Incandescence

As the silt around him settled Rakesh rose to his feet. The white lights scattered across the sea floor were piles of bones. Some were more or less whole human skeletons, others were jumbled assortments of parts. Some bacterial infestation had rendered them all phosphorescent as they decayed.

He must have begun to vocalize something, because he found salt water suddenly burning his nostrils and palate, as if he'd taken a heedless preparatory breath. He rapidly forgot whatever curse he'd been aiming at Csi, and fought desperately to get the water into his stomach instead of his lungs.

As he forced down the mouthful of brine, he felt something hard and smooth under his tongue. He clamped his hand to his mouth and managed to expel the thing without admitting any more water. He didn't need to hold it up to the ghost light to know what it was; his fingertips told him. It was the glass key that Lahl had given him.

And here it opened. what?

Rakesh crouched down and groped through the mud. What had Csi planted? A treasure chest? That might be worth searching for, so long as it contained an oxygen tank and not a pile of worthless coins.

He rose to his feet again and looked around at the graveyard of failed divers. If there was any logic to this macabre metaphor, surely some of them had come close to the prize, even if they'd been unable to unlock it.

Blood was pounding in his ears. Overlaid on a random scatter of remains, there seemed to be a group concentrated on a spot about fifteen meters away.

Rakesh slogged his way toward the hillock of bones. It would have been nice to have Parantham's help at this point, but she seemed to have landed elsewhere, or been shunted right out of his version of the scenario.

As he waded in among the ribs and tibias, he felt a pang of desolation. What were these corpses to Csi? Hopes? Friendships? After nearly twice as long in the node as Rakesh, Csi was still stranded.

Without leaving the scape, Rakesh spawned an insentient messenger who'd visit Csi after a week had passed and hand him a copy of the key. For all the scorn and derision he'd heaped upon the sirens' call, there was a chance that after a few days' reflection Csi might change his mind and decide to follow them.

His conscience salved, Rakesh put aside his squeamishness and dived into the graveyard of travelers' ambitions. His skull was bursting, but he was determined to find the tin box with the treasure map, or whatever Csi's wry punchline was, before he surrendered consciousness.

His fingers hit metal. Jubilantly, he moved his hands apart to try to span the edges, but the surface just went on and on. The treasure chest was more like a vault, at least a few meters wide.

He probed the metal beneath the mound of bones, scanning back and forth with his fingertips. Streaks of light flashed behind his eyes, followed like thunder by a bludgeoning pain. Finally he held out the key itself and scraped it blindly over the vault's unyielding surface.

Something gave, and his hand moved. Probably the key had just slipped. Rakesh waggled it, disbelieving. It had entered a keyhole, and it fitted snugly.

He tried to plow some of the mound aside, but he soon gave up. He doubted that he'd have the strength to lift the vault's huge door even if he could clear it first. Still, there was something satisfying about getting this far. Let Csi paint his not-quite-triumphant skeleton into the scape and leave it as a signpost for the next traveler.

He turned the key, and felt a click.

The door dropped away beneath him. Mud, bones, Rakesh, and a geyser of water erupted from an opening in the floor of the ocean, into an endless space full of stars.

4

The sense of attachment Roi felt toward her work team had never been a constant, unwavering force. Even in the absence of recruitment efforts it rose and fell, following its own internal rhythm. So it was only when it had reached one of its peaks and she felt confident that her loyalty could survive a few missed shifts that she decided to take a break and travel to the Null Line.

Zak had invited her to come and see his «contraptions» as soon as she'd handed him her first batch of weight measurements, and each time since then when they'd met he'd reminded her that she was welcome to visit, though he'd never made her feel that she was under any pressure. It was, of course, conceivable that he had a team waiting at the Null Line ready to enact a full-blown recruitment, but Roi had made a point of quizzing people for any news they'd heard from the Calm, and she'd turned up no evidence of any such threat. It was hard to believe that an entire team indulging in activity as strange as Zak's could have escaped notice. For a lone, unrecruited person to behave oddly was only to be expected.