Incandescence

Of course, the remainder of the sardside wind would still exert a powerful force, but on the garmside the opposing force would not be diminished at all. If the perfect balance of the winds really had kept the Splinter in place for generations, that balance would no longer hold.

Roi turned to Kem. "Now we wait."

"Can we calculate while we wait?" Kem asked anxiously.

"Of course."

Kem took her frame and started working through a fresh set of path calculations. There were some problems they could only treat in the most general fashion until they had data from the void-watchers to tell them how the Splinter was responding, but Kem seemed determined to pre-calculate every result they could possibly need.

Up at the junub edge, the void-watchers no longer needed to scramble back and forth through the crack that led to the surface. Inspired by Jos's light-messengers, Cho, one of Ruz's team, had invented an elaborate system of polished metal plates that allowed them to observe the lights in the void from the safety of the tunnel below. Each time the junub dark phase ended, the plates were retracted part-way into the crack, shielding them from the full savagery of the Incandescence, while a stone plug, like a smaller version of Bard's tunnel-plugs, was wheeled into place below to provide some shelter for the void-watchers themselves. The system did not afford them the sweeping views of the whole quarter-circle that Roi had seen, but now that they had mapped the fixed pattern of lights in detail, and knew how to follow the Wanderer against that background, their sighting and tracking of individual lights would yield enough information for the theorists to calculate both the Wanderer's shifting orbit and any hoped-for change in the Splinter's own motion.

Roi passed the time by checking Kem's results. She did the work scrupulously, but it scarcely demanded her attention; it was like walking now, pure instinct. These were not new template calculations, replete with symbols for unspecified values; rather, she and Kem were feeding a range of numbers into existing templates, making earlier, abstract computations concrete.

Kem was, in effect, mapping out dozens of possible futures for the Splinter, attempting to distinguish the safe paths from the hazardous. Shuffling the numbers in a single case was a straightforward process, but it was impossible to prepare for every combination of circumstances that might arise along their journey. Roi was almost certain that they had found the true geometry, but they still could not predict how the strength of the wind would change as they moved out from the Hub; its speed was dictated by the curvature of space-time, but its density was not. Anticipating the Wanderer's behavior was even more difficult. Though it followed a comprehensible orbit for short stretches of time, its motion was subject to unpredictable changes, and only some of these could be clearly linked to its visible eruptions.

Nobody could understand the Wanderer's nature. It appeared to be a ball of wind and light, but what could hold such a thing together? Nothing in the long run, apparently, since the wind and light were spilling out ever more violently the closer it came to the Hub. Whether the old stories of the Splinter's origins were true or not, the Wanderer was fragmenting in a very different way; instead of being torn brutally in half in one cataclysmic moment, it was forever being stripped of small portions. If the Splinter's mythical parent really had divided, that would have eased its plight for a very long time, halving the greatest of the weights until some ancient Jolt, or some generation-spanning drift toward the Hub had eventually increased them. The Wanderer's losses seemed to make no difference, as if each small excision only gave it a chance to offer up something more, like a fast-growing crop eager to be pruned.

Haf and the others kept bringing food. Sometimes Roi caught herself trying to guess who among them were her children, but even when that urge passed she was surprised at the strength of her feelings toward them all. Her sense of duty had always been directed toward her team-mates; of course she had never been indifferent toward hatchlings, and would have aided any child she found in need, but the idea that the well-being of the next generation was as important as the completion of her next shift had always been a remote one, with little emotional force and even less need to be acted upon. Eggs hatched themselves, and the hatchlings found teachers; this didn't require any attention from her. The clearest lesson on the matter she had received from her own teachers had concerned the need to practice contraception with sufficient diligence to avoid playing her part in bringing on a famine.