Majordomo came scurrying back. Yes, scurrying. The haughty I’m-in-charge attitude was gone. “Alexander will grant you an audience.”

  “When?”

  “Now, of course. Follow me.”

  The small central floater was, as it turned out, Alexander’s residence, seat of government, and throne room. Bridget was taken to a large building high in the branches of the tallest tree in the town. In no time at all, she found herself in front of a dragon seated on a large seat or chaise or something. I examined the item through the video feed. Dragon furniture didn’t really correspond to human norms, given the anatomical differences, but the item definitely filled the function of a human throne. It was deliberately big, ornate, and raised on a small dais so that the occupant looked down on everyone around him.

  Alexander was old. But not old as in geriatric. More like a master sergeant a year away from retirement. He was hard, well-muscled, and covered in scars. It was obvious that he hadn’t achieved his current position purely by back-room shenanigans. I looked around for a display of dragon skulls but didn’t find one. Missed opportunity, as far as I was concerned. Then I spotted another item just at the edge of the feed.

  “Turn your head to the right, Bridget. What is that?”

  Bridget turned her head, and we were looking at—I wasn’t sure what we were looking at, honestly. It seemed to be on a pedestal, like an art display. Torches were lit around it, making me wonder how Bridget had missed it on the way in. It was large, maybe thirty feet long, pointed at both ends …

  “A canoe?” I said, perplexity in my voice. “Why would they have, or need, a canoe?”

  “Oh, that’s not the half of it, she replied. Look at this.”

  The canoe expanded as Bridget engaged telescopic vision, zooming in on the structure. I found myself looking at part of what I supposed could be an aircraft serial number on the side of the canoe.

  One written in no script or alphabet that I’d ever seen. And on a smaller dais beside the canoe was—well, something. It looked like a retrieved bit of wreckage, perhaps part of a SCUT transceiver assembly. But not one of ours.

  “Oh, I think we’ve just entered the Twilight Zone,” I muttered. “Bridget, can you—”

  “Later, Howard. I have to deal with Alexander.”

  Fine. But while she was hobnobbing with royalty, I was going to send this on to Mario.

  “I’ve been told you have an interesting theory about trout,” Alexander said. “I’d like to hear it from you.”

  Bridget repeated what she’d told the majordomo, with a little more detail.

  “And what makes you think this is true?” Alexander asked.

  “Observation. It’s easy enough to verify. Fly down and perch near the end of a tendril after a floater has been through a lake. Fish eggs are unmistakable.”

  “Are they?” Alexander said quizzically. “I confess, I couldn’t describe fish eggs if asked.”

  “I study these things, though. It’s my vocation.”

  “And you think we might be upsetting this process.”

  “I’ve seen your flotilla. You’ve gathered up most of the floaters in the area. They’re tied together. They’re not floating around, dragging through lakes. They’re not doing their job. It will affect fish populations. It may already have done so, since I’m hearing people talk about the reduced catch these days.”

  Alexander smiled. “I think you’ve got cause and effect reversed.” He motioned. “Majordomo will give you access to the histories. You can make your own decision.”

  Majordomo came up, and Alexander said, “Give her an apartment. In the morning, she’ll review the fish-catch statistics.”

  “My mate—” Bridget interjected.

  “Can join you, as long as he stays out of the way,” Alexander responded.

  I’d forwarded the image of the canoe and a SUDDAR scan of the piece of wreckage taken by one of our small spy drones to Mario with a query about whether his group had lost any drones or if he recognized the alphabet from any of the civilizations that the Others had destroyed. He’d promised to check and get back to me.

  Bridget and I were back in Trantor, our drannies curled up in a small apartment in the trees. They would alert us if anything needed our attention, but for the moment, we could relax.

  Bridget was reexamining her videos, and I was staring stupidly at the partial serial number, when I received a callback from Mario.

  “Nope,” he said without preamble when I took the call. “I checked with all my crew. No one has seen anything like that alphabet. And no, we’re not in the habit of painting fictional serial numbers on our drones just to screw with you. Although now that I think of it … ”

  “Sorry, too late. Anyway, we don’t know where the wreckage came from, then. But it looks like the dragons found it and made a canoe from it.”

  “How? Dragons don’t have anything like the technology to work modern alloys.”

  “You could cold-hammer hull plates into rough shapes. Use local materials for jointing if you can’t drill a hole.” I paused for a moment. “I bet that canoe is really light and rigid. Far more so than anything they could possibly build with natural materials.”

  “Light enough for a couple of dragons to carry,” Bridget interjected, having followed the conversation.

  “Yup. I think you could get six in it at night. Carry it in shifts at the end of ropes, and you could probably get across the ocean.”

  Bridget shook her head. “It would be risky. And you wouldn’t know if there was anything at the end of your trip.”

  “Polynesians,” I replied. “They found and colonized most of the Pacific islands, with nothing but ocean currents and seabirds to guide them.”

  “Wait, that doesn’t track,” Mario said with a frown. “You said the canoe is there, on your side. Shouldn’t it be on the other continent, Lemuria?”

  “Could dragons from the west have come this way?” I suggested.

  “No dragons on the west continent. No floaters, either,” Mario said, shaking his head. “It’s a completely different ecosystem. Also, much less tectonically active. I think it’s an older, thicker plate.” He paused. “We actually did some light mining there, since there was no intelligent life to deal with.”

  “Huh.” I looked at Bridget, and she shrugged. “Okay, that’s something for further investigation. But nevertheless, they have a boat made from a high-technology vessel of unknown origin. And they’ve put it literally on a pedestal. It’s significant, and we have to figure out why.” I paused. “And what about the piece of wreckage?”

  “That is not human- or Bob-made,” Mario replied. “It’s definitely part of a SCUT assembly—you can’t mistake the design—but it’s way more advanced than our stuff.”

  “But you can recognize the device’s purpose?” Bridget asked.

  “The advances are evolutionary, not revolutionary,” Mario replied. “But definitely decades ahead of us, at minimum. And yes, physics dictates what a SCUT assembly is going to look like.”

  “So where are the builders?”

  “Good question, Howard. Good question.”

  We were back in our apartment, and Bridget had been hammering away at her Canvas for hours. Finally, she reclined in her chair, put her hand over her eyes, and moaned. All theater, of course, for a computer running an android body. Still, I could sympathize. She’d been poring over every video recording that showed some of the dragon scrolls.

  “Not going well?” I said.

  “I’ve got spy drones watching over the shoulders of the other librarians to pick up as much as possible. It’d be great if I could just ask my subject to hold up the scroll so I could see it. But no, I have to depend on whatever they’re doing. And keep the drone out of sight. The little drones are just camouflaged, not invisible. I can’t risk moving them too much.”

  “Yeah, I get it. So how’s progress?”

  “Not great. Gandalf and company only gave me the basic written vocabulary that you’d find out in public and maybe in people’s homes. These scrolls contain about eighty percent of the dragon language that I don’t have documentation for. And no pictures, and no one reads out loud, so I’m having trouble establishing enough context to identify words.” She paused. “The scrolls I’m personally able to look at are mostly tables of numbers. Numbers are a lot easier. Well, a little easier. They don’t use a numeric system like we do. It’s more like the love child of Roman numerals and cuneiform. But it is numbers.”

  “And they are counting … ”

  “Fish.” She nodded. “As we expected. And yes, the numbers are going down. And have been for a while.”

  “Down? As in … ”

  “There are fewer fish every year. Significantly so.” Bridget frowned. “This guy is looking less and less like a standard despot. He’s definitely onto something. I’m just not sure what.”

  “Look, Bridge, Alexander may be a nut about counting fish, but his army is basically a mob with armbands. Some of the people from the Hunter are now part of the army. You put on an armband, and you’re in.”

  “So you want to enlist?”

  “It’s either that or let them cut my wing feathers off and stick me in front of a table full of books.” I raised my voice as Bridget held up a finger. “No, that’s not an option.”

  Despite my flippant words, I didn’t actually know if it was that easy to join the army. Still, I had to assume that your average dragon wouldn’t be much better informed. There was only one way to find out. I landed on one of the occupied floaters at the edge of the flotilla and walked up to a squad of Alexandrians. “I want to join up,” I said.

  “Why?” the squad leader replied.

  “Because I’m tired of making tuev for coppers all day, every day. You guys are doing something, and it looks more interesting than being a kiosk tender for the rest of my life.” I had subtly adjusted my features to be on the younger side. If dragon biology ran anything at all like human biology, then a teenager wanting to enlist would be believable anywhere.

  The squad leader grinned at me. “I hear that.” She reached into her frontpack, pulled out an armband, and handed it to me. Rather than the standard blue and white, it was just blue. I deliberately and obviously looked from the item in my hand to the ones on their arms and back again.

  “You’re a probie for now.” She chuckled. “You start at the bottom, just like everyone else. Now, how about you go get us all some tuev?”

  Later, mugs of tuev having been handed out to everyone, I sidled up to the nearest soldier. “So when do I get a spear?”

  He looked me up and down, a smile on his face. “Soon as you hit puberty, kiddo.” A pause to judge my reaction. I tried to look hard done by, and he laughed and continued, “You’ll get one at next muster. It’s not like we have them lying around. Real metal tips … ” He waved his spearpoint under my nose for emphasis. “None of that flint crap we usually run up against.”

  “So why are you doing this? Taking over floaters?”

  “Alexander needs floaters. Something to do with all those domeheads he’s got working with books. Counting fish, we’re told.” The soldier looked uncomfortable, glancing around us, then lowered his voice. “Word is, there are fewer fish every year. Soon, people will start starving.”

  “But why take over floaters? Is he trying to move everyone? Why not just explain the problem?”

  My conversational partner shrugged. “I don’t make policy, noob. But you’ll find in life that people will very rarely do the right thing if they’re told to, even if refusing harms them. Dragons are funny that way.”

  Probably another universal, I thought to myself. It probably came with intelligence. Although it closely described cats, too.

  But the explanation did seem to gibe with what Bridget had been able to pick up so far. Were we dealing with someone trying to save the dragon race?

  I emailed a transcript of the conversation to Bridget, along with my concerns. She was doubtless busily going through scrolls, so distracting her wouldn’t be smart.

  Meanwhile, the catchphrase Hurry up and wait seemed to apply to armies everywhere. It looked very much like my group was settling in for a long session of standing around doing nothing. “Are we going to see any action?” I said into the silence. It seemed like something a teenager would say, and maybe get slapped down for.

  Sure enough. The squad leader, who the translator tagged as Ursula for some reason, barked a laugh and said, “Sounds like the noob is volunteering. We need some food, noob. How about you go with Bert here and haul something back?”

  Well, it wasn’t much, but at least it was motion. Trying to look miffed, I followed Bert as he launched himself into the air.

  “Are we going fishing?” I called to Bert.

  “Sure thing, young’n. Fishing at the commissary. We got other people who take care of the gathering. Dried fish. Yum.”

  The comment sounded so much like Bob-1 complaining during his Quinlan adventure that I had to bite back a laugh. But although stocking up on food made sense for an army, it didn’t make sense when there was food for the taking in every lake. Or was there? Just how bad was this shortage?

  My thoughts were interrupted by Bridget, calling on the intercom. “How are you doing? Found out anything?”

  I recognized that tone. I used it far too often myself. It was the I’ve got news, but I’ll politely ask about your day first tone.

  I answered, “Nothing compared to what you’ve got for me, apparently.”

  “Was I that obvious?” she replied. I could hear the amusement in her voice, though, so I knew it had been on purpose. I waited silently, and after a moment she continued, “Seems this fish shortage thing is cyclical. And Alexander was telling the truth—he started his campaign after the stocks started dropping. Curiouser and curiouser.”

  I sighed and signed off, but I was still worried. And it didn’t help in the least that Bridget and I were physically light-years away. That was still my wife, and if anyone harmed her, I’d …

  I’d what? Act like a vengeful god? Rain down fire from the heavens? Rein it in, Howard. They’re just drannies.

  For the first time, I began to wonder if this expedition was a good idea.

  Chapter Forty-Eight:

  Gunther’s World

  Icarus

  January 2329

  Centaurvania

  It was eight light-years from Gunther’s world to the system where he’d found the wormhole. That would be an average kind of distance back in the area of Sol, but this was a more crowded section of the galaxy. Gunther’s race could have easily targeted any of several systems that were closer. But none of those systems had an anomalous microwave source. It’s what humans would have done.

  The sky view here in Gunther’s home system was spectacular, though. Even from the bottom of an atmosphere, the stars would be far more crowded than Earth’s had ever been. The strip of the Milky Way would be far more visible as well. And the dwarf galaxy that we couldn’t see from Earth’s side of the galaxy dominated the sky on this side. Primitive cosmology would have been a lot more complicated with that apparition to explain.

  We came into the system, following Gunther at a respectful distance and waiting for cues. We certainly didn’t want this to look like a chase to any planetary defenses that might be watching. Gunther, ahead of us, was continuously broadcasting on every standard band in use by the centaurs.

  I swiped through several monitor windows, then turned to Dae. “There’s no response that I can see.”

  “I know, Icky. If Gunther’s civilization has also disappeared, that puts an even weirder spin on things, since they weren’t part of the empire.”

  “Yeah, so it wouldn’t have been because of something that spread through the wormholes.”

  “What, like replicators or something?”

  “Maybe. Consider the sentries. Maybe that was the only place that erected a defense in time. Maybe everyone’s behind the second wormhole, on the other side of the DMZ.”

  “Or everyone that’s left.”

  “There is no response,” Gunther messaged, interrupting our debate.

  “How concerning is that?” I asked.

  “There is no good reason for lack of reply. Extremely concerning.”

  “Have you been able to get any indication of how long you’ve been gone?” I asked.

  “No response from any installations. Not even station IDs.”

  “How about an estimate based on orbital positions?” The idea was that Gunther would have astronomical data on all the planets and satellites in its home system and would be able to calculate from their current position what year it must be in the centaur calendar.

  “I will collect position data as we proceed,” Gunther replied.

  That was good. That meant Gunther had the base data necessary to make the calculation.

  It took six days to arrive at Gunther’s home world from the edge of the system. It was immediately obvious that we were looking down on the ruins of a technological civilization. The occasional small bits of city structure that were visible were nothing more than crumbled walls and pieces of foundation.

  “Gunther? You okay?”

  “My operations are at nominal level. However, my orders do not cover this eventuality.”

  “Are the environmental parameters within viable range for your species?”

  “Yes.”

  “So the planet isn’t dead. There might still be centaurs down there.”

  “It is possible. I will do a close scan.”

  Although Dae and I had never personally participated in this kind of survey, we both remembered Bill doing it on Ragnarök, and of course, many other Bobs had covered the process in their blogs. A deep and continuous SUDDAR scan from low altitude would result in a detailed planetary map, along with identification of any anomalies. These might include anything from still-working machinery to radioactive craters.

  We hung back in a high orbit while Gunther circled the planet, doing orange-slice scans. Finally, it flew out to join us.