“I—I am.” There was a note of wonder in his voice.
“Mind telling us what happened?”
“I am . . . whole—” Renaud sobbed.
“Whole?” I asked.
“The voices are gone, Sol Boy. The song, though, remains. It’s so beautiful. Sad, but beautiful.”
REVELATIONS
Knowing we couldn’t just turn the relic, and the—perhaps former—Broken, over to the authorities, the others spent a moment freaking out about the potential ramifications of our discovery.
I had no doubt that if the government learned what was up before the public, they’d likely silence everyone and start running tests until we were used up. None of us wanted that.
Because I’m an old hand at criminal conspiracies, I managed the situation.
First off, a seemingly completely sane and rational Renaud agreed to hide the relic via the simple expedient of digging a space in the tailings pile and fusing material over it.
Second, Mohammed just wanted to mine, and the crew would start to grumble without one of us to settle them down, so he went over to the common bunkhouse.
A brief discussion of quarantining Renaud followed. He sent Dumont some mathematic formula or equation that convinced her she had more to gain from speaking to him face-to-face than if she were to quarantine him and let someone else learn what he knew.
The three of us retired to the foreman’s quarters to discuss next steps.
What we had first, however, was an explanation:
“The relic we pulled from AL-1517B is part of an expert system from a supermassive device meant to open a gate between stars,” Renaud said, sucking on a drink bag. “The very first time it was put in service it exploded in a cataclysm that converted most of its structure into its composite elements and drove most of those components that survived out-system. AL-1517B and SU-4222H, better shielded and equipped with station-keeping drives, remained in position, but only barely.”
I couldn’t believe this was the same guy who couldn’t keep on a subject for more than a few phrases at a time without descending into a rant about the color of shit excreted after eating the infirmary diet.
“The remaining parts had, disconnected from one another and from the intelligence that had created them, mourned the death of purpose.
“Then we came. The relic, tuned to the interstices between realities, noticed our ship’s jumps, but couldn’t communicate with us. It wasn’t until the first Broken settled on Nouvelle Geneve and provided a consistent signal, as it were, that it realized communication with us might be possible.”
“The song?” I asked.
He nodded. “Yes.”
“But, why you? Why now?” Dumont asked. “There’s been Broken on Nouvelle Geneve for ages.”
“I was a navigator. The relic was the navigator for the gate. The gate this one was to connect to was built in the system where I had my break.”
“Lines of congruency?” Dumont guessed.
He nodded.
“What does it want now?”
“It would like nothing more than to rejoin the other surviving relics.”
“And do what?” I asked, knowing the government would really want an answer to that question.
He shrugged. “Survive? It can’t do anything, really. It’s harmless.”
“It healed you, didn’t it?”
He smiled. “Yes.”
I smothered unworthy anger. “With your change in status as an example, I know the government won’t take your original answer at face value, Renaud.”
“Then we don’t give them my example.”
“And let other Broken remain so?”
He frowned. “Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“No offense, but why do you care, Prometheus?” Dumont asked.
I turned a stare on her that had made rough men shit themselves.
She blanched, but gathered herself and went on. “I mean, you were sent up here for being some kind of crime boss, and you have to know there’ll be a lot of profit to be made in this . . . so why would a crime boss worry about fixing a shrinking population?”