Incandescence

Roi rejoined the geometry-calculators for one more task. Since the Splinter's orbit was essentially circular and the Wanderer's was not, they couldn't hope to track its motion perfectly, keeping themselves always in the center of the safe zone that lay roughly — but thanks to the twist, not precisely — on the opposite side of the Hub. However, they could find the orbit that gave them the greatest protection possible, given that the Wanderer's brightness was reaching its ominous peaks with perfect regularity.

In effect, they would try to hide the Wanderer behind the Hub, to make it disappear from view. As the instructions flowed from the calculators to the sardside tunnel, and the observations flowed from Cho to the calculators, Cho's data began to reveal a modified cycle. As well as dimming and brightening from its own mysterious dynamics, the Wanderer was now growing more or less obscured by the Hub, which was swallowing varying portions of its light. As the Splinter eased into its new orbit, the two cycles slipped into the desired, antagonistic relationship: the Wanderer's dazzling bursts were cut short by the Hub's intervention, and when the imperfect alignment of the orbits most prevented the Hub from hiding the Wanderer, it was, of its own accord, at its least radiant.

Roi signaled Bard to close the tunnels, and told Tio to let the calculators rest. There was nothing more to be done. If the orbits started slipping further out of alignment, moving further from the Hub would only worsen the disparity. Their fate was at the mercy of the Wanderer now.

Roi sent word to evacuate the edges, to bring everyone as close as possible to the center of the Splinter. Her first instinct had been to move people to the sard edge — doubling the amount of rock between them and the Wanderer compared to the center — but Kem had pointed out that while pure light straight from the Wanderer couldn't reach them from the opposite side, a flare might wash behind them while radiating heat and light of its own, rendering the sard edge vulnerable.

Cho refused to leave his observation point, as did the light-messengers who linked him to the center. Roi sent a message to him.

"Let me replace you." She was older, it was her time.

Cho replied, "This is my work, not yours."

It was a bad argument, his skills might yet be needed for some future task they could not imagine, but Roi lacked the strength to make the journey to the garmside to plead with him in person.

The evacuees poured into the crowded center, bringing stores of food, pushing carts, herding susk.

Roi left her post and moved from chamber to chamber, seeking out people she'd known. Gul had come with a new class of hatchlings. She greeted him fondly, and played for a while with the children, but some restlessness drove her on. Ruz was nowhere to be found; eventually she heard that he'd taken the place of one of the light-messengers.

She stumbled across Bard in a crowded tunnel, pressed against the rock, his heart laboring despite the lack of weight.

He was dying. She said, "You moved the world, brother. You gave us our chance. Be at peace." He was too weak to reply. She looked around for food to bring him, but the influx of people had scraped the rock bare.

She had wanted to find Haf, but the crowd around her had become impassable. What could she have done for him, anyway? Sheltered him beneath her carapace? Offered him words of comfort, which would only have made him more certain that death was upon them?

Roi found a place beside Bard. She had planned to return to her post to wait for news from Cho, but the only news that mattered now would come to them all, soon enough, without the need for instruments and calculations.

She looked around at the people covering the walls and ceiling. They had worked hard, all of them. What was the nature of the world, what was the meaning of work, when so much struggle could end in obliteration?

She was tired now. She wished she could have gone as Zak had, when there was still so much hope. This was unbearable.

Bard stirred, and drummed something faintly.

Roi said, "I missed that."

"I think we've all been recruited," he said.

Roi caught his meaning and chirped softly. They really were one big team now. She turned the bleakly funny notion over in her mind, and felt the answering buzz of cooperation. Living or dying, she'd be doing the same as everyone around her. How could she not be happy with that?

Light replaced the crowds, the rock, the world. Roi ramped down her vision as fast as she could, fleeing from its intensity, trying to burrow into the safety of her mind to reach a painless black sleep. The light wouldn't let her escape: it overtook her, then reached into her eyes with lacerating claws.

There was only pain, heat, and brightness. She willed death, but the light kept slicing into her, playing with her, refusing to deliver mercy. Every time the sameness of it softened the blows, the thing turned her over and cut her somewhere new.