or body, of whatever the thing was.

“That’s about as good as it gets,” Tayang said.

“I’m impressed.”

“You see these armlike appendages?” he asked, pointing to part of the image. “I’m guessing, of course, but I can’t help wondering if they don’t serve the same function as our stabilization vanes, only in a more elegant fashion.”

“I think you could be right.”

“One thing I’m sure of, though. Wedidn’t build that ship. I’m no expert, Miss Bocheng, but I know what counts as cutting-edge ship design, and that thing is way beyond it.”

“I don’t think anyone would argue with that.”

“It wasn’t built by the government, or some mysterious splinter group of Islamist separatists. In fact, I don’t think it was built by humans at all. We’re looking at alien technology, and they’re using our Infrastructure system as if they own it. More than that: every now and then you hear about entire ships and message packets going missing. They’re not just trespassing in our network, they’re stealing from it as well.”

“I can see Blue Heaven would rather this didn’t get out.”

Tayang closed the display. “I’m sorry, but that’s all I can show you. It’s enough, though, isn’t it?”

“More than enough,” I said.

Of course, I had my doubts. Tayang could have easily faked those images, or been the unwitting victim of someone else’s fakery. But I did not think that was the case. I had been looking at genuine data, not something cooked up to scare the tourists.

I was just beginning to plot my next move—how I would get a copy of the data, and smuggle it back to NHK while I continued with my investigations in Kuchlug space—when I became aware of a presence behind me. Tayang must have sensed it, too, for he turned around as I did. Standing in the doorway to the library was one of the other stewards, an older man whose name I had yet to learn. I noticed that the sleeves of his uniform were too short for him.