He laughed. ‘I took it for granted.’

  ‘When do we leave?’

  ‘How long will it take you to pack?’

  45

  After that, the two years’ journey out in search of the putative antimatter factory flew by for Ulla. Or maybe it was just exhaustion. Even though the two years turned into nearly three before they found what they were looking for.

  En route Ulla explored the new vessel, this dark-matter ramjet. Took the chance to get trained up on it. Aside from the huge, gauzy ramjet scoop, the ship’s basics were very similar to those of the lightsails she had trained in – though their propulsion designs were based on an entirely different physics. The lightsail rode on the light of the Hearth; the scoop consumed and converted dark matter, that elusive, invisible substance that made up about a quarter of the mass-energy of the universe itself – and gathered, usefully, in such concentrations as the Hearth.

  Politically, she learned that it was the demonstration of the capabilities of the dark-matter ramjet, as much as any other factor, that was forcing the Hierarchy high-ups to the negotiation table back in inhabited space.

  There were tactical advantages too to the ramjet design, obviously. A lightsail was only any use in the vicinity of a powerful light source, such as a star. Dark matter was everywhere. With such a machine as this, you could go anywhere, and push yourself as close to lightspeed as your nerve, and the fabric of your ship, could stand …

  And as she explored this new technological and political environment, Ulla explored her own reactions too. After her years on the Hierarchy ship, with its slavery and cruelty – and her own peculiar, manipulative, mendacious relationship with the protector – it was a genuine joy for her to re-enter the clean, civilised organisational lines of an Alliance-run vessel. And its new technology was fascinating.

  Even as she travelled on in this new marvel, however, even as she did her best to make herself useful, she fretted a little about her own future.

  For now, she knew, she was a fount of knowledge about the workings of the Hierarchy, precisely because of all those hours with the protector. But what use would she be once this unique mission was done – what use, when agents and diplomats far more qualified and capable than her, took over the managing of the relationship between Alliance and Hierarchy?

  And on a basic level, what would become of her own career once this once-in-a-lifetime experience was over, one way or another? Given the time she had spent away from her home base, she’d missed a number of staging posts, career-wise. As she had prepared for the mission, the only person she had to talk to about it was Fels Sedhi.

  They had been the same rank when the first Hierarchy incursion had come – they’d been on the same ship, after all. But after he had escaped from the doomed 45 – and had had the presence of mind to send that cloud of drones after the lost ship – then the luck to be picked up by an Alliance ship – after all that, he had been able to deliver some detailed debriefings on the invaders’ technology, at least. After that he had served through the subsequent conflict in a conventional manner.

  He’d even resumed formal training, during the Hierarchy intrusion.

  The long and the short of it was that he was still in the military system, with a string of conventional achievements to his name.

  Ulla wasn’t.

  They’d had heart-to-heart talks about this, even before embarking on this astounding journey: in private, off duty. Fels was a good listener, although he had no truly constructive advice. ‘Everything is changing,’ he said finally. ‘You have a hell of a record, if an unconventional one. But then you’ve been in the middle of a war – a small-scale engagement – so far – and fighting wars and winning them is the core of our mission, if you think about it.

  ‘Commodore Mott made sure she left one hell of a report about that. About you. Your contribution to the survival of at least some of the 45, and contributed to their achievements. Assembled that before she … fulfilled her last duty. The trouble is all that a record like that doesn’t tick the standard boxes, and personnel reviewers don’t like that.’

  She grunted. ‘Well, if this conflict goes on those “personnel reviewers” are going to have to up their game.’

  ‘Agreed. All we can do is let the dice roll. It will work out.’

  That was as far as they got on the topic. But Ulla made him swear he wouldn’t say a word about all this to the senior officers.

  And as the journey wore on, Ulla tried to – relax.

  Allowed herself to continue to be debriefed by Fels about her complicated part in the brief Alliance–Hierarchy conflict to date.

  Tried to follow the unfolding aftermath of that conflict, less military now, more political.

  Cheered when she heard that Hierarchy politicians had agreed to abolish slavery, in principle, sometime in the future.

  Fels grinned at that. ‘It’s a start.’

  Telling herself that this jaunt wasn’t so long as her previous spell on a slave-ship.

  Tried to sleep, without a headful of ghastly imagery.

  Until, one ship’s morning, she was woken by an alarm chiming in the air.

  46

  She hurried to the bridge, where Fels, peering into a bank of screens, was – excited. As he drank in a new vision, projected in three-dimensional solidity, and pointed, and argued, and muttered preliminary interpretations …

  At last she was able to settle, to focus on the view.

  A swathe of green.

  She was looking at her latest anomalous planet, here in no man’s land, on the blurred border of the Earthlike-Jupiter-like belts. This one was Earthlike to some degree, as she could see from spectroscopic analyses of the light of distant planets, made by instruments peering out, looking for clues indicating Earthlike life – or even just liquid water, oxygenated air.

  Thus it was a candidate.

  A transparent atmosphere, apart from scattered clouds. Even better.

  Beneath, swathes of green, blue water. A landscape cut through by what looked like a blade of granite – a mountain range, surely, and a young one, relatively, so sharp was its profile, the line of peaks, the ridges between them. And a river, she saw now, a ribbon of blue snaking out of the mountainous country and through the green of the lowland …

  The image stayed steady; she assumed the ship was in a synchronous orbit, hanging over one location as the planet turned on its axis.

  And as she studied further, something caught her eye, on one of those peaks. A glint, almost as if there were something metallic up there. A structure, if a small one … standing on a flat platform. On what looked like a sawn-off summit.

  Fels grabbed her arms and pulled her away. ‘Come see what the biologists are making of it.’

  Reluctantly, Ulla followed, to another set of screens, data uploaded to a different set of experts.

  With a slightly different viewpoint, a different light angle, different features emerged.

  Such as straight lines cutting through a jungle mass. There were mounds, too, raised above the jungle floor, some again with varying different textures. Mounds all the same size and shape, roughly.

  Not natural, surely. Some kind of dwellings?

  Maybe a cemetery?

  Certainly such features would not have looked out of place on any of the Earths she had studied …

  All of this might yet have been explained away as natural features on what was evidently a fecund, geologically active, biologically rich world.

  But then Fels, still more excited, pointed out another feature. More straight lines, cut into the landscape. But now, organised into a pattern. A hatching. A road network. And more of those mounds. Dwellings? Roads? All very human, and on a human scale.

  People have been here.

  Fels had been listening in to the biologists’ chatter, and relayed it to her now. ‘They’ve found stuff. A lot of it microscopic, the analysis of the light … Bugs in the atmosphere. Also, traces of industrial chemicals. There has been a technological civilisation here. They’re insisting on making further explorations …

  ‘Well, you can see some of it. The hatched lines – what look like canals – or drainage ditches – maybe both. And – also – we’re able to look at some of the biochemistry of all that green stuff, even remotely. Not definitively, you’d have to land to be sure.’

  Ulla nodded. ‘But it’s Earthlike, I’m guessing.’ She grinned, growing excited. ‘That’s what they’re seeing. Right?’

  ‘Very Earthlike,’ he said, grinning back at her

  ‘OK, but we came here to find people, not bugs. Even useful bugs.’

  ‘Well,’ Fels said, grinning widely, ‘this landscape looks like it has been farmed. By human colonists. With Earth-derived crops, forests, trees? We need samples to be sure … But it looks like life. Farmers? And then they went away. Whoever came here, left for whatever reason. We need evidence to prove that too. But still the traces of what they did here persist. And will persist in the archaeology for centuries, millennia maybe. The life forms, a living archaeology that you can see, analyse from orbit … People have been here. So where did they go?’

  Ulla thought that over. ‘Maybe they left here. To go to better worlds. They had a million worlds to choose from in the Hearthspace. And, in searching, they became us. Some of them. I wonder what they would think of us now? Their remote children, two sprawling interplanetary polities, who almost stumbled into a catastrophic war … and might well yet …

  ‘Would they be proud of us?’

  Fels grinned at that line as he chattered notes, observations, selected instrument readings, becoming more excitable as more stuff, more detail rolled under their prow. And – ‘I think there have been antimatter creation processes here. Some truly large underground facilities – and some even on the surface, masked by the foliage …’

  Ulla was listening. But she was drawn back by the memory of that metallic structure, on top of the tall peak.

  She drifted away from Fels, made her way to a transparent section of the hull, where she could focus on that lone structure. She bent down, trying to see more. Pushed her face towards the panel in the floor. The detail wasn’t good enough.

  ‘Fels. Can I magnify this image?’

  He didn’t look around. ‘Sure. Just tell the window. Or swipe.’

  Feeling foolish, naïve – awkwardly sprawled on the floor, her face to the surface – she took his advice.

  Centred her vision on that structure …

  … swiped, magnified …

  A silver structure … No.

  Not a structure. Wrong word. She goaded the smart systems into processing the image, made them take guesses at the true nature of the at-the-limits drone-camera imagery … I know you can’t be sure. What might it be?

  And the image resolved. Heavily magnified. A human shape. A figure, standing, alone on that flattened mountaintop. Absolutely still.

  Too still, too tall. Not a person, then.

  A statue?

  Now the image crisped up, as more data was squeezed out.

  Humanoid form. Of metal, not flesh, not human. But with a head, bare skull, arms, some kind of silver robe hanging from its shoulders. The robe slightly scarred, torn. A build-up of debris around its base – rotten wood, perhaps even splintered rock. Very old, then.

  A statue, standing alone, on top of a flattened mountain summit. Or a robot, humanoid. Rare in the Alliance worlds, but not unknown.

  Humanoid.

  And even as she framed that thought, the ‘statue’ threw back its head, stared up, and met Ulla’s gaze. Or so it seemed.

  She seemed to read its expression.

  Welcome home.

  Within a day, they had planned a landing.

  Ixchel

  v

  … Mission date unknown …

  … Approx. one thousand standard years after landing …

  … number. I am a legally appointed guardian of this site of special interest, cultural and technological. State your name and your purpose—

  ‘I will not—’

  … and your purpose in landing on this planet—

  ‘I will not, you bucket of bolts. Get lost. Even if you are speaking a language I can recognise without translation routines. Just.’

  I am the appointed cybernetic guardian of this planet. I am embedded in its fabric. For your information I am not a bucket, and nor do I contain—

  ‘Ulla Breen. My name is Ulla Breen. Alliance navy, honorary rank of captain. Probably best known for my exploits during the recent Ice-Rock War—’

  Why is it you have come to this moon?

  ‘Because I detected an artefact on the moon’s surface. Actually, my colleague did. Detected, specifically, you. You, standing on your green hilltop—’

  You detected an artefact on this moon.

  ‘An artefact. You. A human-made artefact as far as I can tell.

  But not of any local technological heritage I have encountered. Not from my people, not from the Hierarchy – I’m sorry, that may not make much sense …’

  I am not of your technological heritage. If anything, your technology is my heritage.

  She thought that through.

  ‘There are also other artefacts here of apparent human construction – archaic human structures anyhow. Roughly buried by rock and regolith. We—’

  Fels leaned over. ‘I think there is an industrial plant, still working. I can give you coordinates, if we have a common frame … A crude but effective antimatter plant. We know that the ships of the Hierarchy have come to the vicinity for the antimatter … Does that mean anything to you … ? No reply, huh? Given the detritus around you, the stand you occupy, the weathering, I suspect these artefacts are a thousand years old or more. These objects – and you. Thus pre-dating most evidence of humanity here in the Hearthspace.’

  Why have you landed beside this object? Beside … me?

  Ulla said, ‘I was – curious. You, standing alone on this peak. We spotted you from space, you know.’

  Will you touch me … ? Me. Take samples of me—

  ‘No. No, no. Not without your consent. I – you – I’m no vandal, no trophy-hunter. Not even a scientist. My colleague, similar. I’ve had a career in the military. Now I’m an – explorer, I guess. A would-be amateur archaeologist. I’m interested in the story of the human past in the Hearthspace, that’s true. But I don’t want to destroy evidence that later workers might be able to explore more deeply.’

  She looked up at the passive, sculpted face of the statue. ‘We were brought here by following a trail, a distribution of artefacts, or their remains, discovered in space, some on moons, planets – or in orbit. Artefacts, probes, possibly small crewed spacecraft – and these artefacts were powered by antimatter. Antimatter propulsion leaves unique traces which enable it to be identified from afar. In addition, following such traces, we – later generations of humans – have been able to retrieve quantities of antimatter – umm, un-burned – some trapped in spacecraft hulls, others drifting in space. Still detectable.’

  Are you the first to discover these traces? There is significant danger of—

  ‘We know. We were not the first. Another group of humans, calling themselves the Hierarchy, found such traces. And have used them as weapons of war.’

  That is regrettable.

  ‘You could say that. We come from a different culture. Though stemming from the same root, of course. We have been able to push back the antimatter raiders for now. And we have been able to track this antimatter to its source, as our enemies could not. Luckily for us. And so we found this part of Hearthspace.’

  This is regrettable. But not surprising. Such enmities emerged even in the first generations after the landings here, in the Hearthspace.

  ‘Well,’ Ulla said, ‘we were first to find you. And maybe we can put a stop to the antimatter wars before they wipe out humanity in this part of the galaxy.’

  That would be optimal …

  Fels pointed her to data on a shared screen. He said, ‘I have sent down small close-in probes to examine you – to probe your interior – non-invasively. And I can already confirm, for instance, that much of your frame is high quality steel, non-corrosive. Clearly human-made. Another clue, and a clincher, is the identification markers stamped into some of the components.

  More antique designs, and the code means nothing to me, but the letters and numbers are clear.’

  That would seem definitive, in terms of proving a human origin. An origin on Earth.

  Just speaking these concepts, even considering them silently, was enough to made her shiver. Could this really be …

  ‘Well? You want more definitive than that? How about the name etched in very archaic lettering. But not indecipherable?’

  What name?

  ‘Companion.’

  Companion. Companion to who?

  Fels said, ‘I’m guessing, to whoever is curled up in your robot belly. The etched name.’

  Ulla felt her mouth drop open.

  ‘Who is she? Or – who was she?’

  Silence.

  ‘Ha! Got you. Smart systems aren’t supposed to hesitate.’

  Much information is being processed as we speak. Implications explored.

  ‘OK,’ Ulla said. ‘But the basic story is clear enough. I think.’

  She shared a nod with Fels. He mouthed, You take the lead.

  She nodded.

  ‘This machine, you, were built as a companion to the human you’ve taken into yourself. In the scans, yes, it does look oddly like a foetus. But the human individual you … treasure … is evidently very elderly, not young. Elderly when she died. Yes, a female. I presume that this machine, you, accompanied her through her life, and took her remains into yourself when her life was done. You’ve turned yourself into a coffin rather than a mobile, capable AI. A monument?’

  Fels said, ‘It would be hard to imagine a more dedicated companion, if so.’

  ‘As the name suggests,’ Ulla said. ‘Yeah. It seems to me that you must have half-dismantled yourself to make room within your carcass. A great sacrifice. Umm. You’ve gone quiet. A lot of data to process?’