“An old kleroukhos on his plot might think they were gods, yes,” Rhita said. She blushed slightly, realizing she had used a queenly tactic against the strategos.

“What about an old soldier hoping to live on his pension?” Atta asked. “An old man who’s seen all the things this world has to offer, from the forests of Nea Karkhēdōn to Africa’s bottom?”

“You’ve seen nothing like the Way,” Rhita said, staring at him without blinking. Atta refused to engage in this kind of contest. He casually turned to Oresias.

“Wonderful,” he said. “Her Imperial Hypsēlotēs wishes us to end our days of service eaten by monsters or burned to ashes by gods.”

“Or being met by friends,” Rhita said, angry now at the strategos’s cynicism. “Friends who could bring the Oikoumenē back to its days of glory.”

“Treasure beyond the monster’s jaws,” Oresias said.

“Try to be more specific about their strengths and weaknesses…if they have any weaknesses,” Atta urged her gently. “We only have a few more hours before we start putting everything together. Help an old ass carry a heavier load.”

“I’ve never seen these things. I’ve only been told about them,” Rhita said, suddenly afraid again.

“Try to remember,” Atta said with a sigh. “Any scrap can only help.”

21

Thistledown, Fifth Chamber

The Jart bided quietly within Olmy, apparently unaware of any change in status. Olmy lay in the second room, eyes closed, probing delicately at his new companion, like a surgeon seeking the best point of entry to a sleeping but dangerous beast.

He could feel the depths of the asteroid all around him, unchanged across billions of years, implacable as time, primordial rock and carbonaceous materials and water that had fed and housed his people for centuries.

He looked at the empty plate which had once revealed the Jart’s placid patterns. Now the memory stores were empty; all that there was of the Jart had been successfully uploaded into Olmy’s implants.

His first discovery, in the first few seconds of investigating the Jart, was that a kind of translating shell, or interface, had been developed, either by the Jart itself in reaction to the probes of early researchers or, less likely, by the researchers themselves. Without the shell, Olmy would not have picked up sensible communications when Mar Kellen first hooked him to the system. The shell was incomplete but useful for a beginning.

Having confirmed that translated communication was possible, Olmy now double-checked his precautions. He had set both the Jart mentality—which occupied one implant—and a downloaded partial of himself apart from his primary self, and erected a number of barricades, not the least of which was a timer that regulated access to all of his implants. The partial conducted the early investigation and reported to him periodically.