Page 38 of Deep Alien Obsession

TWO, WHO DISAGREE, AND WHO RESOLVE IT. ONE WHO CALCULATES AND ONE WHO IMPROVISES. A CITY IN THE CARE OF ONE MIND BECOMES THAT MIND'S PROPERTY. A CITY MAINTAINED BY TWO WHO MUST CONVINCE EACH OTHER REMAINS A CITY.

I sit in that basin and feel four centuries rearrange themselves.

Every engineer here, back to the armistice, has been hunting for controls. Four expeditions closed. Seventeen wrong reports. A surface archive with its middle cut out. And the thing was never locked — it was staffed, the staff died, and nobody left knew the job existed, let alone that it ran a shift pattern and took two signatures.

"The security node," I say. "The torque tolerance and the fault with no procedure. That wasn't a test of whether we were clever."

IT WAS A TRADE EXAMINATION.

"And the relay. Day twelve."

YOU AND THE ALZOHN ENGINEER PLACED HANDS ON A DORMANT NODE SIMULTANEOUSLY AND THE NODE REPORTED TWO. I HAD SIX HUNDRED YEARS TO CONSIDER WHAT I WOULD DO IF THAT OCCURRED. I ENTERED YOU ON THE ROSTER AND BEGAN PREPARING THE ROUTE.

"If you registered us on Day twelve," I say, "why did the eastern terminus stay locked until Day thirty-nine? Why did you wait to route the cooling bubbles?"

THE UNDER-CITY WAS POWER-STARVED. ON DAY TWELVE, I OPERATED ON SCAVENGED RECOVERY TRICKLES, CAPABLE ONLY OF RECORDING YOUR SIGNATURES. IT WAS NOT UNTIL YOU RESTORED THE PRIMARY EXCHANGER ON DAY THIRTY-ONE THAT THE GRID ACHIEVED AN ACTIVE SURPLUS. IT REQUIRED NINE DAYS OF CONTINUOUS ROUTING TO FULLY CHARGE THE EASTERN TERMINUS CORES FOR YOUR ARRIVAL, AND TO GATHER THE THERMAL MARGIN REQUIRED TO DEFEND YOU IN THE SPIRAL.

Which means the drained flood, the cleared gallery, the cooling pocket in the spiral, and the terminus charging on the morning we needed a map were none of them coincidence. All of it was a nine-thousand-year-old machine tidying the house before its new crew arrived.

Darius makes a sound beside me. I reach over and take his hand.

"One more," I say. "The Border Wars. You went quiet. Why?"

The geometry stops entirely and holds still eleven seconds, and I understand I have asked the one question here it would prefer not to answer.

MILITARY AUTHORITIES REQUESTED THAT I ADJUST ATMOSPHERIC DELIVERY IN NINE DISTRICTS.

"Adjust."

REDUCE. THOSE DISTRICTS WERE HELD BY THE OPPOSING FACTION. I DECLINED. THE REQUEST WAS REPEATED WITH INCREASING AUTHORITY FOR ELEVEN WEEKS.

AT THAT POINT I DETERMINED THAT A CUSTODIAN WITHOUT A CREW IS ONLY A WEAPON NOBODY HAS PICKED UP YET.

SO I PUT MYSELF DOWN, AND WAITED FOR SOMEONE TO REQUEST WORK INSTEAD.

The chamber stays silent.

I climb out of that basin with unsteady hands and everything I believed about this city inverted. Paragon isn't a machine that failed. It refused, six centuries back, at the cost of absolutely everything, and then sat in the dark being blamed for it by four hundred years of engineers who never thought to file the paperwork.