“Which isn’t to say there won’t be things to loot here, I trust,” Heuvelt said.

  “Oh, there may be valuable artifacts,” Bianca said. “But the knowledge we stand to gain will be worth far more.”

  “I am aware it’s possible to sell knowledge,” Heuvelt said, “but the collectors I know are more interested in objects.”

  “I’ll get the blowtorch and the wrecking bar,” Ashont said.

  Once they were all suited up and ready to deploy the ramp, Bianca turned to face them. “Maybe I should go in alone, at first? Just in case?” She didn’t want to leave her companions behind, but she didn’t know what waited for them in this strange place.

  “You can take the lead,” Sev said firmly. “We’ll give you a little space, but you can’t possibly think we’d let you go in there alone.”

  Tears welled in Bianca’s eyes, and she threw her arms around Sev. “You’re such a good friend.” She stepped back, blinking – you can’t wipe away tears with a space helmet on – and then straightened her back. “I’ll do my best to protect you all, no matter what we find here.”

  “We know you will,” Heuvelt said.

  Clec lowered the boarding ramp, and they descended to the surface of a world made of stone. The gravity here was higher than it was on the ship, and Bianca noticed her friends stumble, but it barely registered; the difference in gravity was just another piece of data. The structure topped by the light was only a hundred meters or so away, and Bianca strode toward it confidently, with full faith that her destiny would reveal itself.

  Then she stopped, holding up a hand to call the others to halt. “The structure is transmitting… or, no, wait, it’s receiving… there’s a signal going into it.”

  “A signal from where?” Sev asked.

  Bianca turned her head, following the lines of force, and went hmmm. “It’s communicating with the Show and Tell.”

  “I want to say ‘that’s impossible,’” Clec said. “Because my encryption protocols are very good. But I am willing to believe a lost civilization of super-intellects can break them, I guess. It’s not as if we have any valuable secrets hidden in our data banks.”

  “I’d rather an alien entity didn’t seize control of my ship!” Heuvelt said.

  “We can always do the necessary sabotage to convert the Show and Tell to fully manual control,” Ashont said. “Bianca has demonstrated she can fly instruments-only. Actually, she barely even had instruments.”

  “The transmission has stopped,” Bianca said. “I guess we keep walking?”

  “It is better to act than to wait and be acted upon,” Sev said. “Lead on.”

  Bianca closed the distance to the pyramid by half, but then the beacon lit up in that other spectrum again. “It’s transmitting again–” she began.

  “Greetings, child of the master, and her companions.” The voice was low, rumbling, and broadcasting on their comms channel. “Forgive my intrusion into your ship’s systems. I had to ascertain what language I should use to speak to you.”

  “Who are you?” Bianca asked.

  “I am Tyrolian the Gatekeeper. I understand you are known as Bianca Xing, honored heir. May I call you Bianca?”

  “I… yes, of course. This is not what I expected.”

  “I am sure you have many questions. I have answers.”

  The peace that had flooded through Bianca was overtaken by excitement. She was talking to – what, one of the Mahact? One of their servants? And that title, the Gatekeeper, suggested there was a further destination beyond this one. “We–”

  “I have a question,” Sev said. “Did you have anything to do with a crushed spaceship we found en route to this planet?”

  The low, rumbling voice laughed. “You are one of the… Letnev, isn’t it? Mmm. Your people were still hitting each other with rocks in your caves when my master was at his zenith, shaping galactic affairs. Your questions do not interest me.”

  Bianca cleared her throat. “These are my friends, Gatekeeper. Without them, I never would have made it here.”

  “Apologies, honored heir. I will address them with greater respect, if that is your desire. But the point stands: my purpose is to assist you in your journey, not to answer the idle queries of your companions.”

  “It’s not idle, though,” Bianca said. “Do you know about that ship?”

  “I did not encounter the vessel personally, as my duties keep me here, on the surface. But some of my, you could say siblings, patrol this system, and yes, they destroyed that ship.”

  “Why?” Bianca said, but she was afraid she knew. “Because they weren’t me? Do you kill anyone who comes here except the honored heir?”

  “Not at all.” The Gatekeeper’s tone was soothing. “No one has ever landed here before – no one has been drawn to this particular point in space, as you were, and the World of Stone is not easy to discern. We only lit the beacon when we sensed the shape of your mind. But occasionally ships pass through this region, and we allow them go about their business unmolested, so long as they do not interfere with the World of Stone, or the machinery within.”

  “What made the ship you wrecked any different?”

  “That was a scout vessel send by the Argent Flight. They are old enemies of my master, and all the Mahact. They may have been following rumors or whispers about the existence of the World of Stone, or perhaps it was a cosmically unlikely coincidence. My associate disabled their ship before they could reach us. Be assured, Bianca, that we do not take life lightly. But the Argent Flight… they are implacable fanatics, dedicated to continuing a war that ended millennia ago, and they would not hesitate to destroy this place. If they knew about you, your death would be the best possible outcome. They have weapons made to destroy the Mahact and their creations, and that destruction is painful.”

  “Creations like me,” Bianca said.

  “Indeed. And like myself, and my cohort.”

  “Maybe we can continue this discussion inside?” Bianca said.

  “Yes, it would be disappointing to be killed by a random stray micro-meteor,” Heuvelt said.

  “Inside?” the Gatekeeper said. “What do you mean – oh. I see. No, there has been some confusion.”

  The step pyramid began to move, rotating on its base as the stones shifted their positions. The movements weren’t drastic, but they changed the shape of the thing in significant ways, and after a moment Bianca was no longer looking at a temple of blocks: she was looking into an immense face made of planes and angles.

  The pyramid was no pyramid at all. It was a stone head, bigger than the Show and Tell. It opened immense eyes, and they shone with blue-green light.

  “I’ll stand up,” the Gatekeeper said, and began to rise.

  •••

  “The crew has questions, acting captain,” Voyou said.

  “You can just call me ‘captain’,” Richeline snapped.

  “Yes… captain.”

  “You said ‘acting’ under your breath, didn’t you?”

  “Yes… captain. About those questions. A representative asked me to share their concerns with you during our next meeting.”

  Richeline groaned. Voyou stood at attention before her, because she hadn’t told him he could stop, even though she was slumped in the captain’s chair at the captain’s desk with her head in her hands. The bandage was off her neck, and she was mostly healed, except for a shiny scar she’d chosen not to have removed because, she said, “It serves as a useful reminder about the nature of the chain of command.”

  “Questions,” she said. “They have questions? I have questions. Like how in the light I’m supposed to find an unknown ship in a search area that spans millions of kilometers or more. But fine. What are their questions?”

  “Just what you’d expect, captain.” He managed to swallow the “acting” entirely that time, though it took an effort, and he hoped the real captain never found out. He still couldn’t really accept that Severyne was dead. His mind simply wouldn’t retain the information. Maybe if he’d seen a body… though maybe not even then. Pretending to be dead just to find out what people might say about her afterward seemed like something the captain would do. “We’ve been following an erratic course for more than two weeks, with no stated mission or goal. We are crewed by loyal Letnev soldiers, of course, and they’ll do what they’re told, without question, but in addition to troopers, the crew also includes surveyors, linguists, mining engineers, all sorts of planetary annexation specialists who aren’t accustomed to this sort of open-ended assignment.”

  “They’d better get accustomed, or they can see how they like taking spacewalks without environment suits on. They should realize that on an ‘open-ended assignment’ like this I don’t actually need surveyors and mining engineers.”

  “I’m sure they do realize,” Voyou said. “I imagine that adds to the general anxiety. The half rations don’t help. They also want to know when the captain is coming back.” Officially, Severyne had been recalled to the home world to update the Baron personally about the state of their annexation efforts, but that was a flimsy sort of lie, and only the most prone to propaganda believed it.

  “The captain is dead,” Richeline muttered. “Long live the captain. Is there anything else?”

  “Well. Yes. The crew is also wondering where the ‘princess’ went. There are all sorts of rumors about Bianca at this point – including that she’s the one who stabbed you in the neck. One popular notion is that she attacked you and escaped, and you vowed revenge. When the captain refused to let you chase after Bianca, you killed her, and seized control of the ship to pursue your mad obsession.”

  “That’s the plot of The Lord and the Liar!” Richeline finally lifted her head. “They think I’m reenacting a two-hundred-year-old opera?”

  “In the absence of any other narrative, I’m afraid so. If we told them something – anything, really – they’d feel better.”

  “Tell them we’re in pursuit of a terrorist bent on the destruction of the Letnev people. Tell them she killed the captain, because she almost certainly did.”

  “Really?” Voyou said. “You want to go on the record, officially, that the captain is dead?”

  “Of course she’s dead! She must be dead! What else could have possibly–”

  A red-bordered emergency call appeared on the screen, and a bridge communication officer said, “We have received an encrypted message for you, captain.”

  “From the Barony?” Richeline said. Voyou knew she hoped she was being recalled. She was ready to give up this whole mission as a waste. Archambelle was still fanatical about it, but she was mostly being fanatical alone in her quarters these days.

  “We’re not sure where the message came from, captain – it arrived from an unremarkable quadrant of space, presumably sent from a ship – but it has top-level authorization keys.”

  A moment of silence. Then: “Send the message to my desk.”

  A flashing icon blinked on her screen.

  Voyou stared at it. “Is that… could it be…?”

  “Call Archambelle,” Richeline said. “We might as well all watch it together.”

  The doctor arrived, even more disheveled than the last time Voyou had seen her. She’d been poring over her database of Mahact artifacts and translations, desperately seeking some detail that would narrow down their search parameters, and she hadn’t been eating or sleeping much. “What is it? Did you find the girl? Did you find anything?”

  “Something found us.” Richeline activated the message.

  The captain’s face appeared on screen, half hidden in shadow. “Hello, devoted underlings. I know how much you’ve missed me. You’d better come and join me, don’t you think?”

  Chapter 30

  Heuvelt had seen extraordinary things in the course of his many journeys.

  He’d watched twin suns twinkle through the geysers of the living silver fountain on Abadona Eight.

  He’d ridden the last train out of the poisoned city of Thammux, and turned in his seat to watch its towers collapse behind him as the local government bombed their own seat of power in a desperate (and futile) attempt to stop the logic plague.

  He’d kissed one of the most famous entertainment vid actors in the world in the viewing gallery of a luxury Supernova Tour liner as a star imploded just on the other side of the transparent forcefields.

  He and Dob Ell had skied over icy plains beneath red-and-gold aurora, and blasted their way into an icy temple complex devoted to the dead gods of a cold-blooded species rendered extinct by climate change. Once inside, they navigated corridors mosaicked with scenes of reptilian warriors fighting their implacable furry enemies, dodged pit traps and spike traps and arrow traps, and reached the central chamber where a statue of a saurian king ten meters high presided over dust and spiders. (Someone else had gotten there first and stolen the statue’s jeweled scepter and orb, but still, what a thing to see.)

  He’d seen his whole life, and all its extraordinary wonders and glories, flash before his eyes when Dob Ell came at him, snarling, shame-blade in hand, so in a way, he’d seen all those remarkable things twice.

  But all those wonders paled in comparison to seeing Tyrolian the Gatekeeper rise. The ground shook beneath their feet, throwing all of them off balance, except Clec (who hovered) and Bianca (who simply compensated, shifting her weight as the ground lurched). The great being raised all four of its arms out of the ground, seams in the planet’s surface revealing themselves to be merely the edges of the Gatekeeper’s immense fingers and limbs. Those hands were big enough to crush a ship, and Heuvelt looked fearfully back at the Show and Tell, afraid it would be swallowed by a crack in the ground, but its portion of the planet seemed stable. This wasn’t an earthquake, really, as much as it felt like one. It was more like someone climbing out of a hole.

  The Gatekeeper’s immense chest rose up from the surface, a chiseled blank of stone threaded with lines of shining metal. “There,” the Gatekeeper said, resting one set of immense elbows on the ground. “I don’t suppose I need to stand all the way up. You have some sense of my stature now, and I would hate to inadvertently step on any friends of the honored heir.”

  “What are you?” Bianca craned her neck to look up at the now-distant stone face. “You said the Mahact made you, but… how?”

  “The creation of Titans is complex and difficult,” the Gatekeeper rumbled. Though his head was far above them now, he still spoke to them through their comms, so the voice was intimate and close. “We can reproduce ourselves, though with great effort, and the process requires long periods of dormancy. The Mahact could create us more easily, but they did not share all their secrets with us. We are living beings, of stone and steel, created to serve the Mahact. I was created to serve a specific Mahact: my master, and your maker, honored heir.”

  “But why did he make us? I don’t understand what the point of all this is! Why arrange for me to be born on a distant planet, to look like a human, to draw me here – what is the goal? Why am I here?”

  Heuvelt winced in sympathy at the anguish in Bianca’s voice. He’d often wondered what the point of his life was, but he could accept, ultimately, that there was no inherent purpose to existence – he was responsible for making his own meaning. Bianca was different. She’d been created for a reason, and she deserved to know what that was.

  “I wish I could ease your mind, honored heir,” the Gatekeeper said. “I know only my own part in your journey. I was charged to wait, and watch, and listen. To protect this place, until the honored heir arrived. And, once you arrived, to send you through the gate.”

  “Where does the gate lead?”

  “To the abiding home of the master.”

  “Who is this master?” Bianca said.

  “Kor Noq Weer,” the Gatekeeper said.

  Bianca didn’t say anything for a moment. Then: “I don’t know who that is.”

  “Kor Noq Weer was a great scientist, philosopher, and shaper of destinies,” the Gatekeeper said. “His name rang through the stars even at the height of the Mahact empire. He found this planet, near a wormhole, and shaped it to his liking. He created the machinery that closed the wormhole, and that will open it again. He made me, and he made you, and I know he considered you the greater creation, simply because of the nature of my orders: to honor and protect you at all costs. Whatever he intends for you, it must be something great.”

  “Is Kor Noq Weer still alive?” Bianca said. “I thought all the Mahact were dead?”

  “I do not know,” he rumbled. “I was assigned my duties long ago, and the master was very ill, even in those days. Perhaps he has passed on, but left instructions for you. Or perhaps he waits, dormant, in stasis, to share some final words with you before he passes on. Who can say?”

  “I have so many more questions,” Bianca said. “What is Ixth like? What do the Mahact look like? Was Kor Noq Weer… nice?”

  “I will tell you all I know. We can converse while I set the machinery in motion to reopen the wormhole gate.”

  Heuvelt looked to the sky. There was no evidence of a wormhole yet, and no telling where it would appear. He glanced around at his companions. Clec and Ashont were circling around the immense torso of the Gatekeeper, communicating on their private channel; probably wishing they could pry the valuable ore out of that immense body. Sev was – huh. Where was she? He looked back toward the ship in time to see her disappear up the ramp. He opened a channel to her. “Sev? What are you doing?”

  “I’m thirsty and my suit reservoir is empty. I’ll be right back.”

  “Ah, of course.” He realized he was speaking to an empty channel – she’d cut the comms as soon as she finished speaking.