His thumb glides around the iris of the eye embedded in his ring.
“I was true to my word. After he’d given me the eye, I had him sealed in a life pod powered by a nuclear generator and shot it into deep space. That was thirty-eight years ago. This ring receives his heartbeat fromtime to time.” I feel a little sick. “He’s still alive, hooked to the nutrient pods, unable to move, willing but unable to die. He will only be eighty-two when we pass him. We’re following his trajectory, and with this station’s engines, we should overtake him in five years.
“That’s what progress does, you see. It leaps ahead of the past, but we can never outrun the trauma that fixed our course. I will never not be that coward shivering beneath the corpses of my love, my children. I will never not see those Gold eyes staring down at me, mocking, knowing there was no recourse I could seek. Just as you will never be able to forget Nero’s eyes as he killed Eo. We are all ever beneath their golden gaze. That is why I wear this ring. To remind myself how my war began.”
A silence falls between us. I break it after a few minutes.
“That’s why you built this place. So your children will never know that gaze?” I ask.
He nods, and the automatons suddenly make sense. “These children have never met you, have they?”
“No. I am contaminated,” he says. “We are all contaminated. Gold hijacked the fate of mankind. I won’t let them inherit the chains Gold nailed into the rest of us. Those children were born free, and they will be free out there amongst the stars. Free to go mad and devour each other before we reach the nearest star. Or free to build a better world than the one we left. Free to become whatever it is they decide to become.”
“Maybe you’re not a realist after all,” I say.
“Maybe not.”
“Will you extend your life with telomerase tanks?”
“I have not decided yet,” he says, reflective. “I know it will be lonely. Matteo and I are prepared for that. But what god isn’t lonely? I really don’t think it is bad to think of myself as that. Gods are manmade after all.”
I consider his face, so exhausted from bellicosity, so lined with the grooves of struggle it might as well be the prow of a battleship. “Do you want to know what I think?”
“Yours might be the only opinion I value,” he says. He pauses, and I sense why. He made me, in a way. His first child after those who died. “After all, you’re the only person I care to say farewell to.”
“I think when you catch up with the Gold who wronged you, you should show him mercy. Resist the temptation to face him again.Destroy the ship as you pass.” He closes his eyes. “You asked me what I learned on the Marcher. It’s that. Chains might be made by others, but we tend them. End his pain. End your own. Who knows. Maybe you’ll find more joy in being a father than playing god.”
He thinks on that. After he does, he sounds different, like a man speaking an unfamiliar tongue and surprised to hear it coming from his own mouth. Affection is not natural for Quicksilver. “You know, I always called you the best investment I ever made, Darrow. But for a long time now, you’ve been more than that.” He looks away, estranged from his own vulnerability. “For many years, I’ve thought of you as a son.”
As I thought. He let me come all this way just to not hand me the miracle I need. He is not like Odysseus’s wise, gray-eyed god. He is like the other gods who tormented Odysseus. The selfish gods. He wanted me to see him. Not to understand him, but to forgive him for running away. And though I’m angry, I truly do.
I reach for his hand. He flinches, but allows me to hold it and take the eyeball ring from his finger. “Your war is over, Quick. I’ll take it from here. But any help you could lend me that doesn’t risk this ship would be more than welcome.”
“I can’t give you enough to change your destination.”
I smirk. “The Vale?”
He nods. “There was a moment where we could win, but we let it slip through our fingers. That moment is gone.”
“Have I ever given you business advice?” I ask with a smile. “Then do me a favor, don’t advise me on war.”
He laughs. “What do you need? Aside from ships. Most of mine were decommissioned and used as materials to finish theRasa.The few that remain are needed to defend the station until we’re free of this infernal system.”
“Repairs, provisions, weapons, armor, and my wife’s agent. But more than anything, I need information. Since this wandering world is meant to find a new home, and you watched me on my way here, I’m betting it has one bloodydamn good telescope.”
—
The main telescopic array of theTabula Rasalooks like a tornado made of metal and glass. It is constructed in several parts and so can extend out from a crater to change its view. The array tapers to a spherical viewing chamber suspended in darkness. Eight less powerful short-rangetelescopes are distributed along the asteroid’s surface so that with a tilt of its axis the array can bring any one of them to bear without having to completely realign itself. The system is meant to be usable even by an astral novice like Quicksilver, and is run by an AI.
“Show me the system,” I say.
I see the galaxy form beyond me in the blackness beyond the chamber. A second three-dimensional image appears on a central pedestal. It is not a true view of reality. Where there is no visual information to be gathered, the AI has filled in the unseen elements of the celestial bodies. I cup the system in my hands, astounded.
The telescope lends me the flawed omniscience of Zeus. Its only limitation is that it looks out from one perspective—theTabula Rasa’s. On closer inspection there are blindspots from asteroids in the way of its view, but the experience of peering at the images it gathers is no less affecting. I see the planets turn on their axes, revealing little secrets as they dance around the sun. So long as the telescopes are open and watching, the AI is recording, so I can rewind time on demand.
Matteo was right, I do have more time than I thought.
Mars floats before me. The moons of Phobos and Deimos are in the hands of the enemy still, but the siege of Mars has not progressed as I feared it would. The Iron Rain has not yet fallen. Far from it. Nearly half the enemy fleet is missing. I rewind time from the telescope’s old, recorded imagery to see if maybe they are hiding behind the planet. They are not.
