And the one thing everyone agreed on was that Aniara must be split no further, must make no further sacrifices outside of itself. Once that was clear, it was easy to decide what to do. In the wake of the Great Surge, this part of the Bottom was an incredible froth of Slowness and Beyond. It would be centuries before the zonographic vessels from above had reasonable maps of the new interface. Hidden away in the folds and interstices were worlds fresh from the Slowness, worlds where Sjandra Kei could be born again. Ny Sjandra Kei?
He looked across the bridge at Tirolle and Glimfrelle. They were busy bringing the main navigation processors out of suspension. That wasn't absolutely necessary for the rendezvous with Lynsnar, but things would be a lot more convenient if both ships could maneuver. The brothers seemed oblivious to Kjet's conversation with Ravna. And maybe they weren't paying attention. In a way, the Aniara decision meant more to them than to the humans of the fleet: No one doubted that millions of humans survived in the Beyond (and who knew how many human worlds might still exist in the Slowness, distant cousins of Nyjora, distant children of Old Earth). But this side of the Transcend, the Dirokimes of Aniara were the only ones that existed. The dream habitats of Sjandra Kei were gone, and with them the race. There were at least a thousand Dirokimes left aboard Aniara, pairs of sisters and brothers scattered across a hundred vessels. These were the most adventurous of their race's latter days, and now they were faced with their greatest challenge. The two on Olvira had already been scouting among the survivors, looking for friends and dreaming a new reality.
Ravna listened solemnly to his explanations. "Group Captain, zonography is a tedious thing… and your ships are near their limits. In this froth you might search for years and not find a new home."
"We're taking precautions. We're abandoning all our ships except the ones with ramscoop and coldsleep capability. We'll operate in coordinated nets; no one should be lost for more than a few years." He shrugged. "And if we never find what we seek — " if we die between the stars as our life support finally fails "— well then, we will have still lived true to our name." Aniara. "I think we have a chance." More than can be said for you.
Ravna nodded slowly. "Yes, well. It… helps me to know that."
They talked a few minutes more, Tirolle and Glimfrelle joining in. They had been at the center of something vast, but as usual with the affairs of the Powers, no one knew quite what had happened, nor the result of the strivings.
"Rendezvous Lynsnar two hundred seconds," said the ship's voice.
Ravna heard it, nodded. She raised her hand. "Fare you well, Kjet Svensndot and Tirolle and Glimfrelle."
The Dirokimes whistled back the common farewell, and Svensndot raised his hand. The window on Ravna Bergsndot closed.
… Kjet Svensndot remembered her face all the rest of his life, though in later years it seemed more and more to be the same as Olvira's.
"Tines' world. I can see it, Pham!"
The main window showed a true view upon the system: a sun less than two hundred million kilometers off, daylight across the command deck. The positions of identified planets were marked with blinking red arrows. But one of those — just twenty million kilometers off — was labeled "terrestrial". Coming off an interstellar jump, you couldn't get positioning much better than that.
Pham didn't reply, just glared out the window as if there were something wrong with what they were seeing. Something had broken in him after the battle with the Blight. He'd been so sure of his godshatter — and so bewildered by the consequences. Afterwards he had retreated more than ever. Now he seemed to think that if they moved fast enough, the surviving enemy could do them no harm. More than ever he was suspicious of Blueshell and Greenstalk, as if somehow they were greater threats than the ships that still pursued.
"Damn," Pham said finally. "Look at the relative velocity." Seventy kilometers per second.
Position matching was no problem, but "Matching velocities will cost us time, Sir Pham."
Pham's stare turned on Blueshell. "We talked this out with the locals three weeks ago, remember? You managed the burn."
"And you checked my work, Sir Pham. This must be another nav system bug
… though I didn't expect anything was wrong in simple ballistics." A sign inverted, seventy klicks per second closing velocity instead of zero. Blueshell drifted toward the secondary console.
"Maybe," said Pham. "Just now, I want you off the deck, Blueshell."
"But I can help! We should be contacting Jefri, and rematching velocities, and — "
"Get off the deck, Blueshell. I don't have time to watch you anymore," Pham dived across the intervening space and was met by Ravna, just short of the Rider.
