The Archaeologists, Part 1
Parental Advisory: Strong Language
In the main cabin deck, Misha was dreaming of pines when the trilling of the proximity alert woke him. Visions of a heaving sea of green and a burning blue sky dissolved into the ceiling where the cable conduit vanished behind Thessalin's holo of old Terra-Lune. He lay beside the grimy, scratched bulkhead in the whisper of recycled air and the tremor from the main drive.
Across their cabin, Thessalin was already pulling on her uniform to go to the control room. He remembered reaching for her in the night. Her body had been rigid as a vacuum suit.
"You were dreaming again," she said, checking her appearance in the mirror. "What was it?"
Misha sat up and dragged a sweater over his head. He was still trembling.
"What was the dream?" Thessalin repeated. "If it was precognitive, we need to know."
"Pines, a pine forest," Misha said. He forced a twisted smile. "The closest thing to real pines I've seen were those umbrella trees on Dayson before the Krakens blasted it... Maybe it was just a dream, you know?"
"Look at you; you're still sweating. It wasn't just a dream. Try and think about it before it fades. What can you remember?"
Misha shrugged. "I was looking down. From a tower, I think," he said slowly, avoiding her gaze while he dressed. "Bright sunlight, not much wind. It was hot." He shook his head. "I wish I'd never mentioned the damned dream about the damned dragon. Now even you treat me like a freak. Causation and correlation - you know the difference. A dream about a dragon and then what happened on Dayson... can you really believe there's a connection?"
"You know what Quetzal said about theories of causality." Thessalin was at the door. "Try and remember more of it. We'll have to talk about it later."
"Quetzal said he didn't know."
But she was gone.
The alarm cut off and over the intercom, in his bridge-officer voice, Quetzal, the shipmind, said, "Everyone, prepare for course changes in ten minutes. Our pursuer has fired missiles again."
#
Two bulkheads forward, alone in her cabin, Sonya sat cross-legged before the image of Quetzal's winged progenitor that she had stenciled onto the bulkhead. She tensed at the sound of the alarm and started to rise. "No," said Quetzal's social voice. "There is nothing you need do for at least three minutes. A true celebrant sustains the meditative state until the solution appears to her, ignoring all irrelevant distractions. Is that not what you wanted to learn?"
"I wanted to stop the fear," she said. Her thoughts were choked by memories of a planet burning beneath her as she was flown back to the orbiting ship.
"Of course. So consider the problem again; it is not totally irrelevant. A true believer will honour nature's order and not disturb it needlessly; so what choice will she make between increasing the bandwidth of her communications and destroying a unique mineralogical formation? What is to be gained is not life, merely convenience and comfort. How will she choose? Wait until you can feel the answer."
Pale-faced, Sonya lifted her head, pushed her shoulders back, and breathed.
#
As empty corridors were darkened and airtight doors sealed and Quetzal prepared his countermeasures, Sonya joined the surviving archaeologists and crew in the acceleration-buffered meeting room. Fresh from the sickbay, she had helped move partitions and seating to combine the command centre with the conference room - a useful cooperative activity at the time. But the room was too big; it had held well over a hundred, and now they all sat in the first few rows. Nevertheless, after three missile attacks since their reawakening, she realised it had become a ritual to gather here before the main display, leaving the rest of the ship populated by simple electronic minds, by dust, and perhaps by ghosts.
Arriving late, she strapped herself in at the end of one row. Misha was two places over in the row ahead of her, and beside him sat his lover, Thessalin - their leader, the only one in an officer's uniform. It had become her armour,…
